It felt like an enormous risk to Bill and Gay Krause back in 1981.
Bill quit his good management job at Hewlett-Packard — where his personal mentor was the legendary co-founder Bill Hewlett — to join an uncertain but interesting startup.
“There were months when there were no paychecks,” recalled Gay in an interview with this news organization.
The startup — 3Com — turned out to be wildly successful. As CEO from 1981 to 1990 and board chair from 1987 to 1993, Bill grew the data networking firm into a global, $1 billion-plus publicly traded company.
The wealth created from that venture has since allowed the Los Altos Hills couple to pursue many other dreams.
In the case of Gay, a former schoolteacher and principal, she’s been able to create and grow her own startup — the Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. Under her direction since its founding in…
