Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 2: Joanne Bradford has had really a fascinating career in technology,
Speaker 2: marketing and finance. She was chief revenue officer at Microsoft.
Speaker 2: She was chief marketing officer at SOFI. She had very
Speaker 2: senior roles at places like Yahoo, Pinterest, Demand Media, BusinessWeek.
Speaker 2: She has a number of investments as really a entrepreneur
Speaker 2: and a venture investor. Domain Money is one of the
Speaker 2: big ones. She's also involved with wealth dot com. And
Speaker 2: I could give you a long list of all the
Speaker 2: things she's done cahoot, super Telly, just all these really
Speaker 2: fascinating startups. She has had just an unbelievably interesting career
Speaker 2: and is one of these people who looks at every
Speaker 2: role she's had in a company as a challenge and
Speaker 2: an opportunity, and she has really managed to accomplish tremendous things,
Speaker 2: not just at Microsoft where she ran MSN's advertising and marketing,
Speaker 2: not just at Yahoo or Pinterest, but even a small
Speaker 2: startup like Honey, which she was president and sold pretty
Speaker 2: quickly to PayPal for four billion dollars. Anytime I get
Speaker 2: to speak with Joanne. I always come away feeling like
Speaker 2: I've learned so much and gained so much from the experience.
Speaker 2: I found our conversation fascinating, and I think you will
Speaker 2: also with no further ado my discussion with domain monies.
Speaker 1: Joanne Bradford, thank you so much, very it's an honor
Speaker 1: to be here.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a privilege to have you. You and I had
Speaker 2: a conversation not too long ago, and so much of
Speaker 2: what you do is so interesting and so fascinating and
Speaker 2: so beneath the radar of the average investors', you know, horizon.
Speaker 2: I thought, let's bring in Joanne and talk about what
Speaker 2: a fascinating career you've had. But I got to start
Speaker 2: with your education. You started what is that San Diego State,
Speaker 2: studying journalism and Advertising ADS TECHS.
Speaker 1: I was a journalism major because it was the easiest
Speaker 1: major at the time, and I went and took advertising
Speaker 1: courses and went to work at my college newspaper. One
Speaker 1: side where the writers, one side where the ad sales people.
Speaker 1: They paid the ad salespeople. So I went in there
Speaker 1: and didn't turn back for twenty years. And so I've
Speaker 1: sold billions of dollars worth of advertising in my life.
Speaker 2: So southern California in the late nineteen eighties. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: was the tech world like there?
Speaker 1: There was no tech world really, I mean you know.
Speaker 1: After I graduated from college, I went to work in
Speaker 1: the Macy's management program because they were the only people
Speaker 1: that were hiring. It was either go drive a Fredo
Speaker 1: Lay truck or Macy's management program. I did that for
Speaker 1: two years. It was fun, learned how to buy merchandise.
Speaker 1: But my love of advertising called and so I ended
Speaker 1: up working at BusinessWeek magazine for almost thirteen years.
Speaker 2: Right, this was the previous business Week before its acquisition
Speaker 2: by bloomber so it was.
Speaker 1: Part of was part of McGraw hill gra Hill.
Speaker 2: I also owns SMP. Yeah, so what did you do
Speaker 2: with BusinessWeek?
Speaker 1: They sent me to a little known land called San
Speaker 1: Jose and Silicon Valley to sell advertising, and I sold
Speaker 1: ads to people like Hewlett Packard and Cisco when they
Speaker 1: had one hundred employees. And I went to Seattle and
Speaker 1: called on a little company called Microsoft and learned everything
Speaker 1: I could about technology. Sun Microsystems was the hot ticket
Speaker 1: at the point in time, and I talked BusinessWeek into
Speaker 1: buying me an Apple computer and signing me up for
Speaker 1: an AOL account. And I never looked back on tech.
Speaker 2: In hindsight, all these ads you sold, you should have
Speaker 2: had them pay for it in stock and it would
Speaker 2: have worked out even better.
Speaker 1: Well, you do learn a lesson about equity based comp
Speaker 1: and I finally got that right later on, which we
Speaker 1: can talk about. But yeah, I was making commission at
Speaker 1: that point in time. So when I was a salesperson
Speaker 1: at BusinessWeek, I sold more ads than anybody and I
Speaker 1: made two million dollars commission when I was twenty nine
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of money. It was how do you
Speaker 2: go from BusinessWeek to Microsoft?
Speaker 1: Well, BusinessWeek wanted me to move to New York to
Speaker 1: become the associate publisher nine to eleven happened. My husband
Speaker 1: wasn't that excited to come to New York City, and
Speaker 1: so I said, I have to go beg borrow and
Speaker 1: steal my way into a technology company. So I got
Speaker 1: the job as chief revenue officer of MSN in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. Nobody believed the bust had happened. Nobody
Speaker 1: was buying spots and dots or ads on the Internet,
Speaker 1: And so I went to work there and Over the
Speaker 1: course of seven years, I grew it from nothing to
Speaker 1: two and a half billion dollars in revenue. We did
Speaker 1: a deal with Facebook to represent them. That led to
Speaker 1: their investment, Microsoft's investment in Facebook. We did video ads,
Speaker 1: the first video ads, We formed the Hulu Consortium. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of first during those periods at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: It was an amazing, amazing time in my career, and
Speaker 1: Microsoft was an insanely good company to work for. To
Speaker 1: learn how to work at an engineering led company.
Speaker 2: Hually really intriguing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We look at these economic busts or these market crashes,
Speaker 2: and it's obvious in hindsight what spectacular opportunities they were.
Speaker 2: What did you see in two or three that led
Speaker 2: you to say, I know, let me find one of
Speaker 2: these broken down tech companies and start something fun there.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, so at Microsoft, when I went there,
Speaker 1: I knew that people were spending more time online, and
Speaker 1: I knew that advertising dollars would eventually follow. That. We
Speaker 1: had to convince the industry, and I had to go
Speaker 1: convince people like Procter and Gamble and Coca Cola and
Speaker 1: Walmart that they should spend money with Microsoft. They were
Speaker 1: spending most of their money with Yahoo. Google wasn't on
Speaker 1: the scene yet, and so we did crazy things. We
Speaker 1: did flyovers on the front page because that made marketers
Speaker 1: feel good and feel like they were doing me.
Speaker 2: Someone lands on the page and it's like a takeover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, takeovers like that was the hot thing. You could
Speaker 1: sell a takeover for a million dollars a day at
Speaker 1: that point in time. So I, you know, I learned
Speaker 1: so much and Microsoft was like a startup inside of
Speaker 1: a big company for me. I worked my last job there.
Speaker 1: I worked and reported to Satia Nadella, which is amazing, Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2: He's done great things as the third CEO of Microsoft,
Speaker 2: really has led them back to great success. If you're
Speaker 2: doing MSN at Microsoft, how do you end up at
Speaker 2: places like Yahoo and Pinterest.
Speaker 1: Well, so when I went to leave Microsoft, I'd sort
Speaker 1: of done everything that I could do up until I
Speaker 1: was a corporate vice president. There was one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five of us, and I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to go really be an entrepreneur. I wanted to start something,
Speaker 1: and I went to a little startup that was a failure.
Speaker 1: Not all startups are great. This one had taken a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars, didn't really have a product, and I
Speaker 1: spent six months there and said, get me out of here. Safe.
Speaker 2: But by the way, safe to say most startups are
Speaker 2: going to crash and burn.
Speaker 1: Most are going to crash and burn. You know, it's romanticized.
Speaker 1: It's hard to navigate as an employee. You don't know
Speaker 1: what to ask for, what to look at. So then
Speaker 1: I knew the Yahoo folks, Jerry Yang and Sue Decker
Speaker 1: asked me to come in and help them. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, again a giant crash like right, So
Speaker 1: I went to Yahoo and worked on their revenue and
Speaker 1: sales and marketing for a few years. And then I
Speaker 1: really still had the entrepreneurial itche So I went to
Speaker 1: a company called demand Media, which was sort of the
Speaker 1: first reverse engineering of the algorithm. We looked at what
Speaker 1: people were searching for, you know, how to make a
Speaker 1: smoky eye, how to write a check, how to make
Speaker 1: a strawberry margarita, and then we'd write that content. And
Speaker 1: it was called demand Media, and we took it public.
Speaker 1: We were doing four hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue.
Speaker 1: Google change the algorithm and wiped out the business and
Speaker 1: So everybody out there that is AI dependent, Remember, the
Speaker 1: algorithm can change.
Speaker 2: It's really true if you are at all interested. You
Speaker 2: and I have talked about LinkedIn versus Twitter. If you're
Speaker 2: on someone else's platform as opposed to your own website,
Speaker 2: you're absolutely at the mercy and the whim. It doesn't
Speaker 2: matter if it's Elon Musk or Google just tweaking to
Speaker 2: get better results. If the algo changes and it affects
Speaker 2: how often people see your work on that platform, it's
Speaker 2: a very difficult circumstances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody out there that has dependencies on those platforms
Speaker 1: needs to figure out alternative channels and alternative ways. And
Speaker 1: you know that is just an important important task for people.
Speaker 1: You can't just optimize. You know, Google will change the algorithm,
Speaker 1: they'll change the UI, they'll change the rules. You know,
Speaker 1: regulatory changes will come. I've seen every change possible impact businesses.
Speaker 1: I mean, remember when we used to sit around and
Speaker 1: talk about the Facebook news feed like it was you know,
Speaker 1: we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: So to just put a little little meat on the bounds.
Speaker 2: This isn't just Google and Facebook. It's anybody that's a creator,
Speaker 2: an influencer, a producer of content. So it's going to
Speaker 2: be YouTube and Instagram, yeah, and TikTok and LinkedIn and
Speaker 2: I don't know what comes next, but whatever comes next,
Speaker 2: it's their platform. Stop and think about how much time
Speaker 2: and effort people put into things like Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 2: or LinkedIn and you have zero control over what that
Speaker 2: final product look.
Speaker 1: That is correct.
Speaker 2: It's really shocking. So you see the change at Google.
Speaker 2: It crushes demands media. Where do you go from there?
Speaker 2: In your were survey of the best tech companies in
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: Well, at that point in time, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I've been selling Internet ads for a long time. I
Speaker 1: would like to do something different. So I went back
Speaker 1: to my roots and I became the president of the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Chronicle. And why I did that was because
Speaker 1: I felt like, if you're a Bayery native and you
Speaker 1: use sf gate, it is not a great product. And
Speaker 1: I really felt like San Francisco and the tech world
Speaker 1: should have a bigger voice.
Speaker 2: So world class city, it should have a world class media.
Speaker 1: It should, you know. At that point in time, I
Speaker 1: was the independent director for kar Swisher and Walt Mossberg.
Speaker 1: I helped them leave the journal, raise their money and
Speaker 1: ultimately I helped them sell it to Vox Media. But
Speaker 1: I had written a strategy at San Francisco Chronicle for
Speaker 1: Hurst to sort of reinvent that, and there was wasn't
Speaker 1: really a ton of appetite for it, so I spent
Speaker 1: six months there. Again, I do not mind cutting and
Speaker 1: running if it's not working out right for me. Pinterest
Speaker 1: had called several times. I loved Pinterest. I knew pinterest
Speaker 1: would be big, so I went to pinterest as the
Speaker 1: head of partnerships. I set up and sold. I hired
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five ad sellers, account managers and
Speaker 1: a team to go out and sell the first promoted pins.
Speaker 1: My first hire there is now the chief revenue officeer
Speaker 1: there are Bill Watkins. He's a great, great guy. And
Speaker 1: we went out and sold the ads, and I knew
Speaker 1: that pinterest would be big. I went in there and
Speaker 1: the valuation was below a billion dollars and I left
Speaker 1: after two years. And at two years the valuation was
Speaker 1: thirteen billion dollars, And so that was a fun run.
Speaker 2: I would say, that's a hell of a run, right
Speaker 2: once and thirteen and then what eventually was the bridge
Speaker 2: between pinterest and SOFI in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Well again I was, I, you know, sort of took
Speaker 1: stock and I said, look, what the heck do I do.
Speaker 1: Now I've sold every ad, I've sold videos, I've sold
Speaker 1: you know, keywords, done deals with every single person in
Speaker 1: the world in the ad tech business. And so I said,
Speaker 1: I need to go learn something completely new, and I
Speaker 1: want to work in an industry with new people and
Speaker 1: new ideas. And a friend of mine that I knew
Speaker 1: from BusinessWeek said, hey, I work at this little company
Speaker 1: called Sofi and they do student loan REFI and I've
Speaker 1: always been passionate about money. I think people should really,
Speaker 1: you know, be educated about money, think about their money.
Speaker 1: You know, student loan debt is one of the biggest
Speaker 1: problems in America. And so I said, oh, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: So I met the founder and I said, look, I
Speaker 1: don't care if you fire me. I just want to
Speaker 1: try to do this job. He was a hedge fund guy,
Speaker 1: and he said, look, I don't know anything about marketing.
Speaker 1: I want you to build this brand like it's a
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar brand. I want you to take risk
Speaker 1: and let me know what the risk is. I want
Speaker 1: you to hit the CAC which is customer acquisition cost,
Speaker 1: and I want you to make sure that we underwrite
Speaker 1: loans at quality so we can sell them on the
Speaker 1: capital markets. And I said, I don't even know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, but I will get it done.
Speaker 2: So that's very much like what takes place with Freddie
Speaker 2: Mayek and Fannie may where they're buying conforming mortgages, so
Speaker 2: the banks now have the cash to make more loans
Speaker 2: and then they sell it to Wall Street. This is
Speaker 2: sort of like Sally may same basic concept, only private sector.
Speaker 1: Private private sector, so we would, you know, and the
Speaker 1: premise of SOFI is that students that went to good
Speaker 1: schools and were getting law degrees and MBAs and had
Speaker 1: high student loan dad and engineering schools were not going
Speaker 1: to default on their loans, that they were going to
Speaker 1: be employable for as long as they wanted employment, and
Speaker 1: they were, they weren't going to default. And so we
Speaker 1: really underwrote great qualities of loans and so we did that,
Speaker 1: and then we got into the personal loan business, which
Speaker 1: we were when I left there, we were doing about
Speaker 1: three billion dollars a month. I was there twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: There were seventy five employees when I joined we were
Speaker 1: doing about ten to twenty million dollars of loans a month.
Speaker 1: When I left, we were doing one point five billion
Speaker 1: of student loans and you know about one point five
Speaker 1: of personal loans of volume a month. Wow, so a
Speaker 1: lot of funnel.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of funnel. Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you had to learn how to
Speaker 1: you know, make deals, drive, lead gen build a community.
Speaker 1: And I would say that Sofi was and is beloved
Speaker 1: amongst that segment that helped them refy their loans. A
Speaker 1: very interesting fact that we learned while I was there
Speaker 1: is that people if they had a lot of money
Speaker 1: at play, they would refy their loans. But if it
Speaker 1: was a little bit amount of money, they would say,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a pain, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1: And so the magic number was three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: eight dollars a month. If you could save them that,
Speaker 1: then they thought it was worth it, which I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting, Like, why wouldn't you save two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a month, you know, to REFI your behavioral psychology, I know,
Speaker 1: I thought you'd like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I love that.
Speaker 1: Stueah.
Speaker 2: Before we talk about the chief revenue experience. Let's talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about Honey. Four billion dollars for a
Speaker 2: relatively young startup. That's a giant win. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about your relationship with Honey. You were you
Speaker 2: present of Honey.
Speaker 1: I was the president of Honey.
Speaker 2: How did you find your way to Honey? And what
Speaker 2: made you think? I know PayPal? This is a perfect fit.
Speaker 1: So how I ended up at Honey in Silicon Valley?
Speaker 1: Cheryl Sanmdberg used to hold dinners women in Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: dinners where we'd all meet each other. I met an
Speaker 1: amazing woman there. Her name was Emily Is Emily White.
Speaker 1: She works at Anthos Capital. She had held the CEO
Speaker 1: job at Instagram and Snapchat and was an early investor
Speaker 1: in Honey. And when I told her I was leaving
Speaker 1: so far after four years, just because I was done
Speaker 1: with my financial services chapter until now. And she said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got a company for you in LA that I'm
Speaker 1: just about to invest in with two great founders. Can
Speaker 1: you go meet them? And I said what's it about?
Speaker 1: She said, well, it's a coupon code company. Absolutely not
Speaker 1: who wants to work on coupon codes? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: And she said no, no, just go meet them. And
Speaker 1: I went and met them, George and Ryan, two of
Speaker 1: the best founders I have ever worked with in my life.
Speaker 2: And to be fair, when you say it's a coupon company,
Speaker 2: it really isn't. It's a web technology that operates in
Speaker 2: the background. Okay, like a coupon, but it's really a
Speaker 2: shopping search engine to find better prices. Am I doing
Speaker 2: it justice? You are?
Speaker 1: Berry? So their insight was that finding a coupon code
Speaker 1: was a pain, yes, right, and you always want one,
Speaker 1: And so they built a browser extension on Chrome that
Speaker 1: you could download in two clicks, and when it detected
Speaker 1: check out, it would say, pull, look at all the
Speaker 1: coupon codes, query them all, and apply the right one.
Speaker 1: And so it was a great service to consumers. And
Speaker 1: what happened was we started launching. We launched it with
Speaker 1: gamers playing YouTube on their desktop and a little gamer
Speaker 1: called mister Beast. Okay, so we were his first advertiser, and
Speaker 1: we did a deal with him. He made an ad.
Speaker 1: You can go look it up. If you look up
Speaker 1: mister Beast, honey ad and ad comes up. His collective ads.
Speaker 1: I think have been seen. You know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say billions three plus close to four billion times. Every
Speaker 1: kid in America knows what honey is. Every kid in
Speaker 1: America was telling their moms and their dads they needed
Speaker 1: to download coupon you know, honey in order to save money.
Speaker 1: The marketing the team did it. I didn't create it,
Speaker 1: but they did a great job of telling a story
Speaker 1: very clearly to the consumer and getting them to take action.
Speaker 1: They started with gamers, then they went to YouTube makeup people.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't love a Sephora coupon? Did you just get
Speaker 1: to the Sephora coupon code for the sale this week? Berry?
Speaker 1: That's like, it's like crazy that one.
Speaker 2: You missed that one, But I will tell you it's
Speaker 2: annoying as hell as you're about to click the purchase.
Speaker 2: Do you have a coupon code? I don't know. I
Speaker 2: didn't think of it, But now that you're mentioning it,
Speaker 2: should I have a coupon code?
Speaker 1: Well? They should tell you there aren't any, you know,
Speaker 1: they should say there are none, because then you'd feel
Speaker 1: better by saying is there one? You feel like you're
Speaker 1: missing something.
Speaker 2: There have been times where do I really want to
Speaker 2: buy this mailbox for three hundred dollars. Without the twenty
Speaker 2: percent off coupon code, the prompt loses them a sale.
Speaker 1: It does, and you know, Kurt, abandonment is a big deal,
Speaker 1: and so this helped improve that. The revenue model was affiliate,
Speaker 1: so we got a cut of the transactions that would
Speaker 1: go through there.
Speaker 2: Plus the data must be astonishing.
Speaker 1: The data. They were very clear, the founders that they
Speaker 1: were not going to sell the data and they were
Speaker 1: going to protect the consumer at all costs.
Speaker 2: But I mean the data. To the company that's using
Speaker 2: the code, you could say, here's how we've changed the
Speaker 2: car to abandonment, Here's how the upsells have gone, here's
Speaker 2: how the average carts. Like that internal data, not I
Speaker 2: mean like the Facebook reselling stuff that most people over
Speaker 2: forty are concerned about, but just the how can we
Speaker 2: make you better as a retailer.
Speaker 1: And you saw, you know, you saw where people came from,
Speaker 1: how they executed it, and so we built some really
Speaker 1: great products for the merchants. The funding story of Honey
Speaker 1: is interesting. The founders, Jorge and Ryan went to every
Speaker 1: venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and everyone turned them down.
Speaker 2: Because it was just open they bonds.
Speaker 1: So they said they sort of turned their nose at coupons,
Speaker 1: and they also turn their nose at desktop, not mobile.
Speaker 1: Mobile was the thing at that point in time, and
Speaker 1: they were like everything must be mobile. It would be
Speaker 1: like today you saying we're doing something old and everybody's
Speaker 1: like everything must be AI today, right, So everybody said no,
Speaker 1: and so they raised money. They found Anthos. Anthos got
Speaker 1: on it. There was a bunch of other private investors
Speaker 1: that did and did very very well. So let's go
Speaker 1: to the part where PayPal comes into it. So everybody's
Speaker 1: like why everybody was surprised when the headline came out
Speaker 1: PayPal buys Honey for four billion dollars. Shocked, And I
Speaker 1: say to them, don't be shocked. What Honey had was
Speaker 1: twenty plus net new active use That was PayPal's.
Speaker 2: Metric at that twenty plus twenty million.
Speaker 1: Net new active users. Wow, that they could add to
Speaker 1: paypals numbers. It was a profitable business, so it didn't
Speaker 1: have an negative impact to the P and L. And
Speaker 1: it also brought new engineers and new thinking and a
Speaker 1: different shopping strategy to PayPal. So you know, people always
Speaker 1: come to me or they're like, oh, this company should
Speaker 1: buy that company and I just go through the checklist.
Speaker 1: Do you have a ton of users, do you have
Speaker 1: some path to profitability or better yet profitability, and do
Speaker 1: you have strategic thinking and or talent that would give insight?
Speaker 1: And so PayPal was smart. It checked all the boxes
Speaker 1: on that. So it was sort of a no brainer.
Speaker 1: We did. You know, it was a short time after
Speaker 1: I joined that we made the transaction, and it was
Speaker 1: a short time before Covid. We closed the deal January
Speaker 1: second of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Right, and I'm assuming Covid didn't really hurt them.
Speaker 1: When everybody was excellent for Honey.
Speaker 2: Right, everybody's home shopping online, I got to think, turns out, oh,
Speaker 2: we're not hurt by this acquisition. This is right in.
Speaker 1: It was great happening. We were Our biggest problem was
Speaker 1: creating ads, new fresh ads for Honey. Every employee was
Speaker 1: shooting ads in their house. I was like, kids, we're
Speaker 1: making Honey ads on our iPhones. And it was a
Speaker 1: really really fun, fun time to be there and to
Speaker 1: be part of such an exciting acquisition. So what it
Speaker 1: really taught me, you know, out for your listeners out
Speaker 1: there is you know, when I went in to talk
Speaker 1: to that company, I asked for three things. I said,
Speaker 1: can I see the last three board decks and and
Speaker 1: I see the roadmap? And can you show me your
Speaker 1: revenue and your profitability? And they had no problem with it. So,
Speaker 1: as a senior level employee or potential board member of companies,
Speaker 1: that's what I do. I go look through those because
Speaker 1: over a course of nine months, you can see if
Speaker 1: people addressed a problem, seized an opportunity, know how to
Speaker 1: talk about things, know how to think about things. And
Speaker 1: the honey guys passed all those things with flying colors
Speaker 1: for me, and they were awesome human beings.
Speaker 2: So you're talking the way many venture capitalists talk. But
Speaker 2: I know you well enough to know you don't really
Speaker 2: think of yourself as a VC. I know you're an
Speaker 2: investor in a lot of early stage companies. But when
Speaker 2: someone says what do you do? Your answer is in
Speaker 2: venture capital?
Speaker 1: Now, I'm a like I think I invest with my
Speaker 1: human capital, right, I try to get, you know, a
Speaker 1: sick significant stake in a company and something that I
Speaker 1: believe in, in something that I can help accelerate. So
Speaker 1: it is a little bit the same process and how
Speaker 1: I spend my time and effort, and it has to
Speaker 1: be aligned with my values, you know. So that's how
Speaker 1: I think about it, That's how I've made my choices.
Speaker 1: I've had a few pivots in my life on it
Speaker 1: that have served me well. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you can figure out almost anything if you've
Speaker 1: had experiences in startups and doing things like you've, you've
Speaker 1: built many things, you know how to do it. You
Speaker 1: know right what's going to happen, and you have to
Speaker 1: be very open to it. So I was very very
Speaker 1: open to coupon codes. I was open to pinterest. I
Speaker 1: was open to a financial engineered product for student loans.
Speaker 1: You know. I like things that have not been done before.
Speaker 1: I like things that are white space in a market,
Speaker 1: and I think there's just a giant opportunity for talent
Speaker 1: to find those and to think about it. Don't take
Speaker 1: the first obvious one, because that's kind of painful.
Speaker 2: Right, So, let's talk about some other startups that you
Speaker 2: have advised or are advising right now. What is Super? Oh?
Speaker 1: Super It's a they help you save money on travel
Speaker 1: and then they have a subscription service that helps people
Speaker 1: earn money. It's a company based out of Toronto with
Speaker 1: a really great young founder duo that have built something
Speaker 1: to help people get deals every day. And it's a
Speaker 1: it's an app that is helpful in ways that Google isn't.
Speaker 1: And they're trying to combine all those experiences and give
Speaker 1: you ultimately a cash management tool someday. Like everybody will
Speaker 1: eventually be a financial services company or an advertising company.
Speaker 1: I think that's just the way it goes. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't all roads lead to So let's talk.
Speaker 2: About a financial company, Wealth dot com.
Speaker 1: Wealth dot com. I'm a really great company that is
Speaker 1: building AI technology for making trusts, wills estates easy to manage.
Speaker 1: Lawyers spend and run up bills to collate your paper
Speaker 1: to show you where things are. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: leave me your watch, or I wanted to leave you
Speaker 1: a burkin, it would cost a lot on the lawyer.
Speaker 1: In wealth dot com, you can go in and change
Speaker 1: it very simply.
Speaker 2: It's different in every state. There are different rules.
Speaker 1: They have our compliant in every state. It is a
Speaker 1: very strong platform for advisors RAS and you know a
Speaker 1: lot of them are using it At Domain Money. We
Speaker 1: use it because most people don't have trusts set up properly,
Speaker 1: and so they have done that and they're a B
Speaker 1: to B company right now, and I think eventually they'll
Speaker 1: be a B two C company.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about domain Money. Yeah, brought that up.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about what you did starting
Speaker 2: up domain money last year and some of the all
Speaker 2: stars you're working with.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I worked with a certified financial planner called
Speaker 1: Katie Song when I was at SOFI, and she did
Speaker 1: a plan for me personally and answered the questions, can
Speaker 1: I retire? Can I send my kids to school? Should
Speaker 1: I buy another home? Can I go on vacation every
Speaker 1: year for a month, Like literally went through my budget,
Speaker 1: my spending, my potential spending, and my investments. And I
Speaker 1: loved it so much that I said, let's build a business.
Speaker 1: I have a moment in time, and so we started
Speaker 1: working on it. Then Adam Dell was working on domain Money.
Speaker 1: He came to me and said, Hey, I'm working on this.
Speaker 1: I said, I've got you know this product with Katie Song.
Speaker 1: We put them together in November.
Speaker 2: Now let me interrupt you and just point out for
Speaker 2: the listener. Adam Dell has a brother named Michael.
Speaker 1: I've never met Michael, who did something with computers, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so something like that.
Speaker 2: That so, and he also happened to set up a
Speaker 2: little thing called Marcus at Goldman Sacks.
Speaker 1: He did he sold Adam was a VC and then
Speaker 1: open Table was one of his runaway successes. And then
Speaker 1: he sold Clarity money to Goldman Sacks and ran Marcus
Speaker 1: for a little.
Speaker 2: While and very different Open Table, very different. But that's
Speaker 2: just a pure technology to drive reservations, which I don't
Speaker 2: know anybody that doesn't have that on their phone right Literally,
Speaker 2: it's ubiquit it it.
Speaker 1: Is, you know, Rezi versus open Table. We can have both,
Speaker 1: of course, of course you do. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: an Amex and a Chase card. You have them both.
Speaker 1: So Adam, really we have a big vision that there's
Speaker 1: a very big opportunity out there for people that are
Speaker 1: not in need of an au M advisor and that
Speaker 1: don't want to do it themselves. There's a giant gap
Speaker 1: in that market sort of you know, the home depot
Speaker 1: lows of financial services right where you you and you
Speaker 1: want a little more help, the equinox of it, the
Speaker 1: pre novo of it, where you you need help but
Speaker 1: not forever and not at the expense. And I manage
Speaker 1: my money both ways. I have au M and I
Speaker 1: do some you know, flat fee on my own. And
Speaker 1: so we built this product called the one Page Plan
Speaker 1: that will literally analyze what you spend down to your
Speaker 1: door dash, down to your credit card, down to your
Speaker 1: Amazon and then look at your investments and tell you
Speaker 1: need to save sixty three thousand dollars a year for
Speaker 1: the next ten years to get even close to where
Speaker 1: you're going to be. And here's the five action items
Speaker 1: you need to take. And so we offer that plan
Speaker 1: for twenty five hundred dollars. If it's more complex, we
Speaker 1: offer a strategic plan or a full comprehensive plan where
Speaker 1: will help rebalance and do your portfolio for seventy five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. We have, you know, people coming to us
Speaker 1: every day just on word of mouth. People are confused
Speaker 1: and overwhelmed. They well, they love a you know TikTok,
Speaker 1: you know budget tool. They can't do it themselves. They
Speaker 1: need more help. And so that's the place in the
Speaker 1: market that we're serving. You know, I'd say, if if
Speaker 1: I had to describe the consumer, they're sort of thirty
Speaker 1: eight years old and they wake up and they go,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, crap, I didn't I didn't do all
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 2: Tax Day was Mid's Day was fun?
Speaker 1: What did I forget? Why didn't I set my roth
Speaker 1: Ira up? Why didn't I start my college fund? You know?
Speaker 1: You put it off every day, and you shouldn't. Nobody
Speaker 1: here that listens to this show should not have a
Speaker 1: financial plan, even if they did it themselves, if they
Speaker 1: had someone do it for them. You have to have
Speaker 1: one otherwise you shouldn't be listening to the show.
Speaker 2: You have some amazing partners with this. I feel like
Speaker 2: I want to throw a ringer in because people are
Speaker 2: so Some of the early engineers from Amazon Web Services
Speaker 2: are part of this. Mark Bennioff, who's certainly super well
Speaker 2: regarded out in Silicon Valley, Palenteer and all that. Some
Speaker 2: kid named Ashton Kutcher is involved. Like I'm trying to
Speaker 2: make up a name and I can't. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 2: incredible set of partners for what's essentially not even a
Speaker 2: year old startup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think you know, Adam's track record
Speaker 1: and relationship were able to attract quality investors and quality talent,
Speaker 1: and now we're just trying to deliver an unbelievable experience
Speaker 1: for people if you don't like it, we'll give you
Speaker 1: your money back. But we have people that are just
Speaker 1: delighted every day with it, and that's the goal, you know,
Speaker 1: we want people to have more financial control in their lives.
Speaker 1: It's too important, you know, it's for me. It's a
Speaker 1: value system and a belief system and what you do
Speaker 1: with your money and how you think about it and
Speaker 1: how you live. And so that's why I got involved
Speaker 1: with with Domain money, and it's it's been very rewarding.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it. So I want to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about when you were in Silicon Valley and
Speaker 2: working as a woman in what was very much a
Speaker 2: male dominated technology field, and I guess the thought was,
Speaker 2: I know, let me find another male dominating field. Let
Speaker 2: me let me go to finance and see what I
Speaker 2: could shake up there. But I use that phrase on
Speaker 2: purpose because I know you've been very influential in different
Speaker 2: fields from the inside. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: the evolution that we've seen in technology and now finance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just in my early career, many rooms I
Speaker 1: went into and still today I'm the only women in
Speaker 1: those rooms, and so I take my responsibility pretty seriously
Speaker 1: that I have to bring the voice of other women
Speaker 1: into the room. I work with an organization called the
Speaker 1: Female Quotient. How it started and everybody should go followed
Speaker 1: on social They have viral videos. They had one go
Speaker 1: viral with one hundred million views the other day. They
Speaker 1: started doing events at Cees and south By Southwest and
Speaker 1: trade shows all around the world where they created a
Speaker 1: place for women to go and convene and all of
Speaker 1: the power women went there. They called it the Girls Lounge.
Speaker 1: You could go in and get a hair, blow dry
Speaker 1: and a makeup and have a glass of champagne. It
Speaker 1: has since turned into the Equality Lounge, and they do
Speaker 1: programming in every one of those lounges and they let
Speaker 1: everybody in. Everybody is welcome. You don't have to have
Speaker 1: a badge to the show. They're like, look, if you're
Speaker 1: in town, come by. If your support staff and you
Speaker 1: can't get into the party, we don't believe in that,
Speaker 1: So everybody comes. It's one of the most powerful places
Speaker 1: at Cees, at Davos, at south By Southwest. What it
Speaker 1: has reinforced for me is that women need to convene,
Speaker 1: they need to support each other, they need to see
Speaker 1: each other being successful. And how that's normalized. So for
Speaker 1: men and Barry, you and I have had this conversation.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to Number one, if I ran
Speaker 1: a company and I was a man, I would give
Speaker 1: them allowance or budget to go convene as women with
Speaker 1: other women in their industry. Tomorrow, I'm going to the
Speaker 1: CNBC Change Makers, which is their women initiative that is
Speaker 1: launching this year. Would be a great afternoon gathering and
Speaker 1: talks by other women that have made significant changes for
Speaker 1: the year. And there's just a great opportunity to network
Speaker 1: and connect at those things. If the leader from your
Speaker 1: organization goes out and shows up in the community, it's
Speaker 1: going to attract other people from the community, Right, It's
Speaker 1: pretty basic. And so that's number one. Number two is
Speaker 1: that you really have to give people responsibility. I asked
Speaker 1: for responsibility at every turn in my life.
Speaker 2: I was about to bring that up because you've told
Speaker 2: stories about Microsoft. You told stories that I've heard at
Speaker 2: Yahoo where you went to your management and said, listen,
Speaker 2: I have more band with and here's what I want
Speaker 2: to do. Yeah, what are those conversations like? How do
Speaker 2: they go? And is everybody always receptive?
Speaker 1: They're not always receptive. But look today, putting an idea
Speaker 1: down on a piece of paper and sending it to
Speaker 1: someone is free. And what it shows people is how
Speaker 1: serious you are about that idea and that you've put
Speaker 1: some thought into it. And those have been pivotal turning
Speaker 1: moments for me in my career where I sat took
Speaker 1: pen to paper, and you can do it with AI now,
Speaker 1: So it's not even that hard, right. I take notes
Speaker 1: on everything I do. I spit it into I like
Speaker 1: Bard's tone of voice better than chat GPT, but that's
Speaker 1: just me, And I'm like, Okay, write me a proposal
Speaker 1: based on these five things I just saw, and what
Speaker 1: would it be? And then I'm like, mah, should I
Speaker 1: do this? Should I not do this? But I did
Speaker 1: the same thing in my early day at BusinessWeek. I
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, we need to go buy a uurl. Okay,
Speaker 1: we and you know, like, convinced business Week that we
Speaker 1: should put advertiser links on a page in the magazine.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I will get money for that page of advertising.
Speaker 1: So we sold people's URL listings on a page in
Speaker 1: Business Week. We sold a crossword in Business Week. I
Speaker 1: was like, let's put a crossword in there. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good idea, you know, like you just have
Speaker 1: to keep putting ideas forward and then people will see that.
Speaker 1: And so as a woman, I said, that's how I'm
Speaker 1: going to break through. That's that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: What happened in a place like Microsoft that was very
Speaker 2: much an old boys club. It's Bill and Steve and
Speaker 2: the rest of the crew. When you say, hey, I
Speaker 2: want to convene a group of women to talk about
Speaker 2: how we could do better at Microsoft? Do they take
Speaker 2: it seriously? Is there a little snickering? Like what they said?
Speaker 1: They said great? They said great, I you know.
Speaker 2: His post dj any trust case, So there was a
Speaker 2: little sensitivity as to how they looked in emails and elsewhere.
Speaker 2: I would imagine, yes.
Speaker 1: You know I worked. I worked more closely with Steve
Speaker 1: there and still keep in touch with him. And you
Speaker 1: know he he has a woman, Gillien Zucker, that runs
Speaker 1: his operation there. That is amazing. Also. I think the Clippers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the Clippers and the forum now and into its
Speaker 1: center and has just unbelievable responsibility.
Speaker 2: And is that a sea change from twenty years ago?
Speaker 1: Look, he always gave everybody opportunity. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel there was any gender bias in his approach. Like
Speaker 1: he was just like, you know, get it done, get
Speaker 1: it done. Know your numbers, get it done. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've always sort of worked for and signed up for
Speaker 1: tours of duties with people that I felt were just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: get it done. And so I think it's just important
Speaker 1: that you give people the opportunity and I don't care
Speaker 1: if it's you know, male or female, but to put
Speaker 1: ideas forth on how they want things changed, because they
Speaker 1: see them, they know them better than you do. And
Speaker 1: like I saw the video opportunity. So I did a
Speaker 1: thing called Live Earth where we seven seven oh seven,
Speaker 1: where we beamed music around for twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, I remember, Yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Was you know, I went to Microsoft. I did that.
Speaker 1: I did that. I did that with Kevin Wall and
Speaker 1: Bobby Shreiver helped me, and you know, we had every
Speaker 1: artist in the world doing that, and it was to
Speaker 1: promote Microsoft's video player. And it was the largest streamed
Speaker 1: event globally until that guy jumped out of the plane
Speaker 1: on YouTube, which was a long time and I you know,
Speaker 1: took the risk. It was Microsoft was not a sustainability
Speaker 1: focused company at that point in time, and they were like, huh, Joeanne,
Speaker 1: this isn't so great. I'm like, I'm going to pay
Speaker 1: for it with advertising, and I got General Motors to
Speaker 1: sponsor it and it was a huge It was a
Speaker 1: huge success. But we wrote that up and took it
Speaker 1: in and presented the P and L for it and
Speaker 1: got it done. So it's anything's possible when you put
Speaker 1: it to paper.
Speaker 2: So you're at maybe not a giant company like Microsoft,
Speaker 2: but a smaller firm that maybe isn't paying as much
Speaker 2: attention to gender issues because they're you know, they're swimen
Speaker 2: as fast as they can against the tide. And you
Speaker 2: bring up an idea, Hey, I want to convene the
Speaker 2: women on your investment committee or the women who work
Speaker 2: in your sales group. What's the response like from companies
Speaker 2: and what are the net results when you get a
Speaker 2: group together like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll talk about the Pinterest experience. When I worked
Speaker 1: at pinterest, you know, I was much older than the
Speaker 1: average employee. A lot of employees were starting to have kids,
Speaker 1: and the moms were really sort of you know, overwhelmed, right,
Speaker 1: because it was a startup environment. We were going going hard,
Speaker 1: hard hearted, and am.
Speaker 2: I remember correctly? Was Pinterest very much of female user base? Yes?
Speaker 2: It was right like eighty percent of crazy number.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we were thirty percent women when I was there,
Speaker 1: so which was interesting. And the moms wanted to convene,
Speaker 1: and so I said, just give me an hour of
Speaker 1: meeting space. We just want them to get together and
Speaker 1: share information and knowledge. Things as basic as you know,
Speaker 1: how are you dealing with preparing meals for your kids?
Speaker 1: To my recruiters nanny, she had to fire her suddenly
Speaker 1: one day, and what do you do in that situation?
Speaker 1: And how do you communicate that to your to your boss,
Speaker 1: your manager in those kinds of environments. And I will
Speaker 1: say today that Pinterest has carried that on and I
Speaker 1: still talk to many of those women. I did a
Speaker 1: sort of a group talk for Pinterest the other day
Speaker 1: where there's many of those mothers that say that was
Speaker 1: the difference between this being bearable and unbearable for me.
Speaker 1: This was the difference between me feeling like I'm failing
Speaker 1: at my job or doing well at my job. That
Speaker 1: I have some common ground, and so let people find
Speaker 1: common ground. You don't have to control everything. And I
Speaker 1: just think women, mothers, caregivers really really need to convene
Speaker 1: and give them permission, give them space to do it,
Speaker 1: because it will make them more committed, better employees, and
Speaker 1: more productive on every level. Those things are not hard,
Speaker 1: they're not expensive.
Speaker 2: So I have to point one thing out that I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated by you. And I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: coincidental or just a component of your personality, but it
Speaker 2: seems that each of your major career events all seem
Speaker 2: to take place in these wild dislocations. So you start
Speaker 2: at Microsoft in the midst of the dot com implosion terrible, right,
Speaker 2: nasdak down eighty one percent peak to troth. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: next gig starts pretty much in the middle of the
Speaker 2: financial crist and then the honey transaction literally day one
Speaker 2: of the pandemic. Y is it that you just see
Speaker 2: opportunities when there's sort of mayhem and everybody's running around
Speaker 2: with their with their heads cut off? Or is this
Speaker 2: just some crazy dumb luck.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've asked myself that question. You know, all
Speaker 1: of my friends would tell me never to do the
Speaker 1: jobs that I took, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: My, well that's some terrible advice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't take it. And my youngest daughter told
Speaker 1: me this, and it's a good friend of mine just
Speaker 1: wrote a book that's titled it Nobody cares what you
Speaker 1: do or where you work.
Speaker 2: From next month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Erica worked for me and with me for ten years.
Speaker 2: Oh, I had no idea. That's completely coincidental. Yes, I
Speaker 2: love I love the title of that book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so you know, when I would lament about it,
Speaker 1: my daughter would just go, Mom, nobody nobody cares. Like,
Speaker 1: nobody cares what you do, what you put on LinkedIn,
Speaker 1: what you say, where you go. So you need to
Speaker 1: just really get over it.
Speaker 2: Kids keep you honestly, It keeps.
Speaker 1: You really, really honest. And so you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think you know. When I started working, it was go
Speaker 1: to work, work responsibly, work up the ladder as far
Speaker 1: as you can go in a company. I got up
Speaker 1: the ladder pretty quickly in a lot of company, to
Speaker 1: very senior positions. And then I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: do I want to do this for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life? And the answer was no. The answer was
Speaker 1: I like the excitement of building. I like the excitement
Speaker 1: of new territories and new industries, and so that is
Speaker 1: really sort of my larger calling on this stuff. Then, like,
Speaker 1: am I a crazy risk taker, you know, jumping out
Speaker 1: of you know, corporate jobs for you know, playing the
Speaker 1: equivalent of that.
Speaker 2: No, Well, they seem to have worked out. So it's
Speaker 2: not like it's not like you're risk embracing with no upside.
Speaker 2: You seem to be appropriately risk embracing, or at least
Speaker 2: looking at with the advantage of hindsight bias, looking at
Speaker 2: the track record, it seems that you took the right
Speaker 2: amount of risk at the right time in the right places,
Speaker 2: or you've just been on an incredibly lucky run of dice.
Speaker 2: And I don't believe it's the ladder. I think it's
Speaker 2: the former.
Speaker 1: Well, well, you know, I do think experience gives you
Speaker 1: something and I can cut the line in many things
Speaker 1: in figuring out how to get to the person to
Speaker 1: the right group. I'm advising two young women that dropped
Speaker 1: out of Stanford that you'll hear about soon and help
Speaker 1: them raise money for a very interesting product. And we
Speaker 1: were able to sort of short circuit the system and
Speaker 1: get them in front of the right people very quickly.
Speaker 1: And you know, I can bring that skill to a
Speaker 1: lot of different scenarios and so that's what I try
Speaker 1: to do right and the sort of three key areas
Speaker 1: I focus on my life or number one is really
Speaker 1: financial wellbeing. I just I want everybody to just make
Speaker 1: your life better on every front. You know. Number two
Speaker 1: is really female leadership and you know, getting them to
Speaker 1: be all of us to be confident enough to take
Speaker 1: risks and to like stand up and speak and not
Speaker 1: be afraid of consequences in those situations. And then the
Speaker 1: third category that we've talked a little bit about is
Speaker 1: I really love resale luxury and I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: a very big growth market.
Speaker 2: Well you're in the right city for it.
Speaker 1: If I was ever going to be I wrote a
Speaker 1: plan a couple of years back to do an activist
Speaker 1: takeover of the real Reel. I got some investors together.
Speaker 1: I just hate the way that companies run. So if
Speaker 1: there's anybody out there listening, I really I wrote a plan.
Speaker 1: But they have a three hundred million dollar convertible debt
Speaker 1: note that triggers in a change of control. So I
Speaker 1: abandoned their private right. You know, they're public.
Speaker 2: They were public there.
Speaker 1: They went public. I was an investor. They went out
Speaker 1: at like two billion. I think it's worth, you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty million today. I can't even look
Speaker 1: at it because it's so painful.
Speaker 2: Down eighty five percent usually engend. There's a change in control.
Speaker 1: I understand. But so in the meantime, that market is
Speaker 1: going to grow like crazy. So I'm working on a
Speaker 1: few projects in that category. But you know, I and
Speaker 1: it's also a community based product, right, like people are
Speaker 1: buying from each other. There's an unbelievable world of crazy
Speaker 1: stuff going on on Instagram and social selling in those platforms,
Speaker 1: and I think that will be a big, big market
Speaker 1: for a long time to come. So you know, I
Speaker 1: feel fortunate that I can do what I want to
Speaker 1: do and I get to sit here and talk to
Speaker 1: you about it and like sort of look back on
Speaker 1: it and say, oh, yeah, I was so smart, but
Speaker 1: you know, I just I kept swinging the bat is
Speaker 1: really what it came down to.
Speaker 2: Smart, persistent, a little bit of luck. That's a great combination.
Speaker 2: Tell us what you're streaming these days? What are you
Speaker 2: watching or listening?
Speaker 1: I am watching The New Look because I love fashion
Speaker 1: and I love history, so I love a documentary, so
Speaker 1: that's what I'm watching these days.
Speaker 2: Have you watched What is It Palm Royal on that
Speaker 2: yet if you want to see a just lovingly photographed
Speaker 2: set of fashion and just great the way it's done
Speaker 2: is on the list. On the list. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: mentors who helped shape your career.
Speaker 1: There was a guy I was on the board of Care,
Speaker 1: which is the world's largest NGO, for six years, and
Speaker 1: there was a really excellent McKinsey partner that ran the
Speaker 1: board practices, Paul Jansen, and he taught me how to
Speaker 1: be a good board member. And being a good board
Speaker 1: member means you don't talk too much and that you
Speaker 1: are supportive in critical moments of decision. So he was
Speaker 1: one I think. You know, Steve Bomber taught me a
Speaker 1: lot about how to think in an engineering mindset and
Speaker 1: think about technology. You know I have. I think an
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and someone that starts a company is sort of
Speaker 1: the bravest soul in the world right now. So anything
Speaker 1: I can learn from them I do.
Speaker 2: Huh really interesting. Let's talk about books. What are some
Speaker 2: of your favorites? What are you reading right now?
Speaker 1: What am I reading right now? Midnight Express a tale
Speaker 1: about someone that helps her sister through hospice and then
Speaker 1: takes mushrooms to overcome depression and anxiotry.
Speaker 2: Not the seventies. Now you're a movie about no, no, no,
Speaker 2: about bringing how she's now totally different.
Speaker 1: That's totally different, huh.
Speaker 2: And give me one more.
Speaker 1: Financially Fearless by Katie Song, which was written out of
Speaker 1: a need Facebook group. Moms would ping her every day
Speaker 1: about financial advice. So she sat down over a weekend
Speaker 1: and wrote a book for them, and we self published
Speaker 1: it and we give it to every tech mom we know,
Speaker 1: so they have a financial plan.
Speaker 2: Financially fear Fearless. And let's let's let's throw a bone
Speaker 2: to Kara. What what your friend Kara Swisher? What's her
Speaker 2: new book?
Speaker 1: That's out Burne? Who doesn't love burn right? You know,
Speaker 1: I told Kara I was coming here today. She's like
Speaker 1: Barry is a very good podcaster. I've been on a how.
Speaker 2: To get her back into talking about the book because
Speaker 2: it's literally I just finished a book for next week's podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and her book is literally next to him.
Speaker 1: I'm in the book, I'm in the bank. So the
Speaker 1: book was fun. You know, Kara is.
Speaker 2: Kara is, She's fearless.
Speaker 1: There is nobody more fearless than Kara Swisher.
Speaker 2: She actually there's nobody names names and nobody and them.
Speaker 1: Also loves work, loves to invent, loves to be ahead
Speaker 1: of things. Really a very very sharp person.
Speaker 2: Very much so. So our final two questions, what sort
Speaker 2: of advice would you give to a recent college grad
Speaker 2: who is interested in a career in filling the blank
Speaker 2: finance technology startups venture? What what's the advice to that
Speaker 2: recent graduate?
Speaker 1: Yeah, do your research. So if you want to go
Speaker 1: into finance. There's two women that run a a Instagram
Speaker 1: channel called Wall Street Skinny that teach you how to
Speaker 1: get jobs and money. You should have them on the show.
Speaker 1: They both work Wall Street Skinny. They're amazing. They always
Speaker 1: cite you, but they teach you the ins and outs
Speaker 1: of how to get a job in finance on every front.
Speaker 1: I think if you are going to get a job
Speaker 1: at a public company, you should read their annual report.
Speaker 2: The company itself company. You go on an ABC Bank,
Speaker 2: read ABC Banks.
Speaker 1: First stop, first stop on the hip parade. Go read
Speaker 1: the annual report. It's their strategy document. It's what they
Speaker 1: tell people. If not, you have to do it right
Speaker 1: like you read it, you are further ahead than most
Speaker 1: employees there. So do your research, right. You know, I've
Speaker 1: gone deep into you know, filings like SEC filings, like
Speaker 1: you know, I before I go work with a company
Speaker 1: that's public, I look at every execs comp package like
Speaker 1: I love to, you know, dumpster dive through SEC filings.
Speaker 1: It's not that hard to do. Set your alerts. So
Speaker 1: do your research. Know what the person cares about, know
Speaker 1: what the company cares about, and have interest in them,
Speaker 1: and also bring them ideas. My daughter was once looking
Speaker 1: for a job and freelance job, and I said, just
Speaker 1: remake the person's website. It's a company I invested in.
Speaker 1: Their website drove me crazy. And she's a designer, and
Speaker 1: I said, he's not going to tell you what he wants,
Speaker 1: so just do it and send it to him. So
Speaker 1: she did it and sent it to him, and he
Speaker 1: hired her to do that project. Yeah, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do spec work. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it's when you're starting off, you have to do some
Speaker 1: spec work. It's just the way it is.
Speaker 2: That's tremendous advice. Our final question, what do you know
Speaker 2: about the world of investing startups? Marketing? And branding today.
Speaker 2: You wish you knew a couple of decades ago when
Speaker 2: you were first getting started.
Speaker 1: Do not fight so hard on your brand. So I
Speaker 1: have a brand I advise. It was called four Days
Speaker 1: f R F O R D A y s dot com.
Speaker 1: They sold you a T shirt and at the end
Speaker 1: of life you could send the T shirt back. I
Speaker 1: worked with the CEO. I said, look, this needs to
Speaker 1: look a little more like Skittles and be bright. She
Speaker 1: has rebranded it to trashy dot Io. Has a deal
Speaker 1: with Walmart and sold out of her take back bags
Speaker 1: that are going viral on Instagram. And it was too
Speaker 1: hard to explain what four days was. Trashy dot io
Speaker 1: send your old clothes back, get cash reward for it.
Speaker 1: Very simple, straightforward. It's on a tear right now. When
Speaker 1: you over complicate what you're selling, it's impossible. Nobody can listen,
Speaker 1: nobody can follow it. You wide out, So you got
Speaker 1: to keep it simple.
Speaker 2: Huh. Really, really fascinating stuff, Joanne, Thank you for being
Speaker 2: so generous with your time. We have been speaking with
Speaker 2: Joann Bradford of honeypinterst, Yahoo, Wealth dot com, Domain money,
Speaker 2: go down the whole list. If you enjoy this conversation,
Speaker 2: check out any of the previous five hundred or so
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