Are You a Shellye or a Liv?

Liv Boeree, a former contestant on a poker-themed reality TV show, lost almost $200,000 when she raised with a straight against an opponent who had a flush. Despite the setback, she went on to become a champion poker player and a science communicator who promotes better decision-making in an uncertain world. She believes poker pros focus on the long-term and making quality decisions around the cards dealt. Shellye Archambeau, who led a failing tech company through a merger and pivot to become MetricStream, planned her career from high school, setting clear goals and taking intelligent risks. She believes in setting timelines and taking consistent steps to increase the odds of success.1. Shellye's early goal was to become a branch manager in her early 30s, which she achieved through a step-by-step plan. 2. She believes in finding the right ecosystem to achieve goals and followed the current of sales to ascend through IBM. 3. Shellye decided to take an international assignment in Japan, where being a minority turned out to be an asset. 4. Shellye left IBM to pursue her goal of becoming a CEO and took a job at Blockbuster.com, where she saw the potential of a partnership with Netflix, which her CEO dismissed. 5. Shellye then worked at LoudCloud before taking a calculated risk to become CEO of a struggling company called Zaplet. 6. Zaplet was on the edge of collapse, but Shellye saw the opportunity to turn it around and prove herself as a CEO. 7. Shellye's risk assessments involve maximizing the return on each possible outcome while sticking to her plan. 8. She believes in finding and fixing broken things, which is why she took on the challenge of turning around Zaplet. 9. Shellye's calculated risks and ability to adapt to changing circumstances helped her achieve her goal of becoming a CEO. 10. Shellye's story demonstrates the importance of setting goals, finding the right ecosystem, taking calculated risks, and being adaptable to achieve success.Shellye Archambeau, former CEO of MetricStream, discusses the risks she took in turning around the struggling company Zaplet. She took on the challenge despite the company's failing product and tarnished reputation. She had no fixed plan but had a strategy to figure out a problem that could be solved using Zaplet's platform. She merged Zaplet with MetricStream and raised money with Kleiner Perkins as the lead. The merger was fraught with risks, including potential clashes with Vinod Khosla, but Shellye believed in herself and took the risks. She considers planning as direction and tries to put rails on the plan to ensure they are heading towards the overall direction. She believes it should be rare to reconsider the entire direction when encountering landmines. Shellye is still a planner and risk-taker who takes calculated risks with alternative plans and mitigation.