ETL Speaker Series: Bonny Simi, JetBlue Technology Ventures

Hello everyone, I'm Tina Seelig, and I'd like to welcome you to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture Series Revisited, presented to you by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, which is the Entrepreneurship Center at Stanford School of Engineering. Today we are delighted to welcome back Bonnie Simi. Bonnie is the president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, which is the venture capital arm of JetBlue Airways. And they invest in and they partner with early-stage startups that are improving future travel and hospitality. She also is, now wait for it, an active pilot, a former newscaster, and a 3-time Olympian. Bonnie also has 3 degrees from Stanford University. And she's coming back today to share some of her insights since her last visit at ETL. So welcome, welcome, Bonnie.

Thank you. I'm excited to be back. Oh my goodness. It's neat to be virtually at Stanford, even if I'm on the other side of the country right now.

Well, I have to say, your talk is one of the most inspiring that I have ever listened to. It just blew my mind from the moment you got going. So what we're going to do today is we're going to take some of the old clips. In fact, I have so many, it was hard for me to choose some old clips to play and then reflect on them. So I want to start with one about when you were 14 years old. I think it was 14, right?

Yep, yep. I was 14, a senior in high school.

Okay. And someone—

no, I should say I was a— I think that I was a sophomore in high school at Chief Kee High School in Ontario, California.

Okay, well, someone came to your school and had a list of all the things that they wanted to accomplish, and you thought, I'm going to do the same thing. And so you put together a list at that young age of all the things that you wanted to accomplish. And the amazing thing that we will refer to throughout this time together is how you systematically check them all off in your life. So let's play this first clip to get this started.

What I lacked in resources, I had an imagination, and You know, when you're young, you don't think of obstacles. And so I thought, well, I can't think of 100 things to do. But I could think of 5 things. And this is my actual list that I wrote when I was 14 years old. Now putting it in context, so going to a good college, I think that's something pretty normal for a kid who's in high school. But to go to the Olympics, now where did that come from? Well, it happened to be an Olympic year. And I was watching the Olympics on TV. And that might have been what inspired me. Now again, I'm going back many years. So I can't exactly remember what was was going through my mind. But at the time, so I was watching the Olympics. And it was on ABC-TV. And so I thought, well, I want to be a TV commentator. And I want to become a pilot. And I didn't even know anybody who was a pilot. My mom was a schoolteacher. And she used to bring us to the local airport. And we used to watch airplanes take off and land. And so I assume that is how come I wrote that down. Now for those of you who are parents or someday will be parents, think about exposing your kids. I don't know if I would be here today if my mom hadn't brought us to the airport so I could watch airplanes take off and land.

So I just love this. I love this story for so many reasons, and it's about the fact that anything can be a stimulant of your passions. Now I'm curious, like, if we don't have someone in our life who is methodically or accidentally, uh, introducing us to lots of new things, what are the things we can do ourselves to help spark our passions?

Well, I think, you know, a lot of times people feel constrained. They're like, well, I need to do because somebody told me to do it or whatever. And as you get older, you tend to become less creative. And I think, you know, even, you know, kindergartners, first grade on up into high school tend to be very, very creative. And then we get these, these bounds. And so I always tell people to think back, what times in your life were you doing things that you just loved doing them? And what was it about that that you enjoyed? And for me, I grew up in a ski area and I love to ski, so I love speed, I love the freedom of that sort of thing, and so some of that comes about, and so it's thinking back when you were a child. What did you like doing? Another way to explore, I mean, nowadays, of course, there's so many different courses on internet and they're free, right? So just explore what is something you've always been curious about? Where is a place that you've always been curious about? Or talking to different people, going at Stanford, of course, taking courses or at least visiting with a professor in an area that you absolutely knew nothing about. Now, it doesn't always mean that it's going to work. I still remember I took a class at Stanford. I was doing luge and I was trying to figure out the metallurgy of the runners, which are the steels that touch the ice, and I thought there was a lot of science behind it. I thought, I'm going to take material science. That sounds really interesting. It was awful. I hated it. So I decided definitely was not going to be into material science engineer. But, you know, I didn't know until I took it. You got to explore.

So do you— you're obviously extremely curious and imaginative. Do you think this can be cultivated? I mean, I think one of the problems that I often talk about, because I teach creativity, is that we all are creative, but a lot of people are in environments where their creativity is squashed and their curiosity is squashed. They're always given assignments as opposed to allowing them to explore their own interests. How do you cultivate this?

I think, you know, and again, I'll come back to in growing up, I read a lot and reading is a way to kind of put yourself into a different environment. Nowadays, a lot of people, you know, explore and watch different YouTube videos, will just kind of put themselves into place and just allow them, giving themselves time. I mean, that's the thing is, People get so overscheduled. Giving yourself time, going away for a weekend, just exploring, saying, "This is my weekend to explore passions, things that I might be interested in, not because somebody told me to, just because I've always— it's just because." I think that creativity is most definitely learned, but it is done in an environment where there are no constraints, and so you have to set yourself up into that environment, and also So not only is creativity learned, I think courage is learned. People think that, you know, you're just born courageous or something. I actually think it's the opposite. I think that by testing and trying and learning and putting yourself out there, you know, when I first started luge, I was scared of it. But once I took the first run, I'm like, wow, that wasn't so bad. I can keep doing this. And, and then I thought, well, if I can do luge, I can fly a plane. And if I can fly a plane, well, then, then, you know, I could start a company. I could do, you know, it's all different types of things. And you learn to become, you expand and realize you don't have constraints. So creativity and courage actually have the same areas. You just have to let yourself try. You know, it's interesting.

I often reflect on the fact that people say that those who are courageous, it's not that they don't have fear, it's that they have fear and still do it, right? You do it despite the fear instead of saying, oh my gosh, I'm afraid I'm not going to. One of the things I'm most interested about your story is that you set a lot of intentions for yourself, whether it was back when you were 14 and made this list and set some very clear intentions. And I want to talk about the role of intentions and play this short clip where you talk about the, the role of dreams in shaping your life. So let's play the second clip about dreams and then talk about, um, how those dreams shape the directions we go.

Do you have to have a dream for a dream to come true? People talk about dreams coming true. But have you ever stopped and thought about what are your dreams? And a lot of people, sure they have some thoughts and such. But they typically hold themselves back. Because well, I can't do that. I don't have enough money. Or I don't— there's some I don't. I don't— or I'm afraid I'll fail. I want you to stop for one second right now and think, if you were 100% guaranteed to succeed, what would you do with your life?

What a brilliant question. If you knew you were going to succeed, what would you do? And I think that's such an interesting question. What's sort of— what's the role of intention? I mean, versus being sort of opportunistic to things that just sort of come your way. I mean, because you set these intentions so long ago, you know, how did that relate to also sort of opportunities that, that materialized that you might not have thought about?

Well, um, first of all, you know, I, I don't want to say that, uh, well, you— that assign— that was an assignment actually in school. So it wasn't like I just sat down and when I was, uh, have such forethought at the age of 14, I just said— but then once it was written down, and there's something about writing things down that— and some say you'll share with others, and I say you don't need to share with others. I think it's more about just, you know, maybe it's journaling. Some people like to journal, but when you write it down, it sort of commits— you're committing to yourself. And some of those things, and a lot— most of those things, with the exception perhaps of going to a good college, were kind of way out there. I mean, I— we didn't have the means to do any of those kinds of things. But I think people think, okay, so Olympics is way out there. Um, but how difficult is it to just do one lesson or one, you know, if you want to, if you want to become a pilot, just, I always tell people, go take a couple of lessons, 3 lessons, and then you'll learn. Or if you want to be in the Olympics, well, you know, at high school, I was on the JV team in track and swimming. So I wasn't going to be, you know, I didn't think in the Olympics, but I actually did very well in field hockey. And field hockey was the path that I was going to go. And because I had written it down, I said, well, how do you actually become an Olympian in field hockey? Well, you know, it's typically through the college process. And I was actually working my way up and made what they called the national squad, which is like the top 100 athletes. But at that time is when I was exposed to luge. And so I thought, well, I'll do that too. And we'll just see where it plays out. And when I started luge, I did not think Oh, I'm going to do this because I can become an Olympian. I just decided to do it because it looked like it was fun. And typically when things are fun is when you tend to be more successful.

So I, I love the story. And for those people who haven't heard it, I mean, you had in your, in your dream, your list that you wanted to go to the Olympics. And then there was an opportunity to be a torchbearer at the Olympics. And you thought, well, that'll get me sort of there. So you used sort of re-modified your college essay, got it accepted and became a torchbearer and then realized that really wasn't checking the box of being, you know, in the Olympics, as if you were at the Olympics. And so I love the fact that you happen to be there and just sort of discovered luge and decided to take a little risk and try it. So I want to play this clip because I think it's really powerful about taking, as you said, really small risks. And it's about how you, you know, decided to take one lesson and that led to the next and the next, that you didn't need to have an enormous goal. You just needed a little goal to get to the next day. So let's play clip number 3.

When the Olympics ended, I had nothing to do and no money to do it with. And I didn't have to be back here till the end of March, and the Olympics ended in February. And thinking about that goal I had in my mind of, like, well, should I check off that I had been to the Olympics? Well, there was a sport that I saw called luge. And I thought, you know, they had a beginner's camp. It was only $8. Even I could afford it. And this is another one of those things of just taking those risks and just going for it. So I decided to apply for the camp and started competing in the sport of luge. Yeah, so when I saw that, a little bit of the backstory to that, is in the Olympics, one of the other torchbearers was a former bobsledder, and he brought us to watch bobsled. And I said I wanted to do bobsled. And he said, women are not allowed to do bobsled. They're actually banned from bobsled. This is back in the day. And he said, but you can do luge. So that's kind of how that story— now, that little kernel saying you can't do that kind of stuck with me. And then many, many years later, I mean, it was kind of like a list. I went back to do bobsled. And it's a very, again, it's sort of that some of that intention. And when I did start luge, I came back to Stanford. And of course I had to take winter quarter off every year, which meant I couldn't take, and those who are Stanford students will know this, this physics course, Physics 51, Physics for Engineers, because I wanted to be an engineer. And I couldn't become an engineer at Stanford because I couldn't take that class. But I always said I wanted to be an engineer, and that's why I came back to do management science and engineering 25 years ago. So I got that engineering degree.

That's so great. Now, um, I want to remind the students who are watching that you can start asking questions anytime. Start— we'll start collecting them and voting them up and down and see which ones you want to— you want answered by Bonnie. Um, I want to ask you, at what point after you started taking 1, 2, 3, luge lessons, you know, when you were sort of just hanging out after the Olympics, did you say, you know, actually, I'm pretty good at this and I could really exceed, succeed?

Yeah, I think, remember at that time I was, I was also doing field hockey. And this is another one of those lessons in taking risks, you try to overlap things. And so when I took my first lesson, I was just doing it because it was fun. But sports and actually many different occupations in life, there's a certain sort of mental mentality or physical capabilities that you, one, one kind of needs. So for example, I can never be a gymnast because I'm too big to be a gymnast. I couldn't be a basketball player because I'm too small to be a basketball player. But in, in, in luge, there's a certain quality where you need to have strong upper body skill. And you also need to be, I guess fearless is a way of saying it. You respect, we respect fear, but you're, you're able to relax. So being able to really relax under pressure because the sleds do not have shock absorbers and your body is the shock absorber. So you have to be relaxed going 80 miles an hour. And that is a skill or a capability that I had. And so because of my physique, my strength, and sort of my mentality, I was told very quickly within the first week. And I can tell people, I've coached thousands of kids in the sport, and I can literally tell now even within their first day whether or not they would have the capabilities of being good. Doesn't mean they will be, and it'll take many years to be good. But I had those raw capabilities to be good, and enough people told me that I thought, aha, I could do this. So, you know, I went back to Stanford, but then I pursued that over the course of the next 2 years parallel to field hockey. And ultimately, I ended up making the Olympic team, let's see, 3 and a half years from that time that I first tried.

So it took 3 and a half years. So the next Olympics.

The next Olympics, yes.

Isn't that amazing? I mean, if someone had told you when you were a torchbearer that the next Winter Olympics you were going to be competing in luge—

I would have never, ever, ever imagined that. And that's why I think for people, you know, kids who say, I want to be in the NBA, or they want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a pilot or whatever, you know, you just— that seems so far away, but the first steps don't. And that's the thing I just keep— I keep telling you, just take the first steps. If you want to be an entrepreneur, just go out and start. Just go out and try. Um, because, you know, I say this often, and you can't win the lottery of life if you don't enter.

Yeah, people often ask me about writing books because I've written about the books, and I like, just write a table of contents, you know, just write the introduction, just write something, you know. The only way to do it is to just do it. So, um, I love this. I mean, your fearlessness. My, my— one of my favorite though clips is the one we're going to play next. About your crazy confidence. I mean, here you were, you know, you'd taken 2 weeks of luge training, whatever classes— it's like, you know, I don't know, crazy taking 2 weeks of classes— and then you decide to go to Germany to train with some of the best luge coaches in the world, and you show up there like, okay, I'm here, and what happened? So let's play this clip about the failing and failing until you succeeded. So, this is the clip number 4.

I showed up in Germany and didn't know a whole lot of German. I tried to explain that I was just a beginner, but they figured I came all the way from the U.S., so I must be good. One of the best in America. I didn't even know who one of the best in America was. So, they put me in with the German national team. And I proceeded to crash. I only had 2 weeks in the sport. I obviously figured it out pretty quickly. I crashed 52 times in a row. No, you don't get too hurt in the sport. It does look crazy, but when you crash, you actually only fall this far off because the sled is that close to the ice, even with the centrifugal force. But I was so determined, and the coaches had mercy on me or else I would kill myself, they thought. But then really, but I had the confidence. And I wasn't going to leave. And because of that confidence, they kept coaching me. And by the time I finished that 3 months, I came back and became the best in the US.

Pretty remarkable. And so listen, I mean, is this sort of the fake it till you make it approach? I mean, is that what this is about? Or is this just keep— I mean, how would you view this, your philosophy here?

I would say that— that first of all, I would not be successful had they not helped me, and so you need others to help you along, and so I think the way I look at it is confidence is contagious, so if you believe in yourself, others will, and so if the fake it till you make it piece was, I was shaking inside. I was scared because I kept crashing, but on the outside, I wouldn't show that I was scared. If I, you know, when I go do a talk, even though I've done so many of these talks in front of thousands of people, I'm shaking inside before I get up onto the podium and talk, but people don't see that on the outside, and so they'll see this strong, confident person, and it's that, so that's the part, right, is you just need to convey that confidence, and then they reflect it back. If I'm confident in myself, they become confident in me, which then makes me feel more confident, It's that virtuous, wonderful cycle. And so that's really what happened is they took me under their wing. They saw I wasn't going to quit. And they were determined to help me. Now, of course, they figured I would never beat them. But I made that my internal goal that I would then beat the Germans someday. And I did. So, but that took another couple of Olympics.

That's fabulous. I'm just looking at the questions from the students. They're starting to roll in. So one of them from Jan is, he says, I'm reading a book about discovering your strengths. Underline what you say about success naturally coming with what's fun and fits your personality. But when do you know that you found your strengths and— let's see, it just rolled up— found your strengths and decide to go with it? Like, when do you know there's a match between, like, OK, I'm actually good at this and it's fun? And is this something— what's that process like?

Well, there's two parts to it, because you can be very, very, very good at something but not passionate about it, and if you aren't passionate about it, then you probably long-term will not be successful, because ultimately, in most endeavors, I say it's about 10,000 hours, and although maybe I compressed it over 4 years, it was a lot of hours of training, and you have to really like it. and so go test these things out. See if you have some natural skill. If you really like it, you just can't wait to get to practice or you can't wait to get to class or you just can't wait to learn more about that, and so you start getting into a flow, and there's a book called Flow, which I highly recommend people read. It really helps you think, and when you're in flow of something, that is something where ultimately you could be very good if you match that up within the skills that you develop.

So a lot of people are super curious, and I'm not sure if this is two things that they're conflating or whether this is true. They're worried about the balance between saying yes and taking risks and then getting overcommitted and overwhelmed, so are those opposite sides of a spectrum or are those different things?

Well, if there were one of my challenges, I mean, we all have, as my mother used to say, you have your You all have our assets and liabilities. Just hope that you build upon your assets and take care of your liabilities. So one of my liabilities is I do take on too much. And so I'm always having to kind of, okay, what can I load shed? What can I drop off? Because it is easy to go off in 27 different directions, but you do have to check yourself and begin focusing. But, you know, and Tina, you do a lot in design thinking. And so there's this thing called flare and then focus and then flare and then focus. And so, in that exploration phase. It's flair. It's like all those Post-it notes that are behind you in your background. Put out all kinds of different ideas and explore. Find those things where you both have a passion and some skill and then start focusing on it. And I also think of doing things in chapters in life. So, you know, one chapter is a student and another chapter is an athlete. Another chapter is a TV reporter. Another chapter is becoming an airline pilot. And as passion maybe wanes in one area, you begin picking up in another area, and so I think it's just, you really, life is too short to not love what you're doing, and so the moment you feel, hmm, maybe I've been doing this too long, maybe I should do something else, that's the time to flare again and start exploring other items, other areas, and then you can start latching on things and do things in parallel to de-risk it a little bit, and then you can move on to the next, the next area.

Yeah, I love that answer. And in fact, one of the questions sort of builds on that is, listen, you know, I love getting inspired and coming to events like this and, and writing in my journal about my ideas, but then I've got to do work. And how do I balance, you know, being inspired and having my dreams versus the things I actually have to do? And I think one of the things you talk about is doing things in parallel. And can you talk a little bit about how you started as a pilot when you were a newscaster and how you were able to transition from one to the other, because I think that's an interesting example.

Yeah, so I was at Stanford and I originally had planned on being an engineer, as I had mentioned, and turns out I couldn't become an engineer. And I remembered my list, but I also was taking different classes and I had explored. I was in that flaring phase. Well, if I can't be an engineer, what do I want to be? And I took a wonderful class in film and broadcast, and I really enjoyed it. And I was going, leading into, I was graduating, leading into, ultimately ended up majoring in communication. And I was graduating and going to another Olympics. And the local TV station, KGO-TV in San Francisco, came down to interview me. And he said, so what are you going to do after the Olympics? What's your job going to be? And I said, I want to work for you. And he said, "Oh, okay. Would you like to file some stories from the Olympics?" Which I did. So that was my entrée into television. I was doing that for several years, finally earning some money. And I remember I said, "Look, I really want to learn to fly." So now I had money. I was just going to do it as a hobby. Wasn't going to be a career. And I started flying at an airport near Stanford in Palo Alto and very quickly moved to teaching flying. So now I'm during the day, I'm a TV reporter, and during the evenings and weekends, I'm a flight instructor. And then one weekend, the news director called me and he said he wanted me to come into work, and I would have had to cancel several of my students. And I thought to myself, and, you know, I would make 5 times as much working the day as a TV reporter, but I loved teaching the students. I loved flying. And that's when I realized it was time for me to change careers. It didn't happen instantly, but I started spending more and more time in building my hours and experience while I was at the TV station. So that's that overlap. And once I achieved enough hours, worked some corporate jobs, I ended up getting hired. And I was a United pilot for 13 years.

But isn't it so amazing? First of all, I think you skipped over this wonderful little point at the beginning where this person, you know, in the media basically said, what are you going to do next? You said, I want to work for you. I mean, the boldness of saying that. I mean, first of all, if you hadn't said that, the opportunity never would have existed. Now, it doesn't mean if you always ask— if I say, hey Bonnie, I want to work for you. Hey Bonnie, I want to work for you. I'm saying it publicly. Like, yes, sure, it might not happen, but if you don't say it—

well, again, you have to, you have to enter the lottery of life to win. And, you know, I had a degree in it And, you know, I was graduating. I actually had a skill in that I was going to be doing something Olympics, and they were going to be sending a crew to the Olympics. So I had taken some courses in it. So it wasn't completely out of the, out of the realm of possibilities. But I hadn't actually thought of asking him until he asked me that question. And I will say this for the, for the women in the audience. It's interesting, and studies have, have shown this, that Women, when they see a job to apply for, they tend not to apply until they are 100% confident that they meet all the qualifications and they can do the job, whereas men tend to apply earlier. And so, you know, I always tell people, raise your hand, raise your hand, apply for jobs, apply for jobs, apply for jobs that you think that you're not ready for. Go for that promotion when maybe you're not ready for it. And I often thought I was ready for a promotion when I wasn't. And eventually I did get there. So it's, it's, you know, raise your hand, just lean in.

Pick me, pick me. Yeah. Okay. So we've got a question about the airline industry. So, wow. COVID pandemic. Where do you see the future of the airline industry? I mean, what's going to happen? What do you think?

Well, I think, you know, in part, and you saw obviously not only the US government, but most governments around the world around the world see the airline industry as part of both national security and part of the economy. And so people will always need to fly. And so there will be airline travel. Right now, it's only if you— most— in most cases, it's if you need to, not just doing it more. So leisure travel is a little off. And business travel, a lot of businesses are saying, well, they're not going to travel there's vaccines or whatever, but we're starting to see sparks for people coming back. And you know what? The industry is adapting too, putting in a lot of safety measures, social distancing, et cetera. And people are managing themselves better as well, right? Masks. So this is a time— I was a pilot during 9/11, and that was an incredibly challenging time as well. People were very afraid to fly. I was a captain at the time. And I decided to— I was actually on leave because I was competing in bobsled this time because I did finally go back to competing bobsled. I came off of leave to fly because I felt it was important. I was a mother, I was a female, and I felt if— so I started flying the very first day after we were allowed to fly again, just to be out there, to be a public face, to be a figure because the airlines very quickly had adapted on security. To address the challenges of what happened in 9/11. And just, just the same, the industry is adapting very much around safety. So when you think of safety and security as it adapts, so it will take time before it to get back to the same levels, call it 3, 4, 5 years. But this is also a time for industries to adapt, industries to innovate. That's what we're doing here. I run the venture arm for JetBlue, finding new ways to innovate. How do we continue to make it even safer? So I, I'm very bullish on the industry. It just takes time.

So what kind of innovations are you seeing? I mean, obviously there's ones around safety and sanitation, but what other interesting innovations are you seeing? Yeah.

So we, I have my team, awesome team, and we run these things called innovation sprints. And who would have thought that there would be a need to go out and find how do you use UV light to kill germs on aircraft, but we went out and found all the different startups that might be doing that. We've looked into, you know, everything from the health passports that are out there. How do you do contact tracing? Because that's now going to be a federal mandate. How do you track people coming in from it and manage privacy and all of that? So, you know, there's a lot of different companies exploring that, so we're able to surface all of those. We're also in the middle of doing an innovation sprint where we flare— find all the different startups not the big, large public companies, but the quick and nimble startups that are evolving, coming up with solutions in contactless travel. So the fewer times you actually have to touch something, whether it be a kiosk or going through security or the, you know, your ticket or anything through the travel experience, how can we remove those barriers so that you can go through with your phone, which you're used to carrying, and that's yours, got your own little germs on it, and that's it. And we don't— nobody else wants to touch it. So, how can you move through the entire travel experience with just your own devices? So, we're doing quite a bit of exploration in that right now.

Very interesting. Very, very interesting.

And for any entrepreneurs, actually, we have a challenge out there. So, they can go to jetblueventures.com and take a look at our latest Medium post about it, and it explains how to submit your ideas into our innovation sprint.

Well, who knows? Maybe someone in this class will end up winning that challenge. So, um, one of the things that a number of people are curious about is, wow, you are so impressive in the number of things that you've done and the number of things you often do at the same time. Can you talk a little bit about your time management strategies? You know, what does a typical day, week, month look like that you're allowed to— that you're able to accomplish so much?

Well, I, um, first of all, I, I do think it's important. Yes, I do a lot and I'm very busy, and part of it is, and My husband says my hobby is my work. I love what I do, so I don't consider it work. In fact, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. So in part, it's, again, it's getting to that flow. And so I love what I do. Also, building a good team is really important. So the people that you work with are incredibly important. And so part of this is, yes, I work more than a 40-hour week. I work more than a 50-hour week, probably a 60-hour week. And I do that over and over and over again because I I love what I do, but also it, by building in a great team, you're able to delegate things. So I, as soon as I, part of what I enjoy doing is coaching and developing people. And so as people build a skill, I can take what I'm doing and then now they can do it. And that frees me up to go do more in something else. So it's constantly, and then they like doing that. So that stretches that person and that skill. So, you know, it's a force multiplier to have a great team. So that, that's part of it. And then I do spend, you know, family's important. And so I do spend time, I do spend time with family. So I pretty much, you know, I'll take, I don't need to do new explorations outside of my work and family at this point, because now I'm really focused on giving back. So those are, those are the things that I do and how I fill my time. It's family, work, giving back, and of course doing some working out. I'd like to do more of that. I should be doing more of that.

So maybe there's another Olympics in your future. Yes. One of the questions is, okay, you have demonstrated these amazing leadership skills. Are these similar skills that you look for in those founders who are coming to pitch you?

Yes, absolutely. And I, you know, I'm just going to keep coming back to if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Typically, when we invest in early-stage startups, we invest in the entrepreneurs more than the idea. How are they incredibly passionate about what they do? Remember, confidence is contagious. So are they incredibly confident in what they're doing? Do they love what they're doing? They work all day long because they want to, because they're just so passionate about their ideas. And this is why there's— you have serial entrepreneurs, because they learn They find something, they find a problem, they get passionate about it. So most of all, I will be looking for people's passion and then also for the team. And it is pretty rare. It's not impossible. And we have invested in startups where there's just one founder, but usually it's co-founders, a team, and the team that they build underneath them. So because we just believe team is so important. So those are the kind of the things we look for.

So, you know, this is— your story is so amazing, and people are wondering about whether you need to pick a few things. This is kind of the flare and focus.

Yes.

Do you need to pick a few things that you're going to go deep into? And, and, and when do you decide that you finish flaring and you're ready to focus?

Yeah, I mean, well, this is, this is, I mean, again, I'm just gonna— I'll re-pitch your books and, and, and your ideas, and there's some of the stuff at the D preschool and everything, learning about flaring and focus. Because this flare and focus idea is not just, just for your own life. It's for your business. It's for your startups. It's for everything. And so there's a time in life to flare and there's times where it is to focus. I think with flare, yes, I believe that people focus in too soon, too early, and cut out things. So I actually encourage people to flare for a little longer. And because you want to explore these ideas that you become passionate about. And so, I mean, I would have never thought of luge. I didn't even know what that was when I was— so it just wouldn't have— I wouldn't have thought of it. I didn't even think of becoming an airline pilot. I thought about, I want to become a pilot. And so it's— you just— you have to explore and test these things and test many of them. And then once you find what you find, you need to really focus. So when I went over to Germany, I was seriously focusing on the sport of luge. I just went all in. That's part of the reason why I went there. And then, you know, I did 3 Olympics. When I— during the summertime, I was doing the TV and I was then learning to fly. And then the opportunity came to come up for the job at United. And I remember I was going to go, I was going to the interview and I knew they were going to ask me, because this was in 1990 prior to the 1992 Olympics. And, you know, if you're going, it's kind of like going into an airline is kind of like going to the military. You don't really have a choice of your schedule if you're junior or anything. And I was like, well, I know they're going to ask me if I would quit the Olympics to do this. And I was at that point in my life that I loved flying so so much that yeah, I would. Now I was going to hope that I didn't. And of course I didn't have to. You know, I was very supportive and I did compete in the next Olympics. But I didn't do as well. And I remember my coach telling me, Bonnie, your head's in the clouds. My head was in the clouds because I love flying so much. And so that was that time to make that jump. And so I, even though the next Olympics was only 2 years later, they actually changed the schedule at that time. They were at the same time as same year as the Summer Olympics, and then they changed it. So the next Olympics from '92 was '94. No other athletes retired because they wanted to do one more Olympics, and I very easily could have, but I was ready to become a full-time pilot.

So I love this because what we were talking about is you're doing one thing and then you sort of have— it's almost like a relay race that, you know, the next thing is sort of speeding up, and then when you're ready, you sort of switch gears, as opposed to feeling like you need to jump and have nothing, that you're constantly sort of weaving things together, and then it ends up becoming seamless. Seamless transitions.

Yes. Now, so there are times where you do have to, like, no kidding, jump. Um, uh, but, uh, and you just have to have confidence that it's the right choice. Yeah.

One of the things that, uh, you said reminded me of something that I always say, which is before something is your passion, it's something you know nothing about. And that you need to realize that, you know, you can be out in the world saying, I don't know what I'm passionate about, but unless you start you're never going to figure it out.

Yeah. And there's a reason why people, you know, whether it's for those who are in the class or other college students that are out there, that you're required to take breadth. There's a reason for that. Because, you know, that's kind of a force to go out and test all these things. But after, even after you're graduated in college and you're in life, and if you're an entrepreneur, it's go test different ideas, a whole bunch of different ideas. To see what sticks and what you're passionate about.

So speaking of flying, one of the people in the class asked, did you ever consider joining the Air Force and flying some super fast planes?

I did. But I did not have 20/20 uncorrected vision. That was required at the time. I think they now accept some waivers on it. And even when I started to become an airline pilot, they had just relaxed it enough. I think I had 20/70 vision. And so I was able to get into the airline. So yeah, sometimes, remember what I said, you know, there are certain things, whether it's a sport or a profession, where there are certain raw attributes that you must have. I'm just never going to be a gymnast because I'm just not the size of a gymnast. I'm never going to be a basketball player. Well, I wasn't ever going to be an Air Force pilot because I didn't have 20/20 vision. Now that's changed, but I didn't then.

So speaking of constraints, there are some questions about whether you ever felt a glass ceiling. Of course, it sounds like you did with regard to bobsled, and then you found your way around it. Are there other places where being a woman in a leadership role you found to be challenging in some way?

Well, you know, I can kind of look through my life, and most of the jobs that I've had, whether it was as an athlete, and then, you know, Bob said where women couldn't do it, and then ultimately found a way. Or sports reporter. I was a sports reporter. There's not a lot of female sports reporters, particularly then. And then a pilot. Not that many female pilots. There's about 5% of pilots are female. It was a lot less when I started. And then venture capitalists. There's not a lot of female there. And I don't go into things because I'm going to break some kind of gender barrier. I go into it because I want to, because I like to, like to. And if you feel there's a barrier, you will become your own barrier. And yes, there are times where you just have to try harder, perhaps. I remember, you know, getting in a cockpit way back in the day, and I could tell that the captain— I was a first officer— and he didn't think that women could be good pilots. Well, I'm like, right, I'm going to show this guy. Because you know what? The airplane doesn't know if you're a male or female. And ultimately, you know, build everybody's confidence. So I, it's, you know, sometimes you have to try a little harder, but I'm going to keep coming back. The biggest barrier is typically yourself, is if you don't have confidence yourself, it's hard for others to have people to have confidence in you. But the reverse is also true. If you have confidence in yourself or display confidence, even if you're shaking inside, you display that confidence, others will, and it becomes a virtuous cycle. And so I think for women, it's just lean in and just do it.

So, speaking of leaning in and just doing it, I mean, you went from being a pilot then to being a venture capitalist. I mean, that's a huge shift. How did you learn the world of VC?

Well, I'm still learning. I think that, you know, VCs are lifelong learning. Well, I've been at JetBlue now for 16 years. So I started as a pilot, I left United as a pilot, I became a pilot at JetBlue because I JetBlue was a startup and I just wanted to do something entrepreneurial and it just was a nice transition. And I also wanted to do more. And I worked in a lot of different departments at JetBlue besides becoming a pilot and ultimately became the head of talent. Talent is something that I'm very passionate about, coaching, helping people, developing people. So that was my role. And in it also, we had sort of the strategy team. And so when JetBlue was thinking about expanding a business model and becoming— because, you know, it started to become a big company. How do you maintain that innovative spirit? One of the ways to do that is through venture capital. So I— but they came to the strategy team and said, well, what are some different ideas? And that was one of them. And, you know, in the venture world, as you know, a lot of it is about the network. And I already had a network. It's out on the West Coast. And of course, Jeppeloo's on the East Coast, and I was really excited to be able to move back. And so, you know, volunteered and then tapped into, you know, all the different friends that I have, including you, Tina, and many others. And part of it is about building a team. So I said I would do it, but only if I would be able to hire a managing director who was an experienced VC. And so that's where we— in corporate VC, a lot of times you'll take someone like myself who I know the industry very well, but I don't know venture. Or you'll take a venture capitalist who wants to do corporate VC, but they don't know the corporate side. So it's really a match of two. And remember I said it's all about a team. And so bringing on that team, so I brought in Raj Singh, who's an experienced VC, and then my background is all in operations. And so brought on another managing director who came from the commercial side of the industry. So we have an awesome team. And so I'm constantly learning. I mean, Raj is constantly teaching, you know, every, every year or so we do Term Sheet 101 with our team. And we have— because we have new analysts coming in and we're always teaching people, you know, how do you— and I learn every single time.

So I'm super curious, and I'm sure other people are, as well. What have been some interesting things you've invested in, you know, given your knowledge about the airline industry and the opportunity to invest for the future?

Sure. So, you know, we, we invest in not just aviation. We invest broadly in travel. But I am an aviation nerd at heart. I love flying. Of course, we have 27 different startups and they're all my children and I don't want to have a favorite child, but people do know that I love aviation. So we have a startup named Joby Aviation, which is building electric air taxis called eVTOLs, electric vertical vertical takeoff and landing. It's the leading— there's about 300 companies around the world now that are building these, but Joby is the lead in it. We expect to be FAA certified 2023, probably, in commercial operations. And they're in Santa Cruz, so very close, and also have an office in San Carlos. So there's that one I'm super excited about because we literally have a seat at the table and helping evolve. I think I look at electric propulsion to transform aviation just like jet propulsion did back in the '60s. So this is the next change. It's about sustainability. It's about urban mobility. It's about getting rid of traffic jams. Imagine if you could go from San Jose to San Francisco in 15 minutes for the same cost of what it would take for an Uber or less. So this is all possible. So that, that's super exciting. I'm also really excited. We have several startups who are taking the massive amounts of data that are, whether it's in the hospitality industry, travel industry, airline industry, and then marketing analytics, massive amount of data and applying machine learning to it. I think it's using, taking machine learning and applying those algorithms to be useful because there's so much data in our industry, but it's all been trapped in these legacy servers and everything. So pulling it up into the cloud, applying the algorithms and everything from revenue management to better schedule planning to better marketing, all of these areas are things that we're working on. So I'm pretty excited about those as well. I could go on and on, but I— Can we find out these things if we look at the JetBlue website? Yes, just go to jetblueventures.com. And when you go there, you're also So here's something for everybody. When you go onto our website, it'll pop up. We do a newsletter. And this again, I'm going to talk about team and evolving team. So we send out a newsletter every 2 weeks, and it's curated by my team. We have a Slack channel and we see cool articles in travel and we curate it. And it's what is going on around the world in travel and travel tech that is new and exciting and interesting. And it helps you keep abreast of what's going on.

So I have one final question I'm going to ask. What is the best leadership advice you've ever been given?

I'm going to come back to, you know, sort of some of the themes that I've talked already. And again, my mother always talked about the assets and liabilities. I think it's really important for a leader to know where are their strengths and to lean into those strengths. but really to know where their areas of opportunity are as well. Know what you don't know and build an awesome team around that. So, it's about building a team and it's also about helping people grow and develop. So, we have our team and some of the junior members will spend 3, 4, 5 years with us. They'll move out into the industry and they're friends of what JTV would call it. So, it's It's team. It's— you can't do this alone. It's team.

Well, I couldn't agree with you more, and I have to say thank you so much for being on our team.

Thank you. Anything for you and Tina. It's your team.

This is so great. Thank you so much. I know that everyone has really appreciated this, and, uh, I'm sure that they'll want to share this video with everyone once it gets posted up on eCorner. So thank you very much, Bonnie.

Thank you.