Silicon Valley Girl: AI, Tech and Career Growth - Godmother of Silicon Valley: How to Raise a CEO | Esther Wojcicki

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Esther Wojcicki is the "Godmother of Silicon Valley." She raised three daughters: Susan, who ran YouTube; Anne, who founded 23andMe; and Janet, a professor and anthropologist. Her parenting advice got me through the hardest parts of new motherhood, and YouTube, which Susan built, is the reason I have a career at all.In this episode we cover:The one rule that decides whether AI makes a kid smarter or just lets them cheat themselves: do the work first, then ask AI to grade it like a teacherWhy she's against banning phones, social media, or AI for kids, and what she'd teach insteadTRICK: the five-part system (Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, Kindness) she used to raise three founders, and how to run it on yourself as an adultHow to rebuild trust in yourself if you were raised to chase everyone else's approvalThe three sentences she told Anne when 23andMe was falling apartThe billion-dollar bet Susan almost didn't make, the one that became YouTubeWhy she still tells parents to push for college in the AI ageWhat she says to every mom who's afraid AI will take her kid's jobLinks:Subscribe to my free newsletter where I go deeper on AI tools, career strategies, and parenting in the AI age: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=EstherWojcicki🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/𝕏 : https://x.com/siliconvalleymm💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko📌 My Companies & Products: https://Marinamogilko.co

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With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. Today we have a very special dream guest. She is so, so close to my heart. Back in 2022, my older daughter was two. My younger was one. And I was running on no sleep for almost three years, I was forgetting who I was, and it was really hard to function because I was exhausted and I still had to work. That's when my friend recommended a book by Esther Vajitsky, The Washway, or How to Raise Successful Kids. I started reading about her difficult childhood, how she raised three dollars in Silicon Valley as a teacher. So see, this is the reality of working from home

with the kids. So she was that teacher who knocked on Steve Jobs' door asking for computers and walked out with Max. And I kept thinking, if she was able to pull it off, then I will be able to do it too. So we sat down. I took some of her principles and bought them into how I parent. And today, we're sitting down with Esther. She's known as the godmother of Silicon Valley. She raised three amazing daughters. Susan Vositsky was the YouTube CEO. She actually convinced Google to buy YouTube. Unfortunately, she passed away two years ago from lung cancer at 56. Janet, her second daughter, is a researcher at UCSF, and Anne is the founder of 23 and me. She was Sergey Brin's first wife.

Her company was once valued at billions of dollars, and then it went through bankruptcy, and then she bought it back. Three daughters, three completely different lives, one mom. I really want to know how do you raise kids who know how to fight for what they believe in. I really want to know how I can use her upbringing principles not only to raise them, but also how do I stand up after mistakes? How do I keep trying? Let's do it.

You've seen so many revolutions being here in Silicon Valley, from like analog to internet, from computers to devices. Now you're seeing this AI revolution. Do you think it's different from what you've seen before? Well, it's different because the device is different, but it's actually not different in the sense that it's a technological device that we have to learn how to use. And I still don't think they've done the cell phones correctly

with kids, because what they're trying to do is ban them. And so then I have to ask, what in history has been a successful ban? Okay, so they banned alcohol in the 1920s. How did that work? And then they tried to ban drugs in the 1980s, just say no. How did that work? So these bans just don't work. And now they've banned social media in Australia.

And did you know what's going on now? The kids are all using VPN. And so they're thinking of banning VPN. It's just crazy. Instead of doing that, they should teach the kids how to use it intelligently. The main thing you should know is how to use AI to ask good questions and not to use AI to do your math homework for you. Because then you're just cheating yourself. Yeah, it's just tough.

Like how do you teach your kids to navigate that? Because it's so easy to just replace your critical thinking. with AI, like, just tell me what to do and it tells you. They need to know. No one tells them that. No one says, you know, you're cheating yourself. Why don't they tell them that? I don't know. But you are cheating yourself. What you should do, if you want to do it, is you should try to do whatever problem it is, write an essay or, you know, do a math problem. Try to do it yourself. Then put it into the AI and ask the AI to give you feedback. Yeah. Then it can be act like a teacher. But just to have the AI do it for you, I mean, what a

crazy thing. Do you want AI to live your life for you? So the reason I don't think so is just let's look at the skills that we're looking for when we hire. You're looking for people that can solve problems, creative thinkers, people that get along well with other people. And so if you don't train kids to work collaboratively in groups and to think creatively, then what kind of employees are you training for the future? So that's how I use AI in the classroom as a collaborative device. And that's how I've been using computers in the classroom since I first started. You know, I started in the 19, it's shocking, 1980s.

Yeah, 1980s. I mean, I was the first teacher in California, I think, to use computers in the classroom. Wow, and Steve Jobs gave you those computers. Steve Jobs, I am forever grateful to Steve Jobs because he gave me computers. I'm also grateful to some of the parents in the program who also donated money for me to buy more computers. So I had, you know, a lot of computers when nobody in the schools anywhere were using computers. And I was using computers and I looked like an odd duck. And so were you the first, you're one of the first to start using AI, right?

I was one of the first to start using AI also. How would you use it, especially like for adults who are watching, who have been brought up in a different system, no collaboration, no communication, how can they use how you're teaching the kids in their adult life to learn those skills? So one of the things they should do is think about using AI to ask questions. if they ask a question or you can ask AI to do something for you and compare that with how you would have done that skill yourself. And so I ask AI sometimes to write something for me.

I say I have to give a speech to an elementary school. What do you think would be the most engaging thing for me to talk about? So then AI will tell me what they think is the most engaging thing. So then I'll take that whatever they talk to give me, and I will then expand on it. So, I mean, you can use AI kind of like, you know, a well-known teacher who would be there in place of AI that would be there to help you be the best you can be. Absolutely. And so that's the way I think of AI. And you don't want it just to do things that you, you know, you.

you know, just for you. Like crazy, the other thing I did recently is I asked AI to find me the best automobile insurance for my cars in the particular area. Why doesn't everybody else do that? It's so simple. And it comes up with all these answers and then it gives you the sources so you can look back yourself and find it. So I think AI is like a good, smart friend.

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. It's great that you have this positive relationship with AI because a lot of people like, oh, it's going to take away a critical thinking, it's going to take away our jobs. When you think about your grandkids that are growing up now, and like in 10 years, AI is going to be so advanced. Like, are you ever worried it's going to take their jobs or take opportunities from them? You know, I don't think AI will ever take the jobs of being a human being. Because humans have agency and they can think creatively.

and AI cannot do that. So I think you need to be realistic. You want AI to support you, but you don't want it to be in place of you. So there's a lot of kind of silly things that people ask AI to do. But I think one of the other things that I've found really useful, there's all these medical AI sites, you know.

And so you can ask a medical, question. And it's actually incredibly interesting because it gives you the sources of where it comes up with that answer. Instead of calling your doctor and asking some question, poor doctor is overloaded with silly questions. Okay, they're not silly to the patient, but the doctor's probably repeating themselves 20 times. So this would really help doctors be able to answer these questions. Talk to me about your trick system, trust, respect, independence, collaboration, kindness. How can someone who's a grown up now trying to adjust their career for this AI world, how should they use the system? So if you're an adult, unfortunately what usually means is that you were brought up in a system where you're not trusted.

And so when you're not trusted, you don't believe in yourself. because what happens with kids is that when you trust them, they then think, oh, I'm pretty good. I can trust myself and my own instincts. So adults are always looking for outside confirmation that they're good. And if they don't get that, then they feel depressed, I'm sorry to say. And so one of the companies that does a really good job, with the trick formula is Google.

And Google does because basically what they do is they trust their employees. They hire what they consider the best. And then they trust them. So once the employee feels trusted and respected, in other words, you can speak up, say what you think, and nobody's gonna make fun of you. It makes a huge difference in the culture

of the company. And that's how all these creative ideas come through Google. And they have this thing called the 20% time. Have you heard about that? Absolutely. When you can do anything you want? Well, you apply for 20% project, and then you can work on whatever it is that you want.

So let me tell you two very famous 20% projects. Number one, Gmail. What could we do without Gmail? Yeah. Yeah, another one is Maps. That's amazing. Can you believe? So these are employees that were like, oh, I'm not doing anything as creative as I wish I could.

And I'm not afraid to make a mistake. And so I'm going to try something new and creative. And that's how it happened. This is fascinating. So, you know, most companies are very rigid. You know, this is your job. Do what I tell you. This is the day it's due.

and if you can't finish it, well, that's too bad for you. I think if companies want to be productive, creative, and have a really supportive workforce, they should embody this trick principle of mine. Because trick is trust, respect, and giving people independence to work on projects. Collaboration, the C is collaboration, collaborate. You know, in schools in the 1980s and 90s and even early 2000, if you look back historically, kids were never supposed to collaborate. It was always do it yourself.

As a matter of fact, at the beginning of every school year, they sent out a notice to parents. Never help your kid. Never let them talk to their friends about what they're doing. It always has to be individual performance. So they're not teaching collaboration. So where in the world don't they collaborate in the real world? Yeah. Because two brains are better than one.

100%. And then kindness, God, if we could all be kind to each other. Yeah, in this competitive environment. When it comes to education, so you brought up trust, and we talked about these schools, you know, especially I'm from a completely different system. Oh, sure. We were very strong academically, but when it came to collaboration and trust that didn't really exist in my schooling system. Although I think I turned out okay.

You look okay. I think I had a couple of great teachers who were really motivating me and trusting me with what I was learning. So how do you regain trust in yourself as an adult? Well, first of all, you have to be aware. First thing, that you know, you aren't trusting yourself. And you have to be aware of the fact that you're relying on other people's validation to make you feel good about yourself. And that puts you in a very dependent position. And if you don't get validated by other people all the time, then you get depressed.

And the depression usually leads to alcohol or drugs or, you know, overly dependent on other people or other things. And so the first thing you need to do is to appreciate yourself and to stop blaming yourself all the time for everything that goes wrong. How do you do that? Because I was just reading when I was preparing for this interview that you taught your daughters to be very easy with mistakes and your students as well. Like it's part of the process. Well, first of all, you need to realize that that's how you were brought up. And so that that's your natural instinct is to go back and blame. yourself.

Yeah. And then you have to stop it. You personally have to stop it. Stop blaming yourself. And, you know, that's all these drug addicts that go to these, you know, rehab places. Do you know what the success rate of those rehab centers is? 10%, 90% failure. And it's because they don't help those people understand themselves and believe in themselves.

They're just trying, it's kind of like trying to fix the problem without getting to the essence of it. Because all those people, they just, they feel bad about themselves. They learn that in childhood. That's why I focus on the childhood, because, you know, we want the next generation of people to be happier, more supportive, more collaborative, kinder to each other. And we just need that because for the world, we all need to work together on the climate issue. And we're not doing it now, as you noticed. And actually, it's somehow in the U.S., it's getting worse. Yeah, it's just tough.

Exactly what you brought up. We were raised this way. You were raised to be yourself up. Why didn't you think more? That's right. Why didn't I think more? So next time, you probably won't make another step to improving yourself. So the next time you're afraid to even make a single step for fear that you're going to fail again.

Okay. What do you tell your daughters? Like I wonder, because all your three daughters, super successful, but of course they've had tough moments. If one of them came to you, I know Anne has this huge problem with FDA and then, you know, this scandal. When she came to you, what did you tell her? Number one thing is don't give up. Figure out a way out of this. You know, figure out how you can get what you want without spending any time and energy beating yourself up.

And she did. You know, she accomplished what nobody thought was possible. And, you know, 23 and Me, you know, Research Institute, that's what she's going to do. She wants to use your DNA to improve disease. outcome and protect everybody from all the diseases that they get. And of course, one of them that we're working on a lot is non-small cell lung cancer because that impacted Susan. And so we have a foundation called the Susan Wigisci Foundation. We just launched. And we've got millions of dollars working on it. We need more donations, of course. But I don't know if you know, non-small cell lung cancer

is the number one killer of women in the world. I bet you would never know. That's crazy. Yeah, I think the reason I've been doing so many podcasts because Susan was on my list, but then she passed away. Oh, yeah. And then I told myself, like, I just have to start. Yes, good.

Yeah, so. Very emotional, and YouTube is the reason I'm here. So, yeah, thank you for raising your daughter the way you did. Oh, so, you know, they were just. little girls, and I always made sure that whatever they did, if it didn't work out, it didn't matter, they could just do it again. But that's what I did in my classes, too, which was actually revolutionary. So, an English class, or social studies, or math, or journalism, those are the classes I taught. If you failed a test or you did poorly on an essay, no problem. Just do it again.

Just do it again. Revise until you get it right. And so, you know, I never tried to make kids feel bad. I'm just like, well, you know, you didn't think about this or you didn't write this properly or spent too much time on this part. And so that's why they all did so well after they graduated because they were believing in themselves. Yeah. Was there any episode? Because you're obviously giving kids a lot of responsibility and they're able to act by themselves. Again, recalling my childhood, my parents chose my major.

Because my instinct was I want to be a translator from English into Russian. I really love languages. I want to study German. And they're like, you know what? Mathematics. I liked mathematics, but not to the point of spending like five years learning it. So we settled on economics and mathematics, and I did English as a second degree. And I'm grateful for it.

Because I feel like at 18 years old, you know, when I was 10, I wanted to be a singer, then, you know, things change. when do you think is where is there a line when you don't not like trust your kids but you help them make the right decision or like you guide them i think i think it's okay for you to make suggestions and it's okay for your parents to tell you well maybe you shouldn't be a translator maybe you should consider other things they didn't say maybe you're like you can't yeah i'm i'm saying maybe and you know so what you want to do is give them another idea on the horizon of what they might want to do. But then if they don't do it, it's not at least you tried. So, you know, I've had some students, you know, like, for example, Jeremy Lynn, basketball player. Do you know who he is? Lynn Sanity?

I've heard of him. I've heard of him. Yeah. So his parents, of course, wanted him to go to school and be, you know, a lawyer, a doctor, something else like that. And he wanted to be a basketball player. And he came from an Asian family. You can imagine how excited they were.

But to give them credit, you know, they put pressure on him, but then they let him decide to do what he wanted to do. And so he's successful at his chosen career. I mean, I think that's actually really interesting. You know, Susan, for example, Did you know she majored in French and English history and lit? No computer. She took one computer course in all four years of undergraduate.

One. And she never thought it was going to be of interest to her. But then, you know, she took it and then she was kind of shocked at how interesting it was. But if I would have forced her, I think, you know, she wouldn't have had the same. self-confidence to work on it or actually the self-interest to do what she was doing. And then, of course, you know, her plan, you know, when Google started out in her garage. Her main duty, they hired her after six months or so. Her main duty was to find a way for Google to make money.

because Larry and Sergey said we can find anything on the web anything but we don't know how to make money so can you imagine you're one person and you're supposed to figure this out for this whole company of course it was little then and it's also it's brand new

no one has really figured it out nobody had figured it out yet nobody she had to come up with this so the only way she could do it is she had to believe in herself and her ideas Esther broke down her trick system What it actually means for your career Not just your kids

The full breakdown is in this week's Future Proof newsletter Link is in the description So all your daughters are doing completely different things Which is so fascinating Did you have to adjust your system For each of them

Or you just go with a flow And they just do They all got to do whatever they wanted to do I mean Janet's career Is probably the most interesting because she first started out as an international relations major. She actually first started out in a house called Ujima at Stanford, was the black student's house.

And then she wasn't black, so this was kind of interesting. Then after her degree in international relations, she went on to UCLA and got another degree in African American studies. what are you going to do with that? I mean, I have no idea what she... But then, you know, then she went on to get another degree in medical anthropology. I mean, she just, she has more degrees than you can believe.

Was there, when she came to you saying, like, I'm going to get another degree, have you ever had thoughts like, this is unnecessary? She shouldn't be doing that? No. For any of your daughters, have you ever had these thoughts? Like, I don't think it's a good decision. No, not really. I never did.

did. So Anne, for example, majored in molecular biophysics at Yale. But anyway, it didn't matter because then, I mean, when she graduated, she didn't have a job. Most parents would freak out. As a matter of fact, she came home. And then I said, so now what are you going to do? And she's like, I think I want to babysit. This spring, Denham gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. What was your reaction? What was your reaction to that?

I was like, my God, really? I mean, perhaps you could have done that before. you went to Yale. Wow. And so she babysat for three months. And I was like, oh my God, how long is this going to go on? Did you tell her that? Or was it just? No, I didn't tell her.

But what I said one day, as I, you know, there's job fair at Santa Clara Convention Center. Maybe you would like to check it out. Interesting. And so she went and came back the same day, of course. And then I said, well, did you find anything? And she's like, no, don't like anything. Oh, never mind. I did find one company that might be a little interesting.

Sure enough, that company called her. And then they'd like, we'd like to bring you to New York for an interview. And she was like, I don't know about that. You know, I have all these babies I'm taking care of, you know, go to New York for an interview. So anyway, the reason she went is they put her up at this fancy hotel. And she wanted to go to the hotel. Nice. And then finally she got there and they interviewed her and they're like, yes, we like you.

And turns out she liked them too. So that's how she got her first job. That was very, she was not in the market for getting a job. It was just an accident. Yeah, and just a little suggestion from you. I wonder, what would you tell me as a mom? Because, again, I was raised in a different way. Right.

I want to raise my kids, I guess the American way or the wash way. Yes. How do you teach me to trust my kids if I always think I know better? Well, what you do is you can make suggestions, but then they're just suggestions. They're not, you have to do it my way. So the suggestions, you know, you can give them lots of different opportunities. opportunities. Again, with Janet, Janet was, she was in the middle, so I think she was more demanding a little bit. She decided when she was four years old that she wanted to go to

kindergarten, even though it was, you had to be five years old to go. And I didn't know what to do. I was like, you can't go to public school, you know, because it won't take you. She was very persistent. So I'd let her go to a private school in Los Altos Hill. for kindergarten. And I thought, oh, my God, she's going to be the youngest in the class. Is she ever going to be? I don't know. She turned out to be the best student in the class at four.

And you followed her instinct. I followed her instinct. So, of course, when you do something like that for a child, they then believe in themselves. Yeah. And, you know, she continued to break all these milestones or have all these milestones that were kind of remarkable. and she just believed in herself and it worked out. This is so fascinating.

Trusting your four-year-old with a decision. Trusting a four-year-old with that. Investing money in that. That's right. It cost me a lot to do that. And then she moved right into first grade and turned out to be the smartest kid in the class in first grade. And it's like, okay, maybe you were right and I was wrong, right? Yeah. So give your child an opportunity to make a statement and to try.

things that they want to try. If somebody was raised in a different way, like most of us, are raised in a different way, is there a chance to reinvent yourself, even if you were taught a completely different thing? Yes, there's a chance. But the main thing you have to do is put it on the conscious level. You have to realize that whenever you start to feel bad about yourself making a decision, it's because of how you were trained when you were young. And so you're going to say to yourself,

I am going to believe in myself. You know, even if I make a mistake here or make a mistake there, I'm still going to give myself credit for trying. Yeah. You just have to be nice to yourself. Most people don't even think of themselves, honestly. They're worried about, you know, what the neighbor says, what the relatives are going to say, you know, what the teacher's going to say.

And that was what was revolutionary about me, about as a teacher, is you could never do it wrong. You just had to revise. This is absolutely fascinating, and I hope that people who are listening are going to deploy that mindset because definitely, like, I'm thinking about the way I think about my mistakes.

This is, yeah, this is an interesting exercise. When it comes to education and with what you're seeing in AI, do you think parents should be saving or pushing for college in today's age? So the reason I think college is still, important because people think, oh, we don't need college anymore, they can get it all online. College is an opportunity for you to hone your interaction with other human beings skills.

It's an opportunity for you to grow. Between the ages of 18 and 22, you have a lot of growing to do. And if you don't interact with other people, you aren't going to get those skills. So you're never going to be able to substitute college with an AI education. It's just never going to work. It's just like, for example, you know, as an older person and you want to have somebody help you, do you want a robot to help you? Or do you want somebody with feelings to help you? I mean, I personally don't want a robot.

You know, I'd like to have somebody who I can talk to. But it's the same thing in the company. You don't want to just work with robots. You want to work with other human beings. So that's what college is for. It's an opportunity to grow. And those four years are really important in your life. What do you think parents should be doing more with their kids?

Letting them try all different kinds of activities. They want to play soccer, tennis, or, you know, it doesn't matter. And decided to do ice ski. by herself. And she became a competitive ice skater. I mean, this wasn't my idea. This was her idea. Did she ever want to give up, though?

Because my kids also started taking ice skating. But then five classes in, they're like, we're done. If they want to continue, I encourage them to continue, but if they decided they really don't want to do it, it's their life. Just start another thing. They start another thing. I feel like my kids, they want a little of thing. they start them and then they give up after class four because they either don't like a teacher or it's too competitive or like my daughter will always find something.

So you can talk to her about, you know, sometimes it's really competitive, but you personally are learning to do it for you. Not because, you know, the little girl down the street is doing it. All of these years, has your approach to raising kids changed it all with new technology or do you think it's still the same as it was? I think it's pretty much the same as it was, only technology helps me more, because it gives kids more opportunities. You know, there's a lot of choice, but I'm against letting little kids use iPads or phones before the age of five. Because they need to learn to interact with each other and need to learn to interact with the environment. And I also, I've done research myself, and I realize that, you know, in order to really learn to write and to read, you know, you have to write on paper. If you type answers on an iPad, you don't remember.

You remember when you write it. Did you know there's a difference? Yeah, it's a very important skill for our brains. It is. So I, I'm not in favor of using eye. iPads or any of those things in the early years. I think it's better to use paper and pencil and books and things like that. But if you have a child that has like dyslexia, has problems reading,

the great thing about technology is that that book that they're struggling with, it can actually be read out loud to them. As a cartoon. As a cartoon. And so, but it can also just be read as a text. you can follow along and learn how to, if you have dyslexia, for example, or ADD or ADHD or whatever, all those designations. Yeah.

So I think it's easier to cope with those learning differences now. And I really liked what you said that some parents think that their kids should go to the best school ever. And again, this in my culture, like, there were a couple of schools in St. Petersburg. They were like mind-blowingly strong academics. but then it comes to kids losing trust in themselves. I think the best school is a school where the kids learn to believe in themselves, not learn to perform all these tricks,

you know, which are really, I can do algebra in first grade, you know. Honestly, you have a whole lifetime. You can learn it, you know, but let me tell you, with an adult, you can teach them all these academic skills, but you cannot, change their personality.

You cannot teach them to believe in themselves. It's really hard. It's tough. But I can teach, that's why, can you imagine all the stuff I taught? I taught algebra, geometry, history, English. I could teach anything to anybody because the philosophy was you can learn it. I don't care, you know, what grade you're, how old, or you can learn it. you just might have to revise a couple times or maybe five times or whatever.

Yeah. Raising three successful women, being a successful woman yourself, do you think we pay an unfair price for being successful in the society that people don't talk about? So like an unfair price? Like if you're a woman, because I don't know, I feel like kids, they still lean to what's the mother, right? But you actually, but at work, you're competing with men. Do you ever feel that there's disbalance? What would you tell to women who feel that they have to put extra work because they have family and they're built in a different way?

Or you never talk about that with your daughters? No, I did talk about that. You know, like, for example, the first job Anne had, she was the head of a biotech fund. She came into the room. There were all men in the room. This is in New York City. And one of the guys said to her, we need more coffee. they assumed that she was the waitress.

So how does that make you feel, right? So Anne said right then and there, I'm one of your colleagues, I am not the waitress. What was their reaction? Did she tell me? They were kind of shocked, but that it worked. Yeah. And I think you need to realize as a woman

that the majority of the work world is still men. and you need to be able to work with men. And in today's world, men are much more accepting. I mean, back when I first started as a journalist in the 1970s, do you know, I could not get into the San Francisco Press Club? I couldn't get into any of the press clubs in the U.S. Women were banned. Journalism was a man's profession.

Oh, wow. So, you know, that was just, the way it was, I would like to have fought that. But instead, the way I fought it is I said, okay, I can't be a journalist. I'll teach all these kids' journalism. And they can all do what I really wanted to do. And it worked. So you found a way. I was going to say, you can find a way in most situations, as long as you're not, your first reaction is how terrible I am. You stop beating up yourself. And then think about a creative way. to solve the problem.

What would you say to women who want to have more kids or want to start a family, but they think it's almost impossible to combine both? Like I'm thinking about a third kid. My kids are four and six. But I'm like, they're already so much. And sometimes, like my mom tells me, just don't, like, live a life. Just why do you need another one? What would you say to women like me?

Well, if you want to have another one, this is an opportunity that you can't pass up because you can't do it 10 years from now. So you can do it. Also, the other thing you need to realize is the third, fourth, fifth, whatever, Susan had five kids. They're easier because you know what you're doing and the older kids take care of the younger kid. So it's not as hard as you think. And if you're hiring a nanny, the nanny can take care of three kids or four kids. It just depends on the number of kids you have. I think one of my last questions would be for someone who's watching from abroad,

and they're thinking, okay, they're talking about these things and trusting kids, et cetera, but they're in Silicon Valley. It's a different type of reality. What can I do in my country when the whole society just functions in a way that is completely different from what we're talking about? So I think the main way that is different is the adult community is very condemning when you make a mistake. Oh, totally. Because they grew up with that culture.

And so whenever there's a mistake, whoever made the mistake gets sort of, you know, in trouble. And I think the culture of Silicon Valley is it's okay to fail and revise. So that my philosophy was fail fast and revise. And then Mark Zuckerberg took it and he said, I think it was fail fast and fail. Oh, no. Move fast break things. Move fast break things. So the break things, I removed, or actually he added it, but I didn't agree with that.

Because I think it's okay to move quickly, make a mistake, and then revise. And continue to revise until you get it right. I mean, just look what Anne did with 23 and me. Continue to revise until you get it right. Yeah. And then Susan also did the same thing, revised with how to make money for Google until she got it right. And I mean, YouTube is an incredible example of that. Before YouTube, she had what was called Google Video.

I bet you never heard of it. No one heard of it. But they spent a billion dollars making Google Video. And then she had to admit to the board that it didn't work, never would work, and she had found another company that was perfect, and she wanted to buy it for $1.1 billion. Can you imagine? that is a mistake. Can you imagine the size of that mistake? Yeah. But it turned out the best bet.

She did it. Yeah. And she convinced them. And that was the best bet ever. Because it's the largest video platform in the world. Yeah. There's a billion downloads per day. Yeah. And so many careers. And so many careers, so many people that are influencers and YouTube, you know, stars and things. It changed the world. And I think a lot of your, uh, bring.

and principles, we've woven into that platform because how the platform cares about creators, it's the best caring platform, the kindness. And I think Google is the only company where I meet people and they tell me, I've been working for this company for 20 plus years. It's just the incredible amount of people who stay loyal to the company just because of their values. Because it's kind. Google actually cares about people, you know. They have food 24 hours a day. They have a doctor on site if you're sick. They have a dentist on site. They have dry cleaning on site.

I mean, they've got all this stuff on site to help you. And if you have a problem, they'll also help you. They don't condemn you like other companies do. By the way, do you speak Russian at all? Can you say some? My mother spoke Russian to me. You are from Krasn? Novosibirsk.

Okay. Yeah, I wanted to see if you could say something. in Russian to Russian-speaking moms who are afraid of their kids' future. I can't. I'm not good enough. I could practice a little bit and then I could say it for you. Okay. All right. We need a practice session.

Okay, one last, yeah, let's just say it to all the moms who worried about their kids' future because of AI because there are so many videos saying, like, you're going to lose your job. What would you say to those moms? I think they should stop worrying because I think worry itself

makes you depressed and takes away your energy. And your child is going to be okay. You want to teach them to think independently and to trust themselves and not be afraid of making a mistake. Yeah. And then you can't make good decisions if you're constantly worried. You can't make good decisions if you're always petrified about making a mistake. Thank you so much, Esther. It was amazing. I'm so happy we had this conversation. Thank you for coming. I am very happy, too. If I can can just help a few people, I'll be very happy. Thank you.

I'd like to help even more. Please. Please do another book if you ever have time for it. I know you have a documentary coming out. Oh, I have a documentary. It's called The Godmother of Silicon Valley. And so now it's entering competitions. So it can't be shown all over Europe yet.

But it's coming out. And what's good about this documentary is it's really me, but then it's also my students talking about what I did in the class that changed their lives. If you know someone raising kids right now and wondering what actually matters, send them this. Or someone at work who stopped trusting themselves. Same conversation, different problem.