Champion Story 45 | Elizabeth Caley
Recorded on February 22, 2019
Biography: Elizabeth Caley is Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Poppy, the world’s first pathogen protection network. Based in San Francisco, EC has been building and leading fast-growing global technology companies over the last 20 years. Prior to starting Poppy, Caley was the Chief Operating Officer of Meta, an artificial intelligence company focused on accelerating science. Meta was acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropy. Prior to Meta, Elizabeth Caley held executive roles at global software companies, focusing on product innovation and growth.
Honored as one of the most inspiring women in STEM and as one of the most inspiring women in Toronto, Caley is an active contributor to the Bay Area, Oxford, & Toronto technology communities as a mentor, advisor, angel investor, and speaker. Caley holds MBAs from the University of Toronto & University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, with multiple awards for leadership and academic achievement.
Where I want to start off with is to learn about your story., I know you have a pretty incredible story from a founder’s standpoint, but I would love to know your human story as Elizabeth.
It’s a broad question, but tell me, how did you get here?
That is a wonderfully broad question. It's funny, I think somebody tweeted last night, what's your most on-brand story from your childhood? There have been a ton of responses in there. What I shared, which I had never shared before, was about when I was 6-years-old I had rearranged my bedroom to be like an office. I had a reception desk and I had my boss desk, and I convinced my cat to be my personal assistant because I was the first female CEO of IBM. That was my most on-brand story from where I started as a kid. There was something I knew... It was either go into business and make decisions on things that impact a whole bunch of different people, or become an airline pilot, 'cause you know, that sounded really cool too.
Pretty consistently from the beginning, as I learned more and more about myself, through high school and then university and then after, I realized what fulfilled me the most, gave me the most satisfaction, and where I got some initial signal that I had skills, was with amplifying other people. I'm not going to be the one who's necessarily going to have the huge idea or vision for a startup that nobody else has thought of. I'm the one who can recognize and help actually see it through to fruition. I love it.
The actual CEO spot has not been what I've been striving for, even though that's what I was thinking when I was 6. It was, “How can I actually help somebody who's incredibly talented, smart and creative turn their vision into reality?”
There was somebody I went to school with who wanted to start a television station. I'm like, "I think I can help with that." He had a crazy vision, we trotted in, and started something that ran for a few years at McGill. We did that.
Then, going into Tech after graduating my undergraduate in economics, it was, “How do you actually take businesses through massive changes?” I found a couple of founders that I thought had some interesting ideas there. Again, I knew I could help. I could amplify what they were doing.
From there, I've been essentially picking my missions through people. Looking for somebody I could complement and magnify what they do, whether in startups or big companies. Everybody doesn’t have to be good at everything, because you can find people that you can complement to get stuff done.
That's pretty consistently been the journey.
Now, we've got an organization that we sold, two years ago last week. It was our anniversary. It's about taking that team that we started in Toronto, helping that team move and relocate down in Silicon Valley, and all the changes that each individual goes through, along with their families, their kids, their spouses, and their partners, and making sure that we've got a happy, healthy team down in the valley now.
Thank you for sharing that. What excites you about the work that you do?
I love spending time with smart and talented people. Seeing something in them that they might not already see, or they might not feel confident about. Being able to understand and recognize somebody's super powers, and then let them be the superhero that they can be.
Whether that's spending time like I did yesterday with 25 entrepreneurs, back-to-back in the Creative Destruction Lab program, and then deciding at the end of the day which ones I wanted to invest more of my time in before we have our next session in a few weeks. It's about seeing an individual and what their potential is, and what their vision is, that energizes me. Whether that's through work, or mentoring, or folks that I keep in touch with that I used to work with who want somebody to bounce some ideas off of. That's all time well spent.
There's a lot of people skills in what you do. I love that you're about the people. For you as a leader, what have been the beliefs or skills that help you lead?
That's a good question. There are two good philosophies I've found. The first is that, generally speaking, people are coming from a place of good intention. I have found this is true more often than people think. And have seen it as a people manager, a mentor, an executive, or whatever the role has been. Even when things are hard. Even when there's complex issues. Rooting yourself into, “What's the cause of the conflict? Is what's going on here a lack of self confidence on somebody's side, and so, they're being more aggressive than they normally would be?” Or, “Did somebody coach them to make sure they negotiate incredibly hard, or that they have to push somebody else down in order to get up?” It might not be the right action, but it most often comes from a good or well intentioned place. That philosophy has served me well.
The second, is something that I wish I understood sooner, a lot sooner, which is that blunt conversations are better. That might be weird to hear somebody say if it's all about the people skills, but the amount of time I think I probably wasted in my life not asking the blunt questions or giving the blunt answer. By blunt I just mean truthful. Again, not from a place of emotion, but just, “this is the situation”.
Say it's an employee who's having a conflict with another employee. Being able to sit down with them and not soft pedal allows people to know what the concern is, or how to potentially solve the problem. To actually sit down and say, for example, "The perception is that you are not letting this person have their voice heard."
The amount of time I think a lot of us could have said, "This may or may not be true, but this is the perception. I'm telling you this again from a place of good intention so that you have that information. You can make a decision on what you want to do with it.”
I wish that's something I had done more consistently and more freely throughout my entire career. It's serving me well now.
Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that perspective because I feel like we don't talk about that enough, right? I just love that you highlighted this as an important leadership skill.
Don't postpone the conversation that you think is going to be awkward. I think it comes down to trust and respect. So much more can be accomplished so much more quickly if that's the foundation of the relationship you have, both in business and in life. Maybe it's a new board member, or maybe it's a new person on the team.
Operating from the perspective that they are coming from a good place, that you can trust and whose work you respect, means that you can have those one on one conversations. People can hear them more easily because they feel like you're doing it in order to move a situation forward or resolve a situation, not to make them feel bad.
There's something you mentioned just now about trust. In tech, the journey is all over the place. It's like up and down, up and down, up and down. The highs are high, but the lows are pretty low.
At the same time, we're not having those conversations with each other where we're being honest. I wonder what we could do to build more trust, whether it's founder to founder, or founder to investor. Can I ask how you have developed that in your life?
I think I've learned over the years that the more self confidence you have, the easier it is for you to trust people.
Quite frankly, the cost of making a mistake, trusting the wrong person, can have dire consequences. But if you're confident in your ability, know what you do well, and that you have the ability to recover from situations, then it's a lower potential risk. You've reduced the risk on the downside of walking into every situation with trust as a foundation. If you're wrong, you can pick yourself up and go do something else.
As founders and as people who join startups, coming from a “safe” job at a bank or big company like that, we're taking risks. The belief in yourself that you can overcome adversity is important, even if the situation doesn't turn out exactly the way that you expected it to. We're incredibly lucky as an industry, and incredibly lucky as folks who've grown up in this time and this place. There are options. There are other things you can do if you've trusted the wrong person or you've made the wrong decision. We should embrace that and not be so scared of failure. That, to me, is what allows me to trust as my default position.
The competition, obviously there's always some dynamics, right? Where people are, or organizations are pitted against each other. There's some people who operate that way on a daily basis. There's some industries that operate that way on a daily basis. If you're in a smaller or shrinking market, then you're not necessarily going to trust the CEO of a startup in a small space. You're not necessarily going to work from a foundation of trust with another CEO in the same space that you're competing in.
I have amazing CEO groups where two people who feel like they're competitors, there might be certain things that they actually don't talk about with each other, but there's a whole bunch that they can reach out to each other about, and find a common ground for that makes them both better. They're sort of like, "Oh, somebody else is facing this exact problem as well." I've seen that over and over and over again, even in places where you would think it's all about the competition.
Having more players in our industry who have that mindset, versus the winner takes all, built on an individual basis and organization basis, I actually think can amplify things. I love competition when it comes from a place of, "I'm gonna do better than I thought I could do. I can do better than I did last time, or I think our team can accomplish even more."
For me, the competition winner-takes-all scenario where somebody else has to lose in order for us to win, sure, it happens in certain situations. But, I think people construct that as their mental model more often than I think they need to.
Here's what I'm wondering. When you look back at your journey, what's the most surprising part?
I don't think most people realize just how similar working at a company with 100,000 people is to working at a company with 10 people.
At the end of the day, it's technology and people. There's definitely nuances and differences, and we talk about those all the time. What does it take to grow from 30 people to 60 people, or 60 people to 100 people. What does it take to scale, and how do you incubate innovation inside of that? Those are all great conversations that we're going to have and continue to have.
But, at the end of the day, whether you are thinking about hiring somebody who has only worked in a big organization, or only been in startups, or only been in academia, I've learned that the more open-minded you are you’ll find that people can adjust to change. People can operate perfectly well in situations that people think are really different but are actually pretty similar.
The other, more personal realization has been that it's okay to have the ambition to not be the biggest title in the room. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to be the CEO. Not because you don't think you can, but because you think you can actually make more of a difference in another role. Which I think is hard to say in tech culture.
I think the culture, in tech especially, is about celebrating the singular CEO, and the biggest fundraise, or biggest acquisition. Obviously that happens for all sorts of different dynamics. I don't think that's going to change overnight. But wouldn’t it be refreshing if we celebrated “you brought together a team of people, amplified them, and built something that didn’t exist before, something that brings value to the world.” I think it is something we'll eventually evolve to understand.
Thank you for sharing that with me. I appreciate your openness in that. I hope it's okay to ask, I would love to explore what has been the hardest part, or the part that we don't speak about, in the tech industry?
Yeah for sure. What's the best way to word this? Like I said, the industry is very focused on being the superstar CEO, or the superstar VC. As a woman in the industry, especially now, but always really, if you're driven, ambitious, smart, you often get indoctrinated that you should shoot for that as the goal no matter what, otherwise we’re not “leaning in” like we should.
The process that I've gone through, and the comfort that I have now which I haven't had throughout my whole career, is to decide, "Actually, what I want is this..." To run a certain kind of company, in a certain kind of way -- regardless of title. It doesn't mean I'm not leaning in, it doesn't mean I'm not ambitious, and it doesn't mean I'm not good at what I do. But, I actually get more out of partnering with somebody, and bringing a team together to take a new product or company forward. The prototypical, glorified solo CEO role has become less and less attractive to me, and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm comfortable with that.
What has helped you with that? That discovery of yourself?
That is a really good question.
I think part of it has come from actually thinking through what the worst case scenario is. Maybe this is something that comes with age, with more experience. Deciding not to care about what other people think, to a degree. To have the self confidence that even if somebody expects you to be a certain way, it's actually not going to make any material difference to my life if I take the path that's much more suited for me. A lot of people seem comfortable sharing their expectations of what I was going to be, what I should be. But I know myself better. I'm self confident. It's choosing what to care about and what not to care about.
I know a lot of people in CEO roles feel similarly. The expectations for them to be a certain way, by the board or by external folks, or by their team employees, is a constant weight. This new management book or that tweet from a famous CEO or VC proclaiming “you have to be like this”, “this is what success looks like.” Leadership comes in a ton of different flavors. Expertise and professionalism and making an impact comes in a ton of different flavors. There's room enough in what we do to have space for all of those flavors.
I love that. It's a powerful message and an invitation for people. So much of what you said about being true to yourself and honoring what you really want is such an important part of mental health.
What do you do to support or take care of your mental health and your emotional well being?
That's a good question. I need to spend more time in a completely different headspace on a regular basis. I know for some people it's exercising or spending time with family. For me it's thinking about something different. It's diving into history and nature and trying to put all of this in more context, which helps me realize that what we're dealing with on a day-to-day basis is a small part of a much larger, more complete and complex picture.
For all of my career, I’ve been very driven. I can get very focused on something and go down a rabbit hole. This leads to me spending time trying to fix problems that come up at work or trying to set things up for teams and customers. Worst feeling in the world for me is if I'm a blocker; that I'm somehow stopping somebody else from doing what they do.
It's really, really easy when you've got that sort of orientation to spend all of your time fixing. More and more, the wisdom I have gained is that I'm going to be very useless if I don't get out of my head, talk to other startups and entrepreneurs, and hold them in my space. Blockchain companies yesterday, AI startups the day before, those working on infrastructures for cities, flying cars -- those kinds of different problems recharge me for what I actually need to do day-to-day.
Holding up workaholic patterns as the pinnacle or as the state we should all be in, is incredibly unhealthy. Yet, it happens every day in almost every conversation, even in incredibly subtle ways. I think it takes a real conscious effort to set an example, especially as a leader. When you've got a team around, where some are looking at what you're doing as an example, and trying to reconcile what you say versus what you do. Sending emails on the weekend sends a different message than saying, "Hey guys, have a good weekend with your families, or your kids, or your dog, or your bike."
Everybody should pitch in, but especially if you're in a leadership role, setting an actual example, and being clearer with your team is important. I found it to be super useful all the way through my career. Saying, "this is the way I like to work." Just having that conversation and doing it in a conscious way -- that can lead to meaningful differences in how you feel and how much you can last a marathon versus a sprint, and how your team can do the same thing.
Yes. I so appreciate what you shared. Here's my wondering: what can people do to help move mental health and emotional wellbeing forward?
I think it's hard to be in any kind of management or leadership role for any period of time and not realize it's about the whole person. In an HR appropriate way, I feel like it's about the whole person with everybody on the team. That feels awkward for a lot of people, risky too, so a lot of people shy away from actually viewing each other as people.
Taking the time is important, with yourselves, the people you work with most closely and your teams. Really consciously thinking about and understanding the obvious signals we're sending and regurgitating in our industry. Celebrating fundraisers is some of that to me. It's an indication that there's a group of people who feel like they’re on the right track, but are there more meaningful things that we should actually celebrate? The rock-star-ification that's going on in our industry, and the implicit and the explicit pressures that puts on everybody to be a certain way, or to achieve certain things. I think it's about being more conscious of that and actively deciding if that's what we want to be part of as individuals.
Having founders groups or meet-ups or something where people are actually talking about failure is also important. Conversations where people can say, "This is the biggest mistake that I made," or, "This is why I decided to shut down my company," or, "This is why I decided to actually spend more time with my family," or, "This is why I decided to switch to the focus of what our team is working on for social good." We're starting to do that.
I think it's trying to keep that momentum up that's going to make a difference in our community. Making sure that there's forums and people who feel safe using those forums.
Thank you for your time today. Touched by your presence and what you shared.
Thank you. My pleasure.