Gordon E. Mayer received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Purdue in May of 1979 and joined Unimation Incorporated as a design engineer developing the PUMA series of robots. In the Air Force from 1980 to 1983, he was project manager for the Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing Program.

In 1983, Mayer joined Adept Technology as the technical marketing director. He helped the company restructure the product line, successfully introduce five new products, and grow to hold a 45% market share. In 1988 Mayer was named vice president, marketing and sales, for Proxim, Inc., a supplier of OEM wireless data communication products then in a market transition from government systems to the emerging wireless LAN market. By 1991, Mayer was ready for a new challenge at InfoChip Incorporated, a fabless semiconductor company developing compression ICs. As president and CEO of InfoChip, Mayer restructured the company from an aftermarket supplier of board-level products to a fabless semiconductor company supplying products through an OEM channel.

During 1992-1993 Mayer was the entrepreneur in residence at MPAE, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and helped identify and manage high technology investments. By June of 1993 he was back in the position of chairman and CEO, this time at Geoworks, a provider of client and server software for smart cellular phones providing e-mail, fax, wireless data, and Internet services. At Geoworks Mayer has launched public offerings, obtained backing from such industry leaders as Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, and Toshiba, and licensed GEOS products to other companies, including NEC, Toshiba, and Ericsson.