Podcasts about Heidi Roizen

In this episode of Super Psyched, host Dr. Adam Dorsay interviews Silicon Valley legend Heidi Roizen, a venture capitalist, corporate director, and Stanford lecturer. Heidi shares her journey from growing up in Silicon Valley to becoming a successful entrepreneur and VC. She discusses the importance of genuine relationships, reality-based self-talk, and prioritizing empathy and kindness in the business world. Heidi also provides practical tips on networking, maintaining health, and continuous learning. Her insights reveal the significance of balancing personal well-being with professional success.00:00 Welcome to SuperPsyched00:28 Introducing Heidi Roizen02:10 Heidi's Early Life and Career03:41 Challenges and Strategies in Tech06:41 The Power of Self-Talk12:22 The Importance of Preparation14:18 Building Meaningful Relationships17:57 Connecting with People21:01 The Facebook Filter and Extroversion Myths21:25 Confidence vs. Faking It22:30 Growing Through Challenges23:28 Recognizing Your Strengths and Weaknesses25:03 Exposure and Response Prevention25:30 Best and Worst Advice26:50 Health Epiphanies and Lifestyle Changes31:47 The Importance of Meditation and Walking Meetings35:02 Advice for the Younger Generation38:01 Empathy and Kindness for a Better World

Twenty-five years ago, a Harvard Business School case study featured the exceptional networking practices of Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist Heidi Roizen. This was before the rise of online social networks and the ubiquity of social media. But today, Roizen says that those developments have not fundamentally changed how she builds and maintains strong personal and professional relationships. Now a partner at Threshold Ventures and a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, she shares the biggest missteps that she sees people take. She also explains the impact of AI and remote work on networking, her most effective strategies for building relationships, and her frank advice for those just starting their careers. Roizen is subject of the HBS case study “Heidi Roizen.”

Over twenty years ago, Heidi Roizen became the subject of a Harvard Business School case on how to build a successful business network. This episode is a culmination of Heidi's best answers and actionable advice on the best ways to build one's network — or, as Heidi likes to put it, how to build a relationship-driven life, as opposed to one that's transaction-driven.   More Information: https://threshold.vc/podcast/the-case-for-a-relationship-driven-life Further Reading: Here's another take on my favorite sentence in a negotiation: What problem are you trying to solve? https://www.tumblr.com/heidiroizen/92662870040/the-magic-question-that-turns-transactions-into?source=share Funny enough, First Round Capital covered me and my advice about relationship-driven living and more here: https://review.firstround.com/8-rare-gems-from-heidi-roizen-on-building-a-fulfilling-life-and-career/ And, if you want to actually read the Harvard Business School case, you can find it here: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=26880

Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures joins Nick to discuss Secrets of a Serial Entrepreneur and VC: Fraudulent Founders, Radical Recaps, C-suite Shuffles, and Reviving Dysfunctional Boards. In this episode we cover: VCs' Bad Behavior During Market Downturns, Self-Optimization for Short-Term Gain and Poor Treatment of Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship, Investors, and Advisors with Tips for Founders Secondary Shares in VC Investments, with Focus on Founder and VC Perspectives Startup Funding, Board Dynamics, and Founder Liquidity Board Member Behavior and How to Address Negative Actions Gender Diversity in Venture Capital, Including Challenges Faced by Women in the Industry Entrepreneurship Program at Stanford with a Focus on Ethics and Social Impact Guest Links: Heidi's LinkedIn Heidi's Twitter/X Threshold's Website Threshold Podcast The hosts of The Full Ratchet are Nick Moran and Nate Pierotti of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area. Want to keep up to date with The Full Ratchet? Follow us on social. You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and we'll send a list of potential investors right to your inbox!

Heidi is a venture capitalist, a corporate director, a Stanford lecturer, and at heart, always an entrepreneur. She co-founded the software company T/Maker and served as its CEO for over a decade until its acquisition by Deluxe Corporation. After a stint as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple, She entered the VC industry with Softbank, and currently is a partner at Silicon Valley-based Threshold Ventures. She is a corporate director for a bunch of public and private companies such as Memphis Meats, Lumity and Polarr. And most importantly she is known for her strong and warm professional relationships.

Heidi Roizen is a venture capitalist, corporate director and former technology CEO/entrepreneur. Today, Heidi is a partner at leading venture firm Threshold Ventures and serves as a board member for private companies Upside Foods and Polarr in the Threshold portfolio. She is currently also an independent corporate director for Invitation Homes (NYSE:INVH) and Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL). Heidi is also an Adjunct Lecturer at Stanford University and leads Stanford's Threshold Venture Fellows Program in the Management Science and Engineering department. At Stanford, Heidi also serves on the advisory councils of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and Stanford Technology Ventures (STVP). She started her career as co-founder of software company T/Maker and served as its CEO for over a dozen years until its acquisition by Deluxe Corporation. After a year as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple, Heidi then became a venture capitalist in 1999. She has undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford and is the proud mother of two kids and two rescue dogs. In this podcast, we cover - 1. The adventure of building and scaling your business 2. The art of having difficult conversations 3. Nuances of gender dynamics in entrepreneurship 4. Leveraging your social network to advance social good 5. The joy of giving back Read her HBS Case Study: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=26880 Check out her podcast: https://www.threshold.vc/podcast

0:00 -- Intro.1:27 -- About this podcast's sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.2:23 -- Intro of Webinar (and speakers) by Nancy Easterbrook, Executive Director of SVDX.5:33 -- Start of webinar by Dan Siciliano, Chair of SVDX.6:40 -- Some differences between private (VC-backed) and public boards.9:23 -- The role of independent directors in venture-backed companies. 14:00 -- Specific issues in VC industry: preferred vs common shares and impact on director fiduciary duties and dual-fiduciary duties. The Trados case (2013).18:14 -- An edge-case proposed by Heidi Roizen: voting as a director vs voting as a shareholder. The "sanctity of the preference stack" vs management carve-out.23:44 -- How "bad" directors can negatively impact companies and the proper use of special independent committees to "cleanse transactions." The role company counsel. Funding managing incentive plans (MIPs).29:39 -- Two lessons for independent directors from Heidi Roizen: 1) "avoid messing with waterfall distributions" and 2) run a thorough process.33:52 -- Important take-away from the Trados case: fiduciary duties are owed to the common stockholders.40:00 -- The Basho case (2018),  where a VC investor was ordered to pay ~$20m in damages for using contractual consent rights granted to it as a preferred shareholder together with “hardball” negotiating tactics to force the company to the brink of insolvency and leave it with no choice but to accept “oppressive” financing terms. Inside rounds vs outside rounds.42:27 -- Other thoughts to encourage independent directors in venture-backed companies from Heidi Roizen. "You have to understand the payouts." "As a VC: lead, follow or get out of the way." "We can either be the crusher, or the crushee, but either way something is going to get crashed here." "Sometimes (...) the best thing you can do is say, look, I'll get out of the way.You guys do what you want. We're in the risk business (...) almost half of our deals don't return the capital we put in. And so to be assholes about stuff is a bad idea. You may win the battle, but lose the war, right? You may, you know, twist somebody's arm and get your couple million back, but no entrepreneur is going to want to work with you anymore."49:09 -- On director education for venture-backed companies. New program to launch from UC Law SF and Cooley in San Francisco in March 2024! *For more details: contact Evan Epstein at epsteinevan@uclawsf.edu.51:03 -- Why there are so few independent directors in venture-backed companies? Heidi Roizen: "I think they're undervalued by both investors and entrepreneurs." On board education: Heidi recommends Brad Feld's books, including Venture Deals and Startup Boards. Book mentioned by Evan: Founder vs Investor (by Zalman and Neumann).56:03 -- Heidi's recommendation for independent directors of companies running out of cash: "If the company you're on the board of has only a year or less of runway, you already should be speaking up. If your company has nine months or less of runway, you should already be beginning a process to be sold. And if your company has four months or less of runway, I would resign from that board as an independent. I would speak early, speak often, and if nobody's paying attention to you, I would actually get off that board." "[A]ll the problems happen when you have bad process and when you run out of money."59:06 -- The enhanced role of the board in this downmarket. Heidi: "Structured deals are board for startups."__ You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__ You can follow Heidi on social media at:Twitter: @HeidiRoizenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiroizen/ The Startup Solution: https://threshold.vc/podcastThreshold VC: https://threshold.vc/__ You can follow SVDX on social media at:Twitter: @svdx1LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/silicon-valley-directors'-exchange/Website: https://www.svdx.org/__You can join as a Patron of the Boardroom Governance Podcast at:Patreon: patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod__This podcast is sponsored by the American College of Governance Counsel.__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

0:00 -- Intro.1:35 -- Start of interview. *Link to our first episode: E6 from June 2020.2:18 -- On the origin story of her new podcast: The Startup Solution with Heidi Roizen. 4:23 -- The Case of the Boardroom Blow-Up.  How entrepreneurs should go from 'pitching' to 'partnering' with their investors. "Entrepreneurs get stuck in pitch mode." On terms "happy ears" and "jazz handy." On the golden rule of the boardroom: no surprises. "A board meeting should be a working meeting, it should not be a performance." On "Boardzillas."15:55 -- What should entrepreneurs know about how VC funds works? On VCs wearing two hats in the boardroom (as a board member and as an investor). On the Trados case and the Rule of Common Maximization.19:42 -- The Case of the Downer Round. On the preference stack and nuances of venture financing. On "structured terms" or "dirty terms." "When an entrepreneur trades structure for valuation, they are almost always giving downside protection in order to get more of the upside." [Heidi's more detailed blog post on down-rounds. Take by Janelle Teng]. On the pendulum of influence from founder-friendly to investor-friendly.33:00 -- On secondary transactions of private company shares. On reasonable and/or rational options. On removing founders. "Inside a market there is always is a sub-market, and right now generative AI is very hot."41:51 -- The Case of the In-Law Investors. What to consider when doing an angel investment. "When anyone asks me whether they should make a seed investment, I tell them to do so only if 1) they can do so with money they can afford to lose; 2) they don't mind tying up those funds for seven years or more (it's an illiquid investment); and 3) they have enough additional money to put about 30-40% more in a future round if the opportunity or need arises. More importantly: founders should consider how they would feel if 'family & friends' lost the money as a result of their startup failing. 45:26-- The Case of the Strategic Sucker-Punch. The difference between a strategic investor (corporate venture capital investor) vs a pure venture investor: the latter only makes money by buying the stock low and selling the stock high while the former also makes money if its stock also goes up. "They are called strategic investors for a reason: they are using investment dollars to drive strategy that should be additive to their strategy."49:07 -- On best practices with board observers. ROFRs.51:07 -- On the role of independent directors in startups. Promoting diversity in startup boards. Fred Wilson (USV)'s board diversity proposal.57:44 -- On cross-over and PE board governance and cultural distinctions with VC.Heidi Roizen is a venture capitalist, corporate director and ‘recovering' entrepreneur. She's a partner at Threshold Ventures__ You can follow Heidi on social media at:Twitter: @HeidiRoizenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiroizen/ The Startup Solution: https://threshold.vc/podcastThreshold VC: https://threshold.vc/__ You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__You can join as a Patron of the Boardroom Governance Podcast at:Patreon: patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Connie & Alex talk tech news and then chat with longtime venture capitalist Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures about teh startup market as well as her new podcast, The Startup Solution.Music: 1. "Inspired" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3918-inspired)2. "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5759-blippy-trance)3. "Dream Catcher" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4650-dream-catcher)4. "Pamgaea" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4193-pamgaea)5. "EDM Detection Mode" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3687-edm-detection-mode)License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Startup Solution is a new podcast from Threshold Ventures. The series tackles the make-or-break challenges that startups face, offering clear advice on how to survive and thrive in an early-stage company. Who's it for? Founders, startup execs, and investors who want to hear (and learn from) rarely discussed real-world “oh shit” moments. All names and details have been changed to uphold our commitment to the Entrepreneur Protection Program. Heidi Roizen, partner at Threshold, unravels a new startup situation each week, breaking down why it's a big deal, and talking about how it was solved — or could have been solved. Heidi closes each podcast with a clear review of lessons learned. 

How Board Members Support the Success of The Start-Up CEOIn this episode of Scale By Numbers, we have an exciting conversation with Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures, who has worked as a venture capitalist for over 20 years.  She shares experiences as a board member, giving her incredible insight into the value that a board of directors brings to businesses, small and large.  Understand the board of directors' role and their authority in making decisions, what it takes to become a productive board member, along with the challenges a board member can face.  What You'll Learn:What you should consider when choosing board members.What authority do different boards have, and what roles do they play?The difficulties a member of a board of directors may face.What obligations do you have as a board member?Differences between mentors, advisory boards, and governing boards.Why does a company need a board of directors?How important are the relationships with stakeholders?How to become a productive board member.How to find a work-life balance as a board member.Key Takeaways:Understand what a typical resume of a board member looks like. Let people know that becoming a board member is something you're interested in. Meet with others who are on the board you're interested in. Want to learn more about Threshold Ventures? Start Here.Ready To Scale? But not ready to invest in CFO?One of our bespoke packages can help you.  One of our membership options may be able to help.  Learn more herePro Membership:This is ideal for those who want to do it themselves, but with a thinking partner by their side! Gain the hands-on training and access to our community that you need at this stage of your business. Enterprise Package:Perfect for companies who are on the edge of growth, and ready to take that next step but want someone to do the work for you.  Bring us on board as your interim CFO. We'll guide you through the planning & execution you'll need to guide your growth.  From modeling to M&A our expert team is ready to dive in.   Connect with us:  LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesvanreusel/Twitter:https://twitter.com/JamesVanreuselYoutube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7-6z47BPMnY9eJn0gCha6gv1WtquitMmWebsite: www.vanreuselventures.com

Dans le monde du travail, une femme qui s'affirme et réussit fait souvent peur à ses homologues masculins. Lever la voix, s'affirmer, tenir tête sont des choses qui semblent anormales pour les femmes lorsque les hommes sont habitués à être craints, vénérés et écoutés. Qu'un semblant de domination soit présent peut être vu comme un terrible affront auquel très peu sont habitués de la part de leur entourage féminin. Nombre de femmes cependant se retrouvent confrontées à des difficultés concrètes et qui ont pour cause tout simplement leur sexe. Et pour preuve, c'est pendant les années 2000 qu'une expérience menée auprès d'étudiants montre concrètement les différences de traitement entre hommes et femmes dans le monde professionnel. Les Discriminations sont une réalité à laquelle les femmes sont confrontées parfois même jusqu'au harcèlement. La Woman Mag revient pour vous sur le cas Heidi Roizen. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/la-woman-maga/message

Heidi Roizen Is a Silicon Valley executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur. In this BoS Talk she discussed why are VCs so difficult? Heidi, will tell you why VCs behave the way they do, and what you should do to maximize your chance of success with a venture capitalist. For more great BoS news and updates, subscribe tot eh newsletter at businessofsoftware.org --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-of-software/message

Miriam Rivera is the co-founder and managing director of Ulu Ventures, a seed stage venture fund focused on IT startups. Previously, she was a vice president and deputy general counsel at Google, where she joined as the company's second attorney. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Heidi Roizen, Rivera discusses the state of diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley, how she evaluates investment opportunities to eliminate bias, and the importance of great mentors.

Miriam Rivera is the co-founder and managing director of Ulu Ventures, a seed stage venture fund focused on IT startups. Previously, she was a vice president and deputy general counsel at Google, where she joined as the company’s second attorney. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Heidi Roizen, Rivera discusses the state of diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley, how she evaluates investment opportunities to eliminate bias, and the importance of great mentors.

Heidi was the head of T-Maker software - remember them back in the '80s, baby? It was a great word processing program for the Mac - back in the daze when there weren't many women CEO's in software or tech. Heidi offers a nostalgic look back to those times with a mix of fun stories and lessons in building teams, tech and a maniacal focus, as a company, on user satisfaction. She readily admits to using many of those criteria as she advises startups in her role as a VC. Press here for more!

In January 2019, Aicha Evans was named CEO of autonomous vehicle startup Zoox, which was acquired by Amazon in 2020. Prior to joining Zoox, Evans served as Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Intel, where she drove Intel's transformation from a PC-centric company to a data-centric company. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer and former Zoox board member Heidi Roizen, Evans discusses building cutting-edge technology in a crowded market, dealing with skeptics, and leading an innovative team.

In January 2019, Aicha Evans was named CEO of autonomous vehicle startup Zoox, which was acquired by Amazon in 2020. Prior to joining Zoox, Evans served as Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Intel, where she drove Intel’s transformation from a PC-centric company to a data-centric company. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer and former Zoox board member Heidi Roizen, Evans discusses building cutting-edge technology in a crowded market, dealing with skeptics, and leading an innovative team.

In this episode of the Judgment Call Podcast Heidi Roizen and I talk about: Which role Stanford University played in Heid’s life personally and how much of a role it has in spawning entrepreneurship.Why entrepreneurship is such an important tool to change the world (to the better).What are the motivations for entrepreneurship? What skills and values pay off for entrepreneurs?Are the public market in a state of irrational exuberance?Is the big stagnation is real in entrepreneurship? Have we let go of our own high expectations to improve? How the ‘baby boomers’ have corned the real estate market and why the millennials have trouble following the ‘boomer model’? Where does Heidi stand in the Miami vs San Francisco debate?Do we live in a simulation? Will we be able to upload ourselves into a silicon based lifeform?Will we be able to ‘rebuild’ our ancestors from their DNA?Are first time entrepreneurs or ‘wise’ serial entrepreneurs the better choice?How is religion linked to entrepreneurship?How would ‘free energy’ change our life? Watch this episode in 4K resolution on Youtube – The Judgment Call Podcast Episode #38 – Heidi Roizen (What makes a ‘great’ entrepreneur?). Heidi Roizen is a venture capitalist at Threshold Ventures, former entrepreneur and Silicon Valley evangelist. She also actively mentors new entrepreneurs. You may reach Heidi via LinkedIn.

Brandon and Derick explore the connection between computer networking technology and people in this interview with venture capitalist and entrepreneur Heidi Roizen. 

Heidi Roizen is a venture capitalist, a Stanford University lecturer, and an entrepreneur. She co-founded the software company T/Maker, served as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple, entered the VC industry with Softbank, and currently is a partner at Silicon Valley-based Threshold Ventures. She is a corporate director for a bunch of public and private companies such as Memphis Meats, Lumity and Polarr. Heidi has been known in the tech industry for her relationships and her principles to building them. In this episode we talk to her about her journey first as an entrepreneur, then as a VC in the valley. She talks about building meaningful relations not just for a fulfilling career but for a fulfilling life, and about the venture capital industry.

As an early Silicon Valley pioneer founding and leading her own software company, Heidi Roizen shares insight to the importance of building a great team and forming honest relationships amongst peers. From the lessons she learned entering the job market with only an undergraduate degree, to the founding story of T/Maker, to entering (and dominating) the world of venture capital, it is clear that Heidi epitomizes what it means to be a #SheLeader!She also shares the well-known 20-40-60 rule and how to approach mistakes: “Learn from the mistake and then learn to put it away. The more you can train your brain to do that, the better off you’ll be” This - and so much more - from Heidi! Enjoy, share, and subscribe!

In this episode, my co-host Alex Patel and I talk to Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures about the dot-com bubble. We delve into topics like the irrational exuberance, evangelism, the history of innovation, entrepreneurship, and much more! Check out the episode to learn about the dot-com bubble in a simplified way! Heidi Roizen is a veteran venture capitalist and partner at Threshold Ventures as well as a corporate director. She is on the boards of directors of Zoox, Planet, Polarr, Memphis Meats, DMGT, and Invitation Homes. She co-founded T/Maker, where she served as CEO for over a decade through its acquisition by Deluxe Corporate in 1994. Next, she joined Apple as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, and from there, Mobius Venture Capital. She's been named to the Corporate Board Member's "Top 50 Women in Tech" list and Hot Topics' Top 100 Women in Tech. In 2018, Heidi was named the Financial Woman of the Year by the Financial Women of San Francisco. She has also earned the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives Annual Achievement Award, among other accolades. Heidi currently holds two leadership positions at Stanford University. She co-leads the Threshold Venture Fellows in the Management Science and Engineering department at Stanford. Additionally, she is also a member of the advisory council of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She earned both her undergraduate degree and MBA from Stanford University. Follow Heidi Roizen on Twitter here! Follow StreetFins on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook here, and follow me on Twitter @rohaninvest! Find and subscribe to Finance Simplified on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor.fm! Want to learn more? Check out some StreetFins articles and videos relating to topics mentioned in the episode: Intro to Earnings The Difference Between Investing and Trading Basics of Stocks Valuation: Discounted Cash Flow The Dot-com Bubble Explained

Heidi Roizen was the subject of the famous Harvard University Howard vs Heidi research into gender bias. As a is a venture capitalist, corporate director, ‘recovering' entrepreneur and now partner at leading technology venture firm Threshold Ventures, she has her share of lived experience ralting to bias. In a candid discussion with WORK180 co-Founder and CEO Gemma Lloyd, Heidi discusses the traits that successful entrepreneurs share, living a relationship-led life and career, and giving yourself permission to pay for help with the domestic load.

Start of Interview [1:32]Heidi's origin story and career pre-venture capital [2:00]Heidi's first board experience: Great Plains Software prior to its IPO in 1997 [6:01]Joining Softbank Venture Capital (Mobius Venture Capital) in 1999 [09:09]The HBS Heidi Roizen Case Study [12:50]Her experience with foreign boards (UK, Canada) and take on transnational directors [16:21]Re-entering the VC market with DFJ and Threshold Ventures [23:25]Private tech company board governance challenges [25:36]Startups staying private for longer, and getting bigger [25:48]Change of terms based on cyclical nature of the market ("dual class shares is a grey area") [26:31]Founder-friendly terms [29:55]To be a good investor or board member "you have to be willing to speak truth even when unpopular" [31:48]Dealing with "dual fiduciary duties": be clear about what hats you wear (investor vs company) [32:08]There will be a "flight to quality" in venture investing [37:06]Director Independence in Silicon Valley, social ties and networks [38:56]Distinctions between serving on public and private venture-backed boards [42:27]Her joke-caution to entrepreneurs: "be careful what VC you pick, because it's harder to divorce your VC than your spouse!" [45:34]Board self-evaluation. "Collegiality doesn't mean that you're only nice and friendly to each other, but it also means that you have to have a working relationship where you can be honest with each other." [46:16]On the CA corporate board gender diversity bill (SB-826) [48:35]Heidi's views on stakeholder capitalism or ESG: "I think that companies earn the right to satisfy a broader stakeholder base by also remaining viable." Big difference between private and public companies in this regard [51:47]Her favorite books: "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss [56:15]Heidi's mentors: her father, Bill Gates, Ann Winblad, Tina Seelig, Emily Melton and Josh Stein [57:25]Her favorite quote is The Shirley MacLaine 20/40/60 Rule: “At 20, you care what everyone is thinking about you. At 40, you don't give a damn what people are thinking about you. At 60, you realize no one is thinking about you." [58:38] Her "unusual habit": she's a glass artist [01:00:15]The living person she most admires: Bill and Melinda Gates "In 100 years from now, when people look back to Bill and Melinda,  Microsoft is only going to be a footnote. What they do as philanthropists is really what people will talk about." [01:01:05]How to find Heidi online:www.heidiroizen.comEmail: heidi@threshold.vc   ___Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License 

Heidi Roizen, now a partner at Threshold Ventures, spent time as the CEO and co-founder of T/Maker and the VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple before pursuing a career in venture capital. Along the way, she's experienced several significant disruptions, including the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and the subsequent Great Recession. In this talk, delivered amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she shares ten concepts that can guide leaders in times of crisis.

Heidi Roizen, now a partner at Threshold Ventures, spent time as the CEO and co-founder of T/Maker and the VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple before pursuing a career in venture capital. Along the way, she’s experienced several significant disruptions, including the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and the subsequent Great Recession. In this talk, delivered amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she shares ten concepts that can guide leaders in times of crisis.

Heidi Roizen, now a partner at Threshold Ventures, spent time as the CEO and co-founder of T/Maker and the VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple before pursuing a career in venture capital. Along the way, she’s experienced several significant disruptions, including the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and the subsequent Great Recession. In this talk, delivered amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she shares ten concepts that can guide leaders in times of crisis.

Venture capital pioneer Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures on gender balance, networking and personal culture. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

www.vchunting.com/heidi-roizen - Show notes!

Today’s guest is none other than Silicon Valley Legend, Heidi Roizen. She is an accomplished, Entrepreneur, former head of developer relations at Apple and now, a legendary VC. She shares with us why today is the Golden Era for entrepreneurship, how any company is literally a tech company and more about VC-backed company, Memphis Meats. Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector The Financial Women of San Francisco honored Heidi as Financial Woman of the Year in 2018. She is also dubbed as “Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector.” She is currently sits on the board of companies such as Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT. “I talk about the fact that there should be more women entrepreneurs and there should be more women venture capitalists and diversity. Not just gender diversity but other diversity and I try to support that through my actions. I think it’s appropriate given my role in Silicon Valley. If I have an opinion about that, I should be vocal about that.” - Heidi Roizen Other than these achievements, Heidi is a self-proclaimed animal lover. She adopted several dogs from the shelter, which she fondly shares in her social media. Golden Era of Entrepreneurship Heidi describes the market as a seller's market when it comes to early-stage equity. There are a lot of sources of capital in the market, its very competitive. She enumerates all the positive assets entrepreneurs have in today’s world. “There's just so many different avenues for funding. There are so many tech breakthroughs that can be built upon, whether that is networking or processing power, sensors, devices, GPS, next-gen VR technologies, ubiquitous platforms. When you think about the kinds of businesses you can start today for pennies, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past.” - Heidi Roizen The only negative she can mention is about competition, as she believes everyone else can also solve many big, interesting problems. Additionally, she mentions why companies nowadays are considered tech companies. “I do think it’s interesting today is, every company is a technology company, right? For the most part, how they interact with the customers, how they distribute their products, how they garner feedback, how they handle customer service, tech support, logistics, supply chain, internally, HR systems—every company is deep in technology now.” - Heidi Roizen Memphis Meats. Cell-based Meat Heidi shares more about Memphis Meats and why she believes there is a huge growth potential for cell-based meat. First, she discusses how meat is inefficient to produce: from breeding to feeding to slaughtering and distribution to markets. Not only does it requires more resources, such as land and water use, it is also highly prone to contamination. “The great thing about being a venture capitalist is, we don’t have to actually invent this stuff. There are really awesome entrepreneurs that are way smarter than we are who come up with these ideas. We just have to make sure they want to come to talk to us, and that we can validate sufficiently what they are doing through our own research learning.” - Heidi Roizen To hear more about legendary Silicon Valley stories of Heidi Roizen, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Heidi represents the voice of the entrepreneur, having been one herself. But she also represents the voice of the user, as those are the roots that led her to start a company in the first place. She is on the boards of directors of Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT (LSE:DMGT.) After Heidi earned her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford, she co-founded T/Maker, where she served as CEO for over a decade through its acquisition by Deluxe Corporate in 1994. Next, she joined Apple as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, and from there, Mobius Venture Capital. She's been named to the Corporate Board Member's "Top 50 Women in Tech" list and Hot Topics' Top 100 Women in Tech. In 2018, Heidi was named the Financial Woman of the Year ...

Today’s guest is none other than Silicon Valley Legend, Heidi Roizen. She is an accomplished, Entrepreneur, former head of developer relations at Apple and now, a legendary VC. She shares with us why today is the Golden Era for entrepreneurship, how any company is literally a tech company and more about VC-backed company, Memphis Meats. Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector The Financial Women of San Francisco honored Heidi as Financial Woman of the Year in 2018. She is also dubbed as “Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector.” She is currently sits on the board of companies such as Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT. “I talk about the fact that there should be more women entrepreneurs and there should be more women venture capitalists and diversity. Not just gender diversity but other diversity and I try to support that through my actions. I think it’s appropriate given my role in Silicon Valley. If I have an opinion about that, I should be vocal about that.” - Heidi Roizen Other than these achievements, Heidi is a self-proclaimed animal lover. She adopted several dogs from the shelter, which she fondly shares in her social media. Golden Era of Entrepreneurship Heidi describes the market as a seller's market when it comes to early-stage equity. There are a lot of sources of capital in the market, its very competitive. She enumerates all the positive assets entrepreneurs have in today’s world. “There's just so many different avenues for funding. There are so many tech breakthroughs that can be built upon, whether that is networking or processing power, sensors, devices, GPS, next-gen VR technologies, ubiquitous platforms. When you think about the kinds of businesses you can start today for pennies, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past.” - Heidi Roizen The only negative she can mention is about competition, as she believes everyone else can also solve many big, interesting problems. Additionally, she mentions why companies nowadays are considered tech companies. “I do think it’s interesting today is, every company is a technology company, right? For the most part, how they interact with the customers, how they distribute their products, how they garner feedback, how they handle customer service, tech support, logistics, supply chain, internally, HR systems—every company is deep in technology now.” - Heidi Roizen Memphis Meats. Cell-based Meat Heidi shares more about Memphis Meats and why she believes there is a huge growth potential for cell-based meat. First, she discusses how meat is inefficient to produce: from breeding to feeding to slaughtering and distribution to markets. Not only does it requires more resources, such as land and water use, it is also highly prone to contamination. “The great thing about being a venture capitalist is, we don’t have to actually invent this stuff. There are really awesome entrepreneurs that are way smarter than we are who come up with these ideas. We just have to make sure they want to come to talk to us, and that we can validate sufficiently what they are doing through our own research learning.” - Heidi Roizen To hear more about legendary Silicon Valley stories of Heidi Roizen, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Heidi represents the voice of the entrepreneur, having been one herself. But she also represents the voice of the user, as those are the roots that led her to start a company in the first place. She is on the boards of directors of Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT (LSE:DMGT.) After Heidi earned her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford, she co-founded T/Maker, where she served as CEO for over a decade through its acquisition by Deluxe Corporate in 1994. Next, she joined Apple as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, and from there, Mobius Venture Capital. She's been named to the Corporate Board Member's "Top 50 Women in Tech" list and Hot Topics' Top 100 Women in Tech. In 2018, Heidi was named the Financial Woman of the Year ...

As we continue our run on legendary VCs, we feature today Bruce Cleveland, an entrepreneur, executive, venture capital investor and best selling author of Traversing the Traction Gap. We have a fun and insightful conversation today about the state of enterprise tech and why its the best place to create enduring value. We also touch important points on digital transformation and a lot more! Legendary VCs Joining our list of legendary VCs that we have featured on Follow Your Different is Bruce Cleveland. He joins Randy Komisar (Episode 106) and Heidi Roizen (upcoming episode). He is the founding partner of Wildcat Ventures which has been rated in the top 1% of enterprise technology investors on the planet. At the moment, he is taking up his Masters Degree at John Hopkins University, America’s first research university. He took up Digital Communication, which he feels would be beneficial for writing content for his succeeding books.  Enterprise Tech Scene Bruce shares a number of important insights into the enterprise tech scene. Furthermore, he shares that the valuations of companies of public SAS companies or tech companies selling into enterprise using a subscription model are reflective of the enduring value. Additionally, he cites examples of consumer companies that require a tremendous amount of capital, as opposed to enterprise companies, which require much less. “Consumers require so much capital, not a fund to build a product but to build the market share.” - Bruce Cleveland Enterprise vs. Consumer Company Bruce shares what investors are looking for enterprise and consumer companies. The MOIC or The Multiple On Investment Capital is nominally better in an enterprise. However, he mentions that the issue is these enterprise companies take longer to build up.  “You don't get those big mark up in the first 2 years, as the company began to scale and show minimum viable traction. The important part here is a lot of limited partners, people who invest in venture firms. They want to see early mark up in your funds.” - Bruce Cleveland These investors want to see great markups to show the committee that the firm is of great financial health. However, they don't inform the committee how much money they need to get the company “out of the door.” “They are extraordinarily capital intensive, and the multiple uninvested capitals are high. A lot of these things are faddish. They may work initially, I don't know, they can move in other areas. Then they'll be okay, but a lot of times, these things can come and go.” - Bruce Cleveland To hear more about the Top 1% of Enterprise Technology Investor Bruce Cleveland, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Bruce Cleveland is a Founding Partner at Wildcat. He focuses on investments in AI marketing, EdTech, enterprise software as a service (SaaS) and the Internet of Things (IoT).  He’s also the author of Traversing the Traction Gap. His specific areas of interest include enterprise automation, education and training, and general business applications. Bruce likes working with early-stage companies that use technology and data to increase revenue and decrease costs. An avid adventurer and sailor, Bruce enjoy the challenge of creating new companies and navigating new markets.  He is interested in growing entrepreneurial hubs outside of Silicon Valley, with a particular focus on the Pacific Northwest.  Bruce also is committed to sharing his knowledge and experience through the Traction Gap Framework™. This aims to help entrepreneurs navigate the critical go-to-market period between initial product release (IPR) and reaching minimal viable traction (MVT). As a son of school teachers, Bruce supports continued education.  He founded GreenFig to offer applied business science training to higher-ed students and individuals in job transition. Bruce held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing. He worked with companies, such as Apple, AT&T, Oracle,

As we continue our run on legendary VCs, we feature today Bruce Cleveland, an entrepreneur, executive, venture capital investor and best selling author of Traversing the Traction Gap. We have a fun and insightful conversation today about the state of enterprise tech and why its the best place to create enduring value. We also touch important points on digital transformation and a lot more! Legendary VCs Joining our list of legendary VCs that we have featured on Follow Your Different is Bruce Cleveland. He joins Randy Komisar (Episode 106) and Heidi Roizen (upcoming episode). He is the founding partner of Wildcat Ventures which has been rated in the top 1% of enterprise technology investors on the planet. At the moment, he is taking up his Masters Degree at John Hopkins University, America’s first research university. He took up Digital Communication, which he feels would be beneficial for writing content for his succeeding books.  Enterprise Tech Scene Bruce shares a number of important insights into the enterprise tech scene. Furthermore, he shares that the valuations of companies of public SAS companies or tech companies selling into enterprise using a subscription model are reflective of the enduring value. Additionally, he cites examples of consumer companies that require a tremendous amount of capital, as opposed to enterprise companies, which require much less. “Consumers require so much capital, not a fund to build a product but to build the market share.” - Bruce Cleveland Enterprise vs. Consumer Company Bruce shares what investors are looking for enterprise and consumer companies. The MOIC or The Multiple On Investment Capital is nominally better in an enterprise. However, he mentions that the issue is these enterprise companies take longer to build up.  “You don't get those big mark up in the first 2 years, as the company began to scale and show minimum viable traction. The important part here is a lot of limited partners, people who invest in venture firms. They want to see early mark up in your funds.” - Bruce Cleveland These investors want to see great markups to show the committee that the firm is of great financial health. However, they don't inform the committee how much money they need to get the company “out of the door.” “They are extraordinarily capital intensive, and the multiple uninvested capitals are high. A lot of these things are faddish. They may work initially, I don't know, they can move in other areas. Then they'll be okay, but a lot of times, these things can come and go.” - Bruce Cleveland To hear more about the Top 1% of Enterprise Technology Investor Bruce Cleveland, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Bruce Cleveland is a Founding Partner at Wildcat. He focuses on investments in AI marketing, EdTech, enterprise software as a service (SaaS) and the Internet of Things (IoT).  He’s also the author of Traversing the Traction Gap. His specific areas of interest include enterprise automation, education and training, and general business applications. Bruce likes working with early-stage companies that use technology and data to increase revenue and decrease costs. An avid adventurer and sailor, Bruce enjoy the challenge of creating new companies and navigating new markets.  He is interested in growing entrepreneurial hubs outside of Silicon Valley, with a particular focus on the Pacific Northwest.  Bruce also is committed to sharing his knowledge and experience through the Traction Gap Framework™. This aims to help entrepreneurs navigate the critical go-to-market period between initial product release (IPR) and reaching minimal viable traction (MVT). As a son of school teachers, Bruce supports continued education.  He founded GreenFig to offer applied business science training to higher-ed students and individuals in job transition. Bruce held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing. He worked with companies, such as Apple, AT&T, Oracle,

“The true path to happiness is to have meaningful work and meaningful relationships,” Heidi Rozen says. She brings these two elements together as a VC working with entrepreneurs who are changing the world for the better. Her humane take on being a “mentor capitalist” is deeply Give First.

Heidi Roizen, Operating Partner at DFJ, discusses her important article, “How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing,” and imparts crucial lessons to entrepreneurs on how to look at terms in a venture financing situation.

Senior leaders Brad Feld, Sarah Robb O’Hagan, Mike Ghaffary, Heidi Roizen, and John Rogers Jr. discuss burning out on giving, the techniques they use to avoid it, and how they recognize it in their employees.

We had a chance to chat with Heidi Roizen of DFJ and hear her story and what she looks for in founders as well as how to manage key stages in a company's life. Heidi Roizen is the operating partner at DFJ. She has spent her life immersed in the Silicon Valley ecosystem as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, venture capitalist, educator, and member of the boards of directors of private and public companies, trade associations and nonprofit institutions. After receiving her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford University, Heidi co-founded T/Maker Company (an early personal computer software company) in 1983, where she served as CEO from inception through its acquisition by Deluxe Corporation in 1994. In 1996, Heidi joined Apple as vice president of worldwide developer relations. From there, Heidi entered the venture capital world, serving as a managing director of Mobius Venture Capital from 1999 to 2007. Heidi is also a Fenwick and West Entrepreneurship Educator in the Department of Engineering at Stanford University, where she teaches the course Spirit of Entrepreneurship. Heidi is a member of the boards of directors DMGT (LSE:DMGT), ShareThis, and Technorati, and serves on the advisory boards of Springboard Enterprises and the National Center for Women in Information Technology.

In this episode, host Joe Beninato and guest Heidi Roizen of DFJ answer listener questions including: - What tools are there for women entrepreneurs? What tools are missing that would help most? How can we get more women founders in Silicon Valley? - How important is the state of incorporation? There seems to be an investor preference for Delaware. Is that generally preferred or are there other good choices? - I'm a designer at a public Internet company and would like to become a startup founder. What advice would you give me for finding the right idea and partners to work with? - How does DFJ make investment decisions? Do all of you have to agree to invest in a company? - I've noticed is that all these Venture Capital companies have all their details online but no email address to contact them. How do they get to know the viable start ups on the market? In the "Ask The Lawyer" segment, Mitch Zuklie of Orrick discusses structuring a partnership between a start-up and a larger company

Heidi Roizen, operating partner at the venture capital firm Threshold (formerly DFJ), shares personal and professional truths learned from her career as an entrepreneur, investor, and educator. Among other topics, Roizen examines the need for resiliency, the importance of valuing relationships over transactions, and why ethics should never be compromised.

Heidi Roizen, operating partner at the venture capital firm Threshold (formerly DFJ), shares personal and professional truths learned from her career as an entrepreneur, investor, and educator. Among other topics, Roizen examines the need for resiliency, the importance of valuing relationships over transactions, and why ethics should never be compromised.

Heidi Roizen, operating partner at Threshold (formerly DFJ), shares personal and professional truths learned from her career as an entrepreneur, investor, and educator. Among other topics, Roizen examines the need for resiliency, the importance of valuing relationships over transactions, and why ethics should never be compromised.

This episode was recorded 16 May 2013 live and in person at Omni's lovely offices overlooking Lake Union in Seattle. You can download the m4a file or subscribe in iTunes. (Or subscribe to the podcast feed.) Nat Irons has worked at Apple Developer Relations, as a WebObjects consultant, and as IT director at The Stranger. He's now QA Manager at Black Pixel. He once delivered pizza to The Far Side author Gary Larson. This episode is sponsored by Igloo. Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like, with shared calendars, microblogs, file-sharing, social networking, and more. It's free for up 10 users — give it a try for your company or your team today. This episode is also sponsored by Microsoft Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services is a great way to provide backend services — syncing and other things — for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. It's high level — you can get more done with less work. Things we mention, in-order-of-appearance-ish: Lode Runner Dark Castle Windows Boston San Francisco Berkeley, CA Bay Area High school Seattle Tim Eyman Sit & Spin Blogger Meetup Natty Bumppo bumppo.net James Fenimore Cooper Leatherstocking Tales Michael Mann Daniel Day Lewis Last of the Mohicans movie AOL chatrooms Berkeley Macintosh User Group (BMUG) BBS First Class BBS Tim Holmes Purple Harley BMUG Newsletter Modems Heidi Roizen Bleeding in six colors Twitter Bolo Spectre Stuart Cheshire Virtual Reality Bonjour ZeroConf Cheshire Cat Stuart Little Alice PERL Excel Mac OS 9 iMac Floppy drive ADB USB NeXT Rhapsody UNIX Terminal.app BBEdit SE/30 Apple in middle of menubar MPW MacPerl Latent Semantic Mapping (LSM) Regular expressions WWDC Homer Simpson in The Land of Chocoloate Schadenfreude MacInTouch NPR Microsoft Microsoft invests in Apple and pledges to keep developing Office for Mac Powerbook G3 Filemaker Pro Claris Microsoft Access Bento Apple events Farallon Chuck Shotton WebSTAR MacHTTP StarNine Quarterdeck Apache Open Transport Xcode WebObjects Java Bill Bumgarner Objective-C categories SSH tunnels 1999 Redmond 2000 Maria Cantwell King County Pierce County Eastern Washington secession Shoreline Queen Anne Ballard Magnolia Discovery Park Capitol Hill Pagliacci Pizza 2003 Sand Point Gary Larson Dumbledore The Far Side San Francisco Academy of Sciences Workmen's Compensation Virgina Mason 2001 2002 Upcoming.org Seattle Weekly Dan Savage The Rocket Lynda Barry Life in Hell Matt Groening Evergreen State College University Village Apple Store Seattle Xcoders Dave Winer Daniel Pasco C4 Paul Goracke Black Pixel job listings

Tahl Raz interviewed Heidi Roizen, the venture capitalist and Stanford professor who is known as Silicon Valley's most legendary networker. She's one of very few people in the world who can call both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates personal friends. This was a fantastic interview that you'll definitely want to hear.

First we will podcast our weekly Dr Fitness and the Fat Guy radio show in its entirety then we’ll release just the guest interviews throughout the week. So please click POD to listen to this recent interview from the Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy Radio Show. Or now you can subscribe to just the interviews from our radio show on iTunes by clicking this link.We learn how all about the hottest inspirational weight loss cd  sweeping the country SkinnySongs with creator Heidi Roizen. Heidi came into the Dr Fitness and the Fat Guy studio right from a recent appearracne on Martha Stewart's TV show, Oprah and Friends and an artickle in USA Today. She shared her amazing story about the origens of SkinnySongs and gave some juicy behind the music stories. What do great music and losing weight have in common? According to one of Silicon Valley’s bestknown venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, Heidi Roizen… just about everything. “In May I hit my all time high weight,? Heidi begins, “so I decided to commit myself to losing it for good this time. I wanted to find music that would keep me motivated about getting in shape and sticking to my diet. While I normally exercise to music by artists like Pink and Carrie Underwood, and their music is great, their lyrics didn’t speak to me about what I was trying to do. I figured, there is great, empowering music about all sorts of topics, there must be for this too. But, I searched for it, and just couldn’t find any.? That is when Heidi decided to create her own hip music. She wrote the kind of lyrics she herself wanted to hear – stories about making a commitment, sticking to a plan, and getting into that skinny pair of jeans in the back of the closet. She then collaborated with accomplished music producers David Malloy (who has forty Number One Awards to his name) and George Daly (whose career has included senior roles at Columbia and Atlantic Records), to create songs that range in style from driving rock to jamming hip hop, featuring amazingly talented emerging artists. With such empowering songs as Objects in the Mirror Will Get Thinner Than They Now Appear, The Incredible Shrinking Women, You da’ Boss, I’m a Hottie Now, You Can’t Buy Thin and Skinny Jeans her music celebrates commitment, strength, and sex appeal. Now, the 50 million people in America alone who take the annual pledge to lose weight will be able to find a voice – and some support and encouragement in Heidi Roizen's music. "We are all incredibly proud of our work," states Heidi. "We know that we are going to make a difference in encouraging people to right size themselves. It certainly has worked for Heidi – by sticking to her fitness and diet plan with some help from Skinnysongs, she has lost 30 pounds, and recently zipped up her own skinny jeans. SkinnySongs is available on Amazon and iTunes. Read more about the artists and hear some music samples and check out lots of apparel and other goodies at www.skinnysongs.com. This cd has been playing in the Fat Guy's wife's car for weeks now. We can't recommend this cd enough everyone who has listened to it has loved it...including Dr Fitness, the Fat Guy, their wives, past guests...even our engineer Sean liked it. So please check it out for yourself.For more Dr Fitness and the Fat Guy check out our new Wellness Minutes blog where we give you in depth information on health, fitness and weight loss topics in 3 minutes or less every single day. Now available on iTunes right here Please be our friends! Look us up on all your favorite Social Networking sites like: Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Self Growth, Imeem, Squidoo, Xanga and more. And please don’t keep us a secret, if you enjoy Dr Fitness and the Fat Guy please forward this on to a friend and put links to our website and show on blogs and message boards you enjoy. Thanks!

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Heidi Roizen Managing Director, Mobius Venture Capital Date: August 15, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Heidi Roizen BIO: Heidi Roizen has spent her entire life in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley, first as an entrepreneur and ultimately as a venture capitalist helping other entrepreneurs build the great companies of tomorrow. She is currently a Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital, a venture fund with over $2 billion under management. In that capacity, Heidi serves on the Boards of Directors of Reactrix, Ecast, Perpetual Entertainment and AuctionDrop. Heidi began her career in 1983 by co-founding T/Maker Company, a software publisher and developer for early personal computers including the IBM PC and the original Macintosh. As CEO, Heidi led the company for over a decade, raised two rounds of venture capital and ultimately consummated a successful acquisition of T/Maker by Deluxe Corporation. In 1996, she joined Apple Computer as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. After one year at Apple, Heidi decided to return to her entrepreneurial roots, this time as a Mentor Capitalist and ultimately a Venture Capitalist. Heidi has also been actively involved in the trade associations critical to the Valley. She is a past president of the Software Publishers Association and served on its board from 1987 to 1994. She also represented the venture industry as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association from 2003 to 2007. She also served on the board of Great Plains Software from 1997 until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2001, and is a past Public Governor of the Pacific Exchange. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford as well as a speaker at conferences for technologists, entrepreneurs, or women executives. Heidi holds a BA and an MBA from Stanford University. She is married to orthopedic surgeon David Mohler and has two daughters. Lee Kennedy: Hi. This is Lee Kennedy, board member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. And this is part of a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom had insightful stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me, I have Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. How are you doing? Larry Nelson: Oh, great. It's wonderful to be here again. And one of the things that is so exciting for us at w3w3.com is that we are helping support, I think, the most fabulous program that we've experienced since we got in the radio business in '98, and the idea that we're helping inspire young women, girls, getting into IT, looking into that, as well as being an entrepreneur. But now, we're also getting phone calls from business leaders, people in schools, who say, "This is such a great program. We'd like to help promote it, too." Lee: Well, that's wonderful. Larry: One of the interesting things that we have here that's a little bit of a twist is that we're interviewing an entrepreneur who became a venture capitalist, and also, of course, then, therefore works and helps support entrepreneurs. And we're very pleased that we're interviewing Heidi Roizen, who is a managing director of Mobius Venture Capital. And we've got a little bit of a twist here. Lee and I are here in Colorado, and Lucy Sanders, the CEO and founder of NCWIT, is in California, at Heidi's home base. So, Lucy, let's get started. Lucy Sanders: All right. Hi, everyone. I'm sitting here with Heidi in her beautiful home in Atherton. I've been here a few times, and I just think it's so much fun to be here and interview you here in your office. Heidi Roizen: Well, thank you. I hope the dogs don't participate. Lucy: Or they might. They might have something profound to say. Heidi: They often do. Lucy: One of the things that makes it so exciting to interview you is that when I think, about Silicon Valley, I think, about you. And I think that you're synonymous with Silicon Valley. You've done a lot, as Larry mentioned. You've started companies. You're in venture capital. You were educated here at Stanford. You're a part of the community... Heidi: I was actually born at the Stanford Hospital, which I think, I'm probably the only one in Silicon Valley... Lucy: And why don't you spend a minute or two bringing us up to speed about what you've been doing lately? Heidi: Well, I am currently serving on four boards. They keep me very busy. They are all companies that are definitely not in their "two guys and a dog and a laptop" stage any longer, but they're all still companies that aren't through to the end of the road yet. So, lots of interesting challenges in terms of recruiting, customer acquisition, strategic business development, and all the normal things one goes through in startup land. So, I'm working on those companies, and then I'm working on a few entrepreneurial ventures on the side, helping out some friends. I always love having my fingers in the very, very early stages, and so I like having a few of those to work on as well. Lucy: Well, and I happen to know you're very generous with your time for nonprofits and for Stanford students. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: The last time I was here, we had a great dinner, where you brought them back to your home. And I think, you're going to have some great advice for us, so why don't we just get right to the interview? Heidi: OK. Lee: Well, Heidi, I'll jump in and ask our first question, and that's: how did you first get into technology? Was it when you were a child or in college? And then, what technologies do you think are really cool today? Heidi: OK. Well, the first question is one that I think, if you're born and raised in Silicon Valley, at this time ‑ born in 1958, graduated from Stanford, undergrad in 1980 ‑ you couldn't help but apply for a job and end up at a tech company. So, even though I was not a technologist ‑ in fact, my undergraduate degree is in creative writing ‑ I ended up as the editor of the company newsletter for a little startup called Tandem Computers. Lee: Wow. Heidi: And that's really where I got my first inkling that there was something really exciting about the computer industry. What I realized, at that time, was I kind of looked around, and everybody getting ahead either had an engineering degree or an MBA. And it was a little late for me to go get an engineering degree, I thought, but I figured the MBA thing looked like a pretty good idea. So, I went back to Stanford and got that, and really fell in love with personal computing at the time. It's hard for people... I mean, I sound like such an old geezer when I say this. But, I was the class of 1983, and there were only three people ‑ I was one of them ‑ who owned their own personal computer at school. And now, can you imagine being a graduate student and not having a personal computer? You'd be hopeless. So, started my company right out of school and just never looked back. I had the good fortune to have a brilliant programmer as a brother, who really didn't like the business side, and I loved the business side. And the thing I like to tell people, often, who are non‑technologists, who wonder about being in the technology field, I tell them, "You know, need a mix of people." I don't have to know how to build a car to drive one. And in fact, I'd say, particularly in my early times working with my brother, who was the genius programmer, sometimes he'd build features that were so genius that only he could use them, and they weren't very practical. So, I think, sometimes it's good to be the petunia in the onion patch, as I used to call it in the development hall. Lucy: Tell us a little bit about the technology that you're thinking about as being the next wave of technical, cool gadgets. Heidi: I think, gadgets is always a slippery slope, because there are gadgets that I just love. I mean, we're investors in Sidekick and Sling, so we definitely have some gadgets companies out there. If any of you have seen a Reatrix system in the malls and in the theaters, and the Reactive television systems, or an Ecast jukebox ‑ we've got tons of portfolio companies I can tell you about that all have exciting gadgets and technologies. To me, where I'm focused right now is I've been thinking a lot about the demographic that is me ‑ the woman who still wants to look good and feel good, who has more free time, who has more money, who, however, still has family obligations, has a career. We're hitting 50, and when our parents hit 50, we thought they were pretty much close to death... Heidi: Now, we are shocked to find that we are 50. And I think, what's interesting is that the Silicon Valley ‑ and it's a little bit like Hollywood ‑ get so focused on youth and the youth culture and the spending money that youths have and advertising to youths. And while I've got nothing against young people, I think that the people my age and women my age have been an underserved demographic, when it comes to utilizing the web as a medium for exchange, as a community, as an outlet for all sorts of things and a place to go learn about things. And I'm seeing more and more activities around that, and I can't tell you how many times... this is probably hitting all of my same‑age brethren entrepreneurs, but we're all sort of getting up and saying, "I don't really want to start the next teen cell phone. I really want to start something that my friends and I could use." And so I'm seeing a lot of really interesting companies come about, a lot that combine community with some of the really innovative things that can be done online. Lucy: Give it some time. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: Give it some time. Larry: Yeah, you bet. I'm not that old yet. But, anyhow... Lee: That's right, Larry. Larry: They're laughing... Heidi: Somebody once asked me to predict the future of venture investing, and I said, "Just about the time we finally invest in the ultimate weight‑loss pill and the instant‑tan pill, culture will change so that it's not cool to be thin and it's not cool to be tan, and we'll lose again." Larry: Oh, boy. My personal friend, Mark Twain, said, "Youth is wasted on the young." Heidi: That's right. Larry: Anyhow. I can't help but ask this, Heidi. Many people don't look at venture capitalists as entrepreneurs, but anybody who is a managing director, believe me, they are entrepreneur. But, of course, Heidi has the background and experience of being an entrepreneur. She's now continuing to support and work with entrepreneurs. What is it about you that makes this all happen? And what makes it tick, in terms of an entrepreneur? Heidi: Well, there are so many answers. And I've had the pleasure to listen to many of your wonderful speakers on this series before myself, and I think, a lot of things have been mentioned about tenacity and creativity and mission and a passion about what you're doing. There are so many things that I can think of. And of course, if you look me up on LinkedIn, I refer to myself as a "recovering entrepreneur," which is a little bit of an inside joke at Mobius. We're recovering entrepreneurs. Heidi: I think, what I had to learn, going from being an entrepreneur to being a venture capitalist, is it's like being the quarterback and then being the coach. When you're a venture capitalist, you do work behind the scene, you do help a lot. But, they're sort of not your losses, and they're not your victories. And if you're doing your job right, the entrepreneur is on the cover of "Time" magazine, not you. When you're an entrepreneur, the buck stops here. It's funny. I just went on a walk with a fellow entrepreneur of mine, and he was talking about a friend who used to be a vice president of a big company and is now the CEO of a small company, and one of the things he was saying to her is, "Now you understand how the buck really stops here." Heidi: And I think, for me, what really defines an entrepreneur is something that somebody said to me once. When I was running T/Maker, we had this product line called ClickArt, which is still around today, and it's basically electronic clip art. But, you have to remember, when we did that product in 1984, there were no scanners; there was no PostScript; there was no anything. We were literally sitting artists down, at 128K max. We didn't even have a stylus. They were drawing with the mouse in 72 DPI to create electronic clip art. I mean, that's as basic as it was. And when we shipped that product, I remember staying at a trade show, and I can't remember how many people came up to me and said, "Wow! You know, I thought of that, too." Right? And in the back of my mind, I thought, "Yeah, you thought of it. But, we did it." Heidi: And I think, for most of these things, it's that "one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." There are so many ideas that just die on the vine because a person doesn't go out and try to actually do them. They think they're a cool idea, but other things get in the way and they don't really work hard at it. And not only do they not work hard at the creative process, but the process I'll loosely call is the destructive process. With entrepreneurs, one of the things I respect the most is, when you come up with an idea, that instead of working on it for the first five days about how you're going to accomplish it, you spend five days trying to prove that it's already been done or it's not doable ‑ not because you're being pessimistic, but before you engage in the creative process, sometimes you have to go and say, "What else is already out there?" And one of my pet peeves as a venture capitalist is when somebody comes and pitches me an idea, and I say, "Have you ever heard about blahblah.com?" And they go, "What's that?" And I get on and I show them, and it's the exact company they were talking about building, but it already exists. My feeling is, today, particularly with Google and other search engines and the Internet, you can find a lot of this stuff out there, and you need to go out and look. But, I do think, ultimately, a long and winding answer, but the short answer is it's like Nike, man. It's "just do it." If you just do it, that's the only way to be an entrepreneur. If you're not willing to just do it, you're never going to be an entrepreneur. Lee: That is such great advice, Heidi, because so many people, even when they just go out and do it, it's not that first idea that they even end up doing sometimes. It's just having the guts to get out there and start the business and get in that industry and figure out what it is. Heidi: That's right. And ask a lot of questions and meet a lot of people and kiss a lot of frogs. Larry: Yeah. Heidi: It's always easy, in retrospect, to say, "Why did I take that meeting with that person?" But you don't know because, just as likely, you could take a meeting with another person. And I just had something happen this weekend, where I was helping someone on a music project. And we were talking to someone who was totally unrelated, and they just said, "Oh, what are you up to?" Totally unrelated to the music industry. And we told him what we were doing, and he said, "Hey, I'm good friends with..." And I won't name the names because it's all proprietary, but let's just say one of the most Grammy‑winning artists in the world. And he said, "I'll give him a call tomorrow and see if he's interested in helping you with this." So, it's like one of those random, like that's not what we were even there to talk about. But, that's how the conversation ended up going, and it could take us in a really exciting direction. You just never know when that kind of serendipitous stuff is going to occur. Lucy: Your remark about 1984, when you were doing T/Maker and you had to have the ClickArt, I just have to go back to that for a moment and say, in 1984, we were trying to draw things in P‑Roth inside... Lucy: That's not revolutionary. Heidi: Yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I showed my husband QuickTime, whenever it came out ‑ 1989, whatever. And I'd bring home my file, because we were under nondisclosure with Apple. And I'd show him this postage‑sized, grainy thing, and he goes, "Wow. I am really underwhelmed." Heidi: For me, as a computer geek, it was so exciting to see television on a computer. And for him, he was like, "Uh, honey? Have you looked at our TV set? It's like a lot better than this." Lucy: Because I know you, I think that one of the things that makes you a great entrepreneur is, in fact, you see potential, and you're willing to take the risk to develop the potential. Heidi: Yeah. It does make one quite dangerous. It's that joke about the person who buys houses because they see the good in every house. And I tend to be a person who sees the upside in things. Which I think, again, in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be an optimist. You have to believe things are going to work out your way. But, you have to be realistic. And that's where I, again, for lack of a better word, call it the destructive process ‑ testing your idea, going out and thinking about the boundary cases: "What's the worse that could happen here? What's the worse that could happen here? How am I going to prepare for it?" And also going out and really combing the markets to make sure that what you're doing is unique, or, if not unique, that you're going to be the best somehow. Lucy: Well, along the way ‑ you've been here in Silicon Valley. You were born here. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And you've got a great network. And we are really curious to also understand who helped you the most. Who would you look to as being your mentor? Heidi: I was very fortunate to be born into a family where entrepreneurship was not a bad thing. I think, it's one of the things that makes California such a great place and will play a continuing role in the world economy is because we are just a culture, for 150‑plus years, of people striking out and doing something on their own, and failure not meaning social failure. You can be a business failure and still hold your head up and go to your kids' school and not be embarrassed about it. Lucy: "I failed today." Heidi: "I failed today." It's part of the process. I think that, for me, my father was a great role model for me because he was an entrepreneur. He was always thinking. He would say things to me like, "Today is the best day of my life because I have every day before today that I can draw on what I learned to apply to today." So, he was just that kind of person. And he wasn't like Mr. Rogers. I mean, he was just a great role model about how one could look for the opportunity in everything. And he was a very poor immigrant. I think, he graduated from high school. I'm not really sure. His dad died when he was 12, and he had to make money for the family to make ends meet. I mean, he had one of those really hard upbringings that made him very grateful and thankful, and very creative and resourceful. And he treated me like one of the boys. He never said to me, "Oh, you're a girl. You shouldn't do this," or "You can't go to graduate school," or "You can't do anything." In fact, if I said I couldn't do something because of being a woman, he would scoff at me. And my brothers joke that I'm the most like him... Heidi: So, he actually made me in his image, not my brothers. But, I was very lucky about that. I was very lucky, also, just to be in the computer industry in the late '70s and early '80s, because I really did get to grow up with the people who are the leaders in the industry. And so somebody said to me, "Wow! How did you get to be friends with Bill Gates?" And it's like, "Well, started 25 years ago." [laughs] Heidi: He was easier to get to then. But, it's things like that, that I think, I just had the great fortune to have a front‑row seat and be a participant in an industry that I really believe has changed the world. So, it gave me a lot of opportunities to learn from other people and have mentors and role models. Lee: So, Heidi, when you think about all you've done in your career ‑ building your own companies, being an investor ‑ what has been the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Heidi: You know, you face so many tough challenges when you are the CEO and "the buck stops here." Someone once said to me, "Gosh, you're so lucky. You're the CEO. You have so much freedom." And I laughed, and I said, "You don't understand that when you're the CEO, you have the least freedom, because you can't just quit." I raised that money. I hired every one of these people. I gave those venture capitalists my commitment that I was going to bring it home for them. I'm not just going to walk out the door. I remember walking into my company every day. We had about 100 employees. And I would count the cars in the parking lot, and I would think about the car payments and the mortgage payments... Heidi: Everything that was dependent on this company. And so I would say, still, to this day, that the hardest thing you have to do is lay people off. I mean, the hardest thing you have to do is downsize your firm. It's not as hard to fire someone. This is an interesting thing. I would much rather terminate somebody for cause than lay people off because we can't afford it. When you terminate someone for cause ‑ and "for cause" is a real legal term. I don't want to use the legal definition of that. But, what I really mean is, when somebody's not a good fit for the job they're in, I find that it's really in their best interest to tell them and get them to move on to something else. And while that is sometimes hard, I think, it's the right thing to do, and I think, it's the right thing to do for the person. And I've often found that you check in with them a couple years later, they're better off where they are, even though this can be very difficult. I do think, going through the dot‑com bust and having to lay people off, knowing that there wasn't going to be another job they could just waltz into, was a really, really hard thing to do. To me, those were the hardest things I ever had to do. In fact, my T/Maker employees still joke about this time where we had our first loss ever and we had to lay off some people, and it was Christmas. I was about four‑months pregnant. I said to my husband, "I've got to do it myself. I hired all these people. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to give each one of them the news." So I'm in my office, and they're coming in, or I'm going to their offices. And I'm pregnant, and so the hormones coursing through my veins. So, I am sobbing through these terminations, and they are comforting me. Heidi: They feel sorry for me. But, I have to lay them off. Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And I say to my husband, "This is the worst business day of my life, where I'm terminating some people who've been with me five, six years, and I just feel terrible. And it's Christmas, and I had to tell them, 'No bonuses for you guys, and you're getting laid off.'" I said, "Please go to Blockbuster and rent a funny movie so that when I get home, I can take my mind off of it." So, I come home, and what had he rented, but Chevy Chase's "Christmas Vacation." Heidi: And I don't know if you guys have seen this, but of course, the whole story is about a guy who believes he's getting a Christmas bonus and builds a swimming pool or something, and then he doesn't get the bonus, and he ends up kidnapping his boss. Heidi: It was just one of those moments: I just didn't know whether to laugh. I'll never forget that moment. I still cry when I see that show. It was on TV last Christmas, and I'm like crying through it. My kids are looking at me. They're like, "Mom, it's a comedy." Not for me. Lucy: Not for me. In fact, my answer to this question is the same. I think that laying people off is clearly one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. Heidi: Absolutely. Lucy: We've heard a lot of great advice so far in this interview from you about entrepreneurship, and the Nike "just do it," and who cares if you've thought about it? Just get it done. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And other types of advice around doing your homework and seeing the potential. If you were sitting right here with a young person and you were giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what else would you tell them? And one of the things that comes to mind is a conversation we had sometime about networking. Heidi: Yeah. Lucy: And I thought you had some of the best advice about networking that I've ever heard. Heidi: Well, I have a ton of advice about networking. I'm a little typecast as a networking speaker because Harvard did a case on me a number of years ago that really is about my philosophy of networking. And when they approached me to do the case, I said, "Why would anyone want a case on this? It's all just common sense." It's kind of like that book: "Everything I needed to know about networking, I learned in the second grade." But, it's just commonsense and practical and courtesy. And so, they did do this case, and I do speak on the case a lot. And my fundamental belief is that it's very rare that anything happens as a singular effort. Yeah, you can go climb ‑ well, even climbing Mount Everest, it's a team, right? And entrepreneurship is a team sport with very many lonely moments. So, you have to be the one. I'm working on this project with someone. I got up at four o'clock in the morning a couple of days ago because I thought of something, and I knew if I waited till morning, it wasn't going to be the same. So, I had to get up and come down here and sit at the computer for an hour and write up my thoughts while they were fresh. I think, there are a lot of times when you're just singularly approaching something, but I think, you have to know how to ask for help, and how to give help. Students say this to me all the time, they say, "Well, I don't have anything to give." You always have something to give, everyone has something to give. Good lord, you can come and talk to me and baby‑sit my children while you're talking me. I had one guy who traded me, I would talk to him about his business and he was a personal trainer, so he would train me while I was talking to him about his business. Heidi: And I think that one of the errors that people make in networking is they try to hard to gather business cards, and they don't think about "What is my connection with this other person, and what do I have to give them? What in return am I going to ask them for?" Again, I will bring it back to this other comment, a lot of times you don't know how the other person is going to help you, and you're not quite sure always how you're going to help them. Sometimes, it's quite surprising, but if you put yourself open to that, and you use some of the modern tools ‑ like I've become a real LinkedIn convert, because I love being able to get on LinkedIn and see who my friends know that I might want to talk to about industries completely foreign to me and vice versa. If somebody has a good friend from college who now wants to do something in the out of home advertising market and sees I'm on the board of Aventure and would like to talk to me. I don't mind doing that stuff because I sort of feel like there's this great, you know, we all help each other in this community and I'm a little bit of a believer in that kind of pay it forward. It's interesting right now because in Aventure I'm working closely on, I have to reach out and ask for a lot of favors, and I've been very aware that for a lot of my current roles in life I'm the one that asks for the favors than asked. Now that I'm doing the asking it's interesting, I'm uncomfortable. I'd much rather do a favor for someone else than ask somebody for a favor. It's my nature, and it's the nature of many people. But, I think that you have to get good at understanding "What am I asking for? Is it appropriate for me to ask it? Is the person capable of delivering it? Is it an appropriate amount of time for them to send and do something for me? And what could I possibly do for them?" I always try to make sure that people know I'm quite open to doing something for you in exchange, and by the way, no is a perfectly good answer, too. If I ask you a favor and the answer is no, just tell me no. I'm very comfortable with that. Lucy: That's great advice because so many people they really are either afraid to network, or don't know how to network, and that just makes it really clear. Heidi: Networking is also very awkward; somebody from Stanford called me up once and said, "Can I network with you?" What is that is that like my pen pal or something? Lucy: Just network. Heidi: Let's say you want to meet someone, and I guess, with the powers of Google and the Internet and all that, you might want to meet some important person. If you have no context, it's going to be a very fruitless conversation. But, every one of them, their kids go to school, they are on a charitable board, they may enjoy a certain kind of athletic activity. I'm not saying become a stalker, but generally, for example, if you want to get to know a person and they happen to be on the board of a charitable organization go find out what the annual fundraiser is on that charitable organization and volunteer to work at it. Chances are you're going to be able to meet that person over time if you get involved in something like that. And, by the way, you're doing something good too. That's again, one of the powers of Silicon Valley ‑ both good and bad ‑ you've got to be careful, you've got to find out if other moms and dads on the soccer sidelines have MBAs because everybody's kind of in this business. Heidi: It is interesting that you have so many different places where you meet and run into people, and so many people I do business with are friends of mine in other context. Lucy: So Heidi, you had talked earlier in the interview about different characteristics that you thought were really important to help entrepreneurs grow and build companies, but when you think about yourself, what are some of your personal characteristics that you have that have helped you to be successful as an entrepreneur? Heidi: Certainly tenacity. I mean, I'm very tenacious about... you put me on something I'm on a mission and I'm not going to let it go. I like to learn new things, so I like to push myself and try to learn something new. I think, when you're constantly learning it helps you get a better job, [laughs] and in so many areas. I'm definitely a people person, I love talking with people, I love meeting people. I'm very comfortable asking people for their opinions and I think, I'm a pretty good listener. So, I think that that also helps me be an entrepreneur, because you learn from other people, you gather opinions, you mold what you're doing. Frankly, it helps you in terms of going back to asking for favors, giving favors, recruiting people. People generally want to work with people they like and people they respect, which is another thing. My belief is that I'm going to be in this world for, I hope, a pretty long time. One thing I've learned being almost 50 and being in the Valley all this time is that you run into the same people over and over and over again. So, don't burn a bridge unless you've decided that's the best course of action. I like to sleep at night. I don't like to do bad deals, and I don't like to squeeze the last nickel out of somebody just because I have the upper hand. I like to live that way. While there's always different opinions about anything you do, I try to test everything. Does this match my ethics? Can I sleep at night? If my husband or my kids knew I did this, would they think less of me as a person? I like to live that way. I think, an entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game. Your gain doesn't have to come out of somebody else's loss. Larry: Boy, I'll say. You know, Heidi, one thing I've learned to do is that I'm going to call you "Coach" from now on. I just want to clarify one little thing. You said something earlier about kissing the frogs, or was it kissing your dogs? Heidi: Yeah, kissing frogs. Although frogs wish it was kissing dogs. Larry: Yeah. And you also just mentioned that you should ask for help. Do you want to introduce me to Bill Gates? Heidi: No. Larry: No. OK. Heidi: That's a good one you bring up, because it is one of those, how do you manage a relationship towards a person who's very important or famous? One thing I had to decide early on is, I just set certain rules. And I've gotten very comfortable saying "No" to people. So, people will say to me, "Can you introduce me to Bill Gates?" And the answer is, "No, I can't," because if I did that for everybody, they would.... And the hardest part is people thinking, "I have the best charity in the world. I have something that would be so interesting to the Foundation. Please help me get to the right person. Can you please send this to Bill and Melinda?" And I say no. One of the things that gives me comfort in saying no is that I say, "Look my own husband runs a charitable organization called Refugee Relief that does medical assistance in countries under conflict. He'd be a perfect candidate, and he hasn't even asked Bill and Melinda for money." One of the things I try to do is live by my own rules. The other thing I try to do is, for example, when I sold a company from my portfolio to Microsoft I didn't even talk to Bill about it. I'm not going to mention, "Hey, I'm selling one of my portfolio companies" to him. It's not relevant. I really try to respect that, particularly people who are in positions like Bill where everyone's approaching you all of the time, you need to be respectful of the pressures on that person's time. I think, that's one of the reasons why Bill and Melinda and I have a good and long‑standing relationship. They know that I respect that there needs to be boundaries there, because they don't have the luxury of living normal lives. Larry: Yeah, that's fact. By the way, of course, you know I was just saying that to.... Heidi: Oh, I know. Larry: However, last week we interviewed Brad Feld and he did say, "Hi to Heidi." Heidi: Oh, that's so sweet. I adore Brad. Larry: All right. Let me ask you this question. In your approach to your professional life, you do so many things. How do you bring about balance? Heidi: That's an excellent question. If you'd like I can bring my 12 and 14 year olds in here right now to continue the counterpoint to that. Larry: oh. Heidi: I do try to set limits. In my house, although we have wireless access, I'm not the person who walks around with my laptop and uses it everywhere. We certainly have a "no laptop in the bedroom" rule. I don't tend to watch TV and do email at the same time. I have a home office that I come in to do my work and then I try to leave it. I also try to have a commitment with my kids. If I say, "I'm going to stop working at seven," then I'm going to stop working at seven. I mix business and pleasure a lot. I have a lot of social engagements with people. I have a lot of people over for dinner. I try to engage my kids in some of that, because luckily at their ages they find some of that very interesting. In one of the projects I'm working on right now, I ask them for advice a lot. I've been able to pick their brains a lot about it. And they've been really great. I tell them, you know, if I'm having a bad day, you know I had a bad day about a legal contract I was working on. And because it didn't get done I missed a window of production for something. And I said to them, they said you know, "Why are you in such a bad mood?" And instead of saying something like, "Well, I had a bad day at work." I said, "Well, let me explain to you. This company needs a piece of paperwork before we can contract this production facility. We didn't get the piece of paperwork. Now because this production facility can only do things in, you know, they have another client the next three weeks that pushed me out a month. So, here's a one day delay on a contract that's going to cost me a three week delay on the production. And that's why I'm so mad about this today." And so that what is the thing? A teachable moment right? You know, I try to bring them in to the things that I'm doing. But, it is important sometimes to just close the door and say, "I'm sorry I'm not going to do this." I try very hard not to schedule meetings on the weekends. I try very hard not to schedule meetings at night. I try to really limit my travel because it is very disruptive to my family when I travel. And so, I try to make accommodations. Lucy: Well, and your daughters are wonderful. And having seen them at a couple of dinners. I mean the integration works really well. Heidi: They're pretty cute. Yeah. Lucy: They're pretty cute. It works really well because they get to see a lot of different people over here. Heidi: Yes they do. Lucy: That they wouldn't ordinarily see. They lead unusual lives. Heidi: We had a nice conversation about Norwegian and other things this morning. So, it was very good. Lucy: They were very funny. Heidi: And they do provide very funny moments. One time actually, Bill and Melinda were coming over for dinner. And Nicky was playing on her Xbox. And she knew Bill was coming over and said like "Can I have him sign my Xbox?" "Oh, I guess, you can ask him to sign your Xbox." Which she didn't ultimately do when he came over because she was too embarrassed. But, she said to me, "Microsoft, yeah, they make the Xbox. Do they make any other products?" And I just had to laugh. Heidi: You know, the eyes of a thirteen year old is like all they make is the Xbox. Lucy: Well you really have achieved a lot. And you have front row seats to a lot. And I have no doubt, fifty or not, that you are going to be on the front row for many, many years. Heidi: Not done yet. Lucy: Not done yet. So, tell us what's next for you. Heidi: Oh, I'm so excited about what I'm doing. But, I can't tell you. Sorry. Lucy: I'm going to jump across the desk and strangle her. Heidi: I know. I know. I am. You know I'm continuing to do my work with Mobee and then a company that we work on. And Brad and Jake my partners there. I mean, you know, we have a great relationship and I'm enjoying that. But, I am definitely an entrepreneur at heart. In fact I've been thinking, at some point on my link and profile. Right now, it says venture capitalist and recovering entrepreneur. And someday soon it's going to say "Relapsed entrepreneur and venture capitalist" because I just can't help myself. Heidi: So, I just started a little company. I actually funded it yesterday. I'm fortunate enough to have provided my own seed capital. I joke to my husband. I said, "It's very important tonight because we're having cocktails with my lead investor," which of course was me. [laughter] So, we laughed about that. So, I have a little start up that I'm working on, which I will hope to tell you all about really soon. But, it's not quite baked enough yet. So, you'll just have to wait. Lucy: I just hope it's about fifty year old women. Heidi: You will, you will buy one of these products. Well, I'm going to give you one. And Lucy. Larry Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Heidi RoizenInterview Summary: Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Heidi spent the first part of her career founding and growing tech companies. Now she enjoys helping entrepreneurs build companies as a coach instead of a player. Release Date: August 15, 2007Interview Subject: Heidi RoizenInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 34:33

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Kim Polese CEO, SpikeSource, Inc. Date: July 17, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Kim Polese BIO: Kim Polese is the Chairman at CrowdSmart and former CEO of SpikeSource, Inc., a software company based in Silicon Valley. The company is backed by venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and has developed an advanced automated testing technology for certifying interoperability of open source software, creating a continual "UL"-style certification for Global 2000 companies that depend on open source software applications to run their core business operations. The automation enables the delivery of low-cost, high-quality software to a mass market, resulting in more affordable and dependable software applications for business of all sizes worldwide. Prior to joining SpikeSource in August 2004, Kim co-founded Marimba, Inc., a leading provider of systems management solutions, in 1996. Marimba was acquired by BMC Software in June 2004. Kim served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Marimba, leading the company through a successful public offering and to profitability in 2000. Before co-founding Marimba, Kim worked in software management at Sun Microsystems and was the original product manager for Java, leading its launch in 1995. Prior to joining Sun, Kim was with IntelliCorp Inc., consulting for Fortune 500 companies in the development of expert systems. Kim earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and studied Computer Science at the University of Washington in Seattle. Kim serves on several boards, including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the University of California President's Board on Science and Innovation, UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, and the Global Security Institute. Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology. This interview is one in a series of interviews that we're doing with fabulous IT entrepreneurs. With me today are Larry Nelson and Lee Kennedy. Larry is CEO of w3w3.com, and Lee is an insulate director. Welcome, Larry and Lee. Larry Nelson: Well, thank you. That's so great being able to get together and help support this type of thing. The Heroes program is sponsored by NCWIT, wonderful. At w3w3.com we archive everything and we push it out. We have a large audience, and we're happy to be part of this. Lee Kennedy: Thanks, Lucy. I'm excited to be here and be part of the interview series. Lucy: Today we're interviewing Kim Polese. We're so excited, Kim, to have you on the call. Kim Polese: Thank you, delighted to be here. Lucy: I have to say that your career has been one that I think is just awesome. When I look back at some of the things you've been involved with for example Java. I remember when Sun released Java. Us techies at Bell Labs were pretty excited about that, because it really enabled the Internet to come alive. You could bring applications along with the static web pages. That was just tremendously thrilling. Then, when you moved over into Marimba, worked on push technology, again, we were all rather thrilled that we could have stuff come to our desktop without even asking for it. That's pretty amazing. And now you have a new company Spikesource is a couple of years old, is that right? Kim: Yes. Actually, it was founded in 2003 and I joined. It was an incubation project at Kline & Perkins, a venture firm here in Silicon Valley. I joined in the fall of 2004. Lucy: I just think you've been on the leading edge of all of these different trends in software and software development. Why don't you give the listeners a little bit of information about Spikesource? Kim: Sure. I'd be happy to. So, Spikesource, basically its mission is in a nutshell to democratize software, and do that by bringing open source software to a mass market. When I say "democratize software", I mean make software as low‑cost and as easy to maintain, to use as possible. Software's a wonderful thing; it powers all sorts of service and appliances, the world around use every day. But it's also really complicated both to develop, package, maintain and support. Open source has provided a wonderful new abundance, a new ecosystem of software applications, components and infrastructure. It is really totally changing the software industry in a variety of ways, and really accelerating innovation. Software is getting better faster. There are many more people who are banging on it and making it better every day. That's a wonderful thing. It's an exciting time to be in the software world. But there's also a challenge with abundance. Businesses that have been using open source find very quickly that they get into a lot of overhead time and cost in maintaining open source application. The applications typically consist of dozens or hundreds of different open source components, all of which need to be updated, maintained and made to work together, continually integrated and tested. That's a huge problem. So, what Spikesource is doing is really helping that problem through automation. We're automating specifically the process of maintaining that software and ensuring that the software applications continue to work, stay up and running and are free of viruses, and so forth. It's really making the process of maintaining open source software invisible to the user. We're using very interesting approaches in computer science and automating the build test patch process, and creating an automatic test framework for basically packaging up, distributing, supporting and maintaining these open source applications. We're bringing to market a variety of open source applications. Basically taking many of the best applications out there on the Internet, email, content management, business intelligence, CRM and so forth, and offering those as packaged applications to business of all sizes. There's a low‑cost subscription maintenance stream along with it. So, in this way when I said "democratizing software", again, it's really about making software much easier to buy, to use, and to have supported at a much lower cost. That's now all possible because of open source and because of the new technologies that we're working on and others are participating in as well in innovating, automating and maintaining the software. Lucy: I think that the technologies involved with software engineering are some of the most complex. No question. And so, I can only imagine that the technologies that you're using at Spikesource are pretty advanced. Kim: Yes. Lucy: For sure. And that gets me to the first question that we wanted to ask you. In addition to some of the technologies that you're using today at Spikesource, what other technologies do you see on the horizon that you find particularly cool? Kim: Well, the open source world is really where most of the most interesting innovation is happening, in my view, in software today. That's because of the power of collaboration. You take, for example, virtualization. Virtualization, or virtualization software, there's a huge amount of innovation happening there. You see a lot of not only developers all over the world who are contributing to open source virtualization technologies, but also big companies that are standardizing on open source and using it to drive greater value in their hardware platforms. So, to me in general the most exciting place to be in software today is in the open source world. In virtually every category there's tremendous innovation happening and really a new generation of software is being developed. And there are a lot of very important supporting technologies and underlying infrastructure that's also helping make this happen. A lot of the service‑oriented architecture, the web services, the easy to use now APIs that make it possible to put pieces of software together more easily, and new techniques like Agile programming and so forth to make it easier to build software faster... But so much of that, again, really does come out of the open source world. We're finding that the open source model of building software is becoming more prevalent even within companies and across companies in vertical industries such as financial services and retail. Companies are now beginning to collaborate on creating applications that they can share to make their respective businesses more efficient. Lucy: In fact, I'm on a commission looking at the R&D ecosystem for IT. We were at Harvard and we listened to a researcher not too long ago who was studying open source and the movement of companies into open source. It was pretty interesting how that platform is really emerging. How did you first get into technology, Kim? Kim: I was actually a girl geek. I grew up in Berkeley, California and I was fortunate to really be exposed to science at a very early age. I started entering science fairs as a kid in elementary school and just found that I loved the idea of creating something new and exploring, and testing the limits of what was possible. Then, I found a place called the Lords Hall of Science, which is a public science museum here in the Bay Area. I went up there, again, as a kid in elementary school and started playing on the computers. There was a program called Eliza which was an early artificial intelligence software application that was running on the computers there. It was kind of like an online psychotherapist, and I really loved playing on the computer that ran Eliza and trying to get Eliza to go into a loop or act like a computer, again, see the limits of what was possible. So, all of that sparked my curiosity, my interest in not only science but specifically computers and software. I ultimately ended up getting a degree in biophysics, but at Berkeley I started to get more and more into computer programming and software development as an undergrad. That increasingly became where my interests were directed. Lucy: That's really cool. Kim, tell us why you're an entrepreneur and what it is about entrepreneurship that really makes you tick. Kim: Well, I've always loved creating new things. I love inventing and coming up with a new idea, running with it and seeing what's possible. There's nothing more exciting than setting out with a whole team of people on a mission, climb a mountain and actually doing it together, making it happen. So, I think it's the creativity. It's the element of being able to chart your own course, come up with your own idea. It's the challenge of making that idea actually into a successful business, which is two very distinct elements to building a successful company in the technology area. One is coming up with a great technology, but the other is actually making it work in the economic sense and the sense of the market acceptance. That turned out to be a whole separate creative process. All of that is very challenging. I love a challenge. I love climbing mountains and scaling new heights, because it's just fun when you get there and it's fun along the way. So, I found that that was just something I gravitated towards. I think it's just something that's been inside me forever. Lucy: And it's a pretty good view when you get to the top. Larry: I'll say. Kim, I can't help but reflect back. Quite some time ago, did I hear that you were one of those early radicals that were pushing free and open source software? Kim: Well, I did grow up in Berkeley, it's true. And I was hanging out at Cal when Bill Joy was a grad student. So, I do have it probably in my DNA by now. But I didn't actually get to immerse myself in open source until I joined Spikesource in 2004 and really started doing it as full‑time and really wrapping my head around the whole open source world and building a business. Larry: You've done a wonderful job. Now, you mentioned Bill Joy. We interview him probably five, six, seven years ago. Along the line, did you have any particular mentor, or support person or support group that really helped along the way? Kim: Well, I was very fortunate to work at a great company for seven years, Sun Microsystems. Sun was full of very bright I'd say demanding, people where there was a bar that was set high and you had to achieve more than you thought you were capable of. I look at the management team, the founders of Sun, Scott, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla and Andy Bechtolsheim. They really were a great inspiration to me, each of them. Also, to me, at that time in the '80s as I was developing my career, Carol Vartz, who was a senior executive at Sun at the time, I really looked up to her. Sandy Kurtzig, Heidi Roizen, these were women who were really leading the way in building companies and proving that women could achieve great things in technology and software. So, I was surrounded I guess by many inspirational leaders, and I learned what I could from each of them and then really molded that into what I decided to do next, how I developed my career. Lucy: Kim, you've been in the thick of Silicon Valley and all the changes that have taken place over the last 10, 20 years, and you've had such an exciting career. When you look back, what's the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Kim: Well, there are many challenges in building a company. I'd say probably the toughest thing as a manager is letting someone go. It's actually making a decision that you know is right for the company and right for ultimately that individual, but always a tough thing to do. I'd say that's probably the top of the list, and that's just one of those management challenges that everyone has to deal with at a certain point. So, that's on the not so fun part. There are also challenges just inherently in building a business. I'd say the other thing that I have faced repeatedly, but actually is kind of a fun challenge, is the need to adapt to change. When you're starting a company and you're in a new market, you've got a new idea, it's unproven, there's precedent, you can't become attached to that one plan that you're going to execute on it. There's always going to be a reason why it doesn't exactly turn out that way, another twist in the path, another unexpected obstacle, but then unexpected opportunity at the same time. And so, adapting to change and being comfortable with change on a daily basis is something that can real tough at first, but once you get used to it, it's actually exhilarating. You love the challenge of being able to rise to the occasion and adjust course, change course as needed, and still keep your eye on the ultimate goal that you're headed towards. It's just that the path along the way is different from what you thought it would be. I'd say that's a more fun, tough thing that I've faced in business. Lucy: Well, and in face you ultimately get to the place where you really enjoy change. You wouldn't want to be working in something where that wasn't part of what you did every day. It really becomes part of the challenge. I think that's wonderful advice. You can share with us, a bit more advice that you might give to young people about entrepreneurship if they were sitting in the room with you right now. Kim: Sure. Well, there is a lot to say. If I were to boil it down to some of the things that come to mind first, it really has to do what I was just talking about. You might have a great idea, but you can't forget the market that you are launching it into, and all of the other constituents that need to contribute to the success of what you are setting out to do. For example, you may be launching a product in the market; the most brilliant product that anyone has developed or thought of but it turns out that it's just too early. A good example of this is I worked in artificial intelligence, AI, software back in the 80's. We built a fantastic software system that was an expert system, but the hardware requirements were prohibitive in terms of cost and just the overall expense of delivering an expert system. You had $50000.00+ computers required, and ultimately there wasn't a mass market for that back in the 80's. The software wasn't ready for the environment around it that it needed to rely on, so for entrepreneurs I'd say don't get too enamored of your idea. Make sure that you see the full picture and that you find a way to make it palatable in the market today and then chart a path to where you ultimately believe you can go and what the ultimate end goal is. But, don't be too wrapped up with getting to the end goal right off the bat. So, that's one thing. The other thing I'd say is get comfortable with saying "no" because as an entrepreneur you want to say "yes" to every possibility and every potential customer and partner that comes along. There is a temptation to do that, especially early on. You have to have the discipline to say, "You know what? We'd love to deliver this product into both the enterprise market and the consumer market, and we know the software is capable of working for both markets, but we're just going to focus on the enterprise market". That's the first step. From there we can build a bigger company and ultimately get to the broader market. Saying "no", we had to do this at Marimba, a decision we made very early on to focus on the enterprise and not the consumer market. It turned out to be the best decision we made, but it was a very tough one at the time because I knew we could do anything. We could absolutely serve a broader market, but you have to have the discipline to know what you are capable of and take one step at a time. Lucy: That's some very sage advice. What personal characteristics do you think have given you advantages as an entrepreneur? Kim: Probably the greatest one is persistence. It's never losing sight of that goal that you are charging toward and never losing faith that you will achieve that goal and being totally flexible and able to deal with any obstacle that comes along. Whether it's an obstacle in the market, a challenge with the team, whatever it happens to be, never giving up, never ever, ever, ever giving up. If you have that, you'll find a way to get to where you are going no matter what. I think that's probably for every successful entrepreneur you will find that that is the primary characteristic that made them. Lucy: In fact, we're finding that with this series of interviews. I believe that one of the people we interviewed a few weeks ago said there is this line between persistence and pesky. And it's OK to cross over it from time to time. Kim: Yeah, that's probably true. Lucy: I want to switch a minute into this issue of balance. I know there is a lot written about work and personal balance, and so we just wanted to ask, how do you bring balance into your life? Kim: Well, that's a great question. One thing I've always made sure to do is to continue to pursue the things I love to do in the rest of my life. One thing I love is dance. I've always done that, and I still do ballet and jazz. I've done it since I was a kid and will never stop. I find that it's tremendous; it's literally all balance. It's a great counterpoint, too, to do what I do all day long. It's also requires great focus and attention, and you just can't sort of space out while you're learning a piece of choreography. So, that's one thing I love. I love also mountain biking and getting out and just charging up a mountain. So, those are the things I have always done and will continue to do. I find also that the mind‑body balance is really important. If you are physically fit your mind is much sharper and you are able to run a marathon in business as well as physically. So, that's one way. The other is just time for family and friends. I always make time for family and friends. It's not enough ever, but you have to stand back every so often and think about what's really important in life. Those connections and relationships are really more important than anything, so I try and not always succeed as well as I'd like. But, I try as much as possible to keep that at the forefront, too. Larry Nelson: Kim, I want to thank you for what you've shared so far. It's easy to see by the discussion here why you were chosen as one of the heroes, that's for sure. Now, you have already achieved a great deal, and I know you are going to take Spike Source to another level. In addition to Spike Source, what is your next thing? What are you going to do next? Kim: Well, one thing I've always done is actually not plan too far in advance. Lucy: That's a good idea. Kim: The reason is sort of tongue‑in‑cheek, but I find that serendipity is a wonderful thing. I am in the most dynamic, exciting industry and, I think, place for the area and the world. I am surrounded by brilliant, creative people, and that network is ever expanding so I know that whatever I do next it will evolve from creating something new together with a team of people and doing our best to make an impact in some positive way in the world. I personally would like to find a way to make an impact in the world that goes beyond my industry. I haven't quite figured out when and how and what that will be, but that's something that I'd like to do in my life. I'm sure that the path will appear as it always has. As long as I follow my passion and surround myself with people that I love working with and respect and appreciate, I know that life will unfold in wonderful ways. I have faith. Lucy: I think that's just really well said. I'm just sitting here thinking you are just one of the top web entrepreneurs of our age. It's wonderful. We are so thrilled to have talked to you. Kim: Thank you. I am more than honored to be part of this series. Thank you. Larry: A couple of words that stick out in my mind, too, in addition to hear all this democratized, open source and serendipity. Lucy: That's great. And see I'm a techie so what stands out for me, open source, Java. So, Kim, thank you, thank you very much. Kim: Thank you. Lucy: We appreciate your joining us. I want to remind listeners where these podcasts can be found at www.ncwit.org and also at w3w3.com. Please do pass these along to friends who might want to listen. Kim, thanks again. Kim: Thank you, my pleasure. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Kim PoleseInterview Summary: Kim Polese has technology -- and innovation -- in her blood. Ever wondered who coined the term "Java"? That was Kim. Release Date: July 17, 2007Interview Subject: Kim PoleseInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 20:04