Sandra L. Kurtzig is an American businesswoman and technology entrepreneur. She was one of

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

's first female entrepreneurs, and as the founder of the business and manufacturing software producer ASK Group in 1972, was the first woman to take a Silicon Valley technology company

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

Career

Early life

Sandra Kurtzig was born in Chicago on October 21, 1947. Kurtzig earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

in 1968,"Kurtzig, Sandra L." ''American Men & Women of Science'': ''A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders in Physical, Biological, and Related Sciences'', edited by Katherine H. Nemeh, 31st ed., vol. 4, Gale, 2013, p. 699. ''Gale Virtual Reference Library'', Accessed 3 Feb. 2017. and a master's degree in

aeronautical engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Contract programming

In 1972, she left her job selling computer

time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the Concurrency (computer science), concurrent sharing of a computing resource among many tasks or users by giving each Process (computing), task or User (computing), user a small slice of CPU time, processing time. ...

for

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

and devoted more of her time to starting a family. She founded ASK Group as a part-time job, using "a $2,000 commission check from GE;" the $2,000 was needed to rent a time-sharing terminal. Kurtzig launched ''ASK'' as a small, part-time contract software-programming business out of her second bedroom "to keep her mind occupied" and increase her income, never intending the business to operate outside her house. She was asked by her first client, Halcyon, to create an inventory-tracking program that could efficiently provide manufacturing information. Realizing that other manufacturers might find such a program useful, she recruited several graduates with degrees in engineering and computers. Under her direction they wrote standardized applications that addressed problems faced by local manufacturers.

ERP

Manman

Kurtzig reinvested all profits into growing the company. Her company required access to

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s and she persuaded employees at a nearby

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

plant to allow her company to use one of the company's

HP 3000 The HP 3000 series is a family of 16-bit computing, 16-bit and 32-bit computing, 32-bit minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard. It was designed to be the first minicomputer with full support for time-sharing in the hardware and the operating system, ...

minicomputers outside of normal working hours. By 1978, ASK released a package of programs called Manman, one of the first

enterprise resource planning Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a suit ...

(ERP) software suites. She later concluded a deal for Hewlett Packard to sell ''Manman'' for use on HP-3000 minicomputers, at a time when most ERP software was only available to run on more expensive

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

s. The company went public on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

in 1981, and in 1983, Kurtzig's personal stake in the ASK Group was worth $67 million. She resigned from her role of CEO of the ASK Group in 1985. but returned in 1989 to refocus and once again grow the company. ASK bought

Ingres Corporation Actian is an American software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that provides analytics-related software, products, and services. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and data integra ...

in November 1990. At its peak, the company's annual sales were just under $1 billion U.S. dollars.

Kenandy

In 2010 she founded the enterprise management software company Kenandy, where she served as the CEO through 2015 and is currently the Chairman. Kenandy specializes in producing cloud ERP solutions for manufacturing businesses. Kenandy is named after Kurtzig's sons, Ken and Andy Kurtzig,Gould, Lawrence S. "Manufacturing Meets Social Networking." ''Automotive Design & Production'' 124.1 (2012): 26-27. ''Business Source Complete''. Web. 3 Feb. 2017. who are serving as CEOs at other tech businesses. In June 2013, Kenandy announced a $33 million round of funding led by

Lightspeed Venture Partners Lightspeed Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm focusing on seed stage, early stage investments and growth stage investments in the enterprise, fintech, consumer and healthcare sectors. Lightspeed has eleven offices globally and as o ...

. valuing the company at $350 million. Other investors are Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, salesforce.com, and WSGR (Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati). Kurtzig's autobiography, ''CEO: Building a $400 Million Company from the Ground Up'' was published by Harvard Business Press.

Personal

When Kurtzig was awarded the ''Wall Street Transcript's Bronze Award'' and was shortly thereafter "profiled in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

''," she said "It's fun to clip articles and send them to your mother, but ''ASK'' is really a team." Her former husband's name was Arie,died late 2001 and their sons Ken and Andy Kurtzig were born c. 1973 and 1976; their parents divorced when the boys were 12 and 9. Her father's name was Barney Brody. Her mother "Marian (Boruck) Brodywho lived til 100 came from a wealthy Chicago family, graduated from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

, and worked for a time as a police reporter in Chicago."

References

External links

Kenandy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurtzig, Sandra American business executives American women company founders American company founders American technology company founders Living people University of California, Los Angeles alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni 1947 births 21st-century American women