oxymoron saying it now. The truth was that all these jobs they were recruiting
for affirmative action, if you weren’t really a competent young woman, you
would fail. There was a gap between skills and jobs because they had to hire you
and they had to hire you in stretch positions to get women populated. In fact, I
got my masters degree at night and Saturdays while at the Federal Reserve
Bank, and I was only the second woman in the whole Federal Reserve banking
system that had a masters degree. In the whole Fed system!
When I went there, it was the first real business experience I had—
although I had had part time jobs. I’d never been in a corporation, and it felt so
glamorous to have a cubicle. Minneapolis is a bright city. There’s the Nicollet
Mall and you were right downtown in the city. It’s like getting a job in San
Francisco.
But it just wasn’t inspiring. No one was chomping at the bit. I actually can’t
remember—I knew I was going to quit, but I can’t remember the moment
where I thought, “I’ll quit and start a company.” I still felt very empowered,
like, “This isn’t this hard a job. This is a big job and I’ve already gotten promoted
once in the first 3 months and I know I can earn money. I can always
come back to this, so why don’t I break out?” So the three guys from the
Federal Reserve that started the company with me—one guy did quit his job
and the other two took a year sabbatical, just in case this didn’t work. They held
on to the safety ring.
There were not a bunch of people saying, “Start a company, start a company.
Let’s do this. Let’s build something from scratch.” It’s so long ago now that
I just remember the general feeling that there was very little to risk. I was
somehow already fully trained for anything that might confront me. Of course,
all that is false; there’s a lot of risk and you are never fully equipped to . . . you
just have to be very adaptable. It turned out I was adaptable. I didn’t know that
until I did that, but it was just a feeling of fearlessness. “What’s the risk? What
will I have to lose? I’m sure I can do this.” It was not cockiness, just that
moment you feel in your youthfulness that you are sort of empowered to
achieve.
I think what does separate some entrepreneurs from other entrepreneurs is
we’re not handwringers. We don’t worry about the unknown. We don’t really
worry about the risk points ahead. As you get older and you get more experience,
you train yourself to think ahead about the risk points versus just to take

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