Helen Pastorino has more than 40 years of experience in transforming the real estate industry via technology. She co-founded Alain Pinel Realtors, one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most prestigious real estate companies, driving billions of dollars of annual sales. Today, she is founder and CEO of Pertria, a real estate sales, investment, and property management firm that guides clients in creating investment strategies that generate income, benefit from real estate appreciation, and achieve capital gains objectives. Helen concurrently serves as interim President and Board member of Startup Sandbox, a bioscience incubator in Santa Cruz, CA. Startup Sandbox incubates biotechnology entrepreneurs as they translate basic and applied research into commercially successful businesses. With wide-ranging interests, Helen serves as CEO of the World Tomato Society, growing the organization as a global community with one of the world’s largest tomato databases and almost one million members.
On today’s show we talk about:
What was it like to meet and work with Steve Jobs?
How does one implement technology in a company?
What is it like to be on the bleeding edge of technology?
What does the real estate market look like post Covid?
What is the true legacy of a CEO?
Connect with Helen
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenpastorin o/
Websites
World Tomato Society
Pertria https://pertria.com/
Startup Sandbox https://www.startupsandbox.org/
CONNECT WITH SHAWN
- Shawn Flynn’s LinkedInAccount
- Silicon Valley LinkedInGroup Account
- Shawn Flynn’s FacebookAccount
- Email Shawn@thesiliconvalleypodcast.com
Shawn Flynn 0:00
You’re listening to the Silicon Valley podcast. This is a very special episode of the Silicon Valley podcast. Why? Many of you know I co-host another podcast called Silicon Valley Tech, where myself and Sunil S Ranka interview some of the biggest names in technology from around the world, not just Silicon Valley, we’ve interviewed the 1998 Miss Universe, who is now heading an incubation park in the Caribbean’s. We interviewed Prem James who sold five companies to Cisco, along with an investment analyst from Bloomberg financials and many more. One of the guests that we had on Helen Pastorino is a huge fan of the Silicon Valley podcast. And I want to do her a favor and promote the other podcast as well, by taking the interview that’s on that channel and promoted on this one. For everyone out there, check out the other podcast and on today’s show, Helen Pastorino, she was a co-founder of Alain Pinel Realtors, where as president she grew sales volumes into billions of dollars. she’s worked with some of the leaders in tech in Silicon Valley implement in real estate tech before anyone else. On today’s show, we talked about what was it like meeting and working with Steve Jobs? How does one implement tech in a company? What is it like to be on the bleeding edge of technology? What does the future look like for the real estate market? post COVID? And what is the true legacy of a CEO? Remember, go on iTunes, write a review and share with your network because they’ll want this knowledge as well. All right, now let’s start the show the Silicon Valley podcast.
Announcer 1:38
Welcome to the Silicon Valley podcast with your host Shawn Flynn, who interviews famous entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and leaders in tech. Learn their secrets and see tomorrow’s world today.
Shawn Flynn 1:55
Helen, and thank you for taking the time today to be on Silicon Valley Tech with myself Shawn Flynn and Sunil S Ranka now, we are very excited about this interview. We got to talk to you off camera before and when we found out you have 45 horses we found out about your family, your history, your neighbor, Steve Wozniak of all people, one of our heroes, and one of the people we look up to and we are very excited about this. And I know everyone at home is going to love this episode.
But before going too in depth, can you give us a little bit of background up to this point of your career and your time here in Silicon Valley?
Helen Pastorino 2:29
Well, thank you both for having me. I came to the valley in 1968. And my parents were looking actually located a small little town of the peninsula that they wanted to move to. It was called Palo Alto. They looked at resale homes in Palo Alto but could not afford them at that time, a resell average resale home in Palo Alto was $42,000.
Sunil S Ranka 2:51
And you said $42,000,
Helen Pastorino 2:54
$42,000 was a little bit over my father’s budget. So, he ended up taking them moving the family to Cupertino. And we bought a brand-new home above a Bub road in the foothills and paid $31,000 for that. And he borrowed a little bit from his life insurance policy to make sure he could make that down payment on that home. Now, I recall not too long from then I have a copy of the San Jose Mercury News. And on the front page of the Mercury News. It says Saratoga highs housing prices hit $100,000. And the conversation was how could this be and who can afford these houses. And so, the decision was they were celebrities. They were movie stars or they were athletes. But the average family could not afford $100,000 home. employment in the valley at that time was Moffett Field, it was Stanford. Also, then we were affected by whether we had a Republican or a democratic president. So, when you talk about the swings of real estate in the valley, at that point in time, it was if we had a president that would support Moffett Field, then we were booming with VA loans all over the valley. And if not, then we were in a recession until the next election and agriculture as everybody knows and reads about was prevalent in the valley and some of the key locations were also Sherry’s in Sunnyvale and Del Monte insignia in Campbell, downtown San Jose, Cali brothers, of course, in Cupertino, and I think all of the kids at some point or another were employed by Cali brothers and I know I work there. And for 50 cents a tray we were asked to cut the apricots cuts in half, splay them on the tray. And then those trays went as far as you could see, and the trays were eight by eight feet by four feet. And you were paid 50 cents tray. So, can you imagine how long it took for to cut, well, of course, you ate one and you cut five and there was no 85. But 85 was on the map has been on the maps for a long, long time. 35 years it actually appeared on the maps, but there were houses that completely all the way through 85. And then there was a decision made that Okay, that was at 85 was in fact going to be built and there was going to be five to six years. So, we had to start talking about moving houses out of the corridors, we had to start talking about the exit ramps. At that point in time in my career, I worked at a company called Fox & Carskadon. I manage their Saratoga office. We had a meeting at De Anza College at the Flint center. It holds about 2300-2500 people. We had five mayors and we had Caltrans, we had a couple of managers, a few lawyers, and basically talked about where the off ramps for 85 are going to occur. And in what cities in where Los Gatos was adamant, they would not have any sort of 85 off ramp. They were the most difficult of all the towns with regards to accepting an off ramp, what they didn’t want were people to be able to come from different areas and just land in their town. They did not want one. So the rule became that every town had to have one. Minimum you were going to have to identify within your town or city where you were going to have an 85 off ramp. We’re driving through the valley. Now I drove here today and I had a smile on my face when I jumped on 85 in Los Gatos, because you can only go one way, the 85 off ramp in Los Gatos is only North you can’t there is just so I jumped on and I laughed. I thought, Yeah, I remember this. I remember the argument about this on ramp.
Shawn Flynn 6:47
And then your career path, currently and in the past, you know, 20-30 years. What sector has it been in? And can you talk about the development of that?
Helen Pastorino 6:56
Yes, I started in real estate in 1975. I was 21 years of age. At that time, I was a sole practitioner, I was an individual real estate broker and sold real estate in the valley and the valley was full time of very small offices independently owned 5-15,25 people at most in those offices. And most of them were gentlemen, most of them were male and probably in their 50s retired or second careers very unusual to see a young woman in the industry, and rarely saw any woman who was the broker of record or actually owned a company. I learned my mentors were mostly men, middle aged, retired or second careers. And they taught me very well. I went on in 1998. I was 27 years old. And I began to manage the Fox & Carskadon office in Saratoga on prospect in highway 9 Fox & Carskadon was a very well-known real estate company. It was founded in the peninsula in 1929. And one of the top three in the valley, and Saratoga office, you know, they, when you were in the peninsula in those days, and I’m not so sure it hasn’t changed. The South Bay was kind of a stepsister or a stepbrother. It was unfortunate that you had to identify yourself as a South Bay real estate for and the peninsula firms did their best to accommodate us, but we were really South Bay Fox & Carskadon was a peninsula firm, as was Grubin. LSS was Cornish and Carey. And those were the big three firms in the valley. I took over Saratoga and we became one of their top first, second or third offices. So now they could no longer dismiss the South Bay, because one of their top offices were there. In 84. I think I was 30 years old then. And now you can figure out how old I am. We’re you are you calculating? I saw you, Shawn.
Shawn Flynn 9:01
Luckily, none of us are engineers. And we don’t have we’re not good at math. We’re all we’re all good here.
Helen Pastorino 9:07
Well, I took over. I became their senior vice president I stayed managing Saratoga, which was considered a very large office at that time was 50 people. I took over I oversaw Palo Alto to Carmel, I had seven other offices that I was responsible for. In addition to the office I managed at 1989. My boss who was the general manager of Fox & Carskadon. Applied for the position of President of Fox & Carskadon. He was denied that role shared that with me and shared who the President would become and I resigned. I left Fox & Carskadon and when I was maybe 34, with my boss along Pinel, we didn’t quite know what we were going to do. We thought maybe we’d go to work for another one of the other remaining large firms, we decided instead that we would open our own firm. In June of 1990, we opened Alain Pinel Realtors was myself along. And Paul Hume, all whom was a client of mine, I reached out to Paul. He was not in real estate at all. And he said, Sure, I’d love to do that. So, the three of us opened the company in June of 1990. In June of 1990, we were in the middle, or just at the beginning of a five year recession phrase on the street was survive till 95. That was, we were all hoping that we would make it to this five-year downturn. So here we are starting doing a startup in June of 90 being told that we’re heading for a major recession, I had signed on to follow, I was going to be a follower in this organization and do what Alain told me to do. Because he was a superstar. He was just amazing. His marketing skills were just ridiculously impressive. Well, what happened was, we had to make a decision. We were a small firm of 17 people; we had leased a 7800 square foot office. So, a large office was 50 people. 7800 square feet is 150 to 200 people, that’s what it will accommodate. And one of our decisions was to go from small to large, there were no large firms in the valley. Second of all, was how to survive this downturn, we had 17 people. You can imagine how that felt to have 17 people in 7800, it was a ghost, it was in a bowling alley. It was nobody there. So, we had to figure out how to compete with these big companies with 17 people. Everybody was saying you won’t make it you’ll never survive. We’re heading for a recession, bad timing. We came up with a decision, what are we going to do? We looked at the standards of practices in all three of the other firms. We had worked in them. So, we knew what standards of practice were, how are we going to beat those standards. And so, you can mark it a little more, spend a little more money. And at that point, all the advertising because there wasn’t technology in the public domain of any extent. It was to buy more advertising, buy more marketing, buy more magazines, Business Journal, the San Jose Mercury News, luxury magazines, homes and lands will just buy more pages. We couldn’t buy more pages; we were competing against 1500 brokers or agents and other firms with 17. So, the decision came down to which I didn’t know at the time, technology, or magazines. None of us knew anything about technology. We couldn’t even I mean; we didn’t have the language. Like we didn’t even know how to talk about it. We only knew the word technology. And there were computers.
Sunil S Ranka 12:59
This is a perfect segway for the next question or the Indian Silicon Valley, you have seen so many changes. What was that inflection point where you started seeing technology as a prevalent market share within Silicon Valley?
Helen Pastorino 13:13
Those things when you look back, you can always identify that point, when you live through it. You’re never really sure where that point was, for us at Alain Pinel it was a very distinctive point because there were three of us co-founders. And when we had to make a decision where we were going to invest our money to ensure this firm survived this recession. And even if it is survived could compete against these companies that have been in the market since 1929. major players we had to decide and it was almost like scissors Rock what is that game Rock scissors paper? You wonder how decisions are made?
Are we gonna are we gonna buy more magazines? Are we gonna buy this technology stuff, rocks, scissors? So Alain’s concern was that this was a passing fad, that these would end up being as he called them paperweights at some point in time, and that the real core of all success for real estate firms or firms in general was a marketing press release. Very difficult to argue with because it was a proven practice. It’s hard to argue technology because nobody had a clue. But the vote came in. And then when it was Paper, scissors Rock, two of us decided technology and Alain decided magazines, newspapers, marketing, he resigned. And in December of 1996 months after we were founded, he returned to Paris and left. He did not believe or at least according to what I believe he stated he did not believe the technology would allow us to survive.
Sunil S Ranka 15:02
What made you think that technology is the right way to go about your business?
Helen Pastorino 15:07
It was different. It was. It was bleeding edge not leading edge. It was, it really hurt. It was bleeding edge. And it was just at the forefront of where people were starting to talk about it. It was something like a wave that was coming. But it was a risk because waves come in, they fail. I thought there was a high probability when you had companies like HP, Apollo, Sun, IBM, I thought it was going to stay.
Shawn Flynn 15:37
You know, could you tell me when you’re saying technology? What was it at the time?
Helen Pastorino 15:43
Actually, at the time, it was hardware, hardware in towers and computers, you know, hardware, and almost all of it was in academics, or in government, there was very little of it in the public domain. And if it was in the public domain, it was a single person had it. You had one, you used it. But there was no connectivity. I have a few little dates here. That was kind of surprising that ran along the same timeline as Alain Pinel. In 1990, the first web browser was announced. I remember we incorporated in June of 1990. So we’re talking bleeding edge, not leading edge not on the edge. But we really, and then the next thing I think in 91 was Linux and then 92. The first text message went out. In 94, Amazon was founded PlayStation was created, and banner ads began to happen in 95. Of course, Windows 95. 96 the first Palm Pilot 97, Steve Jobs returned to Apple after the Scully debacle. And in 1998, Google was founded the valley right now thinks is really hopping in those eight years. And that’s just a few in eight years during a major recession. Those are some of the things that happen.
Shawn Flynn 17:12
And then all this technology your company was starting to utilize were the agents, did they have their palm pilots? Did they have? Was there a website, hand coded HTML? No, WordPress, I’m really curious about all the other real estate agencies just looking at you going, they’re doing what?
Helen Pastorino 17:29
Actually, we had more of a problem. The outside real estate companies thought this was a ploy, a joke, a short term, trying to get our name out there type thing. And we had more trouble inside our company than we had outside, the agents inside just didn’t. It was just, they didn’t understand how this was going to help them sell real estate. And nor did we, it was very hard to explain to them because we didn’t know how this is going to help them sell real estate. And what we ended up doing, we ended up buying a number of towers. I think they were from HP. We went to Sun, we went to Apollo, we learned about proprietary software versus open. Here we are real estate agents, right learning all this about, we bought the towers, because it was all about the towers in all about the hardware. And a friend of mine said you got to look at these workstations and next. And I said, Okay, what’s the workstation, just getting the tower thing down. And now we’re moving on to workstations. And they said, you know, they’re more powerful. The connectivity is different. It’s a collaborative piece of hardware. I said, Okay, and then we called for a meeting with Steve Jobs, because he at that time, were next, so I said, Great. Let’s go talk to him, and find out what this is and how it works. So I was 31, he had to be 29. And I have had a lot of success at a relatively young age in my career. When you’re 30 years old, and you’ve had a lot of success. You have attitude. But he was 29. And he had more success and he had more attitude. It took us a long time to get past as gatekeepers, because we were lay people we were out in the public, he was not selling to lay people he was selling to academia. And he was selling to governments he was selling not to the average user. It was really hard to get through the system to get to him. And it was persistence and tenacity and maybe being a little bit inappropriate. But we got through and we got a meeting and all of us got dressed up like in our Sunday baskets and brought our briefcases and did our hair and put on our makeup or a three-piece suit. I mean, we were like going up to and we went there in this huge conference room. It was so big. We waited and waited and waited and we were 45 minutes into our meeting time no Steve Jobs and his staff was at the table with us. And I was asking, how long do we have to wait? Are we too early? Did I get this wrong? Where is he that type of thing? He’ll be here, he’ll be here. I only have 45 minutes. I said, Okay, that’s it. I’m done. Everybody We’re leaving. So, everybody stands up, I stand up and we start to go out the door. Just a few. I said, No, I’m done. I’m done. I’m out. And the door opens and there’s Steve, he had on Levi’s, and back then, that hadn’t become protocol, you’re supposed to dress up to go to big important meetings. But he came in and the minute he opened the door, and the table was probably it was quite a distance from the front door. The charisma was absolutely, I could not believe that a man could walk in a door and produce that kind of charisma from that distance. So, I thought, I am in trouble here, I’ve got to lose the charisma, immediately just chop it down to nothing, there is no charisma, it was very apparent there was. He came to the front of the conference room table, as you can imagine. And the first like nine shares on both sides were empty. We started at the 10th chair, with his team across the table. And at the 10th. Chair, I looked at that I thought, Okay, so this is how this is going to go.
Sunil S Ranka 21:25
What is it like interacting with Steve Jobs, because you talked about attitude, success? He’s not willing to sell to an outsider. How was whole interaction went?
Helen Pastorino 21:37
I had to quickly analyze how this was going to unfold, what role I was going to play, what role he was going to play in what the outcome was going to be. In a meeting like that, you have to decide where your walk point is, at what point Am I going to walk? And at what point will I trigger him to walk? So, you start out not that you would ever know. But you have to analyze and draw it somehow. Otherwise, you lose total control. And next thing, you start agreeing to things that never in your life would you have agreed to if you I think he came to the meeting fully prepared to tell us we were inappropriate, and it wasn’t going to happen. But there was some little part of him that was curious. And he loved that next box. I mean, it was just an amazing piece of technology, that there was a little part of him that thought but what if, and I think that’s the part of Steve Jobs that made him who he was probability not going to happen. But what if, and we were what if we started talking, he said, what are you going to do with it? I don’t know. Why would I sell it to you? I don’t know. Well, you’re real estate company? Yes, we are. Well, do you know anything about technology? No, we don’t. Yeah, I’m not selling it. That was kind of it. And I said, okay, but everybody has to learn your Apple computers are in schools. Now. That’s telling me that your horizon of time says that you are preparing these for the public market. You want to sell these things to the public. So, give us a chance we’re here. And we’ll be a successful introduction to that market for you. And he says, we’re going to talk the team is going to talk and we’ll let you know. And weeks went by. And I called and I wrote tonight can email right you can. I called and I wrote and I went up and I waited in the lobby. And they told him I was in the lobby. And he didn’t come out and I got a phone call. And his calls typically come like this. Hi, it’s Steve. Steve, who I know a lot of Steve’s. And I’m thinking and why wouldn’t you tell me your last name was so I could at least, but I learned over the years. That’s how he placed his calls. Hi, I’m Steve, or it’s Steve. So, he called him he said, Listen, I think we can do this. He said, but are you prepared to pay the price? And I said, Well, I don’t know what is the price. And he said, these boxes are $5,000 a box. You could buy technology for 11,12,15,1800 dollars from proven HP, IBM long term going to stay around predictable companies. And this was a risk that was a monetary risk. That’s a huge amount of money. But here’s what I learned from him. Once we decided it was a go. He completely changed his posture. Now we were on the team. Now we were going to do this together. Now he was going to do everything he could to make this a successful exchange and a successful purchase and engagement. And he started to teach us about object-oriented software. Now mind you, I’m a real estate broker back then he says listen, this is what it’s all about. The box is necessary to run the software but what you want to look at what you want to buy software, how long is it going to take to write the software to provide you the suites, the custom suites that you want? And what’s it going to cost? Well, we know that because when we went to HP, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars and years for them to write custom suite that we want it. He said, $70,000 90 days. And I thought that can’t be true. I mean, how can those be that extreme? And then he explained why he taught us about linear programming, how you program linearly, and if you want to make a change what that programmer has to do to make that change, and how object oriented software allows you to build objects that you put in a library that you can pull down and modify as you wanted to change. And so instantly, I thought, well, that makes perfect sense. If you want to write software, why wouldn’t you want to write it on that kind of a platform rather than a linear ionary? linear, I guess So, I was in. He took us up to Oakland to some programmers that did this. Amazing men, just amazing. They wrote our software. For us in I think it was a little over 90 days, they wrote seven custom suites. And I think it was $82,000. That’s my experience with technology.
Shawn Flynn 26:22
So once this technology was implemented throughout your company, can you tell us about the growth of your company? Was it just okay, we expanded 10% every year or was it hockey stick growth, once the technology was implementing customized for your company,
Helen Pastorino 26:39
that introduction of that technology almost brought the company to its knees, I had an opportunity to observe human beings and how they learn. This was something it wasn’t like, okay, we’re riding a bike. And now we’re going to ride a motorcycle. The bike and the motorcycle have very common features. And this was I don’t know anything about this, the closest we could get was a typewriter. That was about the closest we could get. And a lot of them felt it was kind of a useless typewriter. Because at that time, we had IBM Selectric on every desk, I put the paper in, roll it up tight, and you put the little white backspace. And that’s how you did it. The other problem was, we didn’t have anyone to send this stuff to nobody out there, we could remember the first fax machines and you wonder to login effects to and you fax to somebody who had one and then you ran down to see how it came out. The other end was the same thing with this technology, there was an order to take it in order to send it professors at Stanford would get it, government officials and some, but you couldn’t send it to another real estate office. We had lots of problems. We had problems with email addresses, the realtors came back and said, our client, we’re not selling real estate, because we’re ending up in a technology conversation with our clients. And at that time, the majority of them were, in fact engineers in the valley. And they couldn’t explain the reason for the email address. People thought it was a typo. People thought it was a gimmick. People didn’t understand what you did with it. And they said, we’re spending 30 minutes of our listing or selling time trying to explain this thing on our card, we want it off. We dealt with all kinds of we do not want this on our cards. It’s getting in the way of our business. So then as a CEO, you say, Okay, we’ll take it off. But the CEO said, No, we’re not taking it off. And We’re going to learn to explain it. And soon our clients will understand what it is we’re explaining to them. We lost some people, not many, but some. We set up classes, there were eight classes a day, everybody had to take at least 20 classes. So, we became a Mini University, teaching people how to email and how to download how to anything to do with technology. At that point, a lot of them had paper and they weren’t sure how they were going to get how you got the paper in this thing. And they go back over to their typewriters and type. So, I gave him an ultimatum. And I said, every class they went through, we gave a T shirt, or we gave a pen, or we gave a graduation type. We had to encourage them to get to these courses. And there were early adapters, which I learned about there are those people who step up right away and want to learn everything there is about it, and they lead the way for everyone else the tail end. I gave an ultimatum by the state at this time, we will be removing your typewriters. So, you better learn how to use this because there will be no typewriters. typewriters went under the desks they went into the ladies’ room and they went into the cars. I mean, these guys were going to hold on to those typewriters no matter what. And I had to find them in the ladies’ room in the ladies’ stall in the supply Room under the desk, and I had people go and find them all, and we gave them away. So, I learned a lot about technology I learned, learned, which applies to all anything new, is the learning curve of biology? How do you teach people a new practice that they’ve never seen before? And how long does it take them? to absorb that to couple with that new learning, and how many of them have the emotional strength as you talked about to learn as a real estate agent who just wanted to sell houses, I was involved in things I classes, teachers that had to teach the classes, which was language they’d never spoken. I know a little bit about technology.
Shawn Flynn 30:44
So, there was so much there that I want to ask questions on, I mean, talking about adapting to change. It’s perfect timing right now with COVID. And the way that we’re redoing our entire work situation, but before even going into that, you talked a little bit about the psychology of some of these people you worked with for early adaptors, and their mindset. And I’m really kind of curious, because you also mentioned explaining to engineers, an email on a card? How do these engineers, what’s their thought process like outside of their comfort zone outside the engineer lab, when they’re wanting to buy a house? or making that decision? Do you see a lot of overlap? The CEO of the big tech firm, the decision maker and the confident decision maker with the real estate? Or are people’s thought process different depending on the situation? What’s been your experience in the valley?
Helen Pastorino 31:43
Because it brings into play culture, different cultures, have different thought process and have different practices, it brings into play your status or your role in a company? Are you a CEO, CFO? Are you making big decisions? They’re all very different. But I think under I mean, some culturally will speak with their parents, depending on their age, if this is a first home, if they’ve bought two or three or four homes, maybe not parents, maybe colleagues, certainly spouses or significant others, or so it just it’s very diverse. If you could identify a specific type of person, I could probably tell you how they go through that process.
Shawn Flynn 32:31
How about that confident CEO?
Helen Pastorino 32:34
I don’t get to observe them at work. So, it’s very difficult for me to make an assessment say, well, oh, well, I saw him do this at work, but they don’t do it this way at home. But I have to assume if they’re a CEO of a successful firm, they are making decisions consistently. They have to make them successfully, or they’re not CEO very long. I don’t know how they do that on the work side. But I can tell you what I observe in the personal side. And there’s certain things that I experienced and that I look for, I look to see how they make assessments versus assertions. A lot of people speak and posture that they’re making an assertion, when in reality, they’re making an assessment, I look and watch and listen as to how they do that. It’s likely if they confuse those two in their personal life, or probably confusing them in their business life. And it’s not that they’re not already a superstar in what they’re doing. But what else might they be doing? If they sorted those two out? collaboration? I watch to see how they collaborate, who they collaborate with? How they choose collaborators? Are they stronger, more powerful people than they are? Or are they not? And based on how they make those choices, you can kind of tell how they probably act or respond in their businesses. horizons of time are critical. Do they think in immediate horizons? Or do they think in long term horizons? And that too, is cultural? A lot of cultures really do think in 30-year horizons, the Western culture not so much. Is that good? Is that bad? I don’t know. I look at horizons of time. How did they think I look at emotional strength? long can they sustain uncertainty before they fold? folding, let’s say in real estate would be they withdraw an offer or they rethink what they’ve decided? Or and it’s not to say there are appropriate times to do that for sure. But it’s that emotional strain. Can you hold the line? Can you hold the course can you bear the uncertainty to get to a successful result? A lot of them can. There are things like that that I observe with very powerful people when they turn to their personal life and how they make their decision.
Sunil S Ranka 34:55
Just diving a little bit more into what you just talked about is when you meet people are successful. For people and help them by home, do they carry the same clear business savvy attitude in their personal life as well?
Helen Pastorino 35:10
That’s three questions in one, one of them once again, is I don’t know how they perform it at their business. And I have to just assume that because they are a CEO, and they’ve been there a while they’re powerful, they’re making the right decisions. And if they’re a public firm, that their board is satisfied that their investors are satisfied. And that’s that, then I look at how they interact with me. And I find that the CEOs, I just I’ll tell you what, I just had a conversation. A few days ago, I am working with a CEO of Fortune 250 firm. And she said to me, after a conversation, that was pretty tough, we were in the middle of her conversation she took the lead always takes the lead, they always take the lead, and majority of times in a conversation, because I think they believe that it’s a critical decision. It’s a family decision. It’s a monetary decision. And they are powerful, strong, educated and capable of making those decisions. And so they take the lead on the conversations, I intercepted the conversation said, that’s it, we’re done. We’re not going to continue this conversation, we’re not getting anywhere, this person is not going to jump through these hoops for you. So, you run this flag up as far as you need to go. So we can talk to someone who can actually make a decision for because we’re no longer jumping through these hoops. After that conversation, she said to me, I have never had anybody interrupt my conversation and actually take control of a meeting, and that I was satisfied with the way in which they did it. So, she said thank you for doing that. So that’s kind of telling about their willingness to give up their authority, their willingness to give up their understanding that they can make the best decisions for themselves. And it’s not likely that other people are necessarily going to be able to do it the way they would do it. So, they just take control and do it. And oftentimes, unfortunately, it’s to their demise. Because getting a solution doesn’t mean necessarily in the moment in that conversation, sometimes that solution starts days before the conversation takes place, and that there’s a plan in place to secure it days after. The other thing is I watch how they engage with their family because that was your question. They are marvelous with their children they are marvelous with their spouses. I watched these powerful rough, you know, cut to the chase, one of our clients, please forgive me Cut the bullshit as well. And yet they turn to their kids. And they say, do you understand what’s going on is I want you to learn how to buy a house, I want you to understand what the concerns are. That’s amazing that they go from top CEO, to I can handle this Get out of my way to Oh, I guess you can handle it to I’ll get out of the way, too. I want my children to understand what this process is all about.
Shawn Flynn 38:06
In my mind, whenever I think of top tech CEOs, I think of these people that are technologically savvy off the charts, where right now, when you are talking about how they interact with their family interact at work, interact with all these people. It sounds like they’re emotional intelligence with the general population, how they can read situations, how they can read body language, how they can read other people, that intelligence is also probably off the chart as well. Is that a fair assessment?
Helen Pastorino 38:36
For you to be CEO, you’ve got to, you have to deal with people. And you have to get people to motivate and move the direction that you want them to go. So yeah, you have to have some pretty lot of emotional strength because people don’t want to go, as I experienced when we introduce technology in your real estate. I know they want their typewriters. That’s what they want. That’s what they’re used to. That’s what they understand. I think it’s a fear of change. That questions hard for me to answer.
Shawn Flynn 39:07
Can I ask a question about what your opinion is of the housing market post COVID going to be?
Helen Pastorino 39:13
what we were talking this morning about my father was a master chemist. So, I was raised with a chemist. So, everything was the scientific, everything had to have a scientific solution. What I was taught was that you take fixed variables, and you find out what the cornerstones Are you take those variables and you are a fixed component. And then you add a variable to it. And because the only thing that’s changed in that, I guess, scientifically in that test is the variable. In real estate, we used to do that easily, we would say, Okay, what are the interest rates? What is the employment in the valley? And we go through a number of these types of things, and we say, okay, based on that, if we change was the supply and demand, I mean, there were a lot of things that we would look at, so Let’s say we put supply on the table. And let’s say we put interest rates on the table. And let’s say we put employment on the table. And then we adjust the interest rate. It goes from 2.975 to 4.1. What do we think is going to happen? I have to smile. Because people are really upset if it goes to 4.1. And I lived in an 18% world. So, I lived in a world where interest rates were 18%. And all we wanted, all we wanted was a single digit interest rate. And now they say, why not paying 3.5? What are they crazy, and I’m thinking people would have given anything to have anything under a double-digit interest rate? The problem with the COVID situation is all the parts are moving. There’s nothing that you can define as a fixed. So, let’s look at it. We’ve got an election coming up. We had this unfortunate and I really, this is not a moment maybe to do that. But we had that unfortunate incident, where the job, yeah, that was not good at all. And then we have interest rates are artificially being held down. And you cannot get a non-conforming jumbo loan for 2.875 ever anywhere. That’s crazy to get that type of an interest rate. So, we can’t base it on that. Because when they removed that and let it go, how’s that going to impact us? And now we have the work from home situation? Well, okay. There’s an example. There has been talked about working from home remote working, things like that for a very long time, long time. And it’s not worked because people just couldn’t quite get around it. We had COVID. And boom, they didn’t have a choice. They were out. They were home. That was it. No choice. Now they’re saying maybe they need to stay home. Twitter said, No, we’re going to allow our people to work from home. When everything comes back to normal, whatever that might be. Are you really going to be there talking about now? Oh, you can leave California you can go to Tahoe, you can work from all these different places. I don’t know yet. If that’s true. It’s very intriguing. And I have my list of where I might go to and I’m not sure how that’s really going to work out because we’ve always had close collaboration. I love being in a zoom meeting or you know, some sort, but it’s not the same as like I am with you right now. Shawn, are you right now? Sunil I can see you twitching I can see you moving I can see much better our conversation than on a screen. I don’t know what’s going to happen. They opened up the cities, they closed the cities they opened up the gyms they closed the gyms. I don’t know what these small companies are going to do. I heard the majority of small companies over 50% are owned by people over 60 a baby boomer, baby boomers are saying, and we had it right in Los Gatos baby boomers are saying I’m not coming back. Because they’re at that age where they were almost getting ready to retire anyway. And this forced them not all, but many are saying I’m not coming back. I’m closing for good. What does that mean? So, what do they do? Do they leave the area? Does the supply go up? Do they move in with their kids? Do they I don’t know what they’re going to do. So, there’s so many variables in this scenario that are artificial, and aren’t yet tested. And this is going to go on a year, 18 months, two years? I don’t know. I don’t think we have consistent testing yet. Certainly, vaccines appear to be far off into the future. And I speak because I walk a lab every once in a while. That’s doing COVID work. It’s very difficult. So what I do is I step back and I go, okay, every time we have one of these phenomena, whether it’s an earthquake, whether it’s a Black Friday, whether it’s a.com bust, and forgive me, whether it’s a 911 experience, whether it’s the 2000 789 10 18% interest, I’ve been through them all, each one, I think, Oh, this is more unique. This is different. This is going to change things. And it never does. So, I look at this and I go, Oh, this is unique. There’s so many moving parts. This is going to make it this is going to make it I don’t know. It’s too early to tell. But if I were to bet, and I looked at $31,000 in Cupertino in 1968. And that house now is probably 2.83 point 1 million it survived all of those ups and downs. I’m going to have to bet now it’s not going to change anything we’re going to it’s going to continue.
Sunil S Ranka 44:50
So, Helen, you talk very important thing you said something related to labs and you said you walk in every day. For the most of the listeners. They may not even know what the BSL lab looks like or what does a BSL lab means?
Helen Pastorino 45:06
So BSL is a Biosafety Level. Center for Disease Control has established levels for labs. And BSL is just a biosafety level. BSL one BSL two, three and four, the lower levels BSL. One is similar to a lab that you often see, you know, a in a picture, you might have to wash your hands, it’s possible that you might have to have glasses on and maybe you might have to have a mask on. But it’s a pretty low level, as far as any sort of danger or need to control then as you move up the ladder to BSL 2,3,4 it gets pretty extreme.
Sunil S Ranka 45:46
So that one, but you’re talking is a BSL one kind of level is it.
Helen Pastorino 45:52
We have BSL one and BSL two. So, you can go into a lab. There’s benches in the lab, people are sitting on the benches, and they’re doing their work. BSL two is an enclosed area is a tissue lab. Now you’re dealing with human tissue or live tissue and now it’s enclosed. Now you’re wearing jackets. Now you’re wearing masks. Now you’re wearing hoods. Now you’re wearing. There’s just a whole lot of different requirements because there’s more risk in the work that you’re doing and what could happen. So, as you go up to BSL three, and BSL four, ESL for there are only 13 BSL four labs in the United States, incredibly difficult to get anybody to agree to build a BSL four lab and BSL three is what everybody’s implying, costs all of our current problems.
Shawn Flynn 46:49
Wait, Helen, you have to tell us a little bit about the transition from real estate to the BSL lab? Because it seems like there’s a little part of that story that there yet.
Helen Pastorino 47:01
So, there’s a lab in Santa Cruz is called startup sandbox. It’s actually an incubator, and it has a lab, most incubators do have labs. And it’s right at the base of the university. And I don’t know I’ll do a little sidebar here. I don’t know if everyone realizes that University of California Santa Cruz has some of the most probably has the most intellectual property of almost any university. I mean, they have just a library full of intellectual property. As someone said once that the other universities move out and ask for forgiveness, and Santa Cruz wants to make sure it’s perfectly okay before they move out. That’s been their history. I’m told, I almost went to the University of California, Santa Cruz. But back when I was young, they had a pass fail. You either passed or you failed. And my parents said absolutely no way. You’re getting a pass fail. You must get a letter grade. But I wanted to go there. That’s what my first choice was. But they said no. So, most universities like Berkeley and San Diego they have incubators close by. And what happens with the postgrads or postdocs and professors is they come out of the university down into the incubators, and they start their research in bringing these ideas to the market. So, they’re commercializing these ideas, doesn’t get any better if you’re doing research, and that’s what you do to be doing it near the water in the beautiful setting of Santa Cruz. So, if you have to be in a lab, and if you have to be focused, and if you know it gets pretty intense. It’s so beautiful to walk out the door and the waters right there. You replenish, you refresh and back into the lab, you go and your research continues. So, people are very fortunate to come out of that university and be able to continue their research right there at startup sandbox. The gentleman the CEO, there is very well known in the valleys, very accomplished, very well connected, and lives in Santa Cruz came from Saratoga and moved over to Santa Cruz. A fantastic Captain has a boat races in sales. The president of the company, he’s the CEO and the chairman, the president of the company, unfortunately passed away at a very young age a few months ago, and Lu Paul Bianco who is the CEO and the chairman, he called me up and said, could you step in and be in term president? And I thought, I don’t know. Sure. I got excited about it because it reminded me of the technology days. It was a new learning curve. It was a new language. There were new networks, different people, people I didn’t know, words, I’d never heard standards of practice. All of it was going to be new again, but the core fundamentals of business. I’ve got those down. So, understanding what it takes to run a business, whether it’s Real Estate bio science, an incubator type, I understand those fundamentals. So that’s what I went there to do. And in that process, walk the lab. What is this? How does that work? Why do we have these co2 things, beeping? And people Oh, we’re out of co2. Oh, so I learned all that. Why? What’s the difference between a minus 80? freezer and a minus 120? What do you put in a minus 120? That you don’t put in a minus 80? And what do you put in there?
Sunil S Ranka 50:35
What are the some of the most exciting research right now happening in your lab? And things you can share?
Helen Pastorino 50:41
Either the companies. So, Bill and Melinda Gates have their foundation as you know. They’ve put aside some funds, quite a bit, actually, to resolve this COVID issue. There are real strict regulations are real strict rules, you have to qualify and satisfy all of these rules, because you can imagine, all over the world, people are going to apply for this. I think they tried and I’m speaking maybe out of turn, but they may have tried to limit the amount of people who are going to apply by saying you must meet the following conditions, five of the companies at the sandbox, were able to apply and did in fact apply because they are in the process of COVID research. And surprisingly the other day, which is very unusual, person who had set up actually personally reached out to our CEO, and said, we’re in the process and a few of these three of them in particular, they wanted more information on
Sunil S Ranka 51:40
We talked about your life journey. Earlier, then you talked about technology, then you talked about how do you take a company in a new norms, Steve Jobs, anything you want to leave our listeners, any thoughts?
Helen Pastorino 51:55
My entire life I’ve lived on a commission basis, I have never been employed. I think that being on a commission basis allows the marketplace to tell you immediately whether you have value, you can be employed, and in a cubicle somewhere for weeks, if not years before somebody figures out that maybe it’s not the right place, or you’re not the right person or the performances is not at the right level, the marketplace will tell you by this weekend, you’re in or you’re out. It’s required me to be incredibly discerning, very well grounded in the decisions that I made. I have a few things here that I wrote down. And I thought if I was going to start a business or give a recommendation as to how to start a business. First of all, I’m in full support of entrepreneurs, that is such an exciting place to be its brutal, it’s painful. And there are many nights that you go home wondering if this is the right solution or right role for you. But the outcome, win or lose is phenomenal. If you when great if you lose, look what you learned, and you take what you learned and you do it again. So, I said what I did when I looked and I thought what do I do when I start these companies, the first thing I do is I always look outside for disruption. When I go back in time and look at the disruption to industries. It’s never within the industry. It’s always from outside the industry. Uber didn’t come from the taxi company should have done that. Uber did it. And you can make a whole long list of all the people who came from outside and disrupted and I go out and I say okay, I’m going to look outside the industry to find out who could disrupt me or who I might be able to disrupt. I think embracing downturns is critical. Rather than pull back during a downturn. Now you want to talk about emotional strength. Rather than pull back when there’s a downturn, you should move forward. There’s a saying lean into which we all know where that came from. And it’s kind of that same feeling of, don’t pull back don’t hunker down, yes, the revenue is dropping. And, yes, it’s hard to keep your payroll going. This is the time that you spend money that you market and that you grow. Because when everybody’s doing well to be a differential is incredibly difficult. When everybody else is pulling back and you have all this space to play in. It’s phenomenal. But you have to be bold, and you have to have the strength to do that. Because your instinct will back buckle down. Wait until it’s over and then come out. That would be one. I’d confirm the standards of practice in your industry. And I’d have had a minimum learn to beat them. But really what I do is reconfigure them. When you have a startup, you’ve got categories, you have to have accounting, you have to have marketing, you have to have branding, you have to have sales and there’s certain categories you have to have. And if you look at each one of those, and this is what Alain Pinel did very well is they said If our clients are engineers, if our clients are artists, if they’re designers, if they’re architects, if they’re doctors, whatever it is that they are, we are going to be the best in their field was what we do. So, our offices were architecturally designed, they were all consistent when you walk into an Alain Pinel office, they all look the same, you know, immediately are there, we had architects and designers come from all over to look at these offices. And so, we competed in their fields, technology, we competed in their field, you look at the different components of marketing, we are black signs, with very small letters that you couldn’t see, black was evil. And you couldn’t read the lettering, because it was white on black, very bad marketing, people ran classes and use this as an example of what how not to market, my advice would be to go outside to identify what it is, don’t just be what it is that you’re creating, or designing or the service you’re providing. Make sure every aspect of your firm addresses the client that you’re going to be involved with. That is something find the pain we know about that find the weakness, build an incredibly strong culture. That’s not so easy to do. That’s the CEO. You have to be adamant about the rules or the practices or the performance, adamant so that it couples and becomes part of their drive. You need passionate people, intelligent people, and then you need to cut them loose.
Well, I want to end with this if I may, I had the opportunity to talk to Steve Jobs. And one of the things I did at Alain Pinel, and I’m unfortunately started doing it again, with the current company Pretoria that I have, I held everything, I knew everything about the business. And I held it up here. And Steve Jobs said to me one time, I don’t know, maybe we’re writing software going to Oakland, I don’t know what we were doing. And he said, Helen, I’m going to tell you something he said, the most important thing a CEO can do is when they leave their company, most CEOs want to see it fail. So, they can personally say, see how important I was. He said, don’t do that. Build your company so that when you walk away, it’s stronger and better and more powerful. And then when you were there, and he gave me this rule of thumb, he said it should last and your culture should continue. However, many years you served as CEO. So, if you served as CEO for 10 years, that companies should carry that culture for additional 10 years. Well, he blew that out of the water, because he left and the culture continued for a very, very long time he left wants to go to next. And then of course he passed away. So, I’ve always remembered as a CEO, don’t carry it in your head. Don’t not share everything, you know, build a team that when you step aside and you walk away, and that team can carry on that culture and those standards that passion and belief and if I had to give one piece of advice to a CEO or to a startup, that would be it.
Shawn Flynn 58:21
Helen this is an amazing interview. And I know everyone’s going to listen to this multiple times. If anyone wants to find out more information about you what you’re working on, what’s the best way to go about doing that?
Helen Pastorino 58:31
There’s LinkedIn and websites. There’s the startup sandbox website, there’s the world tomato society website, Pertria’s website. And any of those are certainly LinkedIn will get you connected to all three of those or me. Absolutely.
Shawn Flynn 58:46
Fantastic.
Helen Pastorino 58:48
Thank you both very much.
Shawn Flynn 58:50
Thank you.
Helen Pastorino 58:50
Appreciate it.
Announcer 58:53
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