From Here to Autonomy

BlogHer'12: It isn't about ME?

As the chatter about the BlogHer'12 Conference intensifies this week, I find myself in both an enviable and jealous place. Enviable, because I have the first-time luxury of viewing the excitement as others in the community do--in blog posts, on Twitter and across social media--something that Lisa, Elisa, and I try to do but never really get to do while we're onsite at BlogHer.

Jealous, because I am watching from the sidelines this year--36 weeks pregnant. And while confident in my decision to not fly to NYC and run around on my feet all week (like I did at BH'10, 33 weeks pregnant), the kid in me that always wants to be included will be reading about all of your experiences wistfully.

The event team has embarked on their trip to NYC. Our sales team have all flown in and gathered to prepare and experience the event. My co-founders will already have been onsite for a week when the conference begins. I know how it goes--the nonstop rush of speaking, interviews, meetings with sponsors and partners, spontaneous sightings and hugs in the hotel lobby and on the exhibitor floor. Stressful and exhilarating all at the same time.

And yet I sit here quietly, reading only a trickle of conference-related emails (the week of the conference everyone is using email for emergencies only, and there's very little I can do about onsite issues). I've told everyone I am on-call for anything that comes up, trying to be involved and stay out of the way at the same time. As much as I would like to have a stream of updates on Yammer and an always-on live video feed, I will instead have to wonder how the opening is going, how sessions with some of my favorite bloggers were received, how the parties are going--at least until I can read about them on blogs and Twitter.

It's weird.

Last week I was talking to Elisa about the incredible line-up of speakers and events she and her team managed to amass this year.

"Yeah," she joked. "This year really wasn't the one to miss."

I reminded her that we think that every year. But then she had to go and confirm a live video welcome from President Obama himself.

Rub it in, Elisa. Rub. It. In.

I was at a dinner in San Francisco last week--enjoying some local events and trying to compensate for what I won't be doing in NYC. And I was speaking to another entrepreneur who has successfully built a media/tech conference brand.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm holding up. It's just so hard, with the conference next week and all. It will be hard not being there, but everyone's managing, and we'll be ready…"

"Actually," he said. "I was talking about the baby."

Made sense, given I was standing in front of him--in person--and quite obviously on the brink of welcoming a child into the world. I was a little bit embarrassed, actually, that I'd been so in my head, and so obsessed with where I WASN'T, that I could not acknowledge the gift of what has been with me all this time: another daughter.

Early in my pregnancy I had an awkward conversation with my doctor, sharing that while I knew my due date was in August, with her permission I would consider going to "this conference my company puts on in New York," despite knowing the stress I would be putting myself and my family (and possibly a planeful of innocent bystanders) under.

My doctor knows I'm an entrepreneur and co-founded a company. "Couldn't you just move your event?" she asked. "It's your company, right?"

Inside I guffawed, knowing how far in advance we plan BlogHer; knowing we'd have somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 people coming this year. Seeing how this "event" has transcended beyond anything that one, three, or fifty people could plan alone. We work hard on it, but it is a foundation, not the whole experience. It is, as Elisa loves to say, the event the community built.

"You have to understand," I replied, needing to remind myself, "This event is SO not about me."

On working and having babies

Bless you Marissa Mayer for taking the helm of Yahoo while being six months pregnant. I'm not joking!

While you are hardly the first CEO/Mama to exist, you took the job at the height of your career, which just happened to coincide with those years when mothers/gynecologists/childbearing friends start to needle with good intentions about the approach of the "cliff"--you know the one; when good ovarian eggs suddenly become less easy to come by. You were in a position of power, and already pregnant, when a board concluded that they needed your talents. You didn't need to be apologetic or cryptic about your intentions to have a baby when things were less hectic, or when the time was "right." You know the cosmic joke: The time is never right.

Like you, I had my first baby in my later 30s and will be expecting my second daughter in just a few weeks, at age 40. I must confess, while I was in the "thinking about" stages of building a family (something I hadn't even contemplated until age 36, as I was quite busy starting a company and not thinking about making babies), I wondered if others might think I wasn't serious about my career, now that I was having kids. I was also uncomfortable--having done many things professionally at a relatively young age--being in the position of the newbie and asking 25-year-old moms how to get a kid to latch properly.

Even now, when I go to executive functions while very pregnant, I am aware that some people have judgements. Recently one male exec said to me, "Aren't you a bit old to have kids now?" I wasn't sure if he meant biologically old, or too far in my career to have to now manage babies at the height of their neediness. Women who were sitting near me insisted that the question was nonsense--women are having babies later now, after they've established their careers. But when I asked them when they had their children they said that their kids were older or even grown up. They got the baby-making phase of their lives "out of the way" early in their careers.

When I learned I was pregnant with my first child I agonized about whom to tell and when. I reasoned that bearing children was my right, a right that plenty of male executives exercised. At the same time I made plans to work at full speed--including travel--up to the very last possible moment. I pushed myself harder than usual in order to prove I wasn't less committed to my career now that I was going to be a parent. I took mental note of all the powerful women execs who were parents and wondered when they managed to fit the kids in. You see, there isn't a lot of how-to out there about having babies and high-powered careers. You can read a lot about preparing for little sleep and negotiating a maternity leave, but so many of the women I talked to confided that they winged it, often kept their Mommy status on the down-low, or even traveled for business abroad with baby and nanny in tow to make the transition unnoticeable to colleagues and bosses.

But even with an air-tight system of nannies, assistants and various professionals there to help, there remains the inevitable identity shift that occurs when you become someone's Mama. I recall being on a flight back from New York to San Francisco (one of many I took the first year of my daughter's life) and realizing that, you know what? I'd rather be home tucking her in. You'll be able to rationalize these bouts of momminess and get back to the email at hand, but you can't turn it off indefinitely.

I just read a piece about the various camps of judgement over your move to Yahoo. Some praise your decision of taking a high-profile position while pregnant, and some condemn it. Some argue that with your considerable compensation package you can hire all the help you need to nurture your baby while you handle business. I suppose that's true. But even in these scenarios that many working moms could only dream about, there's the biological tug that you will feel being a mom that makes a demanding job even more demanding. It will sometimes feel like a sacrifice, even when you are lucky enough to afford help. Even knowing that you don't want to be a part- or full-time stay-at-home Mom, you will still wonder what it's like to spend more time with your child.

I don't mean to say you should feel guilty about your choice. Frankly, I would have made the same choice to step up up the career if I'd been offered. I'm only saying that as a Mom and CEO, life won't be pangless. You'll get pangs in the weirdest places--in boardrooms, in TV interviews. You will feel a little lessened when you perceive that your kid laughs a bit more with his caregiver than he does with you. You might sense that you are not as bonded to him as you were when he was just born. And you won't take yourself so seriously when you remember that earlier that day, you were wiping someone's butt.

But I congratulate you on your choice to step it up. And I hope that, while you don't owe anyone details on how you are managing this choice, that you will be open to talking about it and sharing your experiences with other working moms.

A Woman in Tech/Media's Take on Yahoo's Hiring of Marissa Mayer as CEO

I've had 24 hours to marinate on the news of Marissa Mayer's appointment as CEO of Yahoo. Initially I was shocked by the immediacy of it all--Mayer resigned from Google Monday and started her new post at Yahoo! today, just days after reports of Jason Kilar taking himself out of consideration and Ross Levinsohn seeming the logical next choice. It seemed a Hail Mary move to save a company that was stroking out in the press; a shot of adrenaline thrust into the heart of an Internet giant that could either save it, or leave it a near-corpse, damaged from all of the half-and poorly executed experiments of well-meaning CEOs past.

Perhaps "near-corpse" is too dramatic. Yahoo is still a content and advertising powerhouse. Mayer's selection is generally being described as a good thing. Some industry experts are even making cautious comparisons of Mayer's hire to Steve Jobs's appointment as CEO of Apple--finally a product visionary to help bring Yahoo back to its cool, techie roots.

Ah, were it as simple as following the Jobs playbook. Being a female co-founder of a digital media start-up, I know I should be dancing the Hora with my fellow entrepreneuses; another woman from our Silicon Valley hometown has tipped the "Women in Real Power" scales slightly more in our favor. But I hesitate, not because I do not have faith in Mayer's ability, but because I am a businesswoman. And I have a few reservations.

1. I do not immediately subscribe to the "product trumps all" argument. I thought Marc Andreesen was quite convincing in his enthusiasm for Mayer's appointment. But even he admitted surprise over the Yahoo! Board's selection, he diplomatically reasoned, because he was surprised they landed such a talented fish in the public spectacle that had become the search for Yahoo!'s next CEO. Still, he was surprised.

I agree that for media/tech companies product is important. Rely too much on content alone, or someone else's technology, and you become irrelevant. But (and let me just disclose my media bias right here--a professional hazard) let's not discount where Yahoo is still making money--in content. Mayer has huge chops developing cool-ass products, but there are certain mundanities that she'll also have to address, like the myriad content businesses and programming that Yahoo! serves up every day to pay the bills. 

Clearly, the Yahoo board's decision to hire an engineer to helm the company indicates a larger emphasis on product. And I applaud the longer-term thinking, and the pure ambitiousness of yanking out the wiring, even the wires that work, to restore Yahoo as a tech innovator. But I had my money on Levinsohn to lead. How inside the box of me. Must be all those years having to earn revenue by quarter.

I hope that the learnings gained from Yahoo's prominence as a content company don't go to waste. Yahoo still needs partners, and content sources, and an impression base, to get it through its identity crisis. The jury was out on Scott Thompson's plan to drive consumer commerce into the mix before he had to resign as Yahoo's CEO in May, but it was a move that could have made sense, given social technology is highlighting how easy it is to corral purchase recommendations, and mobile tech is making it stupid simple to purchase on the spot. There was money being left on the table that Yahoo could easily swipe.

I think that Mayer will have to address the collective whiplash remaining employees inevitably feel from having survived multiple rounds of business strategy, and unlike in Google's early days, where there was nowhere to go but where others hadn't, Mayer will have to respect some legacy businesses, even while renovating them.

2. Being a CEO is hard. Not like I know from experience or anything. But I do have a business partner who is our CEO, who came from the product side.  She is a testimony to how product geeks CAN run companies, but it ain't a day in the lab, where you get to wax philosophical about product. It's a series of painful decisions based on hard truths and counterforces, and some things you'd rather not deal with.

Before Mayer was hired, Ross Levinsohn had put some nasty lawsuit business with Facebook behind him. What fun. While I'm sure Mayer can handle icky things like investor relations, will she want to? Or will she have the presence of mind to hire the corporate talent of a few suity types to do this while she focuses on her strengths? 

Also, there's a new level of mudslinging that occurs when you are the CEO that you don't necessarily experience when you are the anointed badass of product, or even when you are the 20th employee of one of the most successful companies in history. I don't dare suggest Mayer does not have thick skin; I suggest that this is another facet to leading a major corporation that requires skillz. And it remains to be seen how she will handle it.

Like I said, no Horas just yet. Just a pat on the back and a sincere "Good Luck!"

Reservations aside, I think that Mayer's decision to take the job is a no-brainer. Marc Andreesen thought it was such a coup that Mayer would be willing to helm a damaged company, but isn't that the point of taking the job? What determined powerhouse executive wants to take on a perfectly run company, where others will only compare your performance to that of the person who led before you? Here, the board, the employees, the public, is begging for change. She doesn't have legacy founders to contend with like she had at Google. Founders who provided Mayer with the opportunity of a lifetime but couldn't possibly provide the continued growth that she was ready for. Yahoo! offers Mayer the chance to implement her vision--the most meaningful thing someone who has already been successful at a successful company could want. 

The best opportunity at this point is one at which she might fail, but fail her own way. 

A final note, from someone about to have her second child in a month: Kudos to the Yahoo! board and the press who didn't harp on Mayer's pregnancy, or suggest that it would negatively affect her ability to lead a company. It's not easy having babies and raising small children while running any company, let alone Yahoo!, but if we women keep anticipating others' discomfort with our choice to have families, we will take ourselves out of the running for such high-profile roles completely. 

I know I've taken to task the media's oversimplified interpretation of Sheryl Sandberg's "Don't Leave Before You Leave" philosophy, and applauded Anne-Marie Slaughter's assertion that maybe powerful women don't NEED to jump on every prestigious opportunity that comes our way, but for those of us who do want these opportunities AND have babies I am encouraged by how this acceptance of Mayer's choices is playing out.