So the first question why did he become an entrepreneur and

this anybody can you know go first?

Well I started by entrepreneur journey you know

unconventionally, I actually dropped at high school on 16 so

actually it would cause me to become an entrepreneur was a

little bit different. My family was going through little

hardships I was trying to go ahead and help out and you know

basically try it out. My first job and only job was trying

out for McDonalds and they rejected me so. I realized that

hey there is something called the internet and looked at

what was going on I mean the full year of it and fell in

love with the whole online advertising space and you know

the beauty of the internet is you don't need the stigma

that's attached to kind of business as it was probably 50

years ago. I mean you can be a 16-year-old in a bedroom and

start a business that two years later you can sell for $40

million. And you know that probably wasn't possible 50 years

ago so you know part of the survival helped me become an

entrepreneur but on top of that I love building stuff out of

nothing so encashment about it as long as you are having a

DNA be successful.

So I became an entrepreneur pretty much out of necessity. I

had been working at a public accounting firm then passed

over for partnership two times and I can see that the third

was coming up. And the only reason was because I was woman

and at this point there were 0 women in the partnership

across the world. And that just wasn't okay with me but I

had butted my head up against the glass ceiling enough times

and at this point had enough visibility across the whole

firm to know that I wasn't personally going to be able to

change this organization from the inside. So I left and

turned around and offered them my services for basically the

exact same thing that they would have had if I had been

partner within their structure and asked them to pay me

three times as much. They agreed, which was the amazing

part, provided me an office and let me keep my

administrative assistant for their first six months and I

was totally billable from the very, very first day. And that

grew into an organization that had employees across the

world and then you know kind of once you get the bug it just

kind of starts taking over and so I was like well you know

there is a problem here, I can solve it by doing this. There

is a problem there and I can go solve that by doing this and

I love it.

Yeah, so I guess the best answer that I can give is that I

didn't decide to become an entrepreneur, and I mean that in

two ways. One, I am actually not quite an entrepreneur. I

don't really deserve to be called an entrepreneur unlike all

the other people up here. I have always sort of helped

entrepreneurs. I joined the LinkedIn and Facebook before we

raised venture funding, before the companies were built and

so on so very, very, very early in those companies. But I

always sort of liked helping entrepreneurs. They used to

call that thing a venture capitals but that means something

else today I guess. So the second way in which I mean that

and just really amplifying what Carol just spoke to is I

think of lot of the time people who end up being

entrepreneurs don't really exactly decide to become

entrepreneurs. It's not like being an accountant where you

say you know I am going to go out and you know take a test

and get a license and go become an accountant. You know I am

going to go to an entrepreneur school and become an

entrepreneur. It's a little bit more organic than that, a

lot of the time in my experience. And it's just something

that almost happens to you or that you get the bug for like

you said usually because something is broken that you want

to fix or because something doesn't exist that you think

should exist. And you just decide you know I am going to do

it. And that can take lots of different forms but I think

it's a more organic process than a lot of other so-called

career paths.

I actually never aspired to become an entrepreneur and I was

working as a research scientist and I thoroughly enjoyed

that. And as I know I inspire to become an entrepreneur

working as a manager or working in business in the first

place. But the thing that made an impact on me was that I

was actually reading the specification for Netscape 2.0,

some years ago some of them may remember the browser

Netscape. But I was reading the whole night and I was really

taken by this, and it had an enormous impact on me. So the

next day I actually quit my job and started my first

company. And I had no idea what kind of business idea I was

going to pursue and I really didn't have so much of a plan

but it was more this incredible passion I felt for internet.

I could just sense that internet was going to be a really,

really big and I felt it was too big of a thing to walk away

from. So that's actually why I started.

So in a life of an entrepreneur, now you are all living a

life of an entrepreneur what is it you like about the life

of an entrepreneur and what is it that you don't like about

the path that you have chosen? Anybody, you can just go to

anywhere you like?

I guess what I love about is you know it probably goes both

ways. I love creating something out of nothing and seeing

that impact it's almost like you can see it nurture and you

can see the positive result as quick as you can kind of make

it happen. The downside of it being an entrepreneur is that

it's not as you know passion stable as a typical company

where you have enough stings in place but you don't have to

worry about the revenue, you don't have to worry about

profitability, you don't have to worry about the individual

things so you end up losing a few hairs almost everyday. So

part of being in the startup is you know is you have your

good days and you have your bad days but you know you fall

down and you get up and you keep going.

So in the corporate world I used to be called a workaholic

and I am a pretty passionate person and when I am on a

project or working on trying to get something done I pretty

much stay focused on that and that used to be considered a

bad thing. And when I became an entrepreneur everybody just

started saying oh she is an entrepreneur it's okay. And so I

suddenly became socially acceptable about the fact that my

work life and my personal life had a very, very blurry line.

Blurry line if you are lucky. Yeah, you know, the best thing

about it is that it's amazing and all consuming and

exhausting and crazy and the worst thing about is that it's

amazing in all consuming, exhausting and crazy. It will

become your life if you are lucky and you are doing it well.

And there are straight offs in that but you know I feel like

the last ten or so years of my life or more or less this

vortex of non-stop startupness which is great I wouldn't

trade it for anything. But I think it almost becomes an

either-or decision at some point if you are lucky enough to

be facing that problem.

I think for me the biggest thing is the dream you know that

you can allow yourself to dream, you can allow yourself to

you know you are going to credit company, you are going to

have an impact over the world you know and it's at the end

of the day it's really all up to you. So I think that's a

fantastic luxury that there is really no limitation. It's

all about your capability, your creativity and your hard

work that at the end of the day hopefully, you will be able

to accomplish what you are set out to do.

You know the things that all of us are talking about is that

we are doing it because we have some passion about what we

are doing and with whom we are doing it. And you know one of

the things that you will hear people give you advice about

over and over again is stay focused on your passion and the

reason is if you hate what you are doing you won't be

successful as an entrepreneur because it requires too much

extra effort. And you have to really love it to make the

sacrifices that are necessary to be successful.

You also are a little bit crazy to enjoy the ups and downs

of it because there is a lot of ups and lot of downs along

the way but I think the other key thing is like if you look

at just how the business world works you know big companies

get to run it but in a startup you get to change it. And you

know if you look at you know company like Facebook, Twitter

and just social media in general that's really transpired

the way we communicate, big companies are now falling onto

that. So I think that's the highlight of being entrepreneurs

when you can make that big of an impact and if you are part

of that genre you can really go ahead and see why you are

passionate about it you are making a change and it's a lot

of fun.

[Informal Talk]

Don't you have the phenomenal when you are entrepreneur and

that is to pick the people you actually are going to work

with and I think that really makes a big difference, you

know one thing is to have this, objective, dream, desire but

you can actually work with people that are phenomenally

inspiring, people that are fun to hang out with, people that

you really care about. And regardless of where you want to

go with the company, regardless what you want to accomplish,

just a luxury that everyday you will go to work, you are

working with people that fundamentally are people that you

like and you want to hang out with I think that is a

phenomenal perk if you can put it that way.

So it's a great segue through the next question and so we

have some we have both pure entrepreneurs and we have some

venture capital experience here so you can answer it from

either perspective. Do you think it's better in the

construction of an entrepreneurial company to partner to

have a partner with someone that maybe as complementary

skills or vision or whatever or is it better we go it alone?

I think it's a frustrating answer but it depends on the

person. And you know there are people who are absolutely

solo creators who have a very individual drive and that's

the way they function. There are people who you know thrive

and need a partner. I think you know the funny thing about

startups is this whole thing is driven by exceptions, you

know you can create anywhere you like you know, oh you know

startups where the husband and wife are founders together

that always goes well except for Cisco. You know startups,

so I mean no matter what you pick there are always

exceptions. So it's very hard to generalize out of those

things. You know I have been involved in companies where

there were kind of cofounders and a founder and cofounders

and just a founder and I think all of them can work. The

most important thing if you are starting something yourself

I think is to ask yourself what's the right thing for you.

And just like with a lot of the other things that we have

been talking about it really should be a sort of an organic

process. I think if you sit down and say alright today I

need to go out and find myself a cofounder that's probably

not going to succeed.

I think it's all about you know the couple of ways to look

at it part of it is finding your dream team and you know,

either all your cofounding employees and that's really

essential for any startup your first five people make it or

break it to actually seeing if it's going to survive first

20 people, make it to see if it's going to be a large

company or not. And you know when you get to that standpoint

you got to go ahead and realize who your right partners are

going to be and partner can be beyond cofounder it's really

VC. And you know just a short plug for Stanford. Stanford is

actually an investor in gWallet, so I think we have got you

know we picked the right investors for the right reasons and

partly is because you know they can actually add a

tremendous value. I mean if you look at my first company I

actually take no funding whatsoever. I bootstrapped it

mainly because nobody wanted to fund me. I was 16, 17, 18 so

no offense on that but you know what I learned on the second

time around is when I actually raised venture capital is it

matured me as an entrepreneur. It actually brought a

different perspective on how to grow large company, how to

actually sustain certain things that you do international

expansion so forth and picking that right partner is key,

because if you put the wrong one, you know VCs can either

add a lot of value or take a lot of value out. So, that's

the caveat, no offence but that's the big formula into

finding the right magic in that partnership.

So you know the other part is whether or not to do it alone

or in the team. It is also based on if you need outside

money you know, how are you going to get it, and in the

venture world one of the conventions is basically never

invest in a single entrepreneur. And the bottom-line is if

that entrepreneur gets hit by a bus you know what do we

have, so if we have at least two people on a team and one

person gets hit by a bus then at least theoretically there

is somebody to kind of go forward and so typically by the

time you see them any entrepreneur company coming forth to a