- The speaker introduces Diane Green, the chief of Google's cloud businesses and former founder and CEO of VMware.
- Diane Green talks about her experiences as a co-founder and CEO of three startups, including V Extreme, VMware, and Bebop.
- She discusses the importance of observing, adapting, and making decisions in real-time when building a company, drawing parallels to racing a sailboat.
- Diane emphasizes the significance of having a solid team and the right corporate culture in order to achieve success.
- She shares lessons learned from her experiences, such as the need for alignment among founders, making innovation non-disruptive, and finding alternative solutions to setbacks.

- Importance of fostering a sense of importance and role of each person in the company
- Creating an open culture for communication and collaboration
- Lessons learned from previous startup, Bebop, in terms of design and perseverance
- Building an enterprise startup within a larger company like Google Cloud
- Importance of culture and having the right people in the right roles
- Focus on creating value for customers and partners
- Giving your all and enjoying the process of building a company
- The commitment and love for what you do will nourish and satisfy you, and make you unafraid of failure.

Diane Greene is SVP of Google Cloud and she was also the CEO and cofounder of VMware.

This is her talk from the 2017 Female Founders Conference.

Read the transcript here: http://blog.ycombinator.com/diane-greenes-advice-for-founders/

I'm just here to introduce our next speaker, who's 1 of my just favorite people, Diane Green.

She is, you all I'm sure know her, so she needs no introduction.

But she's the chief of Google's cloud businesses.

And prior to that, amongst many of the things she did, she was the founder and CEO of VMware.

So she's going to come out, say a few words, then I'm going to come out and join her and do some Q&A for her talk.

I was trying to figure out what to do because I like to read my notes and the lectern was too high for my 5 foot 1 self.

So, you know, it's just such a total pleasure for me to be here.

You know, more than 800 female founders from all over the world.

So some of you probably starting your careers and many of you in the early stages of your developing your companies, and I think it's just like incredibly exciting, you know, there's so much possibility sitting in this room, this 1 auditorium, and imagine all the interesting challenges that you're going to surmount and all that you're going to be required to navigate.

I've been a co-founder and CEO of 3 startups, and the first was V Extreme in 1995, where we developed a low-bandwidth streaming video technology.

We could stream sort of postage-sized videos across the internet.

And we sold this to Microsoft in 1997 for 75 million and that became the basis of Microsoft's movie player.

My second startup was VMware and we launched, with that we launched the virtualization revolution, and we founded that in 1998, and we took it public in 2007, and the market cap closed that day at $19.1 billion.

So my last startup to date was Bebop, which we founded in 2013, and then we sold it to Google in 2015 for $380 million, and I committed my portion of the proceeds to a non-profit through a donor advice fund.

Okay, so before these start-up, I don't usually get so much applause, you're a great audience.

Before these startups I built inside of larger companies.

At Sybase, the first tech company I worked at, before that I was a naval architect, I developed asynchronous input-output software to make the database run faster.

And actually we were able to beat Oracle and Ingress and all the other database companies at the benchmarks.

And then I went to Tandem, they actually fired my boss who was a woman and it was a mistake, she was running engineering and I went to Tandem with her.

And anyhow there I helped create a hybrid architecture to run an open Unix-based world.

Tandem had the best transaction processing system in the world, but it was proprietary.

And then at SGI, I developed streaming video solutions, and that was part of the Time Warner Interactive television project which was actually a precursor to the World Wide Web and a lot of people in that group went out.

Netscape was 1 of the companies, a lot of companies started out of that.

And then as a tech investor I've advised and put seed money into a lot of startups and they include 2 companies that are now public, Cloudera and Pure Storage and also Unity Technologies which is the gaming developer platform and several others.

Unfortunately my schedule's now such that I no longer have the time to provide C money or advice to startups.

But anyhow I've learned a lot of lessons along the way and I'm going to now look back and attempt to identify and share them with you.

My first lessons were at a very young age.

My mother was the latest in a pretty strong principal, midwestern school teacher lineage.

And my father was a brilliant hard-driving engineer and entrepreneur and I was the second youngest in my family, a little girl and a proud of very competitive and dominating brothers And we lived on a creek that fed into the Chesapeake Bay, and my father conveyed his love of the water to me.

And I soon found myself taking off on long sails in my little sailing dinghy and this was formative.

I had suddenly you know was the mistress of my world and in charge of a boat and on my own you know facing overcoming the challenges that the sea would present to me and later on I would race bigger boats and windsurfers.

I won the Women's National Dinghy Sailing Championships.

I raced long distance to Bermuda and and down both of America's coasts and I windsurfed across open ocean from Maui to Molokai and back.

It's actually an amazing story, but I'm not going to go into it.

But more than anything I think my connection to the sea has really helped me develop my independence and a sense of importance and value of my own vision.

And to sail successfully You need to observe with great care.

You need to identify what the wind and the water are telling you, and then find a way to execute to reach whatever goal you've set, be it simply making it home to port or winning a race.

Building a company is so much like racing a sailboat.

You need a plan and then the ability to re-evaluate the plan in real time as new information is acquired.

Suddenly the wind changes or a competitor is stronger than you thought they'd be.

And each mark in the race is a milestone where you need to look up and evaluate what you're doing, how you're doing.

And so when you campaign a sailboat you need to be in the moment, you need to let go of your self-doubt, and yet you can't lose the ability to question your decisions.

So most of all when it's time to make a decision, a competitor's come upon you or the wind shifted, you make it.

And finally when you race a sailboat the selection of your crew is just completely paramount.

It's impossible to be an effective skipper if you don't have the right people working harmoniously in the right roles.

So what does all this mean in terms when founding or running a company?

At V Extreme I learned that the founders need to be solidly aligned and that a startup maybe has a better chance of success when the number of founders is limited.

Most of all I learned that no 1 is indispensable and it's essential to get the right mix of people, talents and personalities.

VMware was really the beginning of an industry revolution and from that I learned what it takes to induce the market to accept a profound innovation.

It's essential to design and market a major innovation in a way that makes its adoption non-disruptive.

That makes it easy to integrate with an established order, an established way of doing things, even if the innovation ultimately supplants that order.

So for example, 1 of the things that made our sales take off, we had this virtualization layer, but we built a tool that would take a workload running in a physical machine and just magically put it in a virtual machine and everything just ran the same.

And that was a phenomenal sales tool for us.

At VMware I also was reminded not to let step backs make you stop thinking.

If a puzzle can't be solved 1 way, there's always another.

We were really disappointed when we learned that VMware would not be able to sell through IBM due to IP issues, but then we turned it into an advantage where we were able to work with IBM to enlist all of their star resellers to take us to market.

Finally, at VMware, I learned how essential it is to create the right corporate culture.

We worked hard to foster a sense of the importance of each and every person and the importance of each and every person and also what their role was in the furtherance of the company's objectives and to create an open culture that would make it easy for people to communicate, collaborate and share ideas.

And indeed we designed our corporate campus with exactly these goals in mind if any of you've ever been to VMware.

And then Bebop also provided an interesting set of lessons.

I think it may be my last startup, but you really learn every time.

My original co-founder didn't stay with the company, and I was at first sort of a bit out of my element.

We were attempting to re-event how enterprise applications are built so they'd be simple to use and more effective in attaining their objectives.

But the basic look and feel, the design of our first attempts was just off.

And we persevered and Bebop became a powerhouse for design thinking and for tools to build enterprise applications.

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

Once again the cultures of both the parent and the in-house startup are crucial and we're a pretty big startup.

We serve 7 apps that have over a billion active users, anyhow we're big, but and once again it is all about having the right people in the right roles And finally it's about never taking your eye off creating value for customers and partners.

So the bottom line when 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, you enjoy creating value.

And the commitment that comes from loving what you do is what will nourish you.

It will satisfy you and it'll make you unafraid of failure.

You may lose this race or that 1, but sailing ahead with everything you 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.

So thank you, and now Jessica's gonna come out and ask me questions.


Speaker 0: Hi, everyone. I guess I'm mic'd up. I can stand right here. I'm just here to introduce our next speaker, who's 1 of my just favorite people, Diane Green. She is, you all I'm sure know her, so she needs no introduction.

But she's the chief of Google's cloud businesses. And prior to that, amongst many of the things she did, she was the founder and CEO of VMware. So she's going to come out, say a few words, then I'm going to come out and join her and do some Q&A for her talk. So welcome, Diane.

Speaker 1: Hi. I was trying to figure out what to do because I like to read my notes and the lectern was too high for my 5 foot 1 self. So, you know, it's just such a total pleasure for me to be here. You know, more than 800 female founders from all over the world. Some of you just, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So some of you probably starting your careers and many of you in the early stages of your developing your companies, and I think it's just like incredibly exciting, you know, there's so much possibility sitting in this room, this 1 auditorium, and imagine all the interesting challenges that you're going to surmount and all that you're going to be required to navigate. So, a little bit about myself. I've been a co-founder and CEO of 3 startups, and the first was V Extreme in 1995, where we developed a low-bandwidth streaming video technology. We could stream sort of postage-sized videos across the internet. And we sold this to Microsoft in 1997 for 75 million and that became the basis of Microsoft's movie player.

My second startup was VMware and we launched, with that we launched the virtualization revolution, and we founded that in 1998, and we took it public in 2007, and the market cap closed that day at $19.1 billion. Thank you. So my last startup to date was Bebop, which we founded in 2013, and then we sold it to Google in 2015 for $380 million, and I committed my portion of the proceeds to a non-profit through a donor advice fund. Okay, thank you. Okay, so before these start-up, I don't usually get so much applause, you're a great audience.

Before these startups I built inside of larger companies. At Sybase, the first tech company I worked at, before that I was a naval architect, I developed asynchronous input-output software to make the database run faster. And actually we were able to beat Oracle and Ingress and all the other database companies at the benchmarks. And yeah, it was cool. And then I went to Tandem, they actually fired my boss who was a woman and it was a mistake, she was running engineering and I went to Tandem with her.

And anyhow there I helped create a hybrid architecture to run an open Unix-based world. Tandem had the best transaction processing system in the world, but it was proprietary. And then at SGI, I developed streaming video solutions, and that was part of the Time Warner Interactive television project which was actually a precursor to the World Wide Web and a lot of people in that group went out. Netscape was 1 of the companies, a lot of companies started out of that. And then as a tech investor I've advised and put seed money into a lot of startups and they include 2 companies that are now public, Cloudera and Pure Storage and also Unity Technologies which is the gaming developer platform and several others.

Unfortunately my schedule's now such that I no longer have the time to provide C money or advice to startups. But anyhow I've learned a lot of lessons along the way and I'm going to now look back and attempt to identify and share them with you. My first lessons were at a very young age. My mother was the latest in a pretty strong principal, midwestern school teacher lineage. And my father was a brilliant hard-driving engineer and entrepreneur and I was the second youngest in my family, a little girl and a proud of very competitive and dominating brothers And we lived on a creek that fed into the Chesapeake Bay, and my father conveyed his love of the water to me.

And I soon found myself taking off on long sails in my little sailing dinghy and this was formative. I had suddenly you know was the mistress of my world and in charge of a boat and on my own you know facing overcoming the challenges that the sea would present to me and later on I would race bigger boats and windsurfers. I won the Women's National Dinghy Sailing Championships. I raced long distance to Bermuda and and down both of America's coasts and I windsurfed across open ocean from Maui to Molokai and back. It's actually an amazing story, but I'm not going to go into it.

But more than anything I think my connection to the sea has really helped me develop my independence and a sense of importance and value of my own vision. And to sail successfully You need to observe with great care. You need to identify what the wind and the water are telling you, and then find a way to execute to reach whatever goal you've set, be it simply making it home to port or winning a race. Building a company is so much like racing a sailboat. You need a plan and then the ability to re-evaluate the plan in real time as new information is acquired.

Suddenly the wind changes or a competitor is stronger than you thought they'd be. And each mark in the race is a milestone where you need to look up and evaluate what you're doing, how you're doing. And so when you campaign a sailboat you need to be in the moment, you need to let go of your self-doubt, and yet you can't lose the ability to question your decisions. So most of all when it's time to make a decision, a competitor's come upon you or the wind shifted, you make it. The race won't wait for you.

And finally when you race a sailboat the selection of your crew is just completely paramount. It's impossible to be an effective skipper if you don't have the right people working harmoniously in the right roles. So what does all this mean in terms when founding or running a company? At V Extreme I learned that the founders need to be solidly aligned and that a startup maybe has a better chance of success when the number of founders is limited. Too many cooks can spoil the broth.

Most of all I learned that no 1 is indispensable and it's essential to get the right mix of people, talents and personalities. VMware was really the beginning of an industry revolution and from that I learned what it takes to induce the market to accept a profound innovation. It's essential to design and market a major innovation in a way that makes its adoption non-disruptive. That makes it easy to integrate with an established order, an established way of doing things, even if the innovation ultimately supplants that order. So for example, 1 of the things that made our sales take off, we had this virtualization layer, but we built a tool that would take a workload running in a physical machine and just magically put it in a virtual machine and everything just ran the same.

And that was a phenomenal sales tool for us. At VMware I also was reminded not to let step backs make you stop thinking. If a puzzle can't be solved 1 way, there's always another. It's just a matter of navigation. We were really disappointed when we learned that VMware would not be able to sell through IBM due to IP issues, but then we turned it into an advantage where we were able to work with IBM to enlist all of their star resellers to take us to market.

Finally, at VMware, I learned how essential it is to create the right corporate culture. We worked hard to foster a sense of the importance of each and every person and the importance of each and every person and also what their role was in the furtherance of the company's objectives and to create an open culture that would make it easy for people to communicate, collaborate and share ideas. And indeed we designed our corporate campus with exactly these goals in mind if any of you've ever been to VMware. And then Bebop also provided an interesting set of lessons. I think it may be my last startup, but you really learn every time.

My original co-founder didn't stay with the company, and I was at first sort of a bit out of my element. We were attempting to re-event how enterprise applications are built so they'd be simple to use and more effective in attaining their objectives. But the basic look and feel, the design of our first attempts was just off. And we persevered and Bebop became a powerhouse for design thinking and for tools to build enterprise applications. Tenaciousness really pays off.

And now finally as head of Google Cloud I'm learning that it's possible to build an enterprise startup inside a mega company. Once again the cultures of both the parent and the in-house startup are crucial and we're a pretty big startup. We serve 7 apps that have over a billion active users, anyhow we're big, but and once again it is all about having the right people in the right roles And finally it's about never taking your eye off creating value for customers and partners. So the bottom line when 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, you enjoy creating value. And the commitment that comes from loving what you do is what will nourish you. It will satisfy you and it'll make you unafraid of failure. You may lose this race or that 1, but sailing ahead with everything you 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. So thank you, and now Jessica's gonna come out and ask me questions. You

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Diane Greene's Advice for Founders