Life Story: Sandra Kurtzig (1947– )

Sandra L. Brody was born on October 21, 1947, in Chicago. Her mother was a journalist, and her father owned a construction business. Sandra has a brother who is six years younger.

The family moved to California when Sandra was 11 years old. Sandra was a slow reader in school but did well in math and science, subjects she preferred because there tended to be “right” and “wrong” answers.

Sandra graduated from high school when she was 16 and enrolled in college at the University of California, Los Angeles. She majored in mathematics and completed a minor in chemistry. Sandra also got a part-time job with TRW Systems, a computer engineering business, assisting aeronautical computer programmers. 

After graduating from college, Sandra was accepted into a master’s program in aeronautical engineering at Stanford University. There were 250 men in the program and only two women. Both Sandra and the other female student were white.

At Stanford, Sandra met Arie Kurtzig, who was a PhD student in physics. They both graduated in 1968 and married shortly after, then moved to New Jersey for Arie’s job. Having grown up in California, Sandra did not feel at home in New Jersey. But she agreed to try living there for three years with Arie.

Sandra got a job selling computer timeshare services with General Electric (GE). In the early 1970s, computers were large machines that had to be kept in air-conditioned rooms. Most businesses did not have the space or money to buy their own computer. By buying a computer timeshare service, they could pay a fee to use a computer from a company like GE. Sandra would sell this service to different businesses. She did very well in sales, as clients found her outgoing and likable, and she was able to explain complex computer terms in a way that was easy for anyone to understand. 

After spending three years in New Jersey, Sandra and Arie moved back to California in 1971. She was able to transfer her job with GE to their Palo Alto office. One of the business owners she worked with learned that Sandra had an engineering degree and asked her to write a computer program that would help him track his inventory. This was an exciting but time-consuming opportunity for Sandra. She decided to leave her job with GE and work from home on her own programming business. In early 1972, Sandra launched her own business with a $2,000 commission check (a percentage of her sales) from GE. She named it ASK Computer Systems, using her and Arie’s initials.

Only 1% of engineers were women, and only 4.6% of businesses in the United States were owned by women. But Sandra already had her first client: a telecommunications equipment business owner who had been one of the people encouraging her to start her own business. Sandra wrote an inventory-management computer system and charged him $1,200 for it. 

ASK Systems took off, but Sandra was still a woman in a male-dominated field. She decided to stand out by using a pink briefcase and lavender business cards. 

That same summer, Sandra found out she was pregnant. After their son was born in 1973, Sandra and Arie hired a housekeeper to watch the baby and take care of the home while they both worked. 

Sandra worked long days to make ASK Systems successful. In the 1970s, it was increasingly more common for white middle class women like Sandra to continue to work after having children. While she had always wanted to become a mother, she realized that her life was not fulfilling without a job, and she felt that having her business actually made her a better mother.

A business opportunity arose for Sandra in 1974 when Tymshare, a large computer company, asked her to partner with them and write a generic rather than custom inventory management program. This would allow all clients to use the same system, instead of the company having to create a custom system for each client. In a first draft, she named the program MAMA. After a customer said nobody would take the name seriously, she changed it to MANMAN, because it takes two men to do the work of one mom.

ASK Systems received only a small share of the profits of MANMAN. Then Hewlett Packard (HP), one of the largest computer companies in the world, called Sandra to write a version of MANMAN for their new minicomputer. The minicomputer was much cheaper and smaller than the large computers that took up an entire room. This was a huge opportunity for ASK Systems. Sandra hired a programmer, and they worked on the system for several months. Unfortunately, when a new president took over the company, they dropped ASK Systems.

Sandra did not give up when she faced challenges in the early years of ASK Systems. She continued to work on the MANMAN system for the HP minicomputer even when HP was no longer paying her. She knew that other companies would be interested in this system. Most software businesses focused on timeshares of large computers, but Sandra predicted that minicomputers were the future.

In January of 1976, she successfully launched a working version of MANMAN for the HP minicomputer for Hughes, a major defense contractor. Around the same time that she made this major business deal, Sandra gave birth to her second son, Ken.

By 1976, ASK systems was still a small company with only six employees. More pressingly, they did not have a computer anymore, because they had sold the one HP minicomputer they had to Hughes. Although the new minicomputers were smaller and more affordable than large computers, they were still very expensive. The HP 3000 minicomputer Sandra wanted cost over $60,000. Sandra was able to ask her father for a loan to purchase a new minicomputer.

Sandra convinced HP to allow ASK Systems to purchase their computers at a discount, load ASK software on them, and sell them directly to customers at a profit. A computer needs software to be of use to a customer, she argued, and ASK Systems helped popularize the HP 3000. By 1980, ASK Systems made an annual profit of $1 million, and Sandra had paid back the loan from her father.

Many smaller companies could not afford to buy a full $200,000 ASK system, so Sandra came up with a new solution: ASKNET. Companies could buy a smaller computer to use the MANMAN software, and computers at ASK Systems would process the data. This fee structure increased their profits, and this software user model is used by many companies today.

ASK Systems went public in 1981, which meant that it could be traded on the stock market. The company was valued at $50 million dollars, and Sandra owned two-thirds of the shares. She was the first woman to take a technology business public.

ASK Systems was the fastest growing software company in the United States by 1983. Sandra had over 350 employees and quickly rose in the Silicon Valley social scene. She received the nickname, the “Mother of Silicon Valley.” In 1994, she published her own book, CEO: Building a $400 Million Company from the Ground Up.

Sandra and Arie divorced in 1985. She decided to retire from her role as chief executive officer of ASK Systems and spend more time with her children. She remained a member of the board and worked as a consultant. Three years later, the board asked her to return, and she ran the company again until 1992. Computer Associates purchased ASK Systems in 1994.

With her son Andy, Sandra launched a new business in 1996 called eBenefits. The company provides online payroll and benefits services for small businesses. She retired several years later and moved to Hawaii. 

Sandra came out of retirement in 2011 and started another company, Kenandy, named after her two sons. She recognized that cloud services, provided over the internet, would be the next major opportunity in technology. The company provides business-management software, and she grew it to a $350 million business. Sandra again retired in 2015, and currently lives in Hawaii.

• aeronautics: The science of designing and building airplanes.
• commission: A sum of money that salespeople receive when they make a sale.
• payroll: The process of paying a company’s employees.
• Silicon Valley: An area near San Francisco where many technology businesses have their headquarters.
• software: A set of instructions, data, and programs that operates computers.
• timeshare: The practice of sharing a computer for a fee.