Not your ordinary Ms. Techie

MANILA, Philippines - It’s true: the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. And so in 1988, when the tech industry in the US was just starting to take shape, a young graduate of Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley in California decided to “go East” instead and headed back home.

Home, of course, is no Silicon Valley of Asia, and even today, many wouldn’t consider it a fair exchange. Yet, when the idealistic 21-year-old Myla Villanueva rolled the dice, she knew there was no turning back.

“I guess there are times in an entrepreneur’s life when hard-headedness plays a big role,” she says.

Now a partner and managing director of Novare Technologies, a global company headquartered in Hong Kong but with a technical resource center in Manila, Villanueva was home recently to grace the Women Business Council’s WOMEN CONNECT summit and share her story with aspiring women entrepreneurs so that they, too, may find the courage to take on the path to entrepreneurship.

Lured back to the country by the vast expanse of virgin territory for technology and computing in the ’80s and a much bigger idealism, Villanueva says the reality she had to face upon her return was almost devastating.

Sharing her thoughts on the future of technology, Myla is a sought after speaker here and abroad.

“I came home to coup attempts and a destabilized country. There were major power outages and of course computing power depended on electricity. The capital markets were very archaic, and banks did not lend without collateral (but what 21-year old has collateral anyway?). And there were no capital markets to speak of, let alone for start-ups. It certainly was not my idea of a Silicon Valley in Asia,” she recounts.

Six months into her first entrepreneurial venture, doubts started to seep in. Business confidence, she remembers, was very low and no one was investing in computing infrastructure, let alone new technologies she was trying to push.

Then came the big break. The company she founded, Micro D International (MDi), was awarded a large government contract that changed the way the Social Security System (SSS) managed its data. “It was a P120-million contract and for a young techie, that was astounding. What was even more important than the viability of my first business was the confidence it gave me in my ideas,” she recalls.

Inspired by this first taste of success, she established Microwarehouse with her husband soon after and it became the country’s biggest distributor of networking gear after only three years of operation. The store introduced to the country many pioneering gadgets, including the Palm, the iPod, and the Blackberry.

Myla Villanueva interviews Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

“I wanted to bring technology mainstream, democratize information, and we certainly did that by teaching many small systems integrators all over the country the wonders of networking and then subsequently, the technologies that deliver the Internet,” she says of her business strategy.

This second venture quickly gave birth to other ventures, including Meridian Telekoms, which was eventually bought by Smart Communications for $50 million.

“That was in 2000. The Internet was growing exponentially, but unfortunately here in the Philippines, its development was hindered by the snail pace of telcos bringing connectivity to users. I figured it was the topology of the country. We have so many islands, and the telcos tried to connect them mostly by copper lines. I thought there was a better way and I was looking at the new wireless technologies that was then developing in Israel,” she says.

Meridian’s Internet service became a huge success that the deal with Smart was the biggest for that year. “Even by Silicon Valley standards, it was a good exit,” Villanueva says.

Giving up her “baby,” however, proved to be also beneficial for many. “Today, it is a pride and joy to see those Meridian antennas on the top of nipa huts, or in sari-sari stores. I do not think I could have done that without the capital muscle of Smart. The collaboration and eventual acquisition of Meridian made the dream of Internet for the masses closer to reality,” she says.

Women in tech

Myla (right) with global telecommunications CEOs including China Mobile’s Jianzhou Wang, Ericsson’s Carl-Henric Svanberg, Bharti Airtel’s Sunil Mittal, BSN’s Kuldeep Goyal, among former GSMA chairman Craig Ehrlich’s guests at a gala.

Although it is no longer rare to see Filipino women succeed in big business and many have already penetrated the extremely challenging, male-dominated high tech industry, Villanueva’s story is definitely one to inspire.

Pacita Juan, managing director of the Women Business Council, says that it is important for women entrepreneurs to be exposed to inspiring stories of women in business as women comprise more than 50 percent of over 900,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

“Many of them do not know where to start. This is why we strongly believe a Women’s Desk at the DTI office will greatly help women who are just starting. The desk will be manned by mentors such as our members and other volunteers,” she says.

Asked to name her own sources of inspiration among the so-called titans of the tech industry, Villanueva has so many to share. “This may sound very cheesy, but Steve Jobs really had a lot to do with why I am in technology. I drove to school everyday and passed through the campus of this company called Apple. He was my absolute rock star, and I was amazed at how they were changing the world. It was 1984 and the Mac just got launched. I was smitten with technology from the time I first touched that Mac. I was 17 years old,” she says.

Myla is a staunch advocate of helping young technologists start successful Internet companies, such as those presented at a recent ON3 event with STAC-SV and DOST.

Although women in telecommunications are still quite rare today, she says technology is another story. “You have Meg Whitman, formerly of eBay and now with HP. Carly Fiorina also once ran HP. IBM has announced a woman as its new CEO, Virginia Rometty, the first in its 100-year history,” she says. “Some of the best minds in innovation are also women: Marissa Mayer of Google, Hilary Mason, chief scientist of Bit.ly, and of course, there is the goddess of Internet trends, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield, the leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.”

Thus, Villanueva says there are really no barriers for women in technology and entrepreneurship. All one needs is “a connected computer, a mobile phone and lots of imagination.”

Life goes on

As with most successful entrepreneurs, the drive and entrepreneurial spirit do not really go away. Today, Villanueva is a partner and managing director of Novare Technologies, a tech firm she co-founded with Mohan Gyani, who was the former CEO of ATT Wireless (of the US), and Craig Ehrlich, former chairman of the GSM Association, the global industry body of close to 750 telecommunications companies.

“They wanted to start a company in the mobile space. We got together, shared ideas and decided we wanted to do something together,” Villanueva explains.

While still a relatively young company, it is already making waves in the industry, winning Globe’s Value-Added Partner of the Year in 2010 for re-engineering the Globe Store experience. It has also done work for Smart Communications and was involved in the development of its newly launched NetPhone.

“We are going to announce something very big in the first quarter of next year,” she says.

For leaving the Valley and taking on the more difficult path to entrepreneurship, there is definitely no regrets for this no ordinary Ms. Techie. “I just rammed my way through the challenges, and I am glad I did,” she ends.