Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

by Jessica Livingston

Something is getting lost in the message here, where it should be really inspiring: "All I have to do is figure out this math-and-science thing, and I'm writing part of my ticket here." Why that is not pulling not only women, but pulling everybody to say, "I want to be like those people," I don't know. You'd think that everybody would want to have our jobs. We've all been handsomely rewarded. The stories are not like, "Hey, we had patrician backgrounds and silver spoons, and we bought our way into this." We just "thought" our way into these industries. The power of thought and math and science and computing, you're given that for free—it's a choice you can make. You take that choice, and it gives you sort of a magic wand to be a captain of an industry that's still fairly young, that's driving the whole world economy. I don't know. This is just a mystery to me. Women running these companies have very rich lives. I don't know.

The need for ambition