Podcast appearances and mentions of lucy they

Jolie is joined by Dr. Lucy Long, director of the independent Center for Food and Culture and an instructor of American studies, ethnic studies, folklore, and nutrition at BGSU, and Jerry Reed, a recent graduate from the MA program in popular cultures studies at BGSU. They discuss their “Finding Comfort/Discomfort Through Foodways” project that examines how comfort food can be meaningful and create meaningfulness in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Announcer: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie: Welcome back to the BiG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies, and the Director of ICS. Due to the ongoing pandemic, we are not recording in the studio, but remotely via phone and computer. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Jolie: Bowling Green State University is located in the Great Black Swamp, long a meeting place of the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Fox, Pottawatomie, Erie, Miami, Peoria, Chippewa, and Seneca Indian tribes. We honor the rich history of this land and its indigenous inhabitants, past and present. Today we're joined by two guests, Dr. Lucy Long and Jerry Reed. Lucy directs the Independent Center for Food and Culture and teaches in American studies, ethnic studies, folklore and nutrition at BGSU. Her research focuses on food, music, and dance as mediums for meaning and community. Jolie: Lucy served as the Director of "Finding Comfort/Discomfort Through Food Ways," a project that examines how people are living and eating in these difficult pandemic times. Jerry Reed earned a BS in Education and an MA in Popular Culture Studies from BGSU. He completed an internship with the Center for Food and Culture, working to develop a curriculum that uses food to help children understand cultural conflict. Jerry worked as the Assistant Director of the Food Ways Project. Thanks both for being with me today, I'm really excited to talk about this with you. To get us started, could you tell us a little bit about the Food Ways Project and how it came about? Will you start us off, Lucy? Lucy : Okay. When the pandemic first hit, I started noticing that food media was publishing recipes for comfort food. And this is a stressful time for comfort food. So I actually edited a volume and published some articles in 2017 on comfort food, so that automatically grabbed me. And my initial response to some of these publications, particularly-there was one for the New York Times, and it was comfort foods of famous chefs. And it was all these specialty ingredients and things that, probably, the average American would not have in their pantry. And I realized, first of all, these foods are not things that I relate to, personally, as a comfort food. And they probably are not relevant to many people who are reading this. But also, the idea of having to go out and find these ingredients, some of which are very expensive, but many of which, you would have to go to different grocery stores or try to find them. Lucy : And I realized, that's going to cause a lot of discomfort. So that got me thinking a little bit more about at how, during this time, it's not a simple thing to say, "Here, eat some comfort food and calm down." And then also, comfort food itself as a very American concept. Every culture has food that is comforting, that reminds people of their childhood, and things like that. But it's uniquely American in that there is a particular sort of morality attached to food in America. That different foods are good and bad, depending on what they do to your body, physically. And we're not even talking about health, we're talking about whether or not those foods make you fat or whether they make you kind of sluggish or whatever. Lucy : So, so much of our morality around food is tied to how that food impacts your body, your body image, and whether or not you have the proper type of body. So therefore, Americans talk about good foods and bad foods in terms of, good foods are ones that are healthy for us, will keep us nice, fit and slim. Bad foods are the ones that really tastes good, lots of fat, lots of sugar, salt, but we all know that they're bad for us. That they have negative impacts on our weight, on our body shape, and on our energy levels. Lucy : So that grows out of a very distinctive, American attitude towards food. And the phrase, "comfort food," was invented in the US. Dr. Joyce Brothers used it in the 1960s as an explanation for why so many Americans were starting to be obese, said that people are turning to comfort foods. They have stress in their lives or they need comfort for some reason, so they're using that as an excuse to eat these fattening foods. And then the food industry picked up on that and said, "Oh, okay, here are some comfort food dishes," and they started using that concept to market these dishes. Saying that, "Oh, everybody needs comfort, so here, eat some macaroni and cheese." So it turned into a marketing category. Jolie: Yeah, it's so interesting because, two thoughts. One is that, the opposite of comfort food is discomfort food. The things we're supposed to like are the things we're not supposed to enjoy. That there really is this idea of, maybe that is also a very American thing, that Protestant work ethic, that we're suspicious of pleasure, in some ways. Jerry, what was your particular interest in some of these issues in this Food Ways Project? Jerry: Especially as we dug deeper into the interviews that were conducted, I think one of the most surprising and interesting aspects for me was this idea of food of discomfort. Because we focus so much on this idea of comfort food as this a very individual experience to help one self feel better. Which is incredibly relevant during the time of pandemic or even during a time of stressful elections. So when people start talking about foods of discomfort, there's two major things that I've noticed. One is there are foods of actual physical discomfort, foods that you just can't eat for dietary reasons. Whether you're lactose intolerant, PKU, et cetera, that your diet is limited. Jerry: And then there's also foods that, it's not so much that the food itself causes discomfort in some way, it's the concept of food as a whole. Some people have turned their minds now to that ... Let me redo that. A number of people have realized that, "Oh, now I happen to work at home or not work for a while. I'm living well within my needs." And they can see that, now that they've stepped a little bit outside of that daily work that they do from 8:00 to 5:00. So to be able to realize that, oh, there's got to be a number of people who are not able to live within their means. Especially during a time like this, where even as I'm struggling, I'm surviving. And so that's brought a number of weird pieces of discomfort, just conceptual discomfort, to people. And that has caused some to act, some to not act, at different levels. Jolie: I'm curious, in terms of this project, because of the pandemic you had to really work remotely. Entirely, I imagine, including with the number of international collaborators. So how did that affect the way you collaborate and conduct research? Lucy : We were able to actually extend this project much further than most oral history projects. We frequently did not even know where people were when they were responding, initially. And then it does kind of happen, I also was using social media, LinkedIn and the Center for Food and Culture has a website. And that goes out to anyone who's interested, anywhere in the world. And then I was also using Facebook. And so when I was sending out information about this, and people were responding, and then they would tell their friends about it. So I also do a lot of work internationally, especially on culinary tourism, so a lot of my international connections were seeing this, "Oh yeah, this is really interesting." And so they were sending me things. Lucy : Some of those people would just send me a little paragraph, this is what's happening here. Other times, there are people who are using this ... I developed it first as an assignment for an undergraduate class, and then realized, oh, this would actually be very useful to do on a larger scale. I should mention here, too, I did get a little bit of funding that helped to cover honoraria for the researchers. Minimal honoraria, I should say, from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. And then also humanities, the Ohio Humanities. Formally the Ohio Humanities Council, now it's just called the Ohio Humanities, and then also from the Elliot Torium Foundation, a private foundation. Lucy : So when this started, it was just like, oh, this is interesting. Let's see where we can go with it. And then, because of my international work, various colleagues in different places were picking up on it and extending it. And then the researchers themselves, one of them, who also happens to be my daughter, she teaches in Ireland at a university. So she's having some of her students do the project. And she was interviewing some of her colleagues and friends, who tended to be very international. So we're hearing from people who lived in Israel or who had parents in Israel, Norway. And then another one of the researchers is Chinese studying in the US. So he has access to a different group of people. Lucy : So, it's not a model for a social science ethnography. A lot of it was serendipity, but everything was so sudden and unexpected, we just took whatever opportunities there were. I had worked previously with Jerry and so when I started getting this idea, I approached him. I said, "I don't know if there's going to be any funding, would you like to sign on to be the assistant director of this? There's a lot of administrative stuff that I'm going to need." And he said, "Sure." I said, "Now, I don't know about funding, but ..." So I know that Jerry was committed regardless of funding. So he's been a tremendous help through this. Jolie: And Jerry, could you talk a little bit about some of the tasks that you were working on and how the pandemic may have changed the way you had previously worked on projects or worked specifically with Lucy and your relationship prior. Jerry: I guess, for my tasks, there's two halves of it. There's the largely administrative half that, it was at home or not at home. It didn't really make too much of a difference, really, just depended on which wall I was staring at. But then came the other half of it, which was doing interviews and conducting these interviews with all of these participants. Which was a very different way than I'm used to doing field work. My field work that I did for my thesis, I did at a middle school in the area. And I was there with the students for a large portion of the day, and that's what I was used to, is just being around the people. So now all of a sudden, doing these cold calls to people I don't know to say, "Hey, I want to talk about food for awhile," was a very different setting. Jerry: But because people were already isolated and wanted that contact, they were happy to talk with any stranger about anything. Just that piece of human contact was so valuable to everybody that we talked to, and it made some of the conversations we've had absolutely fantastic. And yet my work with Lucy prior, because of the nature of building curriculum, the only real thing that changed was that we couldn't really meet face to face. Which can be, I guess, somewhat solved via Zoom, WebEx, whatever your medium is. Jolie: I think it's interesting that you're talking about, in addition to comfort food, the comfort of community. And even having the occasion to talk about these things is also a real balm in these challenging times. Can you talk a little bit, each of you, about how this project created or changed your sense of community? Lucy : I think for me, I really enjoyed getting to know the different people who were working with me. They're all either master's students, PhD students, or they had recently completed masters. I was able to learn things from them, and that was really nice. I was given a whole different perspective on things from them. And then a lot of people were sending me emails with just brief snippets of their thoughts about comfort food. And some of those really challenged the assumptions that we all have. One of them that I always point out, a woman contacted me and said, "I just wanted you to let you know that my husband and I are both disabled. We've had to live off of food stamps for the last 20 years. We are eating better now than we ever have because the food stamps were expanded," and they were able to go to the farmer's market. Lucy : They were able to use them for fresh produce. And she said, "This is wonderful. I'm healthier now than I ever have been." And that was completely the opposite of what we expected. That's not to paint a rosy picture of this all either, but it automatically challenged some of my assumptions about class in America, and how class is then tied to community. Similarly, someone else, they actually came from an upper middle class background and they lived out in the suburbs. And they said that in order to go shopping, they had to drive to a supermarket. People didn't usually go out walking in their neighborhoods. They had all this money, but they didn't have that kind of casual contact that you could get in a city or in a very small town. Lucy : And they said getting food meant they either had to drive somewhere or have it delivered, and they could afford to do that, and they recognized they had a lot of privilege in being able to do that. But she said, "It's very, very lonely. We don't have the usual kinds of contacts." She didn't realize that going to the grocery store had been a way for her to connect with people. Before, it was just a chore and now suddenly, she recognized that it had been a routine that had provided connection for her. That she didn't recognize that. So two things there, having money definitely made things a lot easier for people, but it didn't automatically give them a sense of community. Lucy : And it did not give them people that they felt that they had a sense of belonging with. And then also, being partly because of the pandemic, people were starting to recognize that these activities around food that we think of as just chores, that they were actually opportunities for very meaningful connections with other people. And suddenly we were missing those. Jolie: What about you, Jerry? Any observations either through the research or your own experience, in these last seven, eight months around community that have caused you to think a little differently? Jerry: Especially in thinking about the interviews, it's surprising how much, when you would start to ask somebody what their comfort food is, how little they would talk about the food. And what the conversation would turn to is about the meals that they would share with people, or the origin of the recipe that they got the recipe for their comfort food from. And then they would bring off into a different story about that, about their grandmother, so on, so forth. And so, I think it goes to show so much of comfort food is tied up in identity and community. Who we decide our tribe is. And so it's really fascinating to hear somebody start to talk about how much they really, really have been going to carbs during this time, and then all of a sudden they're talking about how much they miss their grandchildren or friends, so it really is a lot of focus on the comfort that we get from community. Rather than the comfort that we get from food. Jolie: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas podcast. Musical Interlude: Question. Answer. Discussion. Announcer: If you are passionate about Big Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie: Hello and welcome to the Big Ideas podcast. Today I'm talking to Dr. Lucy Long and Jerry Reed, about their research on comfort food ways and how the network and practices around food provide opportunities for connection. One of the things that also strikes me in the discussion about comfort foods and how they come from traditions, from rituals, whether those are religious or cultural, familial, regional, things like that. I'm wondering, are you seeing in your research, new traditions being formed out of these pandemic times? Or revisions of traditions due to these particular circumstances? And if so, can you give us some of those stories? Lucy : I think new traditions are definitely being created, being rediscovered. One of the definitions of comfort food, Julie Loker was a medical sociologist who first started studying comfort food, and she published an article in 2002 and then in 2004 that established comfort food as a scholarly topic. And she identified four different needs that were being fulfilled through comfort food, that then helped people relieve their stress. And one of those was nostalgia, one of them was convenience, and we don't always think of convenience and fast food can be comfort food, because it's very convenient. Foods that offer physical comfort, the hot chocolate on a cold day, and then indulgence, which is what we usually think of. And then about 10 years later, another researcher identified belonging as a need that was being fulfilled. Lucy : So people wanted to eat the foods that other people were eating, because it gave them a sense of belonging to that community. So that gave us a baseline for studying comfort food. And part of what we started finding, the definition of comfort food is foods that help relieve stress. That's the accepted, American definition. What we started finding is that the kinds of stresses that people were dealing with during the pandemic, I think are more of an existential nature. We don't have control over our lives anymore. All of a sudden you have to recognize that nature really is more powerful than humans. So all these myths that, Americans in particular have grown up with, were suddenly being challenged. Lucy : And so, what I started noticing was that comfort food was fulfilling some of these more excess existential needs. Baking bread, I find it amazing that that so many Americans had gluten sensitivities, that bread purchasing was what was dropping. And then all of a sudden, they're all trying to make bread during the pandemic. And I felt like a lot of what that was showing was, people had a sense of control by cooking in general. And they could control the whole process and they could control the outcome. And having that sense of control is very important during the pandemic, when we can't control anything else. Lucy : It also gives people a sense of agency or efficacy. We can actually do something, it's not just control, but we can actually do something to change the outcome of things later. So we can organize our freezer so that we know that we can now make dinners for at least another 30 days. And that makes the individual feel like, oh, okay, I can do something to change the outcome of my future. And then also, one of the things that was fascinating, that the researchers who are doing most of the interviews pointed out to me, a lot of people were finding comfort by giving comfort to other people. Working with food banks, making food for their neighbors, doing things like ... something as simple as going shopping and checking with all their elderly neighbors and friends to see if anyone needed things picked up. Lucy : And that was being nice, but it also fulfilled this existential need to feel like, as an individual, we have significance in life. We can matter. And we can matter to these other people. So we started seeing these other needs, rather than belonging, I like to think about connectedness. Because part of what we were seeing with food was people were connecting, not just to a community. They were connecting to nature, to the seasons. So many people started gardening. I know for the first time I was able to do a CSA because usually I'm not in Bowling Green during the summer. Lucy : So suddenly I was, and I discovered that, oh, okay, now I'm eating zucchini and tomatoes and nothing else for the next three weeks. So now I'm eating butternut squash and potatoes and that connects me to the seasons. It connects me to nature. It connects me to these larger things that help to give a sense of continuity of life. So that kind of connectedness is on an existential level. And it's a much deeper kind of stress than simply, I had a bad day. So some of that was very exciting to me, the idea that people were finding comfort by giving comfort. I find that very optimistic and it gives me a lot of hope. Jolie: Yeah, and I think that's one of the ongoing questions, of what of these changes will stick around after there is a vaccine, after the immediate pandemic crisis has passed. Jerry, are there any other new traditions or observations that you were struck by in some of the interviews you've done that you want to share? Jerry: I guess I can categorize them in three different ways. There's the new traditions, one of the examples I can think of is somebody who has specifically taken time out of their day to have their tea time, specific time, and they specifically have their tea with condensed milk. Which is very popular in Newfoundland. Then there's also traditions that have changed. So one interview we talked about how do you have a Seder dinner online and the guides that have been sent out by the community and recipes that have been sent out. Sadly, people can only have a Seder dinner, but have a Seder dinner for a smaller group, rather than the large portions that are usually served because you have so many people. Jerry: And then there's also this, it's a slight abandonment of tradition, and one of the best examples that I have for this from an interview, would be a couple that ... Their new date night routine was to go to this very fancy Italian restaurant. Well, you can't eat in, so they would get the takeout and eat this very nice, expensive Italian food, in their car out of styrofoam boxes. So it's this, going away from being around all these people ,and it speaks the same idea of it, but it's not really the same thing anymore. And it's also an excuse to get out of the house. It has a new meaning just beyond that. And so that's three different ways that I think about it. Jolie: What possibilities do you see in bringing food into classrooms more often and more directly, whether at the K-12 level or in college. Could you talk a little bit about that? The role of education around food? Jerry: Well, I steal this concept from a botanist I met in Costa Rica. He became a botanist, and then later a tour guide, and said that he studied botany because there's plants everywhere, so you always have something to talk about. And the same is true with food as a human need, you just need food, so there's always something there to talk about. And food is so intrinsically tied into identity, and often in ways that we don't realize, which circles through back to the appropriation piece. When we talk about Southern food, for instance, and even Appalachian food, these two very different categories that both get a lot of their food histories from historically Black cooking and slave cooking. Jerry: And so when we talk about food, at any level within education, all of a sudden we're able to talk about individual identities without even having to bring up ethnicity, race, gender. One of the easiest questions to ask, to start talking about what your identity is without really even talking about identity, but talking about food, is to ask how your family prepares rice. Because most families eat rice, and if you don't eat rice, that says something when it comes to identity. And rice is this really recognizable and very versatile food. And so what you do with it says a lot. And then you can start talking about, when it comes to cultural differences, this aesthetic piece, that your enjoyment of this specific rice dish comes from your history and your family and how grandma makes it. Cultural history. Jerry: So food is this vital piece of connection. And my previous research for my thesis focused on how children use food as a means of creating connection and community amongst themselves. And they're very active in doing this, and examining food, and trading food, and trying to engage each other with food. It's a human need. And so to be able to bring this human need to the forefront of education, to use it as a background for conversations in the humanities, conversations in the sciences, is easy and beneficial because it's very easy to understand. Jolie: I'd like us to conclude by asking you each to reflect on our current moment and what you think might be the broader implications on how we regard food ways. And in particular, what lessons do you hope we learn from this moment about food and connection that we can take forward with us in the after times, whenever they do eventually arrive. Jerry, would you go first? Jerry: So much of how we decide who we are as individuals comes back to food. Not necessarily the individual dishes, but the people we eat with, the people we choose not to eat with, and how we share those meals. And what this time has done has changed that in very significant ways. But I think people are also finding ways to overcome that and rebuild their community, and rebuild the communication that they once had through food, through a variety of other means. And so I think one of these overarching pieces that you should begin to look at next is, we compare the inequalities between these two new systems, because it's easy to see one problem in just one system. But once that changes, it reveals new problems that may even say, the problem that we thought we had? It doesn't exist. That's not even the thing because it's actually this thing. So now is the time to really solidify all of these major problems that then can be focused on. Jolie: What about for you, Lucy? What would you hope we take away from this period in history in thinking differently about food and culture? Lucy : First, I should mention, that listeners can go to the website and actually see ... We have an online exhibit from text and photographs from the interviews. So people can go to www.foodandculture.org, and that website takes them to the exhibit and to the whole project. And they can read the questionnaire and actually respond. And they can also see on that website, the curriculum project, doing it. But I think the thing that I take away from this is the significance of food. That we tend to overlook the power that it has to create connections for us. And those connections both take us inwards and outwards, so that we can connect with our own histories, our own past. It can be something that's very personal, but it also connects us outwardly with larger society, with our larger culture, and internationally. So I think what the pandemic is doing is making us recognize the significance of small things, of everyday things that we normally take for granted. Jolie: Thank you both so much for joining me. I really loved this conversation. Listeners can keep up with ICS by following us on social media at @icsbgsu. You can listen to BiG Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please subscribe and rate us on your preferred platform. Our producers are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza, with sound editing by Marco Mendoza. Research assistance was provided by Kari Hanlin. Musical Outro: Discussion.

What *is* fanfiction? Like, really? Katie and Britt seek to answer that question—and more—as they delve into the world of fic and ships, discussing their personal journeys with fanfic, their favorite X-Men ships, and some new people named . . . Jeremiah and Lucy? They also read some of Katie's old-timey Supernatural fic. GET READY.Support us (and get some sweet rewards) on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/isitanxmanWe’re on Instagram, Twitter, and AO3 @isitanxman.Email us at isitanxman@gmail.comSee you next #xmenmonday!

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

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Margaret Burd Founder, President, & CEO, Magpie, Inc. Date: June 1, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Margaret Burd [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Woman and Information Technology, or NCWIT. Larry Nelson from w3w3.com is here today. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi. Yes, I'm really anxious for this interview. Lucy: Well, this is one of a series of interviews that we do with women who have started IT companies. Many of them are serial entrepreneurs in all different types of IT sectors. We ask them for their advice on being entrepreneurs and the pathways that they've taken to be successful. It's a great series. We've had a lot of interest in it. We have another great entrepreneur with us today, a good friend of ours and, I must say with great pride, a successful Colorado entrepreneur, Margaret Burd. Hi, Margaret. Margaret Burd: Hi. Thanks for having me. Lucy: Oh, our pleasure. Margaret is the founder and president and CEO of Magpie. They are a software company. They provide software services and development in the space of smart energy and telecommunications, which is where I know them from the very best. Lately, they've had even more exciting things going on, if you can imagine that, than smart energy. I mean, that's pretty exciting. But, also, there's a new spin-off trial called Magpie Health Care, which is doing some very cool work in giving hospital providers the kind of phone-based tools they need to locate either specialists or others very easily. And, they don't have to wait on the line. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice, but it's a new venture for Magpie. So, Margaret, tell us a bit about Magpie, either Magpie One or Magpie Two. [laughs] Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Well, Magpie One, Magpie Telecom as we used to call it. But, we've branched so far into other industries that we just say Magpie now. Magpie, we bought it in 2001. Which was a difficult year to start a business, with 9/11 happening two months after we started, and then telecom crashing. But, we survived all that. We have about between 50 and 60 people now doing software for a whole variety of companies. In the last year and a half, we went out and explored the whole smart energy, smart grid space. And, have found that there's a very huge market there, especially now with all the stimulus money that we could tap, with very much the same skills that we have from our telecom experience. That experience is very high-end: Bell Labs, educated people. What we learned about creating reliable, scalable and all viable networks of AT&T we can apply now to the smart grid. When you pick up the phone, you want to get dial tone. When you flip on the switch, you want your lights to come on. So, it's very similar to the ways you have to think about developing these networks. Then, as Lucy said, about two and a half years ago, we got the idea to go into health care. I started wandering around hospitals personally, and we ended up getting an idea for a product there. Lucy did a really good job explaining what that does. We help caregivers find other caregivers in really efficient ways. Because that is a product-based business, we have spun that into its own little company. And, I chair the board for that company. Lucy: So, see? She's not idle. Larry: No, it doesn't sound... Margaret: [laughs] We are pretty busy here. Lucy: Yeah. Larry: Well, that's fantastic. Margaret: But, that's really fun. You want your services business to be really busy. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: Yeah. Well, so, you've got 60 people now. I think when I interviewed Wendy Bohling you had about 12. Margaret: [laughs] That could be true. We probably had a few more than that when you interviewed her. But, yeah, we started out. There were 10 partners, and eight of those partners are still here in our office in Westminster. We also have a little office in Durango whether the partner has eight or so people at any one time. So, we've been on a growth spurt here with this smart grid energy space. And, really constant growth this year. We've hired seven or eight people in the last couple of months. Larry: Well, Margaret, you're involved with so many different things. Of course, now I see the Bell Labs connection here with you and Lucy. But, how did you first get into technology. And, what technologies today do you think are really cool? Margaret: Well, actually, I probably come to technology in a weird way. Because my first career, I was teaching math and science and coaching lots of different sports in public schools in Missouri. I had done that for about nine years. In '83, I was still making $15,000 a year. I was pretty bored with that whole teaching thing, too. So, I started looking around for what I wanted to do next. And, it just so happened that the University of Kansas let you get into their computer science master's program if you had a math degree. I applied, and they accepted, and ended up with my master's in computer science. Right out of school, I got an offer from Bell Labs and ended up in Denver. And, that's how I got into technology. Larry: Wow. Margaret: It was kind of a whim. I showed a little aptitude when I got to KU. So, it all... It was an amazing turn of events in my life, I can just say that. And, probably just because. It's one of those things that just happens. In terms of cool, my guys, if they were on the phone, they would be talking about a bunch of cool technologies that they love. But, you know, to me it's more about figuring out where to go next in verticals and what technologies we can apply. So, I think less about them being cool, actually. But, every day when I pull out my iPhone, I think that's cool. I'm still thinking the iPhone is cool. So, I'm probably not the best person to talk to about cool. But, the cool part about the iPhone is that all these people all over the world can wake up in the morning. And, in their pajamas, create an application that somebody else somewhere else in the world is going to use via that device. And, then, I could go off to the other. In torrent, we use a lot of open source software. And, we contribute to open source. I think that's another one of those places where we have involved community in the creation of really cool things. So, that I think is really cool. Lucy: Well, it is pretty fascinating. When you think back 30 years what we were doing with computer science. And, now, you think that, in fact, you can create this application and it just goes everywhere in the world. It is amazing, and I think it still deserves some awe. [laughs] Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Well, I am awed almost every day by something there, yeah. Lucy: I think that, that deserves some awe. Margaret: Yeah. Lucy: So, Margaret, I certainly knew you when we were both at Bell Labs. Then you took off and you became an entrepreneur. Why did you do that? Margaret: Well, that was pretty much because Luce had told me... Luce and I had ended up in a department of about 70 people. And, I had another 30 at Nice, France. And, we were really cooking along and having a great time building cool mobile Internet applications. This is in 2000 so that was well before those were cool. And doing some applications for AT&T. But we'd also--we'd spent a lot of time getting our department to really develop software in innovative ways and in different team ways, than had been used in the past. And we could actually show that we were improving our productivity all the time and actually had measures for productivity. We were really cooking along and everybody really liked each other, it was like this love fest in my department. I mean, we really cared about each other. And so, then Lucent told me that I should lay everybody off. And so I did, and fired myself. And we had always joked in my department, that if things got too bad, we would start our own company. And, well, things were pretty bad when you have to lay everybody off. So, ten of us out of that started Magpie. And so, I kind of just wandered into being an entrepreneur, as well. But it's been tremendously great. So things happen. Larry: Wow, that's... Margaret: You probably listen to this and think that everything just happens to me. Lucy: Oh, no. No, no. [laughter] Margaret: But it is kind of... When you get into certain situations, things happen and you can react to them and go forth and do great things, or you can not. So I really think the founders at Magpie chose a path that is pretty cool. Larry: Well, Margaret, along the way, did you have a mentor, did you have other people who served maybe as role models? In fact, who influenced and supported you in your career path? Margaret: Oh man, there's been so many. Well, one even--well, Lucy. When I look at you leaving there and starting this really great foundation and going out and raising the money you needed to do that. And to do something that is totally needed in the world, that's really inspiring to me, and it has been inspiring to me. So, I'll just say that. I learned specific things from a whole bunch of different people. I had this--which Lucy knows well--Sally Werner was my boss for some time at Lucent. And there, she really taught me about how to manage people and how to do that in a way that is just really cool. And so, I learned a ton by working for her. There was another VP there, that I learned how you celebrate success. And how you not only do that, but how you communicate with large groups of people that work for you. So it's a totally important thing, especially when you're an entrepreneur, I might add. I learned about organization development from a consultant, Susan Carabello, who's consulted with me through most of my career, actually; and learned what you have to do to create organizations that really work. And I learned about sales and marketing from another really good friend of mine, Robin Wright. And I still call her and ask her for her advice on paths that we may be taking here at Magpie, and she consults with us. And then, I think... But the most important thing to being an entrepreneur I actually learned from my mom and my grandmother. And they worked really hard and they never gave up. And I think, those are the two things, that to be a great entrepreneur, you have to get. Larry: Wonderful. Lucy: Absolutely. I think it leads to another question around the personal characteristics, you know, that you have as an entrepreneur. Because you have worked hard and you've never given up, and you also have looked at opportunities to really take them where they could go. You know, and that's a very observant thing for people to do, to be that thoughtful about what life puts right in front of you right where you can take it. So what other words would you use to describe yourself as an entrepreneur? Margaret: I'm very optimistic. And, you know, as I've talked to a lot of other entrepreneurs, I think often they are really an optimistic person. So I don't think I'm rare in that regard, at all, and I think you have to be. And that helps you see those things also. And it also can be a real detriment. You know, you have your rosy glasses on all the time and don't know how to actually look at a new idea or look at a new plan, or whatever. So I'm not saying... But you have to kind of think you can do things. You know what I mean? And that's that optimism. I think for me, especially in the services business, but probably true for lots of small businesses, it seems to be a good entrepreneur, you really have to like people. And you have to like helping people and you have to enjoy going out and meeting people. And just walking up and introducing yourself to someone. There's something about just enjoying being around new people and talking to them about what they've got going on, and I really like that. Probably most important in this business too, though, has been you have to... I think I'm good and I'm pretty creative in my problem solving abilities. I don't mind solving problems. A problem is a problem, it's just a thing to be solved today. And I think I'm creative in how I can do that. Not that other people aren't just as creative, but I think it adds a skill for being... When you are an entrepreneur, you're going to be hit with all these issues, all the time. And so, figuring out how to do them in a way that you can afford, in a way that's maybe going to work and, you know, so forth, is pretty important. And then, I think lastly, I really like to start things. That initial forming of the idea and storming through understanding what you're going to do. I really like that part of the whole process. So... Larry: Well, you know, one of the things we have to ask is that, if you were sitting down right now at a table with a person who was going to become an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Margaret: Well, first of all, I'd say it's really hard so you really have to want it. It's really risky and most small businesses fail, so you really have to want it. [laughter] And it's going to take a lot of work. But if you really want it, it's so worth doing. And I'd tell them to go find a mentor, someone that they can sit with. And sometimes you have to pay for that and sometimes you can get that for free. So, early on, I always got that for free. But there's also groups out there, CEO groups, that can really be helpful. And I've been a member of Renaissance Executive Forums, one of those groups, for a long time now. And, totally helpful, because you get to bounce your ideas and problems and everything else off a bunch of people that all have those same problems. So, I think you need that. And then, I think really think about how you're going to interface with your partners, if you're going to have partners in your business. And know that that relationship all changes as you go through the different stages of your company and have that legally set up so that you can make changes that make sense in easy ways, that just recognize that people change. Larry: That's a great list. Lucy: It certainly is a great list. And I have to say that Margaret was being modest when she was talking about her personal characteristics. I mean, Margaret is really a great leader of technologists. We rarely talk about that on this interview series. But because your tech companies, obviously... Our founders and CEO's are leading engineers, a lot of them, and that's a special skill set. Margaret: Well, thank you for saying that. I think--well, I love engineers, first of all. But they are an interesting sort that--you know--that you have to figure out how to lead along. So, thank you for saying that. Lucy: Yeah, it's always been an interesting thing. Larry writes books and maybe one day he can write a book about leading engineers. Larry: Oh. Margaret: That would be a great idea. Lucy: I think that would be a great book, wouldn't it? Margaret: Yeah, I think there's several million people that could use one. Lucy: So, you've given us probably one story about a tough part in your career that ended up where you fired yourself and started Magpie. What's another tough thing you've had to do in your career? Margaret: It's been all kinds of places at Magpie, where you get to spots where all your management team, in my case at the time they were partners, and were in these difficult situations where you have to really--maybe an example would be you have to spend a bunch of money. And it's really hard at the time, because you don't have the money to spend. But if you're going to move to the next step, you have to like go get that money, somewhere. And in our case, we were bootstrapping everything. I was taking the profits of their business to go off and do these new things, like the energy practice. That was--you know, people think, "Oh, you go start a new energy practice." But we spent a whole person's time, for over a year, figuring out how to approach that market and what software was required in that market, and actually having conversations with companies in that market. So, you know, it's a big investment for a small company to do things like that. And I think that the hard times had been in convincing your partners, for example, that that's a great thing to do. So, they've been mostly around that. Other hard times, I have trouble even really thinking about them, Lucy. Because they're not... I don't think about them as hard times. I think about--oh, yeah, that was a problem time. Last year, for example: 2009 was... I'm so glad we're through it. Lucy: Yeah, I know. Margaret: Everything was hard. Everything we were bidding on was--there were, you know, five companies bidding against us. And there wasn't very much to bid on and it was really hard. And we ended up having a flat year which was not very--that was great. In fact, I say that last year was the new great. But it's so much different now, this year. So, I mean, that was really a hard year, but it's just another problem in business that you kind of work through. I don't have lots of examples where I think, "Oh, that was something I really figured out how to work through and I should tell people." Lucy: Yeah. Margaret: There all kind of just--it's day to day problems. You know what I mean? Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Margaret: So I don't have great examples there. Larry: Well, that's--you know, starting a company in 2001, "Hi-Tech", and then, living through 2009, you're doing fantastic. Lucy: 2009 was just an angry year. Larry: Yeah, really. Lucy: I mean, it was just an angry year. It was just one of those years, that it was time to be over. Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Oh, it was just icky the whole time. Lucy: Yeah, I know. Margaret: And '02, that was really a difficult year. But, you know, when you're starting a business, I mean, you have expectations about when you're going to finally get some customers. But, beyond that, you know it's going to be hard. And so, what we learned out of that--and we always learn something out of our hard times, by the way--we learned how to do cash-flow management in great detail. And last year, I think we learned that in times like that, you have to hone your sales processes to really go after the small set of customers that are out there. And we did that. And now, in this year, we are cooking along with really great new processes and with new sales people, that really understand how to do that and with sales, there's lots of really good things that happen out of those hard times, if you make it through them. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: Wow. You know, with all the things that you're doing, and you're expanding into new silos, and everything that you're doing in your career, how do you bring balance into your personal and your professional lives? Margaret: Balance is an interesting word. Well, I have a wonderful life partner that I love to vacation and see the world with and enjoy theater with, and exercise with, and so forth. So, I make time for those things. And I really like to go to the beach, so I go. And this may sound counter-intuitive, but I do a lot of non-profit work. So I'm on several non-profit boards and I raise a lot of money for those causes. And that is a lot of extra work, but then it also brings balance, because you're out actually giving back to people that really need your help. So that always feels really good, even though it makes me stay up way too late. Lucy: Yeah. Margaret: And then, I really like to ride my bicycle. And so, I make time, at least on the weekends, to do some longer rides. And I put my iTunes in my ears, and I've pretty much got balance then I would say. Larry: Well, just so you don't swim and bike. Lucy: Especially on your bike. Larry: Yeah, right. Lucy: You'd better have balance on your bike. Larry: Yeah, yeah. Margaret: Yeah, yeah. Oh, good point! Lucy: Yeah. If no other time, you need to balance on your bike. Margaret: That's right. Lucy: So Margaret, tell us what's next for you. You've done a lot, you've accomplished a lot, you've got some exciting new applications that you're working on and at least two companies. What's next? Margaret: Well, obviously, or maybe it's not obvious, but I really want to see where I can take those Magpie companies in the next probably two, three, four years. And I think in the health care business, we are on the edge of real greatness in terms of the application we're providing and what it's looking like in the markets. So I really want to stay around, at least as chair of that board, and see where we can take that. And then, in the services business, this energy thing is really important to the whole world, so it feels like I want to stay around and do that for a while, too. And then, after that though, I think--I've got this vision of doing a lot of work for non-profits, but also being able at that time to fund them, in ways that are greater than what I can do now. So I want to do that. And then, there's a whole bunch of South Pacific islands and beaches that I haven't... Lucy: Yeah, no. They sure beat the... Margaret: ...hung around. So I want to do that, too. Lucy: They sure beat the beach in Colorado, don't they? Larry: Yeah, yeah. Margaret: Yeah, yeah. Colorado's a great place. But without the beach, I have to... Lucy: There's no... Margaret: ...vacation other places. Lucy: There's no beach. Margaret: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah. Larry: Yeah, just don't ride your bike while you're swimming. OK? Margaret: [laughs] Well, you know, on all those islands a bike is pretty good transportation. Really. Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Yeah. But that's what I've got in mind, pretty much to follow on with some more and greater non-profit work. Lucy: Well, you know, that's very--you are very philanthropic and a very giving person and just a wonderful member of our community here in Colorado. So, we really want to thank you for talking to us. We've enjoyed chatting with you. And I want to remind listeners where they can find this podcast: you can find it at w3w3.com, Internet radio. Larry: You betcha! Lucy: And also, ncwit.org. Thank you, Margaret! Margaret: Oh, I appreciate the time and really enjoyed chatting with you guys. Larry: Alright. Lucy: Thank you. Larry: Same here, we'll see you soon! Lucy: See you soon! Margaret: See you! Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Margaret BurdInterview Summary: Margaret Burd was working at Lucent in 2000 when the tech bubble burst, and she was forced to lay off herself and her entire department. Since she and her team members were "really cookin' along" at the time, doing high-quality, innovative work, she decided she'd just start a company and hire them back. Release Date: June 1, 2010Interview Subject: Margaret BurdInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 21:12

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Beth Marcus Former Founder and CTO, Zeemote Date: January 22, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Beth Marcus [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology or NC WIT, and this is another in our podcast series with women who have started IT companies, very successful women I might add... Larry Nelson: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: ...that have started IT companies. With me Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi Larry. Larry: Hi, I'm really happy to be here. This is going to be an exciting interview. Lucy: Well, and these interviews have been very well received at W3W3. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that. Larry: Well we host a special channel, "Heroes for NC WIT, " and we get a tremendous amount of traffic from, everything from small business owners to C level, high level executives from enterprise size companies and it's very interesting and the thing that we like about it so much it's really helping support a push for more young girls to get into IT. Lucy: Well, very good. Well, you know this interview is going to be no exception to our great interview series. Today we're talking with Beth Marcus, who is the CEO, the founding CEO of Playsmart, a new venture for her, she's a serial entrepreneur. She's founded a number of companies including Exos which she sold to Microsoft on the middle of nineteen nineties. And she is, I think easily one of the most technical people we've spoken to in this interview series with a history at MIT, and a PhD and patents and very, very impressive technical entrepreneur. Welcome Beth. Beth Marcus: Thank you. Lovely to be here chatting with you. Lucy: Well we are really interested first to find out a little bit about Playsmart, your new venture. And we understand it is really geared towards having safe environments for children on the Internet. Can you tell us more about it? Beth: Sure. It's a complete media solution for kids, ages one to eight. It allows them to be entertained, educated, connected to other family members around the world and allows the parents to control what's happening with the kids' interaction with those environments and make it totally safe. No commercials are passed to the kids. Once they get into the Playsmart system which can run on any PC or netbook they can't get out of it accidentally or otherwise and they can't get to any content or interaction that their parents don't pre-approve. Lucy: That's pretty interesting. Larry: Boy I'll say. I've got seven grandchildren, I'm happy to hear that. Beth: In fact, one of the features that some of our investors are interested in is Skyping to grandchildren that you can do through Playsmart. All you do is click on a picture of your grandparent and it makes the call for you. Lucy: Oh, that is really cool, you know. My mother's on Skype too and you know she, I mean I actually think the other end could use some help with that, you know? Larry: Yes, I agree. Beth: Yeah. Lucy: I mean she loves Skype. Beth: My daughter is how I got involved in this. I do a lot of advising of other start up CEO's and I thought I was going to be taking a break from being a CEO and just help a bunch of other people, and an entrepreneur came to me and said, you know, "Let me show you what I've got, " and it was for kids and I have a five year old. So I said, "Susie, let's play with this thing, " and she said, "Oh, this is so cool." You know and her interaction with it is what convinced me to get involved with the company and become a CEO. Lucy: You know, we've had a couple of people we've interviewed whose children have helped them form the idea for their next venture or at least encouraged them to get involved. That's really interesting. So Beth give our listeners a sense of how you first got into technology. I mean you have a very extensive technical background as I mentioned before. What first interested you in technology? Beth: A million years ago when I was in school I liked science and math and I played around with computers. And I'm probably going to give away my age, but wrote programs in Basic that ran on paper tape into a terminal. Lucy: I did that too. So don't feel bad. Beth: And then, I ended up going to MIT because they had a lot of interesting science and math. And what got me into more core technology was freshman year at MIT they have a seminar series that you do, typically in January and I took aluminum bicycle frame building because I loved bikes and I thought that would be cool. I had never seen a machine shop, I didn't know what welding was. I had never done any of the stuff and through that seminar I got fascinated by making stuff and ended up being in mechanical engineering. Lucy: Well and we noticed you were judge for First Robotics which I think further extend... Beth: Ten years, which is a lot of fun. Lucy: Yeah, you're love of making things. Larry and I both judge as well with First, so it's a great program. So what technologies do you look out there today across the technical space? What technologies do you find really cool and interesting today? Beth: Of course the last company I was in was the mobile space so I think the evolution of mobile devices into computers that you carry around with you is very interesting. I mean, when I started Zeemote in 2005, when I said, "These are the computers you're going to carry with you 24/7" the potential investors looked at me like I was from Mars. Larry: Yeah. Beth: And now people do. Lucy: They certainly do and in fact the number of people are looking at mobile devices as a real tool to help third world developing countries as well. Larry: Awesome. Beth: Well, they don't have land lines. Lucy: Exactly. Beth: And even though we have them, a lot of people don't use them anymore. Larry: Yeah, let me kind of switch gears here for a second. Two part related questions. One is, why are you an entrepreneur? And what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Beth: Well, I think it's a challenge. The first company I started, I remember we had built some high end controllers, exoskeleton controllers for robots in space for NASA and other people. And I got this idea that we ought to be able to take this technology and make it into a consumer product. And I was giving a talk at a Virtual Reality Conference and somebody from a not to be named defunct computer company said, "Well if you can't spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a reality engine you shouldn't be doing VR." And I said, "We're going to do it on PC's and we're going to make a hundred dollar joystick and everyone's going to use them but they're not going to know that it's VR." And that sort of a challenge where somebody says, "Oh you can't do that." [laughter] Or even sometimes why would somebody want that. And then you put it in front of them and they go, "Oh wow. That makes my life easier"or "That makes my health better." You know. That exciting to me. Lucy: It's a very incredibly important point I think, you know, maybe I'll just digress a moment and say that you know there's always this tug of war in any corporation big or small between the business side and the technical side and often I think the business side can't necessarily see the power of technology until a technologist puts it in front of him. And... Beth: That's why I advise all the companies that I get involved with to get those prototypes built as quickly as possible with as little money as possible and get it into the hands of the end users. Because there's where you're going to find out are you smoking something and convincing yourself there's a market or does somebody really care about this. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: And you learn so much that most entrepreneurs will tell you that the thing that they thought they were starting their company on is not the one they made money on. And it's the ones who iterate and spend time with the consumer whether they're a consumer or a corporate customer or whatever kind of customer, the ones that spend the time and listen to the customer are the ones that figure it out and succeed. Lucy: That is a really important point and I think, looking forward, we may have to ask you again a month from now but you know we do a Toolbox series as well and I think that it would be great to hear your advice for entrepreneurs because that advice around prototyping is excellent. Beth: I was going to be writing a book this year. Lucy: [laughs] Now you are running a company. Beth: Company...My God. I spent some time on it this summer capturing things like that and interviewing other entrepreneurs and then I said, "OK, I got to put this aside until I do this center and I'll come back again." Lucy: I think it will be fabulous because of your technical background. I'm sure you'd have some really valuable insights there. Beth: And I am a published poet. So... Right in the way that is intelligible to the rest of the world. Larry: So now there is a third interview. Lucy: A third... [laughs] Larry: A poetry. Lucy: Yeah. You are really digging yourself into a hole. So, along the lines of entrepreneurship, we found that many entrepreneurs can point to a particular person or a group of people who influence them or help them along their way as an entrepreneur. Who are your role models and how do they influence you? Beth: I think the first person who got me the sort of excitement at making stuff work was this professor in MIT Woody Flowers who was involved in the First Robotics Company. Lucy: Absolutely, I have seen him. I have never met him. Beth: But he was an early mentor of mine and I became a judge for this mechanical engineering design contest while I was still a student. And then that's sort of got me excited about the excitement of innovating and trying new things and testing your ideas. And then when I went to start my first company, I joined the MIT enterprise forum and there were a number of people there who I had no idea even what a business plan was. And I was going to write one to raise money. So I listened to other people talk about their businesses and I got some of those people to help me write my first business plan. And then later on, a man named Don Spero started a company called Fusion Systems down in the DC area that successfully flowed against the Japanese and the patent area. Kind of taught me about intellectual property and the value of it and also mentored me generally because of his long experience in running companies. And then when I was running Exos and I realized that I was out of my debts from a management point of view. I hired a guy named [indecipherable 10:03] to come in and run my company. And he became a mentor of mine and he is still to this day a friend. So all along the way, I think the lesson for an entrepreneur is to talk to anybody you can everywhere about what you are doing and try and connect with them because you never know when you are going to stand next to the person who is going to get you a deal like I did when I was in a party in MIT. And I stand next to Bob Metcalf who introduced me to the Logitech guys that told me what product to build for an Exos to get an exit. Or whether I am going to hire somebody who turns out to be my mentor and teach me about business that leaves the exit in the company. Larry: Wow. Beth, let me ask this question. First of all, you just mentioned about you are going to write a book this year but now you are running a company instead. It took me three years to write a book that I just had published called Mastering Change. So I just want to let you know that you can do that too. Beth: Yeah but I have a five year old and a puppy. Larry: Yeah, I got you. [laughs] Beth: So I said my daughter is most important, my business is second most important and the rest will just have to wait. Larry: There you go. I agree with that. Lucy: Although I could throw little barb in here and say Larry is a five year old but... [Larry clears his throat] Go ahead Larry I was... Beth: Anything about relationship in any of that. So? Lucy: [laughs] Larry: I have been married for 40 years. What are you going to do? Beth: Adolescence. I am not married so... If any of your listeners want to apply for the job, I take resumes. Larry: We make a little commission on this... Lucy: Yeah... [mumbles] Larry: Yeah. Speaking of all that stuff, what is the toughest thing that you ever had to do in your career? Beth: I think the first time I had to fire people was probably the worst moment because at Exos we started out as a medical company and we grew to a million and a half in revenues selling orthopedic rehab devices using our technology. And we realized we probably sold all the units that whatever be sold because we were teaching people how to turn on the computer not have a measure motions and force in patients. They didn't care about that. They use a plastic protractor and so we figured that out and we had to restart the company, went from 32 people down to about eight in one day. Lucy: That's tough. Beth: And I believe that I had helped outplace...anybody who wanted to be outplaced in great jobs elsewhere, and I am friends with some of the people who left the company at that point for years. And some of my hired again into other companies. I feel good about it. I remember at the end I closed my door and I just cried because these were my friends. Lucy: We hear that a lot from entrepreneurs. I think that is a very tough thing to...not just let people go but it is theirs loss and also downsizing the company and restarting it. That is all tough stuff. Beth: Yeah. Perhaps to tell you that I learned in that experience that if I had done it sooner, everybody would have been happier. Both the people who did not fit the business we are getting into and the investors and everybody would have done better. So, my advice to entrepreneurs is don't be afraid to hire but don't be afraid to fire the person who is the wrong person for the job. You are not doing them or you any favors by keeping them around if they are not working. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: It is the truth. We have learned that lesson unfortunately in the Telecom downsizing. Well that's great advice and it gets us to our next question about advice for young people about entrepreneurship and you have given us some perils already. And I wander around online and I found some presentation you made about naming your company. What I found was pretty interesting. Beth: That is a new one. [laughs] I give that to an MIT class because I am still on the faculty there. So occasionally faculty members will call me up and ask me to come, give lecture to their class and the senior mechanical engineering design class didn't have a clue how to name their product. So I came and I gave a lecture. Lucy: That's good. I can't wait for your book. And so, what kind of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs that you haven't already told us? Beth: I think the most important thing that I talk to any entrepreneur that I coached from day one is why are you doing this? What are your personal goals? What are your financial goals? How does that fit with your family? And if you evaluate that first and write it down and keep it in front of you and then say, is what I am doing today serving my goals, the company's goals and my family's goals? And when those things start to not match, that is when you get into trouble. And if you don't bother to figure it out first, then you don't have a road map because I made this mistake. I ran a company called Glow Dog which was a failure. It was a failure because we were just about break even and about a million plus in revenue and our Christmas shipments were on the water on 911. We had just grown to the size where we need to manufacture in China instead of the United States in order to compete and they were in the container on the ocean and they could not get in the United States so there was no Christmas. And we had to sell the assets and fold the company because I didn't feel like there was going to be a return on investment if I brought in more capital. But what I didn't think about when I started that company was what was the right size for this business and did that kind of a business match what I personally wanted to do? It was just interesting. People loved the product. They were reflective coating for people and pets. And you walking your dog at night, you don't get run over, right? Well, it turned out our customers were fashion stores in Tokyo who liked the logo I designed. I didn't even know it was reflective and it was a 33% margin business in an industry that is not very protectable and that I had no expertise in. What was I doing, doing this business? So, I raised a bunch of money to make a big play, before I realized that this really was a brand company, not a technology company. I raised the right amount of money for a technology company to get launched, but it turned out technology didn't matter, and to make a brand like Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren, you need tens of millions of dollars. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: ... and you need expertise, which I didn't have. So, if I had understood my own personal goals and what kind of a work environment I wanted, and what the end game looked like at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have made those mistakes. Because Glow Dog could have been a very profitable, between $2 and $10 million dollar clothing company and pet product company, if that was its goal. It wouldn't have raised as much money. It wouldn't have spent as much money, and it might still be around today. Larry: You obviously didn't know all your life that you were going to become an entrepreneur and since we're... Beth: I thought I was going to be an academic. Larry: There you go, see... Lucy: Well, you're that too, so there you go. Larry: A little change. Beth: So, I'm an academic. I play at academia. [laughter] Beth: I actually have on one occasion taken money from MIT to teach a class, and I realized that it was not for me. Because along with taking the money, comes a lot of faculty meetings and policies and procedures, and entrepreneurs don't really love those things. What's good about a company that's under 25 people is you don't need a huge amount of that stuff to be successful. Larry: Right. Beth: Some people are really good at structure and organization and detail, and that's not me. Larry: Not you, no. Well, then, what were the characteristics that made you really become a successful entrepreneur? We want to reach out this way, because we have many young people and employers and parents, who want to know what secrets they should look at when it comes to entrepreneurism. Beth: Certainly, like anything else it can be taught, and it can be learned over time. So, if you want to be an entrepreneur and you don't really understand what it is, go get a job or an internship with an entrepreneurial firm and get to know that person who started the company and watch them. Do it a couple of times. You'll learn whether it suits you or not. But in terms of what I think gives me an advantage; first of all, unbridled optimism to the point of stupidity at times. [laughter] Larry: I love it! Beth: You know, "You can't do that! You can't do that!" "Sure I can! Sure I can!" You know there is a limit, you beat your head against the wall a few times and you walk away, but hammering on and being tenacious at getting your objective. If it doesn't happen the way you think, you think of a second way. If it doesn't happen that way, you think of a third way. Maybe you don't end up accomplishing what you set out to do, but in the course of trying to accomplish it, you figure out where the real value is. So, it's a combination of being tenacious, and also being aware and being willing to change, and willing to take advantage of what God, the world, whatever, has presented to you in terms of opportunity. So, if you're trying to build widget A, and nobody wants widget A, but in order to make widget A, you had to make a fixture. And it turns out loads of people want that fixture, well go sell a fixture. Don't keep trying to sell a widget that nobody wants. Lucy: Exactly. I like that, 'unbridled optimism on the verge of stupidity.' I am just going to have to remember that one. Larry: I was looking in a mirror when you said that, yes. Beth: Also, you have to be able to learn from everybody around you. Lucy: That's totally right. Beth: Willing to talk about what you do in a pleasant way, not obnoxious, but to anyone who will listen. Because you never know where you're going to learn something, or who's going to have, "Gee. I know the guy who started that company that you want to have buy your company" or "Gee. I had a company like that, and we made this mistake" and so you can learn to avoid that mistake. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: Or somebody you want to hire. And don't be afraid to hire people who know a lot more than you do. Lucy: Totally. Beth: It's a matter of risk right. If you're an investor, and I've done some investing as well, you look at what's the total risk package for this business. And anything, absolutely anything you can do to reduce the risk is a good thing. And so the more experience you have that's relative to the business you're in, even if you don't know it yourself or understand it. It's going to reduce that risk. Lucy: Well and that's great advice I think. It's all pointing towards another interview I think Larry. Beth: You could have me talking for days. Lucy: I know. No, no ...I've got all kinds of plans for you know now. So you've already mentioned to us that you are a published poet and we know you're a judge for many years with First Robotics. What else are you doing to bring balance into your professional and personal lives? Beth: Well, I mean it's a struggle. I mean I'm a single mom, so there is no such thing as balance in my life. But, I do things like, I've got a calendar I just printed out this morning because I wasn't sticking to my exercise routine. And just like my daughter gets stars for reading books and she turns it in at school every month. I'm going to have her help me put stars on my calendar for my exercise. Lucy: Oh, that's nice. Beth: And I have family dinner night, where I cut off work early usually on Fridays, so that I can cook a meal. And we can sit down and eat together because it doesn't happen that often. And when I was growing up that was something that was somewhat absent and I wanted my daughter to have that, and I wanted me to have that too. Because, there is this idea that, when I was in the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, I obsessed about the business 24/7 and drove myself nuts. You know, I hardly slept, and that's not the best way to be productive. As I've gotten older, I work smarter. And so I do everything that I can do to make every minute of my time incredibly effective. If I'm having a bad day and I'm not productive. I'm not going to hammer my head against the computer or the telephone, which is where most of my work happens. I'll go and do something nice for myself for an hour. You know, call a friend, go have a coffee, or do an errand I need for my home. Go do some food shopping and come back. And then I'm refreshed and renewed. I listen to books on tape at night as I'm falling asleep so that I can't think about business at night. I love novels and I love fiction. So that for me blocks out my ability to think business. Lucy: That's a great idea. Larry: Yeah, it really is, wow. You know Beth, you have achieved so much in so many different ways. Going back to your first company that you ended up selling to Microsoft and all the other Wins and that challenges along the way. You've achieved a lot what's up for you next? Beth: I would like to have a huge exit in Playsmart. So if anybody is listening who wants to buy a company like that, that's the goal. To build this to where there is enormous excitement about the product and many, many families are using it. And then get a bigger company with huge resources behind it. And then I'll be happy to step back, finish my book and invest and advise in others. Lucy: Wow, and we would love to see you write that book. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: That would be I mean great, great advice here and we thank you for taking time to talk to us. I want to remind those who are listening to this interview that they can find it at W3W3.com. Larry: That's right and we'll have it up also on our blog as well as our podcast directory so you can download it 24/7. Lucy: Well, I'm pleased to pass it... Beth: And if there are there any moms of kids interested in Playsmart. That's at Playsmart send me an email, I'll make sure you find out about a product when it's out this summer. Lucy: Absolutely, and we'll have that as well in the bio up on the site. So everybody can find it when they come to download the podcast. Very good, well thank you very much. Larry: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Beth MarcusInterview Summary: Beth Marcus has been Founder and CEO of several successful startups, most notably EXOS, Inc., which was venture-backed and sold to Microsoft in 1996. Since then she has been involved in 14 start-ups in a variety of fields as a founder, investor, or advisor. Release Date: January 22, 2010Interview Subject: Beth MarcusInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 24:00

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Anu Shukla Founder & CEO, Offerpal Media, Inc Date: February 7, 2009 Interview with Anu Shukla Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews we're doing with outstanding women entrepreneurs who have started IT companies. They have just so much wealth of experience and passion around entrepreneurship to share with us. With me is w3w3.com's own Larry Nelson. Larry Nelson: Oh yeah, well she's making fun of me right now. Lucy: Yeah, I know, I know. Larry: Yeah. We love what we do because working with the organization and the contacts you have is fabulous. Lucy: Well, we're very excited to work with w3w3 and today, we're really excited to be interviewing Anu Shukla who's the founder and CEO of Offerpal Media. Now, this is really a great, great Website. People need to go check this out. Anu, though, is a Serial Entrepreneur. This is just her latest endeavor but it's really interesting because it uses an innovative Engagement Marketing model. Users win points for filling out surveys and doing other things and at the same time, it matches it up to advertisers. So, it's a win win-win for everybody and really works towards monetizing the web even more through advertising. So, Anu, tell us a little bit about Offerpal Media and what Engagement Marketing models are? Anu Shukla: Yes, thank you so much, thank you. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show and I am also very excited about Offerpal Media. And as you mentioned, I'm a Serial Entrepreneur but I have to say this is probably the most exciting venture I have been involved with. Offerpal Media, as you mentioned, is a Virtual Currency Modernization Service. So, what this means is and I'll just put it in plain English for everybody, is if you use FaceBook or MySpace or if you play games, any kind of online casual games or role-playing games or MMORPGs as they're known, you play for free, basically. At a certain point, you want to advance your level in the game or you want to move faster or you want to procure weapons or you want to unlock custom features for your Avatar or you want to send virtual gifts to people. That will require you to conduct a microtransaction with that particular game or Website and you can either, take out your credit card and pay for things or you can use a service like Offerpal. Offerpal really matches the consumers up with the right advertisers. If you take one of their advertising offers which are generally, let's put it in the category of good deals, then, you would not only get a good deal from the advertiser but you also get the virtual currency points. You can send a premium gift or card, virtual gift or card as well. What happens then is that it's win-win, win situation for everybody. You have the consumer, they got points on their favorite game so they can advance and engage further with the game. The advertiser got a qualified customer or lead and the publisher got some revenue so they can continue to enhance and make the game even more engaging for their consumers. Offerpal facilitates that service through our platform and we take a portion of the revenue for doing that. Sorry for the long-winded answer but at the end of it, it's all about benefits and I just wanted to end up with all the benefits that we provide. Lucy: Well, I thought, I thought it was really interesting. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Some of the users around dating and poker and my son's a poker player so maybe he's used it. Anu: Yeah, most of the free to play poker games will give you a certain number of chips everyday but once you sit down at the table to play with five of your friends, all virtually. Let's say that you lose all your chips, you don't want to wait until the next day to play with them and so you are going to have to buy chips for a small amount of money or you can take one of these advertising offers and both of those scenarios are facilitated by Offerpal. In fact, all kinds of poker franchises use Offerpal and you'll see us showing up at the button in various games and Websites as earn bucks or earn poker chips or earn currency button. And, when you click on it where we come up with all the list of advertising offers and payment options. Lucy: Very cool. You know, Anu is a visionary and, in case you couldn't tell? Larry: Yeah. Lucy: In the area of Online Personalization and Marketing Automation and she, one of her former companies was Rubreck which was acquired by Broadbase so when we talk about her being a Serial Entrepreneur, it, quite a big deal. Larry: A big deal. Lucy: A big, big deal. So, Anu, you have a real track record with technology and so how did you first get into technology and obviously Engagement Marketing model is a petty cool technology. Do you see any other technologies today that you think are especially innovative? Anu: Sure, it was a bit, that was a series of questions so first of all how did I get into technology? I guess it was luck of the draw because I graduated with my MBA from Ohio and I happened to know somebody, which is lesson number, always remember to network. Just through my network, I knew somebody who had a small company here in California, in Silicon Valley and that was my first job out of, fresh MBA grad within a technology company and a start up. So, I've stuck with both of them ever since because it was personally, intellectually, and financially very, very rewarding. And it's something I really liked so that's how I ended up in technology. I really have an MBA. I have an undergraduate degree in history so it wasn't that I had none, done a lot of programming courses or even I was a competent hardware engineer or anything. But, I ended up in marketing job, this high-technology company starting with semi-conductors and moving on to databases and development tools for programmers, pretty technical in a B to B environment. So I worked for about six companies, all start ups, all of which were either acquired in a financially good, on good terms or they went public. So, after having done it about six times, I said, maybe I should do a start up myself rather than always working for other people's start ups. Because it was so rewarding, I think I've seen the process enough times, I'm comfortable. The area that I selected was Marketing Automation for a business to business environment because, guess what? I had been doing that for about 15 years. I had been a marketing executive in a business-to-business marketing environment for high technology companies. So I created some software for my peers, which is other marketing executives in the business to business environment that were selling technical products. That's how I started Rubreck which was a Marketing Automation software company that really pioneered the category of marketing automation. I had dealt with the problems of running a budget and using the Internet to communicate with my customers, all the nuances that come in to B-to-B marketing environment. And I've put that into software and made it into a company called Rubreck which was acquired about 19 months later by a publicly-traded company so it was a good financial exit for my investors and myself. That's how I set up a track record as an entrepreneur and was able to then get funding for my subsequent ventures including Offerpal. With Offerpal, what is so exciting about Offerpal and here's where we get to the technology opportunities that are emerging and remain. It was really that Offerpal was riding, the idea, the concept of Offerpal Media was really riding a few different and interesting waves. One of the big trends right now is social networking. A lot of people are spending time on FaceBook and on MySpace and on other social or community networking sites. Offerpal allows applications that work on social networks or social networks themselves to actually make money from all the visitors that they get. This we called Net Monetization and so that's an interesting and important problem. Everybody's spending time on social networks, how do you make money so that it's viable? We are an extremely important and viable option for making money on social networks, we're publishers. The second thing is the rise of the freemium model and so the freemium model is really, I don't know if you read the latest book called "Free." I think it's by the same author, I'm forgetting his name, went blank but it's all about how everything is free, but it's not really. Really, the model is all about getting a lot of consumers to engage with your product or service and that leads to up-selling and cross-selling. That's where you really make your money. The freemium model is really emerging in gaming, in online gaming so people are engaging, they will play, this has really expanded the universe of people who will play online games because they can actually engaged and try it for free. Offerpal is the center of monetization for the freemium model in online gaming and so that's an important trend that we're riding. And the third is the rise of virtual currency. Virtual currency is much more advanced in its usage and its popularity in Asian countries like Cyworld in Korea, which is a social network, all that income from virtual currency. Also in China with companies like Tencent and Xiao Nei which are all social networks that created billions of dollars of revenue from virtual currency. The virtual currency model is really being applied in European-based properties now and again, with it, the center of monetizing, virtual currency as well. Being that we're riding these three important waves, it's no surprise that we've seen some measure of success. And it also opens up lots of avenues for technology innovation in all these three areas. Larry: Mm-hmm, wow. I guess. Lucy: Pretty interesting virtual world. Larry: Is that ever but you and I are here right now. Lucy: Well, maybe. Larry: Yeah, maybe. Larry: I think it's pretty obvious why you became an entrepreneur but what is it about being an entrepreneur that makes you tick? Anu: Well, I think that entrepreneurs, I really feel that I'm on a mission every time I start a company. It's a really, a big problem that I'm trying to solve and I really love the people that I work with. Because of the nature of start-ups, the risks involved, the intensity and the tenacity that you have to have to be part of a start-up, you actually meet and work with like-minded people. So, essentially I like working with the people that work in my company but also with the industry at large, the kinds of people you meet are a reflection of what is important to you. I think, that's what really drives you, the process of creating something from nothing, the whole unknown that you are about to conquer and that along the way you're working with people that are like you that share the similar drive and passion and intensity. I think that's what makes an entrepreneur tick and once you officially hang out your board and say, "I'm in business, I'm a start-up. " Then it really becomes all about your responsibility to your, the things that you have to prove and the things that you have to do and the responsibility you take to the employees who leave their jobs and come and join you in your quest, you want them to be part of that success. Your investors, who believe in your idea and based on a business plan, plunk down millions of dollars. Then it's about proving to them or coming through for them. I think it's a combination of feeling a sense of pride and responsibility and also the creative process. Lucy: They're great answers. Being an entrepreneur is certainly all those things. You do have to have a good bit of intensity. For sure, to be an entrepreneur so, tell us about mentoring. You mentioned when we first started chatting with you that networking was important. We've heard over and over again that mentoring is important to an entrepreneur so tell us your take on mentoring. Anu: I think mentoring is very important and I'm coming from the perspective of somebody who hasn't really benefited from a lot of mentoring, official or structured mentoring. I think the reason I didn't benefit from it was because I wasn't very open to it and I've now realized that I could have benefited more, really been better in many ways had I actually been open to mentoring from other people. This is different, it's a different take that you will hear because a lot of people would say, I didn't find mentors or my mentors didn't have time for me. I didn't go looking for mentors and the ones that I did run into, I wasn't very open to their advice because I just felt that I knew it all. That's not actually correct so in hindsight, if there's one thing I've learned is that mentoring is really important. You have to actually find the right mentors that you can benefit from, and then you have to be open to listening to their advice and actually making behavior or strategy modification based on what you're learning. You always have to make up your own mind but if you're open, then you would listen to inputs from others and I'm getting a lot better with that now. Lucy: That's so interesting that you say that. I personally equate to that myself. It took me a while to get used to, in taking advice and not just taking advice but asking for it and then welcoming it. Anu: A lot of people, it is easier to approach mentors with a completely different expectation. I will have people approach me saying, "I really want you to mentor me," or "are you available to have lunch with me," or whatever. At the end of the day they're immediately looking for, can you help me find a job or can you give a career advice? It's very narrow, the scope. It's more about networking for referrals rather than mentorship. If you're really seeking a mentor, you should be prepared that they're not there to find you a job, they're not there to write you checks for your most recent venture although that maybe coming up sometimes. They're not just there to refer to other people so you can advance your business. They are there to understand what are your weakness and what are your challenges and give you specific advice on how to improve yourself and also as a sounding board for issues that you're facing. I think if you approach mentorship that way, your mentor will feel better and you will get a lot more than if you just get one referral to a business partner or a venture capitalist. Lucy: That's an excellent distinction between mentoring and networking and I'm sitting here thinking, if you were talking to a young person besides that particular piece of wonderful advice. What else would you tell them about entrepreneurship because I do think people make so many mistakes about mentoring and networking and all of those things, what other pearls do you have? Anu: Sure. I've come across two types of entrepreneurs. One is, the entrepreneurs who come across a business idea that they try out against all odds and they see certain signs of success. They just are so enamored and passionate about it, they can't wait to do it and they just jump headlong into doing it. Usually, they're right, actually, and they end up as young prodigies with huge business enterprises. That is one type of entrepreneur and what's really important in this is to have somebody who's smart enough to see an opportunity but also with blinding passion and drive to pursue it. Also, I keep in mind that not everybody will end up with a huge, an instinct that was completely correct, a great execution so they end up with a huge success at a very young age like the Google guys, right? Or the Yahoo guys, these were young people, students that found something and they said "oh this instinctively make so much sense. I love it" and then they went out and executed nearly perfectly for huge, huge gain-changing things. I'm just giving this as an example of a profile of an entrepreneur and how people come about it. So, it's important for young people listening in to see, am I that person? Am I a young person who has just come across this wonderful idea and I believe in it so strongly, I really want to pursue it and it's really, really important. The end result of this is really important. If you talk to the Google guys or entrepreneurs like the people who founded Google, yeah, they'll tell you that it was so compelling to create a better technology so people could find things more easily on the World Wide Web. It was such a huge idea that they had to pursue it and I was part of their academic curriculum but they saw the commercial viability and the benefit that could come about from it. If there are young people listening in that they have that, they should pursue it, they should, absolutely should pursue it. I don't think that good entrepreneurs are made when they just come out with, "I'll do anything, I just want to make money." I don't know, I think you have to be committed, really be passionate about the subject matter that you're pursuing or the idea you're pursuing. If it's a good idea and if you're really passionate about it, the money will come. That should not be your primary motive. Larry: Mm-hmm, very good. After getting your MBA, you went one company after another that all were successful. You've had successful companies but in this process, what is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Lucy: The toughest thing that you do in your career, is to make two kinds of moves at the same time. The two kinds of moves are, you are moving away from your subject matter that you know and you're also moving away from the functional model that you know. And you're trying to get into another company or start an enterprise in a completely different area at the same time; you're not going to be the functions. Let's say, you want to move from marketing to sales and you want to move from semi-conductors into software or into, make a bigger, you want to move from retail sales into technology sales. My advice is, that's a tough thing to do and I've done it a couple of times and I was able to make it work but it was certainly difficult to do. I would say, if you try to make one move at a time, it's probably easier. If you move from retail to technology, you may want to stick in sales rather than try to change your function from marketing to engineering at the same time. Lucy: It is hard to do that, two things at one? Anu: Yeah but in all fairness, I want to go back to the question? Lucy: Sure. Anu: That's a tough thing to do and I had to do it a couple of times. The toughest thing that I had to do was, in one of the start-ups that I did, realize= a year into it that it was never going to be a big idea. Lucy: Yeah. Anu: So I needed to change it and I needed to change it radically. I needed to change it now in half the venture money that I had to do this, the enterprise in the first place because I had spent half of it on, essentially a wrong idea, for the wrong time. And so, I had to take my little company down from 30 people to five people, going to a room and reinvent it and reinvent it on the time calendar, on a clock. That's the toughest thing because innovation doesn't come on a timer. And in having to abandon what you are so passionate about and move into another. That is the toughest thing I've ever done. Lucy: We've heard that a number of times, that they're very consistent, downsizing, laying people off, leaving an idea behind that you felt passionate about. Anu: Yeah, really, it's hard to downsize of it but really, the worst part is abandoning the idea that you, you went out you had an idea. You were so passionate about it. You were able to sell people to put money into it and you have to sell people into joining your company and you have to sell the initial customers into buying it. Then, you have to turn around and say, it was not the right idea and we're going to abandon all of it and start over. That's really hard. Lucy: We like to ask people as part of this interview series, words that describe your personal characteristics that you believed gave you advantage as an entrepreneur. We hear things. I won't bias your answer. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: What characteristics do you think really you have that make you a successful entrepreneur? Anu: I think a high tolerance for risk is one. Lucy: Mm-hmm. Anu: The second is a good vision about where the market is now and where it's going so to be able to really apply the creative process towards the right things, moving in your idea. You have to have some vision about where you are now and where you could be and how markets would emerge. Being able to spot those trends, I think, early enough and being able to do something about it. I think those are things that help me create the right ideas or change it or polish it into the right ideas so being open to the idea that, that idea was good. It probably needs some polishing and then adaptability. Being able to adapt to change because change, ups and downs, do happen and they happen very, very frequently. Being able to adapt to that, I think, has also made me, this part of my entrepreneurial achievement or satisfaction with the process because I'm prepared to accept those changes. Larry: Wow, that's wonderful. It's easy to tell that you're a very busy executive. How do you bring about balance in your personal and your professional lives? Anu: Yes, that is something I don't think anybody has the perfect answer to and I suffered a lot especially after I had my children between the whole, horrible feeling of guilt. Why was I working and not spending more time with my children because certainly I didn't need to work. I could have spent all my time, 100 percent, 24 hours a day with my kids. So, why wasn't I doing that? And the reason is I just think I'm a better person when I don't. The reason is I think, I'm a better person when I'm engaged in entrepreneurial activity which I love and enjoy and have passions about, at the same time, I allow enough time and energy to raise my children and be with them. I determined for myself that I was not going to be able to do just one or the other, I had to do them both. So then it gets to the question of how do you balance the two? I think that with me, especially with this additional demands on my time, with the family situation, what I learned to do was to really hire and it became a necessity, it's something I wanted to do all along, but now, it just became completely, completely something that I couldn't live without which is to hire a great team and not micromanage them. I did focus a lot on surrounding myself with bright people and letting them, enabling them and empowering them to make independent decisions and not getting in their way, not micromanaging it so that's one thing. The second thing is, actually, it's more mental than anything else which is realizing that there are going to be times where you're going to be the best mother in the world and there are going to be times where you're going to be the best chief executive in the world. And those two don't necessarily happen on the same day. Lucy: That's amen, great. Anu: When you realize that, you said, OK there are some Parent-Teacher meetings and things I will just not miss, that's it, I'm going to be there. I don't care what great business opportunity I'm going to lose by doing that. I'm sorry, that's what I had to do. And there are times where my kids are just going to have to know that Mom is in New York for a conference and she'll be gone for two days so, I'm sorry, I won't be there. Those are the, you just have these tough choices and just live by them. Lucy: I'd say that was pretty close to perfect answer. It's wonderful. You did really achieve a lot in your career and you have, I'm sure, a bright future. Give us just a few words about what you see as next for you? Anu: I just think that, I realized a while ago because as you know, I've been fortunate enough to work with some great teams so that we will all have some measure of success. And so, I think that when do you feel you've had enough is a personal choice for everybody. This is my third start-up and I still don't feel I've had enough and so I just let my internal center guide me as to when is the time to call it quits to change and right now, that isn't the time. And I'm not trying to put this on a time calendar or a schedule as well. Right now, I just love what I'm doing so I look at what's next for me and I think what's next for me right now is to make Offerpal Media, to focus 100% on Offerpal and make it as big a success as possible. That's where my vision ends right now for that piece of it and of course, it does not end ever with my kids. It's all about, how can I do more things with them and how can I engage with them more, how can we do more things together, what's good for them and so on and so forth and how much I like to be with them and that never ends. I'm focused on that and then, when I do think beyond, after Offerpal reaches some kind of a successful conclusion for me personally, what do I do next? And I can't really think of what, if I'll do another start-up or not. I'm just not there yet. I do think that it would be fun to have, to do something completely different such as go to Washington, D.C. and serve in some capacity over there or my favorite of all times is to be a talk show host. Lucy: I love it. You can help us with these interviews. That would be awesome. Anu: I was thinking more television. Lucy: OK, all right. We may have to move it. Larry's been doing television lately and so there you go. Anu: Yeah. I see, that's, I've always thought that would be a lot of fun. I watch people like Charlie Rose and I think he has the best job in the world. He gets to engage with all these people and really get into the heart of things so that's what I think about it. Maybe some career in that talk show, host-type environment. Larry: We'll follow you. Lucy: We will. We'll be right there. We really do appreciate your time. These have just been very insightful answers and really appreciate it. I want to remind listeners where they can find the interviews. Larry: In w3w3.com. Lucy: W3w3.com. Larry: It's one place. Lucy: And also at the NCWIT Website, www.ncwit.org. So thank you very much. We really appreciated it. Anu: Thank you so much. Bye, bye. Lucy: Bye. Larry: Bye, bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Anu ShuklaInterview Summary: Anu Shukla and her co-founder Mitch Liu brainstormed the idea for Offerpal in response to a good cause: helping friends donate to a favorite cause by participating in offers. They built an application to connect clicks with causes, made it vailable to a variety of other applications, and watched as the idea took off. Release Date: February 7, 2009Interview Subject: Anu ShuklaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 29:21

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

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