Donna Dubinsky

This woman helped build the first handheld computer and sold a million of them in under two years.

In 1985, Donna Dubinsky was a middle manager at Apple.

Jobs wanted to shut down Apple’s warehouses and move to just-in-time production.

But Apple didn’t even ship all-in-one computers yet.

Machines came in parts… from different factories.

Small mom-and-pop dealers couldn’t hold inventory.

If Apple shut down distribution, they’d be shutting down sales.

So Donna demanded 30 days to build a counterproposal. Or she’d quit.

Her plan won.

Apple kept its warehouses (at least for that time), and she was promoted.

A few years later, Donna went to Claris (Apple’s software spin-off) and managed to double their international sales in four years.

But when Apple refused to let Claris go independent, she left.

She moved to Paris. Studied French. And when she got back to Silicon Valley, she met Jeff Hawkins.

He had a prototype for a handheld device that could sync with your desktop.

That’s how Donna became CEO of Palm.

She raised money and launched the PalmPilot (a Personal Digital Assistant) in 1996.

It was small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. It had a long battery life. And it was easy to use.

It also included a new handwriting system called Graffiti.

So you could take notes, track appointments, and sync it all to your PC.

They sold a million units in 18 months.

It was the fastest-growing tech product in history at the time.

Faster than the VCR, the Walkman, or the PC.

U.S. Robotics bought Palm for $44M.

Then 3Com bought U.S. Robotics, and Palm with it.

3Com executives stepped in. Slowed things down. Tried to run Palm like a division, not a startup.

Donna hated it.

So in 1998, she left with Hawkins and Palm’s marketing lead, Ed Colligan.

Together, they started Handspring.

They launched the Visor, a handheld device that looked like a PalmPilot but had a built-in expansion slot.

You could snap in a modem to get online. Add a GPS to get directions. Plug in a camera, an MP3 player.

Even medical tools.

No need to buy a new device.

Just swap out the module.

In its launch week, the Visor captured 26.8% of all U.S. PDA sales.

Then they launched the Treo: one of the first true smartphones.

Phone, email, and PDA in one device.

Then the dot-com crash hit.

Revenue dropped from $240M to $147M in one year.

Handspring was losing over $130M annually.

So they merged back with Palm in 2003.

In 2005, Donna co-founded Numenta with Hawkins again.

Their goal? Build artificial intelligence based on how the human brain works.

She served as CEO for 17 years.

Numenta’s research is now powering low-energy AI models.

And the Gates Foundation backed its Thousand Brains Project in 2024.