Jimmy Treybig with his wife, Drew
and that was good at transaction processing, I would have something.” The new architecture would have to be maintained and expanded while it was working on transactions, and data would need to be protected in the event of a failure. Moreover, the computer would have to work via a communications line to enable live updating, and it would have to be cost-effective. It was a tall order, but as Treybig wrapped his mind around this business idea, he made one more skill-building move. Following his mentor Tom Perkins, who had left HP to form the venture capital firm Kleiner & Perkins—which eventually became Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB), one of the world’s foremost such companies—Treybig joined as the firm’s fifth employee, working as an associate. “The benefit to me of working at KPCB was learning from Tom,” Treybig says. And being able to see start-ups from the venture capital perspective was illuminating. “You learn about what it takes to start a successful firm and how to raise money,” Treybig explains. “It gives you a whole different perspective—the venture capitalist sees a lot that the entrepreneur doesn’t see.” In 1974, when he was 34 years old, Treybig was ready to venture out on his own. He knew the market opportunity inside out, he had a wide array of skills, he had incredible connections, and he had arrived at what he believed was the solution to the 100 percent availability problem: parallelism. As Treybig conceived it, multiple processors with the capacity to handle the maximum load run simultaneously (or in tandem), and if one fails, it isolates itself and, while the others continue to do its work, it corrects the problem. Having discovered the way to conduct reliable transaction processing, he founded Tandem Computers that year and delivered its first product two years later. The company issued public stock in 1977, and by 1980, it was dubbed the fastest growing public company in America by INC. magazine. In 1984, Tandem made the Fortune 500, and when it was sold, it was a $2.5 billion company. Treybig founded Tandem on the premise of identifying and
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understanding the market and the market needs before building the products. It was an uncommon strategy at the time, but it proved to be a huge financial success. “The first customers were exactly who we thought they’d be—the financial institutions, banks, and stock exchanges,” Treybig says. The first wave of commercial use of Tandem’s systems gave way to a myriad of telecommunications and electronic commerce applications in the years to come, leading to the electronic age as we now know it. The impact of reliable transaction processing on the evolution of computers and networking simply cannot be “What makes Jimmy one-of-a-kind is underestimated. the fact that his leadership and downTreybig served as Tandem’s to-earth style make him easy to talk to, CEO and chair until 1996, but all the while, unbeknownst to you, when he and his team sold the the wheels of his computer-like mind company to Compaq, which are constantly spinning. Jimmy has in turn recently merged with been an inspiration to me in helping HP. He proved wildly successme understand, as a technologist, that ful in both starting a new, entechnology is only one important factor trepreneurial company and in running a large enterprise—a in building a great company. It is just rare feat involving such a wide as important to know your customers variety of skills that few are and take good care of them.” able to pull it off. Entrepre—Julie Fergerson neurial companies require viCo-founder of ClearCommerce sion, drive, and the ability to influence people. In large companies, leaders need those qualities as well as the ability to manage and implement process. For his accomplishments, Treybig joins the likes of superstar businessmen Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and Larry Ellison and has been recognized by Upside magazine as one of “100 People Who Changed Our World” and as a Visionar y Silicon Valley pioneer by Silicon Valley’s Software Development Forum.