Entrepreneurship Success Stories

Entrepreneur:  Catherine S. Muther

Company:  Three Guineas Fund

Year Started:  1994

Description of Business:  The Three Guineas Fund, a non-profit grant-making foundation, was founded "to promote social justice by expanding access to economic opportunity for women and girls."  The Three Guineas Fund, based in San Francisco, aims to create access to opportunity for women and girls in education and the economy.  It emphasizes the roles of women in the business world, collaboration between senior and junior employees, networking amongst businesses, and the importance of philanthropic behavior in today’s business world.

The Story:  Muther received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, her M.A. in Anthropology from Cambridge University, England and her M.B.A. from Stanford University.  Prior to founding the Three Guineas Fund and the Women’s Technology Cluster, Muther worked as Senior Marketing Officer with Cisco Systems (1989-1994).  At Cisco during that time, she helped grow the company from $25 million to $1 billion in sales.  Previously, Muther was vice president of corporate marketing at 3Com and a vice president of marketing at Bridge Communications.  She has won numerous awards and honors, including Top 25 Women on the Web, Fortune’s Top Women in Technology 2001, the Supporter of Entrepreneurship Award at the 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, and was an invited speaker at the White House First Conference on Philanthropy in 2001.

When she decided to leave Cisco, Muther’s goal was to take what she learned about entrepreneurship into the world of philanthropy with a eye toward specifically helping women succeed in business and in leadership roles.  She invested $2 million of her own wealth to launch the Three Guineas Fund (and continues to use her business knowledge and networks to help nascent women entrepreneurs).  The name Three Guineas Fund comes from Virginia Woolf’s meditation on philanthropy entitled "Three Guineas."  One of the Fund’s main projects is the Women’s Technology Cluster (WTC).  Founded in 1999, the WTC is a non-profit incubator in San Francisco that assists women in obtaining capital to build communications technology businesses.  Muther’s vision with the WTC is to facilitate the development of independent businesses using a revolutionary technique - collaboration, via networking, among businesses employees within a firm.

Her business philosophy is teamwork.  Employees with more experience, for example, mentor those with less - a system that enables more experienced workers to gain new ideas and insight from the younger employees.  For Muther, this helps foster a strong working relationship that leads to greater business success.  Recognizing the interrelations of the business world and the underutilization of women within it, Muther has developed a visionary method that incorporates women into more prominent roles in the business community.

Muther does not see business prosperity as the bottom line.  The well being of the society in which we live is equally important, she says.  Muther’s companies have made a commitment to contribute a two percent equity stake back into the Women's Technology Cluster to be used for philanthropic purposes.  The idea is to create a reciprocal relationship between the business world and society.

The Women’s Technology Cluster companies are creating jobs and fast-growing companies through aggressive acquisition of equity capital.  WTC firms already have raised $61 million in private equity in the first sixteen months of the incubator’s operation.  The Women’s Technology Cluster is still working to fulfill the ideals upon which it was founded.  Launched in 1999, the WTC has thrived in the business world and has been recognized for its accomplishments.  WTC firms continue to receive abundant capital and investor interest from overseas investors.

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