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[Music]
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