Episode 3: Hope Cochran of Madrona Venture Group

Come on into The Room. The Room is a series that lets you get a view into the room where it happened. I'm Claudia Laurie.

And I'm Madison McIlwain, your co-hosts. Not many people double major in music and economics at Stanford. But Hope Cochran has a knack for standing out. After starting her career in the audit sector of Deloitte and spending an unexpected year in Lithuania, Hope joined an early startup in the Valley. On her second day, they were bought by PeopleSoft. This turned out to be a fortuitous fork in the road as PeopleSoft went on to buy Hope's own startup, Skills Village, in 2001. Hope's experiences as CFO of her own company put her in the room where it was happening and she never left. By 2011, she became the chief financial officer of Clearwire, a telecommunications operator who built the broadband infrastructure you're likely leveraging to stream this very podcast on your smartphone. She helped Clearwire go public and eventually get bought by Sprint for, wait for it, $14 billion. Because she still had more in her, Hope went on to become the CFO of King Digital, who you may know from the game Candy Crush. In 2015, Hope led the acquisition of King for $5.9 billion to Activision, the creators of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Hope managed to do all of this while raising 3 children alongside her husband. Today, she invests in the next generation of fintech, security software, and female coworking spaces as a managing director at Madrona Venture Group. Her extracurriculars include sitting on 3 public boards, Hasbro, MongoDB, and New Relic. As she humbly shared these jaw-dropping life experiences with us, Hope redefined Claudia and mine's definition of a boss. In today's episode, we'll explore insights and themes such as advocating for yourself at work, what makes a good board, and leadership in times of uncertainty. Let's open the door.

Thank you so much, Hope, for sitting down to chat with us. Madison and I are so excited.

It is so fun to be able to do this with you both. I love the concept of "in the room." I think we've all been either in or out of the room and felt the frustrations on either side of that. Such a fun concept and idea.

Just before we dive a little bit deeper into your career, would love to zoom out and start a little bit earlier in your life. At Stanford, you were a double major in both music and economics. Tell us what it was like pursuing your passion for music. And how has your pursuit of music and balancing multiple areas of focus informed your perspective today?

You don't go to Stanford thinking you're going to major in music. That's not the reason you choose that school, right? So I ended up in the music major because I'm basically a cheap person and I had to pay for lessons if I was not a voice major, and I got them for free if I was a voice major. I had taken voice lessons my entire life. I couldn't imagine not taking them. So signed up for the voice major and took my lessons. And then lo and behold, actually completed the major and, you know, got my econ degree as well. As I think about those years at Stanford, I will always recommend to my children that they get practical degrees. I think that's important. But truly, as I reflect back, it's the skills in my music degree and career that I feel like I use more and more every day. Those come with, I mean, in order to be a professional singer or musician, you spend 4 to 6 hours a day in a practice room. So just having the diligence of practice and practice makes perfect. You never are unprepared. The thought of getting on a stage and singing an aria that you weren't perfectly ready for is petrifying. So you really put the time and effort into it. And I think that's really translated into my career in the sense that I come to every meeting prepared. I try and do everything I can to make the most effective day that I can have. And that means really doing the prep to make that happen. Also, the ability to carry yourself on stage. And I think this very much relates to being in the room, right? When you are at the table and you are in the room, you need to command the table. You need to command the audience. And I think being on stage taught me to be able to do that, to voice my opinions, to handle unique situations that come at you fast, and to handle things that you don't expect as if it was expected. So, you know, I think about these skills that I really honed in during those years of getting that music major. I actually feel like I put them into practice in my career. I always say that my econ degree got me interviews and allowed me to get in the door. And then I ended up using my music major skills once I was in the door.

Tell us a little bit more about whether or not you thought you would become a founder at that stage. What was the first business that you built?

Yeah, I don't think that I thought I would be an entrepreneur, to be quite fair about it. I really was always drawn to finance and I saw myself in that career. So coming out of Stanford, I went into the standard recruiting machine that those universities provide, and they do such a good job getting you your first footing out the door. Interviewed with all the big consulting and audit firms and landed at Deloitte Touche and felt like I was in a pretty standard career track with that. I did start to notice my desire to break out of that about 2 years in when the pattern that I saw in myself and that I can now reflect back on is the fact that once I've done something once and felt like, okay, I did that pretty well. I'm like ready to do something different. I'm not a person that wants to do the same thing again and again and again. That's just not who I am. And I think that's a pretty consistent trait with someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, right? Like you want to break out and be courageous and do something new versus being in a daily routine. So at Deloitte and Touche, by year 2, I realized I was going to be doing all the same audits I did the prior year. And I was really, really like, ugh, like that's, It's not, doesn't sound fun. I got really frustrated one day when I heard through the grapevine that they had reached out to some of the individuals in my group to go to Lithuania and, um, start an audit practice for Deloitte in Lithuania. Now I was kind of the top of my class in this group and no one had called me and I was like, I don't know why no one called me. So I reached out to the head of HR. And I asked, and I asked very nicely, but I was, I literally was like, I'm just curious what criteria you were looking for this and why I didn't hear about it. And so the interesting thing is I met my husband in high school and we got married right after graduation. So I was a 21-year-old bride and I was the only married person at Deloitte of this age group. And she absolutely told me, well, we didn't reach out to you because we knew you were married and you might not be interested in going. And I looked at her and I don't know where I got this courage at this age. I was 23. I said, I think that's my choice and I would very much like to go. And I went and I called my husband that afternoon. I said, oh my gosh, I think I just committed myself to a move to Lithuania for a year and I can't back down. And he was like, okay. Yeah, I went.

And did he go with you?

No, he didn't go. You know, we had always said that we wanted to be married and live our life together, and I'm so grateful that we made that decision. But we also recognized that we got married at 21 and we had a lot of living to do, and we were going to do this journey our way. So, I mean, we didn't have our first child till 29 or 30, you know, so we'd been married like 8 or 9 years. We did a lot of things in that period. I think that was a defining moment in, number one, me recognizing that I wasn't going to not be in the room. Number 2, the thought of doing— in an audit firm, you need to stay for 3 years to get your license. So like, I needed to stay another year, but like, to do the same thing 3 years in a row, just— that's just— I couldn't do that. So Lithuania was my option.

So you're doing long-distance marriage in what, 1998 is this? So there really isn't Zoom or FaceTime. There's, you know, calling on Sundays and letters, I guess, an email, some, right? So you do your year in Lithuania, and then I'm guessing you come back and that entrepreneurial itch that hits everyone in the Silicon Valley struck you around 1999 when you were founding Skills Village. Do we have that right?

Not quite. So I came back and I absolutely intended to find a new role outside of Deloitte. So I ended up joining a young company, a startup of about 80 people. Called Red Pepper Software as their international controller, which seemed like a lovely fit because I had just been overseas. The second day I was there, I thought my career was over because, you know, you're very dramatic when you're 24 or 25, maybe as music majors are, I'm not sure. But, and I had this lovely plan that I was going to be in this company, help build it and be a part of this new thing. But on day 2, PeopleSoft announced the that they were buying us. And I was so disappointed. It ended up being the best thing because PeopleSoft was and still is an amazing company. I learned to see what it looked like to run a big company and observe that and take it all in. And then it's from there that I was able to see what needs were in the market. And I launched Skills Village and left PeopleSoft and launched Skills Village, but that was 3 years later.

And so Skills Village was a B2B skills procurement platform that helped businesses connect with the skills and talented people that they needed. This is before LinkedIn. Additional context here, Amazon founded in 1994, Google 1998. Were people really leveraging the internet to connect to other people at this time?

No. And so the really, this was born out of my 3 years at PeopleSoft because PeopleSoft was known to be the leader in HR software and HR software focused on your internal workforce. There was— I was put on a task force at PeopleSoft to help us identify areas that PeopleSoft could grow. And we identified several, but this one area that no one had really worked on yet was this contract labor piece, the contingent workforce. PeopleSoft wasn't really ready to do that yet. And they gave us the blessing, myself and my friends, to go and start our own company and build that. So, it was really an HR system and platform to manage your contingent labor.

And you're coming out of this big company, you're going to say, I'm going to build something. And this is the height of the dot-com frenzy. You went on to raise, you know, north of $20 million from Atlas Ventures to build this. But unfortunately, macro environments really sometimes have their own way. The boom became a bust. You were still managing this company that you're building.

Would you—

could you just take us to that time and those moments?

Yeah, there was a lot of moments in that journey that I reflect back on and think, you know, you need luck and skill, you need perseverance, you need fortitude, right? And all of those are equally important. You know, one of the things that I always say is you look at my LinkedIn profile and you could think that it's this beautiful, smooth journey. And there were so many moments of failure, almost failure along the way. And I really identify with entrepreneurs when they're in those moments where they feel like there's no way out. We've all been there. I had so many mistakes, you know, in the Skills Village journey. With my perseverance, fortitude, and luck, I was able to scramble out of them. And we had a positive outcome for Skills Village where it was then purchased and everyone made good money and it was all happy. And this is gonna really date me. We were using fax machines. During those years. Does anyone ever have any, a fax machine? I don't think they exist anymore, but the merger agreement had to come over the fax machine. Founder and I all had our little good luck charms and we stuck it on the fax machine that day and we just sat there and watched. Oh my gosh. Because we were so nervous that it wouldn't come through. Um, because as you indicated, the, the, we agreed to the price before the bubble burst.

Oh, interesting.

The bubble kind of burst during that window. Life was different. And, but they, to their credit, they stuck to the agreement and that fax came out. So I was very grateful. People always ask me, how do you get a chief title? How do you get in the room? And I often say, well, if you give it to yourself, it works really well. So that is how I got my chief financial office. Yeah, that's how I got in my first room, right? That's how I ran my board meetings. That's how I, because it was my company, I started it. It is one way to get there. And then when you establish yourself, then you stay there. So that was helpful because I really didn't think that much about the fact that I was a woman founder or I was a woman executive. I just kind of like plowed forward. But I did have my first child during those years when I was a CFO at Skills Village. And I had one investor who, he wasn't my biggest fan. When I was pregnant, he basically said to me, okay, well, this will be a nice smooth way for you to transition out. I looked at him and I made it very clear that I had no intention of that. It just so happened I had my first child 3 weeks early and we had a board meeting scheduled within that 3-week period of time. And by goodness, I was not going to miss that board meeting because I knew he wanted me out. You know, a week after delivering, I was in there and that— and I'm not suggesting that any woman should do that. Like that's ridiculous, but that's what I did. Because I knew that he was trying to use this as a way to get me out, and I wouldn't have it. So I, you know, set up my son in my office with a friend, and I went into the board meeting and did my thing. And, and to that investor's credit, I saw him at a party 5 years later, and I was very, very nervous to see him. He came up to me specifically, and he had remembered that moment, and he apologized. Which I thought was hugely big of him. Number one, I was surprised he remembered it because of course I remembered it. It hit me very deeply, but I was surprised that he had remembered it. He apologized and said he had no right to do that. And I had done a phenomenal job in the role of the CFO. So we have to give people some credit.

Those are really, you know, moments that stay with you throughout your career. And I think to his point and to your point of not making a transition after you had your first child, You went on to have some really incredible roles at a variety of different companies. You've grown companies and led them through acquisitions and IPOs from the sale of your own company, Skills Village, to PeopleSoft, as we were just mentioning, to being CFO of Clearwire through their IPO and eventual sale to Sprint for $14 billion.

Sorry, what was that, Claudia? $14 billion? Yeah.

Billion. Just double hit that one. And you were the CFO at King Digital through its IPO and sale to Activision for $5.9 billion. Billion. It's clear you are a change leader. How do you evaluate when it's the right moment to sell? And what advice do you have for managing the team during these transition moments?

When I think about my career, I do think that often, I mean, the consistent threads are I was in the CFO seat. Okay, that's fine. But I was in lots of different industries. So there's not a consistent thread in that. But yet to me, all the companies felt similar. And they felt similar because they were all going through lots of change. And there was the velocity of movement and change was remarkable. So how do you be a leader when there is so much uncertainty, chaos, and you ask the question about when do you sell? I don't know that there's a great answer to that question, but how do you manage through that? Right? Because, but selling is also creating uncertainty for your team. and they usually take quite a bit of long time. So you have to keep the ships going during that period. As a leader, we do need to be calm. And I, you know, we talked about my music major at the beginning, calm in a storm when things are not going as you anticipated, just taking a deep breath, breaking it down into pieces and making sure people know what they're doing that day with giving them the broader context. I would never not give them the broader context. But I think having clear tasks ahead of them within that day or that week or that month, you keep your goals, you keep your KPIs, you keep measuring them and holding them accountable to those so they don't lose sight of those. That is what I think a leader needs to do during these times to keep the company moving forward. When do you sell? I never know the answer to that question. The, the answer to that question is you constantly build your company. You build your company as a strong independent company. That's why you have those goals, those KPIs that you're driving towards. If a sale opportunity comes amongst that journey, then you engage with them, especially if you're public, of course, because you have shareholders and you, you have to entertain and look at those. With both of those companies, or all my companies, they've all sold at some point in their journey. It might be after they went public, it might be before they went public, but there was reasons why that acquisition made strategic sense. With Clearwire, we had an asset that mirror matched with a Sprint asset, created a worldwide or a United States telecom network that was really powerful. So it was a 1 1 3. That particular asset is now what T-Mobile just bought from Sprint and why they bought Sprint. So you can see the journey continuing. With King, of course, the game Candy Crush, who those of you might know well, we had a situation where King was incredibly brilliant at creating easy, casual mobile games. I shouldn't say easy and easy to play, versus Activision was incredibly skilled at creating deep, deep mythology games and story-led games, but they really hadn't cracked the code on mobile. And so bringing these two companies together and sharing their skill sets across really was a situation where 1 1 3 once again. Those are how those mergers came about, but they came about at different stages in the company's journeys.

You have a motto, FTJ, Finish the Job, and I'm sure that was employed throughout all of these transactions and times in your career. Can you give us one example of an FTJ moment?

Well, when I think of FTJ, I think of little moments in life. They're not the big ones. The big ones we seem to finish. And I do think the little moments enhance, you know, build your career. It creates your reputation. The thing gets you in the room later. So I do think the little moments are incredibly important, and that is really the theme behind FTJ. Think about creating a presentation, whether that's a PowerPoint or a Word document. If there's a typo in that, it just looks bad. You put miles and miles of work into that presentation, and then you get up there And all you can see is the typo, right? Like, that's what the FTJ moment is. Like, you spend as much time making sure that that's a beautiful product so that you can get across all the deep knowledge you have without people questioning you. And so you spend time at the end when you're tired or when you're hurried. I often love to use it in my house with my kids on laundry. You know, they say, oh, I did my laundry. I'm like, okay, does that mean it's folded in your drawers? Well, no, right? Like, that's the FTJ. You fold it, you put it in the drawers. Like, that FTJ is you finish it and you finish it well, so you're proud of the result.

You mentioned these little moments.

They, they kind of happened all over the world. You talk about being Lithuania, you're in Silicon Valley. I know you're now in Seattle. King Digital was in London. You really traveled quite a lot of places and had these incredible work experiences, other podcasts you've mentioned, the people who were there surrounding you in those moments. We like to believe no one's in the room alone. There are people surrounding you. We'd love to know who was in the room with you in some of these either finish the job moments or the, the big moments.

Yeah. I mean, this is where your reputation and your career is never your own. It's a collaborative effort, right? And so the first thing you do is you choose the people you surround yourself really carefully. When I think of taking an opportunity, whether that is a new job, whether that's a board seat, whether that's a project, I fully recognize that it's not going to be great because I'm great. It's going to be great because of the people that I'm working with. And my reputation is attached to that. I view that my reputation is really the one solid thing in my career I have. I mean, yes, I've earned money and all those things, but it's really my reputation that is valuable. So I really choose the people I surround myself with very, very carefully. In every situation I've been in, every company, there have been moments where it's very stressful and very hard and people's true colors come out and you hope you know what those true colors are. So when I think about people that have— I've been with in very difficult moments and people that I think of when I am in a situation where I'm like, I don't know what to do. And I think, okay, I remember David Obershaw from PeopleSoft. He is amazing at counseling people and getting them to work hard. What would David do right now in this difficult situation? I'm gonna channel my David. Now I still talk to David all the time. I'd also probably call him, but you know, he just had an amazing talent and I really admired him and I literally would try and put myself in his shoes later on in my career. John Stanton. If you ever want to negotiate a deal, you hope that John Stanton is sitting next to you. You know, he's pretty remarkable. He's a dear friend and I was able to be in the room with him for years and negotiate so many deals. And I would just watch, be like, yeah, I'm with him. To this day when I am negotiating a deal, I go back to, okay, John Stanton would, he's a great debater and you can tell he was classically trained in debate. He organizes his 3 points. He does his 3, you know, I'm like, I need my John Stanton right now. And the other thing he does that is really remarkable is he makes everyone in the room feel good about the deal when the deal's done. You know, he's very considerate. He's very thoughtful about trying to find that win-win on both sides. He's not overly greedy and yet he negotiates phenomenal deals. So I, you know, I try and take that mode into me when I'm dealing with different situations. And then the other one I would say is my parents, both sides. You know, my father is a public company executive, a CEO himself. And I remember one day, you know, he came home and he was uncomfortable because he got a raise and he said, I have to deserve that money. And I've always, you know, and like little things that he took home to the dinner table about championing, you know, a woman that worked for him and he wanted her to be his successor and like how he fought for her, his own work ethic. The other thing about many CEOs is just you see that vulnerability. And knowing that they are vulnerable too. So very much from my father. And then my mother, just the compassion that she brings to everything.

You've had so many incredible personal mentors and work mentors who've been partners to you through your journey, coming from being a first-time founder to a multi-time CFO. And your latest act, so to speak, in your opera or musical of hope is being a partner and managing director at Moderna Venture Group. Clearly your reputation preceded you, and when they were looking for, for someone to bring on, or maybe even not, they called you. And for those who don't know, Madrona Venture Group is based in Seattle and was an early investor in Amazon and really got their start almost 25 years ago when you were getting your start in your career. So it's just really cool to see you now on the other side of the table as the fundraising landscape, you know, has changed a lot in the last 20 years.

Since you were a founder.

Could you talk us through a little bit about that transition and what it's like being at your capital side now?

Yeah, this was not a straight line for me. Um, and what I mean by that is I had had my CFO role in London with King Digital, and as we talked about earlier, sold it to Activision. And so this— the public CFO job was done, and it was time to move back home to Seattle. This was my fifth foray as a CFO, I was looking at, okay, do I want to do it again? Do I want to do a COO? Do I, you know, I just, there was a, I felt like it was a transitional moment back to, I don't do things twice well. You know, the, the calls I was getting were very similar to what I'd done. I kind of would be in the, the conversation going, okay, I would do this, this, this, this, and this. I know how to do that. I don't want to do it. There was also the element of really wanting to get my family back to Seattle. My kids were at an age where I felt like it was the right time to just say, okay, we're here. Here in Seattle. So what is in this environment? So it really led me to think a little bit outside of that traditional path. And I started to get some calls for board work. And that was really interesting. And, and so I took my first board role with Hasbro. And I have so enjoyed that. The next call, I got lots of calls, I was very lucky, but none of them were all that interesting. I think when you get these board calls, you need to say no to like 90% of them, just word otherwise. But there was one that, that came that I was really excited about, and that was Mongo. Everything I loved, it fit everything. And I thought, if I take this, then this is kind of getting me off the operational track, because two board seats is not quite right if you're a, you know, an executive at a chief level. And at the time, I have been talking to Madrona. They had been incredibly, like, good about welcoming me back to Seattle. I wanted to get back to my roots. I loved that entrepreneurial time. I mean, starting my company and helping mentor other entrepreneurs just sounded like a great next step. And so they, you know, Madrona welcomed me back and offered me a venture partner role, which was just a great way to get back into the Seattle market. And I worked with a lot of their CFOs and their portfolios. And once again, just got connected to starting your own company and going through what they were going through. I was able to watch and learn and be a part of that venture world for about a year and a half as a venture partner. And really, so I felt like it was my, like, school. It was like my school of how to be an investor. I was able to watch all these brilliant investors around the table. And then that led to them asking me to come and join as a managing director, which I was thrilled to do. I felt like the venture partner role was perfect for where I was at, at the time. But after a while, you know, if you were to ask me the question, what gives you joy in life? My answer has always been the same, and it's to be useful. When I feel useful, I have great joy. And I felt like as a venture partner, my usefulness was running out a little bit. It didn't feel quite as practical. And so I knew there needed to be a transition. So transitioning to managing director, you know, now my job is clear. I get to invest in companies and help them grow, and I'm really enjoying it.

Well, it's clear that you are incredibly useful to the entrepreneurs that you get to back with your time at Madrona. We had the pleasure of interviewing one of those CEOs, Amy Nelson with The Riveter, and she sung your praises to us. And so it's clear that that usefulness quota is being hit. And more than just The Riveter, you've been able to invest in 3 other companies since joining Madrona: Tesorio, Strike Graph, and Sela. And so presumably you sit on the boards of those 4 companies, which is common with early-stage investors, writing oftentimes the first institutional capital into early-stage companies. And you already mentioned MongoDB, Hasbro, the toy company, and you didn't mention your third public board seat with New Relic. These are really quite different companies across the various stages of both being public and private, from cloud performance monitoring to toys. Could you maybe just take this up a level for our listeners? Because I think the board is an abstract concept that many of us know exists, but have never been in a board meeting or know anyone personally who's on a board. And we'd love for you to just illuminate us on what exactly is the function of a board.

It's a great question. And it does vary by stage. Let's talk about a public company board, because I think that's a little bit more defined. So a public company board is usually, you know, 8 to 12 people. And overall, their job is to manage the company. When I— manage isn't quite the right word, but to oversee the company and to look after the shareholders' best interest. Ultimately, the CEO reports to the board, and there are certain decisions in the company's documents that the board has to vote on and weigh in on. One of the things that I really value is that at Hasbro, for instance, we've got 6 women in the boardroom, and, you know, they've always made this an incredible important element to then choosing their board members. As you think about it, they think that most of their customers are both mothers. So that would be why. But it is interesting when you get into diversity in the boardroom, when there's more than one of you, when there's more than one woman in the room, you all of a sudden just become your area of expertise. You don't become the woman in the room. It's really a remarkable difference, I would say. So hats off to Hasbro for making that early and, and making that work. When you look at a boardroom for a private company, and, and I'll specify like a smaller VC-backed company that's kind of on the rise, your role is very different. It's much more hands-on with management. It's really helping them in a practical way along the path. In a private company, I feel like the board is much more about a mentor and hands-on with the CEO and the management versus a public company. It's a little bit more about governance. And looking out for the shareholders' best interest.

You mentioned, um, how boards are quite different between rising startups and big companies, but would love to know if there's a common thread across these companies and what makes a good board that you've seen.

A good board is one that is put together, first of all, in a thoughtful way. So you've established that you have both the right functional expertise, and the right diversity around the table. I think that's key to making wise and thoughtful decisions. A board should not be put together based on who's friends with each other. That is not an effective board. You want challenge in the boardroom. You want people that are ready to look at things in a different perspective and voice those different perspectives. You want it to have a collegial feeling, but not one that means we are going to just agree with everyone. So there needs to be good, healthy debate, good, healthy challenge. I once had a board member say they knew they said something effective when the CEO wrote it down. So, you know, you want to be able to provide insight that maybe someone who's in the business day to day doesn't That is what I think creates a healthy dynamic at the board.

See, on the topic for educating women and advancing women in the workforce, you have been very involved on that front. You're involved with Onboarding Women, a nonprofit that helps ready women to take seats in corporate boards. What tactical advice do you have on how to support women throughout the stages in their career and throughout levels of organization, not just at the senior-most executive levels?

Well, we could take that question a lot of ways. You know, you see your career moving towards wanting to be involved at the board level. The best thing you can do throughout your career is to have a great career. So that is what ultimately gets you in the boardroom. How do we support women in that? That is something that, you know, I think I have tried to be very intentional about in my entire career, but a lot of it comes down to Understanding what makes that individual excited and happy and how can we help further that in their day-to-day operations. And what I mean by that is if someone works for me, I can't tell them that I'm going to make them a huge amount of money on the stock price. I hope that happens. But what I can tell them is that I'm going to get them their next job if they give me their best self. So, you know, trying to understand what their objectives are in their career and then helping them work to achieve those objectives. That might mean having them get an experience outside of their exact space, and then just really setting them up for where they want their career to go. So I think that's such a crucial piece to be looking at when you're in your mid-level is how do you expand what you're learning so that you can really think about what is that next job you want and what do I need to put on my resume to get there? And then working with your manager to do that. You know, you're gonna get in the boardroom because you had an amazing career, but then there are some functions at the board level that I think the board should be very cognizant of. Meaning the board should not bring in people when they're nominating a new board member. It shouldn't just be, hey, I know this person, let's bring that person in. I think it is very important to look around the table understand what skill sets are there and what skill sets you don't have, and then do a real search, um, outside of just who are friendlies. And then whenever I get a call for a board seat, I take the call. I don't have any more time to do another one, but I always recommend someone in my network for that slot that, that search can look at. And I try and make sure it's usually someone with a diverse background.

I also realized we didn't get the chance to ask you what's next for Hope.

I am pretty happy doing what I'm doing. So what's next for Hope is doing what I'm doing. I'm loving my public company board work and I'm loving my journeys with entrepreneurs and Madrona. So it feels like a really fabulous marriage right now. It feels like I have a tremendous amount to learn in order to do it well, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I mean, when you invest in small companies, These companies are on a long, long journey. Starting a company takes years and years and years. I am excited to join that journey with them and continue on that path.

You've mentioned many people throughout our conversation today who've had an impact on you, such as your parents and John Stanton, amongst other names. And our hero question on The Room is specifically pointed at trying to highlight women who have had impact on everybody's career, which sometimes gets overlooked. And so we'd love to ask you this final closing question of who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you in your professional career?

It's a hard question. And I hope that it's an answer that's changing today. But as I think about my journey, I was always the only woman in the room. I actually can't think of an executive team where there was another woman in that space with me. So, you know, I view mentorships very organic, meaning I never have sought out a mentor and said, I want you to be my mentor. They've happened because we've worked closely together. We've gone through something together. Those people that I worked with closely were men. And when I think about the boardrooms I sat in throughout my career, they were men and they were wonderful men. They were men that helped me. They helped me craft my journey. They supported me, but very few, in fact, I can't think of any that filled that role that were women. I didn't really need that. I didn't feel like a hole to me. I felt very supported. I did have my moments of struggle. We talked a few of about a few of them where I did have challenges because I was a woman. And there were several more that we didn't touch on, but overall I found those mentors and those people that took a chance on me, they, they were men.

I wish you were on my board, Hope, because clearly you both have just such incredible insights to your past experiences and compassion yourself in terms of the journey and being able to thread the needle for some tough love as well as being a champion of your founders. It's been such a treat to have you here.

Thank you.

Thank you for Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room. If you enjoyed our conversation, please like and subscribe. Stay tuned for next week's inspiring guest airing Tuesdays at 7 AM Pacific. See you soon.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The5AC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.