Magdalena Yesil was the first investor and founding board member at Salesforce, a company that now has a $200 billion market cap. She is the Founder of Broadway Angles and serves on the SoFi, Smartsheet, and Zuora board. In a conversation with Annie, Magdalena shares her experience breaking into Silicon Valley, including stories about how Steve Jobs and Marc Benioff shaped her career. She describes how persistence and resilience let you take bold steps forward.
Magdalena Yesil was the first investor and founding board member at Salesforce, a company that now has a $200 billion market cap. She is the Founder of Broadway Angles and serves on the SoFi, Smartsheet, and Zuora board. In a conversation with Annie, Magdalena shares her experience breaking into Silicon Valley, including stories about how Steve Jobs and Marc Benioff shaped her career. She describes how persistence and resilience let you take bold steps forward.
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“The piece that a lot of people miss is that if you are going to go get advocates and you are asking them to basically be putting their own necks on the line for you, then you need to think, ‘what will I do for them?’ Life is always a two-way street. ‘If you are advocating for me, how do I return the favor?’” - Magdalena Yesil
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:19) - Magdalena’s career success with networking
*(13:58) - Attending Stanford and breaking into Silicon Valley
*(20:46) - Experience working with Apple’s Steve Jobs
*(26:57) - First investor and founding board member at Salesforce
*(33:29) - Magdalena’s approach to advocates and networking
*(37:48) - How to overcome obstacles and earn acceptance
*(44:58) - Final thoughts
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Sponsor:
Who Got Me Here is brought to you by Connect The Dots, mapping professional relationships so you can find the strongest connections to the people and companies you want to reach. Visit ctd.ai to learn more.
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Links:
[00:00:00] Narrator: We all have that person in our lives who seems to be connected to everyone. You can be intentional about your network while still being human. In order to build strong connections with others, you really have to be strongly connected with yourself. I believe that meaningful networking... has been the single greatest contributor to my good luck. You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.
[00:00:28] Annie Riley: Welcome to Who Got Me Here, a podcast about making connections matter. I'm here today with Magdalena Yesil. An entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author, and board member. Magdalena was the first investor and founding board member at Salesforce.
She's been an investor at U. S. Venture Partners and is the founder of Broadway Angels, a group of women angel investors. And now she serves on the board of SoFi, Smartsheet, Zora, and other tech companies. And Magdalena is also the author of Power Up: How Smart Women Win in the New Economy. Magdalena, you have had such a great range of experiences in your life and done so many interesting, impactful things.
Thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome to Who Got Me Here.
Magdalena Yesil: Thank you for having me.
Annie Riley: Thank you for joining us. So this show is all about making connections matter and a lot of people think of who got me here and connections as being synonymous with networking. Before we hit record, you were telling me that you have some thoughts about networking as a concept and I'd love to hear more.
[00:01:37] Magdalena Yesil: So I think that a lot of people think networking for networking's sake is really important. So they go to, you know, happy hours and get-togethers over wine. And I feel that if you are going, trying to network. Without something very specific in your mind, you probably are going to spend a lot of hours, probably will have some good wine, maybe some good hors d'oeuvres, but will not necessarily walk out with relationships that really matter.
So my attitude is that If you're going to spend your time, which we all have very little of, you should really have very specific goals before you walk into that happy hour, before you go into that reception. Who is going to be there? What is it about them that you really want to get connected to? And what would be a successful evening for you to walk out with?
So, very mindful, very directed in networking, I think is what I would recommend, and otherwise just go hang out with your friends. I love that
[00:02:48] Annie Riley: because it's all about real authentic connections, right? Not networking for networking's sake, but, uh, to build real relationships that actually have an impact. I, you know, you've had an amazing career in researching you for this conversation.
I've just been blown away by all the different things that you have accomplished and done, and just. you know, how far, uh, of a journey you've taken over the course of your career from, from when you were just starting out until now, I guess, you know, the show is called Who Got Me Here. And in the intro, we talked about here for you is a board member, an author, an investor.
How do you define what here is for you? And in sort of the phrase, who got me here, what is here for you?
[00:03:39] Magdalena Yesil: Here is being happy today. All of those are, you know, external. One day I might be a board member, one day I might be an author, one day I might be an entrepreneur, but those, they don't define me. What defines me is what I'm doing today, how I'm spending my time, who am I spending my time with.
And I do think that, um, I'm very, very happy because I've had You know, a career that's been, yes, from an outside looking in, successful, but also internally, for me, very rewarding in what I and the people that I've worked with in the relationships that I've built. So for me, those are incredibly important.
In some ways, much more important than, you know, Did I get that job? Did I get that position? Did I get that salary?
[00:04:29] Annie Riley: When you look back on the career that you've had, who are one or two of those relationships that stand out to you as having been some of the most meaningful, the most impactful relationships that you've had over the course of
[00:04:43] Magdalena Yesil: your career?
Well, there's no way I cannot, you know, state the name of a man named Dan Lynch. Dan Lynch is a man that I started two companies with, back to back. Before meeting Dan, I was a very junior entrepreneur, really didn't even know what I was doing. Dan at the time was significantly more senior than me, significantly more accomplished than me, significantly more experienced than me, and it was really hitching my wagon to Dan.
And using him as my locomotive that enabled me to, you know, kind of have my lucky break. People talk about lucky breaks. And what was so significant about Dan was that no matter, you know, and things didn't always work out for us. I mean, we had some very dark days, very, very hard days, but he always Always was in a good mood, smiley, always said it doesn't matter, it's fine, we'll do fine even if things don't work out.
Our relationship never got jeopardized. It was always based on, you know, it's important that we like working together and if we can accomplish what we want to do, great, but if we can't, we still like each other. A lot of, uh, relationships, when they hit hard times, they kind of fall apart, especially in the business world.
Our relationship was, you know, strong and steady, regardless of what the outcome. Lucky for us that the outcomes were good. But I've learned a lot from that man, and I'm forever grateful to him.
[00:06:26] Annie Riley: That's amazing. And how did you first get to know Dan? Because I heard you tell a story on another podcast about how you kind of got into entrepreneurship by accident almost.
And you know, nowadays, the life of founding a company, I think, can be very glamorized. A lot of people really aspire to be an entrepreneur. And I heard you say that. You know, you kind of fell into it because you were looking for a job. How did, you know, that relationship with Dan and that founding experience come to be?
Had you already known each other? How did you end up starting a company together?
[00:07:03] Magdalena Yesil: Let me first say the way I became an entrepreneur was out of desperation because I couldn't get a job. No one would give me a job. And I knew that I had to make money. I had two kids. And my husband, I think at the time was unemployed, so I had to give myself a job.
It was a down cycle in Silicon Valley, which we have had plenty of. If you're in my age group, you've lived through many of them. We haven't had one in over a decade, decade and a half almost, but I think we are starting one or we are in one right now. But it was a very tough time and I was trying to figure out, you know, how do I make a name for myself?
Because I don't have any name recognition and how do I create expertise in an area? Because I really don't have any expertise. So studying up is one thing I know how to do. And I was studying up this thing called the internet, because I'm now talking about very early days of the commercialization of the internet.
And I financed and executed on a, on a study myself, uh, which was I think the very first study talking about the demographics of who was online. And I presented that in Washington, D. C. at a conference. And at that conference, a young man approached me, multiple people approached me afterwards. It was a small conference.
The community was very small in those days. This gentleman was named Chris Lynch. And we became friends. He was about my age, and he was also playing in my space, so he was actually working at a company that he and I started working at. I was consulting for them, I was helping them. And after we spent some time, like, maybe three, four, or five months together working, he said to me, you know, My dad would really like to meet you because this is something that what I was projecting the industry going.
He said a lot of what you say actually he shares and he truly believes in some of the same hypotheses that you have. So he introduced me to Dan Lin. So that's how I met him. Dan's summary was Okay, so here's our relationship. I am going to make promises to people and you are going to execute on my promises.
So that was the job definition for me. That was the way we were going to run our partnership. And that actually defines, you know, the two startups that we did together.
Interesting.
[00:09:41] Annie Riley: And, you know, I think that is such a cool setup because you're in the room. You're in charge of execution, which you had a track record of, you know, being able to follow through on not just projects, but your own kind of dreams and vision for your life, which we can talk about in a little bit.
And I think that a lot of people might, especially if they have kind of dreams of being a founder or an entrepreneur, see that number two job. Have maybe ego get in the way or kind of question, is this the right place for me, right? If I'm trying to make a name for myself, how do you think about that job of being that right hand person, being the person who's in charge of the execution and the follow through?
[00:10:30] Magdalena Yesil: Well, it's the smartest thing I ever did. If you've come across somebody who you feel can really help accelerate your career. teach you things, take your places. The best thing you can do is hop on that wagon as soon as you possibly can, instead of worrying about, will we have equal ownership? Will we have equal decision making?
You know, how will he treat me? I mean, I, a lot of what younger people than me worry about today, I didn't worry about at all. All I cared about was, wow, I'm going to have an opportunity here. Someone is willing to give me an opportunity, and the only thing I need to do is prove myself. I need to be so much better than his expectations.
So our ownership in the first company was 90 10. He owned 90%, I owned 10%. And to me, that was absolutely right. He had already. Built a company, sold it for, you know, millions of dollars, uh, double digit. I think it, his exit was about 43 million at the time. I did not have, you know, I had a master's in electrical engineering, good for me, but I did not have that kind of career track.
So It was, I'm very, very thankful that I didn't spend too much time trying to figure out, you know, is this fair? Is this right? Am I being taken advantage of? Because I think he would have probably passed on me if I thought too much. And I was willing to take that step, bold step
[00:12:05] Annie Riley: forward. And so you saw that track record that he had.
And I'm curious, what else was it about Dan, that made you know immediately, this is an opportunity for me. This is something I need to hop on the wagon for immediately.
[00:12:22] Magdalena Yesil: Yeah, the other thing was he was a very happy man. I wanted to work with people who were happy, who were not, you know, I mean, he worked incredibly hard.
He had incredibly hard expectations of me, tough expectations of me. It's not like it was a piece of cake, but he was, he was a happy person. He was smiling. If things didn't go well, he said, it's okay. Tomorrow will be a new day. You know, working with someone like that, especially in an entrepreneurial environment where 90 percent of the time things don't go well is such a blessing.
And I knew even if things don't work out. We're going to have a good time together and I'm going to learn a lot in the process.
[00:13:01] Annie Riley: And then that 90 10 split, you know, that 10 percent that again, to your point, some other people, especially today, they might be looking at that, you know, having a lot of questions about it.
What did that 10 percent turn into
[00:13:13] Magdalena Yesil: for you? A lot. I won't tell you exactly what, but it's a lot more than I ever thought in my wildest dreams. And then we went off and started another company after that company went public. So it was a very, you know, it was a very good relationship. Again, you know, I have to credit Dan because Dan needed someone who would be the executor, his right hand person.
Gave me the opportunity, which I'm forever grateful for.
[00:13:42] Annie Riley: Yeah, amazing. And it sounds like the 10 percent became a great outcome financially, but also in so many other ways, uh, in terms of, you know, the learning experience, enriching your life and opening doors to subsequent opportunities. I want to rewind a little bit, if it's all right with you, to the story of how you got to Stanford.
Because I think, especially for a lot of people, Silicon Valley can seem like, you know, a place of insiders and, you know, certainly from the outside looking in, as you mentioned earlier in the conversation, by all accounts. You have made it, you've done so much, and I think people could read your background as one of quote unquote an insider.
And yet from what I've heard about, you know, how you got to Stanford and then, you know, launched your career from there, the experience was anything but. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about how that all transpired and who were the key people along the way to
[00:14:43] Magdalena Yesil: help you get there. I came to Stanford as a transfer student.
I was born and raised in Istanbul. I'm full blooded Armenian who grew up in Turkey and I came to Chicago to go to college not knowing how cold the place was. It was, I think, late October and it started snowing. The only other people who were complaining about the cold were these two guys who happened to be from Northern California.
So when I asked, hey, you're not happy with the cold either, are there any good schools around there? They said, yeah, two, Stanford and Berkeley, because they were from Northern California. I applied to both as a transfer student. And my essay as to why I wanted to go to those schools was that it's very cold where I am.
And when my roommate read that essay, she said, this is ridiculous. Like, you cannot send this in. You have to write a new essay because, I mean, these are good universities and you cannot talk about the only reason why you want to go there is the weather. Doesn't work. But I just wasn't gonna, I didn't have more time.
I didn't have patience. I sent in my applications just the way it was and both universities accepted me. They must have felt incredibly sorry for me. So I showed up at Stanford and I came as a pre med. And I thought I was a really good student in Chicago. Then I hit Stanford pre med and all of a sudden everyone was doing better than me.
And I realized I really wasn't smart at all, comparatively. And I got a C plus at an exam where I got 94 out of 100. I was just shocked that my grade wasn't an A or an A minus. So that day I was sitting at lunch and the man said, How are you doing? The man at the table. And I didn't realize at the time, Americans, when they say, how are you doing?
They don't expect an answer, but I started telling him how I was doing. And I, you know, gave him a long explanation as to my grade and all that. He said, you know what, you should get out of pre med. You should actually be an engineer because us in the engineering school, we do problem sets together. We work together.
It's very collaborative. And I said, okay, so. I took an engineering class, liked it, it was exactly as he said. I switched from pre med to engineering. I'm telling you this story because there's one more, but you'll understand that I actually listened to every bit of advice people would give me when I was at Stanford, because I had no idea.
I was in a foreign country. I didn't have parents here. I didn't have uncles and aunts. So people that were professors would give me advice, even my classmates. Give me advice, I'd take it. Because they knew more than me. I was just an immigrant. So, uh, fast forward, I'm a good student in industrial engineering and then comes junior summer, I can't get a job.
All my classmates get jobs, I can't. And I go to my advisor and I say, why can't I get a job? No one's offering me a summer job. And he says, because you don't have a work permit in America. Why do you think people would give you a job? Because they, they cannot hire you when you graduate. And I said, am I doomed forever?
I'll never get a job in the United States. He said, no, get a master's in electrical engineering. Then a lot of companies will give you jobs. They'll even sponsor you for citizenship. I'm like, oh, okay. Thanks for giving me the hint. I walked across, I went to electrical engineering departments that I need to apply for a master's.
Tell me what I do. They said, what? You don't even have an undergrad coursework done. And I said, just tell me what coursework I should take and I'll take it. I need to get a Master's in Electrical Engineering. That's what my advisor said. So they told me what I needed to do. I took it. I applied. They accepted me because I looked like I was serious about it.
And I got a Master's in Electrical Engineering. And then, sure enough, I got jobs. So the reason for the story is that when you don't know what you're doing, listen to people. You know, listen to people who are trying to help you. Don't you think that you have all the answers? Because if you do, most likely you can only go so far.
But if you listen to people who've been around, who've had the experience, you know, these are all the people who helped me. There are so many of them. They're so... So numerous because they were willing to give me free advice and I was willing to take every little bit they gave me. So that's how I got set up in Silicon Valley, not because I was an insider, but because I was actually willing to listen to those around me.
[00:19:20] Annie Riley: I think that's great advice, especially when you're trying to break into a new industry, a new space, a new company. And in hindsight, if someone's reading your bio, it all looks like, again, from the outside, this decisive action. And based on everything you're sharing, it's actually just kind of making the next best move to kind of make things work, to get where you want to go based on the advice that you're, you're getting.
[00:19:47] Magdalena Yesil: Very well put. I mean, that's exactly right. It's all my whole career. People say, what kind of strategy? I'm like, what strategy? I just put one foot in front of the other. I never worried about what would I be, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now. That was too big a luxury. I just worried about where am I going to be tomorrow?
And I had a very tactical approach. I was a survivor, again, this is what happens when you're an immigrant and you have no money, you have no connections, you just have to make sure that you can, you know, pay your rent, get food, and do interesting things. And in some ways, it's very liberating because you have low expectations.
What really kills us is high expectations, because if we can't make them, then we get crushed. And you
[00:20:37] Annie Riley: got to a place, it seems, you know, relatively quickly in your career where you had a lot of options ahead of you. I read about your story of turning down multiple jobs at Apple, including a role that Steve Jobs himself offered you.
And I'm so curious about that choice because it sounds like it was really about Sort of making sure that the role worked for you and everything you had going on in your life. Could you tell us a little bit about that decision and what you did instead after you turned down the job from Steve Jobs himself?
[00:21:13] Magdalena Yesil: Yeah, so I actually had two different offers from Apple from Steve Jobs. Two very different times in my career. The first time was when I was a graduate student on campus. I didn't even know what the company did or anything. So that was not a very well thought out decision. I didn't take the job because my advisor told me that no tech company that was self respecting would name themselves after a fruit.
So I passed on that. The second time though, it was a much better thought. Out decision. I had been introduced to Steve Jobs. He had just come back to Apple as CEO after leaving and starting Nexta. He had been ousted, had to do another startup Nexta, and then he had come in and he needed someone to basically Come in as a head of marketing both from a technical marketing as well as brand marketing And I was introduced to him as a good candidate So we spent quite a bit of time together and when I was working with them Um, I realized this man is very intense, you know, we worked all day on a friday We worked all day on a saturday.
We worked all day on a sunday And he had kids and I had kids but And we both lived in Palo Alto, so working with him was easy, because we were geographically very close to each other. But he and I had different approaches to, uh, being around our children. You know, I felt like if I worked all weekend, and then I would work all week, I would never see my kids.
So when he offered me the job, and it was fantastic, he was, he was really fun to work with, he was very creative, and we could go back and forth and bounce ideas off of each other. Really had a good time working together, but I realized, you know, unlike me, he, this is all, he's totally a hundred percent satisfied doing this 24 seven.
I don't want to do that. And if I work with them, if I take this job, that is his expectation and I will not be able to deliver to him what he was hoping and expecting from me. And I felt that, you know, for my personal happiness. It wouldn't really, um, satisfy me. You know, my work, even though very important, is not my whole life.
And in fact, when I became a mother, I realized, you know, no matter what happens in my life, my kids are always my top priority. So I had to turn them down. And how did you go about doing that? I just told him I couldn't accept his offer because, I mean, I explained to him exactly why. He was shocked because he knew that I'd enjoyed myself and he kept saying, well, but, but you really have fun.
I mean, this is really, you're enjoying yourself. You really like doing this. And I said, yes, I really like doing this. You're right. But the price that I will need to pay to be able to work with you on a, you know, regular basis will basically be way too high for me personally. It sounds like
[00:24:20] Annie Riley: you approach that from such a place of self awareness and clarity about your own priorities, your own boundaries, uh, what you want out of a job, what you're not willing to compromise on.
What's your advice for cultivating that sense of clarity? As you go into job conversations, networking conversations, I think a lot of people get caught up in that, like, should I do this? Is this the right move? And it can be easy to almost betray yourself in search of some outcome. I'm very curious how you cultivate that and what advice you have to others for gaining that same sense of clarity.
[00:25:06] Magdalena Yesil: Well, I think partly because maybe my upbringing, you know, work, I mean, I'm Mediterranean. We don't live to work. People talked about work life balance, you know, all my career. I mean, frankly, when you work in tech, you don't have much balance. But you need to have some, some balance of some sort. And that means taking care of your health, because that usually goes out the window first, your physical health, uh, your mental health, your relationships.
So all of those are really important. So for me, You know, my priorities are pretty clear. They've been pretty consistent all my life. My family and not just my kids, but you know, my mother and my, my extended family, they are incredibly important and I have, I get great joy. from being able to be support for them.
So I'm not going to give that up to do work. But then on the other hand, I'm not going to, you know, limit myself either. I've always worked. And one thing that I'm very, very happy about is when I go to work, I don't think about my family. And I did this when my kids were little. I would go to work and forget I had kids, but then I'd come home and forget I'd had a job.
So my brain did a good job in leaving whatever behind. You know, if it was my family worries, I forgot about them at work, and it was work worries, I forgot about them at home. I think that's a
[00:26:38] Annie Riley: helpful lesson to be fully present in whatever it is that you're doing as a way of not just being great at the job you're trying to do, whether that's at work or at home, but also, uh, of kind of cultivating that strength.
I'd love to switch gears, Magdalena, and talk a little bit about your experience at Salesforce. I would love to hear how you ended up at Salesforce, how you ended up being the first investor and founding board member. Tell us a little bit about the relationships and the circumstances that got you there.
[00:27:13] Magdalena Yesil: Yeah, so the relationship was with Mark Benioff at my second startup, actually the startup, you know, where Dan was my co founder as well, um, a company called CyberCash. Mark Benioff was working at Oracle and I was working at CyberCash. We were a tiny nothing company. Oracle was much bigger company and Oracle was a partner for us on the server side.
And Mark was my contact person. So we started working. I got to meet him in a professional environment where he was my advocate for my little company. But then our relationship became more than just our. You know, Cybercash, Oracle relationship, we actually started comparing notes as to, you know, where we felt the technology was going, where we felt, um, the e commerce world might go at some point.
Cybercash was a payments mechanism for the then emerging e commerce merchants. So we actually You know, kept up our relationship after I left. I started a third company called MarketPay, and Mark wanted to invest in MarketPay. But I sold it, it got acquired very early on, and I was telling Mark that I was not going to take any money in because I already had acquirers.
But we looked at some companies together. We were actually looking at multiple companies and deciding if we should invest jointly. So our professional relationship continued as two potential investors discussing, you know, the trajectory of technology, et cetera. We would have those conversations very regularly and get together.
One day Mark called me and said, I want to talk to you about an idea. Let's have lunch. I went over, we sat down, and he started presenting the idea of Salesforce. The idea of taking Siebel functionality, but only the 20 percent that people actually used. This was Siebel being the leading CRM software company at the time, and we both knew that people spent Millions of dollars for the license and then another few million dollars for the implementation.
And at the end, they only used a very small percentage, maybe even less than 20%, maybe only 10 percent of the functionality. So the idea was Instead of creating all that functionality that people don't use, just create the little subset that people do use, and then put it in a architecture where people don't have to implement it themselves, that actually they use it as a service.
So you kind of get rid of the whole. Implementation, cost, and time. And then from a pricing point of view, you pay for the drink. You pay for whatever you consume. So you pay basically a very, very small percentage and only for the number of users who are using it. So that was the idea of the original Salesforce.
The idea also was very revolutionary because it was a multi tenant architecture. You know, until then, people bought software, enterprise software, and put it in their own, on their own premises. So this idea was, no, you don't have to buy software and put it on your own premise. You actually can use The software that we run, the multi tenant architecture that we provide, the concept of a cloud didn't exist, that word just, you know, no one used it, we didn't use it because the concept didn't exist.
But when Mark presented this to me and he said, what do you think? I said, wow, I love it. I've been thinking about the fact that enterprise software, as we know it, is going to change. It has to change. Way too expensive. Way too clumsy. And at the end of the day, people don't get value. Companies don't get value out of the money that they invest in it.
So, right at that lunch, I committed that I would help him, I would help him, uh, raise money, I would invest my own money, I would help him recruit people, you know, I was in. And then that's how it started.
[00:31:25] Annie Riley: That's amazing. And in that moment, you were probably ready to say, yep, I'm in, I'm going to participate and support in these ways.
In part because the ideas aligned with problems you had experienced yourself, things that you had been curious about and noodling on, but there was also this relationship in the background that had gone on for How long had you known Mark at that time? Multiple years. Yeah, and when you first met Mark, like I know hindsight is 20 20, but were you thinking at the time, oh, this person is going to become a tech giant, so I must cultivate this relationship?
Or what were your impressions, and how did you approach the relationship in those intervening five years?
[00:32:10] Magdalena Yesil: Well, I certainly didn't think that either.
I mean, I approached it as, you know, I need an advocate at Oracle, this guy's willing to advocate for me, he understands the concept, he understands our product. So it was very much focused on the job at hand. I didn't think of what my relationship with Mark would be like, you know, two, three years out. It really didn't matter.
What mattered was, can we work together today? And we did. And then as we worked together, we realized we actually enjoy working together. We actually like sharing ideas. And so then it expanded beyond the job at hand of CyberCash and Oracle. So we could cultivate a working relationship outside our tactical day to day relationship.
[00:33:00] Annie Riley: And then it became your involvement in Salesforce and Salesforce became, you know, what we all know it to be today. And You've referenced this idea of having an advocate and not just sort of sitting passively and hoping advocates fall from the sky, but actually going and seeking them out, making the ask for what you want to be involved in, what you want this person to do for you.
Can you talk a little bit about maybe another advocate that you've had in your life that you've had to go Seek out proactively in the way that you advise people to do in, in your writing
[00:33:37] Magdalena Yesil: and speaking. I seek out advocates on a daily basis because almost always, whatever I want to do takes much more than just me.
It always takes, you know, multiple people, multiple relationships pulling for the same idea. It's really no different than a sales process where you say, this is what I want to accomplish and I want these people to be on my side. I want them to see my vision. And then you need to teach them enough, give them enough, convince them enough.
That then they start advocating for you, but the piece that a lot of people miss is that if you're going to go get advocates and you're asking them to basically be putting their own necks on the line for you, then you need to think of, what will I do for them? Because life is always a two way street. If you're advocating for me, how do I return the favor?
How do I advocate for you or others that you want? Or maybe there's something else. But one of the things that I think people miss a lot is they say, well, I want to come and pick your brain, which I think is a pretty unattractive term for starters, but okay, so you're going to pick my brain and then what?
And then they are gone. They don't have them follow up and say, Oh, by the way, Magdalena, remember I picked your brain and now I've done this. So I think that people miss the fact that advocation, you know, getting advocates and asking for people to advocate for you is a two way street. For those people to continue being your advocates, you need to return the favor somehow.
And even if you can't return the favor, you need to at least offer. And show them the appreciation because if you're only looking for advocates yourself, sooner or later, people will think that you're pretty self centered and probably not really, you know, be as excited about helping you. How does
[00:35:46] Annie Riley: that apply if you look back on that early relationship that you had with Mark Benioff?
You mentioned, you know, he was the advocate for your company within Oracle. Some might consider that to be a pretty transactional relationship, but you know, how did you at the time approach it with that sense of reciprocity that you're describing?
[00:36:08] Magdalena Yesil: Well, first of all, there's nothing wrong with a transactional relationship if both people are winning, right?
So for me, it was, yes, I was the little company, but then Mark was getting something out of it. We were a very innovative company. We were bringing new functionality to Oracle. We were bringing new bank customers to Oracle, the Visa and MasterCard exchanges to Oracle. So they were going to get. to places that they couldn't do on their own.
So we were basically having them get great coverage and attention in a vertical. So that was the reason why Mark was doing this and the reason why Oracle decided to go with us. And by the way, other comp, other big companies worked with us was because they were getting something out of the relationship.
And I always think about, you know, one of the things that my whole career, when I'm asking someone for help, I always think about how do I help them? And I always lead with whatever I can do for them because that's a much better way to start a conversation.
[00:37:12] Annie Riley: There's a couple of topics I want to cover and I know we are short on time.
I feel like, uh, I could talk to you all day long. One of the things that you address in your book and has also been a theme throughout your life or your career has been this idea of, uh, being different or other. then whatever is mainstream in the environment that you find yourself in. And I think that that can be a big obstacle or at least perceived hurdle for people if they're trying to break into a new space.
Could you tell us about an experience that you've had where you felt different than the folks who were in, you know, the industry or the space or folks who had the power in that space and how you broke in and what advice you have for folks who find themselves in that situation.
[00:38:04] Magdalena Yesil: Annie, I don't think there's ever a moment in my life where I felt like I fit in.
Never, ever. I mean, look, I have a name, Magdalena. I grew up in a Muslim country. Just for starters, the day I was born, I was an outsider. The day I was born, I was other, and it's just like, in your face other, like, just a very weird name. And on it went from there. I mean, my gender in engineering school, you know, we definitely did not have other women.
It did not bother me because one thing that my dad taught me was that he said, yeah, they might react. You know, this is when kids wouldn't play with me. It was very hard on me as a kid because they'd say, what kind of name is that? And then I went to an Armenian primary school that had a really difficult.
name. I didn't go to the local public school. So when kids ask me in first grade, second grade, so what school do you go to? When we were playing on the beach or on the street and I'd give them the name of my school, they'd say, wow, what kind of school is that? And I just felt, and then sometimes they'd walk away from me and, you know, kick sand in my face and not want to be my friend.
It was hard. So my dad said, listen, if you're really good at whatever they want to do, Okay, so if they're climbing a tree, go practice. Without them, become the fastest climber. Go to the top, highest branch. If you're really good at what you do, then they'll want you sooner or later. They'll want you on their team.
If you're really a fast runner, then they'll want you on their team. The way you get in. And the way you get accepted is if you're really good at something and that they treasure. But if you're not, you'll be left behind. So he taught me that that was basically the golden key that opened the doors. And so my whole life, I've always known.
If I want to be included, I have to contribute somehow, and I have to be really good, because if I'm just average, there are too many insiders who are average, I cannot be included. But if I'm outperforming everybody, they will give me a seat sooner or later. And so, you know, that's how I deal with it.
There's never been an environment where I've felt like as an Armenian, I don't fit in because my parents are Protestant, Armenians are Orthodox. Just for starters, from day one, my parents doomed me as many, which way they could, but they also taught me how to work around it. It works, believe me, if you're, if you're really good at your job, if you're really good at school, if you're really good as an athlete, whatever it is, people sooner or later won't care about your, your eye color or your hair color or your skin color or your religion or your name, because they'll want you on their team.
[00:41:10] Annie Riley: It sounds like working with it, you know, working with your attributes, working with your strengths, cultivating those things, and then not being afraid to try. You know, you kind of have to take that first step, go talk to the kids on the playground, go apply for that job, go, you know, bring Salesforce to your investment team, stick your neck out in a way to, to try the thing you're passionate about, but then also be cultivating that excellence at the same time.
[00:41:39] Magdalena Yesil: And then not be heartbroken that when they say no, you know, it's okay that you don't get included all the time. Don't, you know, because I think if you get heartbroken, then you won't try enough times.
[00:41:50] Annie Riley: Hey, what's an example of that from your own
[00:41:52] Magdalena Yesil: career? Well, I mean, not being able to raise money. Believe me, as an entrepreneur, the number of VCs that basically show you the door is 99%.
You're only 1 percent give you money. So you have to feel totally fine saying, well, you know, I couldn't win them over. That's okay. I'll go knock on the next
[00:42:14] Annie Riley: door. So it's really about persistence. And that was even the case, am I remembering correctly, that I heard that when you actually brought Salesforce to your investment team, initially they passed?
[00:42:25] Magdalena Yesil: They passed all the time. They passed not initially, not the second time, not the third time, all the time. Yes. They never said yes. And you just...
[00:42:35] Annie Riley: Let it roll off your back. Like, how did you handle that? Well, you have to.
[00:42:38] Magdalena Yesil: What else are you going to do? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, that's what I'm saying.
You just have to go find somebody who's going to say yes and not take it personally and not get you all upset because most of the time you're not going to win. So, accepting that and approaching life saying, I'm not always going to win. Not everyone is going to say yes. Not everyone will like me. Not everyone will think I'm brilliant.
Sometimes they're right. I'm not. Yeah.
[00:43:06] Annie Riley: And last question about this. I think a lot of people sometimes want to find the shortest path or the quickest path. And we hear this a lot in networking, sort of this idea of, How do I find the right people or the right project to be working on? And I think it's a balance, you know, this idea of persistence that you're bringing up and also knowing when maybe it's not the right path for you.
How do you know when to stay the course and when to adjust in these experiences that you've had, whether it's Salesforce or the many companies you've founded or even, you know, the book you've written and all the more recent projects.
[00:43:44] Magdalena Yesil: I think you know internally, because only so many times you can hit your head against the wall.
At some point, your head hurts, and when it hurts, you say, okay, you know, I think I'll stop that. So the persistence is incredibly important, but also, like you said, knowing when to quit. And I opened my book and I closed my book with this analogy of being like water. And water flows around obstacles, underneath obstacles.
It doesn't always end up in maybe where... It was intending to go, but it always ends up someplace. So the key is not to be so hung up on exactly where you want to go, but to always make the motion forward to, to not get stuck. And it might be a little different, but your life is a journey and, you know, you might not be having that fun, but hopefully you'll have some other kind of fun.
Wise
[00:44:45] Annie Riley: words to end on for sure. Magdalena, this has been such a great conversation and so many amazing lessons that I certainly am taking away and I know our audience will as well. Is there anything else that you were hoping to cover with us or any anything that we didn't get to that you wanted to share before we close?
[00:45:02] Magdalena Yesil: All I wanna say is one, always is learning. And just because I did certain things doesn't mean that today all those same things would work. So discovery is the most fun part of life, and at my age, which is much, much higher than yours, I'm still learning and discovering. And that's one of the fun parts about the technology world is that there's always new stuff to discover.
[00:45:29] Annie Riley: Terrific. Well, hopefully we can all walk away from this conversation with a little bit more of a sense of discovery, curiosity, and certainly flowing a little bit more with whatever might come up in our days. So, thank you so much, Magdalena, for sharing your experiences with us. It's been a wonderful conversation and, you know, everything that you've done is just, uh, just incredible and so it's really a joy to get the opportunity to learn from you and to chat with you. So, thank you so much for the time today.
[00:46:02] Magdalena Yesil: Thank you very much and thank you for giving me the opportunity.
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