Diane Greene’s Advice for Founders [video] | Hacker News Reader

Diane Greene’s Advice for Founders [video]

blog.ycombinator.com

104 pointscraigcannon18 comments

The post that follows is tangentially related, but maybe some might want to discuss.

I think it's amazing how we live in an age where diversity seems to be of so much importance in tech. We saw this happen with the ousting of Kalanick at Uber, with the now infamous Google diversity memo, with Dave McClure, with Justin Caldbeck, and so many others.

Now, I'm not sure if diversity is as virtuous in tech as it is in something like medicine (I'm reminded of Bakke v. UC Regents) or politics (I'm reminded of MLK), but to argue one way or another would take a lot of effort and research. Overall, though, I think we're heading in a good direction.

However, I think that a much more important distinction -- more than race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. -- is wealth. As Diane Greene was speaking about her sailing, I couldn't stop thinking about how different I am than her (and probably most of the people in that auditorium). This isn't because I'm a guy, as I'm sure my sister would feel the same way.

See, I grew up dirt poor in a third-world country where I distinctly remember not being able to afford food (in the first few years after Communism fell). When we immigrated to the US, my parents had no support system. They are college educated, but still had to work menial jobs (my mom cleaned houses under the table, for example). Because of their hectic schedules, my sister and I couldn't attend computer club, or math club, or sailing class -- not that we even went to schools that had sailing class.

Now, this isn't meant to be self-serving, and my sister and I ended up alright (both six-figure-making UCLA graduates in Los Angeles); even my parents' Southern California house is now worth $1M+; so, for 20 years in the States, I think that's pretty good. But it's just meant to show the amount of privilege wealth affords you is far beyond any other kind.

It's not just wealth, but status. I was in the UK recently and had an enlightening conversation with a mixed-class couple. The guy sounded like an aristocrat and the lady sounded, well, low-class. They both had middle-class jobs but told me that if the guy was a hobo on the street, most Londoners would still believe that he was wealthy and give him the privilege of it, just from his manner of speech.

Americans might claim to have no such social strata, but one can often tell from dress and speech what social class someone is from. Amusingly, I met a young billionaire who tried to dress poor, but still quite obviously spent thousands of dollars on his dredlock basket-hat.

I'd argue there is a slight difference between lack of diversity in Medicine/Politics, vs Entrepreneurship through Software Engineering. In medicine, lack of diversity meant female patients with breast cancer got "butchered" or research neglected (from a surgeon who became a breast cancer doc due to horrible practices she saw). In politics, lack of diversity means entire populations get neglected, deprived of votes, deprived of resources. Those are also zero sum games (finite number of doctors can be trained, and political seats are limited as well).

Those two fields the gaps are fairly obvious. In Entrepreneurship you wouldn't know if the IPhone had never happened or if Facebook never happened, just as you don't know all of the innovations we have missed out on because advertisers once upon a time decided to market computers as boys toys, which led to parents buying less for girls, which led to unfair advantage, which lead to the female Wozniak or Steve Jobs of the 80s becoming a lawyer or a Breast Cancer doc. What would the world look like without Grace Hopper's work, or Ada Lovelace's? These are irreversible forks in the road that you cannot see. This is not a zero sum game, which is why it's so baffling to me that women in engineering are treated so poorly. Nobody gains from that. I started hanging out at the PC lab of my school in second grade (8 years old), and a 16 year old TA asked me to the bathroom to make out. I'd been hit on at every single new place I tried to code or work in computing until I moved out of Bulgaria in my late teens. I've been fortunate to be in better environments in the US, but the climate towards women in CS is real, worldwide.

Female software engineers who manage to scrape away resources and start businesses today are pushing in all kinds of new directions. We'll see the forks in the road that come of that in a few years. Today, many of us want to just work and let the work speak for us. The difference now vs before the scandals of late, is we can see that we are not alone struggling with fundraising or obnoxious attitudes along the way, and we are less likely to give up the fight (it's not me its the culture, I can push through culture). The confidence level is up and likely the percentage of Female Founders who persist to build bigger businesses.

This comment really strikes a chord. There's not enough awareness around the actual privilege wealth affords. The majority of the tech titans today come from similar affluent backgrounds. Thank you for sharing your story. I would love more examples of successful folks who share a tough past.

U.S. citizenship as well. Few Americans are aware of the degree of privilege that being American grants them.

I tell my friends abroad that US Citizenship should be worth at least $500,000 for a child.

This is a nit, but there's a difference between sailing on a dinghy vs sailing on a yacht. The former seems to be what she is talking about growing up. Sailing on a dinghy has little to do with class---poor people have been doing that for literally thousands of years. It's more of a function of growing up near the water vs not. I think it's rare nowadays, but back then land near water was quite a lot cheaper.

You're correct in that even today, rural kids that live in, say, New England, take boats out all the time. But there's a difference between sailing to fish for sustenance and racing "long distance to Bermuda and down both of America’s coasts."

Honestly I think she is one of the best people on this planet. She really means what she's saying, because she doesn't bother to play political games. I love it.

However that is not a good business teacher. Most of us don't have rich parents that guarantee us lifelong financial safety and a vast network of business contacts when we leave university. That means we need to do a lot of stuff we don't like, for instance bother with questionable business deals, and we really need to learn to fight for life of our start-ups because these a-holes who just want to take all you got really are more rich and powerful than we are. In your start-up description form the part "unique selling point" is checking for something that will let you survive when people start fighting you despite you're not being ready to fight back.

I'd rather suggest Sun Tsu than Diane Greene as start-up advice. Keep hers for the sunny days after you exited one or two start-ups successfully.

DG is a heck of a leader, and we're lucky to have her dedication to outcomes at Google Cloud.

This is a minor point, but I like the joke she made in the beginning about her height. Not only was it funny, but I was unaware that she was 5'1", and think that makes her accomplishments even more impressive and says something about her tenacity, given that 58% of F500 CEOs are over 6 feet tall.

That was one unnecessary fact.

Actually it's relevant. There is a fair bit of research about people being unconsciously biassed against short leaders.

Napoleon and Hitler were both shorter than the average and they were powerful leaders. Looking at their place in history I am confused about the research implications. I just search on Internet and the list is very large: http://www.ranker.com/list/shortest-world-leaders-from-histo... we cannot forget Putin!

Definitely unusual. Most female executives are above average in terms of height too - Sheryl Sandberg, Ruth Porat, Susan Wojcicki, Marissa Mayer are all 5'8"+

Don't forget Meg Whitman. She's 6'1".

this is the co-founder of VMWare for those of you who don't know the name.

(watch the video, amazing woman.)

" The bottom line in sailing a boat or building a company is that you give it your all.

You give it your all, not because you’re supposed to, not because that’s what makes you win, but because you have respect for your goal and you enjoy the process.

As a company founder, enjoy building things. Enjoy creating value. And the commitment that comes from loving what you do is what will nourish you. It will satisfy you and will make you unafraid of failure. You may lose this race, or that one, but sailing ahead with everything you have will still be a pleasure.

You may make a fortune, but the fortune will be incidental. If your goals are worthy, it’s the process that will count, and that understanding will be your greatest source of strength no matter what the adversity.

This is excellent. One of my thoughts while reading it was, it really would have been interesting to see what she could have done as CEO of Yahoo:

>And now, finally, as Head of Google Cloud, I’m learning that it’s possible to build an enterprise startup inside a mega company.

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