Podcast appearances and mentions of judy estrin

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Anne Dwane (@adwane) Co-founder and Partner at Village Global - an early-stage venture fund backed by some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. From how they invest in startups to how they help founders. They operate as a network. Anne Dwane is passionate about aligning teams and applying technology to unleash human potential.The venture firm is backed by an impressive and diverse group of investors that includes:  Jeff Bezos, Sara Blakely, Reid Hoffman, Magic Johnson, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Diane Green, Judy Estrin, Bill Gates, and Ken Chennault. Anne Dwane's Twitter: https://twitter.com/adwaneShow Notes:- Switching from executive to venture capitalist- Starting Village Global- Building a systemic network to advantage founders- How Anne started investing- Anne Dwane's investment strategy - Village Global's process of evaluating startups- The best advice Anne got in looking for the best companies- How Anne helps founders, emerging managers, and angels find simplicity beyond complexity in venture capital- How Anne and her team decide what projects to focus on- What Anne is excited about nowMore about the show:The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. More about us:Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.The Vitalize Team:Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC​Caroline - https://twitter.com/caroline_yeager​Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212​Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone: https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

BombBomb was founded in 2006 by Darin Dawson and Conor McCluskey. The idea came from two salesmen that knew their best client interactions came from face to face meetings, but during this time, communication had started to become faceless. Connor wanted to test the waters and sent out a video email to test out this form of communication and the results were overwhelming-essentially leading to the birth of BombBomb!Ethan Beute came onto BombBomb in 2011 as their VP of Marketing. At this point in time, Ethan had already carved a niche for himself in the B2B marketing world. Having written books such as “Rehumanize Your Business” and “Human-Centered Communication”, Ethan eventually blossomed into his current role as Chief Evangelist, to spread the good word of Bomb Bomb's mission in changing the ways in which organizations communicate with their consumers.Contact Information: Ethan Beute-Chief Evangelist of BombBombLinkedin Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanbeute/BombBomb Website: https://bombbomb.com/

This week’s episode of Everything They Know was supposed to be about a hypothetical dark future, where we’ve done nothing to rein in Big Tech and Surveillance Capitalism, where algorithmic prediction has gotten to 100% and has created perfect echo-bubbles for each of us, where authoritarian techno-governments and their cronies control every aspect of our physical lives, and where the time has past to take any meaningful action. But as the Coronavirus has upended every aspect of life as we know it, and the world already seems a little darker, it felt untimely to release that episode. Instead, I decided to have a special conversation with one of our previous guests, and friend of the podcast, Judy Estrin, about how Covid-19 is deepening our reliance on technology even more.  Now, this is a nuanced topic right now, because,in the positive, these technologies are actually enabling humanity to undergo this craziness collectively and remain connected in ways that would otherwise be impossible. I just finished taking a dance class on Instagram live, for goodness sake.  But at the same time, we have authoritarian governments taking advantage of this time of expanded digital reliance and surveillance that is in danger of becoming normalized if not highlighted. There’s stories coming out of Singapore and China about people letting their phones run out of battery and police officers showing up at their apartments within 30 minutes.  At the beginning of this series, I referenced one of my favorite authors, Yuval Harari. He came out with a piece in the Financial Times a few days ago that did a fantastic job of encapsulating my worries.  He writes, “Even when infections from coronavirus are down to zero, some data-hungry governments could argue they needed to keep the biometric surveillance systems in place because they fear a second wave of coronavirus, or because there is a new Ebola strain evolving in central Africa, or because . . . you get the idea. A big battle has been raging in recent years over our privacy. The coronavirus crisis could be the battle’s tipping point. For when people are given a choice between privacy and health, they will usually choose health.” So yes, right now, we must choose health. But in these uncertain times, we also must find balance. We must not give up too much. We must stay vigilant.  Now, here’s my conversation from this week with Judy Estrin. 

We seem to have collectively accepted that we’re going to keep playing this rigged game of data harvesting because the playing of the game itself placates us, giving us just enough of that beautiful dopamine-serotonin-oxytocin combo to get us to keep pulling the lever on the slot machine.  There are thousands of entities that have thousands of pieces of data about you right now, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These same entities are selling that information to advertisers, political campaigns, and government agencies so that they can sell you what they want, make you believe what they want, or make you do what they want.  So, being the reasonable people that we all are, don’t we want to know the truth about this game? The truth that defines our modern world?    Featured guests this episode: Judy Estrin is an Internet pioneer, entrepreneur, business executive, and author in the United States. Estrin worked with Vinton Cerf on the Transmission Control Protocol project at Stanford University in the 1970s, often looked at as the project that our modern e-mail emerged from. Estrin is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded eight technology companies. She was the chief technology officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000. Estrin served on the boards of FedEx Corporation (1989-2010), Rockwell Automation (1994-1998), Sun Microsystems (1995-2003), as well as the being the first woman to serve on the board of Walt Disney Company, where she served for fifteen years (1998-2014). She served on the advisory boards of Stanford University School of Engineering and the Bio-X interdisciplinary program, and is a member of the University of California President’s Science and Innovation Advisory Board. Tim Shea is the founder and CEO of Latticework Insights.  Eric Sapp has managed successful democracy-building and advocacy campaigns on issues ranging from international peacekeeping, human rights, counterterrorism, and foreign assistance to domestic campaigns for pollution control, hunger alleviation, supporting veterans, and protecting victims of terrorism.   Through these efforts, his team developed one of the largest voter response databases and most sophisticated digital advertising platforms in the country, which they transformed into a Public Benefit Corporation, Public Democracy. Sarah Miller is Executive Director of the American Economic Liberties Project and formerly the Deputy Director of the Open Markets Institute. Eric Yang is the Founder and Executive Director at Junto. Junto is a new breed of social media founded in the spirit of authenticity, with the goal of rebalancing our relationship with technology and inspiring agency, privacy, and free expression

Think about where we were technologically just 10 years ago, when everybody was really excited about our utopian tech-driven future. Netflix used to mail you DVDs, now they spend $15 billion a year feeding their content algorithms. Google used to cutely offer you the “i’m feeling lucky” option, now they predict your searches before you finish typing them. Snapchat and Instagram didn’t exist yet, and Facebook was still a place where you could find someone under 45. With modern smartphones, we have more technology in our pocket than what NASA had to send humans to the moon. We have more information at the tip of our fingers than all the libraries of the ancient world. We can make a few taps and gestures and food or drugs or people show up to where we are.  But think about it. To the ancient world, we’d seem like a society of depressed wizards. This week I speak again to Judy Estrin, Internet pioneer and serial entrepreneur to better understand how this problem has metastasized. Then, I sit down with K Krasnow Waterman, who was the Chief Information Officer of the first post-9/11 data analytics facility established by the White House and, next, led the reorganization of the FBI's intelligence operations. K helped me form a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the problems we face.  Have questions? Let us know on Instagram or Twitter!   Featured guests this episode: Judy Estrin is an Internet pioneer, entrepreneur, business executive, and author in the United States. Estrin worked with Vinton Cerf on the Transmission Control Protocol project at Stanford University in the 1970s, often looked at as the project that our modern e-mail emerged from. Estrin is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded eight technology companies. She was the chief technology officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000. Estrin served on the boards of FedEx Corporation (1989-2010), Rockwell Automation (1994-1998), Sun Microsystems (1995-2003), as well as the being the first woman to serve on the board of Walt Disney Company, where she served for fifteen years (1998-2014). She served on the advisory boards of Stanford University School of Engineering and the Bio-X interdisciplinary program, and is a member of the University of California President’s Science and Innovation Advisory Board. K Krasnow Waterman Early in her career, K was on the design team for a new IBM outsourced services and storage business; an officer of Morgan Guaranty Trust managing data centers and special technical projects; she then became a trial attorney and in-house legal advisor. K returned to her technology roots when she became inception CIO of the first post-9/11 task force created by President Bush, served as the interim chief operations executive for the reorganization of FBI Intelligence infrastructure, and represented the Department of Homeland Security in high level negotiations to set the requirements for interoperability of federal data systems.  More recently, she served as Global Head of Anti-Money Laundering Infrastructure at Citigroup.

Before Big Tech was the bad guy, we all had dreams of a digital utopia brought about by the democratizing power of the Internet. What happened? I spoke to Judy Estrin about her decades of experience as an innovator in Silicon Valley, and what she thinks might have happened to lead us astray. Then, I sat down with Andrew Keen, one of the earliest Internet naysayers, to understand why he saw (and was willing to call out) such a big potential problem and when others did not.     Featured guests this episode: Judy Estrin is an Internet pioneer, entrepreneur, business executive, and author in the United States. Estrin worked with Vinton Cerf on the Transmission Control Protocol project at Stanford University in the 1970s, often looked at as the project that our modern e-mail emerged from. Estrin is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded eight technology companies. She was the chief technology officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000. Estrin served on the boards of FedEx Corporation (1989-2010), Rockwell Automation (1994-1998), Sun Microsystems (1995-2003), as well as the being the first woman to serve on the board of Walt Disney Company, where she served for fifteen years (1998-2014). She served on the advisory boards of Stanford University School of Engineering and the Bio-X interdisciplinary program, and is a member of the University of California President’s Science and Innovation Advisory Board.   Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and author. In his book The Internet Is Not the Answer, Keen presents the history of the internet and its impact on psychology, economy, and society. He argues that the more the internet develops, the more detrimental it is to those who use it. Keen writes: “It is more like a negative feedback loop, a digital vicious cycle in which it is us, the Web’s users, who are its victims rather than beneficiaries.” Keen goes on to argue that the internet has allowed for the emergence of “new, leviathan-like monopolists like Apple, Google, and Amazon,” impeding economic competition and economic justice between the rich and poor. Follow him on Twitter here

Anne Dwane is co-founder and partner of Village Global, the venture firm backed by an impressive and diverse group of investors that includes: Jeff Bezos, Sara Blakely, Reid Hoffman, Magic Johnson, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Diane Green, Judy Estrin, and Ken Chennault. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Anne was a tech company co-founder, a private company CEO, and public company executive. She built Military.com with previous podcast guest Chris Michel, and was CEO of Zinch before it was acquired by Chegg. At Chegg she had P&L responsibility as the company became public, with a value over $1 billion. In this episode, Anne shares her journey from Harvard Business School, to Silicon Valley, and her path to becoming a public company executive to her latest role as a venture capitalist at Village Global.  Village Global www.villageglobal.vc Chegg www.chegg.com Something Ventured www.somethingventured.us  

I recently read“The World is Choking on Digital Pollution” by Judy Estrin and Sam Gill from Knight Foundation. It basically intends to send an alarm on how dangerous to neglect online hate speech and trolls, of which they call digital pollution. By referring to the pollution during the Industrial Revolution and the construction of sewage system being the solution, it writes, "Society figured out how to manage the waste produced by the Industrial Revolution. We must do the same thing with the Internet today." The article does help us realize the danger of ungoverned misinformation, yet it simplifies the narrative of cholera and public nuisance down to an advent of waste management, and misses out the colonial nature of industrial revolution that prioritized profits over public health, as if the causes of the issue were some ungoverned human waste. Cover Image: http://josen.env.go.jp/archive/detail/i/FB-01-P0016.jpg (CC BY4.0)

In this episode of Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott, we’ll hear from Judy Estrin, whose distinguished career in the technology industry includes work as an executive, engineer, and serial entrepreneur. Besides serving on the boards at Disney and FedEx, she is former CTO of Cisco. Judy was one of the key figures in the development of the Internet, working with Vint Cerf on the initial TCP-project at Stanford. Tune in to find out to whom and what she attributes her success – it might surprise you!

Welcome to The Story After Show, Week 7!  In this week's show, CEO and Founder of The Mission, Chad Grills, talks with Ian Faison (CCO of The Mission) where they highlight:  the four BIG ideas/principles that come from the stories this week that feature Andy Grove, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Sheryl Sandberg, and Judy Estrin Plus, they show you how to apply these big ideas in your own life  We hope you enjoy this After Show. Whether you work in: business, technology, a startup, or something completely different, it's our goal to create an after show that helps give you actionable ideas and tactics to apply to your own life to increase your health, wealth, and wisdom!   Show Timestamps 0:25 Andy Grove 4:55 Sergey Brin and Larry Page 9:10 Sheryl Sandberg 13:22 Judy Estrin

By Alison van Diggelen, host of Fresh Dialogues   Judy Estrin is an influential tech entrepreneur, CEO of JLabs, and author of Closing the Innovation Gap. I caught up with her at SD Forum’s 12th annual Visionary Awards in Atherton, where she was one of four recipients. We talked about whether clean energy solutions can save the planet; […]

Ms. Judy Estrin, author of “Closing the Innovation Gap”, former CTO of Cisco Systems, and a successful serial entrepreneur, interviews with Mr. Pascal Levensohn, Founder and Managing Partner of Levensohn Venture Partners. They are speaking together at the Aspen Institute on February 15, 2009 during the Aspen Institute Socrates Society seminar on Innovation, in Aspen, [...] Related posts:Exposing the Links Between America’s Innovation Crisis, Cybersecurity, and National Security (ITSEF III full panel presentation) This video of the panel discussion on America’s Innovation Crisis...Challenges Created by America’s Transition to an Innovation Economy Dr. Curtis Carlson, President and CEO of SRI International, speaking...The Increasing Role of Universities and Research Institutes as Centers of Excellence For Innovation Today Dr. Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, Chairman Sparta Group, LLC speaking on...

Innovation drives economic growth, our quality of life and is the only hope of addressing the major challenges we face. But America, a cornerstone of innovation throughout the world, has become increasingly short-sighted. By taking innovation for granted we threaten not only our own strength, but the overall global economy. Judy Estrin, technology and business pioneer and author of the new book Closing the Innovation Gap, will talk about how it is essential to reignite sustainable innovation in business, education and government and what is required of business and national leaders to revive organizational, national and the global Innovation Ecosystem.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Carol Realini CEO and Founder, Obopay Date: April 7, 2009 Carol Realini: Obopay [intro] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and this is one in a series of interviews with fantastic entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies. With me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com. Larry, how are you? Larry Nelson: Absolutely magnificent, kind of jittery a little bit. We just launched our Internet TV show, so things are going good. Lucy: And the name of the Internet TV show is... Larry: "Colorado Rising." Lucy: So everybody, be careful, he's after you for not just audio interviews now but live TV as well. Larry: You bet. Lucy: With us today we have Carol Realini. She's the founder and CEO of Obopay, and before that a very distinguished career in a number of high tech companies including Cordiant. Obopay is the first truly comprehensive mobile payment service in the United States, and it's really cool. You go on the website and you can basically send money to your kids. If you're kids, you can get money. I'm trying to figure out how to get my parents to do this for me even now. Larry: Yeah, I've got five kids. I appreciate that. Lucy: [laughs] And we're really happy to talk to Carol. Welcome, Carol. Carol Realini: Thank you. Happy to talk to you guys. Lucy: Oh, great. Why don't you tell us a bit about Obopay. It's a great company and it has a wonderful value proposition. Carol: Absolutely. First, I just want to say I assume you are all in Colorado today. And I'm a longtime San Francisco-born Californian, born and raised here. But I spent five years living outside of California and that was living in Colorado, and I love Colorado. Lucy: Well any time you want to come visit us. [laughter] Larry: That's a deal. Carol: Absolutely. Lucy: That's a deal. Carol: I love Colorado. So let me just give you a little background on myself, and then I'll talk about the founding of Obopay and what we do and a little bit about the company. I am a four-time entrepreneur, so this is my fourth company from the ground up. Lucy: Wow. Carol: First one, I wasn't the founder but I was a very early employee at Legato, which became a very large storage management software company which was bought by EMC. That company went public and then was bought. The next company, I was the founder of a consulting company that focused in the early '90s on helping people migrate to distributed computing. And this was when big companies around the world were trying to figure out how to leverage the client server and PC technology that was emerging. And then the next company was Cordiant Software, and I founded that and raised the venture capital for that company and was the CEO until just before the company went public. And it went public in 2000 and is still a public company. And then I retired from that and thought I wasn't ever going to work again. I'd had a fantastic career in technology, really started in the mid-'70s when it was really about mainframe. And I retired thinking I would never work again, and actually moved to Colorado and ended up getting involved in some nonprofits which were focused on fostering entrepreneurship in developing countries around the world. As a result of that, I was traveling in places I would have never normally traveled, places in rural Africa, rural Latin America, and was quite taken in 2002 with the number of mobile phones that I would see in very far away places where there was no electricity, no clean water. You would find that there was a growing number of people that had mobile phones. And this is the year 2002 when there was about a billion phones on the planet. And since my last three companies had really focused on financial service software primarily, and I had spent a lot of my time in the financial services industry building software from the biggest financial service companies in the world, I ended up starting to think about, well if there are mobile phones in all these places, maybe we could use those mobile phones to start delivering financial services to everybody with a mobile phone. It was a real simple idea, but it was exciting for me to think about the possibility that someday most people would have mobile phones, and those mobile phones could then bring convenience and access to banking like we've never seen before. So that idea got under my skin and by 2004, late 2004, early 2005, I funded some research where we went around the world and looked at some of the very early implementations of mobile payments and mobile banking. And once the research report was done, the way I think about it and this is the way it happened, when I started the research report, my career was behind me. When I finished the research report, my career was in front of me. Lucy: That's great. Larry: Yeah. Carol: Yeah. And I decided I just had to come back to work and use all my experience as an entrepreneur and technologist to build a company to deliver mobile payments and mobile banking to every mobile phone. So that was 2005, and I've worked almost every day since I made that decision. And I'm sitting in my office in Redwood City where I spend a lot of my time now. And the company is about 150 people now. And we are operating the service in the US and India, and we're in the planning stages to rolling it out in Africa and in Europe. And we get a call almost everyday from different parts of the world saying when can Obopay think about coming to this country or that country. Lucy: How did you choose the name for the company, Carol? Carol: The big idea is everybody with a mobile phone will get access to payment services and banking services through their mobile phone. And if you think about that, it's such a big idea because if you look at traditional banking, it serves let's say a billion and a half people on the planet, whereas already there are over four billion mobile phones. And so you can imagine that the people that have bank accounts and have mobile phones can benefit from it. But there are also a lot of people that don't get access to banking that will now have it because they have a mobile phone and there's a ways for these services to be offered to those people. In addition, people are still using a lot of cash, right, and sometimes checks. And my belief is that mobile payments and mobile banking will eliminate cash from use. And it's such a big idea if you think about it. About $7 trillion of transactions a year are done in cash still today. And I believe that in the future we won't be using cash, we'll be doing electronic transactions between mobile phones. For that reason, when we looked to name the company we said, wow do we relate to this big idea that someday this will replace cash? And we found that obol, O-B-O-L, is a greek coin that has been obsolete maybe a thousand years. And so we took an obsolete coin as a concept that we put in our company name. Lucy: That's fascinating, and the story of the company is interesting as well. And I would love to follow up with you because I think that the people here at the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado - Boulder, they're starting an ITC4D program here. So they would probably be interested in having you speak. So that's really interesting. And you've been a technologist for a long time and our first question centers around that. How did you first get into technology? And as a technologist, what are the technologies you see as being especially interesting today? Carol: I first got into technology in the mid-'70s. I was a mathematician and I was teaching math at a local university, and found the computer science department and decided in my spare time to get a computer science advanced degree. It was a natural transition for me. I was doing math because I was good at it and I loved it but it wasn't my passion. But once I got involved in computers I got very passionate about computers and specifically software. So that's how I got into technology. And you know in the mid-'70s, Silicon Valley was a very small community, so a lot of my professors worked at IBM or Hewlett Packard. Once I started taking classes from these folks it was just very easy to understand what was going on in the industry and I very quickly opted in. And matter of fact, I ended up leaving my teaching position and starting work six months before I finished my degree. Larry: Oh, good. Well you've had a chance to work for others and the nonprofit experience you had, why are you an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Carol: I started my career as a typical software engineer and ended up starting to get into management. And I was quite successful in management positions. Something happened to me about six years into my career. I thought when I was working for this big company that my aspiration was to be an executive at a company like that, but I got involved in a project almost by accident. It was an entrepreneurial project within a big company, and it changed me. The company I worked for, which was a hardware company - it's called Amdol - decided they wanted to do a commercial product based on UNIX. Because UNIX was just an internal AT&T Bell Labs technology, and I negotiated the first commercial license for UNIX. And we ended up building the operating system and then providing it as a high-end version of UNIX out into the marketplace. And this all happened very quickly, it was very entrepreneurial, they were a handful of people in a big company and we built a whole business around this new operating system that we built. It was amazing. People would tell us "You'll never get this done," that nobody would ever buy it. And so I got involved in that and I saw about 15 people. We moved a mountain just by saying we we're going to do this. And I had that experience and I said, wow, I really love doing this and I'm good at it. I got a taste of it from that and then, once the project got mature and was mainstreamed, I decided that I couldn't go back into the mainstream, I had to go be an entrepreneur. I left and then I went to work at a company that was just about to go public, which was a database company - I think of that as my transition job. And then I got a phone call about 18 months after that, where somebody asked me to do a company from the ground. So that's how I got into it. I think that I had it in my blood, in my desire. I'm not sure if I would have been an entrepreneur if I hadn't had the early experience of how powerful it is. Also, I managed my career even before I left this big company, I had experience in marketing and sales. When you're an entrepreneur, you have to wear a lot of hats. You especially have to wear a sales hat. You have to go out and get the initial customers, you have to go out and get the initial founders or employees to work with you, you have to get the original investors. That is a sales job. And so somehow I've been able to over the years be quite successful at evangelizing new ideas and bringing on employees and customers and venture capital. And that's been something that I'm just good at and I love to do. Lucy: Well you know those are all UNIX projects. I'm from Bell Labs and we were probably one of your Amdol customers. [laughs] Those were fun times for sure, and it does sound like you have entrepreneurship in your blood. In terms of who influenced you, can you look back - you had an experience that influenced you at Amdol, and another experience at the database company - were there particular people or mentors along the way that influenced you? Carol: Yeah, I think there were. I was aware of what some other people were doing, so I think I was inspired by some of these early entrepreneurs. Famous ones, like Bill Gates and Judy Estrin. Or fhe less famous ones, just people I knew in Silicon Valley - I was inspired by those people. So I think, one thing that happened to me when I ended up becoming an entrepreneur -- if you had met me before I took my first CEO job, you would have said "Well, this woman..." Lone Ranger, I used to call myself. I would take on projects and I would do them, and I would have people working for me, but I didn't need any help. That was my attitude. When I started my first company that was venture-backed, for some reason I decided that I needed to change my style. I said, you know, I need help, because I've never done this before. And raising venture capital seems really hard, building a company from the ground up. I've kind of been involved in it in kind of different ways, but this seemed a really big task. So I decided to change my style and ask for help. I'd been around for a long time so I knew a lot of people, but I had actually never asked anyone for help, never in my entire career. And so when I wrote my first business plan for Cordiant, which is where I first raised venture capital, I sent the business plan to 50 people I knew, who had either raised venture capital or would know how to do it. And what was so interesting about that is that I've never asked for help before, and people were so honored that I had reached out to them for help, I got this wave of help from all these really great CEOs or venture capitalists. And that was the reason I'm here today. It was actually because I figured out that it wasn't just about me doing something. Being an entrepreneur and having a big idea, you need a lot of help. So when I reached out to these people, a lot of those folks became mentors to me and became advisers to me. And I remember, when I was raising my first round of funding, I said, look, if I'm successful at this -- and I thought this is the hardest thing I've ever done, If I'm successful, I'm going to help other people do this. You know, over the years, I've turned around and done the same thing for other folks and helped other people who were trying to raise venture capital or start companies. And something I really like to do is give back, because it was so important to me to have those experienced people help me. Larry: Wow. Carol, you know you have a number of happy, successful stories, but I'd like to ask another kind of question. If you were to pick the one, single time - I'm sure you had challenges along the way - but one, single toughest decision that you had to make in your career. Carol: Business decisions? Larry: Yeah, business-related. Carol: I'll tell you, there's a lot of tough decisions you make every day. I mean, when you're an entrepreneur, it's important to figure out what you can't do, or what you shouldn't do right now. I think one thing is, at big companies you might have the luxury to do most of the things you think are the right things to do. But in a small company, an emerging company, a new company, you have to choose every day what is it I have to do now, and what is it I can afford to do right now? And you have to make that decision every day, and people come to you and they lobby, or customers come to you. And you just have to be good at prioritizing and saying no. And that is a tough decision, but I can't point out one time I said no. It's just that every day, you have to learn to say no. Larry: OK. Carol: Hire this person, go after this opportunity. So that's sort of the tougher part, the tough decisions I make. Probably some of the more challenging business decisions were really around timing of expansion. Larry: Ah. Carol: So if you think about it, Cordiant wouldn't be where it is today if it hadn't made a decision to, very early on in the company's evolution, to expand into Europe. So they made a decision while they were in the US market for six months, they decided to go to Europe. And that was a tough decision to make because it was an expensive decision. But it turned out to be a very good decision. Hard to execute on, but a really important strategic move. Obopay has made that same decision. From the beginning, we decided that, to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, which is deliver financial services to every mobile phone, we had to be willing to build a service that could work in places like the US, as well as India. And the only way to really know that is to build it from the beginning with that in mind, and then go to those markets and prove that it worked in both markets. That was a very tough decision to make because it's a very expensive decision, and it requires the ability to execute on two different markets. Lucy: You've given us a lot of pointers that would be helpful to people who are considering being entrepreneurs. For example, you said it became important to you to ask for help. I think you said, "Get to like sales," you know, and, "Learn how to prioritize and learn to say no." And I think the story about expansion into Europe is an indicator as well of taking educated risks and getting out there and really growing the company. What other advice would you give a young person who's considering being an entrepreneur? Carol: I think you can't learn to be an entrepreneur in a classroom. So I think you have to be willing to take jobs that help you build skills and experience so that you're able to be an entrepreneur and be good at it. You know, some people come out of school, like I was reading about the founder of Facebook, I mean, phenomenal story. He's 24 years old and he founded Facebook. I mean, that's incredible, but a lot of entrepreneurs don't get there that way. They end up having jobs that give them good skills and experience that prepare them to be an entrepreneur. So unless you're like the Facebook founder, I suggest you think about, "OK. What's the next job I could take in the company I'm at or in a different company that will help me get skills and experience I need to be an entrepreneur." So for example, let's say you're not good at strategic stuff, which is like what you need to be good at to raise venture capital, what you need to be good at to go out and get your first set of business partners in your business. If that's true and you're not good at it, you should get a job in an opportunity where you figure out how to be good at that, where you're tested, where you're trained, where you have to do it, because that's going to help you build the competency that you need and better prepare you to be an entrepreneur. I want to say one other thing about that. I knew in my heart I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I remember one time I tried to get a sales job at a company. I won't mention which company, but I tried to get a job being a sales person, because I kind of knew I needed to be better at this. And I remember the person I went to who liked me a lot, said, "Oh, well, you're a girl. Nobody's going to buy a million dollar product from you." [laughter] Lucy: I'm sorry. Larry: Yeah. Carol: But, you know, at the time that was their point of view. But I remember thinking, "You know what, that is not going to stop me. That's this person." Lucy: Absolutely. Carol: And, you know, it may have been conventional wisdom that a girl couldn't do this job, but it didn't faze me at all, and I said, "Oh, OK. That's your opinion. I better go find my sales opportunity someplace else." And I think you have to have that in your DNA to be an entrepreneur. You have to be the kind of person that has the kind of vision and direction and drive that when some obstacle gets in front of you, it's not that it's not real, but you figure out how to manage beyond that obstacle. Lucy: Absolutely, being relentless. Larry: Relentless. Lucy: We've heard that a lot, relentless, persistent. Carol: Yeah. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah, resourceful. Carol: The other thing I was going to say about building the expertise to be an entrepreneur, I have two other things to say about that. You can never be everything. You can't be all things to all people. There's some things that maybe the perfect entrepreneur would do that I'm not good at. So you also need to understand where your limitations are and surround yourself with a team that collectively has the skills to pull off the business. So you're not going to ever be all things to all people. There are some things you have to be able to do, like raise venture capital, but there are some other things your team may be able to do for you, and you don't have to do it yourself. The other thing that I would say, and one thing I like to say to the people who want to be entrepreneurs and go out and raise money, especially raising money. I said, "If you think about being entrepreneurs, don't think about success being raising money." Because let's imagine you're going to be successful raising money. Success is when you get the money and you've got the company, that you're successful with the company. You have to think less about sort of the, "Oh, I can get a VC to fund me," and more, "I can get the capital I need to build the company I need to build, " and it's a different mindset. And you have to have the mindset of, I not only have to be able to raise the venture capital, I have to be the kind of leader that once I have it I can build the company. So you kind of raise the bar for yourself and what you think you have to be able to do to build the company. You have to raise capital, and you have to make that capital turn it into a successful business. Larry: Carol, with all the things that you're doing and you're at the office right now, how do you bring balance to your life, both personally and professionally? Carol: I don't think I have a balanced life. [laughter] Lucy: Yeah, we're heard that before too. Yeah. Carol: But I don't know, you know, I think about that I have three children, and I love them and they're all successful. They're grown. They're in their twenties. I love them. I don't see them as much as I want to, don't spend as much time with them as I would like. I have a husband who I've been married to for almost 30 years. I love the outdoors. I'm very athletic. But the fact is when I'm doing this I would say that I don't have the kind of balance that would be the perfect balance, and I just accept that. That's the job. The job is to have a little bit of struggle with balance, because the job is going to be really, really demanding, and I've accepted that. I had five years off, six years off where I was able to spend as much time as I wanted with my kids and my husband. And I biked and hiked and skied 60 days a year. That was fabulous too, but, you know, there's nothing like building a company from the ground up. Lucy: And that's the case, and we've heard that from some of our other interviewees as well, that it's more of an integrative thing. You know, that you have all these interests and you integrate them, but it's not like every day is balanced. Larry: Right. Lucy: That's really interesting. So, Carol, you've done so much. You're a global visionary. You give back. I wanted to mention to listeners as well that Carol was on the board at the Anita Borg Institute, which is one of the co-founding organizations of NCWIT, really focused on women and innovation and computing. And you mentioned earlier that it's important for you to give back. So across the board you've done some pretty phenomenal things. What's next for you? Carol: No, I am very passionate about entrepreneurship, so wherever possible I support entrepreneurs, either through my own time or through donating to organizations that support entrepreneurs. I'm passionate about education. There are places in the world where children don't get access to free education, places like Uganda or a lot of places I go in the world. And so my husband and I both donate a lot to programs that get the kids that are left out of the education system access to education. So we do that and that's something we do on an ongoing basis. You know, I'm kind of doing Obopay full-time. It's interesting. I was on boards when I started Obopay, and I got off all of them. And I did that because I just felt like for an early stage company I didn't have the luxury of having time to be a good board member for them, but I think for the next couple years, I'm pretty much full-time doing this. But I don't have a lot of bandwidth to do other things right now. When this period is over for me, I don't know what's next for me and I'm not worried about it, because I love so many things. I have so many hobbies, so many interests, I'm not worried about what comes next. I'm not a worrier anyway. I'm just dedicated to doing this now, and I know when I'm doing this that they'll be something else great for me to do. Larry: Well, I couldn't agree more, yeah. Carol: Oh, that's another word for entrepreneurship, fearless. Larry: There we go. Carol: There you go. Larry: Well, Carol, I want to thank you for joining us today. Carol: Oh, you're welcome. Larry: And we'll put your link up in the website. That's Obopay.com, but we'll put it up on NCWIT's website. That's ncwit.org, and also at w3w3.com. And by the way, I want to say this to the listeners. Pass this interview along to others that you know would learn from it and would enjoy an interview on this kind of a topic. Thank you much, Carol. Lucy: Thanks, Carol. Carol: Thanks, bye. Lucy: All right. Thanks everybody. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Carol RealiniInterview Summary: Carol Realini is an imaginative pioneer whose foresight and business acumen have changed the landscape of technology, and whose global vision is providing hope and a future for people in developing countries. Release Date: April 7, 2009Interview Subject: Carol RealiniInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 24:49

JLabs LLC CEO and author Judy Estrin puts the processes and philosophies of innovation under the microscope. Her current analysis indicates that we're short-changing the business arena and culture at large, as we've stopped planting the seeds for true, monumental invention and problem-solving.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Judy Estrin President and CEO, Packet Design, LLC Date: September 13, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Judy Estrin BIO: Judy Estrin, CEO, JLABS, LLC. and author, Closing the Innovation Gap is a networking technology pioneer and Silicon Valley leader. Since 1981, she has co-founded eight technology companies and served as CTO of Cisco Systems. As CEO of JLABS, LLC, she is an advisor and speaker in the areas of entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation. In May 2000 she co-founded Packet Design, LLC, a network technology company. Prior to co-founding Packet Design, LLC, Estrin was Chief Technology Officer for Cisco Systems. Beginning in 1981 Estrin co-founded three other successful technology companies with Bill Carrico. Bridge Communications, founded in 1981, was a vendor of internetwork routers and bridges that went public in 1985 and merged with 3Com Corp. in 1987; Estrin served as Engineering Vice President and Executive Vice President of Bridge, and later ran the Bridge Communications Division at 3Com. Network Computing Devices, a maker of X terminals and PC-UNIX integration software, was founded in 1988 and went public in 1992; Estrin started with NCD as Executive Vice President and became CEO in 1993. Estrin served as CEO of Precept Software from the company's 1995 founding as a maker of streaming video software until Cisco Systems acquired Precept in 1998, and she became Cisco's Chief Technology Officer until April 2000. Estrin has been named three times to Fortune Magazine's list of the 50 most powerful women in American business. She sits on the boards of directors of The Walt Disney Company and The Federal Express Corporation as well as two private company boards -- Packet Design, Inc. and Arch Rock. She also sits on the advisory councils of Stanford's School of Engineering and Stanford's Bio-X initiative. She holds a B.S. degree in math and computer science from UCLA, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. Today we have another great interview with a fabulous woman entrepreneur. And with me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hello, I'm so excited to be here. Lucy: Why don't you tell us a little bit about w3w3.com, since the podcast series will be also syndicated on your site? Larry: Yes, and we've started already, and it's really popular so far. At w3w3.com, have it all set it where they can download it as a podcast, they can listen to it on their computer, and it's having great reception. Lucy: That's great! Also here is Lee Kennedy who is an NCWIT director and also, in an exciting new twist of events, is starting yet another new company called Tricallex. Welcome, Lee. Lee Kennedy: Thanks, I'm so glad to be here. Lucy: Well, and today we're interviewing somebody who is just somebody I'm thrilled to talk to because she loves data networking. Now you guys don't get on my case about this. I'm sure that she loves lots of other things, but I know she gets network congestion, and TCIP, and all those great packet protocols. Judy Estrin, welcome. Judy Estrin: It's nice to be here. Lucy: Judy is the co‑founder and chairman of Packets Design. And she sits on the board of the Walt Disney Company and also Federal Express. So, Judy, you know you certainly have done a lot in the area of networking, and not just networking but route analytics and all the different algorithms. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Packet Design first, and then we'll get into the interview? Judy: OK, Packet Design has actually evolved over the last five years. It started out in 2000 as a company that we started to target what we called medium term innovation. So we didn't want to just focus on one product area. We started a number of projects, and the idea was to either license technology or spin out companies. Now, we all know what happened in 2001 and 2002 in the networking market; actually and in the technology market, in general. So it was an interesting time to start a company like that. But we did spinout three companies: Verneer Network, Packet Design, Inc., and Precision IO. A couple of years ago, we changed the business model and stopped doing new projects and just focused our time on the spinouts that existed. So Packet Design, itself, is really somewhat of a shell company at this point. Packet Design, Inc., which I'm chairman of the board of (but not CEO), is in the route analytics business. Verneer is in the network security business. And Precision IO, unfortunately, ended up getting shut down because of, I would say, running out of patience in the eccentric community. Lucy: When you mention route analytics, tell us a little bit about what that entails. Judy: The products that Packet Design, Inc., which is really the spin off that most of the people from Packet Design, LLC went to, the products they provide, probably the easiest way to describe it, is allow you to get more information about an IP network, so that you can manage, diagnose, and plan more effectively. And it gives you information about the routing itself, which is why it is called route analytics, as well as the products that give you information about the traffic that goes on the network and correlates that traffic with the routing. And previously there'd not been products that understood the routing the way this product did. Lucy: Well, and that maybe gets us to our first question around technology because, certainly, I know enough about networking protocols to know that route analytics is an extremely difficult technology. How did you first get into technology? And as you look out into the future, what technologies do you think are going to be especially important? Judy: So, this is kind of a funny answer to have to how did I first get into technology, I would say I was born into it. And today it's common to have second‑generation computer scientists. But when I was growing up, it was not so common. But my father worked with Flid Noiman at the Institute for Advanced Studies, and they started the Computer Science Department at UCLA. My mother is also a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and was one of the very early biomedical engineers. So I grew up in an environment filled with science and technology. I had a very strong aptitude toward math. And I used to joke that if computers hadn't been invented, I might have ended up being a statistician. So I'm very lucky that computers were invented. When I think of myself and what I really like to do, it's solving problems. And if you think of about technology and computer science, specifically, it really is about solving problems. And I, very early in my career, moved from being a dedicated engineer into management. And I was, in essence, an individual contributor for probably a couple of years before I started managing. And what I found is the same problem solving techniques that I learned in computer science worked very well in the world of solving overall problems, whether it was organizational or people or technological. So I was exposed to technology very early, and I loved it. When you ask me what technologies I think are cool today, as I look forward, some of the most interesting technologies I think are the ones that are, what I would call, interdisciplinary, essentially applying information technology to different things. So whether it's to the consumer market, when you look at entertainment or social networking or any of the other problems that technology is solving in that arena. The increase of mobility, so looking at the problems of trying to take everything we've done that runs so well on personal computers and make that information available on mobile devices. One of the areas that I'm very interested in, my sister happens to run this center at UCLA in this area, and I'm on a board of a startup, is something called sensor‑nets, which is the area of bringing the physical world, or being able to monitor the physical world, and bring information about the physical world into your information systems. Because you now can combine processors, sensors, and wireless together in a very small device that can be sprinkled around, and allow you to get information about the physical world that might be used for environmental needs, or energy, in data centers, in monitoring the elderly at home. There's a whole range of applications. So I think that is another interesting application. I think the application of information technology to healthcare and education will be very important areas, because both of those are areas we have big problems in. And I believe technology can really help solve them. And then last, it's a broad area, but anything having to do with what people call clean techs. So the whole area of energy efficiency as well as new forms of energy I think are going to be very interesting. And technology, information technology will play a role in solving those problems. Lee: Well, the area of sensors is also particularly interesting to me and us at NCWIT. Just a plug for a future NCWIT summit we're going to have at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne will be exactly, Judy, what you were just talking about. And we're talking about the future of computing and how it's driven from multiple disciplines. Judy: Great. Lucy: And Judy you may have already answered our next question when you talked about your love to solve problems. But the question is: why are you an entrepreneur? And what is it about it that makes you tick? Judy: You know it's interesting, a lot of entrepreneurs will tell you stories about how when they were kids they had a lemonade stand or they started a business, and I don't have any stories like that. When I was growing up, I don't think I ever imagined that I would become an entrepreneur. But when I graduated with my master's from Stanford, I had offers from a number of different technology companies. I was interviewing at Intel, at HP, Xerox, the classic large companies. But I also interviewed at a very small company with 50 people called XLog, which was a spinout of Intel. And I decided to go there, because a friend of my parents told me that the smartest people that he knew worked at that company. So I started off my career at a small company. And just became very passionate about what you could do in small groups. And how quickly we were able to move. And how innovative the environment was. And I realized, also, how much I enjoyed building my own culture, developing groups, developing an organization. So out of that XLog experience, I think, was probably what made me start to think that, you know, maybe I'd like to start something on my own. And the other thing is, because I went to a small company, I was able to move into management much more quickly than I think if I'd gone to a larger, more hierarchical company. And I found I loved managing and so the non‑technical side. I always stayed deep in the technology. But the business side of entrepreneurship, I've found that I really enjoyed. One benefit of being an entrepreneur: when you're building a company, you get a choice to stay involved in the technology and do the higher level executive functions. And you have a very broad scope. And I found that that was something that interested me. When you end up at a large company, you end up having to make a decision of either being at the top, and being very far away from the technology, or staying technical, and not being able to necessarily exercise the management side as much. So I think what about entrepreneurship makes me tick. It's a passion for an idea. Every company we started was because we were passionate about an idea and about solving a problem in the marketplace. Most of the companies were pretty ahead of their time. So we tended to look forward a lot in what we were doing. And I keep saying we. The companies that I was involved in, I co‑founded with my ex‑husband Bill Carrico. So that's the "we" that I'm saying there. Larry: Judy, you know I thought it's interesting that it was obvious since the very beginning of time for you, IT was going to be part of your life. But it wasn't until after you got your master's degree that you really started thinking about the possibility of being an entrepreneur. And by the way, this is Lucy's favorite question, having to do with: Who were the people in your life that shepherded you through this career path? And who were your mentors? Judy: Early on, as I was growing up, my parents were really my role models. And that is what led me toward science and to become a computer scientist. But both of them are academics. And so I was not at all exposed early on to the business world. And it really was at XLog that I first became exposed to the business world. And I would say my first mentor was Bill, my ex‑husband, because he came to XLog and was the one who promoted me into a management position. So I would say, if I had to pick an early mentor, it was Bill. But the reason I don't like the question is: I think as I have gone through my career, there are so many people that have influenced me. I watched everybody, whether it's people who have worked for me who have taught me things. I have people I have worked for. I sit on the boards of directors of some incredible companies with just terrific leaders. And watching them and how they lead influenced me. Watching people who I don't like the way they lead at times influences me, saying I don't want to be like that. So I would say that I really can't identify a small set, or a set of role models. I think I've pretty much built my career and have always taken a strategy of just learning from everyone around me. Again, from those people who have worked for me and those people I have worked for. Larry: I think you answered that question quite well. Lucy: Right. Judy: You know, I'm asked these days... People often ask will I mentor, get together and ask for help. And one of the things I like to tell people is that when you're looking around, and when you're looking to someone who has experience, and hearing about hearing about their experiences, don't listen to what they say and just say, "OK, I have to do it that way." What you need to do is listen to other people's experiences and then filter. And decide which of those things feel right for you. Because in the end, and I think this is probably the most important thing about mentoring and role models, one is most successful when you're being yourself and developing your own capabilities. That doesn't mean you don't learn along the way. But when you try to act like somebody else, and if it's not natural to your own personality and skills, it always backfires. Lucy: Well, and I think that's really well said as well. We certainly do learn from everybody around us. And I think you had a brilliant answer for that. The next question we have for you is maybe on the other end of your experiences, in terms of the tough times in your career and the challenges you've had. What was the toughest thing that you've had to face in your career so far? Judy: I'm going to say two things. They were kind of tied together. The Packet Design Model involved spinning out these companies, and then hiring executives to run them and getting back your investment for them. And it involved then me learning how to let go. Because if you spinout a company, the company has to become independent. The CEO of that company has to run the company. You can't have two CEOs. So one of the very interesting things for me was one: I learned how hard it is to find good executives, to find good leadership and that process of learning how to let go, which I think I have developed as a board member and is one of the things that makes me more effective as a board member today, is that I have learned when to suggest, when it's my business to poke in, and when not. And how to question in a way that helps the CEO think, and helps hold them accountable without meddling in their business or trying to do their job. So that's number one. But I would say, by far, the hardest thing that I had to do was being involved in the shutting down of Precision IO. It was the first time that one of the companies that I helped start had to outright fail. And we couldn't navigate an exit strategy for it. Every other time when there was something that didn't go exactly the way we wanted, we were able to navigate an exit. And whether it is acquisition or partnership or changing strategy, here, because of the timing, because of execution, leadership, the venture dynamic, we ended up just shutting it down. And having to let people go that I've been involved in hiring was just very tough for me. Lucy: It really is tough, I think, for anybody. And it's tough for the people on the receiving end. It's interesting how a lot of times; those are the changes in people's lives where they go off to do wonderful, exciting things. Judy: Right. And I'm happy to say that the core team that got let go, those that I have continued to touch base with, are all in great places. They were all terrific people and very employable. But it doesn't make it any easier to make that decision. Lucy: So, Judy, one of the reasons we are doing these interviews with women like you is we're hoping that a number of young people will listen to these, and learn, and get inspired to go off and, potentially, be entrepreneurs in their career. So if you were sitting there, what would be some of the best advice you would give them? Judy: Well, I guess a couple of things. One is: do it for passion, not for money. So it's wonderful to make money if you're successful. But if you're doing it for the money, and the money is what you're doing it for first, I guarantee you won't come up with as good an idea or be as successful. So every entrepreneur I've seen that is doing whatever they're doing (a new product, a new service), because they are passionate about solving a problem with a new type of technology, those are the ones that are most successful. I'm not going to say that having a company go public, or get bought, and making money from it is not great. And that has to also be a motivator, because the venture guys want you to want to make money, because they want to make money. But the passion has to be there. And that should be the number one. So I guess that's one piece. The second is: you have to be ready to fail. You have to be ready to fail, pick yourself up, and try again. I think that sometimes we get confused because it was such a long time of growth and opportunity in the IT business, that so many companies were so successful, that people forget how hard it is to really build a successful company. And more companies fail than succeed. And so you really have to be ready to fail. And everybody says it, but you have to be ready to do it and pick yourself up and try again. The third thing is: that when I think about what it takes to be an entrepreneur, I already talked about the passion. It takes flexibility and persistence. You really have to be willing to keep going and plow through obstacles. But you also have to have a sense of judgment and flexibility to know when that obstacle... Sometimes you need to push through the obstacle. Sometimes that obstacle is telling you something. And what it's telling you is: you need to be flexible enough to change your strategy a little bit. And so this balance between persistence that just has you pushing forward, ignoring the naysayers and just knowing that your vision is right, but the flexibility and the open mindedness, to be able to say to yourself, "You know what? Maybe it's not 100 percent right. And maybe I just learned something new that I have to change slightly or change dramatically." So that balance between persistence and flexibility. And then last, there are lots of people out of school that want to go right from school to being the CEO of a company. My advice is get experience first because it will make you a better entrepreneur. Again, I think everybody thinks it's easier to build a company that it really is. Now that experience might be at another entrepreneurial company where you go work somewhere and watch someone else do it. It doesn't have to be 10 years of experience but getting some experience first I think will make you a much better entrepreneur. I think the trend of get your degree and start a company is actually not a good one. Some people can do it but I think it's better to be able to watch others a little bit first. Lucy: I can really echo this notion of passion. Last night I listened to the three‑minute pitches of 10 young entrepreneurial teams here in Boulder. I got to be the judge. The ones that really were in love with their idea and passionate about it ‑ and you could really see that there was a subset that was and then a subset if I would have said, "Why don't you make black white?" they would have said OK. [laughs] Larry: Hmm. Lucy: So it was just kind of an interesting experience. You have given us a lot of, I think, great characteristics of entrepreneurs. I know that they are your personal characteristics as well in terms of flexibility and persistence and having good judgment. Do you have any other personal characteristics that you haven't shared with us so far that you think have given you an advantage as an entrepreneur? Judy: I work very hard. [laughs] So that's part of that persistence. I'm really willing to roll up my sleeves and work very hard. We have talked about passion. Communication skills ‑ I think that one thing that I have always been able to do is communicate my passion and my vision to a broad range of people, so whether it is to the customer, to the marketplace, to employees. It's not enough just to have the passion and vision. You have to be able to communicate it and get other people excited about it also, for instance, raising money. So, I think my communication skills probably have helped me. The other is that I tend to be very forward‑looking. I am always willing to question. I'm very open‑minded. So in terms of when you try to think about, "Well, how did you decide to start a company in this area?" that whole notion of being able to look at what is available and what isn't and how can you take technologies that exist and maybe do something different with them. So the whole arena of being able to question what is out there, question myself, be honest, and do kind of a self‑assessment about where I or the company is at any certain time, I think has helped. There are some entrepreneurs that go in one direction until they hit a wall. The ability to self assess and question oneself and what you're doing without becoming wishy‑washy, but just a healthy amount of it, I think is important. Then last I would say leadership. I love building teams of people and leading teams of people. I think the teams of people that have worked for me appreciate the relationship and the environment or the culture that we created. So I would say leadership is probably the last. Lucy: That's great. I sense you have learned a ton through all the startups you have built. Judy: I have. I would say leadership style is really what I am talking about. Lucy: So, one of the things about which we are always curious is, being an entrepreneur, especially with the phenomenally successful companies you have built or as an executive at Cisco, how have you brought balance into your personal and professional life. Judy: I would say that until I had my son, which was in 1990, in our second company, I didn't. All I did was work. I had no balance in my personal/professional life. The only reason it worked is Bill and I cofounded the companies together. So our personal and professional lives just melded into one. We didn't do anything except work. Having a child forced me to have balance because my son became my number one priority. It doesn't mean the companies weren't important. But there was no question in my mind about what my number one priority was. Then I had to begin to juggle. I think that what I always tell people is that you can do it but the first thing you have to realize this is really hard to acknowledge to yourself because you can't do everything. So you have to prioritize and figure out what you are not going to do. You know, I couldn't be at every event at his school. I could pick the ones I wanted to be at. I had to make trade‑offs and establish routines where I would leave work at 5:30 in order to be able to spend time with my son. But then I, at 8:30 or 9:00 would go back to email and work some more. So an analogy I like to give people is when you're juggling, good jugglers know how many balls they can juggle. They don't ever pick up any more than that. I think the mistake people make is at each stage of your life, if you have children at each stage of their lives, the number of balls you can juggle changes because the balls change in size. The different phases of the company take different amounts of attention. So in six month increments in my life, I have always said, "OK. How many balls can I be juggling?" because if you pick up one more than you know how to juggle, they all fall down. So you're much better off putting one down so that you can continue to juggle than having the whole thing fall apart. The other thing is learning to ask for help. That was very hard for me to learn how to do. Whether it's getting help in your personal life or getting help at work and delegating and getting other people to do things that maybe inside you know or think you could do better, usually it's just that you think you could do better and other people can do them just as well and you need to learn how to do it. Now that I am older and I'm in a different phase of my life, I try to more consciously balance personal and professional. I think for 25 years when I was running companies it was coping. Now I'm spending more time consciously saying I need to make sure that I pay attention to myself as well as others. Lucy: So, I think juggling is a wonderful way to describe it. It's a wonderful analogy. We have talked with a number of people who have also talked about integration and we have had other words. I think juggling is terrific. So you have really achieved a lot. There is a lot about your career at that we haven't even touched on in this interview. But we always like to ask our interviewees what's next for them. What is next for Judy Estrin? Judy: It's been an interesting couple of years in terms of changes in my life. For the first time I'm not running a company. A couple of years ago, I picked up my head and said, "What's next?" and decided that I wanted what's next to be something very different, that I do not want to start another company at this point in time. I do have my Board seats, which I spend a lot of time on and love. But I decided to write a book. I started about a year and a half ago and hope to have it in bookstores in the August timeframe, August '08. That is a very, very different type of endeavor than running a company. But the reason I did it was the same reason. It was passion for a topic. The book has to do with innovation. But it has not specifically targeted it as 'here is how to make your business more innovative', which is what most of the innovation books are about. It more looks at how you create cultures of innovation for science and technology and where we are as a country and the fact that we have lost some of the elements that made us so successful have eroded. So it's really a little bit of a broader perspective on not just businesses but the country and what we need to do to cultivate sustainable innovation looking forward. Lucy: Well, I've had the pleasure of seeing some of your early remarks that you gave a group a couple of months ago. I'm very much looking forward to the book because you have had very thoughtful ideas. So hurry up and finish it. Judy: I'm working as fast as I can. Larry: All right. Lucy: Really, thanks a lot, Judy for your time. I know you're really busy and we really appreciate you taking time out to talk to us. Larry: I want to thank you so much. You echoed one of my feelings that over the years we have learned more from our mistakes and failings than we have from our successes. Judy: No question. One of the big things in my book is that you need to failure as a step to success and not an end in itself. So if you're not willing to fail then you never try anything. Larry: That's right. Judy, I want to thank you for joining us today. By the way, you listeners out there, would you please pass this interview along to people that you know, that would be interested and maybe even should be interested. It's an excellent story. Just go to www.ncwit.org and that's where you can see all of the different interviews along with w3w3.com. Thank you much. Lucy: Thanks Judy. Judy: Bye‑bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Judy EstrinInterview Summary: For Judy Estrin, an interest in science and technology is in the blood: her older sister is an MD; her younger sister is a professor of computer science; and her parents both have PhDs in electrical engineering. Release Date: September 13, 2007Interview Subject: Judy EstrinInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 27:36