According to Lerner, Hunter’s Head is “an extension of my own living room,” meaning, “everybody knows everybody.” A chalkboard advertises the specials of the day—the pot roast is her favorite—and there’s a Dutch door where customers wanting quick service can place their orders. They get a numbered wooden spoon in exchange, which is then laid on the table to signal the server where their fish and chips or bangers and mash should be deposited. “I have attention-surplus disorder,” quips Lerner. “I leave the business to other people and focus on things that interest me and that need to be done from a progress point of view.”
Lerner lives in horse country, but she is the antithesis of the traditional, demure estate owner. For one thing, she’s a Californian. She grew up in a place named Clipper Gap, northeast of Sacramento. More to the point, Lerner is an assertive person with an imposing intellect and unconventional interests—qualities that made her an entrepreneurial iconoclast. She likes pushing boundaries. She was a pioneer in the high-tech startup industry, a business dominated by men, and nowadays is intent on changing farming practices. In 1997 she posed nude, on horseback, for Forbes magazine. She says it “seemed like a good idea at the time. … Everyone else does the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. I thought Forbes was more me.”
The Forbes photo session was a product, so to speak, of Lerner’s career. In the early 1980s, after earning a master’s degree in statistics and computer science at Stanford University, Lerner and her then-husband (now ex-husband), Len Bosack, conceived a way to communicate by e-mail from different locations within the labs at Stanford University, where they worked. The technology they developed was called the multi-protocol router, and it led Lerner and Bosack to co-found in 1984 a company named Cisco Systems, which soon became one of America’s most successful technology ventures and is now the worldwide leader in computer networking. Six years later, the CEO fired Lerner—and when Bosack heard of her dismissal, he left the company, too. The two sold their Cisco stock, pocketing $170 million.
Latest Comments