Thecubicle Com

In February, TheCubicle.com was just another "dot-com" start-up desperate to get traffic flowing to its Web site before its product launch at the end of this year. With brand-new electrical- and electronics-engineering software technology and a fixed marketing budget, TheCubicle needed to steer the multibillion-dollar semiconductor industry to its doors--something founder and Chief Executive Martin Shum likens to pulling a 1,500-passenger cruise liner with a two-person rowboat.

In February, TheCubicle.com was just another "dot-com" start-up desperate to get traffic flowing to its Web site before its product launch at the end of this year. With brand-new electrical- and electronics-engineering software technology and a fixed marketing budget, TheCubicle needed to steer the multibillion-dollar semiconductor industry to its doors--something founder and Chief Executive Martin Shum likens to pulling a 1,500-passenger cruise liner with a two-person rowboat.

Martin Goodwin never thought he'd head an international software company, let alone one partnered with high-tech heavyweights Microsoft, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. The soft-spoken 46-year-old has yet to take a computer class, and until three years ago the office he and partner Bob Henry shared was in the leaking basement of a supermarket. That market wasn't in Silicon Valley, either, but in Crestline, a small town in the San Bernardino Mountains.