Latest / Masters in Business / Sukhinder Singh Cassidy on Entrepreneurship (Podcast)

Transcript

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy on Entrepreneurship (Podcast) · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is Mesters in Business with Very Renaults on Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This week, on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Her name is Kenderson Cassidy and she has had a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: fascinating career in technology, starting as an analyst in the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: investment banking group at Merrill Lynch before going west to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: join a company that ends up getting purchased by Amazon,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and she stays at Amazon for a while before leaving
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: UH to join another startup that ends up doing well.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: She eventually takes a couple of roles at Google Google
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Maps and then running a couple of other projects Google
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: International Commerce, and from there ends up launching a couple
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of more startups, all of which that have done very
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: very well. UH. She talks about the process of risk
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: taking and decision making and why you can't think about
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the risk reward calculus in terms of one big win
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: or lose choice. You have to think about a series
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: of smaller incremental steps that all involve risk and eventually
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: determine the path you take. It's a good framework for
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: both technology and finance. I thought this conversation was quite fascinating,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and I found her book to be intriguing as well.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Choose Possibility with no further ado My conversation with Sekenderson Cassidy.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: This is mesters in Business with Very Renaults on Bloomberg Radio.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: My special guest this week is Sekenderson Cassidy. She is
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a technology executive and serial entrepreneur. Previously she was president
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of stub Hub. Her new book is Choose Possibility, Take risks,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and Thrive even when you fail. Sekenderson Cassidy, Welcome to Bloomberg.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me excited to be here.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about your career, which is really so
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: interesting it it covers everything from UH finance and investing
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: banking to technology. UM, let's begin at the beginning. You
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: started at Merrill Lynch in the early nineties, a great
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: time to start in investment banking. What motivated that decision
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: to go into finance? Um, well, a couple of things.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Number One, I'd say the most more intelligent reason was
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: because I wanted to a base in financial literacy and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: financial analysis, which I thought would be great for any
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: career I had. And then the more emotional reason. Honestly,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I was at a top undergraduate business school in Canada
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and all my friends were doing it, because like, well,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: if they're doing it, I should be doing to. So
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: in some ways I call I call it a copycat goal.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there are many ways I could have gotten
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: financial literacy, but I was bound and determined to keep
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: pay with my rather competitive colleagues to get a job
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: on Wall Street. So you you head to New York,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: you started Merrill Lynch. Any formative experiences stay with you
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: years later? What do you most remember from that era? Well,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the first is, honestly, just to struggle to get the job,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: believe it or not. And uh and I say that
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: to people because often we look back on the careers
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: of you know, others and think they're they look so
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: pretty from the outside, but from the inside. It took
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: me a good year plus to get that job. I
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: was rejected by number of banks. Meryl didn't even come
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to candidate or recruit, and they offered me one of
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: those polite informational letters that said something like, if you're
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: ever in New York City, would be happy to give
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: you fifteen a fifteen minute informational interview. And I remember
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: saying to my father, I'm like, well, what is't that?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: They just rejected me and he said, well, why don't
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: you take a train ticket and head down to New York.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: You never know? And um, and I was at the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: end of my rope. I've been searching for a job
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: for over a year, I said, as I said, determined
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to at this job and not successful. And I took
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that train ride in fifteen minutes turned into a three
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: hour interview, and then they accelerated me to the final process. Uh, which,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: if you know, for investment banks, is very competitive. I
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: came down on a weekend and competed with all the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: sort of IVY League American kids who had been through
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: rounds of interviews. Undoubtedly, um and I got the job.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: So it was a pretty sweet, pretty sweet success after
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: a year and a half of trying. But it was
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: very formative for me because it really informed and you know,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I guess my view of how often you have to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: just keep choosing in order to get to the goal.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: You want keep keep banging away. So so, what what
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: did you do for Meryl when you when you get
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the job? What was it that they had you do?
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: What were your responsibilities and what was the job like? Well,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and I think this is probably the second former of
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: experience I had at meryll Um. So my role with
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the financial analyst, anybody who maybe has studied finance know
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: that that's really a job where you create pitch books,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: books with facts and details about different industries. I was
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: in the financial services industry group I was assigned to,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and you really you know, create those books or what's
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: called managing directors who go out and pitch you know,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: large companies on using their services M and A services, I,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: p O services, what have you. And so the average
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: analysts is spending you know, days and nights softened through
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the night, toiling to create these perfect pitch books. So
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I certainly had that experience, but I ended up working
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: for a pretty eclectic young managing director called Henry Michaels.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And Henry was you know, as detail orange as they
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: could get, type smoking, you know, definitely capable of driving
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: others crazy. But he took a really deep and early
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: interest in just teaching me about, believe it or not,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the savings and loan industry. And I think he found
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: me to be maybe uh rap students. And I freely
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: admit after taking a year to get that job, I
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: was just bound and determined to be successful um at it.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: So I was you know, very inquisitive, very curious, and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: as result, Henry kept staffing me and putting me, I
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: would say, on jobs with increasing responsibility. And so pretty
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: early on I was going to meetings with CEO, so
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: he would he would set up and let me attend.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Of course I was carrying the pitch books, but that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: didn't really matter to me. The exposure did um and
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: as a result I ended up working on an I
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: p O early the Long Islands, I think bank. Henry
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: kept giving me more and more responsibility, and in my
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: second year Merrill sent me to London, which was unusual
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: as well to send something that early, and I got
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: to go, you know, work on banking in the you know,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in the European banking industry, and had just an amazing experience.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So I gave Henry Michael's a lot of credit. Henry
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: definitely skipped a bunch of players to teach me, and I,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: as I said, maybe my best contribution, as I was
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a wrapped student. But the result was, you know, an
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: experience where I got a lot of exposure so very
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: quickly to kind of senior executives. Really really interesting. I
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: have a specific recollection of the Long Island Savings Bank
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: going I p O in the early I want to say,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: mid nineties, and eventually I was the analyst, and eventually
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: it got acquired, and then that company got acquired and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: at a certain point you just lose track. But this
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: leads to an obvious question. All of your background is
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: finance related. How did you transition to tech and what
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: made you decide to leave the East Coast and the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: world of finance for the West Coast, which has more
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: of a technology ben Well, I so ironically I made
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: my way to the West Coast, not from the East Coast,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: but via London, because if you recall, Meryll sent me
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to London. And when I was in London, I had
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: spent maybe you know, two years with the bank, and
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the classic length of these programs is two years and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: then they expect you actually to move on, you know.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: So analyst programs are two years of investment banks. So
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I spent two years. They offered me a third and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I really want to be quote unquote in industry. Now,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I had no idea what that meant. That I wanted
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to work for one company, and so I was able
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to secure a role with the cfo UM at a
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: company called British Guy Broadcasting, one of the biggest satellite
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: broadcasters in the world. Um, he recalled, this is part
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: of news corps, kind of empire and uh. And luckily
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: for me, I parlayed my job in finance to a
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: job in finance inside of the company at at beast
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I B and then I was promoted to working UM
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: for the CEO and the CEO UH there. So actually
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: it's probably more dramatic story. I was promoted. I was
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: working first on the top floor for the you know,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: one of the two top bosses. And I've been there.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I've been at beast IB for only a year. And
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I walked into my boss's office and I told him
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I quit. And he was shocked, and I said, I said,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I said, two things are true, David. Number one,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I have this epic promotion. You know, I you know,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I sit down the hallway from you. I get I
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: get lunch every day. I'm on the you know, I'm
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: on the executive floor. I'm like, but you don't really
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: use me. And it was true. My boss was very
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: used to sort of operating like the load wolf is
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that UM as a sort of effectively president a company
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and I said number two, I think I want to
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: head back to North America. I've been there for two
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: and a half years. And a girlfriend of mine, a
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: very dear friend, was at Stanford Business School. I had
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: visited her the year early earlier, and I fell in
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: love with the weather in the Bay Area and this
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: kind of sense of entrepreneurship. That's true. I mean for
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a girl who comes from you know, Ontario, Canada, where
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: it gets pretty dark cold. You know, once you visit California,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you sort of realized that it's possible to live in
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: good weather all year long. Um. But the other but,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the other truth was I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: My father, you know, loved writting, Zoe love business. I
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: had no idea how. I loved the Bay Area for
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the weather, and I sensed that it was you know,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: that there were a lot of people starting companies. So
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I put my job. I um went skiing for three
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: months in Whistler, um, and I moved to the I
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: moved to California and bought a car, drove up the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: coast from l A to San Francisco. Luckily that that,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you know, those friends of mine, their parents put me
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: up at their very nice house and California until I
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: found a job and I started over, how did you
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: end up at? If you can't tell already? I was
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: assarily impatient, uh, young woman, because you know I moved
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to Farembound in that first six years of my career. I,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: as I said, I you know, I was looking for
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a job in the valley. I faund when and forlting
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the job I found, who was not nearly as positive
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and experience as I had hoped. Um as you as
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: we just talked about, I actually had a really good
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: experience at Meryll. I even had a good experience at
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Peach Guy b if you look at the fact that,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I got the ability, I was promoted and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I got to this. You know, I found a startup
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley that was an interactive television which was
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, at least somewhat related to what I'd just
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: done it, you know, a sky was in the TV industry.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And then second day on the job, my boss told
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: me I was scared the secretaries, and I was like,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: what what does that mean? What do you mean? What
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: do you mean? I'm like, I've just come from two
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: industries that are highly male dominated, nobody ever told me
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I was scary and um, and thus began a rapid
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: decline in our relationship. I felt like I wasn't getting
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of response ability. He kept telling me I
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: was the rookie that needed to be coached, and I
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: quit six months later, actually fairly deflated, because I was like, Wow,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: if this is what it means to be in Silicon Valley,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: its supposed to be this meritocracy, you know, I'm supposed
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to be, you know, having the time of my life.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not meant for this place. Luckily for me, UM,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I started to think about getting another job, and a
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: recruiter called and pitched this idea of you know, a
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: company started by four Stanford PhDs in um I had
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: this very cool technology. I took the interview. I didn't
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: really understand fully the technology, but I loved them. They
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: were smart, they were candorous UM, and so I switched,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and lucky, luckily for me, I made that switch. You know,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: um Jungly ended up building a whole engine for shopping
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: for compared and prices across the Internet, and Amazon bought
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the company six months later, and that was really the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: start of my career in Silicon Valley just a great experience,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: but following a very poor one. Huh really, well, everything
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: can all be one in roses. Sometimes they're gonna miss
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about what it was like
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: working for Amazon and how closely did you work with
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Bezos back then, Well, believe it or not, that's then
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty small company. There was about twelve
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: hundred people. We were public, so everybody got exposure to Jeff,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: myself included. So what are some of those earlier those
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: early times like at Amazon. Well, first of all, as
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I said, everybody was you know, it was a small
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: most company that you could fit most of Amazon in
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: one or two buildings. That we made a couple of
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: moves where you know, we were all in the same building.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Number two. We all had to work in the warehouse,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: including you know, like the very top executives at Amazon,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Jeff and Rick Dal's out. Like everybody had ships, had
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: shifts over Christmas, you had no day job. You literally
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: all had shifts in the warehouse, which was a pretty
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: amazing cultural you know cultural feat and by the way,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that included like overnight ships. Um, you were picking and
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: packing books, music, you know, books, uds, and videos. That's true, Um,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Jeff had bought the company because he believed it or
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: not in still for still had his vision of a
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: day where Amazon should show you every product on the internet,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: whether or not they had it in stock. So this
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: early vision of marketplace. But Amazon at the time was
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: just building out its own verticals, so what was it
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: like He was really the main champion of this acquisition
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of buying us for our technology. He used it to
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: start version one of Amazon Marketplace, which he shut down
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: several years later. So he had made many attempts at
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: marketplace before he got the one that worked, and by
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the way, before the world was ready for it. So
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: it was pretty It was a pretty um meat look
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: into how sort of visionary he was even early on.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, not nearly as sort of um
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: daunting a presence as he might be now, just like,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you know, very accessible, pretty goofy actually pretty quickly sense
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: of humor. And I got to work with them specifically
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: because I was one of the people selling merchants, you know,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: like people like Macy's and others on the idea of
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: putting their products on Amazon's website. So I got to
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: pitch a few different retailers with Jeff, which was really neat.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: So I know this is going to be a very
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: fanboy question, but I have to ask because there's a
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: broader components about understanding or not the future. In the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: late nineties, in the early two thousand's, did you have
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: any indication that Amazon would become the juggernaut that it
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: become came or was thouse early days, Hey, we think
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: we're going to be successful. We could be a real
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: solid company. Like what was the view like from back then?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: The view was not that we were going to become
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: the juggernaut we are today as defined by Amazon's not
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: just a retailer, but it's like a dominant movie studio. Oh,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: it's not just a movie studio. It owned the grocer.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Oh it's not just the grocer, but it happens to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: own the largest infrastructure backbones for the way it's called
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: you know, Amazon Web services and other merchants. Like no
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: way with that obvious, as I said, like literally, these
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: were the days when we selling books, music and video
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and um launching new categories. And Jeff, as I said,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: like he was impressive, but he was also very accessible, funny, young,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: like he told me a few years older than I am.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: At best, and um, to know, I don't, I mean
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: all the people that you think of now is it's
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: quite famous. Um, there was no indication, you know, as
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I said, now you might and I might say wow,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: buying a company in launch Amazon marketplace. Certainly they were
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: early inklings that he used a vision to sell a
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff and so he could say, hey, could
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I see this company becoming one of the larger retailers? Sure,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: but is defined by what Amazon is today? Um, yeah,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: no way to predict it quite quite fascinating that that's
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: quite fascinating. So let's talk about your transition from Amazon,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: uh to your next venture. You co founded a startup.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about Yodley and what made
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: you decide to say, well, this Amazon company is kind
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of fun, but let me see what I could build
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: on my own. Well, remember we were chatting about that
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: rather restless and impatient young woman. I don't think any
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of that solved when I was at Amazon. It was
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a great experience, by the way, And you know, remember
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I had never gone intending to be at Amazon. I
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: had gone to a startup right which got bought. And
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: while Amazon was a great company, was up in Seattle,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it was now public, and so there's me thinking, gosh,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: what am I going to get the chance to start
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: my own company? And I know many people listening to
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: this podcast will be like, really, you left Amazon to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: start your own company? Is that a really smart decision? Um?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: But in some ways, you know, Amazon to me still
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: at the time still felt very big and um, and
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get there. So at Amazon and remember
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: many of the founders of Jungle League, you know, have
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: made a lot of wealth. Um, they're certainly mentors of mine.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: They are even today, and they start angel investing in
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a number of companies in the valley. And knowing that
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: I have this ambition. Um, I've been at Amazon about
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: a year and I get into day. I get a
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: call one weekend and sort of says, hey, you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: there's this professor from UCSC who's a computer science professor,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and he's built this really cool technology that goes out
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: across the web and it gets all your financial information
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: behind all of those sites with passwords, and it puts
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: them in one place. You can have an aggregated view
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: of your financial life. And by the way, the technology
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: is not the same as Junglie, but it has some analogies,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and they're like, and they're looking for a business co founder.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: They have all these engineers that they need somebody to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: establish the business model, race the money. Um. And so
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I got one of those inbound calls and it was
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: through that network of you know, angel investors who who
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: were the founders of Junglee. I flew down from Seattle
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to San Francisco for a weekend. I took one look
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: at the technology and I suitably impressed. I was like, Wow,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: you just grabbed all my credit card balances and my
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: bank balance and you know, my brokerage balance in one
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: place and gave me this egrecated You nobody can do that.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I'm just pretty revolutionary technology at the time. Um. And
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: they offered me the opportunity of twenty nine years old
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: to become what's called a co founder of the company
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and the first business executive. And I just jumped at
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the chance. I love the technology, UM. I love the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: fact that I would be with There was five engineers
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: at this company too, again very similar to Junglie. But
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: now I was going to get a seat at the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: table as you know, as literally one of the executive
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: team at such a young age and get to raise
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the money from venture capitalists, right a business plan. So
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: uh so they were really very early stage. Yes, yes, yes,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I mean it was twelve engineers in a room. And
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: as I said, and and I was just, you know,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: as effectively the first business leader to be hired at
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the company. And so I uh, I gave my notice
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: at Amazon maybe a month later and moved right into
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Jungle Lee And we raised fifteen million dollars from venture
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: capitalists within a month of that, and we were off
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: to the races. And you know, thus began kind of
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: a six year journey to build you know what today
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: many would consider the pioneer in really aggregating your financial information.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I'm really proud of the fact that Yodally really did
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: create a whole industry of companies that you know, we're
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: able to access financial information using our services and our
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: kind of technology backbone and build many of the financial
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: apps that you know people used today. Um so Yodally
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Yodally had a fifteen year run before it became public,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and I was there for the verse five of those years.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: So let's work our way through this chronology a little bit.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: You end up at at Jungle which gets acquired by Amazon,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: and from to I'm at Amazon, and then when do
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: you leave ninety? When do you leave amaz Oh? So
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: you were only okay, Actually, so when their year, I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: mean it was year and you stayed. Um, did you
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: stay with Yodley until they were acquired by investment? No.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I stayed with Yodley for five years. In that time,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I had every job under the sun. I was predominantly
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: responsible that we've talked about for uh for not just
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: raising the money. We raised about a hundred million in
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the time I was there, in several rounds of financing,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: but I was I was responsible for sales and business development,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: selling our technology to all the banks and brokerage companies.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And so I stayed until two thousand and four. I
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: helped us hire our CEO in two thousands, and he
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't going anywhere, by the way. So I always say
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to people, I topped out at my own startups. Like literally,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I'd had every job I've done, sales at Den Marketing,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: at don PR, I was our spokesperson, I raised money,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and I in many ways, I was, you know, partnered
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: very closely with the CEO and we had a great relationship.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: And in two thousand and four, I was like okay,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and now like what's my next horizon? Like I've been
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: here five years and I've done all of these roles,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: but there was like, the company's not growing fast enough
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: to give me an entirely career, you know what set
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of challenges. Um, And so that's I actually, for the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: first time, you know, I did what i'd call, you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: a more studied search, thinking I might start another company, um,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: but also thinking you know that I wanted to find
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the right idea. So I was pondering my next new
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: presuming I would start a company. When UM, I got
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to start a new service at Google, which
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: you know today we would call local and maps. And
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and let's talk a little bit about Google Maps. Uh.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It's funny because it's so ubiquitous today we don't even
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: think twice about, um, the miracle that is Google Maps.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: But back in the mid two thousand's, did anybody have
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: any idea of what a massive technological breakthrough g maps?
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Where I remember playing with early versions of it and
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: just you know, had head exploding. What what was the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: thoughts like within Google about about Google Maps? Well, it's, um,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: it's a couple of things. So first of all. When
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I got to call Google originally called me you come
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: to join them, and I actually said no, And I said, gosh,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you guys are also quite big. Your twelve hundred people.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Remember in my warped brain, you know Amazon is making
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred people. So is Google. And I was like,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I'm going to start another company. I know. It's so
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: funny and and um and Google called me back seven
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: months later. They said, you said you wanted to start
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: up opportunity. We have it. We have something Greenfield called
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: maps and we said They said, Yahoo has a product
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: called Yahoo Maps, a well has something called map Quest.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Google has no products to help you search locally or
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: find navigate locally, i e. Both find goods and services
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: locally or businesses and navigate right because Google Local is
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: like search for business Google maps. Who search for a
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: place is back today. They're very merged. Nobody thinks of
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: them as different. Um and uh, and I studied. I
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: studied the landscape. I went and interviewed Google, and within
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: two weeks I said yes to the job because I
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: was like, holy smokes. The yellow pages industry, which at
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the time was you know, those thick yellow books that
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: everybody got to find places was a twenty three billion
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: dollar industry in annual advertising. And I was like, surely
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: if Yahoo has some product in a well has a product,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Google should have a product. And look at all the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: ad dollars available in this category and look at all
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: the usage. That's pretty antiquated. Um So I said yes
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: very quickly. Um and I have to point out that
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yellow Books at billion dollars revenue. The obvious answer is
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: but not for long. But not for long. I mean, look,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: look digital really white staff business over you know, by
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the way, there were still Yellow Pages around the country
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and that around the globe, but nobody would think of
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: that as a juggernaut industry. Um So, yeah, you know
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: online really you know, really changed and transformed the face
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: of local advertising fundamentally. But um, I would say, I
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: knew it would be big. I mean that's what led
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: me to move in that direction. I'd say, what was
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: unknown about Google service? And you appreciate this even by me.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: You know, I was paired with a product manager. I
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: was the business person, meaning I had to go license
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: to data for like roads and businesses to put underneath
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: inside of that service. Right, all that data was not online.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I had one product manager, Brett Taylor, um ironically now
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the president of Sales Force. He was my He was
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: my product manager, and we had ten engineers and the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you know, twelve of us built that product effectively. I
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: did the business deals. He you know, he guided the engineers.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: So on the one hand, the product could have been
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: pretty straightforward like Yahoo A O L. But Google made
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: two innovations that I think people will remember to this day.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Number one, believe it or not, just putting the name
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: of the road inside of the road, not on top
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: of the road was one innovation. You're like, oh, the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: name of the road is like on the road, and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: visually it's just like a prettier experience, and it's you know,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it's it's like the map is less crowded that way.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: But the second innovation, and this I give a lot
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of credit to Sergey and Larry. Early on, a guy
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: named John Hanky showed Google, once we'd launched local and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: maps his cool technology that had satellite imagery called keyhole,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and Larry and Sergay were like, we need to buy that.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: We're going to overlay that on maps, and that was
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the innovation, right overlaying satellite technology on top of maps, Like, hey,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you can't give me any credit as a business person
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: for seeing that that was really product vision and in
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: that case led by the founders, I mean Brett, Brett
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: liked the product too, but from what I recall, Larry
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and Sergay were really gung ho on buying the company
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and overlaying satellite technology on top of maps. And that's
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: an example of sord of one of the things I
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: admired about Google. They didn't really care about how it
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: would make money. It was just a very cool and
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: differentiated in you know, it turns out very useful feature
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to have Google Earth on top of Google Maps, but
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: like no commercial application, just super cool at least not
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: then eventually yes, but not. But like when we laid
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: over overlaid it, I was like, Okay, I guess if
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: this is cool, I'm going to make if anybody, But
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: what a what a great kind of product feature and
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: like kind of great vision. So um, those are some
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of the fun or experiences about building maps and you know,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and then local as well. But you mentioned the integration
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: of local with Google Maps. I have a suspicion that
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of people don't realize how tightly integrated it
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: actually is what I was in pre pandemic. I was
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: in Paris and we were looking for a specific restaurant
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and you just punch restaurant in, and Google Maps knows
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: where you are and it just shows you on the maps.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: It populates all the restaurants of that type in that area,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: and it's absolutely seamless. And I've showed that to people
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: who are much much younger than me, and they're like, huh,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't know I could do that with Google Maps.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: It's almost like, uh, you know, it's almost like a
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a a surprise feature when really it's a more part
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: of of Google Maps. It's not an easter egg. Yeah. Absolutely,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And to be honest, when we started the product, local
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: and maps were different things. You could type into the
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: search box like you know, movie theater near me, and
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: you would get literally a listing of results. Today, of
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: course I'll show you the results on a Google Map
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: as the preferred way for you to see those results. Like, yes,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: you can get a listing if you want, but every
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Google Search result has the map embedded. And like you,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I actually often do all my local searching on Google Maps.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I don't even go to the main Google website. I can.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: But I just go to like Google Maps and I
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: type in like restaurants near me, and I get all
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: of them with the reviews and the results, and so
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: look very very very fun product to have launched into.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: What's done? So what led you to leave Google to
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: start joyous? Well, remember, I have one more big chapter
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: at Google that's probably um that's ironically even bigger than
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: my local and map chapter. Because I'm at Google. We've
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: launched local maps. And what's happening is people are saying
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to me. We'll saying to my boss, who is the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: cheap business officer of Google, Um, hey, we have all
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: these other products that need us to license data, like
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: we want to have um we want to have a
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: library product. We want to have a scholar product, we
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: want to have a shopping product. By the way, we
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: wanted a video product. So I end up building a
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: team that is all the licensing for all this other
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: data types of data that we want to put online.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: And so I'm running that team. You know, my team
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: has gone from I've gone from being an individual contributed
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: on running about thirty afford the business development executives and
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: about in the span of a year. This is how
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: fast Google was growing. And then my boss turns to
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: me and said, Hey, Larry's or days really have this
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: ambition that we should grow our international business much faster.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Would you move over and run what we call rest
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: of world, which is everything from China to Brazil. At
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the time we weren't in China, Um and build that business.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So so, to be honest, I spent the next five
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: years of my time of Google US there for six
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: years actually running our international business. I end up giving
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Local one, giving up Local one Maps and all those
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: other teams, and I move over and run that business
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: for five years and um, and that was the majority
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: of my time at Google actually was which building our
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: international business, which you know became renamed Asia Pacific in
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Latin America. We entered China, we had at Brazil, we
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: entered India, we entered I don't know eighteen different countries
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: directly in a hundred nine indirectly, um until I ran
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: that business until two thousand nine. And that was probably
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: um my what I'm more known for its Google huh
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: really really interesting. And then the startup it starts again
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and so oh nine, you head over to tell us
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: about the genesis of joyous, Yes, so um, oh nine,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I am, you know, three months pregnant with my third child.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I've had, you, got married, had a family. At Google. Um,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I met the pinnacle of my career. But it's also
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: clear that I am not going to be the CEO
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: of Google. Like it's not happening. You know. It was
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: obviou obviously Google. You know those two guys interest in
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: leaving they don't even and it was Eric and Eric
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Schmidt as well. But it's also clear that any successor
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: at Google would be from product or engineering. And so
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you know, and by the way, I mean pretty mighty company.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Sheryl Sandberg's might peer to an Armstrong who went on
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: to read a well Nikesh Aurora who today runs power
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: walls and networks. I mean, it was a pretty crazy
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: talented group. But all of us started peeling off in
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: our own time. My colleagues, a lot of them went
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to larger companies. And I actually wanted, to your point,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I had to start a bitch again. I was thirty
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: nine years old, and I thought, if I'm ever going
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to build another company, um, you know, this might be
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: my time. I'm you know, I'm older, but I'm not
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: so old that I wouldn't not start a company or
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: go to something early and I and I wanted to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: be a CEO, and so I combined those ambitions and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I went to a venture capital firm for nine months.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I basically parked myself there. I had my third child. Um,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I said to them, I want to study everything in
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: e commerce. Remember I started my careerit e commerce, write
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: at Jungle and at Amazon, and it was like start
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: to two thousand nine, and I believe that e commerce
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: was going to go through another revolution in which people
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: were shopping less for things they needed like you're you know,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: were things based on convenience and more based on want.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So this is the era where fashion, you know, decre
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: um experiences all start to rise as sort of marketplaces
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: on the Internet, and they're all just getting launched. By
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: the way he looked, you know, back ten years, it
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: was not obvious that Airbnb would be a big company.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It was not obvious that fashion would become one of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the biggest categories. Right, It's just super early to think
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: about anything other than price and convenience. So I study
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: sort of all the things in the landscape. And one
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: company had been pursuing me very actively at something called Polyvore,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: which was sort of like an early version of pinterest
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: um subsequently about by Yahoo several years later for three
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: hundred million. And I actually, before I start my own company,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I go to them first as a CEO who's replacing
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a founder. UM, so I go there for I go,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I study the landscape. They tried to recruit me multiple times.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I've been at a venture capital firm. I spent like
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: really nine months looking for my next thing. And I
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: took that job and within six months I was out.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, the founder and I but it heads. I
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even say we, but it had heads overtly. He
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: just wanted to run the company again. I came in
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: as the CEO and within six months he wanted the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: company back, and that's what he told the board. So
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I actually got you know, I lost my first job
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: outside of Google, which was humiliating. So that's how I
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: entered e commerce. This is what I mean when people
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: are like re entered e commerce. Whop. I was like, wow,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: he started your own next stup and I was like no, no,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: First I was the CEO of a startup where I
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: battled with the founder and he wanted the company back
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and I gave up my like two thousand person multibillion
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: dollar job at Google to stay all of the ten
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: person startup. Like, let's not miss that part of the story,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: because it's a pretty you know, illustrative of the way.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: To your point, it all rolls, it's never all glorious.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: We do talk. By the way, we're going to circle
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: back to that because it's relevant with in the book
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: of absolutely what happens when you choose risks. What happens
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: when they work out kind of takes care of itself.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: But when it doesn't work out, how do you respond
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: to what is a disappointment or a failure. Although I
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: have to imagine if they hire you a CEO and
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: then the founder comes back, that exit was probably made
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a little less painful by whatever the the contract gave
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: you on the way at the door. Yeah, absolutely, by
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the way, I heavily negotiated said after constancy, you're right,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I was very financially protected, but my ego, and we'll
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: talk about that later, was just incredibly bruised. And I
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: mean I was very humiliated, as you can imagine, have
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: lost that battle. And we'll come back to that. But
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: to your point, look, I start my next company, not
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: wanting to because I just had this very brutal startup experience. Right.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: And remember I'm still pretty relevant because I've been at Google,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I still have the sheet of Google and
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: everythingson before at in Amazon. So I'm getting large company calls.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: In fact, I was at the final rounds of uh,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the CEO job for you know, a travel brand you
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: would well recognize. And at the same time, I had
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: this idea for a video shopping startup because I had
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: seen that at Google. You know, YouTube was starting and
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: having a young women who were like hawking products. They
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: were called haulers in the day. They'd go shopping and
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: show all their wares on their YouTube videos. YouTube wasn't shoppable,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: but I saw that trend without the Google. And then
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of course I've been a probably where the shopping startup
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: in fashion and lifestyle, and all the brands wanted to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: work with us. They all wanted to somehow showcase their
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: wears online and they want to do it with like great,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: great content. So, um, while I'm interviewing to these larger
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: company CEO roles, I have an idea to like effectively
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: create a new version of TVC you know which again
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: many people are doing video ship commerce today, think two
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: thousand and ten, like eleven years ago, not that many
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: people are thinking about this. Um. And ultimately I found
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that idea so compelling that despite myself, I turned down
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the safer CEO jobs and I took another startup risk
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: and I started that company, which you know you called Joyous. UM. Yeah,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: that was my video shopping startup. And I ran it
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: for six years and we sort of built literally studios,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: had brands, you know, give us products. We had curators
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: who told the story. We we created a patented video
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: player that had shot a shopping cart in the video player. UM.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: We distributed that video player online multiple places, at multiple
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: different third party websites to get people to shop and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: watch at the same time. UM. And that was an
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: incredible experience. I mean again sort of like the risk
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: of you know, trying to be an innovator. Uh, never
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: something I would regret doing. UM. Obviously grinding hard, ultimately
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: too early for the market, but nonetheless, like I sort
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: of just embraced the idea of the e commerce was
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: going to go through another revolution, and I sent all
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: my time working on the video side of that equation.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: When you say too early for the market. Joyous was
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: still acquired by stack Commerce in why do you Why
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: do you believe you were too early to that market? Well,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: first of all, we required for a very small sum.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Like you know, nobody made anybody My venture capitalist didn't
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: make any money. I didn't make any money. Um. But
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: why I say we were too early? We raised you know,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: we raised close to fifty million dollars, which in today's
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: world is not a lot of money. People raised that
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: in one round. We raised that in over six years.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: But when I say too early, if you think about it, today,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: we have Instagram video, where people are used to the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: idea of looking at products in their feed. Half the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: people in my office are their wardrobe is purchased via
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: in Instagram, right. And then you have Facebook video where
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of shopper blads like today's video. You know,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: there's really a video unit on Facebook that has a
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: shopping card in it. You can watch video as an
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: ad and buy it. But when I am building this business,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: there is no Facebook video, there is no Instagram video,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: there's no snapshot, there's no a kick talk. So people
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: aren't really used to watching video for anything other than content.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Really like funny videos, short form videos on YouTube and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: really for quite a young audience. And like even Netflix
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: is and it's you know, is building and growing, but
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: it's as a long form video platform. Like we went
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: to Netflix and said, would you like to buy a
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: shoppable show? Like we can give you shoppable shows, and like,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: nobody was interested. Nobody was interested in carrying shows that
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: were about shopping. So we had neither interest from kind
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of any of the big platforms, and all the platforms
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: were really interested in content that was only monetized through advertising. Right, So,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: and the consumer is not used to like being on
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a site like you know, Instagram was just filters and
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: products at the time and being honest site where you
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: could watch and shop products. So like when you have
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: no consumer understanding of that and you put out a
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: new innovation, you're hoping they'll adopt it, right, But if
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: they don't, if it's not something they recognize, you know,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: what ends up happening is you're searching for cosumers who
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: want that experience, and that can be very expective. We
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: spent a lot more money on marketing and advertising in
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: order to convert people into watchers and shoppers, and that
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: was our that was our case. We kept growing, we
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: kept doubling every year, but we really needed venture capital
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: money um to keep you know, to keep growing the
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: size of the customer base. And it was it was
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: too expensive ultimately, So that's why we told we didn't
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: sole self for some glorious reason. We sold because you know,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: a fifty million dollars in we were growing the revenues,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: but we could not find a path to profitability, so
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: sold the technology and platform. Let me ask an obvious
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: in hindsight question. You have a background at Google. YouTube
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: is the fastest growing video platform. Wouldn't your technology integrate
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: with YouTube so that you can and along the same
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: way the past decade unboxing videos and all sorts of
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: tech and fashion and automotive and go down the list
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: of things you could buy that seems like that could
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: have been a pretty natural fit. You can ask any
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: startup and ask any startup ceo the past they go
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: on to sell a company. I spent a year trying
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: to sell joy Is. That's the gritty nitty gritty truth.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: And think about my role of dex real pretty darn
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: good right at the Amazon it is Google. I mean,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: I'm a known quantity by the way when you're this
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: is one of the hard truths when you're running a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: money losing startup. You know, sometimes you can get people
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to bike, but often they think they can build it themselves. YouTube.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: You know, we had a conversation and they certainly thought
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: they could build it themselves. I would say, up until today,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: YouTube still doesn't have a shopping cart. Right, I was
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: gonna you know that Calculus is always lessly frustrating, Right,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: that Calculus always seems to be, hey do we want
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to wait three years or drop eight hundred million dollars?
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: And you know, leaprov the competition that seems to be
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: the math that was done, and here it is. It's
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: almost too And you still can't just purchase something on
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: YouTube with a click the way you can on Instagram.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah you cannot. Facebook is probably probably the best video
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: shopping experience. Instagram has good shop ability, but it's adding
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: shop ability because for a long time, Instagram, you know,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: was like kind of more pure. But it's adding it.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Um But they all want it, right, Everybody talks about
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: shop video, I mean everybody, and many people have enabled it.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: So yeah, look, I would tell you I find it
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: endlessly frustrating that I couldn't land the company at one
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of the places I think even today could use the technology.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: By the way, h I said QVC. If you were
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to look at the list of the people I talked
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: to in the seventeen as time as trying to sell
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: my startup, I can only tell you I found it
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: fairly shocking. But this tells you also how early it was.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Like today, video commerce is the hottest thing in one
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: in I literally could not get some of the best
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: platforms on the Internet to buy this pad technology. Now
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I alsomely sold it to another private company that's doing
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: very well and was doing shoppable content and still is
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: so you know, enjoyous as a brand still continues. It's
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: just it's still painful to me because obviously I was
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: early but right, and you know, that's one of the
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: risks you have an entrepreneurship when you really do try
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: and innovate. Right, Maybe if I had started Joys five
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: years later, it would have been an entirely different outcome.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: It probably would have been, but but hey, that's the
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: way the internet roles. Huh. Quite quite fascinating. Let's jump
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: right into a little background on Choose Possibility. You published
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: a letter I don't know. Is that five years ago
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Tech Women Choose Possibility tell us about that? And is
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: that what led to uh into the new book? Well,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Tech Women Choose Possibility was a letter and open up
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: ed I wrote on a platform called v code, well
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: non digital newsletter really at a time where everybody and
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: myself included, which frustrated that the narrative on women in
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: tech was incredibly negative. If you think about two thousands fifteen,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: you know many headline articles the Atlantic, the cover of
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: many of the New Yorker. I think all of these
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: folks have articles about sort of where all the women
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: in tech and how terrible it is. And there's also
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: like a lot of great, you know, not so great
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: stories about bias, discrimination and so on, and so at
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the time I must startup entrepreneur and running joyous. And
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: of course I have a multi faceted view of this.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, I think, hey, you know what,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: all things being equal, I was still food Choo, Silicon Valley.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: It is mostly maurocratic. It has been very good to me.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I found my tribe right, I've been able to thrive.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Yet at the same time I remembered that early experience
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I had you recall where my boss told me I
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: was too aggressive for the secretaries. And I now started
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: a entrepreneur, and I hear firsthand stories from other amazing
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: female entrepreneurs and how terrible their experience is fundraising and
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: you know, and and and just the biased experience. So
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I wrote the op ed by surveying a hundred women
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: in tex from CEOs two entrepreneurs um asking for their
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: opinions on being an entrepreneur and then their experience of
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: bias and discrimination. And in fact, what the you know,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: what the survey shows, which is why I write the letter,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: is what you'd expect, which is, you know, they you know,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I think the majority had said we have directly experienced
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: bias and discrimination, yet like eighties something percent still recommended
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurship in tech and even for their daughters. They said
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: if they didn't recommend us for their daughters, it wouldn't
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: be because of bias, would be because their daughters maybe
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: don't want to entrepreneurship. And so you say, well, how
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: can this duality exist? And the actuality is sort of
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: what the letter says. It's basically says, hey, look, you know,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: by the way every day women get up and choose possibility.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: They choose to sort of make their next active tech
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and you can't be successful. So like, don't walk away
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: from this industry, please, because so many women are being
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: successful in increasing rate. But if you think it's all great,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: it's not. And honestly, if I were in the tech industry,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: the call to action I was looking you know, to
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: have happened is like, hey, you know, we think we
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: can solve all the world's problems. We tell everybody else
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: we can hear and silicide valley. Why are we not
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: applying any technology solutions to the problem of gender and inclusion?
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Like really, like it's shocking to me that we'll talk
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: about solving poverty and clean water and climate change, but
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: there are no tech platforms to try and solve bias
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: and discrimination. And so that was what the letters that
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: have positive that you can both have a positive experience
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: personally yet still understand this is not what it should
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: be and the rest of the tech industry need to
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: take some responsibility for trying to equal equalize the playing field.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: So did it lead to the letter or did the
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: book a little bit um The title is what I
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: mostly took from it. See, I think the notion that
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: is a dual path, like there can be risk and
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: reward and still danger or all those things can exist
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: at the same time, and that's what we're always grappling with.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: What was the feedback to the letter when you published it.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: It's now at Foxy, but recode back then. What sort
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: of response did you get? Overwhelmingly positive? Um, a lot
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: more than I expected. To Keep in mind, you know,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: we talked about risks we take in our career. Like
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: many other people, I spent the majority of my career
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: heads down building my own companies or building at larger companies.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I really didn't try and use my voice actively on
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: any like broad topic. So for me, it was a
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: risk even write a letter. Right, I'm like, what will
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: people think of me? Well, they think I like, you know,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: I'm putting myself out there for the first time as
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: a female first and a leader second, which is the
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: exact opposite of how I ran my own career. Right.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I never wanted to be seen in short of like
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: for my gender. I wanted to see my capability. Um. So,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: I think the letter was very well received, and I
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: think people just said, well, hey, thanks for acknowledging the reality.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: But also being solution oriented, like you know, it was
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: just a counter to the narrative that it's also terrible
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and really, until all of our daughters become engineers, nothing
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: can be solved. I mean, um, So I think it
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: was maybe the first time I'd use my voice in
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: any kind of way that offers maybe um a personal perspective,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: and found a little risky to do it. And I
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: think I was validated and sort of trying to speak
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: up by the response like that. And that was before
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: places like Uber. Um, some of the engineers had had
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: gone public about what a frat house that was inside you.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: You predated that explosion that we saw elsewhere, right, Uber
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: had its me to moment about a year later, and
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: in fact, many companies did, and you started to see,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: you know, some of the very very bad behavior far
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: beyond the microaggressions that many women talk about that um,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: you know, people of color and women experience, unfortunately to
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: a far date greater degree than any of us think.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: So the letter predated it, but um, I think me
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: too really expose some of the more flagrant and honestly
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: awful things people go through work. Sure, so let's talk
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: a little bit about the book I don't. I don't
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: want to overlook this. Um. I like the way you
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: have this structured in three parts, going get Smarter, Get rewarded.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Explain why you went with that structure. Sure, so, UM,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: obviously it's uh, it's probably obvious from this conversation that
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I've taken a decent amount of risk in my career.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And I wrote the book because I think people have
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: a very um, unrealistic sense of what risk and reward
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: looks like compared to how it really unfold. And so
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: I structured the book in a way that really I
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: didn't did not want it to be a memoir, but
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: I structured in a way that goes from sort of
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: basic lessons on risk taking, um, to sort of maybe
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: more complex not ideas, but kind of uh, philosophies. And
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: it really mirrors maybe the way I learned to take risk.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: You know, for me, it was really simple in the beginning.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And you know, we talked about those early moves. I
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: made five or six moves in the span of seven years, right,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: so whether they worked out or not, I took a
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: fair amount of risk, you know, and made a number
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of sequential choices. And then I think the middle is
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: about being a smart risk taker. Nobody says, I don't
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: say certainly that this book is about just taking risk
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: willy nilly. It's about how do you become a calculated
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: risk taker? Right? If what we're asked you to lean
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: forward and take more risk in your career, the question
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: is you want to do it smartly? And then the last,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: of course, really chapter really kind of talks to how like,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: how many of these choices really unfold over time? So
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: organized it roughly in the order in which would happened
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: in my lifetime, which is also the sort of order
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: broadly speaking, which I learned these lessons, and some of
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the chapters really leap out with some real interesting questions
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to bounce off of you, um, starting
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: with why is the hero's journey the wrong metaphor for entrepreneurs? Well,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: you know, and not just to entrepreneurs, for people at
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: larger companies too. We have this idea, you know, when
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: we look at the hero's journey, what we what we
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: see and remember is just like one mighty choice the
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: hero made that we could either lead to sort of
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: abject failure or glorious you know, glorious success. And by
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the way, we see that story just in you know,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: in um popular media, but even in the media that
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: relates to, you know, the journeys of successful entrepreneurs, Like
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: we're all watching what happens when Richard Branson, you know,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: goes to space, Like you know, it's just going to
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: be ethically successful or something disastrous gonna happen, right, Like,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: there's all of the binary stories we see about people's
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: like big, singular choices, and I think and I call
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: that the myth of a single choice in the book.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: The reality is that you know, most people who are
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: taking risks, it's not one risk that led them to
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: the reward. It is the multitude of risks. And by
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the way, they're not even all big. They may be small, small, small, big, small, small, small, medium, small, small, small, small,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: and they just keep pivoting in small ways until they
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: realize the reward they imagined or a different one. So
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: we have boiled the hero's journey down to a single choice,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: when you know, really rewards, you know, reward getting is
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: about a system of unlocking multiple choices, and it's never
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: just one choice. It's about be committing to the process,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: is continually choosing your way and your path. I like
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: that description. It's less cinematic but far more realistic. Another
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: one that that jumped out that was kind of interesting
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: and obviously, given how you've moved from New York to
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: London to Silicon Valley, makes sense. Tell us why proximity
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: beats planning, Well, it's interesting. I think one of the
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: reasons people um see a risk is they like they
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: just don't like uncertainty. In fact, it's research that suggests
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: that often people choose something not because they're convinced it's
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the best path, but because it simply reduced this uncertainty.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So it certainty creates a lot of anxiety for people.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: So what's the anecdote to that, Well, for many people,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: it's planning. Well, I'm going to do this, but first
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to create a plan. So they start planning
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: for the thing they don't know, and they plan from
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: afar right. So you can create this perfect plan of
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: what you imagine the thing is that you want to
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: go after, and you can add more and more detail
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: to that plan. But the problem is, like you're pretty
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: far away from understanding what that new reality looks like.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: And so while you're creating a plan, it's not like
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: it's sort of a plan in your head with more
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: and more detail that makes you feel you know less uncertain,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: but it's not getting you any closer to the action.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: So often I say to people like, if you if
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: you know what you want, or even if you don't,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: get proximate to you know, environments or people that even
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: roughly approximate the thing you think you want the thing
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: you think you want, and two things happen. Number One,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: you learn a lot more by being proximate than planning
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: from afar, Like did you say, hey, I want to
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: be a chef and I'm currently a financial analyst. Like,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: let's say, well, how do you get yourself in circumstances
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: where you're in an array of chefts and restaurants? You
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: know before you ever make a mighty lead to go
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: to culinary school because you can learn by being proximate
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: whether or not that thing is even what you want. Right,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: So getting close helps you identify the thing you think
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: you want is what you really want. Number Two, you
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: get knowledge on how to achieve it because you're you know,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: you're approximate to people who've already done what you want
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: to do, and simply by studying them or being around them,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: you're going to learn. And the third thing is well,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: if you really know what you already want, when you
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: get proximate, you know, you really get the opportunity to
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: you know, to I would say apprentice under masters people
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: are really good at it, and those people attract new
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: opportunity all the time. UM. So those are the reasons
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I think that proximity, getting close to what you want
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: even before you know it exactly, has far more value
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: than planning in the abstract. So let's talk a little
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: bit about a less successful startup in your personal UM
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: career polyvore, which is what preceded you joining UM. Joyous
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: tell us about what went wrong there and the lessons
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: that you learned. Sure well, first of all, I always
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: say people, you can take smart risks, or try and
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: take smarter risks, but you don't never eliminate risk entirely. Right.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: You can do all the studying you want and set
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: yourself up well and still fail. I mean that is
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: why it's called risk after all, And certainly a poly
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: woar I made a very studied choice. I entered the
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: e commerce arena very knowingly. I wanted to be a
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: CEO and the company I mean, I've known the company
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: for three years, so I felt like I really had
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: done my homework. Um. Yea. When I arrived at Polly War,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: I had a game plan that said, look, I'm taking
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: over from a founder. You know, Silicon Valley is littered
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: with founders CEO pairings that don't work, crumble. It's like
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: a marriage, right, I mean, at best, your your odds
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: of fifty percent out of marriage, and like I'd say
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: they might be even slightly less out of founder CEO
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: relationship because you have two people who have authority over
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a company. Right. Um. On the one hand, you have,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: you know, a founder who has been used to running
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: a company and obviously have control over it, including you know,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: financially through equity ownership, and then you have a CEO
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: who's sort of theoretically bought into sort of be the adult.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: So um So my point overall is that, uh, when
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: you think about any start the founder CEO journey, you're
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: like carrying somebody's with financial ownership of a company that's
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: pretty large and moral authority with some of the theoretically
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: has professional management skills, but also wants to set vision um.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: And that's what I entered to Polly bar and I
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: think if I were to characterize in a nutshell, white
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: didn't work out. I think that, you know, at to
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the first three months, I was listening to what the
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: founder had to say and didn't really wanna did not
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: really want to disrupt the apple cart. I really want
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to listen and be a fossful partner. At month three
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to six, I started to sort of voice some of
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: what I believe we should do with the company. And
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: by the way, I said to the board, you know,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: this is going to go one of two ways. Either,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: you know, my partner and I kind of share the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: same values and want this to work, or you know,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: there's a possibility that this person feels very threatened by
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: you know, me voicing my own opinions. And I think
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: the latter ended up happening. And at month six, you know,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the founder basically said I want the company back. It's
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: either to Kinder or me, and the board shows him
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: and it was an INCREDI off we painful experience. And
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: so what did I learn from it? I think I
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: learned one seminal lesson, which is, you can do all
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: the studying you want, you know, whenever you make a
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: new choice like the who that you're partnering with, the
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: who of the equation is even more important than the
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: what I would say that to people like, we make
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: new choices based on the industry, based on the company,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: based on the company's track record, based on our passions.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Yet intrinsically, when we enter any new situation at work,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: we are, you know, inextricably tied to whoever we're working
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: for or with most closely right and our experience working
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: with them. Do we share the same values? Do we
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: have different strengths? Do we have complementary strengths? And I
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: think I ended up in the boat with somebody who,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day didn't share my values.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Like we really wanted to run the company, not just
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't even say with different ideas of how we
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: could get there. It was like we wanted to run
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the company differently, what we valued in leadership was different.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: And so when that then I went that situation transpired,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: I went to my mentors and I said, oh, my god,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: like the founder wants the company back, should I fight
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: for it? And the very first thing my mentor said
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: was no, They said, why would you ever want to
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: fight for a company? That's ten ten people big where
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: quite frankly, what you're telling me about this story and
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: what's transpired. And by the way, I'm not going into
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: the nity grade of how it transpired, which was thank
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: not in keeping with my values. They're like, from all
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: of the behaviors that have gone on, like, what makes
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: you think that this would be a group of people
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that you want to tie yourself to going forward? And
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I said, you're right, and so I actually like didn't
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: fight for it. I was like, okay, you want to,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: you can have it back. I'm out. You're right, this
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: is not the right place for me, which was against
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: every instinct I have. Is like somebody who wants to
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: drive and control right just to give up. And they're like, yeah,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: you're right. And I look back on that situation and say,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: my mentors were right. One of the hardest things in
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: business is knowing when to cut losses, when to say, hey, whatever,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: this decision that led us to this point was wrong,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and now let me just reverse engines and head out
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: of here as fast as I can. But it it
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: feels challenging because it's an admission of failure, even though
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: that's not what this was. Yeah, well, well, by the
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: way I would say to people, it depends over what
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: time frame you characterize that decision on a six month
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: time frame or year time frame. That was a failed decision.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: And I call it a failure because I failed to
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: have the impact. You know, It's different than Joyous, Right,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: we talked about why Joyce did or did not. We
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: just culmination as a video platform. But I can look
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: back on those six years and see every innovation we achieved,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: see everything we've built, See the team we assembled and
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: what they've gone on to do. See the fact that
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: like we were the pioneer, and I can feel very
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: proud because I know I had impact. It's probably where
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: I had no impact. I was just six months. You know.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: It was painful and like and honestly like a waste
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: of my time and their time because nothing transpired that
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: was positive. Right. We just I just exited. Um So
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I consider it a failure, but I also consider it
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a success. In the decision to join the commerce, you know,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: to leave Google and become a CEO. You know, I
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: got to run my own company. I got to run
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: stub Hub, like I mean, you know, I began a journey.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: I got to become an e commerce investor, an e
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: commerce board member like I have loved being in the
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Business e E Conference for the last ten years, and
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: that would only have been possible because of my decision
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: to join Pollymore however painful. So so anyway, I I
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: think it was a personal failure, but I think in
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: many ways, you know, the choices I made, some of
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: them stuck, and those ones, you know, not all of them,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: but several of them were successful. Hey, sometimes due diligence
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: just doesn't identify every less cockroach that might that might
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: come out. Absolutely absolutely true. You can't. You can't just
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: research away all the inherent risk in the situation. You
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: just make the best choice you can and then you
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: need to have confidence in your ability to respond. So
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: I have dozens more questions about the book, but I
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: want to get to some other stuff. Let me ask
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: one last question. I really like the title to succeed
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: forget success. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure, Well,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: what I always say to people is when we make
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: a big choice, particually a big career choice, you know,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: most big choices unfold to sort of a meaningful reward
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: and call it three to five years. It's hard to
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: think about a work ambition that you couldggest that it
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: is big enough to be exciting, yet so small that
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: you could achieve it in six months. Right, it almost
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Um, So let's presume you make a big
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: choice and you're like, hey, I want to ascend to
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: this law. I want to be a CEO in the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: next three to five years, or I want to get
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: at my current company, or I want to be the
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: head of this division, whatever it might be. At the
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: end of the day, we make a big choice and
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: we're not done right. Like, once we've made a big choice,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: we're like, oh, yeah, now I need to execute my
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: way to that reward. I didn't just choose that. Now
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: I need to execute my way to that reward. And
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: so to the process of execution. Every day we're making
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: littlar choices to find success. We need say like, okay,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: now we need to build the revenues of this you know,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: of this division. Oh my god, we need to restructure,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, we need to find in new ways
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: to grow, and so on your way to your larger ambition.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Every day you're making choices and producing outcomes you know
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: in this and you're just doing that picklically. So between
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: you and that big reward is you know, a dozen, ten,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: a hundred more choices, And every time you make a choice,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: you're trying to produce a success, a learning, but some
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: kind of outcome. So let's say that you know you
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: don't achieve that, you know that ultimate success, you don't
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: get the promotion. But along the way, you built a
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: great division, you doubled revenues, you launched new services. I
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: call all of those outcomes. You know, by the way
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you built a team that you know gave you a
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: high satisfaction rating as a leader. All of those outcomes
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: are still positive. There's still what I call your career capital.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: And in that process of just continuing to pursue results
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: and impact, you've not only accumulated career capital, you've likely
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: become more agile and more confident. So aren't those all
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: things that are going to contribute to your future success,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: whether or not you've got the reward you want. They are,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: But we often only focus on the end goal when
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: really I think what we should be focusing on is
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: creating impact. Every time we create impact, we create an
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: indelible results or outcome that is the result of our
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: own efforts and learning and agility. And that's really like
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: the reward for risk taking. Because I can't tell you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: if you're going to get the riginal reward. I can't
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: tell you if you're going to get the original success
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: you imagine or something different. But I can tell you
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: that if you pursue impact in every choice that between
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: you and that big reward, you're going to create a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: lot of outcomes. And those outcomes, you know, will become
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: the basis for your reputation, your confidence, your skills, and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: any future success you acquire. That is the reward for
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: risk taking. And that's why I say they'll focus on success,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: focused on impact. Very interesting. Let's talk a little bit
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: starting with your role as president of stub Hub. What
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: was that like? Did you have any surprising challenges you
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: had to deal with in that role? I feel like
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: that's the leading questions to tell you about just suseuch,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: but certainly I'm happy to share. So um I ran
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: stub Hub from in that time. There's a lot of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of surprises, some I could have anticipated and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: some I couldn't. First of all, just a phenomenal and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: fun experience. If you've ever been in a business of
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: live experiences and giving that gift to people of lives.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: There's just really nothing like it. So and I'm also
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: happy to be a big sports and entertainment fans, so
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: that doesn't hurt UM. But when I think about the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: things that were surprises, Number one, UM StubHub. If you know,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: the history was bought by eBay over ten years ago,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: and so was an EBA SIB sidiary, and UM I
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: could have anticipated that eBay would continue to face, you know,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: shareholder pressure because it wasn't growing at the same rate
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: as Amazon and its margins were declining. UM and in fact,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: that shareholder pressure came to task and an active Elliott.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Two activists joined the board Starboard and Elliott in yeah
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: and no no in nineteen my goodness in January two
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: and put pressure on the CEO, the then CEO to
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: self stub hub as opposed to whole bit so Midway,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I was only a year into my tenure when an
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: activist joined the eBay board, and UH quickly became apparent
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: that we were gonna end up selling the company and
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I was gonna be leading a sale process, which is
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: not necessarily what I personally wanted, but UM, so that
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: I could have anticipated in the sense that they had
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: had an activist once before, and certainly when I took
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: the stub Hub job, it did occur to me that, um,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: that would be uh one potential risk that eBay itself,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: my parent company, would face pressure. UM. I expected more
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: sort of earnings pressure, you know, pressure to deliver our
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: numbers every quarter. Uh. There was an outside possibility of
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: an activists, but that came to pass, and that led
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: to the sale of the company to StubHub. Sale. UM
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: the honest the other unexpected event with Covid, and you know, ironically,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: stub hub sold for a record stub you know, four
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. We led a process that led to a
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: successful transaction that closed on February, and I thought, as
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: much as I was personally disappointed, you know, I recognized
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: it as a very successful business outcome and I was
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: going to go have to find a new job because
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: very rarely there's the acquired company, you know, get to
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: have its CEO run the combined company, and I certainly
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: was not getting that job. Um. The original founder of
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: StubHub bought back the company and he wanted to run
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: the combined company. H there's a thing with you and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: founders coming back to run companies. That's keep in mind.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I've also been a founder three you know, three times,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: so um so I do understand that founder CEO dynamic
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: And as I said, any founders have an affinity for
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: their companies that is really hard to you can I
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: don't know, it's just hard to put any price tag
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: or any sure it's one part you go, one part
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: of their baby. I get that, Yeah, you got it.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: So and by the way, and in this case looks
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: completely professional, like you have a founder who's been out
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: of the company for twenty years and has nothing to
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: do with me. A fifty years he had started a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: competitive ticketing company and now you want to come back.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: And by the way, he had been pushed out of
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: the company. So if there was an ego involved here,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: it's that the original founders pushed him out of the
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: company in twenty five And so yeah, there's a lot
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: involved in one being able to come back and buy
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: the company that you were once pushed out of. So anyway,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I have nothing to do with that, Dynamics. I just
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: want to be clear, and let's put let's put some
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: numbers on this, because really, so you oversee the spin out,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: the sale of stub Hub to a third party, and
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: to put some numbers, eBay buy stub Hub for like
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars in oh seven. It's barely a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: decade later, it's now late and you managed to sell
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: stub Hub for over four billion dollars to via Go Go,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: which I think was smaller than StubHub at the time.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: And ps, this is four months before the world is
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: going to shut down thanks to COVID. That turned out
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: to be a spectacularly time sale. Yes, I know, people
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: give us a lot of credit in hindsight for that
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: sale period. And I think and um and I and
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: for eBay, just a tremendous outcome because to your point,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: we announced the sale in the fall of nineteen and
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: the and the transaction closed like money in the bank
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: for eBay on February. Wow. That's yeah, I know, people
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: say unbelievable timing. One thing to note is, you know
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: everybody who was bidding to buy us in the strategic
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: category was smarter than StubHub, because you know, we were
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: the largest player in in in C two C ticketing right,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Ticketmaster the other big player, and much bigger than us,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: but not the same category. So um So ironically, all
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: of the people bidding to buy us were people that
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: honestly I would have wanted to buy UM, but they
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: were all smaller than us, but with big checks and
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: often you know, pe dollars behind them. So uh so
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: look um successful as some for stub Hub. And then
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm going to sail off into
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the sunset after you know, a reasonable but short transition period,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: and I do not expect to still be in the seat.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: You know, on March their teams, well, I think I
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: think I'll be there, but it will be part of
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: my transition um and on marched their team. The COVID
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: hits the US sports and entertainment industry in a massive way.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: At the beginning of the week, we are forecasting that,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: you know, we need to start to plan for closures,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: and I remember saying to our finance team, we're forecasting
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: to be fifty percent down. Maybe we need to have down.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: No one should need to have a fifty percent case,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: you know, this is what's trying to think about. How
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: no way. And by the end of the week, every
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: sports league has suspended its season like literally something like
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand events canceled in like a week span. I
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: mean when I say, you go from sort of you know,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: having a record sale to like an existential crisis that
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: was us, you know, we were because we were no
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: longer owned by eBay. We didn't have ebase balance sheet.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: We were owned by another private company who itself had
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: to manage it because guess what, it's ben't ticketing to right,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: So it's being affected internationally. We're being affected internationally and
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: more importantly in the US, which is the majority of
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: our business. And so we went from you know, record
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: sale to cash crunch um. And it was on my watch,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: and so you can imagine I'm might feel responsibility for
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: our business. I feel responsibility for employees. I feel responsibility
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: that we do not go bankrupt um. And we rapidly
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: restructed the company over sixty days. I will say to people,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: if you want to know what that period, would like
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: to look at my Twitter feed the amount of hatred
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: I got from people. I mean, I understand that customers
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: were very upset. We had to change policies on refunds.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't have the money on the floor. I didn't
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: have you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to give
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: everybody their money back. The best I could do would
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: give people credit, like I mean like literally, as like
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to choose between the company not going under literally,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: which was yeah, how do you explain that to people?
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: I did my best. I wrote a transparent note to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: our customers. I got tons of hate triad and it's fine.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Like people were very frustrated. You remember the levels of
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: everyone's frustration and people's money, so anyways, very intense. But
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: I'm very proud of the team. We we structured in
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: a sixty day span and only once we finished the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: restructuring that I depart because I knew that Step Up
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: could survive for an indefinite period until live events started
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: to come back. And so you know, it turns out
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: that the definite period has been over a year. Obviously, um,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I can't share any confidential numbers, but you know, the company, no, no,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: I'm proud of account of the fact that the company survived, right,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: And you know, I mean it looked dire for everybody,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: anybody in the in the live entertainment business. There was
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: a genuine question mark, Hey, if you're going to close
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: for six months or a year and have zero revenue,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: will you be able to survive? It was nice of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: you could have easily said, Hey, my job was to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: sell the company. I'm att here. The fact that you
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: start stuck around, help them restructure and put them on
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: better footing. Um, not everybody would have taken that choice.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I think a few people would have said, Hey, my
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: job was to sell and it's sold and we're out
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: of here. Well, yeah, I don't know. Most leaders I
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: know would know that that's really not a choice. I mean,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: once you're there, you're there. But I appreciate your saying it.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Mostly as I said, I'm super proud of the team,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: because this is what I will say about risk. Right,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Risks come upon us that we never can anticipate, versus
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: ones that we can. And in those moments, you see
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: people's agility. And let me tell you, the Subhub team,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: like that is a team of people who share my values.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: And I was very proud to be leading a team that,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, really made hard choices in a rapid period
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: into including choices that affected each of them. Think about
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: that like people making choices about their own jobs, you know,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: to try and make sure Subhub survived and like, you know,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: as a leader, like a very painful period but also
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: one of the most rewarding to be with that group
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: of people. So let's talk about something else that reflects
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: your values. Tell us a little bit about the board list,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: what it is and how it seems to be helping
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: women advance their careers. Sure well, if you recall I
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: wrote that open letter tech Women Choose Possibilities, and you said,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: how what was the reception? I said, it was very positive,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: and people kept saying to me, like, what are you
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: going to do that? And of course I thought I
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: was just writing a letter, right, I was like, well,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: did might just do it? I put out this opinion,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, but it became clear to me that
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: maybe there was something more to be done. And I
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: had been kicking around the idea actually with a number
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: of dcs of them starting to put more women on
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: tech boards. You know, they would come to me and say,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: like the Kinder, what should we do about women in chests?
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: And they have all these solutions for putting girls in
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: stems into which i'd bespont and like, you can do that,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: but that will take generations. You realize that there meant
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: plenty of amazing women leaders in the valley. I know them,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: I see them every day, Like, why don't you just
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: put them on your boards? Because you have all these
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: early stage companies that could really benefit from this experience.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: And ironically, you know, at that point were like oh oh,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: like yeah, you're you're, you're right, but they didn't do
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: anything about it. So when I started the Boardlist, a
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: basically crowdsourced six names from thirty executives and entrepreneurs in
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: the valley and I said, would you give me the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: names of women you think should serve on board? I'm
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: gonna put them on a website and then people can
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: come and look for great women leaders for their boards
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: and they can no longer say where are all the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: great women? We can't find any um, So we launched
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: a free service called the board List UM. It's not
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: a nonprofit, but it is a mission driven kind of
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: It was a mission driven startup. I started it at
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: my side Hustle and twent and today the Boardlist is
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand members, over ten thousand women and diverse leaders
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: that you could go to the site today and look
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: for for your board. You can also recommend people to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the board list. UM and so it's a marketplace for talent,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: um for diverse talent, and today it serves not just
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: women to people's color. And about a year ago we
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: raised our first institutional rand, so I bootstrapped it for
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: four years. I knew that you know, it was working,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: which it is quite well, UM, and it's needed more
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: than ever. So the Boardlist is my my my own
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: startup baby as the founder, but I'm not the full
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: time CEO. I haven't what's the what's the track record
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: of the board List in actually getting women and people
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: of color placed on the boards of startups? Um, the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: track record is quite good. Now I would characterize the
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: track crack track track record two ways. Remember, we're not
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: a search firm, We're a discussed platform, which means our
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: core metric is like how many people come to the
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: board List and search and then ultimately, you know, find
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: a board member, whether it's through us or whether we
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: were just part of their journey. And to date we've
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: helped over two thousand women, two thousand companies from early
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: stage to public have come to the board List searching
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: for board members. UM. And as they said, the way
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: I think about the board List is sometimes we are
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: the accelerated of the journey. Sometimes you find the exact
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: person you want on our platform. We are, you know,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: we consider our role to be a sore of talent
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: um and to make sure that that board teak gets
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: successfully filled. So um. Yeah, and the companies run from
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: Series A all the way to public public global companies.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: I think a few years ago when an activist put
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: up to a United slate for the board, he used
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: the boardlist entirely to put up an alternate slate through
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: the board. Um, and we didn't even know if he
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: just gave us credit. Afterwards he's like, oh, I used
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: the boardlist for example. How how optimistic are you that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: technology is at least starting to head in the right
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: direction when it comes to both inclusion and diversity. Well,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: first of all, I think there are two or three
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: different ways into that question. Number one, there are lots
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: of platforms now that try and solve bias and discrimination
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and everything from the hiring process to sourcing diverse talent um.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: We're pretty unique and that we kind of you know,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: are focused on the boardroom. Um. But to sort of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: take away by some discriminations from the hiring practice. Hiring process,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: by the way, there's a whole other set of companies. Yeah,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: I'm an investor in several that do things like, you know,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: help you confidentially report issues at the company in a
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: productive way before it ends ever ends up in the press,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: and give companies the chance to arbitrate and to solve
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: your problems right as an employee. So I think that
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: we're seeing all sorts of platforms that run from bison
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: discrimination to you know, anti harassment, to you know, proactive
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: consultation between companies and their employees to find solutions. So
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: I'd say that is a positive to see that much
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: technology kind of solution ng you know, try and tackle
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: this problem in equality. That's great. Number two and I
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: think this is important. People often say, like if you
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: want to be it, you need to see it. The
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: number on absolute levels of women who are founding companies,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: you know, compared to any prior period in my lifetime,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: is up into the right. People may say the percentages
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: are still small, and that's true, but women are getting
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: more venture capital. There's more pressure obviously not just put
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: women on boards, but to provide funding is for women
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: and diverse people of color to start companies. And look
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: at the number of female unicorns that exists, the female
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: founded unicorns that exist today. I was lucky enough to
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: fund one of the first, Katrina Lake at stitch Fix.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I was her early investor and she worked
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: with me at poly Bore. But since then, you have
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: Whitney at Bubble, you have Rachel Carlson at Guild, you
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: have um the founder of every Well, everywhere you look,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: there are women starting not just great companies, but very
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: valuable companies. Audi at House houses the Unicorn several times over,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: I'm sure. And and so there's lots of examples of
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: women who are building really valuable companies. So Canada, Canada
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: just got funded at forty billion. It's got a Australians
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: emile founder. So I love seeing kind of these examples
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: because I think it really, you know, a it inspires
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: a whole generation of other diverse leaders to feel like
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: they can do it. But more importantly, for all of
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: those VC dollars that you know had, you know, I
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: would just say unconscious fives going out and like under
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: funding companies, they will be fomo about the companies they missed.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe they need to look at their own funding practices
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: and figure out why they missed. Some of these great deals,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: and often it comes back to you unconscious biased when
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: these women and diverse leaders are early on looking for money.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: So so let's talk a little bit about um. You
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: mentioned venture capital. I work in finance where there's clearly
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: a diversity issue with both women and people of color.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: It's very much been an old boys network for many,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: many decades. Lots of signs that it's changing. Venture capital
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: is actually worse than traditional Wall Street tell us about
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: what has to happen for that to change, and are
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: you seeing signs that they too are moving in the
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: right direction. Well, I think there are two types of
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: pressure that BC firms are under. First is from the LPs.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: So the first thing that needs to change and is
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: changing is LPs. You know, the people who provide venture
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: you know, money to venture capitalists, demanding to see staff
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: on the rate at which they fund you know, people
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: of color and women like how you know how equality
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: driven as their own funding profile? LPs tablets all day
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: after that, and number two, what does the profile look
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: as the venture capital firm itself, like where their female partners?
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: You know, what's their own pipeline for development? Because we
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: know that when you're diverse, you fund more diversely as well,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: right I E. Um, when you have more you know,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: women as partners, more women get funded. UM. So I
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: think LP pressure is starting and it needs to continue.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: An LPs, I think need transparency on how your dollars
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: are distributed and need to ask for that how in
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: terms of pipeline versus deal bigger closed? And then number
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: two pressure to keep these PC firms getting more diverse.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: The second thing is it's what identified is like the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: inflicted pressure of performance as we start to see more
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: kind of companies that don't look like the average Valley company.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: And I don't just mean it's a woman or person
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: of color. It could be a company that started in Canada,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: It could be a company that started in Kansas, It
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: could be a company that started in India. Like like,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: that doesn't fit the normal pattern. You know, dollars slow
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: to where there's money. And so I think the other
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: type of pressure is actually just performance pressure as you
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: see you know, companies that don't come from your traditional
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: backgrounds and founders either that perform. There's nothing like that
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: kind of pressure, which is like, wow, what am I
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: missing out on that? I need to be a part
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: of so I think both kinds of pressure need to happen,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: performance pressure as well as LP pressure. So I know
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: I only have you for a few minutes. Let's jump
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: to our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: starting with tell us what you've been streaming these days?
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: Give us your favorite Netflix or Amazon Prime or podcast,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: whatever is keeping you entertained during the pandemic. Sure, well,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: I probably have three that are at the top of
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: my list these days. First of all, Ted laugh Tho,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I know about you, but my family's loves Ted Lasso.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: Such a feel good, funny, um funny show, so well done.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Season two not so good as season one, but I
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: will just we're still tad laughs of die Hard Um
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: On Amazon. A girlfriend of mine recommended mc mafia, which
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: is actually a pretty um interesting for those of you
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: who like uh, I would say finance or financial services
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: and the Mob. It's a fictional series on a British
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: Russian financier who gets involved with the wrong folks. That's
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: a really um niche one and an interesting one. It's
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: been a great series to watch. Succession. I'm waiting for
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: you know season two. I mean we all watched Succession
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: and then I would say on the podcast side right now, actually,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: I am listening to do separate podcasts about um Elizabeth
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Holmes trial wants to drop out from ABC, and the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: other one is Out for Bad Blood from John Kerry,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: you who, as you know, is the original kind of
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: journalist on this story. So I like listening to smart
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: people that have just keep me abreast on on the trial,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. Tell us about some of your mentors
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: who helped shape your career. Well. First of all, my dad.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: I always talked about the fact that he was a doctor,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: but he was also an entrepreneur and he really loved
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: working for himself, and I think he made the idea
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: of entrepreneurship so accessible for me. Remember he's also the
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: guy who told me to take that trade trip down
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: to New York that led to the job with Mary Lynch.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: Like if there was ever a champion of possibilities, even
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: small ones all the time, it was my father. So
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: he is my pre eminent mentor for sure. And then
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: I think the other group I had point to is,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I've been lucky to have a lot of
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: kind of great people I worked for. They often are
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: my best mentors because they know me well, and I
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: know them well. Um, all the tribe a jungie. We
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: talked about those four Indian entrepreneurs who started that company
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: that I joined. I mean, my god. They became an
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: angel investors in Yodeli, my next company. They introduced me
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: that opportunity. UM. One of them, Rom Scherry Ram was
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: the first investor in Google. So when I made the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: decision to go to go to Google, and they called
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: me because Rob pushed both of us us. He pushed
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: them to call me and need to consider it. Um.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: And you know when the situation went awry at Polly War,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: the number one person I called was a guy named
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: Bankey Harry and Ryan, one of those Juggli founders and
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: the one I was closest to who continue to know
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: me and invest in all the companies I founded. And
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: I just said, what do I do here? And he
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: was the one who could have gave me the like,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: look me straight in the eye. Are these people you're tribe?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: Do they have your values? Advice? And tell me to
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: get the hell out. So, UM, I really considered bank
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: you probably the closest among that group, but all four
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: have been very instrumental in my career. Let's talk a
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: little bit about books. What are some of your favorites
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: and what are you reading right now. Well, one of
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: my favorites, I'm like a very kind of speeky business person.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't like to read all business books, but
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: there's something I really love. One of my favorites is
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: McKenzie's Growth Beyond the hockey Stick. So, if you're a
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: leader or CEO, who's always you ever grappling with how
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: to get your company to grow faster? And obviously it's
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: stub hub. I was trying to accelerate growth um and
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: just paradigms for what works. It's like the new good
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: to Great. I always love Jim Collins Good to Great,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: but great. Growth Beyond the hockey Stick is McKinsey's analysis
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: of that of what makes top performing companies over a
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: thirty year period, and it's just got lots of kind
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: of anecdotes I love. So that's the favorite business one
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: that I always recommend. And then right now I'm reading
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Automic Habitts. You know, Automic Habits has long been on
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: the best seller list, UM, and I wanted to know why.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: So I'm in the midst of reading it and so
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: far it lives up to its billing. Is just being
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: refreshing simple, um surprisingly intuitive, Yet we don't do it enough.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: M quite quite interesting. What sort of advice would you
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: give to a recent college grad who was interested in
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: a career in either entrepreneurship, technology venture capital? What what
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: would you tell someone like that? UM, I would say, Well,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: on the entrepreneurship and technology side, I would say, get proximate.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: You know I And today, luckily for us, getting proximate
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean you need to move to Silicon Valley. We
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: all live in a hybrid world. Old, But if you're
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: contemplating to move into one of those areas and you
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: don't know what it looks like like literally, maybe as
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: simple as you know, doing a couple of informational interviews
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: with people you find on linked In and maybe tapping
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: your closing network and you know, figuring out who's doing
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: something entrepreneurial and going to shadow them, and maybe like
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: finding a side hustle, where's your new day you're at
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: a large company in the evening, you're moonlighting. These are
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: always to get proximate to what you know. And I'd
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: say that's far more the case for entrepreneurship and technology,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: because there are so many sort of gig economy hustles
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: that you could do to learn before you ever make
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: a bigger move. UM venture capital is a much more
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: kind of traditional path. I would say, like, you can
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: get there from technology um, but then they want to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: see that you've accomplished something inside of technology company, so
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: that's possible. The other path is obviously a more traditional
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: finance path through like you know business school and you
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: know classic financial training or consulting training. And our final question,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: what do you know about the world of g I
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: could say finance, entrepreneurship, technology, venture capital today that you
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: wish you knew thirty years or so ago when you
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: were first getting started. What do I would know today
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: that I wish I knew that I always say to people,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: like I think what I wish I knew then is
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't need to be a mighty choice to
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: enter these areas. You can enter in a small way.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: And like I said, I made, I made what I
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: would consider now a relatively small move. Yes, I quit
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: my job, but I was like in my mid twenties
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: and I moved to Silicon Valley, Like I would just
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: say this idea that you don't have to have the
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: big idea to get started. The big idea can come later.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Just get close and start with something small. For me,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: that was a move to this area. For other is
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: as I said, it might be tapping into a side
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: hustle or opening an st store like you can learn
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: everything you need to know about these areas in small acts,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: not waiting for one big, perfect idea to show up
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: and galvanize you really really, really int rereaking uh Sekenda.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being so generous with your time. We
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: have been speaking with Kindersin Cassidy, author of the new
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: book which I have right here, Choose Possibility, take risks,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: and thrive even when you fail. If you enjoy this conversation,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: be sure and check out all our previous interviews we've
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: conducted over the past seven years. There are about three
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty two of them. You can find those
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: at iTunes, Spotify, wherever you feed your podcast fix. We
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can sign
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: up for my daily reading list at Rid Halts dot com.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: Check out my weekly column at Bloomberg dot com. Slash opinion.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I would be
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the correct team that
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: helps us put these conversations together each week. Mohammed is
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: my audio engineer, Artika val Bron is my project manager.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is my head of research. Paris Wald is
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: my producer. I'm barried, Halts. You've been listening to Master's
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg RADI