Noosheen Hashemi- Against All Odds

 

About Noosheen Hashemi

Noosheen Hashemi is a business plan builder, angel investor, and advisor with a focus on disruptive ideas and platforms, Noosheen has more than three decades of experience building the leadership and execution capabilities of early stage companies to deliver growth and profitability on a global scale.

As a private investor in more than 20 start-ups that are pushing the boundaries of mobile, productivity, convenience, travel, and beauty, Noosheen takes an active role in fundraising, talent acquisition, operations, and business growth development. She is an advisor to Cloud Lending Solutions, a global cloud infrastructure company, at Radius, an insights-driven marketing intelligence platform, and at AnyRoad, a platform that matches travelers with tour guides.

A seasoned veteran of high growth, technology-driven, founder-led companies, Noosheen spent the early part of her career at Oracle Corporation where, as Vice President of Finance and Administration, she built the critical sales and administrative capacity that allowed the company to scale revenue from $26 million in 1985 to $3 billion in 1995 and a market cap of $19 billion. A philanthropist and outspoken advocate on behalf of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, Noosheen is also the co-founder and President of HAND, a family foundation that provides financial, advisory, and advocacy support to hundreds of organizations and dozens of scholars and social entrepreneurs dedicated to protecting the young, and promoting the socio-economic growth and development advancement of individuals.

Noosheen serves on the advisory boards of SIEPR, Ploughshares Fund, and Eurasia Foundation. Noosheen’s philanthropic efforts have been honored by the World Affairs Council, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Girl Scouts of America, and she was recognized as one of Gentry magazine’s top 50 philanthropists in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 and 2014.

Born in Iran, Noosheen emigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1977. She holds a B.S. in Economics from San Jose State University and an M.S. in Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of business growth strategies.

 

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Noosheen Hashemi, welcome to today’s show. Thank you for having me. So Noosheen, it’s really an honor to have you with us today. But for the listeners, can you give us your background and you’re happy in life and what brought you up to where you are today?

Noosheen
Yeah, I was born in Iran and immigrated to the US in 1977 and went to high school and graduated from cotton High School in Palo Alto, and went off to college. And right after college, I started working at a semiconductor company briefly, before going to Oracle, where I worked for 10 years. After Oracle, after a brief, brief break after Oracle, I went to a.com, a successful Sequoia backed profitable.com, which was eventually sold. But I left to have my kids and 70 Sorry, 97 and 99. And then took a different path to the social world and philanthropic world. But that’s it in a nutshell.

Alan
Okay, good. Well, you do quite a bit today. And I want to step a little bit back that 9119 91. Okay, Oracle, awarded you with the against all odds award for your role in the company’s financial turnaround. Can you tell us about that?

Noosheen
Sure. Yeah, Oracle, was an incredible growth story. When I joined the company, it had just finished a $23 million year, and we went on actually $26 million a year. And we went on to double our revenues every year, all the way to a billion dollars. And so we were constantly testing the growth, the growth was constantly testing the organization, essentially, how much we could push this train, we joke that Oracle was, it was a running train that you wouldn’t stop for you to get on or off, if you just sort of hopped on and did your piece. And a big part of this was the infrastructure to the underlying the foundation underlying this, this fast growth, at some point, we decided we would grow even faster, if we decentralize this infrastructure. And unfortunately, as it turned out, some of the checks and balances that had been designed, did not get implemented. As a result. We didn’t like that. We didn’t as a result, they we had some we had some hiccups. And so I was called back in to basically re centralize everything, reorganize the foundation, correct the mistakes and build a solid foundation rebuild a solid foundation for going forward. And so it was I got the award because they were such competing goals and the company he wanted the fastest growth you could possibly have. But you also wanted to have the greatest customer satisfaction, the greatest sales, productivity, and, you know, the greatest organizational efficiency. So all of these were at odds with each other. And that’s, that’s the role that I played and making, at the end everything work.

Alan
When you were working through these issues, and it’s every entrepreneur as companies grow and scale. You’re constantly modifying did you find that for yourself personally? Was it more intuitive the direction or how did you come to

Noosheen
Absolutely, I was the moment I landed, I was 22 years old. And soon I was a I went from the bottom of the organization to from an individual contributor to a manager that I was a director that was a vice president I was I already needed to have two assistants by the time I was 24 years old, because I was doing so many things at some point I was running 12 departments, from sales training to the entire self infrastructure of the Oracle Salesforce, I ran all the Finance Administration for Oracle us. So yeah, it was it was intuition it was it was some very basic things, which is always serve in the best interest of the company above all else. So the loyalties were always to Oracle, not to any one person. It was always in service of efficiency and constant, continuous process improvement was always to be ethical, proper, and and then you add a lot of hard work. And oracle was a very hard working company. We you couldn’t find a couldn’t find a conference room at nine o’clock at night. I worked 18 hour days every day for seven years. And I had a three day honeymoon. And I pulled all nighters all the time. I would work till five in the morning, go home and change and be back for a meeting at eight. It was just how it was so yeah, it was a lot of intuition. You just knew what you had to do and It was beautiful because they trusted young people to do things that would just say, go hire 200. Salespeople. And when we decided to go, for example to schools to hire, so you just had to figure it out, No one sat you down and said, I suggest you take you go to these schools, you basically figured out if I’m hiring for for Oracle, and I have to hire that many people that fast, so I’m going to look for technically at colleges to start with, and I’m going to look for the for the so it was, it was a very, it was it was a great place, because you really, as the company tested its limits each individual was testing there’s

Alan
Noosheem, it’s, it’s about time for a break. But when we get back I like to talk about your foundation, your philanthropic causes I’m visiting today with Noosheen Hashemi and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’ve been visiting today with Noosheen Hashemi. And the first segment we’re talking about you successful period Oracle and your award in in 91 basically crediting you for a tremendous amount of input, turning the company around and launching it this way. But how long did you stay with Oracle? And then what? What prompted you to move on to something else.

Noosheen
I stayed for 10 years. And after the first seven years when I was in US Finance. I did go to the Stanford Business School for one year, in this loan program and got a master’s in management went back to Oracle, I was gone for just nine months, I went back to Oracle and continued working more in the field. This time it was running education marketing worldwide. So I ended up having more of an international position. While my 10 years was coming up, I thought I thought about John Gardner’s comment that you should move on after 77 to 10 years, no matter how well you’re doing, I thought, wow, I don’t want to be alive for 10 years is a long time. I’ve learned a lot here. And it’s it’s time to see what’s out there. And so I left and for a year I traveled around the world now remember, my my time at Oracle was my first seven years was extremely intense. I just mentioned to you, my my hours, I’d actually not been outside except to go in between buildings. Three o’clock in the afternoon, when I showed up at Stanford Business School, I only wore suits, I only wore suits, even to the company picnic. So I had had a very intense career life. So it was really an opportunity for me to pause and, and think about things that I wanted to do. So I that was early days. of.com. So I joined a a, a Sequoia backed company that was making, essentially bringing financial services, personal investing online, to the world. So instead of going to show off to execute your trades, you could you could execute your own or you had access to in fact, when you went to Schwab or ETrade, to execute it, to get financial information, you were really getting it from koat.com We were the ones providing OEMing, if you will, providing that information to those websites. So it was really exciting. Those early days of personal finance happening. So I went to that company. And then I decided to have to have kids and and that’s sort of what came next.

Alan
So when you when you stepped out, you began a family. And I imagine that you still have that driving entrepreneur inside you though.

Noosheen
Your DNA never changes. I’m still as as hard working as, as driven as I’ve always been. I just decided to dedicate the last 18 years of raising my family, my daughter is 18 and a half my son is 16. And she’s off to college. And so about two and a half years ago, I began heading back to the corporate world and working with young with entrepreneurs to scale their companies and I get a huge kick out of that. It’s really, really fun. Because, you know, there are 1000s and 1000s of decisions that face entrepreneurs every day. And they have to get most of those right they obviously they have to get the big strategy right but there are lots of other decisions every day about hiring people and setting goals and communicating goals. So it’s hugely gratifying when you can save them from one of those, you know One of those bad mistakes a bad hire or just understanding where they’re going and where they want to go. It’s hugely satisfying to, to apply your experience to these to these other companies.

Alan
And visiting here today with Noosheen Hashemi, and I need to take another break. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back. And we’re here today with Noosheen Hashemi and real entrepreneurs some really fun hearing about the successful career at Oracle then stepping out to help a Sequoia backbencher. quote.com and, and then and then there was a part of your life that you stepped out and began to do some philanthropy, social entrepreneurship. So what is that? What prompted you in that area? Yes.

Noosheen
So um, so I had, when, in 2003, when it was my, my son was four and I was thinking about going back to work. I had a decision to make. And it so happened that for my 40th birthday, I went to a celebration of Sargent Schreiber’s life. And there’s a video shown at that event where he says he had to make a decision whether he wanted to make, make more people rich, or he wanted to do for those who couldn’t do for themselves. And I thought the universe was speaking to me. And I was living a comfortable life. And my husband was very, very successful. And I had lived an amazing career life myself. And I thought this is the time to give back to others. And that’s really what you do in Silicon Valley. Everyone’s involved in philanthropy in some way. Some people do it full time. Some people do it part time, but everyone does it. It’s very much part of our culture. So I really consider it a great privilege to be able to dedicate all my time and resources and my intensity, my research, everything that you know I am, I can offer the world in a social setting. And so there began my journey of first writing tracks and going to conferences and reading syllabuses, just like anything else I do, I usually research it very, very thoroughly. So I tried to really learn what it was all about. And I looked at Global Philanthropy, I looked at flow, local philanthropy, strategic philanthropy, what that all meant I was incredibly inspired by the people who had come before and and the things that, that especially diasporas, immigrants that had come before and they had become established as far as like a Jewish Diaspora. There are the golden standard of philanthropy in the world. And I was incredibly inspired by that. So I felt that yes, this is what one does when one can or everyone can do something. And I should be able to do a lot. So I jumped in. And like I said, I started with writing tracks, and it became more I became more interested in what people were doing. And I had to, you know, I started with sort of textbook philanthropy textbooks or to do philanthropy, you need to know your real wheelhouse, you need to know what you’re doing, you need to be focused on those things. But over the last 1516 years, I’ve developed a lot of shades of gray, I do a lot of random acts of kindness that I never mentioned. And honestly, it’s not very strategic, because you’re not signaling to the market, but I love doing it. I get a huge kick out of it. And, yeah, so I began there. And I brought my entire sort of business experience to my philanthropy. And of course, there are limitations to business operating in the social sector or in government, as we know, so I had to learn a lot of lessons. Things don’t happen as quickly, you can’t eliminate child abuse, for example, and I also went around the world, I took my children to 103 countries and learned that, you know, basically, wherever you are, and whatever you’re trying to change, you’re going to bet against the human condition, essentially, once you see the whole planet over and over, and you realize it really helped me rethink the timeframe for the social changes I expected and people whether it was my Iranian American community and what I could expect of them and what timeframe whether it was child abuse, I wanted to change whether it was the educational system in the US or or whatever else I was working on.

Alan
So the hand Foundation, what is handstand for Okay,

Noosheen
Hand is an anchor Um, it’s basically the two last names of myself and my husband and the two first names of our children so Hashemi, Ari, my son NASM, my husband’s last name. And then Diana, my daughter’s name, our goal was to, for them to continue after we are gone, even though our foundation is not a very large foundation, it’s a very effective Foundation, and that we do a lot of hands on capacity building in nonprofits. And we’re hoping that our kids will continue that tradition that they will get involved, they will partner with nonprofits that will be of service, not only financially, but also with their hands and with their hearts with their voice, and they can spread the gospel, they can help organizations in the way we have tried.

Alan
Now in, in philanthropy, you you found that after several years of doing this, the entrepreneur was emerging within you. And you know, what point you’re you’re starting to move back into helping to launch companies today.

Noosheen
Yes, I, I absolutely love philanthropy, I will always be a part big part of my life. I talked about the joy of even random acts of kindness, which are not, which are anonymous, and not necessarily very long term, although I do feel that they make a long term impact on people. Yes, I felt like the adrenaline was I want that back, I want that speed. And that sort of madness gives me great joy. And especially when I go into these companies, and they have deadlines, and they have things to do, and they are puzzled, and they’re not sure to go this way, or this way, or hire this VP of sales or, or have this kind of a comp plan or, and so I’ve after sort of studying, so I decided first just to jump in. So I started just advising companies and going in hands on operationally to help entrepreneurs and then, you know, I started investing in the companies. And now I’m thinking, you know, if I’m going to work this way, I might as well just start, you know, go deeper and deeper. So I could see my engagement rising over time. And I could see working more hands on with maybe two or three companies or maybe even dropping into one company.

Alan
Have you decide which companies to get involved with?

Noosheen
Well, in the beginning, I started with all the, you know, I mentioned to one friend that I’m interested in going back and all of a sudden I had 12 Different things that people wanted me to do. So in the beginning, I just sort of jumped in based on the technology that I was interested in. So it was the product that interested me. But quickly I learned quickly, I decided that all the quality people had known in my life, I was sort of taking that for granted, not everyone’s a quality entrepreneur. So I quickly tried to learn sort of that it all comes down to the founders first. So now before I even look at the product at first, well, obviously we all look for the market, the size of the market, we always look at the product, the timing, but entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, the DNA of the founders, or the founder, well, first of all, I don’t invest in a company unless there’s a technical co founder. So there at least I don’t invest in a company with a single founder. So founders, I think their DNA is incredibly important. It permeates the culture of the organization for years to come. So it’s really important if they are open minded, if they are driven people, you know, what are their motivations for starting a company? Are they just not trying to go into the corporate grind? You know, they’re trying to have no boss, or are these people really trying to solve something, they’re obsessive about a product, that they read their market? Well, and so I look for people that are playing smart strategically, like they understand their market, and they understand what product they are creating, and what problem they’re solving. But more importantly, I look for emotional intelligence, I’m looking for people that are open, that want to learn, want to hear and want to deal with difficult issues that are so necessary in building a company, if you’re, if you’re a fast growth company over a dozen years, you’re gonna have to change your team three or four times, some people just don’t have the stomach for for for hiring, upgrading people around them to do that much, you know, human assessment and change. So I look for people that have who are not just smart and strategic about the product, but they also have the they are up for the human endeavor that building companies is and not everyone is up for that. So you need to be good, just plain good and competent and smart. But also, you need to be up for the for the human side, which most people that’s where they make most of their mistakes. They can’t tell their co founder, they’re not going to be good CTO five years from start, if that turns out to be the case or they can’t, you know, tell someone that let’s say they’re running remote engineering. They can’t really He tell people like, you need to travel more so that we can stay in community, there are all these little things that that people miss. And most of them have to do with dealing with people.

Alan
When you see the world heading right now in terms of the entrepreneur and technology, so you’re looking five years down the road, do you see some clear trends that you say, as entrepreneur, you’d want to get involved with these trends that.

Noosheen
He used to say, such as you’re specifically asking about tech trends, that kind of thing, I would like to step back and actually say that. Overall, I think that federal governments of the world can’t really provide everything that people or the world need, they can’t provide all the jobs that we need, they can’t, they can’t grow economies at the rate that we need. So I see global entrepreneurship as an extremely positive movement that’s really happening all over the world, not just in Silicon Valley, obviously. But it’s happening in Rwanda. And it’s happening in Southeast Asia, it’s happening a lot of places. And I think that’s extremely positive. I think some of these truly ingenious ideas are obviously happening in the United States, a lot of them are around biotech, I am most excited about the changes that biotech will make in the world, it will change the board world dramatically in terms of the amount of suffering people go through, and the amount of time they miss from work. And that I think those are some of the most exciting changes are going to be in, in biomedical technology. So that excites me very much. But I think there’s going to be innovations across the board, I think there’s going to be innovation to the way governments are run, I think there’s going to be pressure on governments to be more transparent. So there’s going to be business process innovation, there’s going to be just pure technical innovations, there’s going to be technical innovations that allow other technical invasions to be built on top of them. So I feel like it’s, it’s all good news. If you really feel if you really look at the EAC. If you really look at a lot of these young companies, these ideas that are coming back, it is very exciting. It’s going to be a dramatically different world. But of course, we worry about the transition from some of the old, old kinds of jobs to new kinds of jobs. That’s why I’m a huge believer in computer science education in schools. I think it’s as as important as teaching people math and English because we are a knowledge economy, we are the innovators of the world. And we are the at least the Jumpstarters we are the instigators we are the we are the people who we are the inquiring minds because of our educational system because of our strong liberal arts system. We are the ones that think more think out of the box, we test and we try. And so we need to have more of our of our education, to be focused on tools where they can build new things that that the world needs. So I’m really hoping that happens.

Alan
I’ve been visiting here today with machine Asami. Semi and it’s been a real pleasure having you out of all the entrepreneurs I’ve done which is over 500 on the show. You are really stand out.

Noosheen
Thank you. That’s very kind of you.

Alan
We’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’ve held over Noosheen for one more segment. We’re just talking on the break about the generation that today and we’re working with today’s generation the message that we like to have and I asked if she could hold over and, and and share some of the thoughts with me. So when you’re looking at the kids today, you worked very hard in your career to establish yourself nothing was easy. What message would you have to this generation?

Noosheen
Well, I think that youth is a great thing that I think it’s been said youth is wasted on the young. You have unbelievable energy as a young person, you learn things instantly. You have so many assets as a young person that I would you know, I would encourage people to work hard early in their lives. i It surprises me when a 22 year old tells me they want they want they want balance in their lives because I just don’t even know what that means. I think I really benefited It greatly from from working hard early in my life, I enjoyed working hard early my life you’re constantly trying to see, well I did that I wonder if I can do that too. I wonder if I can do that too. And I wonder if I can do that too. And these were these were not individual endeavors, these were group group, you know, teams, so they’re hugely gratifying when you can make the impossible happen. And so I feel that working early in your life, you have to work 10 to 15, I feel that to be successful, you need to put in at least 10 to 15 years of hard labor, decide when you want to put in that hard labor, I suggest doing it earlier in life than later in life. Because later in life, you have other responsibilities, potentially you have children, potentially you have, you want to give back to your community more you you should be giving to your community more as a an engaged us aware citizen, you should be spending time in your community, you should be participating in civic life, and you should you have lots of other things that you do. So I feel like sometimes, young people might tend to these days, at least, I mean, we used to sleep we didn’t even I remember, when Yahoo came about my husband was an executive, he was chief technical technology officer at Yahoo, I think those people like slept under their beds, their desk, we didn’t even sleep. So my generation, we didn’t even sleep. And then at Yahoo, I think they were sleeping under their beds. And now I don’t know if people need to have their cappuccinos. And they’re, you know, they’re sort of, and that’s wonderful. I’m all for quality of life. But I feel like you miss out when you have you’re at your highest mental and physical capacity. How much you can engage with the world is, is going to the level that you engage in the with the world, you know, determines some level of satisfaction you have about the world. And so I feel like you’d be happier, more satisfied. The more you do, the more you give. And it’s just I’m just pushing for higher engagement. And this idea that, you know, I see a lot of trends that concern me about work, because I think work is wonderful work is delicious work is exciting work helps you and helps others. And so I’m always going to argue for for focus on work earlier in life than later because it affords you the ultimate luxury which is freedom, freedom to think freedom to learn freedom to serve.

Alan
I love the way that you you’ve lived your life to the fullest and also that you can outline in looking back and say, you know, I, I gave it all, you know, and and the net result is there were some payoffs. I’m sure that along the way, there were some lessons that were learned.

Noosheen
Yes, so many, but so many.

Alan
But in the end, it’s it’s it’s a beautiful message to the generation that, you know, keep moving and keep pushing the boundaries.

Noosheen
Absolutely. And especially when we live in such a privileged society in the United States when we are we live free of security concerns on a daily basis when we have the best education higher education system in the world. When you know when we have so much opportunity in this country, I feel that we should do more for ourselves and more for the rest of the world.

Alan
Very well said, I believe is here today with ashamed as semi and we’ve been talking about. She’s an angel investor and entrepreneur, and an absolutely incredible person. I really appreciate you being on today’s show. Thank

Noosheen
Thank you so much for having me.

 

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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