Feature Story: Mendozas Endow Business School with $35 Million Gift

Good instincts and the willingness to act upon them have always made a successful combination in the world of business. Tom (ND '73) and Kathy Mendoza have a keen eye for promising ventures and the courage to pursue them. Take, for example, their decision to marry after only eight dates. Nineteen years later they are still happily married. The Mendozas have shown this same decisiveness in guiding seven high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley to successful public companies.

Tom and Kathy Mendoza embarked upon another exciting venture when they gave the University of Notre Dame $35 million-the largest gift from an individual donor in the University's history. "Father Bill Beauchamp and the Notre Dame development office discussed various possibilities with the Mendozas," said Dean Carolyn Woo. "Tom asked Notre Dame to come up with something cool that would make a significant impact."

"The what," said Tom, "was much more important to us than the how much." The Mendozas' generous contribution will go toward the business school, which has been renamed the Mendoza College of Business in honor of their gift. Just as the Mendozas' expertise fueled the growth of companies in Silicon Valley, so too their gift is expected to fast-forward Notre Dame's already substantial plans for achieving distinction in the highly competitive world of business education. As Tom Mendoza said to the Observer, Notre Dame's student newspaper, "We don't want any control [over the College]. All we're trying to do is give them resources to make the right decisions. We're just happy to give them the money to help them compete. The business school world is very competitive."

Dean Woo points out that the money "will not be used for bricks and mortar. It will be used for building excellence." Woo's vision for the gift includes strengthening efforts to recruit and retain top faculty, developing new curriculum and learning experiences, improving technology infrastructure for business education and funding scholarships to attract the best and brightest students.

Faculty, students and administrators alike are delighted by the many positive implications that the Mendozas' gift has for the business school. Management Professor Khalil Matta, director of MIS programs, noted that "the funding will allow us to recruit highly visible faculty, to increase development programs for current faculty and to increase faculty research opportunities with high-tech companies."

The Mendozas' gift is expected to greatly enhance Notre Dame's links to Silicon Valley-both in terms of summer internships for first-year students and full-time jobs for recent graduates. "In terms of [career] placement, Notre Dame has always done well in the Midwest and the East Coast," said Scott Wood (MBA '01). "Our association with the Mendozas opens the door to the West Coast and Silicon Valley." Wood's colleague, Philip Gryglas (MBA '01), agrees. "Being aligned with the Mendoza name gives the University more exposure and increases its level of prestige," says Gryglas. "The Mendoza association gives us a level of credibility, particularly in the high-tech industry."

A Model of Success

Tom and Kathy Mendoza spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in the School's Jordan Auditorium April 11. In a vibrant presentation entitled, "Building a Special Company: Network Appliance and Life in the Silicon Valley," the Mendozas communicated their personal experience of working with Network Appliance (NetApp), and offered advice for what it takes to be successful in the rapidly growing high-tech industry.

A leading provider of network attached data access, management and storage, NetApp was founded in 1991. A company that provides easily installed file servers that can be managed by users with little or no training experience, NetApp produces a product that is simple to install and use, works with off-the-shelf PC hardware and has an extremely high response time. It is a remarkably effective product, but it didn't sell well-at first.

Because they believed in the product, the Mendozas joined NetApp in 1994-first Kathy in February and then Tom in May. After four years managing one of NetApp's most successful regions in North America, Kathy was promoted to director of worldwide Internet sales, and today is senior director of worldwide strategic alliances. "Kathy has an extraordinary intuition about technology," said Tom. "She believed that the market for data storage would erupt. She was right." Tom initially joined Kathy at NetApp as the vice president of North American sales. He was recently named president. The Mendozas helped NetApp land clients such as Yahoo!, Cisco, Oracle, Mindspring, Earthlink, Dell, Texas Instruments and Motorola. Today, NetApp is an integral component of many major corporations' storage infrastructure and hosts the majority of the world's e-mail.

NetApp has been enormously successful this past year. In the first three quarters, the company grew at 80%, 90%, 100%; and on May 18, reported growth of 120% in the fourth quarter of 2000 and 100% for the year (reporting revenues of $579.3 million as compared to $289.4 million last year).

Fortune magazine ranked NetApp the fourth fastest growing company in the United States. "We want to grow so fast that our logical enemies will become our allies," said Tom. "We have a two-year plan with a one-year investment window. If we don't take the market share, someone else will. We are clearly one of the most successful companies on earth at this point and we plan on staying there."

Despite their overwhelming success in the booming field of start-ups, Tom and Kathy Mendoza remain grounded. "We are normal people who didn't put limits on ourselves," they told the crowd of attentive students. "This could be you standing up here someday. People keep asking us, why did you give the money? It's simple. We wanted to make an impact. The business school at Notre Dame is going places fast; our investment will help. This is a place that turns out special people; I am absolutely confident of that. I look forward to hearing about future graduates doing special things, things that will make us all proud."

6 tips - Advice from the Mendozas

Mendoza College to Offer e-Commerce Specializations

The Mendoza College of Business will offer three e-commerce specializations to MBA students in the fall. They can choose to focus on e-commerce, e-entrepreneurship (starting a new e-business) or e-consulting (helping bricks-and-mortar businesses develop and expand their Internet presence). The e-commerce specializations provide the students with the minimum set of technological skills that they will need to understand and manage businesses in the field. The e-commerce program takes an interdisciplinary approach with classes in marketing, finance, accounting and management, as well as MIS and technical courses. As Management Professor Debbie Ballou points out, "At Notre Dame, we train well-rounded students."

With the support of the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, several new student-generated business ventures have been launched, including Nuron (enhanced video graphic cards) and Aprimo (integrated marketing software systems for businesses).

Kevin Twomey (MBA '00), along with a fellow graduate student and a Notre Dame professor, has developed software for high-level programmers in the communications industry. Twomey sees the Mendozas as a resource for attracting Silicon Valley venture capitalists and for choosing from the pool of available "talent"-people who will help him and his partners put their business plan in motion. The Mendozas' gift will empower Notre Dame to be even better at training future business leaders in e-commerce. "e-commerce is the future of business and students know this," says Ballou.

"The Mendozas' gift will enable us to attract and retain top faculty in this discipline, increase the number of technology-enabled classrooms and provide resources and research opportunities for faculty to stay abreast of the latest changes in the field."

The Mendozas' gift will empower Notre Dame to be even better at training future business leaders in e-commerce.

Three e-commerce Specializations:

A Sampling of e-commerce Courses