Network Minister
"I want to build a new Silicon Valley," says N. Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He's on his way: Companies like Microsoft, Metamor, and Oracle have already set up camp in his "hi-tec city," a sprawling infotech park in Hyderabad, some 200 miles north of Bangalore. Now Naidu is taking tech to the people. Soon, citizens will begin accessing an online system to register land deeds, pay utility bills, and obtain birth certificates. Naidu, who refers to himself as the "CEO of Andhra Pradesh," says the goal is to make government accountable. "If we are outdated, how are we going to develop a country?" he asks.
Matchmaker
When Rebecca Patton joined E*Trade as VP of marketing in 1995, the company wasn't even on the Web. As E*Trade's popularity shows, she not only did a good job of promoting the site, but also brought more people into the previously highfalutin financial community. So why did Patton leave to lead Della & James, an online gift registry that aims to do for weddings what E*Trade did for securities? "I couldn't pass up the start-up opportunity," she says. First up for the marketing ace: publicizing the oddly named venture. "We consciously avoided something like Weddings.com," she says, hinting at the obscure nuances of online branding.
Sugar Muther
When Catherine Muther retired from Cisco in 1994, the former VP of marketing had a lot of paper money and even more time on her hands. Today, the stock bolsters a $5 million endowment for her Three Guineas Fund (named after a Virginia Woolf book about charity), and her time is occupied solving "access issues for women and girls." Her latest project is the Women's Technology Cluster, a San Francisco-based incubator for women-run tech outfits. "Capital has traditionally been a barrier to aspiring women entrepreneurs in technology," says Muther. That's a problem she hopes to fix.
New Gage
It's hardly a surprise that the Internet Society tapped John Gage to fill the seat vacated by the death of Jon Postel. As Sun's chief research officer, Gage certainly has good tech references, though lately he is better known for social activism, including founding the school-wiring initiative Net Day. But Gage's interests are a natural fit as the Internet Society looks to broaden its scope. He hopes to expand membership and start projects like a digital Peace Corps to wire developing nations. "I don't have Postel's technical expertise," admits Gage. "My interest is outward-reaching - not protocols, but technology's impact on society."
Leap of Faith
"My bridge-jumping days are over," proclaims Miko Matsumura, the former Java evangelist for Sun. Matsumura once donned the marshmallowy garb of the company's mascot, Duke, and bungeed off a bridge to prove his devotion to the programming language. But the networking master, who claims to have evangelized more than 100,000 people, recently left in hopes of converting his faith into IPO riches. Matsumura signed on to be the chief strategist at BusinessTone, a start-up that plans to harness Java to offer small companies resource management tools over the Web. "There are 8.5 million businesses worldwide," says Matsumura, explaining why Java's ubiquity and enterprise software's high price tag add up to easy money for the start-up.
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