You may be one of the millions of people who purchased a new tablet or upgraded your smart phone or computer recently. Now you need to migrate all your data to your new device. You also want to make sure you have access to all the same information – your most recent versions – regardless of which device you are on, and that your digital data is secure. Enter the Cloud. The Cloud is a hot topic these days, in part because it makes solving these access and security issues so easy.
With the Cloud, your entire library of work and personal files are available to you at a moment’s notice. If you’ve got an Internet connection, you’ve got a mobile office. Just log on to your Cloud service from any device and you’re good to go. And if you don’t have an Internet connection, you can work offline and rest assured that everything will be synced automatically the next time you connect.
And since devices come and go, and crashes happen, the importance of an automatic, continuous, real-time backup for all of your files is of paramount importance in today’s world.
So whether you’re already enjoying the benefits of the “Cloud” or not, here are ten tips to get you started or to improve your experience:
Choose a Cloud service compatible with PC and/or Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry Operating systems. The Cloud is about making sure you have access to your digital data. You may change your mind over time as to what type of device you want to use or you may add new devices to your portfolio. Be sure to choose a cloud service that has software for ALL the devices you might use – PC and/or Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.
A key part of parenting is being a role model for your children. I believe that one of the reasons I have been comfortable with my decision to work full-time while my children are growing up is that that is what I saw my mother do. I never felt like it was a negative having a mom who worked. In fact I was (am) proud of her and even felt special talking about her work in school and with my friends. I think its no coincidence that my husband is comfortable with this situation as well – his mother worked – at first as a teacher, then as an attorney, then as a college professor and part-time judge. In fact my mother is still working, half of her time as medical-director of a drug rehabilitation program and part time seeing patients in the office.
So part of this cycle relates to our daughters and daughters-in-law. Do we want them to feel empowered to and comfortable pursuing a career? Do we want them to be financially self-sufficient? Independent even if they never marry or something happens to their husband or marriage?
Beyond role modeling there is also the exposure to mom’s specific career. In my case – with both my parents as physicians that exposure was not as much about business but I certainly learned a lot about medicine. I learned how doctor’s offices were run, I learned about many diseases and treatments because my parents discussed medical issues, including answering our questions, frequently around the dinner table. I worked two summers in a nursing home where my dad was medical director. Had I wanted to be a doctor this would have been a huge leg up.
In our house, the dinner table discussions about our day are much more about business – how Steve and I are building our companies, what issues are we facing. It is a great opportunity for the kids to learn about what life is like in a silicon valley company and how we handle the issues of the day. In our house they have 2 sources of this information. As the kids became teenagers these conversations were great for me too as they are discerning consumers of technology! I’ll never forget the evening while I was working for Yahoo – we had just started hearing the rumors of the impending launch of Gmail with unlimited storage – Yahoo was still offering 5mb (yes the “m” is correct). Todd quickly pronounced that we would lose all our customers if we didn’t up our offer!
I think it is no accident that two of the very small number of Fortune 500 women CEO’s grew up in the same household as sisters. They were brought up on a diet of business skills and were encouraged early on to be ambitious. All of my children have spent time in my offices over the years. Mostly brief visits – stopping in while I catch up on a few things. Todd and Margot actually did some office and tech support work during summers – I think this is a great chance to learn about the business world.
More generally, I think my children got an extra dose of independence training – starting young with getting dressed and making school lunches themselves to starting homework and problem solving after school. I believe their nannies and (in Derek’s case) daycare experiences exposed them to new people and ideas and challenged and therefore developed their communication skills. At a more subtle level I think that seeing a mom as a working person confirms for children the sense that people—especially women—are multidimensional. Studies have also shown that both boys and girls have more egalitarian attitudes towards marriage, family and men and women’s roles when their mothers were employed which could help their future marital happiness. Finally, I believe that having a working mom helps prepare children for their future where both they and their spouses are statistically likely to both be working.
When we discuss the challenges of balancing family and a career and the desirability for a mother to work full-time outside the home we often hear about the negatives. In my experience as a daughter and a mother I must say that I see many positives. I’m not talking about the ones the psychologists study and report on (e.g. that children of working moms have higher reading scores and better social skills – there are negatives on this front as well). What is on my mind are the specifics – what specific experiences did my children have because of my career.
The one that is most obvious for our family is travel and international experiences. I was interested in international relations since college and international marketing and sales since I started my business career. When I started my career here in the valley I wasn’t able to find a position focused on international marketing from the start so I began in product and channel management but I was looking for international opportunities from the start.
I worked quite a bit with the European sales teams at Informix then when Informix started its Latin American division I joined. I ended up moving to Sao Paolo for six months to open the Informix office and Derek (6.5), Todd (4) and our nanny Susan came with me. It was an incredible experience for all of us. The boys got to experience school in Brazil, play on a local youth soccer team and briefly live an urban lifestyle. We traveled every other weekend all over the country. The school was an international one so we made friends with people from all over the world.
Steve and his partner Gus Spanos had just formed a company to purchase 2 Miller beer distribution franchises so they were incredibly busy. Of course the separation was very hard on all of us, especially the boys, but Steve was able to come down and spend 2 weeks with us in the middle. We took a great trip to the Amazon and several other regions of Brazil.
I wrote previously about my experiences traveling with Margot in Latin America. I continue to take the kids with me when possible. Margot joined me at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona two years ago and last year Adam, Margot came with me to Tokyo. We’ve also had innumerable international visitors to our home for dinners and meetings and the kids have gotten to know them. I believe that there is something different and more educational being exposed to a foreign country and culture when connecting through work (or volunteering) rather than simply as a tourist. You get to know people and about their day-to-day lives – not just the tourist sites, although those are great too which brings me to my next point…
There is that second order benefit. I’ve racked up literally millions of frequent flyer miles – it’s been several years since I received this card in the mail. Steve has earned his share of miles as well and that has funded the air part of a good many of our trips – South Africa, Vietnam, Europe, Peru – you name it. Of course there is the downside to all this travel. Time away from home is not without consequences – there are things I’ve missed and it’s hard on the spouse at home. But even that has some benefits – the kids learn a bit of independence and see that Dad is competent to keep them fed and productive and even tucked in with bedtime stories at night.
It’s hard to know exactly how these experiences have affected the kids. I have to believe, though, that given how small our world is becoming, familiarity with other places, people and cultures will only be more important. Derek and Todd, as physicians will be taking care of people in a country where more than 10% of the population are immigrants – that percentage is certainly much higher for their likely patient populations during residency. Margot is considering a foreign language major (among many possibilities). Adam is enjoying Spanish 3-honors – who knows where this can lead 🙂
Last week was a rite of passage in our house. Adam got his drivers license! Our former Rabbi at Beth Am used to call this the “Car Mitzvah” acknowledging that this milestone is probably as important to the teenager (and parents) as the “Bar Mitzvah”. Joking aside, given the nature of our cd copying suburban lifestyle this milestone represents a significant change in the parent/child relationship. Much more independence for the teen and actually more independence (and worry) for the parent.
Adam has been awaiting this moment with excitement. He shows no ambivalence on the matter – he wants to drive himself rather than have mom or dad chauffeur. I, on the other hand, feel a bit more mixed – a little nervous, a little sad that I’ll miss out car chats but, oh my gosh – after being a chauffeur for 26 years…freedom! I still don’t think I’ve fully internalized this new status. Saturday night Steve and I were discussing our plans for the morning – my exercise class, his pickup basketball game – I was mentally girding for the “who drives to Sunday school” argument. I started to explain why I thought Steve should drive that day and he laughed – Adam would drive himself – hooray!
As with many transitions this one is bittersweet. I like being needed by my children (I guess if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t have had 4 of them). Car time is a great time to chat – some of the time is mundane but some of the time it is serious and significant. Maybe the fact that mom is looking at the road (so no eye contact) and that the ride/conversation has a known end time makes it easier to bring up sensitive topics. But not all of the driving time is so “meaningful” – like the time last month when I needed to leave work early to drive 20 minutes to school, pick him up, spend 5 minutes of driving him to guitar, spend the next hour on a conference call in the guitar lesson parking lot and then go home. Drives like this are necessary but the parenting ROI is not very high.
So now is my opportunity to make the most of this transition – to enjoy the logistical freedom but pay attention in the day-to-day to have quality non-driving time.
I know it’s been said before but I do believe that this really is the year – the tipping point – for the cloud to go mainstream.
My “aha” moment was last week. I was invited to be on two local TV shows – one here in San Francisco, one in Phoenix. For both the topic was basically about organizing your digital life using the cloud. This is the time of year for New Years resolutions about getting organized so timing is perfect for that topic. The reality is that the cloud is an excellent tool to help people get organized (more on that in another post)
But back to the “aha” – it occurred last week when I was in the studio for the filming. It was the 3:00 show 7Live hosted by Brian Copeland. Here’s how they describe themselves. “We take an unconventional look at the news that has people talking including tech, pop culture, entertainment and politics.” The topics that preceded me were Iowa Caucus results, marriage proposal on the jumbotron at the UCLA game, and a dating service. I was followed by a live a cappella group. Watching all of this in the studio it hit me that others are seeing the cloud not just for the tech nerds (like me) but for them including the most non tech nerd daytime TV demographic. It was great to hear my non-techie friends that tuned in react to the show. They are going to try it. After all – they have the key ingredients – devices and data.
We are now pitching SugarSync for more of these shows and the response has been enthusiastic – I’ll keep this blog updated but I will be interviewed live next week on shows in Sacramento, Chicago and Dallas.
When we talk about entrepreneurs – a certain image comes to mind. This person we imagine usually has a few common elements. She takes a tremendous amount of initiative, is willing to take risks and embodies the leadership to bring together the capital and resources for the organization and the management skills to see the initiative through. They will pursue their goal without regard to the resources they currently have yet they must be practical and action-oriented.
With the success and attention garnered by several highly successful entrepreneurs who dropped out of or barely graduated from college to start their companies, we begin to think that that is the typical entrepreneurial model and that, given their youth and relative inexperience, their success was inborn.
The reality though is that – while these young, apparently inborn entrepreneurs are exciting – the data show that they are still rare exceptions, as opposed to the norm, and that in fact entrepreneurs are created by a life full of experiences.
Yesterday I was lucky to be able to do something I had never done before – we took our Stanford alum son, daughter-in-law to be and Adam and Margot to the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix. Unfortunately for Derek and Jess they needed to get back to Boston but the rest of us had a fun family experience. It started with a road trip to Phoenix from Newport. We rented a minivan for the occasion – I must say minivans have come a long way since we owned them when the kids were little. Satellite radio, DVD player, syncing with iPad – the works! Being at the bowl game (my first ever) was an experience – huge crowds, bands at the tailgates, the stadium was intermittent seas of Orange (Oklahoma St.) and Red (Stanford), marching bands, cheerleaders – lots of excitement.
But of course the most exciting part of this outing was the game. It was high-scoring, dominated by two great offenses. The score was tied at 38-38 with seconds to go. Stanford had a chance to win the game in regulation, but a field-goal attempt by freshman Jordan Williamson was wide. He also missed a 43-yarder in overtime. My iPhone video of the attempt is here.
The obvious focus after the game was on the kicker – he had the chance to win the game and didn’t. Of course Andrew Luck took the high road in media interviews – “The media tends to want a scapegoat or a hero and that’s just not the case in any football game” after all it was a full game of plays that put them in that situation. I am certainly no sports expert. Truth be told, I couldn’t name all the positions on the field in either offense or defense despite being a loyal fan of my three son’s many years of football. But I know enough to know that the coach had a choice – he could go to his experienced quarterback to make either a passing play (he completed 27 of 31) or run the ball (average gain of 5 yards per play) or ask an inexperienced freshman to go for the field goal in front of a stadium full of screaming people.
A big part of leadership is knowing not just what to do but who to do it. There are many difficult and risky tasks we need our teams to do. In the case of SugarSync it might be to make a change to a database that manages critical customer data, move datacenter equipment, meet with an important customer, review financials with an investor, or speak with a journalist to name a few. All of these actions can have dramatic consequences for our company. It is my responsibility to make sure the right person is doing those tasks. Invariably they are assigned to our most experienced, proven and consistently performing employees. Not the young hotshot new hire (who by the way hopefully will be the experienced, proven contributor soon). Why go with the proven performer? – they are likely to be successful in the crunch times as they have been in the many events that got your there. We are lucky at SugarSync to have a great team of such experienced players.
This last week I had an interesting experiment with the sufficiency of the cloud. Somehow, in the rush of packing up for our road trip to Orange County I managed to forget my laptop at home. I suppose one of the downsides of having such a light laptop (Macbook Air) is that its absence is not palpable and I didn’t notice until we had driven too far to go back home. I figured it wasn’t a big deal, I had my smartphone, my iPad and access to many other computers – Steve, Margot and Adam all had their laptops with them and since we are on vacation they would not need them most of the time. I could access my work email via webmail and all my files would be available to me using SugarSync. This was a good test of the cloud to get work done.
What work did I need to do? SugarSync was officially on vacation this week but our board meeting just recently got moved up from second to first week of January. The first board meeting of the year is when we review our annual operating plan – this is an important meeting and Peter (our CFO) and I were finalizing the detailed financial model and operating plans. These are relatively complex documents – linked spreadsheets, presentations etc.
The main problem with my plan arose with the internet connectivity. We were staying in a wonderful hotel on the Newport coast – there was wifi but it was very slow (or at least slow when divided by the holiday quota of guests). My connectivity backup 4g mifi was slow as well – forget 4g and 3g was limited. So bottom line I could work using the browser but very very slowly. Similarly, accessing my spreadsheet and presentation documents from SugarSync was doable but painfully slow.
By contrast when Todd brought my laptop 2 days later that same limited connectivity was much less of a problem. Email would upload and download in the background. Ditto for the files in the folders I was sharing with Peter. I could work on my files and email with the speed of local data – the cloud was there powering my laptop but I didn’t have to wait every time I clicked and wanted to open a file or email.
My conclusion from this experience was that while the cloud and internet access enabled me to function without my laptop I could work much more efficiently and enjoyably with it. Perhaps this is why we are not yet seeing rapid adoption of Chromebook style computers.
A friend sent me this Forbes article – 30 Under 30 – with the question – why the focus on youth? It is a really good question. My first thought when I read the article was where was I and what was I doing before I turned the dreaded 30, after which, implicitly in this article – one’s accomplishments become theoretically less impressive.
So let’s turn the clock back to just before 30. December 1993 – I had three children (Adam was born when I was over the hill at 31) ages eight, five and six months. I was working at Informix as a sales manager for the Central American, Caribbean and Andean regions of Latin America. Steve had just bought two Miller beverage distributorships (in Watsonville) and was finishing law school at Berkeley. We lived in a ranch house in a family-oriented neighborhood of Los Altos, CA. The kids were doing well – the boys immersed in school, sports and music and Margot was thriving and, thankfully, sleeping through the night. Life was great but “x” busy. I put an “x” because even in synonym.com I can’t find a word that adequately qualifies busy.
The physical energy and lack of sleep required to keep up with three kids and a job with intensive travel is something that could be hard for me to maintain today. However, the mental energy and stress of a startup is something that I would not want to have shared with my young children. So for me I’m glad for the order in which the different stages of my family and the different stages of my career occurred. More importantly, I always knew I wanted to have several (well actually four) children. Waiting until one’s mid 30’s (or later) post entrepreneurial success to try to have a family is playing with fire and sadly I’ve seen many of my female colleagues get burned. You can be an entrepreneur at any age. You can’t get pregnant at any age. And BTW, one can maybe be a dad at any age but is that what you want?
In my case, however, I was not deliberately working in a big company rather than being an entrepreneur. Frankly it didn’t occur to me to jump ship at that point. I was on an incredibly exciting and steep leaning curve at work. Learning sales (I had switched from marketing to carrying a quota), learning to do business internationally, learning fluency in Spanish and Portuguese (for more details on the logistics see here). As long as the learning stayed steep and the company environment positive I was happy to stay (It turns out that I am using all of those skills today, but that was a previous post). So while I am enjoying entrepreneurship more than big company life, those big company jobs were pretty exciting, I developed skills, networks and great friendships.
Our American society, not just in business, does glorify youth. I probably will not be able to change this and anyhow, I must acknowledge that it is jaw-droppingly impressive what the 30 people under 30 in the article above have accomplished in such a short amount of time. There may be some advantage to youth in their ability to imagine or identify major innovations. Perhaps because they have learned fewer limitations or perhaps there may be some innovation advantage to having lived only in the Internet-enabled world.
Nonetheless, here is what my personal value system says we should glorify for entrepreneurs. It should be simply what they have done and how they did it – not how old they were whey they accomplished it. Did they create a product or service that improved people’s lives? Did they make a great return for their investors? Did they treat their customers fairly and with respect? Did they take care of their employees and support their personal and family goals? I think the most important criteria is not how old or young you are or the color of your skin, religion or gender. Did you build something of lasting value? Were you (and your team) mensches* in doing so. That is my goal at SugarSync.
*Mensch (Yiddish: מענטש mentsh, from German: Mensch “human being”) means “a person of integrity and honor”
Last week was an interesting one in the “why aren’t there more” and “should there or shouldn’t there be more” women CEO’s. Lots of posts and a lot of anger on all sides and finally some humor. For a sampling see here:
I got super turned off by the anger and then fortunately a few rational posts were written and published so I decided to move on from this flurry. The fact that I had a super busy week was probably part of it. I spoke at a conference in Half Moon Bay and we are knee deep in 2012 planning at SugarSync.
To top off this busy week I had committed to attend an event sponsored by Dell, the “Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN).” They had invited me to a big event they organized in Brazil last spring. Although typically eager for a chance to go back to Brazil I couldn’t make that trip work in my schedule. Last weeks event was logistically easier – a cocktail party in San Francisco, but I must say by Thursday evening, I was pretty tired and the idea of a networking event where I knew nobody seemed a stretch. Fortunately I HATE the idea of cancelling last minute so I didn’t.
Dell’s VP of Corporate Marketing, Kelly McGinnis, hosted the networking event at her home. There were probably about 30-40 women there. Well, first off, it was an incredibly friendly group. Plus, it turns out that when nobody at the party knows each other it’s very easy to meet people and strike up conversation. It seemed like each person I met was nicer and even more interesting than the last person. Many good business connections were being made all over the place. I talked to several potential partners on the business development side, agencies, and several of the women’s companies were even interested in SugarSync for Business accounts. The women there were at all stages of growing their companies and their families and lots of advice was shared on both topics ☺. Dell is organizing the next major DWEN event in India and expecting the quality of the attendees to be as good as this event I really look forward to attending.
Kudos to Dell who is an important business partner of ours for sponsoring this program. Lots of business was getting done which certainly in a small way and possibly in a large way helped the women entrepreneurs and their companies. Most importantly, this event was a good reminder to focus on doing not whining – better results happen and it’s a lot more fun!
Laura Yecies | The Kitchen Sync 