Think Playboy, and you think of lingerie, R-rated films and all things adult -- definitely not a PhD from an Ivy League university. But Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh-born Rashmi Sinha, who did her doctorate in cognitive neuropsychology from Brown University, finds herself featured on the quintessential adult magazine, as one of America's 'Sexiest CEOs'.In an article headlined 'Women on the Top' -- pun obviously intended -- Playboy said change has come not only in the White House with President Barack Obama but in corporate boardrooms across America, where many women chief executive officers are in charge.
It featured 10 such women in its list; Sinha was the only one of Indian origin.
The list -- part of the magazine's online forums section that aims at informing men about current events and cultural issues -- includes Sharen Turney, CEO of women's lingerie line Victoria's Secret.
So, how did Sinha, who has nothing to do with the world of adult sensuality -- she is CEO and co-founder of SlideShare, a popular presentation-sharing Internet site -- make the Playboy cut?
"Two months ago," says Sinha, "Playboy sent me an e-mail asking for my bio and a photo. At first I ignored them, but then I thought, 'Let me send it to them.' Honestly, this was not something I would be spending a lot of my time thinking about!"
Sinha, in her mid-thirties, did not have any clue when she responded to that e-mail that she would be selected in the top-10 list.
"They told me why they needed the bio and photo. I thought it was kind of funny. But apart from that I did not think much of that at the time," she says.
"It is a funny thing," repeats Sinha, who arrived in the United States to do her PhD in 1998. "You know, out of the blue Playboy contacts you -- it was kind of a surreal moment for me. But honestly, I am so focused on my work that even now I do not have a whole lot of time to think about it."
Does she believe she is one of the hottest women CEOs in the US?
"No, No! I think of myself just as Rashmi, who is focusing on core problems and living her life. That is not part of the way I think about myself. Certainly not!"
After her PhD, she fell in love with the Web and went on to study human computer interactions at University of California-Berkeley, after which she started a user experience consulting company called Uzanto, and worked on projects for companies like eBay and AAA. Then, in 2005, she built MindCanvas, a game-like software for customer research.
"The second product that I thought of was SlideShare, that was launched in 2007 along with my husband John Patel, who actually thought of the idea," Sinha says.
She calls herself "an accidental entrepreneur" -- because, she says, being an entrepreneur was far from her mind as a student: "I had no idea or ambition that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I never thought of it."
She first wanted to be a journalist. When she was in Brown, the ambition changed to being a fulltime laboratory researcher. But somewhere down her educational journey, things changed.
"I came to love the fact that we would build something, put it out on the Web and next day we would find out whether the product that we have done had an impact or not. The world of building software for people was so exciting," she says.
"It kind of went in steps, but ultimately building software is building software for people -- and all my academic life I have spent time trying to understand people. So, it has brought a lot of the way I think about SlideShare and the things I do and the decisions I make," she says.
"Having said that, I did psychology and then I started learning more and more about search and you know I found that the problems of search and recommender systems are very much about how to recommend things to human beings. And you have to understand their cases. So, I went from psychology to human computer interactions," she adds.
For example, she says, in SlideShare she tries to fathom what does a person who comes to the site and uploads a presentation really want; or, what really makes him happy with the overall experience. If she can get that right, Sinha says, her Web site will be able to attract a lot more people.
"I think a lot of great tech founders have an intuitive understanding of what is it that people want in that domain and how to make it better and how to be matrix-driven into making that better. If you take up pretty much any product and try to understand who it is for, what it is for, you will understand that it is really about understanding people," says Sinha, who is also a designer.
Her independent streak also helped. She wanted to do things on her own; she never wanted to work in a big company. She was passionate "about building cool things. It is not really being an entrepreneur in particular; it's about doing something interesting that makes a difference in the lives of people."
She also admits that hers is a bit of a non-traditional career, given her background, and it strikes Indian parents as incongruous.
"But if you look at entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, there are people who have all sorts of backgrounds," she adds. "Some people fall in love with the Web and decide that this is what they want to do. I am one of them. I really enjoy the problems and I love building things that would immediately have impact. I think instead of studying people, I am building things for people -- and that gives me a lot of joy."
Sinha says SlideShare is a small company with a huge promise and that she wants to make it much bigger. Even then, she says the next thing that she perhaps would do is to launch a company.
Does she consider herself a serial entrepreneur?
"I love building products," she says. "It is great fun, especially on the Web. But right now I am very focused on SlideShare. It is doing well and it has a lot of traffic -- but it needs to do better."
Unlike many entrepreneurs, Sinha tries to make it a point to take off on Saturdays.
"We have an office in New Delhi, India, as well along with the one here in San Francisco. So, the only day that is common between us is Saturday and that is why I take off on Saturday," she says.
"I always think of entrepreneurship as a marathon, and not as a sprint," she adds, laughing. "You need to go back and look at the problems with a fresh perspective. So, I do work very hard but I do take Saturdays off."
