DeniseBroussard

Cynthia Ringo, CEO of CopperCom

by Peg Townsend

Cynthia Ringo, FWE Entrepreneur of the Year 2000, has successfully raised tens of millions of dollars of Venture Capital, and has served as a respected executive of such companies such as Red Brick Systems and Madge Network.

On a warm summer morning 11 years ago, Cynthia Ringo stood in the Atlanta airport feeling like she was about to step off the edge of a cliff. Everything she needed was packed into a couple of suitcases, but almost everything she loved was being left behind: her home, a good job, her family and years of friendships. Ringo, a single mom, was headed west to join a startup software company with lots of promise but not much else. "It was hard," says Ringo, remembering how she tried not to crush her 10-year-old son's fingers while she waited for their plane. "All I was thinking was: What am I doing?"

Now, sitting in her spacious Mediterranean-style home set on 2½ acres in Morgan Hill, Calif., Ringo knows she did the right thing. The little startup, Red Brick Systems, set the standard for data warehousing and led to her current position as CEO of CopperCom, where she has raised $65 million in financing. She has become an influential player in Silicon Valley and a woman to watch in terms of growing companies. "When I look back now, I was pretty amazed I did it," says Ringo, a tall woman with shoulder-length blond hair. "It was the epitome of high risk." But the experience taught her a good lesson.

"The flip side of fear is excitement," Ringo says. "If you find yourself feeling afraid of something, don't back off." Born to a strong, creative mother and a father who worked for corrugated box companies, Ringo was the oldest of six children. Her childhood was spent moving from small town to small town in the wake of her father's jobs. She began cooking family dinners when she was 10, earned good grades without a lot of effort and was the first person on either side of her family to go to college. "My mother always told me I could be anything I wanted, and since I heard it all my life, I think I really absorbed it," she says. But reaching her goals wasn't easy.

Ringo married her high school sweetheart when she was 19 and had to work full time to support herself through college. By her second year of law school, Ringo was pregnant. "I was nursing a child through my second and third year of law school," Ringo says. "At the time you don't even think about it. It was just what I was doing." Despite having to be wife, mother and student, Ringo graduated in the top 20 percent of her class at Emory University and got a job with a prestigious Atlanta law firm. She had to be dragged kicking and screaming into management. While working as a legal consultant for Management Science America, company executives approached Ringo about moving into a management role. "I kept thinking, 'wait, I don't know anything about business and I spent all this time and money and I'm up to my eyeballs in debt from law school,'" Ringo remembers. "I wondered: Why are these guys trying to get me to not practice law?"

But as it turned out, Ringo was a born businesswoman and soon had her own consulting firm. That's when the founder of Red Brick Systems came into her life with a plan for data warehousing - a cutting-edge technology at the time. Ringo spent nine months researching the market and the product's possibilities, took a deep breath and jumped. "The potential for very high rewards was there," Ringo says, "but there was just as great a potential that it wouldn't work out." Three and a half years later, with Red Brick successfully launched in the Silicon Valley, Ringo accepted a job with a data networking company called Madge Networks. "It was a slam dunk," Ringo says of the move. Her stock options in Red Brick were vested, she was burned out on fund-raising even though the company needed more financing, and Madge Network was poised to go public. But it was still a tough decision.

"When you pour a large amount of yourself into something, it's hard to leave," Ringo says. "Women have such a strong sense of loyalty and creation. "It's like being a mom." But the opportunity was right and so Ringo moved on to be senior vice president of corporate development for Madge, a $400-million multi-national data networking company. A few years later, she was ranked as the second-highest paid female executive in Silicon Valley. In 1997, Ringo looked around and leaped again. This time to a startup called CopperCom.

CopperCom makes equipment for telephone service providers like AT&T or MCI. Its chief product allows these companies to offer customers high-speed Internet access and 24 phone lines over what today is one phone line - something sorely needed in an increasingly high-tech world. It sounds like a no-brainer for investors, "but 2½ years ago that wasn't the case. It was not a slam dunk," Ringo says. "I have the dubious honor of having more venture capitalists' cards than anyone I know. That means lots of people have heard your story and turned you down."

Ringo laughs now, but then, it wasn't funny. Going from investor to investor, Ringo would be told that the company wasn't "right" for them. That the firm's management team wasn't right. That the business plan didn't make any sense. Worse yet, she couldn't even get some people to return her phone calls. "You have to find a way to take the feedback and hear it to see if there is validity there...and keep your vision," Ringo says. "It's a gut-wrenching experience." At one point, she even approached company founder Charlie Bass and told him that maybe the problem was that the company needed to replace her as CEO. "He said 'we're not even going to consider that at this point,'" Ringo says. Then she laughs. "He didn't say 'never consider,' he just said 'at this point.'"

So Ringo went back to work, making phone calls, knocking on doors, pulling out all her contacts. Eventually, Ringo raised $65 million in financing from companies like Advanced Tech. Ventures, Advent International and AT&T Ventures. Now, she's working on her second $50 million in financing - a much easier proposition this time around since CopperCom's buzz is at an all-time high. Ringo's experiences taught her persistence, plus a lesson she hasn't forgotten. "If you don't have a sense of humor in this business, go out and get one," she says. Ringo is remarried now - to a man who also works in high tech and is very supportive. Her son is now 21, and supportive too.

It's a good thing, says Ringo, with the summer sun just beginning to touch the olive and orange trees in the garden she designed. Right now, her work pretty much comes first. She's given up the 100 miles of bike riding she used to do every week and had to put family time on a back burner for a while. There's little time for skiing, swimming or collecting art glass. "There are only 24 hours in a day," Ringo says with a sigh. "There is no magic." But both her husband and son understand what this work means to her.

"I absolutely love what I do," Ringo says. "It's hard and frustrating sometimes, but for the most part it's so rewarding to see the team come together; to set goals and meet them." It is what drives Ringo, what makes her thrive as much as her garden. "Only in the last three years have I had what I consider to be the courage to have really big dreams," Ringo says. "People look at my life and say 'you've had some pretty big dreams,' but to me they weren't. They were modest dreams that I thought I could achieve. "But now the modesty has gone out of the dreams." Ringo pauses for a moment. "It's like when I started skiing," she says. At first, she would be frightened as she stood at the top of each run. But when she pushed off down the hill, she felt exhilarated and full of the beauty of her surroundings. "It occurs to me that it's the same thing going on in every aspect of life," she says. "The question is, can you get up enough courage to push off the top of the mountain?"

A FEW MORE MINUTES WITH CYNTHIA RINGO

T.D.: If you could have dinner with two people (living or not) who would they be?

Ringo: Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

T.D.: What is your favorite quote?

Ringo: "The most appealing companies are those in the state of pure possibilities."

T.D.: What was the last book you read? Anything you could recommend?

Ringo: "Market Leadership Strategies for Service Companies" by Craig Terrill and Arthur Middlebrooks, along with "The Intuitive Edge" by Philip Goldberg.

T.D.: If you were to chose a different profession, what would it be?

Ringo: I would either be a landscape architect or develop medical devices, or maybe both.

T.D.: What is your definition of success?

Ringo: In business, it's to create a market-leading company. In life, it's to raise a son who becomes a self-fulfilled, self-sufficient adult.