Fireside Chat with Ken Goldman, President at Hillspire LLC

I had the opportunity to interview Ken Goldman on Zoom last week while he was sheltering in place and working from his Pebble Beach home. Ken Goldman is President of Hillspire LLC, a family office management company, for which Ken is responsible for financial and administrative functions, along with real estate, aviation and maritime activities.

In addition to the significant family office, Hillspire manages philanthropic efforts which include The Schmidt Family Foundation, which advances the development of renewable energy and a wiser use of natural resources; the 11th Hour Project, which supports more than 150 non-profit organizations in program areas including climate and energy, ecological agriculture, human rights, and oceans; and the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which in 2012 launched the research vessel, Falkor, as a mobile platform to advance ocean exploration, discovery, and knowledge, and catalyze sharing of information about the oceans.

Ken is the former chief financial officer of Yahoo! (‘12-’17), Fortinet (‘07-’12), and Siebel Systems, Inc. (‘00-’06).During a professional career spanning over forty years, Ken has served as CFO of multiple public and private companies and as CFO has helped take three companies public. In addition, his experience includes board director, audit committee chairman and financial advisory roles at more than 40 corporate boards, of which over 10 have gone public while he was a board member.

Ken currently serves on the board of directors of NXP Semiconductor, Trinet, RingCentral, Zuora, GoPro, Inc. and the SASB Foundation; and other non-profit boards such as the RFK Human Rights Board, and formerly Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Foundation Board. Ken holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

What surprised me in setting up the interview was how responsive he was on email and how humble he was although after speaking with him, he said these were traits he looks for in leaders. We walked through some questions we had prepared but then took many questions from the live audience.

Here’s the full recording:

Some highlights from his talk:

• 4:41 — How Ken got involved with this community
• 9:22 — What is the role of the CFO?

12:35 — What Ken looks for in a CEO as a CFO or Board Member when he joins a company:

“I’m looking for a company where I can create value, where they appreciate what I do. We can have an impact together. We’re aligned culturally in terms of what I believe. A couple of companies I ended up leaving because I didn’t feel we were aligned anymore culturally so that’s an important element…One of things I’m most proud of [in my career] is that we’ve created shareholder value in every single company. So investors have a good respect for what I’ve done. My teams and I have created value and we’ve done it honestly and with a lot of integrity.”

• 17:13 — Lessons learned from Ken’s career journey

• 22:23 — How Ken got involved with Hillspire and background on the company
• 25:43 — Ken’s angel investing (passive and active)
• 26:55 — How his management style has evolved over time from hardware to software and from old school Silicon Valley to Millennial culture
• 31:36 — Examples of how you “do not waste a crisis” today

“Figure out how to go on the offensive. Obviously that’s easy to say if you have cash. We’ve discussed this with some of the boards I’m on — you need to make sure you can get to the other side of the crisis during a recession, but how do you take advantage? Where can you invest and gain share? You look at what Zoom is doing as an example. I’m not directly associated with it, but you look at how they are now becoming a verb as opposed to a company.

If you look at where many of the great companies today were created, they were created 10 years ago. Why? It happened to be the last time we had a recession — AirBnB, Palantir, Uber, Lyft… Many of the great companies today that are still private were created in the last recession. So there are opportunities to invest in areas when people don’t have as much cash…

In companies, people say to cut once and that’s all. The reality is cutting is hard and to know how much to cut is really difficult until you peel the onion. I actually see it a little differently. Do the actions you would do even if you don’t know where it is going or how bad it will get…Use a current opportunity now to do some things that wouldn’t have been palatable in good times and do those things now…use the opportunity to reduce expenses in certain areas that you wouldn’t have otherwise so you can reinvest further to be more aggressive.”

• 38:38 — How to manage a virtual workforce
• 57:52 — Message for anyone who’s lost their job recently
• 59:40 — “Rules of the Road” for your career & advice he gave his daughter going to college

“#1 through #10 is integrity. People say companies have a strategy and I think you need to orchestrate your career and think of a strategy. I’ve thought about that — I started as a financial analyst, then got controllership experience, managerial experience, and learned different functions. #4 is important — go where the action is. Semiconductors used to be, then I went to software then internet then security…Fortuitously, technology is where the action is — the top 5 companies in the world by market caps are technology companies. It wasn’t the case 10 years ago. Sometimes you do need luck. #11, how can you help the people that don’t have the advantages we have? This is really important…Some folks in politics think that business is bad. I’ve always said business is really a great experience and an adventure.

#14 Have a balance in life. #16 It’s better to try and fail than not try. #19 People always ask what’s the number one criteria for people who’ve been successful? Competitiveness is right up there. That’s why many folks in sports do really well. They have a competitive will to win. #20 Professional appearance is important when you think about it. Show up. I’ve been on a number of school boards including Menlo Schools board and Cornell University’s board. When I first joined, I asked someone what’s important and 80% of the time, they said it just being involved and coming to the meetings. #23 Have compassion. #24 I learned that pressure is a privilege. When you say how do you feel under pressure, you only have pressure if you’re up there in life. So I look at that as a privilege.

#26 “The older the fiddle, the better the tune” is obvious, given how old I am. #29 Go where there are more asymmetrical returns in terms of risk and reward. #31 Pattern recognition is under appreciated but it’s so important in terms of how you think about everything. Having experiences is why you want to stay in the game. #32 I talked about humility and swagger. #34 Don’t waste talent. I see people sometimes wasting talent.

He also discussed some advice he gave his daughter for starting out her career after college:

It was great to get an hour of Ken’s time for this webinar. He is a wealth of knowledge and experience. His insights could help any entrepreneur at any stage company.

I hope when the world “normalizes” post COVID-19, ACTAI is able to have him join us again for a kite trip in one of his favorite spots Maui or perhaps we’ll be able to visit the Falkor, which is currently stationed off the coast of Queensland, Australia!

Hope you can join us for our next Fireside Chat, register on the ACTAI Global website!

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ACTAI Global is a community of Athletes, Conservationists, Technologists, Artists and Innovators that bring their collective knowledge, energy and social capital together in ‘active gatherings’. The community supports projects benefiting environmental conservation and economic empowerment via entrepreneurship. Together we have brought to life a marine conservation area with Mission Blue, supported other conservation organizations such as Ocean Elders, Virgin Unite, Sea Shepard Conservation Society, and Lonely Whale, and catalyzed gatherings around the world including Australia Based WestTechFest, the Necker Blockchain Summit, and the Extreme Tech Challenge.