Godmother of Silicon Valley: How to Raise a CEO | Esther Wojcicki

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1:00Esther Wojcicki: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 wash way or how to raise successful kids. I started reading about her difficult childhood, how she raised three daughters in Silicon Valley as a teacher. So see, this is the reality of working from home with the kids.

1:38Esther Wojcicki: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 Wojcicki 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 23andMe.

2:16Esther Wojcicki:She was Sergey Brin's first wife. Her company was once valued at billions of dollars, and then it went 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?

2:56Well, 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?

3:39Esther Wojcicki:No. What's happening? 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.

4:18Why 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.

4:38Esther Wojcicki:Yeah. Then it can 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.

5:26You know, I started in the 19, it's shocking, 1980s.

5:30Esther Wojcicki:Yeah, 1986. 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, right? 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 when nobody in the schools anywhere was using were using computers and I was using computers and I looked like an odd duck and were you one of 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 how would you use that 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?

6:29So 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 you know 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

7:05Esther Wojcicki: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. And so that's the way I think of AI. And you don't want to just to do things that 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 that 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.

7:58So I think AI is like a good, smart friend.

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8:30Esther Wojcicki:It's great that you have this positive relationship with AI, because a lot of people are like, oh, it's going to take away 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.

9:06but 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.

9:56Esther Wojcicki:Talk to me about your TRIQ 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 it 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.

10:41Yeah. And, you know, and if they don't get that, then they feel, you know, 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 going to 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.

11:31Have you heard about that?

11:32Esther Wojcicki:Absolutely. And you can do anything you want. Well, you apply for a 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.

12:18Do 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, then 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.

13:07Never 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? Because two brains are better than one. 100%. And then kindness. God, if we could all be kind to each other.

13:34Esther Wojcicki: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 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 aren't trusting yourself.

14:12and 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 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.

14:53Esther Wojcicki:How do you do that? Because I was reading when I was preparing for this interview that you taught your daughters to be very easy with mistakes and your students as well. 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 do you know what the success rate of those rehab centers is 10 percent 90 percent failure and it's because they don't help those people understand themselves and believe in themselves.

15:40They'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 learned 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 US, it's getting worse.

16:21Esther Wojcicki:Yeah, it's just tough. Exactly what you brought up, we were raised this way. You were raised to beat yourself up. Because the teacher would tell you, 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 your students. So the next time you're afraid to even make a single step. Exactly. 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.

16:59Esther Wojcicki: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. Yeah. and you know 23andMe 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 yeah and so we have a foundation called the susan wajiski foundation yeah we just launched and that we've got millions of dollars working on it.

17:55We 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.

18:08Esther Wojcicki:Yeah. I think the reason I've been so, I've been doing so many podcasts because Susan was on my list, but then she passed away. Oh yeah. And then And I told myself, like, I just have to start. Yes. Good. Yeah. I'm very proud of you. Very emotional. And YouTube is the reason I'm here. So, yeah. Thank you for raising your daughter the way you did. 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. in a 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 yeah just do it again revise until you get it right yeah 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 They spent too much time on this part.

19:12And so that's why they all did so well after they graduated, because they were believing in themselves.

19:20Esther Wojcicki: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.

19:57Esther Wojcicki:Then, you know, things change. When do you think is worse? Is there a line when you don't like trust your kids, but you help them make the right decision or like you 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. They were like, you can't. Yeah. 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 he's a big one yeah so his parents of course wanted him to go to school and be you know a lawyer a doctor or something else like that.

20:57And 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, 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.

21:50But if I would have forced her, I think, you know, she wouldn't have had the 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

22:39Esther Wojcicki: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 the flow and they just... They all got to do whatever they wanted to do.

23:18I 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 Ujama at Stanford. It 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, she went on to get another degree in medical anthropology. I mean, she has more degrees than you can believe.

24:07Esther Wojcicki: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. 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.

24:46Marvel Television's Wonder Man, an eight episode series now streaming on Disney+. A superhero remake, not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action! Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man. I'm going to need you to sign this assuming you don't have superpowers. I'll never work again if anyone found out. My lips are sealed. Marvel Television's Wonder Man. All eight episodes now streaming only on Disney+. 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.