>> business news from the capital region. this is "washington business report" th rebecca cooper. >> thank you for joining us for a special summer e edition. we're bringing you a second run of two audience e favorite one n ones. the former head of hewlett-packard. lateter, the riches to rags to riches story reggie agarwal. then, when should the head of a company step aside? it is a common startup dilemma and we will scuss. first, earlier this summer, carly hit baback against allegations ththat republins have entered a war on women. the former republican senate candidate fromom californiaa

started a political action committee to help republicans woo women in 2014.4. the goal is to challenge dedemocratic claims that the gop is on the wrong side of women's sues. she is a strong example of how far women can go in the business world. she is proving tt she has what it takes to succeed. i sat down with her at an alexania business s philanthropy summit. we talked about tackling the biggest hurdles in business and life. welcome to washington buness report. >> thank you for having me. >> you continue to be a voice in the business c community. you are a very respected voice in politics. republicans continue to turn to you as a leader. this is a great primer on the business world. how you a lot about believe in building teams. inthe same time, you believe

change agents. you work in the political world and business world? and still drive through changes. first of all, i believe that business is all about people. it is all about the people in it. in my experience, every organization has more human potential than they generally cap. for a leader, it is about unlocking the potential. through the ranks, you eventually became ceo at hewlett-packard trade you were named as the most powerful woman in business in the world. you were always described as half. your many examples in career, you were actually quite nurturing. leaders help people get past fears. >> i do think that i have

learned. i have been afraid d of many things in my life. you overcome the fear. i know that everybody is afraid of something. fear holds people back. maybe you are afraid of looking foolish. maybe you are afraid of making a mistake. all of those fears old people back. no, thisers do is say is worth taking a chance on. if we make a mistake, we will learn from it and not make the same mistake twice and move on. an individual organization cannot tap their full potential unless they overcome their fear. i do think that balance is the art of leadership create what i mean by that is, we have to have different qualities that balance.

there are times that a leader has to be nurturing. there are also times when a leader has to be demanding, like a parentnt. it is both. through fear and took a bold move at hewlett-packard. you posted $25 billion merger withth comcast. no you look at, and you have said it was brilliant. people thought it was sky and a bad idea. they thought it might undermine their efforts. people said we thought carly was wrong, but carly was right. they got you a job. >> the merger was difficult. and it was risky. at a time that we proposed the merger, we needed every alternative. hewlett-packard was a company that needed to lead once again. that the be aware

industry around us was consolidated. we could use that consolidation or we could fall behind and be consolidate head. i think the point is this. anytime time a leader takes on something to change the order of things, they undergo criticism. in the technology industry in particular, if you are leading, by the time you do something that is obvious to everyone, it is probably way too late. tois probably obvious everyone what microsoft needs to do. it is obvious what blackberry needs to do. by the time it is obvious, it is too late. when we took it on, it was timely, but it was going to get criticized. there was one big battle that you had to fight. cancer.

you fought it successfully. what tools to to use to take on cancer? like everyone else, when my doctor told man had cancer, i was terrified. actually, battling cancer turns out to be a lot of risk, reward trade-off. there is a lot of data out there. there is a lot of analysis. patient has to make decisions for themselves based on the data. i was very grateful that i had an analytical background. >> gathering the data and crunching the numbers? >> i had doctors give me any information. you live in a purple state, virginia. >> who knows. we will see what the future lies. believe this i

that i can make a difference in politics. i hope that by making a difference in philanthropy, i hope i make a difference every day. >> thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> she is now hding up a nonprofit, based in norther virginia.. we come back, our business spotlight. when it is time to step aside as ceo.

>> welcome back. this week, we are tackling a topic that can be tough for anyy ceo. a growing startupup to success..

when is it time to let go? marissa is here. we also have the ceo of software. and a history of launching startups. welcome to you both. bobbbby, you have done this many times. you have started a company and growing companies from thrhree employees to 600 employees. employees from 2 million to 25illion. it is painful to let go. why do you say it is ok? >> you look at your company like it is an asset. if you realize it takes humidity -- humility, you realize that it is ok. i am aed early on that good 0220 $5 million person. after that, i am not the best. >> we see this all e time. tim o'o'shaughnessy set the bar for how to do it.

it is time for someone else to come in. at a american appaparel, we are seeing what a memess it is. otr times, we e have seen successful companies bring back the founders, because they did have ideas that were missing. is there a risk?k? >> it is definitely a risk. i cld see myself evolving out of the role of the ashburn are and ceo. i am someone who, like a lot of entrepreneurs, loves to build. i like to get my hands dirty. all of a sudden, there's this grgreat infrastructure and you have evolved the company. then you look at canay where is my value here? for me, i decided that i had such an extraordinary executive team that they a actually functions better when i stepped aside. >> you solve the problem by being serial entrepreneurs. you keep starting new things.

start anotother mpanto keep yourself entertained. by becoming you're doing this same thing. what i is the one and only thing that y you look for? shouldou try to carve a niche somewhere within the company or is that a dangerous approach? >> i think of it is controlled. i have seen some successful colleagues do that. there is still a level of humility that allows other people to lead and control things. when you get to the 25 million and above, that is usually the point where you can carve out a role, it just needs to be managed. arissa, you want thito happen. you what your small business to be so successful that it gets to the point where you have to let other people take over because it is so huge. what are the right ways and wrong ways? >> for me, one of the most important books i have read is "what got you here will not get yoyou there."

it is just being cognizant. there is the peter principle. when an employee rises to their highest level of iompetency -- the truth is, that can happen in the c suite. you need toave a lot of self-awareness and introspection. likeobby said, humility is a a big part of it. maybe i am not the best person to be running this. that means having strtrong communication, transparency, dialogue with your executive team, and being willing to say i want to do i it is best fofor te company, not necessarily keep me at the top. >> how did you know? we talked about your background. every time he tooa company, you kept growing. it seems natural to think he is the right guy, let's keep them in place. what said no? this g growth is great, bubut ie to go? >> the first company that i grew, we went to 25 million. at 35 million, we kept growing to aroround 90 milon.

i had an opportunity to report over at ameran systems and a solid he was doing. i realized howood he was at at he was doing. i preferred to be a small company ceo. >> thank you golf. thank you for joining us on "washington business report." coming up next, a man who knew when not to quit. reggie aggarwal did not give up when things went downhill. now he is a big success. his inspiring story when we return. herbalife has vitamin supplements

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our next one-on-one was popular with our audience. it is such a dramatic stor you're a lot about successful startups, but not much about the ones thago bust t or a almost go bust. it is every entrepreneur's ghtmtmare. hundredsf thousands of dollars in debt and nothing keep the company going except determination. that is the story of reggie aggarwal. i asked him what his company, cvent, is, and how it survived despite the odds. it is a cloud-based software company. hundreds of millions of people attend event every year. we help meeting planners manage markets and organized themselves and help them find the right venue. we have hundreds of thousands of venues and what we call our supplier network that connects venues wther is a restaurant or a museum or unique venues or a hotel with meeting planners looking to host their huhundreds of thousands of events at their ease venues.

>> how did you come up with the idea? >> the key thing is to find a pin point and create an aspira. i was an attorney and i started an association. it was a network of ceos and went from hosting four or five meetings p year to order your 50 meetings per year back in the 1990's. it was painful to send out invitations. we used outlook, excel, sticky notes -- i would send out invitations and try to market these events. what would happen was i decided it was so painful to process and was taking 40 hours a week of my time. i said the has to be a better way to automate this. >> howow soon was it from the ia to launch and leave your day job?

talk about your initial growth of macaws the bottom to follow. >> whwhen we first started the company, waste grew slowly. my: founders put a little moneny in. we grew nice and slowly, lika company should. then something happened, the.c boom. billions of llars went into our business. a lot of companies in silicon valley s started going quickly. we decided we needed to grow rapidly so we grew from six employees to 125 employees most was from the lol community y which was great. there was a lot of people that backed the companyo we grew quickly. we had 125 people anhad great press like in "forbes." >> like many companies, revenue was not yet up to -- >> that's right. we grew very quickly but just as

quickly as we grew, something happened. it was september 11 and the.com meltdown and r reality hit. we had grown to a 125 5 people, blueor most of the $7070 million and had $400,000 left inhe bank. there was only one choice was to cut so we cut 80% of our staff anand went down to 26 people. that was at the end of 2001. it was a difficult time. >> i love readading the headlins describing you as a former lawyer, 33-y-year-old armor lawr living in his parents basement. from desk drawer to 1.5 billion dollars, everyone loves this story. you're almost a cliché. my favorite description is your own descscription of yourself of the time when you said you were the george costanze e of the dot com era. you had to move into your

parents. >> it stop living at home but i went to college away from school. later on, i was doing it because it was a necessity. i did not think a salary for all more -- almo three years. there is our sacrifices and entrepreneur needs to make. >> d you look back at the time and say i blew it? >> of course, it was not just taking a salalary. i had signed up to about $800,000 idebt. you cannot pay it off. too many companies nowadays like instagram or whaapp are created in two or three years for billions of dollars whh is great for them. we all want to be like that. it's false perception. >> it's like winning the lottery. if you look at many have been able to do that, the lottery is

a higher probability. >> you went back to the basics and what enabled you to stay in the game and startrt taking on competitors? >> we went back the basics. between 2001-2004, we were paying back debts and then w we grew with little growth and we we growing fast so he went back to the basics. we hired the best people come up had the best products come and focused on the customers. when you go through extra. time and near bankruptcy, it mas you focus on what's important. >> your ipo was a huge success. what went right? believed that we were positioned to be the lead player in that spspace. that was a massive market. from the investor viewpoint, we have a lot of support. from the investor community because they see they know our history. we are not some fly-by-night

company. we h have been through trench warfare for 15 years. we have the same team to took us where we arere now . we got a lot of confidence from wall street. wall street always says what have you done for me lately. surprisingly, they were intererested in our story. too many companies have not gone through tough times. we have gone through two recessions and win cash positive in 200 we have almost had it decade of being profitable and most compies mcloud space are losing a lot of money. >>as your marketing cold calling? >> we ended d up growing with aggressive grassroots marketing and a reputation startrted building itself. you n only get s so far with marketing. it's a huge industry but itit's small and people know each other. at the end of the day, you can

get your name out there and market your product to customers come in but after a while, everyone knows who you are so you need innovatation withinour cultural and people understand that. >> how do you get up in the morning and keep going every day? >> it's an old saying but it's true -- if you love what you'd do come you never r work a day n ur life. everyday i wake up and i'm excited because i have a lot of passion for what we do. i have great people aroundnd me. at is there not to like when you have gre people around you and you are executing on a vision that you are passionate about. the energy is created by the people around you and the business. >> thanks for joining us. >> thank you. voted mostggarwal admired ceo in the washington region. stay with us, we will be right

back.

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