I can't tell you how many board meetings I've been in where the CEO is anguished over the impacts on morale that cost cutting or layoffs will bring about. You know what hurts morale even more than cost-cutting and layoffs? Going out of business.
Heidi Roizen
I used to fall into the trap of thinking that taking care of my husband and kids was more important than taking care of myself. Now I have a new attitude: You know when you're on an airplane and the manual tells you to put on your oxygen mask first and then help the person next to you? I feel the same way about my health.
You know what kind of companies generally survive? Companies that make more money than they spend. I know, duh, right?
I don't know any successful entrepreneur that doesn't have at least a handful of stories about the things they did that went horribly wrong.
I like to make good things happen for other people. It makes me happy, and I believe it's good for my business as well.
I'm the classic old-school entrepreneur that says let's build companies of lasting value.
I put working out on my calendar as if it were a part of my job. It makes exercise as important a priority as brushing my teeth - something I need to do every day.
Women as consumers are a very powerful force.
I thought of calorie-counting as a budget: I was happy to skip bread at dinner so I could 'spend' on a glass of wine.
Do deals with the people you want to work with, and the success will follow.
The individual dynamics going on within a venture fund are critically important to you. Unfortunately, they're also very opaque.
Venture capital is debt. People don't understand that.
You can't let a failure keep you down, because if you stay down after you fail, you are going to stay down for good.
If you're the only woman in the room, and you raise your hand, there's a good chance your question's going to get answered. You stand out.
I think women let themselves be burdened by failures much more than men do. They agonize - and I do it a lot, too - and rethink them.
If you have to be a female in business, Silicon Valley is the best place because it's a meritocracy. It's not about who you are, it's about what you can do.
Don't define yourself by your mistakes or by the single thing you are at your work.
I bought myself a DVD set of 'Lost' and only allowed myself to watch it while I was strength training. Sometimes I'd exercise longer than I intended to because I didn't want to turn it off. Talk about positive reinforcement!
You can't write about a personal struggle if you're going to water it down to meet everyone's expectations about what's appropriate.
Isn't it interesting that markets are not just perfect? In business school and economic theory, you learn all about those perfect markets, and there's no such thing as a perfect market.
My dog wants the entrepreneurial community to know how thankful she is for the fact that she gets to go out. She has heard more pitches than probably much of the world.
You know what somebody else's fundraise metrics are to you? Irrelevant. You know what your own last round post was? Irrelevant. Yes, I know, not legally, because of those pesky rights and preferences. But emotionally, trust me: it is irrelevant now. We even have a name for this - valuation nostalgia.
I know a few CEOs who delegate the understanding of their financials and their business metrics to the CFO, and then stop worrying about all that 'numbers stuff.' Don't do that. You have to know your numbers inside and out - they are your life blood.
