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At a very young age, Sandy started developing many entrepreneurial traits. The main trait she possessed was self motivation. She grew up on a farm which allowed for her to have such a great work ethic. This shows through her work at Stanford, getting a degree in 2 years, leaving home at 15 to work, making a ⅓ of the salary as her successor but staying, having a second job to afford Cisco, creating Urban Decay and Pet Net, and now still working so hard on her own sustainable farm (even though she made enough to retire). She said she has always been a hard worker. She genuinely enjoys work and really doesn’t care about the money aspect.

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Sandy and her husband Len were both extraordinarily skilled in their fields. Sandy got her degree in 2 years and then went to Stanford, where she met Len. Len was an amazing hardware engineer and systems programmer. Sandy acquired most of her labor from her team at Stanford by hiring them to work for her at Cisco.

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Sandy learned how to program in grad school and loved everything about it. She started working at Stanford when their computers did not have the technology to communicate with each other. So, her and her team created a program for them to. They wanted to sell this to other universities and organizations, but Stanford wouldn’t allow them. They ended up doing it anyways, which is how Cisco began. Stanford claimed that Cisco stole their technology, so Sandy and her team paid them a royalty of $3 million and maintained the Stanford network. Len was an amazing hardware engineer and systems programmer, so he made most of the routers at this point. Sandy took on the more business side while also working a second job to support their company, since they were not able to convince any investors into investing.

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Cisco was started in Len’s parent’s house. They would build these routers in the living room. Once their brand started expanding, they moved to dozens of buildings comprising its corporate campus headquarters in San Francisco. To build their routers, they got their resources from Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore.

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Sandy and Len had a very difficult time convincing investors to invest in their company. Sandy directly talked to over 70 investors, but they all had a similar response- that they couldn’t make money on public protocol. So, Sandy and Len mortgaged their house and got another job to start their company. They also received $10,000 from Len’s parents and $10,000 from their own savings. They ended up finding an investor later on named Don Valentine, which actually ended up being the demise of owning their company, He invested $2.6 million dollars and paid for their lawyer (for the Stanford case).

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Sandy was forced out of Cisco, and her husband Len left in solidarity with her. The issue began when Don Valentine, the launcher of Apple and Intel, invested in Cisco. Don told Sandy that he wanted to bring in a new CEO and that Sandy was “everything wrong with Cisco”. The culture now had changed from passionate computer programmers to hardcore salesmen. This increased tension between everyone, which led to the new CEO telling Sandy to retire, then to tell her to shut up, then to fire her. Sandy felt that his main issue with her was that she was a woman, because when she was fired they didn’t fire her husband Len. He ended up leaving with her. They got their 1/3 stake bake with their lawyer and with the threat Cisco felt to their reputation.

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Sandy’s aunt recommended that she should change her look since she was turning 40. But, Sandy felt that no makeup brands fit her style. She enjoyed being an outsider and thought there was a whole market for people like her- punks, hippies, and outcasts. She fully funded this herself and was able to put makeup on the shelf in three months. Stores like Nordstrom and Neman Marcus carried her line. She believed this was because they felt they were missing out on this market, especially with the Nirvana grunge wave.

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Sandy created PetNet because in her community, when pets were lost they were almost immediately taken to be euthanized. This was because getting them back to their owners was so difficult. So, she created an online solution. If a pet was lost, people can upload a picture and description of a pet so they can be returned to their owner.

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Sandy sold Urban Decay to LVMA. She decided to do so because there was no intellectual property in this business. For example, you can’t patent a color. Urban Decay is now currently owned by L’Oréal and is worth more than $300 million.