Podcast appearances and mentions of larry what

We all have that "Aha!" moment when we got excited about programming, so we asked Larry: ❔ What got you into computers in the first place? Maybe you can find your "Aha!" moment at https://docs.microsoft.com/?WT.mc_id=onedevquestion-c9-larryo.

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, Well-Being friends, welcome to The Path to Well-Being in Law Podcast, an initiative of The Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And, boy, how exciting is it that we're actually moving into the summer months? I always feel like well-being takes a natural elevated state in the summer months. We're also coming off of a really exciting Well-Being in Law week, and I'm joined by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, I'd just love to hear your reflections on, again, a May event that's really become a foundational element in the well-being horizon, as we think about bringing people together and shining a light on well-being. What were your reflections on this year's Well-Being Week in Law? BREE BUCHANAN: Good morning. Hey, Chris. So that was just... It's such an amazing event, and it's really become a signature event for The Institute for Well-Being in Law. This is our second year to do it. We didn't necessarily have people sign up, but we were able to look at things like the analytics, the people coming to our website, all of that doubled over last year. We had so much energy and excitement around that, and many people involved. We had the actual... the whole week for the Well-Being Week in Law, every day programming. And then this year, we added the after-party, which two weeks later, we did another full week of programming around the different dimensions of well-being for the professionals in this space, the people who are tasked with law firms, with... coming up with well-being programming. That's really an area that the institute is focused on, and supporting the movement and all the people that are out there that are part of this movement. So, it was a great event. What did you think? CHRIS: Yeah, I thought was fantastic, again. One of our goals on the podcast is to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates. I think one of the great results of the week was just, again, a mobilization an army of folks who are really interested in this particular issue. We would be remiss without recognizing one of our colleagues, Bree, Anne Bradford, and all of the work that she did to really both initiate, and has really been building some significant momentum in building this community through events like Well-Being Week in Law. BREE: Absolutely. The community and just the partnerships that she's helping us create, really valuable. CHRIS: I think the folks interested in receiving mailings and communications from the institute, I think went up to like 1,400. Again, just a testament to the number of folks who are really passionate about this issue and want to see it remain at the forefront as we look to improve the profession. So that's awesome. Let's move into our podcast today. We're, again, super excited. We've taken a little bit of a pivot. In our first 10 to 12, 15 podcasts, we really focused on some individuals in the movement. We've been moving to a little bit of a mini series format. We started with law schools, and now we're really excited to delve into the intersection of well-being and research, and research into the well-being cause. There's been, in a lot of professions, probably a lot more empirical research. We certainly are moving into that space in terms of specifically looking at lawyers, research, well-being, happiness. I know, Bree, we are super excited about our guest today, who's going to kick off our research miniseries, Larry Krieger from Florida State University. Bree, I know that you've known Larry for a lot of years, I'm going to give you the honors of introducing Larry. But we are really excited about our podcast today in the intersection of well-being and the happiness of lawyers, which is, again, something I've been really excited to get into. BREE: Right. I am delighted Larry is somebody I've looked up to and look to as such a real expert in this space ever since I started working in this area, which was 2009. So, let me just give everybody an introduction. Professor Larry Krieger is a widely-recognized expert in lawyer well-being, and particularly, I think, he's known for his study and work around What Makes Lawyers Happy? And we'll get to hear more about that. That study, in particular, was research on 6,200 lawyers, and identified the specific factors that are required for lawyer wellness and satisfaction and basically, happiness. The New York Times report article on that study was the most shared article in The Times for the following two days. So a lot of buzz about that when it came out in 2015. Larry was the founding Chair of the section on balance and legal education for the Association of American Law Schools. He was a litigator for 11 years, so he knows what it's like to be in the trenches. Part of that was Chief Trial Counsel for the Florida Controller, and he now teaches litigation skills and professionalism at the Florida State University College of Law. He is rightly-so recognized as one of the 25 teachers in the Harvard Press Book, entitled, What the Best Law Teachers Do. Finally, I got to meet Larry in person when I presented to him in 2018 at CoLAP Meritorious Service Award, which is given, really, for a lifetime distinction in the work that addresses mental health and substance abuse issues in the profession. That is a small introduction to all that Larry has done in this space. So, Larry, welcome. We're so glad you're here. I want to ask you a question of what we ask for all of our guests. We start off with asking, what brought you to the well-being movement? We have found that just about for all of our guests, and certainly for all of us who are involved in the institute, there's some sort of personal life experience, something that drives our passion for this work. So, what can you tell us about your experience? And welcome, Larry. LARRY KRIEGER: Well, first, thank you so much. It really is a pleasure and an honor to get to talk to you both, and thank you for the amazing work that you both are doing them and all the people out there. Funny story. So what brought me to it was my first wife, who... way back then, she had actually been dating Mike Love, the lead singer for the Beach Boys, when the Beach Boys learned meditation. BREE: Okay. LARRY: Remember [inaudible 00:07:27] back in the late '60s or something. So we're going back a little ways here. I've been around. So I was in law school at the time, actually, I was miserable, and we heard that this meditation teacher, Transcendental Meditation, at the time, was coming to town. And she said, "Oh, let's go." And I said [inaudible 00:07:50]. And so she dragged me in there. I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard. We walked out, she was glowing. Like, this is fabulous, thought [inaudible 00:07:59], brother. They wanted 35 bucks for you to learn this technique, I thought this is for the birds. So she learned it, and she changed within two weeks. She was a different person. BREE: Wow. LARRY: So I said, "Okay, I want to learn it, too." Then it took me months to get into it, because the teacher didn't come back for three months. So it was just really good luck. It transcended my own ignorance, honestly. And then I was unhappy in law school, and actually quit law school. It took me eight years to get through law school, which I love telling students when they're discouraged. BREE: Right. LARRY: I just didn't like it. The reason I didn't like it is everybody there was so unhappy. I had already been in the Air Force through the Vietnam War, and I was a little older and stuff going to law school, and I thought, everybody is so serious. Oh, my God. Nobody's got their leg shot off. BREE: Right. LARRY: I just kept quitting law school, because I just didn't like being around. It was so serious and negative. So yeah, that was on me. I've learned to have better boundaries. But that's how I got involved. Then when I finally became a lawyer, I noticed how unhappy the lawyers were. BREE: Right. LARRY: [inaudible 00:09:14]. Come on, guys. Even the super successful ones were just ramped up, tense, pushy, on edge all the time. Of course, by then I had been meditating for a while, and so I it was keeping me chilled out. I was prosecuting in West Palm. We had the sixth highest crime rate in the country at the time. So it's not like it was... I was dodging the bullets and avoiding the trenches, like you say. But just, do your job and then go home and have a nice life. So what got me involved was good luck, certainly not my own intelligence, and then just seeing what was going on in front of me. BREE: Right, right. Absolutely. CHRIS: Well, Larry, you've... Certainly, when you look back on your research and scholarship, it now goes back almost 20 years. I know that you've been thinking about it even longer than that. In some respects, you've been a disruptor in our space before it was even a thing. If you look back on some of your titles, I just I marvel at the fact that you saw so much of this so early, that even though the movement is where it is today, again, you were talking about a two decades ago. Some of your titles included Institutional Denial About the Dark Side of Law, and I think that was published in 2002. Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students, again, 2002. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 2004. What were you seeing among your students that brought you to engage in this type of research and scholarship? LARRY: Yeah, thanks. Let me just say [inaudible 00:10:55] just like me starting meditation and getting a bigger picture on life than what I had up to that point. I got lucky and got this job. I wasn't looking for a job, I had a marvelous job of chasing Ponzi schemes out of the State of Florida for the state comptroller, like Bree already mentioned. But I just got lucky and got into this job through happenstance, and it gave me time to start thinking. What I saw immediately was... I think I started this job in '91. I just passed 30 years. Yay. Had a little lunch with the dean, and it was really sweet. So it was a good ways after I had been in law school all those years, and seeing all the unhappiness there. When I got into teaching, I realized nothing has changed. Nothing. And I thought, "Okay, well, I've got some time here. I'm going to try to write about it." Actually, the first article I wrote was in '99. I'm not on tenure track, so writing all that negative stuff is a little tricky for me, but I figured, honestly, what the hell? I wouldn't mind going back to being a prosecutor or a lawyer. If they don't like me, they can just get rid of me, but I'm not going to keep my mouth shut. But the first one I wrote was in '99, and it was called What We're Not Telling Law Students - And Lawyers - That They Really Need to Know. In that article, I was just going from my experience, but I was saying we really need to research this. And then shortly after that, just, again, through happenstance, I ran into a fabulous empirical psychologist who was willing to work with me, Ken Sheldon. So, off we went. BREE: There you go. I really relate to what you're saying. I graduated from law school in 1989, and then had the opportunity, about 15 years later, to go back and lead a clinical program there, and it was the same thing. I saw students were still unhappy, stressed out, everything happened around a keg, alcohol flowed through every event. And then actually, when I got to the lawyers Assistance Program and went back to law schools talking, 10 or so years later, it was the same thing, there just hadn't been any shift. I want to talk to you a little bit. My experience with you, my first Larry Krieger encounter... When I started working at the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program in 2009, I came across your booklet that spoke to me so loudly, it was The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress, in which you openly wrote about the dark side of the law school experience, and it just rang so true for me. I was so impacted by that. Tell me what it was like during that period of time to write about these things. It's like sort of the emperor has no clothes, you were going out proclaiming. Just the same truth at the heart of the matter in the profession. How was that received? LARRY: Well, good question. That book's been a thrill for me and me. It turned out that half the law schools in the country and also in Australia and Canada, more than half of them have used the book with their students in bulk. So, that was a thrill. I'm writing a new one now. I'll explain why I decided to take a new tack. But hopefully, that'll be out at the end of the summer for fall students, if I'm lucky. The first thing I started doing before I wrote that is I started talking to clinical conferences, because I'm a clinical teacher, I teach litigation skills. And every time I would give a talk on this well-being, I never saw any other talks on it. It's so wonderful to see the movement now. When I started doing this, it was weird. But rooms would always fill up. There were so many teachers that would say, "This is so important. I wish I'd heard this when I was in law school." And I would say, "I wish I'd heard it law school." BREE: Me too. LARRY: Right. So somebody needed to start saying it. So that was really good. And then our dean of student asked me to give a talk to an early orientation group one summer here, that came pre [inaudible 00:15:49] law school, and I gave this little talk, and it really went well. What I did is I... This is where the booklet came from. I asked them, "So what are you worried about? Let's list everything you're worried about on the board, everything you're afraid of." And then we're going to shoot it all down, one at a time. So they listed it on the board, I explained why they shouldn't stress about it, and then I woke up the next morning [inaudible 00:16:14] you know that was really a lot of good things. And it all came from them, I thought I had to write this down. So I sent out a little summary to this listserv that I had started by then on humanizing legal education, and people wrote back and said, "Oh, can I use it? Can I use it? Can I use it?" And I said, "Okay, I got to put this into a publication." So I was already getting a lot of positive feedback from my community, which was the community of people who actually care about the well-being and happiness of... and sanity, really, of law students and lawyers. I've learned to focus on the people that are supportive, I just don't focus on the other people. [crosstalk 00:16:56]. BREE: Words of wisdom. CHRIS: Well, Larry, obviously, we're shifting a little bit in the podcast here to a three-part series focusing on research, and we just would really enjoy focusing now on your 2015 seminal work that really helped set the stage for the entire well-being movement. Your work, What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success Redefine Professional Success was really at the forefront. It was a large research project that you conducted with Ken Sheldon. Tell us about the survey, what inspired you to do it, who you surveyed, just setting the stage for what you ultimately found. LARRY: Sure, Thanks, Chris. That came out so well, too. I was shocked at how well... After we publish that, I had a lot of people from different journals and the press [inaudible 00:17:54] and they asked me if there are any surprises in there. Really, the main surprise was that we were right. Everything we predicted came out, and even stronger than I would have imagined. I really encourage folks who are listening to this, take a look at this study, because there's a graph in there of the results, and you can see it in a picture. It's so striking. It's on SSRN, Social Science Research Network, ssrn.com, and it's called What Makes Lawyers Happy?. But what came out of it was that success does not make lawyers happy. That's why The New York Times had such a buzz with it. BREE: Right. LARRY: We were actually able to quantify exactly what's making lawyers happy, and we were able to show, with numbers, it's not the money, it's not the partnership, the junior partners were not any happier than the senior associates in the big firms, not even a bit. Even though they were making 70% more money, and they were partners now, nothing changed. The idea came from because we started researching law students before that, and we were in some of those journals you mentioned with the institutional denial and understanding the negative effects, all that business. I wanted to be sure that what we found in law students actually was going in the direction that the studies predicted, and that lawyers were suffering from the same exact problems. So it really took seven years to get that study done, because I had to get bar associations. Five state bar associations agreed to participate and put their bar members through this survey. I got CLE credit assigned to the lawyers- BREE: Wow. LARRY: ... who were willing do it because it was a long survey. And then one of the states backed out at the last minute, a really big one. So otherwise, we'd have had 10,000 lawyers instead of 6,000, but results would have been identical. But I think they thought it's going to be too hot politically. BREE: Right. LARRY: I think they were afraid that we were going to show what we ended up showing, which is everything that the profession thinks is important, actually isn't important, other than helping clients, and everything that the profession thinks isn't important, like spending time with your family and taking care of yourself, actually is important, and those are the things that's going to make you happy. So, it took years to get that research in but, but we pulled it off. BREE: I see it was just sort of... The findings are just bombshell findings for me. I actually printed out, and I'm looking right now at that graph, and it is so incredibly demonstrative. When you're looking at what really moves the dial on subjective well-being or happiness, are things like autonomy, relatedness, internal motivation, the intrinsic values. So those are long bars on the graph. And then you get to income, class rank, making partner, Law Review, and the bars on that graph drop by like 75% or something. It is just striking visually to see this. Can you talk just briefly a little bit about this divide between the extrinsic and intrinsic values, sort of digging into the secret of happiness? LARRY: Yeah, great point. Thanks for bringing that up. I'm actually looking at it. I did a follow-up booklet to that, Hidden Sources of Law School Stress, that extended out to lawyers too, after this study came out. I have a few of those left. I'm trying not to sell them much anymore, and I'll tell you why at the end here. But it also has that chart in it. It's called The Hidden Stresses of Law School and Law Practice, because they really are hidden stresses. They're mis-assumptions. What these bars mean, is basically, that the human connections that we make, if I could put it in a nutshell, the human connections that we make are everything for the happiness of a lawyer or a judge. They are everything. What these buyers stand for is our connection to ourself, autonomy. Really, the way we measure it is integrity or authenticity. Are you a whole person? Are you true to what you say? Do you follow your own values, or are you two-faced? The negative stereotype of lawyers would be anti-autonomy and anti-integrity. So that's the number one factor, are you well-connected with yourself? And who is, in modern society? What is ourself, even? [inaudible 00:23:00]. And then the next one's obvious, relatedness to other people. Are you closely connected with other people? Not are you around them? Not, do you tell them what to do? But do you feel a close intimate connection with them? The third one and the fourth one have to do with work, do you feel competent at your work, and are you motivated to do your work because you care about it? In other words, is- BREE: Right. LARRY: ... are you connected to it? Not just, are you doing it to pay the bills, but does it give you meaning and purpose in your life? Does it give you joy? So those are the top four, and then autonomy, support, relationship to supervisor. So those are the things. They're way up there as far as predicting well-being. If you don't have those, you're not going to be happy. BREE: Right. LARRY: These numbers are so huge. And then when you get down to made partner, like I said, it's .00. It had no effect on the lawyers, at all, being on Law Review, what all the law students get the most depressed about. .00 and for the layers, it had no effect. Income is very modest, it's .19. These others are .65. BREE: I mean, you just turned it all on its head, Larry. First, when I would see these, I would think I... I would question the validity of the study, almost, because it's so striking against what we're taught and inculcated to believe. But it's a huge set of people that you surveyed, so I'm a believer. It also resonates with me. There's what we've been told, but it resonates with me because it's my lived experience. I believe it, because that's... what I experienced is true, what you found. So, anyway. LARRY: Yeah, thanks for that. If you look at scriptures since time began, in any culture, whatever, they all say the same thing. BREE: Right. LARRY: Right? BREE: Yeah. LARRY: All the music that sells tons and all the movies that are so popular, it's all about love, not money. We actually did a factor analysis. Again, I got lucky. My brother's a math genius, PhD type neuroscience person, and when he saw these results, he said, "Oh, you should do a factor analysis." I said, "What's a factor analysis?" He said, "Well, tell Ken Sheldon. He'll know." You can see I've been led by the nose all the way through my life in this. So we did a factor analysis, [inaudible 00:25:35] in a nutshell, looks at all these top factors for well-being and what my brother said, and it turned out to be true. So those are so big and so close in numbers, that it's going to turn out that they're really saying the same thing. They're not actually five different things, they're going to be one. One thing that's more fundamental. So Sheldon, it took them five minutes when I emailed him, and he said, "Yeah, he's right. There is one thing that's accounting for most of this variability in all of them." He said, "Good luck. Now you have to figure out what it is. I'm just a psychologist, you're the lawyer, because Matthew won't tell you that." Over the years, I did, I think, figure it out, and I've already explained it to you, it's the feeling of connectedness. I tried to think, what is it that makes me feel good when I tell the truth, or when I do what I think is important to me, or when I hug someone, or when I do work that matters, or when I look at a sunset and I feel joy? What is it that they all have in common? It's feeling connected to life. More or life? So I think that's the key to everything going forward, is how do we get lawyers to think bigger, make the box bigger. Because the box we grew up with, that we assumed was going to work does not work. This research shows it so clearly with numbers. We have to get outside that box and think bigger for ourselves. CHRIS: Larry, you've obviously studied this in the context of lawyers, but I just... It's hard not to think about this and say what you've learned about lawyers is really the fact that we are human beings before we are lawyers, and if we take care of ourselves and the relationship and the connectedness... In your study, you talk about what a profile of a happy lawyer is. You could probably replace that with a profile of what a happy person is, and it's going to be equally applicable. LARRY: No question. Actually, that's how we set up the study, is we had all these hypotheses based on research on "normal people", or regular people, not lawyers. That's how we had set up our studies of law students to start with, is using self-determination theory, which had never really been tested on lawyers. That's what I meant when I said, I was just surprised how well it all bore out. These numbers are enormous. Correlations with happiness for each of these factors is like two thirds of a perfect correlation. If you have any one of those five, you're way up there already. But if you're missing any one of the five, you're really missing a lot. So, yeah. Actually, toward the end of the study itself, again, on ssrn.com, I talk about how lawyers are normal people. This is exactly what we would get with normal people. I got to say, I'm a little bit proud about this study because I don't think there's another one that quantifies it like this. This was a another bold step. Once we were getting these results, I asked Ken, I said, "Sir, is there any way we can actually measure these out, not just with P values, which is a probability?" Because they were all highly significant, so they all looked the same. But to show which ones are the strongest. He said, "Yeah, there's these Pearson correlations, these standardized correlation." So he sent me some articles to read about that. And I said, "Let's do that." That's how you actually get these numbers. Because you can't really compare... Bree, you mentioned, you can't really compare how much money you make with how close you feel to your children. They're on two different scales, one's in dollars, and one is in subjective warm and fuzzy feelings. So we were able to do those comparisons and show, for example, that earning more money is a .19 correlation with happiness, whereas having integrity, what we're always pushing lawyers about, is a .66. It's three and a half times as strong. We had to do that with the mathematical conversion into standard. So he was able to do that. Like you said, Bree, I expected to get just hammered once this study came out by people saying, this is garbage, and your methodology is garbage and this and that. Haven't had a single complaint about it, I think partly because every single thing we looked at in the study... And there's probably 50 or 60 correlations in here that people will be interested in like, what about having children? What about being married or a long term relationship? What about how many vacation days you take? What about how big a city you live in? What about the rank of your law school? We were able to compare all those, and everything came out consistently. So each of the findings confirmed each of the other findings. BREE: Right. CHRIS: Larry, first of all, you should be proud of your study. Again, I think it was more, ultimately, reaffirming than anything else, what many of us suspected. So, hey, let's take time to take a quick break. We certainly want to come back after the break and talk about implications of the study, some advice that you have, and then where you're going on the research front from here. So let's take a short break, and we'll be right back. — ADVERTISEMENT: Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard, our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com. — CHRIS: Okay. Welcome back to the podcast. We have Larry Krieger here, who published a seminal study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?. Larry, I'm curious, if you had an audience of a group of big law CEOs, HR officers, based on what you've learned, what words of advice would you give to them about having and nurturing successful lawyers? Because obviously, successful lawyers are the key to a successful firm and are, I think, the foundation of, ultimately, serving society as problem solvers. What advice would you have? LARRY: It'd probably be what I'm telling you two. You're CEOs of your organization. [inaudible 00:32:42] being proud of the study. I'm really smiling here so big while I'm talking to you all, because I'm really happy that it came out the way it did. It's wonderful, because I think it's helpful for people, if they take a look at it. I've already intimated what I would want to tell people, is we have to think bigger. Look, when I went to law school, this all started for me. I guess I was somewhat instrumental in getting it going in other circles and in legal education in particular. It started for me because I came with a different perspective. I came from outside the legal perspective. I had gone to college, I'd gone into the military, I'd seen some serious life-threatening situations, and some soldiers who didn't make it that I was transporting here and there. I lived in different countries. I not only took meditation, but I actually taught meditation. So I came with an outside-the-box perspective. And then when I came to law school, I said, "Oh, this box is too small. We have to think bigger. People are not coming to law school expecting to be happy. You've got to think bigger about your life." It was like a merit badge to be so stressed and stay up and be studying and having big circles on your eyes. I don't even want to be around this. This is just bad thinking. The more powerful you are, the more you know what it takes to be happy, usually. Now, that may not be true in our political system anymore. Those people are not happy, I don't care what party you're in. But as you become more successful, you should be becoming more happy. If you're not happy, you're not successful. There are great quotes from great philosophers that happiness is the highest form of success, and that has to be true. So first of all, I would tell CEOs, and I also tell law students the same thing, the highest form of success you can have is to really be deeply, consistently happy. If something sad happens, be sad, be in touch with your feelings. Everything you're doing, you went to law school, why? To become happy. You're making money. Why? To make you happy. You got married. Why? So you'd be happy. You had children. Why? Right? You're going to retire. Why? You'll be happier. Everything is for that, but we put it aside and get lost in the details. BREE: I want to ask you about your current research, and we'll make sure we have time to talk about that. It sounds like you're doing a bit of a pivot in your focus. Tell us about that. LARRY: I think is that the research is so helpful, it will challenge people. Because they may think, "Oh, my gosh, I've spent all my time doing this, and now I need to shift." You just need to make an internal shift, keep doing what you're doing, because you're good at it, but stop thinking that winning or being the greatest is going to make you happy. Just keep doing it because you're good at it and you're competent at it, and you can help people. That will make you happy. So it's this connectedness to self, to others, and to purpose that shows up in the study as being so strong for making people happy. If you don't have it, you're simply not going to be happy. That's what these numbers mean. So once we get there and we accept that, then I started thinking, "Well, how can I really teach my litigation students? Because they're stressed out, they're trying to learn this high pressure stuff, and they're going to lose lots of cases, just like I did. And I need to get them ready for that." So I started thinking, "Well, what's the most important connection that we could have?" And it comes right from that factor analysis, it's really our connection to life. Our connection to life. When we first got this research, and then the analysis, I thought, "Well, what's the difference between me feeling well-connected to you and caring about you guys, and the difference with me making lots of money and feeling well-connected to my money?" Why isn't that so satisfying? The answer is, there's no life in it. There's no life in it. I mentioned this to my minister, my little church I go to, and he told me this great quote from Thomas Merton, that love is an intensification of life. Love is an intensification of life, a wholeness. I looked it up. And I realized, yeah, that's what's making these lawyers happy. They're connecting with their own self, which is life, they're connecting with the life of other people that they care about. So life is connecting to life and reverberating back and forth. In my slideshows, in my PowerPoints, I use an image of a power cord that's plugging in at both ends, and you see electricity going. That's our life. So the more you plug into life and connect to it, the happier you're going to be. So that's one big piece of it. I'm trying to actually get Ken to do another study with me on spirituality and religion, showing that people who feel connected to whatever they believe, might be God or a higher authority, or this or that, if they feel connected and close to it, they're happier people than if they feel a fear of it, or like it's judgmental and this and that. So far I haven't got him there, but I will. I'll keep after him. But I think there's another area of science now that's so important for lawyers, which is the old power of positive thinking from the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale. But it's turning out to be scientifically really true. Epigenetics, neuroscience, neurobiology, biochemistry. There's a huge body of science now that when you think positively, you feel good, and when you think negatively or you have a negative belief, you feel bad. You can think of the optimism and pessimism research. Same thing. Optimist is just somebody with a mindset that everything is good, even if it sucks. "I got a flat tire. Well, that sucks, but I'll go have a cup of coffee. I got AAA. I'm lucky, I'll call AAA. I'll call and tell them I'm going to be late," and they're fine. Whereas a pessimist has the same flat tire, but has a different mindset and decides now life sucks. Not just this sucks, but life sucks, I suck, and it's never going to get better. BREE: Right. LARRY: So it's the exact same flat tire, it's the exact same client that got convicted of a DUI or got custody, whatever it is, but people frame it in different ways. The way they frame it makes about a 2,000-point difference in your biochemistry. 2,000 different chemicals in your brain and your body, depending on if you have a positive thought or a negative thought. And then that structures how you feel, how you work, how much inflammation you have, whether you're depressed, whether you age, or stay young, and whether you get the raise and the promotion or not, because people actually like being around you, and so forth. So really pushing that now, that people, we need to basically... We have two big things we need to do. First of all, we need to locate our life, and we need to connect to it. Of course, this is a lot of mindfulness and meditation stuff. But that first research shows how important it is to find life in what you're doing. If it doesn't have life, don't do it. [inaudible 00:41:01]. And then both inside and outside. And then the second thing is manage your thoughts proactively. We're so smart, but we have a tendency to think negatively. [inaudible 00:41:16] pessimistic way of thinking what can go wrong? BREE: Right. LARRY: So I'm really coming around, and I'm going to write a paper on this, it's coming pretty soon, about, first of all, work-life balance, real quick. I'll spend just a minute on each of these, because I know we're getting close on our time. Work-life balance is great. I don't think it's worked. The reason it hasn't worked is because nobody's finding life. We're saying we shouldn't be working all the time, let's have more life, but nobody really understands what life is. It's not going out on the golf course and getting aggravated. BREE: Wow. LARRY: It's not spending lots of time drinking. That's not life. It's like, you have to find your life, and then you have to express it to other people, and you have to find it in them, and let them express it to you. So it really involves going deeper inside taking care of your health, and being mindful and finding life. So I've been teaching law students and others, taking just simple meditation practices to do that. And then the second key thing is manage your thoughts proactively. The other sort of talisman we have besides work-life balance that I think is not working well is stress management. Stress management is way better than stress mismanagement, or unmanagement. But stress management, as a talisman, presumes we're going to be stressed. Why do we have to be stressed? To me, that's dumb thinking. You've got to think bigger than that. I actually just did a survey, it was just a random one, no IRB approval, but it's not going to be published, just to prove the point. I want Ken to research this with me, as well. I sampled a bunch of law students, one, two and three hours, just asking them, what did you think law school would be like? That's all. Give me one word. What did you think law school would be like before you started, and what do you think law practice will be like now? One or two words. So they had no bias [inaudible 00:43:34]. 70% of them said stress, burnout, anxiety. That's the mindset, even coming into law school. BREE: Right. LARRY: What this new research says, if that's what you expect, that is what you'll get. In other words, when you get a big assignment, now it's all about, I'm so stressed. I was telling my wife this morning, and then I'll close here, I'm going to get to talk to Bree and Chris today, and hopefully, some lawyers. I could be all stressed about this. I have so much work to do, I don't have time [inaudible 00:44:06]. Or I can say, this is a wonderful opportunity. It's going to be the same talk, either way. What you think it's going to be determines those 1,000 positive or 1,000 negative chemicals flushing through your body and your brain for the rest of the day. So we have to learn to be positive about it, and so we got to get rid of stress management. I would call it thought management, belief management. Just stop looking at the hours of stress. One other quick note. We do have a study that's going to probably be published in about six months, we're just submitting it in the next week or so, that shows that it's not actually the long hours that's making lawyers unhappy. It's not the long hours, it's the wrong work. People who like their work, they work more hours, they actually enjoy it. And the people don't like their work, when they... they're just as unhappy whether they're working long hours or not. So, we need to shift our focus on to find life inside yourself, embrace it, be grateful for it, connect to others, share your life, and think bigger, expect to be happy. Don't expect to be stressed. Because if you expect to be happy and start every day like that, you're going to be happy. Is garbage going to come up? Sure. People come to you because you're a lawyer, they have problems, if you're in that practice. Well, okay. So, let's help them with their problems as much as we can, and then let's go home happy. If we didn't fix them, it wasn't our problem, it was their problem. So we have to have that boundary there and appreciate ourselves. BREE: Larry, thank you so much. It's such a joy to hear you speak, and your point of view when you're thinking about these things. Again, going back to... really just confirms, I think, what I know and what we all know in our gut, in our heart about what makes life worth living. So thank you for that. It's a bit revolutionary, and we need you right now, we need thought leaders like you, and so I'm really excited to hear and read your studies that are coming out. I commend everybody, and I'm going to... We'll make sure that there's a link in the transcript of our podcast. But do take a look at the study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success. Again, it is really the work that kicked the current well-being movement off, and launched many other research projects that came from that. I've always thought that it is not... I think our listeners can hear that you are not ego-based, you're humble man. So there was not a lot of promotion of this study. I've really felt passionate about... In kicking off this series on research in this area, we had to start with you, because you are the Godfather of this area, Larry. So thank you so much, and we will be back in the next couple of weeks with other researchers to shed light on, what is the cutting edge thinking in this area? Chris, thank you too, for being here today, and take care everyone. We'll talk to you very soon. CHRIS: Thank you.  

Intro Banter - This is the (mostly) unscripted intro to the show! We catch up, play games, talk about games that perhaps did not make the main show, and just gab, Welcome!    Getting to know you - We look at certain boardgame related topics and explore strategies for getting involved. We discuss GRAIL games, what they are, why you should care and look into some strategies for acquiring them. (Looking at prices and why they cost so much, not an are they worth it discussion, just that they usually do and to be prepared for this)   Digressions - Short Two and a half minute rants and ravings from each host on off-tangent (Or on) topics as they see fit. Larry - What is Value in entertainment? Alex - Lubys & Bad games with lots of Minis.    General Genre’ - We look exclusively at a sample selection of games, by Genre’ only, taking note of all unique mechanics and explaining the differences and share our recommendations, experiences and activities within said framework. This time we look at Party games! The reason is it's a very popular genre’ a lot of these titles work as gateways, and also with the current environment, they can be played remotely fairly easily! Examples:  Codenames Captain Sonar  One Night Ultimate Werewolf Coup Two Rooms and a Boom    First Impressions – We talk about the first time with a title, from the acquisition to the first look, to the first play and deliver thoughts in writing and on the show. This segment will contain BOTH, so deliver the cliffs notes on the show to be discussed, then point to WHO has submitted deeper thoughts on the blog (can be either or both!)   Larry: Xia Legends of a Drift System by Cody Miller released in 2014 Published by Far Off Games   Alex: Scoville  by Ed Marriott released in 2014 published by Tasty Minstrel Games Other discussed games:  Welcome To: New Las Vegas  by Alexis Allard & Benoit Turpin Published by Blue Cocker Games & Deep Water Games Released in 2020 Welcome To by Benoit Turpin Published by Blue Cocker Games & Deep Water Games Released in 2018   Wits and Wagers by Dominic Crapuchettes Published by North Star Games Released in 2005 Take it Easy!  By Peter Burley Published by Burley Games Released in 1983 Happy Salmon by Ken Gruhl & Quentin Weir Published by North Star Games Released in 2016 dude  by Beau Beckett & Jeph Stahl Published by North Star Games Released in 2018  Obama Llama by Matt Edmondson Published by Big Potato Released in 2015 Snake Oil Board game by Jeff Ochs Published by Out of the Box Publishing Released in 2010 Cash n Guns by Ludovic Maublanc Published by Repos Production Released in 2014 (2nd ed.) Monikers by Alex Hague & Justin Vickers Published by Palm Court Released in 2015 Say Anything by Dominic Crapuchettes & Satish Pillalamarri Published by North Star Games Released in 2008 Werewords by Ted Alspach Published by Bézier Games Released in 2017 Links:  Podstudio1  BGG Definition of Party Games can be found Here Music:  As always from the amazing community of gifted musicians, arrangers, and composers over at ocremix.org go visit and support them for the full project and so much more amazing music! Intro/Interlude/Outro :  Green Dusty Highway  / by Dj Mokram Original Song: Forest Replay ~evaluation From The Album - VROOM: Sega Racing Project Page - https://tales.ocremix.org/ Original Composers - Naofumi Hataya  

Who is Brenda the Bride and what does she want from Larry? What wisdom does he give her and all single chix? What's the Krell Brain Boost and why does Elon Musk need it? Why is Elon Musk a pinhead? Is Larry's local supermarket a portal to another dimension? Who's Ravishing Rashmi and how pointy is she? How did Larry miss being killed by a NYC bus, witness a double homicide that looked like an effect from Dune, then eat French food with a pointy chick? Why are Los Angeles pedestrians the stupidest people on earth? How are Furries the same as corporate execs? All this and more!

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Niniane Wang CTO, Minted Date: September 6, 2011 [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT and with me is Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hi, Larry. How are you? Larry Nelson: Oh, I'm magnificent and very excited about being here. Lucy: Well we're doing another interview today as part of the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes series with great women entrepreneurs, people who have started companies and all types of technology sectors and have told us fabulous sectors. I think today is going to be especially good because we have the pleasure of interviewing a Chief Technology Officer... Larry: Yes. Lucy: ...which we always like to do. Today we're interviewing Niniane Wang, the CTO of Minted, and it's a great site. I went there last night to take a look at it and immediately sent the URL to two people who I know are in the world of design. Minted is a start-up out of San Francisco and it uses technology to crowd source graphic design for a global community. It's really a great site. You can go there and discover the work of great designers from all over the world. They have design challenges. People who achieve a popular vote have their designs on stationery and invitations. It's just a really interesting process for getting great new designs out there. Niniane, super cool and fun. What a great site. She's got a great track record at Google and Microsoft and she's now the CTO. Niniane, tell us a little bit about Minted and what's going on there. Niniane Wang: Thank you for that intro. I'm really glad that you enjoy our site. I thought you did a great job of explaining our mission. I t's great to hear that. I joined Minted about a year ago and I've been so happy. I lead the technology team including the engineering and technical operations. As you described Minted is a growing community of graphic designers from all over the world. We crowdsource designs for them in contests. The top ones are then sold on our site as templates where other people can customize and purchase anywhere from business cards, calendars, notebooks, wedding invitations, holiday cards, stationery, anything that has a design and is printed. I'm just very happy to be working with the amazing team here. It's a group of super-capable people who are very passionate. I feel lucky to come in to work every day. Lucy: Well some of our listeners might not know what a CTO or a Chief Technology Officer does. Why don't you say a couple words about that? Niniane: Basically the Chief Technology Officer manages the strategy and execution of technology within the company. For us, it is web software as well as operational software, in terms of keeping the website experience very usable, making sure that the [indecipherable 00:02:57] graphic designers that we service, as well as our customers, will have a world-class experience that is fast and able to help them achieve their goals. Then after orders are placed making sure that the software that lets each order be reviewed by a graphic designer will work smoothly, and then the technical operations of keeping our servers running on our site and internally. Lucy: That's a great job.  Larry: Yes. Niniane: For all of those things I lead the day-to-day operations as well as setting long-term strategy and vision. Lucy: Well, and that gets us to our first question around your experiences as an entrepreneur. How did you first get into technology? A follow-on question which I'll ask just right now, as you look out on the landscape today at technology, which ones do you see on the horizon that are particularly interesting? Niniane: OK. I got into technology by programming in BASIC when I was 5. It was very serendipitous. My parents had immigrated to the US so that my dad could get a Ph.D. in math. They didn't have a lot of time or money and they bought this game console from Radio Shack because we couldn't afford like a Nintendo. We just bought this Radio Shack game console, but it happened to have a BASIC interpreter on it. If you didn't have any game cartridges you could write BASIC programs. They came with a book of BASIC programs. I would just start copying in the programs. It was very visual, so all the programs basically looked like screen savers. They would be lines or triangles, some of the times the triangles move around the screen. I just amused myself this way. I think that learning has to be fun. It was very rewarding and a lot of instant gratification to type in something. I couldn't type yet, so I would just peck and take a really long time to tap in the program, but then getting the visual result was so wonderful. Actually, when I was eight, I went and took this beginner programming class. Then I discovered that I already knew how to program from typing in these BASIC programs, but I didn't know that that was what I was doing. Then once I had learned that throughout growing up, we encountered various people like grad students that my parents knew who thought it was fun to teach me other programming languages. In their spare time, they taught me LISP and I would play around with programming. I think most passionate programmers that I know started doing it because it was so fun. Lucy: You know, I wonder how many programmers got their start out of Radio Shack. [laughter] Lucy: I remember going to the Radio Shack. Larry: At five to eight years old, yes. Lucy: Yeah. What's your crystal ball reading on the technologies of the future. Niniane: Well I'm really excited by the Kindle, for one. I think it's changed the world of books and of publishing and made it accessible to people instantaneously. I've bought ten times as many books because of the Kindle. I carry my Kindle everywhere. I'm excited by disruptive technologies like that. Also for me personally, I like more artistic technologies, things that are very beautiful. I like a lot of these photo apps that have come out recently and a lot of the ways to use technology to create beautiful movies, beautiful modifications to peoples' existing videos and photos and being able to share that easily. Larry: Mm-hmm. Lucy: I like the Kindle too. I just got to hold one for the first time. I'm a little behind. Larry: Mm. Lucy: They're really excellent machines. Larry: She's always on top of things. [laughter] Niniane: Yeah. I guess in this vein I think human-generated content is becoming more and more critical. First we saw user-generated web pages. Then we saw proliferation of user-generated social information, updates of what people are doing. Then photos, statically, and videos, and now I think we are seeing more proliferation of people creating art. I see that as one of the most personally exciting movements that is coming up, of people creating... On Minted, they create these beautiful graphic designs, and I think, all forms of art, like the Kindle, allowing people to publish beautiful novels and works in writing, programs like Instagram, allowing people to share their beautiful photography with each other. A lot of interesting sites cropping up that now that we have passed the survival mode of people sharing functional information with each other, now we're going into, you could say the Golden Age of people sharing beautiful art with each other. Larry: Now I know you're a CTO, but what is it about the entrepreneurial spirit that makes you tick? Niniane: I really like being able to make fast progress. We sometimes have ideas that we then execute within a day, or even a few hours, we can start making progress on those ideas. This time between having an idea and to when it's live in our sight can be very short. I find that very rewarding. Larry: Mm-hmm. Niniane: There's a lot to do. The whole company is rowing one boat together, so people's interests are aligned. It's all about making fast progress toward a really passionate vision that everyone shares. Larry: That's great. That is super. Lucy: Well I think the thing about fast progress is really, we hear that a lot. It's the ability to decide and move I think that a lot of people really like about the startup companies. Niniane: Totally. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Niniane, who supported you or led you into this entrepreneurial career path? I know you had experience with larger corporations and you chose to then come to a smaller company and help it get its footing. Why? Niniane: Well I was surrounded by many people who have chosen to join a startup or create a startup. Many of my ex-Google friends have started their own startups and were able to talk pretty candidly with each other. I think that many people, too many to list, have really benefitted me by being honest with their own experiences and by showing with their own example how fulfilled they feel by being able to turn their vision into reality and to have a large impact on their startups. Larry: All right. I've got another tough question for you. Lucy: [laughs] With the word tough in it. Larry: With the word tough in it, yeah. Lucy: [laughs] Larry: What is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Niniane: There are actually a couple of things that I would say have both been very tough, both around projects ending in a way that was less successful than I would like. When you work in large corporations, sometimes projects will get cancelled. I would say that project cancellations would be the toughest things that I've experienced, both in my own having to come to terms with accepting that certain visions will not be carried out, and sometimes then having to be the extension of carrying that out even though it's very painful for me having to then carry out the ramifications of that decision. I think that the cases that I can see how events led and my own actions contributed as well. I can see the responsibility that I and the circumstances and other people combined to lead to these projects ending prematurely, but it's always a very painful thing because I tend to really put my heart into the project and fall in love with it. Having something end is like divorce or like your spouse dying. [laughs] It's a very painful process, but I think that that's what happens when you take risks. Overall, I recognize the necessity and I can self-reflect and think about what I can do better in the future. But at the time it's always a very challenging experience. Lucy: I just so resonate with that. My background is in R&D at Bell Labs. That was a very painful part of being on leading-edge projects because they technically could be wonderful, but also ahead of their time or people didn't know how to sell them or the population not ready or perhaps technically they just didn't come together. But, really great technologists do fall in love with their projects. T,hat's what makes them great. Niniane: Yeah, except the fact that then have to tell other people that have also fallen in love with it either users or other team members who are equally in love and who are pleading to have it go on, to be the person to tell them that it cannot, when I myself am also grieving. I think that is also very challenging, but it is a learning experience. Lucy: It is an essential component of leadership, unfortunately, for sure. Well, if we had a young person on the phone and pre-career and you were giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what advice would you give them? Niniane: I would give two pieces of advice. The first advice is a quote that says "Never compare your insides with someone else's outsides." [laughter] Lucy: Say that one more time. That's great. Niniane: The quote is "Never compare your insides with someone else's outside." Lucy: OK. Niniane: The idea is that inside we're all feeling bad or nervousness, or we might be having some tension with someone we're working with that we're working through, but it's causing us stress. From the outside, we all seem perfect and completely on top of everything. If you are looking at somebody from a distance, if you are basically looking at their PR around them, you're not going to see all of their human foibles that they share just like everyone else. What can happen is that, especially as an entrepreneur, you're going through so many challenges and taking risks. If you just look at other people from a distance you won't see they're going through the same thing and you'll feel isolated. It helps if you have some close friends who are going through similar experiences that you can talk to and talk candidly. If you just talk to distant acquaintances, they'll always say things are going perfectly and everything is wonderful. It's important to have close friends you can talk candidly with to feel more supported. The second piece of advice I have is go read a book that I recently read. It's called Touch the Top of the World. It's by a man named Erik Weihenmayer. It's an autobiography. He had an eye disease as a child, and he went blind by age twelve. At first he really struggled and felt victimized and felt, "why me?" That it's so much harder for him to do something basic like walk down the hall. But, then he started to be action-oriented and to learn how to triumph despite this adversity. He started doing wrestling because it's a close contact sport. Then he started doing rock climbing. He then went on to climb mount McKinley. Then he summitted Everest. Now he has become the first blind person to climb the seven summits which is the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, including Antarctica. Lucy: Wow. Niniane: I read this book and I felt so inspired that this guy went blind and instead of, "Oh I'm going to wallow in feeling disadvantaged in feeling that it's so easy for other people to see the path up a mountain and walk up it," whereas he has to use poles and he has to devise these systems to use sound and to have his climbing partners wear bells and all these complicated procedures, he chose to triumph through them and be action-oriented. I felt really inspired because I think all of us feel disadvantaged in some way. You can either be a victim, I've heard women say, "Oh it's so much harder for women and men do this they get away with it, it's so much more difficult." Or people will say, "I'm so much younger people won't take my seriously," or "I'm much older people think I'm obsolete." Everyone has some way that they feel that it's so much harder for them than for most other people. We could either allow it to paralyze us or decide that we will take the actions necessary to deal with that. That is so fulfilling and inspiring to other people. I think that for me, reading this book and seeing how he actually... All these examples of the painful but fulfilling challenges he went through. I see a very interesting parallel to entrepreneurship. I highly recommend it. Lucy: Wow. Fabulous. Larry: That's great. Now, you've been with huge companies. You're now CTO at Minted. What do you think your personal characteristics that given you the advantage of this entrepreneurial spirit? Niniane: A couple of things come to mind. One thing is a tend to do thing because I love them. Not because I think it would be best for my career or because it will impress other people or it will great in five years, something like that. I think that I really follow my heart. Sometimes nervously. [laughter] . But, I really fall in love with my work. It's very hard for me to do work that I'm not in love with. I think that it actually makes a lot of things easier. Because your gut will help guide you. I really believe in Minted's mission. I think we are helping graphic designers all over the world find an outlet for their talents and be able to get community and make money from it. We are helping consumers find excellent unique designs. Being in love with that mission and with the missions of previous projects that I'm working on really make things easier. It makes it possible to travail all through the inevitable bumps that come along the road because you're in love with what you're doing. Just like when you're in love with your child, it's much easier when your child gets sick. I think that has helped. I would say that the second thing that I have found helpful is the throughout my life there were incidents where people told me certain things were impossible or that I would regret doing them and I'd did them anyway and then they were great. [laughter] Lucy: [laughter] Good for you. Niniane: I skipped three grades when I was growing up. I graduated high school at fourteen and I went to CalTech and graduated CalTech in Computer Science when I was eighteen. A lot of people told me it was going to be bad in so many ways and that I'd be socially outcast or I would romantically have trouble or various gloom and doom predictions. Even along the way, as I wanted to take more advanced courses or start taking college courses when I was in junior high or whatnot, people had all sorts of predictions about how it'd be so bad for me. I felt like they all were not true. They did not come to pass. Seeing so many people say that things were impossible or they would have these bad repercussions and then have them turn out totally false makes me skeptical when people say now that something is not going to work. I think being a woman in a predominantly male industry there are sometimes people who will say similar doubting statements but to me know I'm used to ignoring that tone of prediction because, in my experience, it tends to not come to pass. Lucy: The thoughts are just a downer, right? I mean [laughter] , it just like go away and keep those remarks to yourself. Larry: I have four daughters and they say the same thing. Niniane: Yeah. Lucy: You've mentioned a few times about being in love with your work and it really comes across in how you speak about your projects and about Minted. On the other side of it though, we often have to, should be blending at least a little of our personal time in with work. How do you handle that? The demands of a startup with really being able to hang out with the friends and the family that mean a lot to you. Niniane: I think it's actually a similar philosophy which is do what you love as much of the time as possible. It doesn't necessarily mean you won't do grunt work, because just like with my analogy with the child, if you love your child you will be doing things you don't particularly enjoy like driving them long distances. But, my philosophy is to spend as much time as possible doing things that I really love, whether that is work or picking up a hobby or reading. I love reading on my Kindle. [indecipherable 00:19:51] whatever that is, I think it is good to spend as much time as possible on it. I've actually seen some research that if you focus on what you like to do, what you really feel passionate about doing that you will then become more successful at it because your mind is focused on it a lot. You will gravitate towards things that you are strong at. I think it's actually when you do what you love, it becomes much easier to blend personal life with professional life because you're not gritting your teeth doing something you don't love and then finally being able to go and do other things that you do love. Or trying to stuff down your instincts to stop doing something that you don't enjoy. I think that when you love the things you're doing, it actually becomes much easier to switch between them or to decide how to allocate time between them. Lucy: That's true. Larry: That is absolutely true. You know, Niniane, you have accomplished so much. You've done a great deal with the big companies, which you're doing now. What is it you think you're going to be doing next? Niniane: Well I was intending to keep doing, just keep following my heart and doing what I love. For the foreseeable future we are doing some really exciting things as Minted and making, building off the successes the site has already had to be able to expand this vision and enable more graphic designers and get our designs out to more consumers in various methods. I know some people like to have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan but I actually feel like the best opportunities of my life have come by being open. I wasn't really looking to switch from Microsoft to Google, but I felt that joining Google would be a good experience. I try to just stay open and listen carefully to my gut and then keep doing things that I enjoy. Lucy: Well we can't wait to see what those things will be. Larry: Nope. Lucy: I just think that Minted is such a great thing. Niniane: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this interview. Lucy: Well we enjoyed having you. I want to remind listeners where this is. Although they're listening to us I guess they'd know where it is, but they could pass it along to others. Www.ncwit.org and Larry: W3w3.com. Lucy: Thank you very much Niniane we really enjoyed that. Larry: Thank you. Niniane: Thank you so much. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Niniane WangInterview Summary: Niniane Wang began programming in basic on a game console from Radio Shack when she was just five years old. Now serving as the CTO of Minted, Niniane has come a long way in her technological pursuits. Release Date: September 6, 2011Interview Subject: Niniane WangInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 22:24

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Laura Fitton CEO and Co-founder, OneForty Date: April 25, 2011 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes: Interview with Laura Fitton [musical introduction] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women In Information Technology. This is the next interview in a series of interviews we've had with women who have started wonderfully successful tech companies. We're always interested to catch up with our latest entrepreneur and see what she's doing. With me is Larry Nelson, W3W3.com. What's going on at W3W3, Larry? What's the news? Larry Nelson: Well, I'm trying to learn more about Twitter. Other than that, things are going good. We've got a number of business people who tune into the various shows with NCWIT. It's not only business leaders and parents, but also many young women who listen for some great ideas. Lucy: Today we're interviewing someone who is known as the Queen of Twitter, Laura Fitton. I guess that's why you said something about Twitter, isn't it? [laughter] Well, you need to get the number right in your Twitter. Larry: I was just trying to check her out there. Lucy: We're interviewing somebody who is known as the Queen of Twitter, Laura Fitton. Laura Fitton: [laughter] I think Lady Gaga deserves the crown now. Lucy: Lady Gaga! Laura: Once upon a time. Lucy: [laughter] That would be great, maybe we should try to interview Lady Gaga. Any way, Laura is the founder of oneforty.com. Oneforty.com helps people understand Twitter and the exploding ecosystem of applications and services built on it. Oneforty.com has been called the "app store" for Twitter by TechCrunch and others. It's really a place to find awesome tools that really help you use Twitter, not just in ways for yourself but also for your business and so forth. I went and looked at some of the apps there and it just shows how much I need to catch up on the world of Twitter. [laughter] Laura: It's so true. We started out the Consumer App store and quickly learned from our users that they need us to cut through all the noise and provide them with reporting, with solutions to streamline their social business. Oneforty.com is really the place where tool providers, experts, and business leaders are sharing all their advice and lessons learned regarding social business. If your business needs to be getting into social media, this is the place to start. Lucy: Well, Laura, we're really happy you're here today. Maybe you could start off quickly telling us the latest news from oneforty.com. I think it's a place that most of us really need to know about. Laura: Sure! Thank you. In the last four months, we've done a pretty significant pivot, again user-led. We offered people a little thing we called "Toolkits," which were these humble little lists. The idea was, well you're using Twitter online but you're also using it on your phone and a few other places, using a lot of different tools. People came in and said, "Well, here's how to market a car dealership," "Here's how to market a restaurant." Or, "Here's what a realtor needs to know about social media and social business." So we responded to our users like any good startup does. In the last three weeks, we have completely relaunched the site centered around four business personas. All of the directory is still there, but we're really focusing it on connecting people with what they need to streamline and scale social. Lucy: So oneforty.com three weeks ago had a relaunch? That's pretty exciting news. Like I said, the site was just great and I really enjoyed looking at it yesterday. Laura: Thank you so much. The other thing that's new is that I was just on a webinar where I gave a sneak preview of some products that we're just launching that put everything you need for social all in one place-tools, all the workflow, all the guides on what to do next. Kind of training wheels for social engagement, making it really easy. Lucy: So Laura, it's really pretty exciting times at oneforty.com. Thanks very much for telling us all about the new site launch three weeks ago. It's really a great site and we really appreciated taking a look at it earlier this week. One of the things we like to find out from our entrepreneurs is how they first got interested in technology, as well as ask them a follow-up question to that where we ask them to look into their crystal ball regarding which technologies they think are out there that will change things even more? Laura: Awesome. Well I was a kid who was really into science, so I came to technology through science. In fact, my degree is in Environmental Science and Public Policy. I always played around with consumer web technologies, but never got involved in software development or anything like that, quite up until I did the startup. So it was a very odd choice for me, because I'd never seen software built. I knew tons of people in the interactive industry who did build software. I had lots of friends who had invested in it, had worked at startups, had run startups. But I myself had never done it. My connection to startups was that I was kind of a communications consultant. I did a lot of work on helping people to present and speak more effectively. And obviously entrepreneurs are constantly on the hot-seat having to present, so I stayed very close to the startup community but never dove into it myself. Long story short, I moved to Boston in 2006 just in time to have my second kid. They're like 14 or 15 months apart. I've no business network up here and I have to restart that communications consulting firm after nearly two years out of the market. So I get into blogging. I hear about this Twitter thing. I blog how stupid this Twitter thing is, around March 2007. And then two months later, the nickel drops and I say, wait a minute. I can surround myself with successful, interesting people and still be this home-based mom of two kids under two, and yet stay motivated and inspired throughout my workday. And that is exactly what appealed to me about Twitter when Twitter finally did appeal to me. Then I got so emphatic over how so much it was changing my life and how amazing and exciting it was for me that I just ran out there with this blog post called, "Ode to Twitter" on something like August 11, 2007. I mailed it to Guy Kawasaki, who, believe me, had never heard of me. And I just started telling everyone who would listen. To my great luck, Guy Kawasaki did listen and then turned around and trumpeted to the rest of the world. So in this very short time, I went from not even really knowing what the term "web 2.0" means in March 2007 to being profiled by the author of "Naked Conversations," one of the first major books in the space, less than a year later in April 2008. The next month, Wiley is coming to me asking me to write "Twitter for Dummies." I'm relaunching my communications consulting firm as a Twitter for business consulting firm, which was a little insane to do in September 2008. It was still really early on the concept and I'm just incredibly lucky that I staked my career on Twitter and not on one of the competitors like Pounce or Plurk, most of which have dried up or disappeared. I got very excited about a technology, because it made huge personal and professional changes in my life. It's like the classic adage to follow your passion and you can't go wrong. I was still was dragged into it kicking and screaming, though. For four months after having the idea for oneforty.com, I was trying to pawn it off on somebody else. But hey, you go build the startup and I'll advise. I'm smart enough to not do a startup. I know they're kind of hell. I'm in the middle of a divorce and have two very young kids. (They were two and three at the time.) And yet I failed at quitting it. I kept trying to quit it and I kept failing at quitting. So in March 2009 I finally started it up in earnest and it's been two years now. Lucy: You know, your comments kind of lead to our second question. Larry: Boy, I'll say, is that a fact. Here you came into this thing through science. You've been through all the different types of things, you knew you wanted to give it up. But... Lucy: And she tried to not be an entrepreneur. Larry: Yeah, exactly. Laura: I tried so hard. I'd worked for a startup in my 20s and the guy was nuts. [laughter] Laura: I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs and I love entrepreneurs. You have to be fundamentally out of touch with reality on some level to be an entrepreneur, because otherwise you would know that your idea can't possibly work. You need enough detachment from that to be able to go make it work. Which is great, but boy, it puts you into some weird places, doesn't it? Larry: Boy, I'll say so. What is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Laura: I don't know, because I never thought I was an entrepreneur until this happened. [laughter] I have mad curiosity. I love to see things for myself. One of the people who has been kind enough to mentor me is Tony Hsieh, who is the CEO of Zappos. I won't be able to remember exactly what they were, but he asked me three very simple framing questions when I was kind of whimpering and whimpering and saying that I couldn't possibly be the CEO. It was, "Do you have that natural drive and curiosity?" "Do you want to see things for yourself?" And one other thing. He said, "If you have that, you're good. Everything else, you can learn." Lucy: Zappos is a great company. I just ordered my son four birthday shirts from them. Larry: Oh, all right! [laughter] Laura: That's the [inaudible 9:00] , girl. Tony is a fantastic human being, very generous with what little time he has. Lucy: It sounds like Tony definitely supported you on your way on your career path. Do you have other role models or mentors or other people who influenced you? Laura: I was carried by this net, literally my network. When I first did my angel pitch, there were a few people I knew in the investment community who charitably dialed in to hear it and asked me leading questions to help me understand what I was missing. One of them was Christine Herron, who at the time was with First Round Capital and now is with Intel Capital. She literally had to ask me in my first angel pitch, "Laura, where's the pricing coming from?" And I didn't even know what the word "pricing" meant at that point. [laughter] I was that naive. I tried to answer it. Later another person-again, these were friends because of social networking-Dave McClure was kind enough to take the time to listen to the recording. He asked, "Do you know what Christine was trying to tell you, Laura?" I said candidly, "No." And he explained it to me. So I was carried by this huge network of cheerleaders and supporters and mentors. One of the weird, kind of, "rags-to-riches, Cinderella" aspects of all of this is, I was so completely unknown, and then a year later I was in a book by Seth Godin and I was being mentored by Seth and by Guy Kawasaki and by people whose blogs I'd been reading for a long time and looking up to. And it actually took awhile to come to terms with accepting that. Like I felt guilty. I felt like, why am I getting all this time from all these busy people, there's nothing that special about me, I'm just sort of whatever. And then the way I came to peace with how incredibly generous the world was being with all of this was just like, OK, maybe they see a chance to get something done in the world by helping me get it done. So my responsibility to pay back the debt of all this mentorship is not only to do mentoring when I finally have bandwidth to do it, but to follow through and to make sure I realize the riches I've been given and try to create something with it. So that's been incredibly powerful to keep me going. Lucy: Well, and you know this interview is part of a give back. We have had a lot of people listen to these interviews, we have a social networking campaign with Twitter right now, on this interview series, so we really thank you for being with us and giving some of that advice back. Laura: Thanks. Larry: Well you know with all of the neat things you've done, Laura, what is the toughest thing that you've ever had to do in your career? Laura: That is such a great question. I was going to say that, the days after you run into a wall, because make no illusion, you run into a wall time, time and time again when the start-up [inaudible 11:46] , you fail all the time. Investors flake, co-founders drop out, people you hired don't work out, whatever. It's constantly running into a wall. And the next moment where you have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off, is really painful, it's hard. And just staying calm and.. and one lesson I've learned? Being radically nice to everybody, even if they kind of screwed you over. Because it preserves the relationship and you never know where that relationship leads in the future. That said, I'm very lucky, in that the energy just kept surging back to get through those times. I can't even take ownership of that, it was like being a lightning rod. I would give up, I would go to sleep like, "OK it didn't work, tomorrow I'll figure out something else," and I'd wake up still hell-bent on making it happen. So I was lucky. Lucy: Wow, it's great advice to be radically nice to people, even if you think they screwed you over. [laughs] I mean, it's powerful advice and I think it's advice that you might give to any young person who was thinking about being an entrepreneur. Do you have any other advice that you might tell a young person if they were on this call right now or listening to this interview? Laura: I think it's really important to not discount the most trite, childhood, what-your-mother-tells-you of all, is really be yourself. People told me that. I really struggled growing up, I was not socially well adapted, I was very emotional and kind of out of touch with my colleagues, like had a hard time in elementary school. And everyone was like, "oh just be yourself!" and I'm like "yeah, right." You know, "everybody hates me, I can't be myself." But it is so true that the more I was able to connect with "OK, that is what makes me tick, I'm just going to go with it." I mean, I never set out to think, "I'm going to rave about Twitter for a year and a half and someday it's going to be my job to do that." I just couldn't contain my excitement. So things worked out really well for me. I was very lucky. Larry: You know, with all the things that you've been through, in your childhood, preschool and everything else, what are the personal characteristics that really give you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Laura: Definitely resilience. Some of the greatest gifts that I've been given in life were times that frankly sucked. I won't trot them all out, but... a couple tough things here and there. A couple really scary things that ended really well, like a premature baby and a very minor stroke, and things like that. But those are huge gifts and I don't think people see them in the moment when they're first happening. Again, I want to fall back to the trite, "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but there is huge, huge, huge silver lining in every negative thing that happens to you. Even if it's just making up a story in your head like "hey, that felt really terrible but I actually just dodged a bullet, because it could have been this," and I look back at the tough times and I am so grateful for every single one of them. I'm sad for the places where something terrible happened and it made other people sad, but I'm so grateful for how much strength they gave me and how much ability to bounce back and how much calm they gave me. I would not give up a single one of them. Lucy: That's just wonderful advice. That's so true of life in general, right? Being able to learn from tough times. Laura: Yeah. Lucy: And really integrate that into how you're looking at situations. Laura: I really do just straight-up cherish some of them. Lucy: Yeah, I think personally I had some in my corporate career that ultimately led to me coming here and doing what we're doing now with MC Wit, and it's just kind of interesting when you look back and thing "gosh, if that hadn't happened I wouldn't be here." Larry: Yep. You bet. Laura: Right! Lucy: It's totally the case. Laura: You know one of the more bizarre things I did was when I was about 26 or 27 I kind of more or less adopted one of my nieces. Who was, you know, "go and live with your aunt for the fun of it," right? So she had a couple things. And my mom was so, like, almost mad at me. She thought I was crazy to do it. But it was huge, I got so much more out of that experience than I put into it. A lot of growing up, a lot of taking responsibility, a lot of learning about how radically permanent love for a child is, because she really was functionally my daughter for three years, when she was 15, 16 and 17. And I remember thinking, "oh how hard can it be?" And wow, it was really hard. You know, being a teenager is tough, and being a teenager who's had a crappy run-in up to there was tough, too. But it took me out of my shell, it made me connect to people in new ways, my career catapulted because I had to get my act together. And I just love her so much, it was just incredible, it taught me a lot. Lucy: Well and that kind of gets to our next question we were talking some about, sometimes people say "oh, you should have balance between your work and your personal life," and how do you bring balance. We've talked to people about it really being an integration, and we're just curious to get your point of view on this issue of work- life balance and how you achieve it? Laura: It's tough and I don't think I'm super good at it. Yeah, not enough. I try to be really present with my kids when I'm not working. I would really love to bike commute more often, because it's about a nine mile, very flat, ride, very easy, takes the same amount of time the train does but forces me to exercise. And I think that's really important in managing the stress. Again, in a twisted way, I'm lucky that I'm divorced, because my ex is a fantastic dad, and he and his fiance are a great family for my girls in the 50 percent of the time I don't have them. I use that 50 percent of the time I don't have them to do all the extremes like, stay up late and work, or travel, or the different things you have to do to do a start-up. And I think that it would be tough if it was an intact marriage, and I didn't have that really clear-cut line of "OK, you are not a mommy right now." Yeah, of course I call them and stuff like that. But I'm not functionally needing to be there for them. And being more present when I am there with them. Larry: My goodness, I must say that you have really done a great deal, you've achieved a lot. What's next for you? What's on the horizon? Larry: You know, I don't think you ever feel like you've achieved a lot. I always feel just like, "oh crap, what's next? Oh my god, we've got to surmount this, we've got to surmount that." It's not like our company's profitable. It's not like we have a billion users. And I think if you asked everybody along wherever they are in the entrepreneurial process, they'd probably talk a lot more about what's yet to come than about what they feel they've achieved. So there's a ton of professional development I want to do, a lot of skills I want to improve upon and learn. I have this little fantasy about joining a team in the future where I'm a relatively junior part and I can really stretch and grow and learn from others who are just the best at what they do. I still don't have very much management experience, I never had an employee before oneforty.com, and so that means it's been really tough for me and for my employees to learn how to manage on the fly, learn all about software on the fly, learn all about business on the fly. And I just feel like I have so much more growing to do. Lucy: Well we have no doubt that oneforty.com is headed towards great success. Laura: Thank you very much. Lucy: We really do thank you and wish you the best of luck. So I want to remind listeners that they can find us at w3w3.com and also mcwit.org and to tell their friends this is a great interview, and to go visit oneforty.com and learn more about how to use Twitter. I know Larry's going there! Larry: I'm going to oneforty.com . Lucy: I saw him underline "Twitter for Dummies." [laughter] Laura: It's tough, right, I can't really give out my book as a gift because it's a bit insulting, isn't it? Thank you so much for the opportunity, such a salute out to, it shouldn't matter, but to the women in technology who are my heroes. Because it is inspiring to see, you know, Padmasree Warrior as the CEO of Cisco, Kara Swisher just tearing it up in tech journalism, Katarina [inaudible 19:01] , one of the first social media founders of a company. Rash [inaudible 19:12] is running slideshare.net, Marissa Meyer who's done phenomenal things at Google. It shouldn't matter whether, you know, I'm inspired by lots of men, too, but it really does mean a lot and I'm just so grateful for all of them and their work. Lucy: Well thank you, and I know people are really going to enjoy this interview. Larry: Yeah, thank you. Laura: Thank you. Lucy: All right, bye Laura. Laura: Take care, bye bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Laura FittonInterview Summary: Once upon a time known as "Queen" of Twitter, Twitter's own mom-at-home to tech CEO Cinderella Story is CEO/Founder of www.oneforty.com and co-author of Twitter for Dummies. You can read her story in the Boston Globe, on Xconomy.com or watch her Mixergy interview. Release Date: April 25, 2011Interview Subject: Laura FrittonInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:12

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Dr. Marcie Black Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Bandgap Engineering Date: August 23, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and with me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com Internet radio. Larry Nelson: Yes. Lucy: And we are very happy to be doing one in a series of interviews with women who have started IT companies and we love this series because there is so much wisdom with these entrepreneurs that everybody can benefit from. Larry: Yes, it's very exciting and we get a tremendous amount of business leaders, parents, all with different ages of people who tuned in and listen to this and we are very happy because we know that we need a lot of encouragement in this area. Lucy: Absolutely and very excited about today's interview. We are interviewing an entrepreneur who is helping the world solve our energy problems. We all know energy is a very important topic, very hot topic and the person we are interviewing today is a very impressive one. She has very impressive technical credentials with a PhD from MIT and also post doctoral work at Los Alamos laboratory. So, very, very well credentialed to take on the energy problems of the world. So, just to get right to it. We are interviewing Marcie Black who is the CTO and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering. And we are going to let her tell us a little bit about what the company does but in brief, they pioneered the development of highly tunable and inexpensive methods for nano structuring silicone and they are applying that technology to high efficiency solar cells. So, Marcie, first of all welcome and why don't you tell our listeners what this technology is all about. Marcie Black: Lucy and Larry, thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here. So, Bandgap Engineering is reducing the cost of solar electricity and the reason why we are doing that is there are a lot of trade-offs in producing electricity and by moving to renewable energy source, we can lessen some of those trade-offs. And solar is the only renewable energy source that has the potential of being or dominant energy supply. So, there's a couple of ways to reduce the price of solar electricity so that it is cost competitive with conventional sources. One of the ways is by reducing the cost of processing the semi conductors. But another way is increasing the efficiency of the solar cell and by increasing efficiency means that you can get more power over the same area of the solar cell. So, what Bandgap Engineering is doing is increasing the efficiency of the solar cell while keeping the cost per area constant. And that effectively will bring down the cost of electricity from solar energy making it cost competitive with other conventional energy sources. And as you mentioned the way that we are increasing the efficiency is by nano engineering silicone so that it's a better converter of energy from optical energy to electrical energy. Lucy: Wow. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Now, see, I just write softwares. I'm pretty impressed. Larry: No small thing. Lucy: It is very important and it is a young company, isn't it Marcie? Marcie: Yeah, we are about three years old. Lucy: Awesome. So, how did you first get into technology? You obviously love technology and I think our listeners would be very curious to know how you first became interested in it and besides, the nano technology which you are using today, other technology that you see are especially important. Marcie: Yeah like many engineers. I've emerged from very early on. So, I remember when I was very young, my father who was also an engineer would take me to the basement and we'll build electronic circuits and radios and do all kind of cool, crazy stuff in the basement. But when I got older, I didn't explore. At AT&T Bell Labs and what that was I call that branch of boy scouts and we were able to go into AT&T and basically, play with other toys. So, play with their softwares, computers and play with some of their electronic stuff. And that I really developed a love for understanding how things work and using that knowledge to build something from it. I say that's my first exposure to technology. And as far as what technologies I think are cool, for me what's cool is the applications. So I get very excited when a technology comes out that has the chance of really improving the world. And I think that right now we're at a very critical point in history where there's a lot of technologies that are coming out that will help us live in balance with the world around us. And I find that very exciting. So it's not just renewable energy. But for example, I read about some technologies that can take salt water and turn it into fresh drinking water without using very much electricity to do it. And I find that very exciting. Also a lot of the work with the Smart Grid I find very interesting. So right now it costs a lot more money to produce electricity when all of your neighbors are using electricity, but it doesn't cost very much to produce it in the middle of the night when no one's using it. So a lot of the technologies out there are to help levelize that load, which is good for conventional energy sources but is also good for renewables as well. And there's also a lot of battery technology out there that I find very interesting and has the potential of being storage for the national grid. So I like looking at how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and seeing how this critical time in history is going to unfold to the point that we are burning less coal and living more in harmony with our surroundings. So I find that very exciting. Lucy: Well and we do too. We just interviewed the CTO of WiTricity, wireless electricity. And that was just fascinating. That whole area is so interesting. Larry: It sure is. Now Marcie, here you are a "nerd." You've been with some magnificent companies, from Lucent and AT&T and all, and certainly a crossover with Lucy's background also. But why are you an entrepreneur and what is it about you that makes this entrepreneur tick? Marcie: I never woke up and said, "I think I want to be an entrepreneur." For me it was more about how to best get technology into the marketplace. And so I worked in government labs, and academia, and big industry. And they all have a piece in the puzzle. But I think if you are really driven by taking an idea, and making a product out of it, and getting it into the consumers' hands, I think the fastest way to do that is in a small company. And so for me that's part of what makes me interested in being an entrepreneur. I also really enjoy in a small company the team atmosphere. And how everyone is working together to make the company move foreword and helping each other just to make it work. I find that very motivating in doing a small company. Lucy: Well we almost have to work together. Larry: Yes, you bet... Marcie: Right, right. Otherwise the company won't succeed. Lucy: Absolutely. It is true. We were just reading... I forget where it was that a lot of the smaller companies now are where real innovation is going on. The adaptation of ideas and so forth, that's where a lot of the job creation is right now as well. So it is an interesting time in start-ups. So along the way you mentioned that you had had this time with Lucent and time with Bell Labs where you could be in the labs and tinker with things. And that your father encouraged you from an early age. Who else has encouraged you in this path? Being a technologist, of taking risks, and being an entrepreneur? Marcie: That's a good question. I felt very fortunate to have had so many people really help me throughout my career at different times. So when I was young I mentioned my father introduced me to the love of science and engineering. And later on a lot of my professors really taught me how to think critically and understand technological problems. And into my Ph.D. my advisor was Professor Millie Dresselhaus, and she taught me. She's a very hard worker. She works all the time. And that taught me the value of a strong work ethic. And throughout my career there have been other people. Like now there are quite a few people including my board members and other mentors that help me on how to learn the new set of skills that you need to know when you're starting a business. So I can't really pin down one person. There's been a whole bunch of people that have been very nice to help me out throughout they years. Larry: You've done lots of very interesting things, and I would like to ask the question: What is the toughest thing that you've had to do during your career? Lucy: [laughs] There's been a lot of things that have been tough throughout my career, but I have to say the most difficult is probably starting Bandgap, because there are so many aspects that have to come together in order to make a company successful. So, when you're doing research, you have to get the technology right, and the engineering right. But, in a small company, you also have to get the IP right, and the culture right, and set up a good infrastructure in the company. There are million different things to think about, that all have to come into play in order for the company to be successful. So I find that both challenging and rewarding at the same time, but it's definitely the most challenging part of my career so far. Lucy: I have a follow up question to that. We don't really interview many cheap technology officers; we will interview founders or CEOs. So, our listeners may want to know, what is the role of a CTO in a startup company? How would you describe what you do in Bandgap? Marcie: I think it's funny because I've been talking to a lot of my other CTO founder friends, and what we've decided is that the title really doesn't mean much. It basically means you do what needs to be done to make the company successful. So, different people end up doing very different jobs with the same title. So, some people are in the labs, working side-by-side with their people, and other people are filing patents and writing grants. And other people are doing all of the above. So, I think it depends on the company and what the company needs, as well as what the CTO founder wants to do. Larry: Good point. Lucy: Great answer. I think that the role of CTO is pretty broad in a lot of companies. And I think it's really good advice hidden in what you just said: don't get hung up on the title. When you're in a startup company, everybody's there to row the boat and it doesn't really matter what they're doing, as long as the boat's moving forward. If you were talking to a young person about being an entrepreneur, what other advice would you give them? Marcie: I wouldn't advise people specifically to be an entrepreneur, even though I love it. What I'd advise them to do is, really figure out what drives them. And I think, don't take this the wrong way, but if what drives them is making money or having proceeds, it's probably not the best route for them. [laughter] But, if what drives them is, for example, bringing technology to the market and trying to make the world a better place through their technology, then I would advise them to become entrepreneurs. Once they decide to become an entrepreneur, my biggest advice is to follow your passion and do what you enjoy and what you really believe in. Because if you believe in something and you work hard at it, you're much more likely to be successful. Lucy: So, let me rephrase the question just a little bit, then, and ask you: how would you interest a young person in pursuing technology today? What would you say to them that might hook them to get that interest? Marcie: Well I did technology simply because it was fun. Lucy: Yeah. [laughter] Marcie: But then, as you know, I worked on it more, I got good at it and then it made sense for me that I stay in technology. So, I guess I would probably invite them to a lab and play in lab with them, so they could see how much fun it was. Lucy: It is a great deal of fun. I'll come! [laughter] Larry: There you go. I'm there. Lucy: I'm there. Larry: What are some of the characteristics that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Marcie: That's a good one. I've noticed that all the successful entrepreneurs I know are very optimistic, and I am definitely optimistic, as well. But you can't be blindly optimistic; you have to be what I call "realistic optimist". You can't have your blinders on, but you do have to be able to see a way that the company can be successful, and arrange it so all the parts fall into place, so that task remains clear and you can move forward down that path. So I say optimism. Also persistence and work ethic are also very important and seem to be consistent among the successful entrepreneurs that I've met. Larry: Marcie, thank you very much for that. I agree 100 percent. Marcie: Are you optimistic and working hard? Larry: You got it. Lucy: Larry's an entrepreneur too. Many times over, we're both insane about entrepreneurship. So, we totally get it. Larry: Well, I only heard the word insane, but that's OK. Lucy: That's OK too. So it is hard work to be an entrepreneur and you do need to have passion and you need to be motivated, I think, truly by bringing innovation out into the world. And yet entrepreneurs do have personal lives and struggle sometimes to bring balance between the professional and the personal lives. What do you do to attend to this issue? Marcie: It's a tough one. I think what allows me to be able to do both, is that I really enjoy both my jobs. When I say both my jobs, my other job is I'm a mom. I have two wonderful children. And so I go to work and I love my job. And then I come home and I'm with my kids and I really love being their mom as well. And so, that makes it a lot easier and allows me to work many more hours because it reenergizes me. Lucy: That's exactly right, I feel. I mean I honestly think that where I saw young parents who were struggling a lot between, with this balance issue, it was when work had become tedious. Larry: Right. Lucy: And they had to give up a lot. They had to give up being with their children for a job that they didn't find fulfilling. And so this notion that you need to be in love with both of them, I think is very sage wisdom. Larry: Yes. We love all five of our children too. Marcie: Yeah. And I guess I feel fortunate that I've managed to get a job that I really love. Larry: That's great. Lucy: I somehow think that you're always going to have jobs you really love. Larry: I think so too. Lucy: I think so too. Larry: Now, you've already achieved a great deal. And I realize your company today is only three years old. But what's next for you? Marcie: I won't be happy with what I've achieved until our cells have replaced the coal plant. So, I guess the first answer to that is to build Bandgap up to the point that we're producing a significant amount of solar energy that is making an impact on our electricity production. And it's not just building a big company. I want to build a company that obviously makes money and impacts the world. But also, at the same time, I'm hoping to build a culture where people can grow professionally at the company. Where they can come and contribute, but also improve themselves as well. So when I do that, then I'll feel like I've had a successful career. And then probably the next thing that I would accomplish is traveling all over the world. Larry: Ah-ha. Lucy: Ah. Where do you want to go? Marcie: Oh. I would love to go to Africa. And like Egypt and yeah, many places actually. I very much enjoy the music of Africa and would love to go visit it. Lucy: Wow. I've never been there. Plus I know you're in Boulder, Colorado. We have a coal plant that you could replace. Larry: Yes. That's right. Lucy: And we could turn it into a shopping mall. Marcie: That would be great. Lucy: It's rather unsightly. Larry: It's not Africa here but it is Boulder, so maybe we could get you here. Lucy: We'll introduce you and maybe you could talk them out of their coal plant. That would be awesome. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Thank you so much for talking to us Marcie. And you have a great company with a great mission and a great background. And we didn't even get into your background around your authorship and journals and patents. You're truly a technical expert in this area and I know your company's going to succeed. So, thank you so much for talking to us. Marcie: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Larry: Yes. And we're going to follow up on you, so be careful. Lucy: Oh, and you have to remind people where they're going to find this. Larry: Oh yes. You can also listen to this interview 24/7 at w3w3 dot com and the NCWIT channel. And you can download it as a podcast. We'll make sure we have it on the blog. And Marcy, thank you so much. Lucy: Thanks Marcie. Marcie: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Marcie BlackInterview Summary: The mission statement on Bandgap Engineering's website says nearly everything you might want to know about what drives its co-founder and CTO, Marcie Black: "Our motivations are many and varied. We want to mitigate the impact of humans on climate change and ease the global political tensions caused by competition for scarce fossil fuels. As parents we are inspired to leave the world a better place for our children and their children. As entrepreneurs we love the thrill of a startup and think our technology represents a very, very good business opportunity. As scientists and engineers we are motivated to tackle difficult and very meaningful technical challenges." Release Date: August 23, 2010Interview Subject: Marcie BlackInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 18:04

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with ML Mackey CEO and Co-founder, Beacon Interactive Systems Date: May 10, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with ML Mackey [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I'm happy to be here. Lucy: Absolutely. We have this great interview series with women who have started IT companies, many of them multiple companies, across all different sectors. Today, I'm really excited because our interview is going to be with a woman who has worked in both the private and the public sector. I don't really think we've talked to anybody who has worked with the government in the same way that our guest has worked with. So, today, we're talking to ML Mackey who is the CEO and Co-founder of Beacon Interactive Systems. I was really interested in Beacon because it does the workflow kind of things. If you look at their history with private industry, things around customer service and email management and great companies that they've worked with like IBM and MetLife and others. ML, then, that company into working in the government sector working on the performance of its workforce. So, the DOD. And, I'm thinking, oh, that's something taxpayers should really dig, you know? [laughs] Larry: [laughs] Lucy: Performance management of the federal sector. So, welcome ML. We're glad you could join us. ML Mackey: Thanks. Thanks for having me. Lucy: So, first of all, why don't you just give us a little bit of an update on what Beacon's up to. ML: Well, we're a 16-year-old company. We provide software to our customers that helps them get their work done easier and easier, regardless of what that work is. Like you said, we did private sector. And, now, we're doing the public sector. It's a fascinating place to be right now in the federal sector, and specifically in the DOD, where we work. It is kind of a bold statement, but we say to some of our friends we're trying to help the federal government perform more efficiently. [laughs] Lucy: [laughs] Well, I shouldn't laugh, I mean... ML: How's that for a book? Larry: Please. Lucy: [laughs] I was going to say, please! Larry: It has to work. Lucy: Yeah, please do. [laughs] Please do. ML: Let's hope we're successful. And, a very small piece of that, I must say. But, it's kind of fun. Right now we are mainly selling to the Department of Defense. We sell primarily to the U.S. Navy. We have two products that we sell to them. One is in the equipment maintenance space, and it's called TURBOWORK. It's all about helping the maintainers perform equipment maintenance more efficiently and effectively. The second product we have stemmed out of that work. It's a collaborative program management software called T3, the Technology Transition Tool. It's used by the Navy to better manage their portfolio of R&D investments. Lucy: Well, you're absolutely right. There's so much going on in the public sector these days, especially with technology. I was just reading about it. There's an 80-billion-dollar-a-year budget... Larry: [laughs] Lucy: ...in the federal government for technology spent, which is just an amazing amount of money. So, I'm glad you're working to make sure it's spent more efficiently. Larry: We want you to succeed. ML: [laughs] Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. So, ML, why don't you tell our listeners a bit about how you first got into technology and where you see some of the hot technologies today. ML: You know, I thought about this question a little bit beforehand. And, I thought what would I tell them? I wanted to say something very philosophical and profound and deep. And, I'll tell you what, I got into technology because I really wanted to make money. [laughs] Lucy: That's a good reason. Larry: Yeah. Yeah. ML: I was pretty sure that teaching ballet, which I loved doing, wasn't going to be the lifestyle that I wanted to live. So, I said I think I'd like to be able to be independent. So, I applied for a scholarship in electrical engineering because they gave the most electrical engineering scholarships out. I'm already convinced I knew what electrical engineering was when I applied for it. Turned out I got the scholarship. It also turned out quite luckily for me that I really enjoyed what I was learning about. Engineering is a fascinating profession. Understanding what makes things work and how to understand science and figure out how to apply it to real-world needs is a fun and exciting place to be. So, I stumbled upon the place that I needed to be and was happy to be there. Larry: That's great. ML: I got into technology. Larry: I like that. I like that. ML: I like to think it was more purposeful. It was just someone watching out for me, you know? So, that worked out really well. Did a lot of hardware design, some software design. Got into running a business, very much an engineering kind of approach to how we run a business and how we started it. The technologies that I think are cool right now. I think software is a fascinating area to be in. And, I think the convergence of information from both physical resources as well as people is fascinating. I think there's a lot of work to being done with sensors that we've only tapped the beginning usefulness and productivity from that I just think is fascinating. And, I think understanding that in terms of how it integrates with the real world and how people work and interface with that information is really what drives our company. Larry: Well, that's fantastic. ML, having the public sector background, I have to ask what is it about being an entrepreneur that drew you there? And, what makes you tick? ML: I think the reason that I'm an entrepreneur, and I would say the same thing for my partner. The reason we started a business is we said we like to do things. We like to make things happen. We like to create things. We like to be around creative and smart people. And, we like to make an impact with what we're doing. I think we also wanted to make money, too. [laughter] ML: So, it seemed like starting a company was a great combination for all of these things. I think what makes me tick now about being an entrepreneur is the adrenalin, is the challenge, is the opportunity, is the creativity. It's the great people I get to work with at my company. It's the interesting customers that we get to work with. It's never dull. It's always something interesting and new. And, the ability to help guide that and stay true to finding interesting things and doing meaningful work is a real driver. Lucy: Along the way on your entrepreneurial journey, oftentimes we find people have been influenced by others. Sometimes we call them mentors. Or, sometimes we call them role models. Or, sometimes they're co-founders or what have you. What can you tell our listeners about the particular people that influenced you? ML: Well, I can tell you I'm blessed and totally lucky to have found a brilliant mentor for me in the last, I'd say, eight or nine years who worked with me. A tremendously smart, intelligent woman who was interested in sharing what she knew and helping me grow into being a better businesswoman. That was a real benefit, and I hope that every young woman can find someone like I found in Ruth. So, that was a benefit. I found her just by working together and us clicking and finding our way to each other. It's turned into a very nice personal relationship as well. I have to say that I'm not sure that I had women role models until that point. There was occasionally someone that I saw here, occasionally someone that I saw there. I think what helped me specifically was that there wasn't a preconceived set of notions or ideas about how business works or what it takes to be a business person. I know my partner, he practiced his signature from the time he was five years old because he knew he was going to be a businessman like his dad. So, I think he had a role model that he would aspire to. I think I just naturally gravitated to this profession. But, anything that we the community can do to put role models out for our kids is a great thing. It's interesting to be able to see the kinds of experiences that you could have. The kinds of choices that you can make in defining what your career will be. Lucy: I have two sons, and they've been practicing their signatures like their father. And, you can't read any of them anyway. Larry: [laughs] Very good. Lucy: Yeah, they look like little squiggly lines to me. ML: My daughter said to me, "Mommy, I think Daddy" -- my husband is my business partner -- "I think Daddy only has one letter when he does his signature. The rest is just a line." Lucy: [laughs] ML: I said oh, he practiced that, honey. [laughter] Lucy: I know, it's true. And, just as an offhand remark, it seems like I've often wanted to do some research on this issue of signatures, but that's for another day. Larry: Yeah, really. ML: There's a whole science to that actually. Lucy: Yeah, to be sure. Larry: I have four daughters, and half of them are... Lucy: Do they practice their signatures? Larry: I don't know if they did. I think so because two of them it's very readable and looks really gorgeous. The other ones are messy like mine. So, oh well. Lucy: Oh, well. Larry: Now, with all the things you've been through, ML, and the successes and everything else, what is the toughest thing that you've ever had to do in your career? ML: Some people might look at my career and say the toughest thing I had to do was quit my very interesting, well-payed job in order to start the company. Or, you may look at signing leases or some of the difficult things of stepping into a new space and finding a new market. But, I have to tell you, by far the most... All those things were fun, by the way, and interesting and exciting. The thing that stands out among all of our experiences as the most challenging was surviving the economic downturn in the software industry in the 2000 to 2001 time frame. That was just a terrible, traumatic and very difficult time to get through that, I have to say, I'm very pleased we are on the other side of. And, I'm going to find some wood quickly to knock on. That was difficult for a variety of reasons. I think primarily the reason that was so difficult for an entrepreneur like myself is that there was so much that was out of my control. It was so drastically bad, and there was such a long period where we weren't able to feel successful. In hindsight, there were many things that we were doing that were wildly successful and allowed us to maintain, and then to grow, the value of our company again and grow the IP and grow the team back up. But, that was a really difficult time. Having said that, I think every business is going to go through something difficult. So, now I know we've been through it and know some of the steps and some of the things I'd do again if we were in a difficult spot and some of the things that I wouldn't do again. [laughs] Net-net it's all positive. But, that was by far the most challenging experience we had. Lucy: In fact, those tough times, they give you sort of a second kind of intuition, and in terms of looking to the future, too. You might spot things sooner. That was a tough time... Larry: Yeah, it was. Lucy: ...early 2000. That was tough. Larry: We felt the pain, too. ML: We bootstrapped our company. We started in a little rent-controlled apartment on Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner Brookline here in Massachusetts. So, we never lived large when we started. We knew how to bootstrap and we knew how to be lean. And, it still was just a really difficult time. But, you get through something like that, and you appreciate what you have moving forward. Every customer is good news. Every contract is good news. And, they're especially sweet now for us. Lucy: Exactly. And, I think that's great advice for any entrepreneur to hear. ML, I know you mentioned you do work in STEM education. You're very interested in issues related to science, technology, engineering and math. So, as it relates to entrepreneurship, if you were sitting here with a young person and giving them advice about being an entrepreneur, what would you tell them? ML: There are two things that I would say are the most important things to tell someone who's thinking about starting their own business. The first is be true to yourself. Be true to what you like to do. [laughs] I can remember, I was graduating from school and I thought oh, I'm an electrical engineer. This is great. I'm going to do electrical engineering. I don't have to figure something out. Then I got closer to graduating and I went, oh my God! What does an electrical engineer do? [laughter] ML: [laughs] And, I talked to a friend of mine who was wildly successful, founded a few companies down in California and just really doing fantastic. I said hey, Andy, how do you get a job? Both my parents were public school teachers. He said, well, you find what you like to do and then you do that. And I was like, come on. Seriously, how do you get a job? [laughs] That's not really going to help me. In hindsight, it was one of the best pieces of advice that I've gotten in my career. And, one that I would highly recommend for anyone thinking of doing something in entrepreneurship. Or, even just as they're plotting their own individual career path. And, that is find what you like to do and what drives you. For example, I like technology. I really like knowing how things work and making new things. I also like people. I'm the kind of person that likes to go to a party full of new people and understand who's there, get to know them, see how they know each other. I like going into customers and understanding how they get their work done. So, we build collaborative software. It's technology about how people work together. My partner likes technology and he also likes business and clarity in business and really making the right value happen from your business. So, our collaborative software systems are not social networking systems. They're collaborative software systems that help you get your work done. So that, one, you can get it done more efficiently, and two, you know what's going on in your organization. So, we stayed true to what our core values are and what our expertise is while we shifted markets from private sector to the public sector. Which was precipitated by the 2002, 2001 downturn in the industry, as I talked about. We stayed true to what our core expertise was. And, we found a way to understand where the federal money would go to small businesses and how to do research and how to get connected into our Department of Defense customers. There were quite a few solicitations of them, but we stayed true to what our expertise was and what we'd be able to accomplish. And, it's become very successful in the process. Lucy: I think that's great. ML: Stay true to what you do. Lucy: Exactly. And that's great advice. It kind of leads me to a follow-up question around just some words you might use to describe yourself. What characteristics do you believe make you a successful entrepreneur? ML: So I'm going to give you the main word and then I'm going to track back to one other thing. Because I've done a disservice to anyone listening. The second and possibly most important that you have to learn as an entrepreneur that I would tell a young person is learn to sell. Learn how to sell. Learn how to sell. Learn how to sell. Don't say, I have a good quality, I have a good product, I can run a company. All of that doesn't matter if you can't sell your product to a customer. So I wanted to close off that last piece and make sure there are two things. One, stay true to yourself. And two, learn how to sell. And the word that I would give you to this question that you just asked me about what are the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur or what has been successful for me is tenacity. You've got to be persistent. You got to choose your path. You got to say this is what I want to accomplish and I'm going to just stay to it. I'm going to approach it from different vectors if I can't accomplish the direction I'm going in. But you've got to be tenacious. Larry: Well you've got a couple of children. You're growing a business. You're doing all kinds of really neat things. How do you ML, bring balance to your personal and professional lives? ML: You know that's an interesting question. So I'll sort of answer it in two different ways. One, I was given an award by an organization up here and I was speaking to all of the entrepreneurial characteristics, and I said to the group, and I said of all these characteristics I've told you about being entrepreneurial, by far the most entrepreneurial venture that my partner, and I have done is parent our two small children. So family life pulls us...I want to use the word balance, but I don't know that balance is the word that really fits. So the second part of my answer to your question it's more about work-life integration. And balance implies cordoning off. And one place I do work and one place I do home and one place I do, oh, God forbid, a hobby. Someday maybe I'll get to that. Larry: [laughs] ML: Part of that, it's more about how you integrate all the facets of who you are so they flow and overlap well with each other. So, my children know the office space but they don't spend too much time here. My kids' friends know that we have a company and understand that sometimes when we've made a sale, oh, good, we just sold to the navy. We just sold software to every ship in the navy. And my kids driving home from school, and their friends went, oh, that's so cool. So that's about an integration without a line that's tough and hard between the two spaces. But it's a continuous balancing act, I should use the word of that integration. Lucy: Well we hear that from a number of successful entrepreneurs. That in fact integration is a better word than balance. I personally believe it is as well. Having raised two kids and being a corporate executive is exactly the same thing. There's no hard line in the sand. I think that's important. ML: You know what I think is fascinating around companies as well is they are starting to understand that in terms of flex time and hours, and commitments, and how you deliver upon your professional commitments as well. Which I just think is a fascinating new area and we'll see some changes in the next five to 10 years. Lucy: I think so too, and we're seeing some data with our work here at NCWIT, around these issues being really important to men and women. That they have the ability to have this kind of work and personal life integration if you will. An certainly in the technology space, one would like to hope that it would be possible. For sure. Maybe using some ML software. Larry: What an idea. What an idea. Lucy: [laughs] What an idea. So ML, you've really achieve a lot. What's next for you? What can you tell our listeners? What do you see coming down the road? ML: More of the same. The spinning out other companies. Going in different directions. It's just fun seeing the products you've created. They sort of take on a life of their own. So then its how do you leverage them that momentum and how do you grow that into something interesting. Growing our team is on our future. That's really quite interesting as well too. It's great to come to work everyday and have a group that's interested in what they're doing and engaged and energetic about what they're accomplishing. So I think just more of the same. Lucy: I have sort of an off the cuff question just to end in. ML: Oh, God. Lucy: Of course. Just to kind of end the interview with. Like if you were giving advice since you are one of our very few interviews about working with the public sector to other entrepreneurs that might want to become involved with the public sector, what would that be? ML: The best advice I could give anyone looking to get involved in the public sector that has not been in the public sector is to have a healthy respect for how different the business is. We completely revamped how we operate our business, how we mange our business, how you engage your customers. I would suggest that...what was the number you gave at the beginning of the interview on federal technologies? Lucy: Eighty billion. Eighty billion dollars a year in IT spent. ML: Yeah, and people look at that number and go oh wow, all I have to do is get a piece of that. There are stunning roadblocks to knowing how to work with the federal government. And just as simple as, which is not simple at all, of how do you get under contract? So, you have a solution, you have a perspective buyer, you have funds available. How do they even get that to you? So there are a lot of roadblocks there, none obvious. Having said that, there's a tremendous opportunity to be innovative and to leverage commercial sector expertise in innovative ways for what has been a very traditional business area. I'm speaking specifically in the software now. There's a lot of opportunity there to really drive value and do something important there. So I would say to anyone, the advice I would give is absolutely look into it. It's a tremendous capability. There's a lot of R&D as well as straight product sales that are possible with the federal government. But just have a real healthy respect for that it is not what you've known in the private sector. And to pay attention to characteristics and different business models. Lucy: That's great advice. Larry: It is. Lucy: I think our listeners will appreciate that. I know we've seen it from the non profit side, working with the government is very different than our work with corporations for example. Very, very different. ML: Find some of just non intuitive. Lucy: Yep. Totally. Really, thank you for your time. We really do appreciate it. And I wanted to remind listeners where they can find this interview. At w3w3.com. And also ncwit.org. Larry: Perfect. Lucy: Alright. Thank you, ML. Larry: ML, thank you so much. ML: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: ML MackeyInterview Summary: Explaining why she became an entrepreneur, ML Mackey says, "My partner and I like to do things, we like to make things happen, we like create things and be around smart creative people and we want to make an impact with what we are doing. It seemed like starting a company was a great combination for all these things." Release Date: May 10, 2010Interview Subject: ML MackeyInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:05

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Shellye Archambeau CEO, MetricStream Date: September 5, 2008 NCWIT Interview with Shellye Archambeau BIO: As the CEO of MetricStream, Shellye Archambeau is responsible for running all facets of the business. Ms. Archambeau has a proven executive management track record and over 20 years of experience driving sales growth in the technology industry. Prior to joining MetricStream, Ms. Archambeau was Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Sales for Loudcloud, Inc. [renamed Opsware], responsible for all global sales and marketing activities. At Loudcloud she led the transformation into an enterprise-focused company while growing sales 50 percent year over year. Previously, she served as Chief Marketing Officer of NorthPoint Communications, where she led the design and implementation of all sales and marketing strategies. Ms. Archambeau also served as president of Blockbuster, Inc.'s e-commerce division and was recognized by Internet World as one of the Top 25 "Click and Mortar" executives in the country in June of 2000. Ms. Archambeau spent the prior 15 years at IBM, holding several domestic and international executive positions. Ms. Archambeau is an author and sought-after speaker on the topics of compliance, marketing, and leadership. She has been featured or quoted in numerous business publications including BusinessWeek, InformationWeek and the San Jose Business Journal. She is co-author of Marketing That Works and she guest lectures at The Wharton School West and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Ms. Archambeau currently serves on the board of directors for Arbitron, Inc.[NYSE: ARB] and The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives. She is also a member of the Trustees Council of Penn Women at the University of Pennsylvania and the Information Technology Senior Management Forum. She earned a B.S. degree at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. Larry Nelson: This is Larry Nelson with w3w3.com. And we are fortunate to be right here in the headquarters of the National Center for Women in Information Technology. We are so excited about this particular series, because it is really targeting young people and trying to get them more interested in getting involved with IT and how exciting it is. But most of all, on the entrepreneurial side. So Lucy Sanders, who is the CEO and founder of NCWIT, as we call it, for all of our friends. Lucy... Lucy Sanders: Well thanks Larry. We are excited about this series, as well. With me is NCWIT Board Director, Lee Kennedy from Tricalyx. She is a serial entrepreneur. And we are speaking today with Shelley Archambeau, who is the CEO of MetricStream, which is an incredibly cool company. Very timely in today's regulatory and quality environment. Shelley, welcome. Shellye Archambeau: Thank you. Glad to be here. Lucy: Why don't you tell us a little bit about MetricStream? You do a lot. You have software, you have services, and you have training. Tell us a bit about what you do. Shellye: Absolutely. What we do is to provide solutions to companies to help them ensure they can comply effectively with rules, regulations, and mandates that are out there in the marketplace. So whether that is Sarbanes‑Oxley or that are FDA regulations or ISO 9000 processes, any time they basically need a solution to ensure that they comply with the regulations so they can reduce their corporate risk, as well as get the visibility to be able to manage that risk and apply appropriate resources as needed. That is where MetricStream comes in. So we have customers in the FDA space, everything from Subways, which I'm sure a lot of people have eaten at, to pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer. We also run a high technology space, with companies like Fairchild Semiconductor, Hitachi America, and etcetera. So, we work with companies of all sizes to help them comply by providing the full software services total solution. Lucy: Well, we are excited. I must make a plug about Pfizer. Pfizer is an investment partner for NCWIT. Larry: Oh, right. Shellye: All right. Lucy: They help us by funding our K‑12 Alliance. We love Pfizer. Shellye: Excellent. Well, we do too. Lucy: We can have a Pfizer love fest. Larry: There we go. Lucy: Yeah, I love them. One of the things that I noticed too, while I'm looking at your website, was that MetricStream just won an award, the Stevie Award. Shellye: Yes. Lucy: And that is, I think, is that focused on your portal that uses an innovative use of open source? Shellye: Yes, absolutely. We won first place for Compliance Online. Compliance Online is a web portal where we bring together all of the different information about compliance: rules, regulations, best practices, training, and etcetera. To make it easy for compliance professionals to find out and learn what's new, where the areas of focus, where the areas of risk, get updates on how companies are best handling the management of different issues and regulations, etcetera. And we're pleased that in just a very short time, and we just launched this basically the beginning of last year, we have become the number one compliance portal. Lucy: Wow. Shellye: We are leveraging a unique model, where we basically have experts from around the world that provide training to those that need it. And we create an environment in which professionals can come and ask each other questions, interact, etcetera. As well as do vertical search, meaning when they want to find information on FDA CFR part 11, they can do a search on that and just get that, versus getting something that may have the same part number, like a widget on a car if you do a broader search. So all of those things are actually bringing a significant value. And we were recognized, as you said, as a Stevie Award, which is basically an international business award. Larry: Fantastic. Shelleye: As the number one player in that particular category. Lucy: Well, I'm sure you use a lot of technology with that. And certainly you're Compliance Online Portal is one such. And by the way, congratulations. I read you got to go to a great gala to get the award. Lucy: I was hoping I could come carry your bags. Our first question for you really does, in fact, relate to technology and how you first got interested in technology and also, as you look out onto the horizon, which technologies you see as being very important in the future. Shellye: Certainly. So first, interest. It was really college. And now I'm going to date myself, because I went to school in the early '80s. That was around the time frame that Apple Computers and all those things were starting to come out, and really seeing just the changing horizon out there. So, I went to Wharton and focused on business marketing. But where I really put my focus was doing all that in the area of technology. I thought this was really how we could change the world. Again, you're 18, 19, 20 years old and you believe you could do all that, so I did. But I wanted to get into this space. It was hot. It was new. It really looked like there was a lot of leverage that could happen by getting involved. And it hasn't let me down. I've spent over 20 years now in the technology space, and it's just amazing how fast technology continues to change. Harnessing the power is just an exciting, exciting area to be in. Lucy: So Shelley, when you think about the series we're doing, it's all about different, fabulous entrepreneurs and what they've done. So we love to find out, why did you decide to be an entrepreneur? And what is it about it that really makes you tick? Shellye: You know, it's interesting because I actually started my career not as an entrepreneur, per se. I joined IBM. You can't get much bigger than that in terms of a conglomerate to join. [laughs] But I joined IBM with the objective of wanting to run a company, so I might as well try to run IBM. I spent a good number of years doing that, running different divisions and operations both domestic as well as overseas. But the piece that I was missing in all of that was that the higher I got in the company, the farther removed I felt from the market and what was really happening. You spend more focus trying to get things done within the company. With that, I said let me take what I've learned ‑ all the technology focus, I had lots of opportunities to go and fix divisions, build new divisions, get them growing, et cetera ‑ let me take that and apply that to smaller companies. Because now I want to have more of an impact, if you will, on a business. So becoming an entrepreneur to me was really taking a set of skills and trying to get out there and just have an impact. When you think about all that we're learning in our careers and all the skill sets that we're building, that's really what we're trying to do. Whether you're trying to do that against a company or against a technology or against a social issue, et cetera, we're all just trying to make an impact with what it is that we're doing. I don't think there's any better way to make an impact than to be an entrepreneur. You're bringing a new idea, a new concept, a new way to approach technology. All of those things you can do as an entrepreneur and really have an impact on the market space that you're targeting. Lucy: Along the way you have a fascinating career path coming through a large corporation like IBM and then starting your own company. Who influenced you along this path? Do you have role models or mentors that you remember? What kinds of influences shaped you? Shellye: It's interesting. I think one of the things that shaped me in the beginning is that I've always been a planner. I knew, as I said, that I wanted to run a business. I didn't have, really, a view of being an entrepreneur when I first came out of school. Going to Wharton, everything was pretty much focused on big companies, et cetera, and that's what I did. But as I started to progress and see what kind of changes people could make by being an entrepreneur, and then getting connected with people in this space. You talk about mentors. One of my mentors and advisers is Mark Leslie. Mark Leslie built Veritas, which was just acquired about a year and a half ago by Symantec. He took a company from start to four billion dollars in market cap. Seeing what can be done is just amazing. I'm a big believer in mentors and advisers in general. You didn't quite ask me this question, but let me just frame it a little bit. One of the tidbits that I like to offer people is that as you're moving forward in your career, try to adopt mentors. And I say adopt, meaning look for people who are doing things you want to do, or things you think you might be interested in, and just spend some time. Try to reach out, talk to them, ask them for advice, etcetera. There is so much to be learned. And it was really in doing that kind of thing that enabled me to develop a set of really strong relationships that helped me shape what I wanted to do with my career. I still reach out and grasp for mentors and advisors and ideas, because there is so much going on in the world. There is no way you can experience it all yourself. So the best way to try to get broader perspectives is try to leverage other people's experiences, which is really what mentoring is all about. Larry: I haven't had this type of corporate experience, like being with IBM. So, going from IBM to now being a real, full‑fledged entrepreneur, along the way I am sure there's been a bit of course correction and other challenges. If you were to pull something out, what would be the biggest challenge that you had to either try to overcome, or maybe you didn't overcome it, you just had to learn to live with it? Shellye: Gosh, probably the biggest challenge I'd almost put as two things, and I'll answer two ways. In the corporate world, it was all about rightsizing, downsizing, whatever word you want to use. It doesn't matter how many times you do it, that is just a hard thing to do. You are obviously trying to get the business models right, but you're also impacting individuals very specifically. So that is something that is hard to do. Have I done it? Absolutely. Can I do it? Yes. But that doesn't mean that that is something I enjoy. What we've tried to do, when taking that experience and coming to build MetricStream, is try to ensure that we're growing at the right pace and path with the business growth and momentum. So to try to avoid having to go through that kind of activity as you grow. On the entrepreneur side, as to what has been the toughest, it's really...Gosh, we've put two companies together. Part of MetricStream's growth, we actually merged with another company three years back. And that was probably one of the toughest things. Because now you're trying to a business that you've got, investors that you've got, match it and marry it with another company that has its own set of investors, their own original business plan. And make it work both from a financial standpoint, from a structural standpoint, as well as from a market standpoint. So, I would say merging MetricStream three years ago was probably one of the hardest things that I've done, because it touched on every aspect of running and operating a business. Lucy: So Shelley, you had some great advice earlier about role models and mentors. If you were sitting here today with a young person, what advice would you have to them about entrepreneurship? And what advice would you give them? Shellye: Well, first would be only do what you're really passionate about. I mean, this is hard work. Being an entrepreneur is not showing up at nine o'clock in the morning and leaving at five, and being able to put all of the stuff behind you. Being an entrepreneur is totally encompassing, because nothing happens unless you make it happen. If you work for a big company, if you don't show up for work, there is already an engine. There are people doing other pieces, people pitch in, things will still happen and still work. When you're an entrepreneur, if you don't show up, things don't happen. Because you don't have all of that infrastructure and things in place. So if you're going to work hard, make sure you are doing something that you are really passionate about. So that when you have the good times, which you will, you can celebrate and enjoy. But when you have the bad times and the struggles, you still want to persevere. And you do because you are really passionate about what it is that you are doing. As an entrepreneur, the ups can be almost euphoric. But the downs can have you second guessing everything that you are doing. It's important to do something that you love, so you can power through all those cycles that you go through. So that's number one. Do something that you are passionate about. Second would be, create an informal network of advisers. I touched on this, in terms of mentors and things. There are a million people out there who have done what you are getting ready to do. Maybe not in the same industry, maybe not with the exact same model, but in terms of creating a business, finding customers, creating a business model that works, getting investors and funding, etcetera. All those things have been done by others, so create a network of advisers to help support you in that overall process. And then lastly, test your ideas before you just launch into it. You know, make sure that there is a good niche that you're targeting. So testing ideas, either with others like these advisers I talked about or just with people on the streets, to see what kind of feedback you get about your concept and what you're doing. And then get launched into it. Do something that you're passionate about, number one. Two, make sure you create this informal network of advisers. And three, make sure you test your ideas before you jump into it. Lucy: That's all really great advice. I'm really resonating to the testing of the ideas, because it's only then that you test it with your advisers and they love you, they're going to give you the hard news. It's great.. Larry: Now we have to listen. Lucy: Well, you know, they're giving you all the input that you need. Shellye: You know it's true. And it's interesting, because a lot of people come up with great ideas for the product, whether that product is software or it is hardware, or it's a cool widget, whatever it might be. The hard part is, how do you get that product to market? Hundreds and thousands of new businesses and new ideas are created every day. The ones, however, that make it, are not always the ones that actually have the best product. This will be the ones that end up with the best business plan and marketing strategy to get it to market. So, and I'll put a little plug, I hope you don't mind, but I'll put a little plug in there for a minute because I actually co‑authored a book on Marketing That Works. That is all about how to use different techniques and capabilities and structure and discipline to make all that work. Really, that is where to spend the time to make sure that you can be successful. Lucy: Well Larry, I think just as a side note, that's another interview for you. Larry: There we go. Lucy: You need to go look at the book. Larry is an author, as well. Larry: We'll put that up on the blog. Lucy: Yeah. Shellye: Oh, Okay. Great. Lucy: You have great insight and advice. What other personal characteristics have given you an advantage as an entrepreneur? Shellye: You know it's interesting, in terms of reflecting on that. A couple things. One is, I'm a pretty good leader. And when I say a good leader, I think of leader as people who operate in a way that people want to follow them. Making sure you provide the vision, the strategy, the direction, and just stay two inches ahead of everybody. So that you are pushing out the boulders and blockades, etcetera, so that everyone else can be successful in what it is they are getting ready to do. I think leadership is an important characteristic, and one that has definitely helped me. The other is being a listener. And this one's a little different, because people don't always think about this. But it's really being a listener. To make sure that as you come out with your product or your set of solutions, that you don't fall so much in love with your product. When I say in love, it's very much like falling in love with a person. When you fall in love with someone initially, you are almost blinded to everything else. All you see is all of their positives, all their best traits, etcetera. You tend to diminish and not focus on maybe some of the negative traits, etcetera. Well it's easy to fall in love with your product. So that you're not really listening to what the market is telling you so that you can make that product better in what you are doing. So listening has been another key piece to all of this. I mentioned earlier that I'm a planner, and I think that has helped. I absolutely have been able to bring both to my own personal career. A game plan for what I want to do, so what do I need to be able to get there? And making sure I put those things into place. And frankly, once I've gotten here, the other thing that's an advantage is being a woman. There are so few female entrepreneurs running companies in different places, as a percentage. When people do meet you, they tend to remember you, which actually helps your company because they then can associate it with what it is that you do, etcetera. So I actually think that's an advantage. The last would be, I like to win. I like to set objectives. I like to work with teams to go make it happen and win. That's what this is all about. As you build a company, an organization, it is how do you make sure your product fits the market needs? It's making sure that you're building a team and leading it to be able to deliver on those overall needs. And putting a plan in place that will be successful and then making sure you win if you're getting out there and competing. Speaker: Wonderful. Lucy: That's great advice. So Shelley you've had such a wonderful career. You're running a company now. How do you bring balance to your personal and professional life? Shellye: That's interesting. I think about balance and I tell people I think balance is a misnomer. Balance to me means you spend equal energy, time, hours, whatever it is in one area as well as another area at all times, right? That's balance. I don't have balance. What I have is integration. So I think of this more work‑life integration. I've got a fabulous husband. We celebrate 23 years in August. Lucy: Wow. Shellye: And two kids, which, however knock on wood, are turning out really well. But I've been able to do that because number one I work in partnership with my husband so we view each other as a team in terms of how we execute. But number two I've been able to leverage. I'm going to use technology to actually make it all work. My son, as an example, my son played in a basketball championship when he was in high school, which was last year. And they actually made it to the States. When I was in home and in town I didn't miss a game. Now how did I do that? I did that because of the Blackberry and a cell phone. It doesn't mean I was in the stands... I couldn't focus every second on every game. There were times when I was actually plugging away on email, there were times I had to step out and take a call but you know what? I was there. Without technology I couldn't have been there all those times and making sure that things are happening the way they need to happen. So I think integrating the two in a way where you can physically be where you want to be and yet insure that things are getting done that need to get done really makes a difference. It's very hard I think to actually shut out and say, "Okay, from this time to this time I do X. And from this time to this time I do Y. And never the two shall meet." That doesn't work for me. It works for me to integrate the two and to be available. For part of my career I actually commuted. So for three years I left home Monday mornings and I came home Thursday night if I was lucky but usually it was Friday night. And my kids were at school at the time. So the deal I had with them was, "Listen, when you want to talk to me or reach out to me you just call me. Just call my cell." And folks that I worked with knew that when my cell phone rang if it was my kids I was going to answer it. Now it didn't mean I stayed on the phone. I'd answer it and say, "I'm doing this do you need me to step out or can I call you back?" And you know what? 95% of the time I could call them back. But that just knowing that they could reach me meant that I was still there, right? There was no difference if I was at work three miles away versus being three thousand miles away in terms of what was happening. And me taking those phone calls? That didn't impact my ability to execute on the overall job. So when I say integration if it's both kinds of things, figure out how you can make it work together so that you can be available in both sides of your life. Lucy: Well, and we asked this question. I won't say it's a trick question but we all agree with you. We are a fan of integration and blending. I personally think this word 'balance' does us a disservice. And one reason why we really wanted to ask the question is because we want young people to know that there are ways to blend these types of very aggressive and time consuming jobs with having a rewarding personal life. So... Shellye: That's right. Now listen, can I add a couple more things to that? Lucy: Absolutely. Shellye: Because what happens to a lot of young people especially is they put themselves in a trap. And when I say "they put themselves in a trap" meaning my biggest advice to people, which has helped my husband and I, is you need to get help. And I don't mean a psychiatrist. Shellye: When I say, "You need to get help" meaning those things that really aren't as important to you whether it's cutting the grass, whether its' cleaning your house whatever it happens to be for you and your husband, get somebody else to do that. So the people say to me, "Damn it, how can you afford all that?" Especially when you get started, and the whole bit. My answer is to plan it in. When my husband and I got married, I knew that I wanted to have kids right away and so did he. I'm right out of college just starting and the whole bit. Well, we bought a house that was a small, little house that was a fairly decent commute in terms of overall distance. But we did that because I spent more on childcare and help than we did on our mortgage. And we did that so that it would work and we wouldn't be pulling our hair out to be able to get it done. Now, that takes discipline. Everybody else you want to take and say, "OK, let me get the best and biggest house I can get for what I'm spending." We looked at it and said, "Oh no. I want to consider childcare and support and mortgage as one big hunk." Now, what can that be? And now we've got to divide it up between the two. But plan for it. What tends to happen is we come out of school, we work for awhile, we get married, we get the house, we get the cars. Next thing we know, our fixed expense is so high that we don't have the tangible or flexible dollars to be able to go get the help that we need to enable us to better balance. Because I will tell you, it is impossible to do it all without any help and still retain your sanity and your health and all those things. You've got to figure it out. Start financially with, "OK, what can I do". Then work from there. It makes a huge difference. Lucy: Well, I know you can't retain your rotator cuffs either if you try to do it all. That's great advice. One last question for you. You've achieved a lot in your career. I want to also tell listeners that, although you didn't mention it, we know from reading your bio that you also have a big heart. You're involved with a lot of non‑profits ‑ the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives, you're also involved at Penn. What's next for you? You've done so much and you have so much time ahead of you. What's next for you and your company? Shellye: Well, the immediate next is to build a great company and metric strength, and to indeed have an impact on the whole marketplace of how large and small companies comply with the rules and regulations and mandates. So first, next, is absolutely to build a great company. The follow on to that is that I want to continue to do things that have an impact. Whether it is an impact in business, in terms of driving and building and growing another company, or it's on the social entrepreneurial side in terms of looking at ways to have an impact and take some of the skills and capabilities that I've built to go do that. I'm not sure yet which that will be. What I can tell you is that if you flash forward five or ten years, I still absolutely expect to be out there and creating an impact in both the business world as well as in the non‑profit space. Because you're right, that is an important thing to me. I know that I have not achieved everything that I've achieved because of me, because of Shelley Archambeau. I've been able to do it as a result of a lot of good support, advice, and path paving that was done in front of me. And I want to make sure that I'm helping to do that for others.. Larry: Well Shelley, based on the experience and the lessons you learned going from IBM to trying to figure out how to apply these lessons you were learning at IBM to a smaller company, you've done a magnificent job. Of course, a couple of words that really pop out in my mind is being a good leader, a good planner, a good listener, and really liking to win. Shellye: Right. Lucy: Yeah, go! Larry: With a team. With a team, of course. Lucy: And she's an author. Larry: And she's an author. "Marketing That Works". Lucy: Yes. Larry: What a title. I like that. Lucy: We'd love to help you advertise your book. Shellye: Well thank you. I definitely appreciate the help. Larry: We'll do that for sure. This is Larry Nelson here at NCWIT. I'll tell you, this is another exciting interview. I don't know how you and the board line up all of these wonderful people, but I'm just happy to be a part of it. You'll be able to hear this and other interviews at ncwit.org, that's after the www of course. Lucy: Yes, of course. Larry: I just don't like to say it with ours. We have the podcast, and so.... Lucy: Yeah, too many w's. Larry: Yeah, www.w3w3.com. All right, thank you for joining us Shelley. Lucy: Thank you Shelley. Shellye: You're quite welcome. Thank you all. Lucy: We appreciate it. Shellye: Okay. Bye bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Shellye Archambeau Interview Summary: Shellye Archambeau offers three great pieces of advice for entrepreneurs: only do what you're passionate about, create an informal network of advisers, and test your ideas before you launch. Release Date: September 5, 2008Interview Subject: Shelley ArchambeauInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Sangita Verma Founder and CEO, TAG Networks Date: July 3, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Sangita Verma BIO: Sangita Verma leveraged 13 years of executive experience in the videogame industry to found the world’s preeminent interactive games-on-demand network in May 2003 -- TAG Television. Providing a full service, turnkey solution, TAG Networks provides the nation’s first massively deployable games channel for cable and IPTV television. TAG TV lets players enjoy the timeless appeal of popular and brand-name games including Tetris®, Battleship®, Risk®, Barney™, and Thomas the Tank Engine™, as well as popular online games including Bejeweled™, Diner Dash™, and Bookworm™, and Texas Hold 'Em Poker. In her role as CEO, Ms. Verma has secured $20 in funding from private equity investors, established exclusive content agreements with leading game suppliers and global brands, and filed eight patents covering key proprietary technologies for delivering interactive content for cable and IPTV. A strategic planner, veteran marketer, and business visionary, she taps skills gleaned from a varied yet focused career to lead TAG Networks' management team of seasoned game, licensing, video-on-demand, interactive television, technology and consumer entertainment product specialists. Prior to founding TAG Networks, Ms. Verma worked with Midway Games, starting with the company in 2000 as director of worldwide syndication. Previously, she had her own online marketing company, Craig New Media, working with Panasonic and Psygnosis (a Sony Company) among others. Before that she was group marketing director for Panasonic Interactive Media Co. Her videogame career started at Data East Corp., where she managed the U.S. marketing activities and then moved on to establish and manage Data East’s European office. Sangita Verma is a member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation's CEO Council and was voted one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women In Cable Technology by CableWorld magazine in 2006. She is also a member of the Women in Cable and Telecommunications (WICT) "Tech It Out" mentoring programming which encourages girls to consider technical career paths. She is a graduate of UC Davis, having earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. Ms. Verma lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two sons. Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and this is another interview in a series of interviews with IT entrepreneurial women. And today, we're talking to the CEO and founder of TAG Networks, Sangita Verma. Hi, Sangita. How are you? Sangita Verma: Hi, Lucy. I'm great. Thanks for having me on your show. Lucy: Wonderful. With me today is Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi. I'm happy to be here, as you know. This is exciting. Lucy: Well, why don't you tell us a bit about w3w3.com, since these podcasts will be hosted on your site as well as the NCWIT site. Larry: Well, the short story is that we're an online business radio show. We started in '98, and we archive everything with pictures and audio, blogs, and podcasts. So that's us. Lucy: That's pretty exciting. Well, and we are excited to have you here today, Sangita. You have an awesome company. And I have to tell you, it must be every computer scientist's dream to work with a company that is so involved with gaming. And in fact, just to throw a little factoid in here, they did a survey recently of young men and women who decided they want to go into information technology, and in fact, many of them want to go in because of gaming. So, why don't you tell us a little bit about TAG Networks? It's a very exciting, on‑demand network for games. Sangita: Thanks, Lucy. You're right. Games are a lot of fun. They really are. I think that when it comes to technology, there's so many aspects that are very interesting, but I've never found anything as pure fun as the games part is. But, what we're doing at TAG Networks is we're creating the first games‑on‑demand television network. And so, as a consumer, you turn on your TV and you tune to a channel, just like you would HBO or MTV or BBC. The difference is that you can start playing games right there with your remote control that's already in your hand. The types of games that we offer are considered casual games, so we're not competing against consoles like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. I think, our games experience is more similar to what you would find on the Internet, at sites like Pogo or MSN Zone or AOL Games. So, it's puzzle games, card games, kids' games ‑ things like that. Lucy: It's a great concept, and I'm sure it's going to be extremely popular. And these are exciting times for you. I hear your company just raised a Series B on funding, and you're doing a scale‑up of your technology. Sangita: Yes. This is actually a very exciting time for us. When I describe it to people, I like to think that this is 1981 and we're MTV. We feel like we're just sort of right on the verge of taking off, and in a huge way. The trials that we've had at market with our cable operator partners so far have been phenomenal. It truly shows that consumers love games. They want to play games. They want to play them on a big screen. And if you make it easy right there for them, it's staggering the number of hours that they play and how frequently they play. So, we're very excited about that. And we're very excited that we've created some proprietary, amazing technology that is enabling us to be able to go to what I consider the next generation of TV networks. Lucy: Well, and maybe one more sort of incidental before we get into the interview. I have to say that NCWIT is having a reception pretty soon at the football stadium at the University of Colorado, and we have access to the JumboTron. Sangita: Oh, yeah. Lucy: And so, maybe, we could put a few games up there. It's on an IP network. It might all work. Sangita: That would be great. It's so funny you mentioned that, because when you think about one of the really popular things at a baseball game, as silly as it is, it's the little dot race game. Lucy: It surely is. Everybody loves it at the CU football games. Sangita: Right. Exactly. And so, there's a very, very simple application of a game, yet everyone loves it. I think, it just goes back to showing how people love games. Lucy: Well, and that gets us, maybe, into the interview, in terms of asking some questions about technology. I know TAG Networks has a lot of interesting technology that you have to use to deploy this type of game‑on‑demand network. But, other technologies that you see out there, Sangita, what are you seeing on the horizon that you think is especially cool? Sangita: I think that just the whole social networking phenomenon is very cool, and the technologies that are enabled by that. I think that it'll become even more interesting when it is tied across platforms and across devices. Right now, social networking is very big on the Internet, but it's growing on other platforms. For example, I had just read ‑ in fact, yesterday ‑ that Microsoft has the largest social network connected to the TV, via their Xbox Live service. And I think that as you start seeing these devices connecting people, and it's not limited anymore to a platform or device, that's where it becomes even more exciting. Larry: By the way, could we back up? I've just got one interesting question. How did you first get into technology? And then, tie that in with why are you an entrepreneur? Sangita: Oh, OK. Well, it's funny, because I don't think of myself as getting into technology. So, I kind of fell into the games industry. I was doing investor relations when I first got out of college. And I did that for a couple of years and decided that I wanted to do something that was a little more creative and a little more fun, and at a variety of different places, found a games company that sounded like a lot of fun. I didn't know anything about games at the time. This was back, gosh, 16, 17 years ago now. Nintendo was considered a kids' toy, was just taking off at that point. I started working for this games company called Data East and just fell in love with the industry. And I've watched how I think technology has progressed just amazingly across just about everything. I mean, the rate of acceleration of invention is incredible. But, in the games world, you really saw it, because you would see these eight‑bit games back in 1990, to what they're doing now on the Xbox 360. And that's all technology. That's all enabling entertainment. And so, as I got more into the games industry, I really started getting more into the technology that enables you to have a better games experience, to have a better consumer experience. So, it's funny, because I think when people think about technology, or certainly when most young women think about technology, which is where I was at that age, it didn't sound that fun. It didn't sound that glamorous. It sounded kind of nerdy. You had to know math. I think, all the aspects of technology that people really were harping on weren't necessarily the really fun things that technology can be, which is creating amazing user experiences and entertainment and platforms to be able to enable people to do the things that they want to do. And that's the part that hooked me and really got me into the technology aspect, as opposed to "I want to be a technologist." Larry: What about that leap to becoming an entrepreneur? Sangita: Oh. Gosh. You know? I don't know. I think, I just have always been one. It wasn't a conscious effort. It was just, I had an idea, I didn't see anyone doing it the way that I thought it should be done, and I just said, "You know what? I'm just going to do it." And I did it. There really was not a lot of thought. There wasn't a lot of pros and cons listed. It was just the thing to do. And I did it. Lucy: That's wonderful. I mean, I'm sitting here listening to your description of why you like technology, thinking that we need to have you come to our NCWIT meetings and carry that message, because that's exactly what we're up to is really trying to convey that sense of energy and passion and what makes technology so much fun. S Sangita: Yeah. And I was thinking about this, in preparation of us talking. When people think about becoming a doctor, for example, they just think about becoming a doctor and saving lives and what other aspects of it is it that really turns them on. They don't think about, "Oh, I've got to know physics. I've got to go to medical school for this." They don't think about all the little details that get involved in it. They just have the vision of what they want to be. And I think that, with technology in particular, we kind of miss that because, at least when I was in school, the dwelling was always on, "Well, you've got to do this. You've got to do this kind of math. This is what you've got to like to do." And the vision of what you can truly create wasn't ever shown as an end goal. Lucy: That's right. And I think that that's a really important message to get out there. So, Larry was asking a little bit about being an entrepreneur and what makes you tick in terms of being an entrepreneur. Who was it that influenced you along the way? Who, perhaps, is your greatest role model? Who's helped you along in this career path? Sangita: I think, it's a combination of things. I think, one, I've been very fortunate to work with just some fantastic people throughout my career. But, probably, the bigger driver was, when I started working with the games company back in 1990, they had a fantastic management team on board. I was 25 at the time, and I was excited that I would be able to learn from these people that were really good at what they did. Well, the company went through a series of changes, and, within a year, the whole management team was gone. And the next thing I knew, I was running all of North American marketing. Larry: [laughs] Lucy: [laughs] I'm not laughing because they were gone. It's just one of those moments in life, you know? Sangita: Yeah. I know. I joined the company in order to learn from these people, and then they disappeared, and I learned. It was trial by fire. It truly was. "You're in charge of North America. Now, go." And so, in hindsight, I think, maybe, that helped really instill my entrepreneurial spirit even more, because I didn't have a choice. I just had to learn. I had to do it. And it was very exciting. And of course, you make mistakes as you go, but you learn from them. And I think everything that I did up until I started TAG Networks kind of led to a culmination of where I am with TAG Networks and why we think we're going to be really successful. Larry: Let me ask this. It sounds like you've had an exciting and very fun career all this time. You've accomplished a great deal; you're on the road to accomplishing even more. What is something that maybe you've had to put up with a little that maybe you didn't get to overcome, you had to learn to live with, along the way? Sangita: Oh, that's a great question. I think, the only thing that I can say ‑ I'm kind of living it right now, frankly ‑ is you can only control what you can control, and everything else you just have to kind of roll with. That's a tough lesson. And it's tough for, I think, probably any entrepreneur, but it certainly is for me, because an old boss once called me I'm a steamroller. I just go and I get things done. And so, when you get stopped by things out of your control, it's difficult. Certainly, TAG Networks, our distributors are cable operators like Comcast and Time Warner, and IPTV companies like Verizon and AT&T. And anyone who has worked with those operators knows that they have their own timelines, and they're not necessarily your timelines. And so, I think that has been a challenge. It's just learning to become more patient. And that's hard to do. And it's really hard to do given the environment that TAG Networks is located in. We are literally across the street from Google. And so, we're right here in the midst of the Silicon Valley, where things happen so quickly, and it's hard to be working with industries where their speed is not the same as what is around you. Lucy: I hate it when I can't control things. Don't you? [laughter] Larry: Put your hand down now. Put your hand down. [laughter] Sangita: I'm getting better about it. But, it is hard. I mean, that's probably one of my hardest... Lucy: I think, it's hard, too. Hate it. I think that that's great advice, to sort of sit back sometimes and be patient and see which way things are going to kind of land, right? And I think, you probably have some other really great advice, that if you were giving advice to a young person today about entrepreneurship, what other things would you say to them? Sangita: Probably, the biggest thing ‑ and maybe it's a cliché ‑ is really, you need to be passionate about what you're doing. If you believe in your idea, then follow it. And then, the second part of that is, keep following it. Don't let people talk you out of it. Because it is amazing to me how many people either don't understand your vision, don't believe in your vision, or just don't think it'll work. They will get in the way. And if you let them talk you out of it, it's a mistake, because I find that when things are right, they all fall together in just the most interesting ways that you could not have planned for. Larry: Sangita, let me ask this. This is no time to be humble. I want you just to be straightforward about this. What characteristics do you have that make you a successful entrepreneur? Sangita: Oh, this is actually really easy for me to answer. I am tenacious. I do not give up. Larry: [laughs] Sangita: I don't take no for an answer. Frankly, I'm just a pain in the ass. [laughter] Lucy: We're kind of laughing because, in this series of interviews, this characteristic shows up over and over, maybe, slightly differently said ‑ relentless, persistent. I think, you said "steamroller." Larry: I think we ought to have an award called the "pain in the..." You know what I mean. [laughter] Sangita: It makes sense to me that that would be a strong characteristic of an entrepreneur, just given the obstacles that you run into. If you just gave up, you wouldn't get anywhere. And so, I think, it's the people that are willing to stick it out. And when I say stick it out, of course, you may need to make course correction, and you may decide an idea that you had wasn't quite right and it needs to be refined here or there. But, if you believe in a vision and keep going, and don't let things get in the way and deter you, at the end of the day I think you'll be successful. Lucy: I think, that's well said. And being an entrepreneur is just so much work, and you do have to be relentless and take risks and get out there. And yet, we recognize, too, that people have personal lives. They have causes they believe in. They do things with families and friends. So, we were just wondering, in your particular case, how do you personally bring balance into your professional and personal life? Sangita: That is probably the ultimate question. I went to a Women in Cable conference in New York, a couple of months ago now, and it was really refreshing for me because up on the stage were some very high‑powered women in cable speaking: Gerry Laybourne, who is, I believe, the chairman of Oxygen, and a few others. And the one comment that they made, which I think resonated with everyone, including myself, is, "There's no such thing as balance. You just can't do it, so don't even try." And I think, that's right. I think, you need to pick what is important, and you just can't do everything. So, for me personally, at this stage of my life, it's a business. It's TAG Network, and it's my family. I've got two little boys. I'm married. I've got a husband and two little boys, who are four and nine. And so, my life really is my family and my work. And what I've had to sacrifice are things like having a clean house and getting together with friends as much as I used to ‑ I don't do that anymore. And that's OK. I mean, I know that that'll change. It's just sort of a stage that I'm in at right now. And I think that when women try and do everything, where they try and have the cleanest house and the best‑behaved children and run a company and throw parties like Martha Stewart, that's where you get into trouble, because you just can't do it. It's crazy to try. Lucy: I don't want you coming over and seeing my house. [laughs] It doesn't look very good either. Sangita: Trust me. Then, I'll feel right at home. Lucy: [laughs] It doesn't look very good either. Larry: That wasn't a slip of the tongue when you said "trouble" and "Martha Stewart" in the same sentence, was it? Lucy: I don't think Martha gets to come over to our house either. Sangita: But, it's a matter of figuring out what the priorities are and realizing that something's got to give, and being comfortable with just saying, "OK. Let's let that part go for now. I'll come back to it when I can." Larry: Now, I'm going to put you on the spot. Sangita: OK. Larry: All right. You've already achieved a great deal. Thank you for sharing your personal, and professional, aspects of your life this past number of years. And I'd like to ask, what's next for you, above and beyond TAG Networks? Sangita: Gosh. That's a great question. Again, I am so focused, again, just on TAG and my family that I rarely poke my head up to see what else is going on. I do know one of the things that is important to me ‑ and as well to my husband, to us, I think, as a family ‑ is figuring out: how do we give back to the community? We've been so lucky that the next stage, that hopefully TAG is very successful and we'll sell it for millions of dollars and we'll have some time on our hands. What can we do then, to give back to the community? And so, we've got some ideas of different things that we'd like to do. So, I think, perhaps taking some time off to do, for lack of a better word, social venture work, or enabling other people to get to where they want to be, would be fantastic. Larry: Oh. A person after your own heart. Lucy: A person after my own heart. Well, thank you very much, Sangita. This has really been interesting. I think, you're very inspirational, and I know our listeners will get a lot out of hearing your advice and some of your experiences. And I just want to remind everybody to share this podcast with a friend. And I'd like to remind listeners where you can find these podcasts. You can find them at www.ncwit.org, as well as w3w3.com. And don't forget to share this podcast with a friend. Thanks very much, Sangita. Sangita: Thank you. Larry: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Sangita VermaInterview Summary: Sangita Verma saw a void in the marketplace: games on TV, piped directly through your cable line. Release Date: July 3, 2007Interview Subject: Sangita VermaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 17:17