Podcast appearances and mentions of lucy all

The weather is changing and the frightening things are coming out to play. Time for KMAC and Yek to start drinking heavier beers while recounting steampunk powered tales of the macabre in jolly ol’London town with the DC Victorian Undead series. All manner of ghouls abound - Zombies, a Two-faced monster, Vampires, Queen Victoria & Insurance Executives! Comics:Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs Zombies, #1-6 (Jan. 2010 - June 2010) What the Deuce? Automatons! Stuck in a zombie filled underground village, Sherlock sabring heads off and Dr. Watson crackalacking with his strap like an OG. Steam punk grenadiers machine gunning and torching to the rescue. Mycroft, pass that English KFC Bowl of Kidneys and Kedegree, please. Moriarty and his celestial zombie body knowledge. A reanimated corpse with a barely restrained taste for flesh, but now you think he's crazy? Zombie's don't sleep, don't feel pain, don't fear, and their ranks swell with every bite and tear! Burn it all down! **Mic-Drop**Silly zombie, don’t bring a gun to a grenade fight. Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs. Jekyll and Hyde, #1 (Dec. 2010) No, you’re a jack-in-office. Zombie-demic pro-tip: Chinese herbalist can clear up that dual personality. What the Deuce? I shot out your head!Hyde SMASH! Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, #1-5 (Jan. 2011 - May 2011) Lloyds of London: We cover J-Lo’s booty and dead Russian sailors. Queen Victoria & inbred royal cousins gots the sugars. Bring in Dapper Drac! Not gypsies, Szganys, OPA! Queen Bee Gypsy driving ghost car kind of scary. Lucy – All the Single Ladies Vampire! Mustache, cowboy hat got a silvered blade. Early round knock out - Sherlock drops fangs in 2 panels. If an actress dies in character, does anyone even care. Beers:KMAC: Unholy, Coppertail Brewing Co., Tampa, FLStyle: American Trippel Ale, 9.2% ABVRating: 5 out of 5 phosphorous magnesium grenades. Yek: Bust Head, Old Bust Head Brewing Co., Vint Hill, VA Style: English Style Ale, 5.6% ABV, 21 IBUs, Hops: Goldings, Fuggle, & Cascade Rating: 4.5 out of 5 bust Zombie heads.

Which Rumple are we going to see? Is Roni going to help Lucy? All these plus press release, episode promo, set photos and everything you need to know about 7x13 "Knightfall".

Mother Gothel's agenda, Zelena's dysfunctional family, the Resurrection Amulet's unparalleled power. Plus, why did Gothel help wake up Lucy? All these and more as we dig in to the episode "Secret Garden".

From business to literature to politics, there is a huge pool of female expertise on China. But you wouldn’t know it if you examined the names of people who are quoted in the media and invited to China-themed panel discussions: They are mostly men. This is a problem that two Beijing-based journalists aim to solve. Joanna Chiu of AFP and Lucy Hornby of the Financial Times created and maintain an open, user-contributed list called “Female Experts on Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China and Taiwan.” They began by providing their own contacts, then promoted the document to various email groups and to Twitter. The list “blew up” early this year and now contains nearly 200 names and contact details of female China experts on every major subject area, based all around the world. With such a roster willing to be called up, the list eliminates many common excuses for the underrepresentation of women in the field. In this episode, Joanna and Lucy speak with Jeremy and Kaiser about the realities and biases in the field, the excuses and corresponding solutions for gender underrepresentation, and how the “women’s list” came about. Longtime listeners will remember Lucy from a previous Sinica episode discussing her story on China’s last surviving “comfort women,” enslaved by the Japanese military in World War II. You can follow Lucy on Twitter at @hornbylucy, and find Joanna on Twitter at @joannachiu. Recommendations: Jeremy: Witness to Revolution, a film by Lucy Ostrander about author and labor activist Anna Louise Strong (1885–1970), who spent decades in China and the Soviet Union, getting to know Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Joseph Stalin, and writing about their pursuit of communism. Lucy: All the President’s Men, the first-person account of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they reported on the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal. Joanna: The Supreme People’s Court Monitor, a project of Susan Finder, for those who follow Chinese law, and the work of Jessica Valenti, a feminist book author and columnist for the Guardian. Kaiser: The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a story about a sleeper agent from Vietnam who moves to the U.S.

Troels Knudsen lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and has been immersed in music for most of his life. This focus has mostly been fixed on the club world. And he spent the last 10+ years producing, performing, engineering and dj'ing various electronic genres around Europe and beyond. This activity generated the excentric Pyro drum'n'bass moniker, house works as part of 2400 Operator on Underground Quality and the industrial tinged techno project Northern Structures on Sonic Groove. After a few years of working in groups it was time to get back to solo work. In 2012 the Ctrls project was iniated with the release of the Interface EP on the new homebase Token Records. A remix of Ø/[Phase]'s Binary Opposition was the follow up, and by then Ctrls tracks had worked their way into the sets of some of the most notable techno djs across the world. Troels continues to develop his fast paced and futuristic style, seeking out the various nuances of techno and the surrounding genres. Future plans for the project hold more Token Records output as well as dedication to engaged and detailed dj'ing. Tracklist: 1. Lucy - All that Noise 2. Mike Parker - Lustration 4 3. Irradiation - Black Body Radiation (Milton Bradley Remix) 4. Israel Vines - precipice 5. Ron Costa - Erteneve 6. Relay - Untitled A 7. Diagenetic Origin - Question 8. Developer - Indigenous 9. Cassegrain - Yokai 10. Donato Dozzy - Sotto Ma Sotto 11. Pris - If She Cracks She bears 12. Regis - Baptism Extended 13. DJ Spider - Northern Abyss (Ctrls Remix) 14. Spherical Coordinates - SCFGM-19 15. Donato Dozzy - Terzo Giorno 16. Christian Wünsch - Radioactive Decay 17. Sigha - Purification Loop 4 18. ? - ? 19. Ctrls - Charge (RRose Remix) Token Records http://www.tokenrecords.com/ Token Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/tokenrecords Container Video Podcast 05 http://goo.gl/eNb94h Music: Ctrls - Social Vector - TOKEN 22 [Token Records] Video: Lanvideosource

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: Interview with Hilary DeCesare [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders and I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and we're back with another interview and a series of interviews that we've had with just tremendous women who have started technology companies. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, Lucy, it is really great to be here. A lot of people ask what does w3w3 Business Stock radio do. Well we've been around for 14 years. So that was way back in the early days and we have partners like NCWIT certainly one of our most popular and most important to us. I must say that we're extremely proud to be able to help promote young women in technology. Lucy: Well we've got another great interview today as I've said. It's with Hillary DeCesare, who is the founder of Everloop which we're going to find out in a minute. It is just a terrific company for kids. So she is a digital parenting expert and a mother herself. She recognized the unmet need of a safe environment for children to share, to talk, to chat on the Internet. She came up with the idea of Everloop, an idea around privacy protection and mentoring technologies to ensure the safety of youngsters. This is a very comforting thought. I know Larry, you and I are both parents. So it's nice to know that something like Everloop is out there. Perhaps Hillary will tell us some about their innovative technology called loops, looping, how children join loops that they share common interests. They talk to each other and of course that is all with parental approval. So welcome Hillary. We are very happy to talk with you today. Hillary DeCesare: Thank you for having me. Lucy: So tell us a little bit about what's going on at Everloop. Hillary: Well as you mentioned, Everloop is a social media platform and it is designed for kids under 13. There is a huge craze going on out there where kids are using devices far earlier than even two year older children of today. So you've got kids as young as 5, 6, 7, going on their parents' smartphone, the iPads, desktops. What we're trying to do is make sure that when these kids finally go out into the wild wild Internet and they are exposed to adults, that they're ready to actually be there and that they're not making mistakes. So Everloop's purpose is to really keep these kids safe across all devices. Larry: Well I love it. Lucy: I know. It's great, isn't it? I'm sure that some of the companies' strategies will emerge as we talk to Hillary in this interview. Why don't you let our listeners know how you got first into technology? Hillary: I started in technology at a company called Oracle. I was there for 10 years and really became passionate about different products that are out on the market. I was hungry to learn about new things being brought up and I thought of my own children and I do have three kids. As my own kids became interested in technology, I thought, you know, I've got the background and yet I still feel that I'm not connected to my kids in their digital nomadship when they are out there really exploring. And I thought, well if that is happening to me as a parent, it must be happening to others. So two other moms and entrepreneurs, we decided to join forces and create a company that was really designed to as a mission, help with safe communication. I mentioned across multiple devices and it was really mobile devices were coming into play and desktop, giving them the ability to have kids feel safe. Because they ultimately want that too but also give parents a place that they can trust. And that's why we really created Everloop. Lucy: I like that phrase, digital nomadship. Larry: Yes. Hillary: Haha. That might be a new one. Larry: There you go. Lucy: Absolutely awesome. Larry: Hillary, you've got a family. You obviously are very busy. Why are you an entrepreneur? And what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Hillary: Well it's interesting because someone said last week "So you're a mompreneur?" I said, I really am because I believe so strongly in giving kids a voice, having them have a homebase, having them stay kids longer. I think that today's society makes kids grow up much faster than they need to. And there's always that desire as a tween, I've heard it statistically said that kids want to be 17. But the problem is that where we have technology now, taking this kids, they're getting to the place where it took us years and years and years to get. They can get to pictures, images, videos in five seconds by going online. So for me going into being an entrepreneur and having children, you have to take a step back and say how are you going to do it all? And that is really the question. How do you create balance in your life? And I felt so strongly about what I wanted to give my own children that I use them in my test cases. I use them as my focus group. I actually engage them in the company. Larry: That's super. Lucy: Now that is very cool. I believe that's the first time we have heard that. That's awesome. Along the way Hillary, who influenced or supported you to take this career path? Hillary: Well it was interesting because I have had the privilege of really being located in the Silicon Valley. I have had the change to meet truly the top people in the industry and when I worked at Oracle, got to know just some, you know, the creme de la creme of the men and the women. I saw what it took them to really be successful and to gain the respect and you know I talked about trust. You have to, and this is really important for any entrepreneur, when you're thinking about starting a business, you have to be able to identify with at least three people that you think can mentor you and be able to coach you. What was interesting is after Oracle, I actually started a business where for five years I have helped CEOs in the Valley put strategic frameworks around their business. And sometimes when you do things like this you think, well I've done this. I coach other people. Who's going to help me figure out next steps? What's interesting is that there is always more to learn. There's always comments and feedback that people can give you. People have experiences and you have to be so willing to throw out where you are in your company and what challenges you are having. People want to help other people if they're willing to listen. So I went ahead and found three absolutely incredible mentors. I ping them all the time and throw off questions. Sometimes these are 10 minute conversations and sometimes they are an hour. Larry: That's great and I hope you listeners out there heard that because it's a great thing to go after. Now with all the different things you've done. It already sounds you are a serial entrepreneur. What was the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Hillary: I think the toughest besides always having the pressure of being a mom right? Because that's my number one job. That's my number one love. That's my number one focus and everything. So besides the juggling of just really being there and I'm also a single mom. So you add the element of trying to be there for your kids. I think that what you always have to remember is that this is just a job. I mean that is ultimately what it is. It's a career choice and that's the key that I just said. It is a choice. You're doing this because you ultimately want to spend your time and your hours doing it. Sometimes what happens is that you can get caught up in wanting to have something be so successful that you lose sight of why you actually started to create it in the first place. I had the opportunity at one time specifically that I will talk about. I had a chance to merge the company with another and it all sounded great. But then when you started to look at the real terms behind it, it took me away from the core focus of what I had set out to accomplish initially. I believe that you will be successful if it goes with what you are passionate about. So it was a challenging time for me because there was a moment where I could have sold myself short. I chose not to and I chose to continue down the path what I truly believe in and where I believe that this company can go. But those were tough decisions. Lucy: Absolutely and it's a great transition to our next question. Around giving advice to young people about entrepreneurship, so it seems like one piece of advice you would clearly give them is keep your perspective. What other things would you advice them about? Hillary: I would absolutely say ideas can become big, way to big to even handle so focus, focus, focus. Really put together that one page on what are you hoping to accomplish? What are your milestones going to be? Because we lose sight. You're trying to go to that end game, you're trying to get to be that, the big picture. Where you have to appreciate the small things that you accomplish. So putting plans together and I'm dig on a 30 day plan, a 90 day plan. You have to be organized enough that when you hit those small successes, you stop and you take note and you say you know what? That was really good. I was able to accomplish this. Because if you don't, what happens is you spin and you spin and you spin and you don't think you're moving forward at all. You kind of just plateaued. But in reality you actually had. You've accomplished and you're getting closer to ultimately what you're trying to build, which is a successful company. Larry: That's very good advice. Now let me ask you a related question and that is: What are the personal characteristics that have made you a good entrepreneur? Hillary: The characteristics that an entrepreneur needs to have is one you need to have very thick skin. I mean you just have to have the ability to get knocked down and get up again. It's this idea that you've got your integrity. You've got what you initially started the business to be. But then you are also flexible. I see many entrepreneurs kind of get on their path. You can't deviate at all and especially if you're dealing with technology. Technology, you can't jam in your product. The square into the circle peg. You can't do it. Sometimes you have to be able to pivot. You have to be flexible enough to realize, you know what, this idea isn't that great of an idea anymore. But willing to say, but hey, maybe this other one is a really good idea. Lucy: And that's really evolutionary right? Which is a thing that we hear a lot in these interviews that things will emerge. So Hillary you mentioned your personal and your professional lives, what kinds of tips or techniques can you share that help you bring balance to the two of them? Hillary: That we're balanced...You know what if you really showed me someone who truly balanced their lives, please introduce them to me. Lucy: We don't know anybody. Larry: We don't. Hillary: I think it's a fallacy. I think what you can try to do is realize what's important in your life and look at it as a way to say as I'm doing right now. I don't feel as guilty when I know over the dinner table, I'm discussing a new concept or new direction with the company and I'm gaining the feedback of my own children. It's interesting, I once heard that you have your life and it's in the shape of a triangle and it's you. Your family, the last is your career and the right is kind of this whole understanding that the health around you, not just your family. I think it's almost the point where you have to schedule things into your life in order to get balance. It's as crazy as saying that for these two hours I'm going to schedule time with my family at dinner and I'm not going to do anything else. You have to actually make it into a meeting so that you know in your head, nothing else. Cos if you're in a meeting with people, right now, I'm talking to you but I'm not going off and doing other things. I'm completely focused on you. You have to do that with your children. You have to do that with your health. It's so important because if one of these pieces fail, it has the tendency to spin off into other areas as well. Larry: Wow that's also great advice. By the way, I love your website. It's really super, isn't it? Lucy: It really is. Hillary: Well thank you. I'm really proud of it. I think again, trying to be this trusted source for any parent out there and giving kids a homebase where they can just go and feel like yeah this is mine. This is my place. Larry: Yes that's very good. Now you've already achieved a great deal both personally and professionally. What's next for you? Hillary: OK, you're asking an entrepreneur what's next? Well I think that I'm passionate about the kids phase. I love everything about it. I'm so excited with new partnerships that I'm developing for Everloop. I get approached all the time with new technology and it just fascinates me on how we are spending our lives these days. How everything is just gammafied around you. How do you make people interested in doing things without having everything be about a reward system? You look at kids and I'm a mom that does it. Hey if you do this, you get this. But it's interesting because how far will we go? So when I look at where technology is shaping kids. I just read that kids are learning to use an iPad before they can even tie their shoes. This is fascinating to me! I think where I see myself is really uncovering those great technologies in the future that aren't detriments to a kids life but enhances. Larry: You know I think that's so true. I've heard that kids today are taking three months longer to learn how to walk. That's only because they've got to learn how to text first. Hillary: I agree with you. Lucy: But they can't text while walking. Hillary: Exactly but when you have my daughter who is 14 and she texts about a 100 texts a day. She can do it in about 30 seconds and I'm still the thumbs and trying to get my text. She will look at me and say "Are you still sending that one text?' She's just light years ahead of me. I laugh at my 11 year old when she says "Mommy, are you in this new app?' She knew Instagram months before I did. It was so great. She's now telling me " Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Are you playing draw something?' I love it because I sit down and I'm like OK again. She's educating me. Now how can I educate all the other parents in the world? Lucy: And that's why a one final tip right? Make sure your subject matter experts live with you. Hillary: You know what they are the domain experts. I just realize that right now, but make sure you're not disconnected with it. Make sure that you embrace it because it is their way of life. If you want to communicate with your kids going forward, it's not your way. It's their way or the highway. Lucy: It's really true. My son was very impressed with me last night when I sent a photo with a text message. Larry: Whoa, very good. Lucy: I know, I graduated. So Hillary, we can't let you go without asking about your recent appearance on Secret Millionaire. How was that? That's pretty cool. Hillary: Oh I have to say I have always been passionate about giving back. I felt a little hypocritical as I was sitting here on Everloop, letting kids join fabulous charities and hearing more about what kids love to volunteer and what they do if they had the ability to go out and actually make a huge difference. I was approached by this opportunity and initially I thought I'm not definitely into the reality world. I barely even watch TV. I thought more about it and the fact that I could uncover by being placed in a city that I'm unfamiliar with and uncover wonderful charities and be able to help them become known. All these unsung heroes that are doing amazing things. I thought you know what? This is such a great way now. We've taken one of the charities that I've uncovered when I was doing the show and this little boy who started a charity called Love in the Mirror when he was eight years old. He now has a loop on Everloop and he shares what he is doing in the community to help make it a better place. It all came together. It made me feel good. It made the people that are hearing about what we did feel good. The charities that I got to meet. I mean I'm still friends with every single one of them. It's one of those that you feel blessed where something fell into my lap that was just so outside the box for me. It proved to be one of the highlights of my life to date. Lucy: Well it was very compelling. I went and looked out on it on the web and I think it's the perfect way to end an interview because it just really defines you and Everloop and what people are using Everloop for. I know that your site has a page that lists the charities in case listeners are interested. Hillary: Well thank you for taking the time to talk with me and I love talking to you both. Hopefully we will be able to do this again soon. Lucy: Great I want to remind listeners again that they can find this interview at ncwit.org and... Larry: W3w3.com Lucy: All right, thank you Hillary. Larry: Thank you. Hillary: Take care. Bye-bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Hilary DeCesareInterview Summary: As the mother of three young children, Hilary DeCesare recognized the unmet need for a safe environment for kids to connect online with friends, play games, share pictures and music, and learn new skills. With her children in mind, she created Everloop, a social media platform for kids under 13. Release Date: August 1, 2012Interview Subject: Hilary DeCesareInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 19:12

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 Candace Fleming CEO and Co-founder, Crimson Hexagon Date: April 19, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Candace Fleming [music] Lee: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I am a board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and I'm also the CEO of Boulder Search. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, they are women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs, and with me today is Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hey Larry. Larry Nelson: I'm very happy to be here, and this is a wonderful so reason and you make sure you pass these interviews along to others that you know would be interested and they can give it here at NCWIT.org or W3W3.com. Lee: Great, and I also have Lucy Sanders, who is the CEO of NCWIT. Hi Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hello. Lee: Great to have you. Well, and just to get right to it, we are interviewing Candace Fleming. Candace is the CEO and co-founder of Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon's technology analyzes the vast social Internet, so blog posts, forum messages, tweets et cetera, and it's done by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics. And the product is called Foxtrot, and it helps you to develop your listening approach to many different Internet channels. So without further ado, I would love to introduce Candace, and have her tell us a little bit about her background and experience. Candace, welcome. Candace Fleming: Thank you, it is great to be here, I am excited about this opportunity to share. Lee: Well, if you could tell us just little bit about Crimson Hexagon, that would be great. Candace: At a very high level, what Crimson Hexagon does is, we have technology that goes out and find millions and millions of blogs and forums and tweets, product reviews and things that are probably available on Facebook, and reads them all everyday and can summarize opinions that are being expressed. So in some ways it's a little bit like an automatic opinion poll, but you are not actually asking a poll question because you are really just harvesting values from conversations that are already happening. Lee: Wow. Candace: And we are a 15% company based here in Boston. Lee: So basically, you have got bots or robots that go out and hit all of these different social sites and pull back the data and then analyze it, is that kind of a nutshell for our novice technology listeners? [laughter] Candace: It is that idea where we get data from lot of different sources, we license some data streams, we also do our own call link, but it is not so much the data collection that is special about what we do, it is really in the content analysis of what we do. So if you imagine, I think a lot of your listeners are familiar with Google Alert, were you can very efficiently and very quickly use keywords, and every day multiple times a day, you will get an email in your in-box with the links to mention of those words. But the problem is, when you start to build a large brand or you have a large company, there are so many mentions that it is nearly impossible to stay on top of them. We end up speaking with marketers and brand managers or PR agencies who sit down with a list of 30,000 links and they say, "How do I make meaning out of all this?" So our technology really allows you... It quantifies for you in that list of 30,000 links, what percentage of people are saying they like a specific feature of your product or what percent of people are saying they actually like your competitor's product better or really getting down to the opinions of what's being said. Lee: So we could use it to figure out what people are saying about Larry. Larry: Uh oh. Candace: Exactly. That's right. Larry: That's a different dinner gig. Lee: I'm liking this more and more. Candace: The only limitation is that people have to actually be talking about the topic. Lee: Oh don't worry, we've got plenty of info, don't worry. Lucy: So Candace, back to you. We'd love to hear about how you first got into technology. Candace: Ever since I was little, I have been noticing how technology improves our lives every day. My dad was an electrical engineering professor, and so we were always talking about science and technology and new innovations and seeing how the world progressed. And so, I've been thinking about it from a very early age, and went on to get an engineering degree in college and have always done work in my professional career around technology and algorithms and the application of technology. Larry: Oh. Lucy: So as a little add on, what technologies do you think are cool today? Candace: Well, of course our technology. Lee: Of course, you want a list. Candace: I could be honest, that I'm very biased about that. Actually I think there are a couple of things, I think there are some really neat consumer electronics coming out like they talk about 3-D TV or the Nexus One phone. But even maybe a little bit less mainstream, I heard about a technology that a Harvard biologist named Pete Gergen developed in microbial fuel cells, and it sounds like a lot of big words, but essentially what he's developed is a way to harness energy as microbes that decompose organic matter. And what that means is you can basically take a bucket of trash, stick one of his apparati into it and have light, or have enough to charge a cell phone. Stuff like that, if you think about the implications of that for third world countries or differences parts of our lives, I think it's incredible. So there's a lot of good stuff laying around. Larry: Yeah. Wow. I'm ordering one of each. Candace, let me ask this. What is it about being an entrepreneur that turns you on? Talk about that. Candace: I think for me it was all about this particular opportunity. I didn't set out to one day start a company of my own necessarily, and so in this instance I saw a huge opportunity that was so exciting that I wanted to literally drop everything and get this off the ground. I think in general, nothing is more exciting for me than pulling together a team and seeing what we can collectively accomplish. And I think in small companies, you really can see the impact of that. Where I walk into our conference room for a team meeting, and a year and a half ago these people didn't even know each other, and now they're doing things for big brands and big name companies, and really doing things that even the people on their team never knew they could accomplish. Lee: Well and forming those teams and forming something from nothing is really an exciting part of entrepreneurship. Now Candace, you mentioned that your father from a very early age was talking about technology, talking about engineering, and we find that that's very typical, especially for women. That their father or mother played a role in their early sort of sense of technology. Can you tell us a bit more about who else influenced or supported you in your career paths, or role models or mentors? Candace: So I would have to say that number one on that list is actually my husband. Lee: Yay husbands! Lucy: Yay! Candace: His name is Lee Fleming. And you know I was at a breakfast on Friday and there was a female entrepreneur who said, "Well you know, everyone knows the saying 'Behind every good man is a good woman,'" and I say the exact opposite is true as well, especially as it applies to start-ups. Behind every entrepreneur, especially if it's one who is a family, there's got to be a supportive spouse there." And so I think my husband wanted me to do this even more than I did. And so even before day one, when I heard about this opportunity, he's been helping me every step of the way. Quite literally, because he happens to be a professor at Harvard Business School, and he teaches a class on commercializing technologies and innovations, so I get some good coaching over the dinner table. Lucy: That's pretty handy! Candace: Very handy! Other than my parents, of course, who have been so supportive along the way, my co-founder, actually, who is also a professor at Harvard, his name is Gary King. He's the one who invented the algorithms that we've commercialized. So, from day one, he has said, "I think you're the one who should grow this company, I think you can make this happen and I want to work with you to do this." So having someone who believes in you so completely, and stands by you every step of the way, and is so fantastic to work with is a great gift. Lucy: That is really exciting. Lee: I downloaded his paper to read. Candace: Did you read it? Lee: Not yet, it was a little long for me, but I downloaded it for plane reading. Lucy: We just had interviewed somebody about advisory boards, and I'm thinking you've got these great built-in advisory boards. So to switch topics just a smidge from all these wonderful things, what's the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Candace: It's actually what I'm doing now, but more specifically, starting and growing a successful company. Basically, in 2008 which is when we had the worst economic meltdown since the Depression, is by far the hardest thing that I've ever had to do. Or, at least chosen to do. But, as I'm sitting here, we just finished putting together our financial plan for the year, and I think it's going to be a great year. I feel like we've made it through and we have a lot of momentum. But, the economy has not been necessarily the friend of any entrepreneur, I think, in the last 18 to 24 months. Lee: You're right. Lucy: That's the truth. Lee: It hasn't been good to anyone. Larry: Yeah, well, boy, that's an interesting lead-in to the question I'm going to ask, and that is: If you were sitting down right now with an entrepreneur and you were going to give them some advice, what advice would you give them today? Candace: That's a great question. I would say maybe three things. First, and I mean this both perhaps literally and figuratively, eat your broccoli. Eat your broccoli because it's good for you, and it will make you healthy. But, figuratively, I mean being an entrepreneur, there are a lot of things that you need to do that are good for you even though you may not want to do them. They're good for the company, they're good for your own personal growth, and so I would say don't shy away from those things. The second thing, also I mean both literally and figuratively is to play team sports. I think, literally, go out there and play volleyball and basketball, soccer, because I think playing in a team is actually very much like working in a small company. You have the same small team environment, you need to give and take and you have rules in a company just like you do on a sports team. Learning about leadership and teamwork, I think sports is an incredible way to learn that. And then the last thing is again, both figuratively and literally, put things to bed earlier than you want to. [laughter] By that, I mean definitely get more sleep than you want to get, but metaphorically, don't set perfection as the bar for everything. I think that in many, many cases good is enough. And if I had learned earlier, I think I would have saved myself a lot of time and stress. Lucy: Well, so, my next question is about the characteristics that make you a great entrepreneur. What we just saw in that last answer was one of them is wisdom. [laughter] Lucy: So, perhaps you can, other things that come to your mind when you think about yourself and entrepreneurship. Those characteristics that you think give you an edge. Candace: I think that I'm an optimist. I think entrepreneurs have to be willing to look reality in the face and convince themselves to see the rosy side of it, perhaps. [laughs] You need to say you can be so focused and drive for something even though there are going to be a lot of obstacles in your way. The second thing is I'm not scared of hard work. That's something that I think is crucial to being able to get a company off the ground. I think the last thing is I'm fairly direct and honest. I think when you're working in a small company environment, there's - somewhat thankfully from my perspective - there's not as much politics. You sit in a room with people, you decide things and you get things done. There's not ten layers of approvals. So, I think being straightforward with people and being honest with people really carries you a long way in being successful, particularly in a small group. Lucy: I have to agree with all of the above. When you have that small group, you just have to be really direct and honest. Candace: Limit to cycles. Lucy: Yeah. Candace: That's it. Lucy: It really does. So, Candace, one of our favorite questions is with building start-ups and being an entrepreneur, as you'd mentioned earlier, it's a ton of work. So, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional life? Candace: Yeah, I think this is a great question. As I thought about this, I have, perhaps, an ironic take on this. And, that is I view my family as an enabler of my professional success. I think that I have a fantastic husband, I mentioned earlier. I have two little kids. I have a two-year-old and a six-year-old. I actually started Crimson Hexagon when my two-year-old was two weeks. Lucy: Oh, my goodness! Lee: Oh, my God! Candace: There is no better way to give you perspective back in life than when you come home from a hard day of work and you get tackle-hugged by these two little people before you can even put your briefcase down. [laughs] So, I actually think that, by having a family, it allows me to be successful at work. Because I work just as hard as the next person and just as many hours. But, I think the trick is, even if it's 15 minutes that you sit down and talk with them in a day, you make that time. And, that time gets paid back to you in a thousand different ways that help you in the rest of your life. So, I just think you have to make sure that you spend time on each, even if the time is very little. But, mentally, it's what keeps me balanced. Lucy: Absolutely the case. Those are great ages for kids, just great, full of energy. So, Candace, you've already achieved a lot. What's next for you? Candace: I have achieved some good things, but I don't view myself as being done here. [laughs] I plan to continue running and growing small companies. I think that what we're doing here at Crimson Hexagon is so exciting. This type of activity is something I want to do for a long, long time. Lucy: Crimson Hexagon is exciting. That is just a cool company. And, I feel like I want to make a plug for a Boulder-based company that's one of your partners. Because we have a lot of Boulder listeners here. Room 214 is a partner of Crimson Hexagon. So, we're just excited about that. If you come out here to Boulder, you need to stop by. It would be great to have you. Thank you so much, Candace. We all appreciate your time. I want to remind listeners where they can find this interview. Larry: At W3W3.com as well as NCWIT.org. Lucy: All right. Thank you very much, Candace. We appreciate it. Lee: Yes. Candace: Thank you. Larry: Bye-bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Candace FlemingInterview Summary: Data is abundant on the web, and information is free. But meaning is what matters, and uncovering it requires a good deal more than counting keyword mentions across the social web. Crimson Hexagon's technology – based on groundbreaking work conducted at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science – distills meaning about brands, products, services, markets and competitors from the online conversation. Release Date: April 19, 2010Interview Subject: Candace FlemingInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:28

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Gail Goodman President, Chair, and CEO, Constant Contact Date: March 16, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Gail Goodman [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders and I'm the CEO of National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is our next podcast interview in a series of interviews with women who have started IT companies and/or who are CEOs of start-up companies and the technology spaces. And today, we have Lee Kennedy with us, who is a serial entrepreneur and right now with Bolder Search and also with NCWIT Board of Directors. And Larry Nelson from W3W3 who has just informed us that tomorrow is his eleventh year of his Internet... Larry Nelson: ... Talk radio show. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Lee Kennedy: Congratulations, Larry. Larry: Thanks. Lucy: Well, in this interview is very exciting for all of us who send mail out and who know about Constant Contact. We are interviewing Gail Goodman, who is the President, Chairman, and CEO of Constant Contact. And she has done so much, both personally and through her company to really revolutionize the way that businesses reach out and send mail to their stake holders. And really since she's doing Constant Contact, the number of customers has just skyrocketing. NCWIT is a customer. We use it for our newsletters and our campaigns and everything else. So, welcome, Gail, it's good to have you with us. Gail Goodman: Great to be here and thank you for your business. Lucy: Well, you're welcome. Well, we are really eager to hear first, before we start into our entrepreneurial questions a little bit about what's going on with Constant Contact lately? Catch our listeners up a little bit. Gail: Right, for those of you who don't know Constant Contact: Constant Contact is 100 percent focused on helping small businesses, non-profits associations who look great. That's staying connected to customers, clients, members. So, we started with email marketing and that's absolutely our kind of flagship product. But, over the last couple of years, in addition to growing how many customers use Constant Contact, we also added two new products. Event marketing, so to help people run complete closed moved event registration, take money for the event and that whole community advice for business. Lucy: Of course. Gail: And an online survey tool to help people hear back from their customers or members with feedback and learn more about who those folks are, true demographic questions. Today, we have over 325,000 customers around the world who count on our service to stay connected to their most important audiences. And we are just immensely grateful to that group for their business. Lucy: Well, I didn't really know you had an event marketing tool. So, we have events. Gail: That's fabulous. Lucy: I'm going to have to go take a look at it. Gail, you're the CEO of a Tech company, an obviously you're immersed in Tech every day as you think about what Constant Contact is going to be doing in the future. What is it about technology that really interests you and how did you get into a technology company? Gail: Well, I have to say that I had the technology bug pretty darned early. I started using a computer when I was in high school, which to many of the listeners may seem obvious, but when I was in high school, they didn't have personal computers. You had to actually go find a big computer and something that looked like a refrigerator box and actually program on paper tapes and now I'm starting to sound like a dinosaur. Lucy: No, Gail, you're sounding just like Lucy and Larry. [laughter] Gail: But, I just love technology pretty early on and what excited me as I went through my career was not the technology itself, but the problems that it could solve for real people and real businesses. And so, as my career matured, it was all about solving customer problems and that really is what still excites me and makes me get all into the new and emerging technologies. How can this solve a problem that couldn't be solved with a mainframe, with a laptop and now that we have the Internet and mobile devices and it all creates new opportunities to solve problems. Lucy: Well, as you look at technology today, do you have specific technologies that you think are really leading the charge in terms of being innovative. What technologies interest you the most? Gail: As a business person thinking about what we do for our customers. The technology that interests me the most are the social networks and mobile. As a consumer, I'm really interested in the convergence of the smart phone with identity geo targeting and all that that brings together. I think it's consumers, we're just getting so empowered with the iPhone in our hands to do things so dramatically differently. It's like trying to go back and forth with trying to be a consumer and then thinking about what does that means for our business customers, how can they take advantage of that. Lucy: That's definitely the way that you have to think even in your business because your business is all about how consumers use your product. So, if we switch back to you, you started off as a techie and you loved solving problems. What moved you into being an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that you love? Gail: The thing that moved me into entrepreneurship was really this combination of wanting to solve customer problems and really feeling like I was ready to earn my own destiny. I had spent a career working for others, sort of frustrated at the pace of what I could do with a pace of change, with the pace of innovation and it just got to the point where it was time to put my money where my mouth was and see if I could do it better than all the people I was thinking I could do it better than. Lucy: Obviously being in a start up that pace is fast enough for you right? Gail: Yeah, and the very interesting challenge for me now is, I joined Constant Contact in '99, there were six people. But, the place was definitely fast enough. Today, we are 625. Lucy: Wow. Gail: And I could hardly call us a start up anymore and how do we just keep that pace of innovation going? How do we keep internal entrepreneurship going? How do we make it easy for people to get things done and make decisions? And I am increasingly challenged to keep solving the same problems I came here to solve. Lucy: That's in interesting topic. You know, we have another interview series called "The Toolbox Series" where I think this idea of, how do you take a startup that has grown to some significant size and keep that innovation, start moving? That would be a very interesting topic. Larry: Yeah, it certainly would. Lee: And that's amazing that you've been there. It'll be 11 years, this year? Gail: Eleven years in April. Lee: Wow. Gail: Me and Larry, we're both doing our 11 year anniversary. [laughter] Larry: Yeah, I'll tell you. I was thinking that, wow. Lucy: Wow. Larry: You know, along the way I'm sure that you had either mentors or role models, or people who helped you out along the way. Well, who would that be that you would pick out that has influenced and supported you in your career path? Gail: I'm going to go with two answers here. Larry: OK. Gail: And one seems just a tiny bit trite. But, my parents really were huge influences here and I think the thing they did for me that is pretty unique, for their generation for women, is they really gave me a huge belief in myself and the confidence that I could do or try anything. And that was really a huge piece of what gave me the confidence to step out from under, you know, the corporate safety net and go alone. Lee: That's wonderful. Larry: Yeah, great. Gail: And then, along the way, you know, my best role models have been my CEO peer mentoring group. So, when I was about two years into this adventure, I joined a group of other venture-backed tech CEOs, who sat down together for a day-and-a-half a quarter and really talked about what we were doing to grow our businesses. You know, the role of the CEO, how to manage the board, how to raise more money. And we helped each other grow into our CEO roles. And so, I would say all of them were role models and I learned something from each and every one of them, because we each brought unique backgrounds and experience sets to the table and created an environment where we could be completely open about the issues and challenges we were facing in our business. Lee: And you sat down each quarter for a day-and-a-half solid? Gail: -huh. Lee: Wow. Lucy: Wow, well, that's pretty intense networking. Lee: Yeah. Lucy: That's awesome. Well, you know, and your statement about your parents, we see that time and time again at NCWIT, that, in fact, encouragement of parents, especially to women, young women, who are interested in technology. As you said, you were interested in computing in high school, at a time when there really wasn't... It was hard to be interested in computing in high school. And that encouragement from your parents, I think, is quite a factor. So, switching gears just a bit, from the encouragement of parents, to something maybe not quite so pleasant. We always like to ask the people we interview the hardest thing they've ever had to do in their career. So, why don't you tell us the most difficult thing? You mentioned working for others and then you started Constant Contact as an entrepreneur; what's the toughest thing you've had to do? Gail: Well, I think the toughest thing I had to do was, you know, really face the fact that Constant Contact might not make it. So, we were venture-backed, the good news is we got some money before the Internet bubble burst. But then, we needed some money after the bubble burst, and money was pretty darn hard to come by. And so, as the cash balance was dwindling and I was counting down how many payrolls I could make, while I was frantically running around the world hat in hand, I needed to write a shutdown plan. And we got within 10 days of pulling the trigger on that. Lucy: Oh! Lee: Wow! And you got funding? Gail: You know, get the executive team in a room, tell them the plan. Tell them we're... You know, at that point, it looked more likely than not, that we were going to shut this thing down. And I think it was... You know, the full employee base never knew how close we got. But, looking around the table at the team who had been working hard every day and saying, "Guys, I think it's over," was the hardest thing I had to do. Larry: How many employees did you have at that time? Gail: More than we should have. [laughter] Lee: Oh, no! Lucy: Wow. Lee: Well, that's a great story. Right? And that it turned out happily ever after this. Larry: Yeah. Lee: So, Gail, we have a lot of young people listening to our podcasts and we would love for you to... If you were sitting here with them, what advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Gail: Well, the thing I would say, is get a good solid foundation before you strike out on your own. So, get some experience first working for a company, and be very observant about what works and what doesn't work. Leadership style, management style. You know, it is very difficult to be figuring these things out for the first time in an environment where you are, you know, absolutely supposed to be running the place. And as you think about those first sets of jobs, be very thoughtful about the set of experiences you want to get. And I would say, get as close to the customer and the value delivery point as you can. So, if you're in a professional services company, you know, get into the client engagements. If you're in a software product company, get into product management. So, you see how the sausage factory produces a product. And not everything you're going to learn there, you're going to want to take with you, but get some stripes somewhere else. Not only will it give you an experience and guide to your own leadership and management style, I think it'll make you much more fundable, if you're going into a business where you're going to need some other people to vote for you and give you their money. Larry: You listeners out there pay attention to that reply, because I wish I had heard that, before I started my first company. But... Lee: That is. That's sage advice. Larry: So, Gale, you talked about your parents, the CEO mentoring group, and so on. Getting right into you, what are some personal characteristics of yours that have made you a successful entrepreneur? Gail: So, I'll highlight four that I think are pretty important. And I'll start with tenacity. I just refuse to fail. [laughter] Gail: Every obstacle was a challenge to be taken on. The second kind of directly relates to that which is I am an analytic animal. So, when I see challenges I don't react to them emotionally, I react to them analytically. Let's diagnose it. Let's do the root cause analysis. And let's fix it. The third thing is that I am a continuous learner. I understand that I don't know what I don't know, and I'm not afraid to get help from others. Talk, you know, peers... One of my first reactions to a problem we would have in the business is who might have solved this problem already? And how do I get access to them to figure out how they solved it? So, I'm always reading books. I am always talking to others. I am always trying to pick people's brains. And the final piece and probably the hardest piece, for me, because it wasn't natural, is I think it's important as an entrepreneur that you be immensely open to the feedback of others and recognize the weaknesses in yourself so you can complement them with the team. And so I ask for, and on a good day listen to a lot of feedback. Lucy: Well, and I think that, I'd add a fifth characteristic that you didn't mention. You have a great sense of humor. A great laugh, I have to think that that helps get through the day as well. Gail: If you start taking yourself too seriously you're in deep trouble. Larry: Yep. Lucy: Yeah. We think so too. We don't take Larry seriously. [laughter] Larry: We'll talk offline, Gail. Lucy: So speaking of your day. You have a lot of work in your day obviously running a successful company like Constant Contact. And yet you have a personal life too. We like to ask how people bring balance into their life knowing full well that perhaps most people are totally unbalanced when they're in the situation that you're in. But, we find that they amazingly have coping strategies so they do have a personal life as well. So, why don't you tell us about how you bring balance there? Gail: Yeah. Just a couple of things. I have so many interests outside of work that I have been unwilling to give up because of that tenacity. So, that's really helped. So, I happen to be a tennis addict as a player and watcher. The good thing about tennis is you've got to schedule it. So, you've got a bunch of other people waiting for you on a court, you don't blow it off. So, it happened to be a very good hobby because other people were waiting for me. To all the tennis players out, all I need to say is doubles with three people is really not as much fun. And I never said, wow, I'm not going to have that much time for that this quarter. I'm not going to sign up for the contract with the ladies. I just did it. And so that formed some anchors of things that got me out of the office and got me moving and fun. The second thing is I have always prioritized the people who mean the most to me. My family, my friends, you cannot let those relationships go. They are the most valuable thing in your life. Someone once told me that story, just think about the world from, sitting on your porch in your 80s, looking back on your life. Very few people are going to say I wish I had spent more time working. The number one thing you hear is that I wish I had spent more time with my family. And you never get a chance to go back and do that. So, I've always been very clear that while on a given day a work priority might overwhelm a family thing. As I look at weeks and months, I can't let that happen more than occasionally. Lucy: So, it's an integration process as opposed to this perfect idea of balance. Larry: Yes. Lucy: Yes. Gail: Yeah. You never get the perfect idea of balance. But you've got to keep the priorities in place. Lucy: Absolutely. Well, Gail, we have loved talking to you, and it's been so interesting. We have one last question. You've achieved so much. Give us a little insight into what's next? What's next with you? What's next with Constant Contact? Gail: So, we at Constant Contact feel like we are just getting started. We are thrilled to serve 325,000 customers. There are 27 million small businesses in the US. And when you add non profits and trade associations, the number gets up to 40 million. And we think those small organizations succeed based on customer intimacy and relationships. And our vision is nothing less than to help them revolutionize that success formula. And so we are on the march to a million, and just unbelievably excited about it because small business is the backbone of the American economy. It employs half of the private workforce and has typically been the very first to hire coming out of recession. So, literally our mission for this year is to re-energize America's small business and pull the United States out of the recession. Lucy: We're behind you. Lee: Hallelujah. Lucy: We're behind you. Larry: Wow. Gail, I just wanted to thank you for joining us today. Gail Goodman of Constant Contact. And this is Lucy, Lee, and Larry. You know the three Ls. It's really our pleasure. Your interview will be up on ncwit.org. It will also be on w3w3.com. And we'll have it on a podcast, a blog, and that social networking stuff you were talking about. So, thanks for joining us today. Gail: That's great. See you all on Twitter. Lucy: All right. Thank you Gail. Gail: Bye-bye. Lucy: Bye. Lee: Bye Gail. [exit music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Gail GoodmanInterview Summary: Gail Goodman joined Constant Contact in 1999, when the company had six employees. Today it has 625 employees, with more than 300,000 customers worldwide. Release Date: April 16, 2010Interview Subject: Gail GoodmanInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 20:02

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Elisa Camahort Page Co-founder, BlogHer Date: June 1, 2009 Elisa Camahort Page: BlogHer [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, from the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is one of a continuing series of interviews we are doing with women who have started IT companies. We've had a great, great interview series with some very influential, distinguished and successful women, and were very happy to get all of you bloggers listening to this are going to be very happy with the interview we're doing today. It's with Elisa Camahort Page. With me is Larry Nelson, from W3W3.com. Hi, Larry! Larry Nelson: Hi! Well, it's a pleasure to be here, and especially Elisa, I just want you to know, I have four daughters. So, we're really interested in this interview. Elisa Camahort Page: Oh! Excellent, Larry. Lucy: Are they bloggers? Larry: Yeah, you betcha! Lucy: Are you a blogger? Larry: Yes. Lucy: A beginning blogger. He's turning red, everybody. Larry: Well, for three years, and I'm still bad at it. Lucy: [laughs] Well, we're very happy to have you here, Elisa. Elisa is the co-founder and CEO of BlogHer. I did a little research on how BlogHer started, and I believe it's a fairly young company, like 2005. You had your first conference in Santa Clara. Is that right? Elisa: Yeah. We had our first conference in July of 2005. So, we're having our fifth annual event this July in Chicago. Lucy: Wow! That's a pretty fast growth on your part. I know that BlogHer is really turning into the leading community and media network for women who blog. You reach over 14 million women each month, either through your conference, or the web, or through a new publishing network that you have. Why don't you say a bit about that publishing network? Elisa: Oh, absolutely. That's right, we did get started with the conference in 2005. After that conference, we really got three primary people to feedback. The first was, "Oh, more conferences please, " because there is something about that in real life connection that happens. The second was about, "How can we sort of find each other everyday?" And hence we launched BlogHer.com in January of 2006, which is really the hub of our entire network. But then, we also had a segment of our community was saying, "Isn't there a better business model? We've been trying some sites, either AdSense and other networks and other kinds of advertising solutions, but we're really getting pennies for the traffic that we're building, for the communities that we're building." So, that's what really motivated us to start the blog for publishing network, which we did in the middle of 2006. We started with just a small, little group of about 35 mommy bloggers, just to test the concept. When that was successful, we expanded. Over the last almost three years now, we now have almost 2, 500 women of all kinds of blogging topics in our network. They reach over 14 million unique visitors a month. Lucy: That's quite a network. Larry: I'm impressed, yes. Lucy: Yeah. That's quite a network! What are the hot topics these days on some of those blogs? Elisa: Well, what's interesting to us is that one of our earliest decisions that we didn't want to sell only women's interest, either on BlogHer.com or on the network and say, "Oh! We only care about parenting," or "We only care about food, " or "Beauty" or on the other hand, but women who care about politics and means and technology, only care about those things. Actually, we're quite multifaceted creatures. We care about all of those topics on the same day. So, we have always on BlogHer.com featured the full range of subject matters that can be covered in the photosphere, and our network has everybody, from every stripe of the photosphere also in it. What's interesting is how certain things bleed through every vertical. So, for instance the economy. It doesn't matter if you're a food blogger, a parenting blogger, a technology blogger, a political blogger, you're probably talking about the economy right now. Last year, it didn't matter if you were a food blogger, or a parenting blogger, or a technology blogger or a political blogger, you were talking about the election. So, there are common themes that people care about across all different areas of focus. By featuring all of those diverse places, we really get to see that full picture of what people are saying about those topics. Lucy: Well, I went there yesterday to get my fill on "American Idol." [laughter] Elisa: Oh! That's my guilty pleasure. Lucy: Well, me too. I'm sure we could take up the whole tape talking about our favorite singers, but I like Adam Lambert. Elisa: Of course! Lucy: Of course! Elisa: He should win, that's clear. Lucy: He should win. Well, this is probably a good time to get into questions for the interview. Our first one centers around technology. Our listeners always like to hear from the people we interview about the technology they think is really cool, that's going to change the way we communicate, or the way we work, or the way we play. So, what technologies do you see that are out there? Elisa: Well, I originally don't come from a technology background. I have no engineering degree. I really came into it quite late, in the high tech back in '97, when it was very boom times for Silicon Valley. What I discovered is that I had actually an aptitude for understanding technology, and then translating it to different audiences, whether they were engineering audiences, or consumer audiences, or business audiences. So, today that's still a big part of what I do, which is explain why technologies are cool to people who may not already get it, like blogging, like Twittering, like my iPhone. What I see today, what humans are doing right now with technology is they are building ways to connect and converse. In your life, most of the people I know are finding it more and more difficult to keep in touch with people face-to-face, that our lives are so busy. We're so time impoverished, there's so many things that seem to conspire against us being able to do as much in real life as we used to. People used to think that technology was an isolating factor, and it was taking us away from people, but I think what we've done is used technology to connect with people online for a lot of our time, instead of in meet space. So, I think I would debate anyone who says that technology isolates us. We've seen amazing examples of how it brings us together, and how it creates communicates across boundaries that used to be pretty drawn in the sand, social economic boundaries, geographic boundaries. A lot of those boundaries get knocked down by this kind of totally distributed communications channel of the Internet. I see that we are developing more and more ways to keep in touch, to communicate with one another. People ask me why I like Twitter. To me, Twitter is poetic almost, the way you get these little snapshots of people's lives. The way you see who they are, beyond even the thoughts and sort of planning and structure that goes into a blog post. I use Twitter often just to mention the music I like, or something I saw that made me stop and think. It's so quick and easy to get a little thought out there that really reveals who I am in a way that a blog post would take too much time, and I might not ever get around to it for something that seems so small. Yet those little small things are what completely differentiate us, and make us each such unique individuals. It's actually applications like Twitter that enable us to show that unique individuality to the world. So, I think it's a beautiful thing. Lucy: Well, and I think that really shows to the listeners. That's one of the most eloquent, impassioned descriptions of social media that I have ever heard. [laughs] Larry: Yes, me too. Me too. Lucy: I think that was just beautiful. Elisa: Oh, thank you. You know I do a presentation that blogging is about love. Lucy: Oh, that's nice. Elisa: It's about, we find, we love what we can do with this technology and we find all forms of love out there in our communities. Most people do it for love and passion. Even people who make money on it. At the core it's because they're writing about something they love. Lucy: I really love that. Larry: Yes, yes I did too. Lucy: I think that's great. You mentioned that you came into technology a little late, transitioned into it and you found that you loved explaining technology to people. Why are you an entrepreneur? We know I think why you love technology and you like to explain it to people based on your last answer but why are you an entrepreneur? What is it about that that makes you tick? Elisa: Well, to be honest I'm an entrepreneur because of serendipity and then passion. I wasn't planning. My plan, one of my earliest role models was my mother who went back to work in the 70's when I was in junior high. She was very much corporate oriented and climbed up the ladder, went from some part time person at a company to being their first female vice president. I really found myself following in that path. I planned to climb the corporate ladder but then I luckily got the opportunity to try working on my own. What I discovered was that I loved not having anyone in "management" to blame for the bad decisions. At least now if there's a bad decision, I was part of it and I can be part of fixing it. I really loved that accountability all the way to the top of the chain. I also say that wherever you work, you're going to bang your head against the wall about some things. When you're an entrepreneur, you get to bang all the different sides of your head. It's not the same thing over and over and over. It's constantly refreshing. There are constantly new things to challenge you and new things really to bring you joy in what you accomplish. There's just this sense of control, and accountability and ownership that after you've done that climb up the corporate ladder for a while and you realize how much is happening above you that you don't have that control, or really the accountability, or the ownership. It's pretty fulfilling to put yourself in that position. Larry: Well, Elisa you mentioned that your mother had an influence upon you. Along the way are there other people maybe who either been role models for you or maybe even mentored you? Elisa: Absolutely. I had a couple of early, great mentors when I decided to go into high tech. I had been in a completely different industry doing marketing but many other things in small companies. I really started at the bottom in tech, in the marketing department. I was just a junior level person. My boss, who was the vice president of the marketing department, he really, he also liked what I had to say. He liked how I thought. He included me in a lot high level calls and meetings just to observe really. Just to be a part of it and see what went on. Afterwards he wanted to ask me my take as someone with an objective view. He really gave me the opportunity from a business point of view to learn a lot quickly. Then at the same time, there was director of product management in that same department who was my technical mentor. He didn't dismiss me because I didn't have an engineering degree. He really taught me our company's technology. He wanted me to write about it. He just thought, maybe she'll write better if she actually understands it. He didn't assume, as a lot of people sometimes do with marketing people, that oh they're not going to really get it. I'm just going to get them bullet points and they'll put in the flowery language but I'll have to do all the really techy stuff. Lucy: [laughs] Elisa: He wasn't like that at all. He was like, if I spend a little bit of time, I think this person can pick it up. He was the one who really started giving more and more technical things to do and really showed me that I had an aptitude for that. From there, I had to take that and do something with it. I had to go and put myself out there for more technical jobs even though I didn't have that educational background. I'm the one who said, "I'm going to go for product manager job anyway. I'm going to go to lead this product management team anyway because I understand this stuff and I have all these other skills". It was those two mentors who very early on, really gave me the chance to learn and we're open to letting me learn. They were both men and this is a very male dominated company. I give both a lot of credit for that. Lucy: Well, and your story speaks to the important role of encouragement. To those of us who are in the business of encouraging more young women to pursue computing and technical fields. Encouragement is a huge thing. Elisa: Yes. Lucy: Just huge. On the flip side of encouragement, [laughs] and positive role models... Larry: Yes. Lucy: There also comes a time in entrepreneurial careers when something, you have to do something really hard, really tough. Why don't you tell our listeners what's the toughest thing you've ever had to do. Elisa: There are two things that I think are tough. One is tough because of what it does to somebody else and one is tough because of what you're doing to yourself. The first is that it's tough to let someone go whether it's for cause or whether it's a layoff and not for cause. It is hard to sit in a room and tell someone you are putting an end to their livelihood. It's a huge responsibility. I don't want to be someone who gets cavalier about that. I have found that over the kind of conversations afterwards, I go in the ladies room and put a little cold water on my face because it's a tremendous responsibility and it's tremendously difficult. That's not to say I would never be one of those people who said, "Oh it's harder for me. It's as hard on me as it is for you". That's bullshit because they're the one losing their job so I'm not going there but it is hard. You feel bad about it, whatever the reason. The other thing is it's tough but usually worthwhile to be the contrarian if it's something you really believe in. On a couple of occasion I have felt like I had to speak up and disagree. Sometimes this is in a room when I was the only woman, when I was the only without an engineering degree, when I was the only one; in some cases where I was the only one who wasn't already a vice president or C level person. I thought I was standing up for the customer instead of just trying to ignore that fact and move forward with blinders on. I think those early experiences really matter a lot now because Blogger is such a community focused company and we still have to think about the customer. The community member and what they think and feel first and foremost. That is what's still serves me and my company today is having that perspective. You can have that perspective even if you're at a B to B company, even if you're way back on the chain from the end consumer. Your customer is still really first and foremost I think. Larry: Wow, I'll say. You know that's a great lead in to my next question and that is on w3w3.com we've been getting overwhelmed almost by the amount of requests and listening to anything that has to do with entrepreneurship. Of course in these tough economic times, there seems to be quite a few people either out of work or whatever that are looking to become entrepreneurs. If you were sitting down right now with a young person who wanted to start their business, become an entrepreneur what advice would you give them? Elisa: Well the first piece of advice I would give anyone is take the risk. Many people never take the risk because of fear. That they allow that fear to be nameless and undefined. What I actually say is, "Think about it right now. What's the actual worst thing that could happen if this fails"? Most of us have safety nets and options that we don't fully credit ourselves with having. So in my case, I certainly had... I was living with someone who helped share expenses. I had savings. I had a home-equity line of credit. I had a lot of resources to draw on. But let's just say, "What could have been the worst that could have happened if both my business and my relationship had failed miserably at the same time?" It would not have been awesome to move back in with my mother at the age of 40, but it wouldn't have been the end of the world, either. That was a safety net I had, right? And we manned this business until we got our first round of funding. I really was... I had spent all my savings. I had taken out money on my line of credit. I had some credit card debt that didn't exist before. I really worked it to the last dollar I was willing to work it, and then we got our funding, and so that made us able to continue. But even if that had all failed and had not come through, I think it would have been worth it, and the very worst-case scenario for me wasn't as bad, once I thought it through, as my imagination was making it when I didn't really look into the details. So, I always tell people to ask themselves, "Now, honestly, really, what's the worst thing that could happen if you try this and it fails?" Lucy: That's great advice. Larry: That certainly is. Elisa: And I think most people think it through, and they imagine ending up on the streets, and I think there are some people who have different circumstances, where maybe their risk is higher, but a lot times people who don't really have... they're in their twenties. They don't really have a huge amount o'clock risk, and they have a lifetime to recover if it doesn't go well. So, go for it. You might as well act as though you're going to live until forever, and have all the time in the world to rebuild if you're in your 20s, for god's sake. Lucy: Absolutely. And I think some people worry what others are going to think about them if they fail, and that is just an ego thing. Larry: Yes, I'll say it is. Elisa: And I think that actually people are way more impressed with entrepreneurs than they even have to be, and I'm surprised how even in the early days, people were just like, "Wow. You're doing your own thing, and you're doing this, and you're doing that. Wow." I think actually people will be way more, if they care about you, you know... I think people are way more impressed that you tried something, even if it ends up failing, than if you don't. Lucy: That's the truth. So, along the lines of this question, listeners are always interested in knowing about personal attributes, or personal characteristics that you believe make you a great entrepreneur. Elisa: I have this rather checkered past career-wise. I think this is probably my fourth career. The advantage of that as opposed to someone who goes to school for something, gets a job, and then stays in that career, I don't feel like my identity is actually... who I am is not what I do. I developed this confidence that I could jump to a new career and pick it up, and do what I needed to do, and do pretty well. And it's not because I was some great student. I was actually an underachiever. But that also... even back then, I never equated my identity with the grades I got, or the salary I made, or the job title I had. So, I think that bred in me this confidence of being willing to take that risk, being willing to ask questions even if they made me look stupid, but usually, you know what? They didn't make me look really stupid. They made me look really smart. So, I think all of that goes into this... you need some chutzspah, I think, to be an entrepreneur. You need to believe in yourself. You need to believe in your judgment, and you need to not get tied up in what other people think, because you're going to get a lot of "no's" to get to your "yes, " and that's especially true if you start going for funding. Not everyone is going to want to put money into your great idea, not because they think it's a good or bad idea, but because it's just not going to fit their portfolio. So, you have to have something separate from what other people identify you as, and what other people think, that makes you believe in yourself and what you're doing. Larry: You know, you mentioned, "Who I am is not what I do." With the busy, busy, schedule, and everything that you're doing, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Elisa: Well, OK, let's be honest. I've co-founded a start-up in Silicon Valley, and we are still working to hit milestones and goals that will really propel us to a state of permanent success, not just quarter-by-quarter success. I don't think balance is a realistic part of the equation right now. I think I would be lying if I said, "I balance my personal and professional lives." I work all the time. You know, it's not like I never... my birthday was last week, so I went to the city for the weekend with my husband, and you know, we had a great time, and I really didn't get on the computer that much. So, I'm not saying I never get to do anything personal, but I really make no concerted effort to have balance, and maybe that's not [laughs]... Larry: [laughs] Elisa: Maybe a lot of people won't think that's the most encouraging answer, but this is Silicon Valley. I think that's the way it is. Lucy: And well, we find to... we ask this question of all the people we interview, and there's a wide variety of answers, but many are saying that they are completely unbalanced. In fact, I was laughing to myself when you said it was your birthday, and you took the day off. Elisa: [laughs] Lucy: I tried really hard. I tried really hard. My birthday was April 4th, and I was going to take the day off. I'm the CEO of a non-profit, right? Of course, I worked the whole day. Larry: Yes, of course. Elisa: And it is different. I though I was working really hard when I was running a team at a company, and I did work really, really hard, but it's nothing compared to when it's your own, and you could basically, work all the time. And for a lot of us who are entrepreneurs, you're doing this because you hope it's going to pay off in a way that will buy you some kind of freedom and flexibility later. But a lot of entrepreneurs I know, they go on to the next...they want to do the next thing. So, there's a certain, I think, consistency of no one who probably starts a company and is putting themselves through this is... no one is probably someone who otherwise would be sitting on a lounge chair eating bon bons. I mean, they're all pretty motivated people. [laughs] Lucy: Yes, that's true. Well, Elisa, you've really achieved a lot, and we appreciate you talking to us, but we'd also like to know, maybe as the last question, what do you see in the future? What's next for you? Elisa: Well, that's funny question, because as far as I'm concerned, there are just miles to go before I sleep with BlogHer being all consuming, and we have all this opportunity for growth and expansion, and we're figuring out the best way to take advantage of those opportunities. And I think that... and my two partners Lisa Stone, and Jory des Jardin... I think we're all pretty much the same way right now, which is that, we're not thinking too hard what's beyond, because we need to make this really happen, and it may take a year, or two years, three years, four years. And also, might I also say, that we all agree that we now made for ourselves the best jobs we have ever had. So, it's not like we wouldn't want to keep doing this forever. We get to do something we're really passionate about. We're a very mission-based organization, and we get to work with a lot of other really smart people, so I really... what's next for me is to make all the promise really come to fruition. If I can do that, then I'll think about what might happen after that. But we're not there yet. We have miles to go. Lucy: Well, and you are in a great job. It's at a crossroads of lots of interesting topics, so you certainly have made quite a great job for yourself. Elisa: Yes, we love it. Lucy: It's wonderful. Well, thank you very much for spending time with us. Elisa: Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure. Lucy: And thank you, Larry. People can find the podcasts W3W3.com., and also ncwit.org. Larry: You betcha. We'll follow up with you, too. Lucy: All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Hope you to meet at May 11. Elisa: You absolutely will. Lucy: All right. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Elisa Camahort PageInterview Summary: "Women are quite multi-faceted creatures", says Elisa Camahort Page -- women are interested in technology, the economy, parenthood, politics, and much, much more. That's why the BlogHer network comprises 2,500 women writing about a broad range of "verticals", attracting more than 14 million unique visitors per month. Release Date: June 1, 2009Interview Subject: Elisa CamahortInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 23:52

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

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Lucy Sanders CEO and Co-founder, NCWIT Date: June 4, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Lucy Sanders BIO: Lucy Sanders is CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and also serves as Executive-in-Residence for the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has an extensive industry background, having worked in R&D and executive positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs for over 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multi-media communication and customer relationship management.) In 1996, Lucy was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow Award, the highest technical accomplishment bestowed at the company, and she has six patents in the communications technology area. Lucy serves on several boards, including the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) Board of Trustees at the University of California at Berkeley; the Engineering Advisory Council at the University of Colorado at Boulder; the Denver Public Schools Computer Magnet Advisory Board; the Advisory Board for the Women's College Applied Computing Program at the University of Denver; and several corporate boards. In 2004 Lucy was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Engineering at CU. Lucy also is Conference Chair for the 2007 Grace Hopper Conference, having served as Program Chair for the conference in 2006. She is currently serving on the Information Technology Research and Development Ecosystem Commission for the National Academies. Lucy received her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively. Larry: This is Larry Nelson, and I am so pleased that I'm a part of helping get this new campaign kicked off. We have with us today Lucinda Sanders. Lucinda is the CEO and co‑founder of NCWIT, here at the University of Colorado. Welcome to the show, Lucinda. Lucy: Thank you Larry. You can just call me Lucy if you'd like. Larry: Oh, I'd love the more comfortable. All right. Lucy: All right. Larry: Now this is the real kick‑off for the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Interview series. So we are just getting this kicked off. And Lucinda, you have such an interesting background. We'll get into some of that. We are going to take a closer look at what this series is really all about. I'm very excited. Let me ask this question. It's a basic, but a very important question. How did you first get involved with technology? Lucy: I first got involved in technology by learning to program computers when I was in college. From there, once you learn how computers worked and I got a computer science degree and out into industry and started to see how you could use technology and computing to solve real world problems for people. And so I would say I really came at it from a very traditional way, through the education path, and on through getting a graduate degree in computer science as well. Larry: Let me take a quick leap here. What technology today do you think is really cool? Lucy: Well, I really like radio tags. You know RFIDs? I think that technology ‑ first of all, it's very difficult, not the radio tag itself, but dealing with all the data that radio tags can potentially send when they pass readers. And so, the use of those and not just basic inventory systems, but for example, you could use such a radio tag on frozen food and then it has a recipe on it that can talk to your microwave oven and then cook the food automatically when you put the food in the microwave oven. Your radio tags can be used for lots and lots of things ‑ and fairly creative things as well. Larry: That really is cool. Now, Lucy, in this series we are going to be interviewing a number of entrepreneurs. But also, we want to take a look at the entrepreneurial aspect, because you are a Bell Labs Fellow. Let's see if we can take a look at that. How do you operate as an entrepreneur as well as what got you involved with that? Lucy: Well, inside Bell labs, I was always working on the leading edge projects and in fact, inside big companies like Bell labs or AT&T or Lucent, its often the case that small teams form that are a lot like entrepreneurial companies. Now they don't have to go out and raise capital. You don't necessarily have venture capitalists, but they do have to attract budget within the company to move the product ahead. And they frequently have small teams, really too small teams to get the product done. And they really are in many ways, entrepreneurial in nature. So, I always had those kinds of projects. For example, working on the very first risk‑based processing PBX system and operating system; all the way though Internet commerce and working on voice over IP and multimedia collaboration systems. I always gravitated toward those types of projects. I've loved them. I love them still and in fact, NCWIT is almost like that kind of a start up project. Larry: Yes, it is. Lucy: Its entrepreneurial, its socially entrepreneurial, but those kinds of projects where you don't know the answers, where it's not routine operational or maintenance, where you really are creating something from nothing and using the creative talent of people, I think, is what really excites me about that. Larry: That's one of the interesting aspects. Many people who are hearing about NCWIT for the first time, could you give us just a little overview about what it is? Lucy: Sure. NCWIT stands for the National Center for Women and Information Technology. We are really focused on getting more girls and women into information technology in its broadest sense ‑ into use of computing for all types of applications. We really work across the whole pipeline, K‑12 through entrepreneurial careers, which is one reason why we're so excited to be sponsoring this interview series with really fabulous women and IT entrepreneurs. Larry: Yes, we are really looking forward to it. I've seen the list and it's fantastic. Let me see if I could just dig a little bit deeper here, Lucy. What is one of the toughest things that you have had to face in your career? Lucy: Well, probably one of the saddest, I would say tough times was downsizing the team or shutting a location. We went through periods of time where we would buy companies and integrate them, integrate the technology, and integrate the teams. Sometimes you had to make the tough choices about which locations needed to be shut down and people had to be laid off or let go. That's always tough. You lose a lot of sleep over that kind of a decision. It's in the best interest for the business and yet from an individual's perspective, it's certainly quite difficult. Whenever I face that, I really try hard to do the right thing, find people jobs, make sure they could transfer other places or that in the local economy there were places that could take them as well. So, when we did have to face that kind of decision, we did it with as much grace and humanity as we could. But that's easily one of the toughest things that I've ever had to do. Larry: You know, one of the things that if you talk to any really IT pro or an IT one of those people who are really out there, the word mentor or role model comes up all the time. Who are some of the people in your career that influenced you? Lucy: Well, one person who influenced me that I've never met, but I modeled myself after him to some degree because he was the very first chief technology officer I have ever seen, ever heard about using that title and that was Eric Schmidt when he was at Sun. Of course, we all know he has gone on to Google, but I really liked what he did in terms of getting out there and explaining technology and how he was expansive in his thinking about technical solutions and he really was somebody who I looked at and thought, I'd really like to be a chief technology officer. In fact, I did become one and I love that role. So, in one way, I think he influenced me quite a bit although he wouldn't know me from the man on the moon. Larry: That is interesting, indeed. Lucy: He totally influenced me and I had a number of mentors inside Bell Labs that I thought were just outstanding. I think I've talked to you before how the culture at Bell Labs really supported mentoring and women and I had a number of mentors who really taught me a lot. Larry: It might not be looked at from the outside so much, but your position here with NCWIT is really just like an entrepreneur. So let's imagine you were sitting down right now talking to a young girl, a young woman who is thinking about maybe getting into a field and being an entrepreneur. What kind of advice would you share with them? Lucy: Well, so often when you are just starting something out, it's very ill‑formed because in fact is doesn't exist. And so, I guess my advice would be to just live with that. Know what you know and try to test it with everybody. Go test the heck out of it. So if you have an idea for a company or you have a way to explain what you want your nonprofit to be doing, you do your best story and then go tell it, and tell it over and over and over again, get input. And think expansively about it, because quite likely it'll be very different in a month or two months or six months as you go out and do that, but don't be afraid of not knowing the answer. I think so many people stop themselves because they can't see clearly between where they are and where they want to go. And in fact, I would maintain that that's exactly the kind of job you want, where you sit with what you have, and you make the best possible case, and you just keep improving it as you go. I think with NCWIT we have had people, not so much anymore because we are really tight on our story, we know exactly what we're doing and we can explain it in 10 minutes, you know, the famous elevator pitch, but we had a few people when we first got started who just wouldn't come along because they couldn't see clearly what it was going to be or where it was going to go. They couldn't get with the vision. So I think entrepreneurs need to be exceptional at this. Larry: I couldn't agree more. Here you are, I mean, you are busy, you travel around the country, you meet with all kinds of groups and individuals from entrepreneurs to larger organizations. How do you bring balance to your personal and to your professional lives? Lucy: Flexibility, a flexible schedule, being able to schedule things when you pretty much want to do them. So it's not uncommon to see me working until midnight; it's also not uncommon to see me taking off in the middle of the day and going to see my kids play soccer or doing what they're going to do. Was it Best Buy that had a story on the un-tethered workplace? It's not so important when you do your job and work, or where you do it, but that you do it. Now, obviously that can't get taken to the total extreme. Often you need to have schedules and meet with people and be attentive to that, but I think having that kind of flexibility in my day is what makes it all work out. Larry: Don't you go out there and jog every now and then too? Lucy: I jog all the time. I run every day, although I'm a little slower than I used to be, but I can still get out there and go a good four or five miles. Larry: Excellent. Lucy: And running's great. Gardening's great. My husband and I like to ‑ my husband's a great cook ‑ and so we like to eat. I guess that doesn't bring balance, it might bring a few pounds. Well, you know, hey. Larry: You know, I think it was just a week or so ago, I think Brad Feld said, "I think that Lucy Sanders just passed me." Lucy: He did not. Larry: Oh, didn't he say that? Oh, Okay. I thought he... Lucy: The day I pass Brad Feld is a day to celebrate. Larry: Yeah, you bet. Woman 1: I have a question. You have two boys. Lucy: Yes. Woman: So how do they look at you in the broader scope of women? Lucy: Interestingly enough, I think that kids of their age still aren't at the place where they see that there is any difference in the way people act and they don't want to admit it. The way they look at me is, I think, I'm just Mom. So we don't really talk about any under‑representation issues or anything else. Now, I would say that they are, I think they're proud of me. I think they have seen my career and what I've done, and I think that it motivates them. I could be wrong, you could interview them. Larry: Lucy, let me ask you this question. What do you feel gave you the advantage to get in the position that you're in today as well as all the way through your IT experience? Lucy: Well, I really am very relentless, not relentless in a bad way, but I go at it over and over and over until I find what I want. So I don't want to say I'm patient, because I'm really very impatient, but I'm very... Larry: Persistent? Lucy: I'm persistent. I'm very, no, my husband says I'm very relentless. Larry: Oh, really? OK. Lucy: And I am relentless in business. So I really do look at every no I get as just the first step to a yes, that they didn't mean it. Larry: Wow. You sound like Thomas Edison. Lucy: I think that that's important, I think, it has been important to me. The other thing that I think has been important to me is that I work incredibly hard. I put in a lot of hours and I have extremely high standards. And I have high standards for myself first, and I have high standards for others later. And at the same time, I have incredibly high forgiveness, so if the bar is high, then there should be a safety net and people should not be made to feel bad if they can't quite climb over that high bar. It's just that if you set it really high, then there's always going to be learning. So I think some of those perspectives have helped me in giving me a bit of an advantage. Larry: Wow. I like that. That is usable, powerful, motivating; that's really good. You know, by any standards, you have already accomplished a great deal in your life. And I know you've got a lot of things probably down the road that you'd like to do, but give me a little piece of near‑term, what do you see for yourself in the near‑term, and then maybe longer down the road? Lucy: Well, near‑term, I think, speaking about NCWIT, we have spent about two and a half years really building the foundational infrastructure for NCWIT. By that I mean we've got about 100 organizations, corporations, universities, nonprofits that are part of our alliances. We've built a technical infrastructure to support them; we've built a best practices infrastructure to support them; and project management meetings and workshops to support them. And now it's time to really start to drive the utilization of that infrastructure and to create series like this interview, series to really work on reform within our organizations. So that's in the short‑term for NCWIT. I mean, you can imagine building out a national infrastructure takes a little time. And I do think that people will commit to reform within their organizations once they see the infrastructure's there to support that. So we're at that point right now; it's an exciting time for us. The longer‑term, I don't yet know. I'm still really in the startup of NCWIT, so I'm pretty blind to everything else and I can't see that far out. Although I do know this: I really love technology. I don't think I'm through inventing technology yet, but I don't know what that looks like. Larry: We're going to follow up on that and find out. Lucy: Okay. Larry: Wow, Lucy, this was a fantastic piece of information. We're really looking forward to the series, the entrepreneurs interview series for IT and women. This is going to be just great. And what's the website that they can go to check out other stories? Lucy: It'll be hosted from the NCWIT website, www.ncwit.org. Larry: Sounds perfect. Lucy, thank you so much. Lucy: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Lucy SandersInterview Summary: Lucy Sanders is start-up CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology. She is a former VP at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs, and holds six patents. Release Date: June 4, 2007Interview Subject: Lucy SandersInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson Duration: 13:35