Quite a few of the who's-who of the Silicon Valley venture capital world were in attendance—not just money people but idea people, too. Very innovative and entrepreneurial folks.
Before I went up to speak, the founder of the group introduces me, which by itself is a big testimonial in this community. He briefly intros me as someone he tried to convince to take the commercial route but didn't succeed. In short, he tells people, "Look, this is going to be way off the wall for you but you better listen up. This guy has done stuff and I'm vouching for him." It was a big risk for him to put me up in front of this crowd.
My instructions for giving the keynote address were: don't be humble, talk about scale. I actually laughed out on the phone, when I heard that, only to realize that it wasn't a joke. The other keynote was a billionaire, who had invented 33 medical devices and held 150 patents. And I was warned that this will be an audience of hyper alpha males.
I like entrepreneurs because they are always looking to broaden the pie. The best of them don't hold a scarcity mindset but rather focus on creative expressions for creating new value in the world. And this crowd of 400+ folks last night had lots of them. The guy sitting next to me had started 13 companies, including Symantec. The person sitting in front of me was a top exec at JP Morgan; the fellow sitting next to him created Google Earth, before Google bought it. In this context, being a CEO of a 150-person company was just run of the mill. Unfortunately, what was also run of the mill was a singular focus on money. Greed. People cheered when a speaker spoke about unethical behavior to get ahead, as if that was truly heroic.
On the other hand, the crux of my message was pretty simple—do a small act of service, and the insights will appear; if they don't, keep doing more small acts. Yet, this is not exactly the kind of crowd that will get excited about
Smile Cards...which, of course, wasn't going to stop me. :)
I spoke about my journey that led to tapping Silicon Valley talent with non-financial incentives; then the ServiceSpace journey that exposed us to new forms of abundance (social, synergistic, subtle) via intelligent use of technology; and ended with a vision of creating an incubator of generosity entrepreneurs. The talk, the stories, the sincerity hit them in a shock-and-awe sort of way.
It was like a mini earthquake of sorts. Many were radically jolted out of their context. As ServiceSpace became the talk of the gathering, the founder wrote to me and copied all partners of his firm: "The best compliment you could have gotten was an entrepreneur telling me that you were bad for my business: he heard several people in the audience thinking aloud that maybe they need to do something better with their lives than just try to make money!" They very kindly placed me at the very beginning to give me more prominence; but the raw resonance of generosity was underestimated. Love capital is always going to trump venture capital.
Lots of fun stories after the talk, as people came up to me privately. I had warned people that I would hug them before I spoke to them, so that already confused the tradition of speedy business-card exchanges.
Instead, everyone took home Smile Cards as well as a copy of
Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World's Greatest Business Case for Compassion.
At one point, I was talking with five-six folks and I'm introduced to one guy—almost on cue, everyone else leaves. It was kind of strange to get a sense of implicit hierarchies even here. I wonder if *any* of them realized that when they were talking to me, they were listening to a guy that the IRS would classify as poor. :) Anyhow, this fellow tells me that he was very moved by what I had to share and adds, "I just realized that I've never done things for others. I want to do it. But I don't know how. I don't know where to start." He is coming up to Berkeley for a coffee chat.
Later, I was told that this fellow was a serial entrepreneur and had sold his previous company to Cisco for seven billion dollars. He, and many others like him in attendance, will probably release lots of monetary value in the world, as a direct ripple of last night's talk. Who knows how that'll emerge, but that's only a good side-effect. What's much more powerful is that the talk and the conversations were anchored in something far deeper than money—inner transformation. When people asked to connect personally, I told 'em to come to a "Wednesday." :) When they pondered what they could do, I asked 'em to a small act of kindness and observe how it changes the eyes through which they look at the world. At least one of them is going to come volunteer at Karma Kitchen. External ripples were obvious, but I particularly smiled at the internal ones.
As I was leaving, an open-hearted gentleman walks with me to the car. He's a CEO of a popular company too but one could tell that he was in the middle of a mini-transformation of sorts, the kind that you feel privileged to witness. The next morning, he wrote me this email ...
It was truly a great evening last night and I would like to share something with you. Talking to you put me on a surf board of a tiny ripple that continued well after the event.
As I was driving home, my wife calls to tell me that our 80 year old neighbor was driving herself to the ER due to dizziness and high blood pressure. So I drive over to the ER, and spend the next 3 hours, till about 2am, at her bed side.
Well, the night stay at the hospital was rather beautiful as my Japanese neighbor and I talked about Japanese culture and people, as
showcased during the tsunami. I pontificated that Japanese have a higher propensity to be in contact with their
spiritual selves because the culture immerses a Japanese person in
empathy, sensitivity,
gratitude. Great spring board into finding our inner voice, and getting in touch with our spirit. She agreed. I asked her about her 50 years of teaching Ikebana. She talked about how the process of creating the arrangement is co-creation between herself and a nature force of sorts. She explains how sometimes when she is done with creating the arrangement, that she herself is amazed to find
beauty she they did not consciously create herself. We talked about how Ikebana is a practice for creating beauty but also peace.
At about 2AM, when we were walking to my car to drive her home, she felt so sorry that I wasn't able to go home to
sleep sooner. She is a close neighbor and she felt comforted yet uneasy that I went through such efforts on her behalf. But for me, I was still in a different head space and time of night wasn't relevant to me. What was relevant to me was that I was granted an intimate and heartfelt audience with another human being that entertained my inquisition on the nature of spirit. But in the Japanese way, I knew I needed to give her a reason to take some action to give back to show her appreciation in a way that she can express genuinely. And so I pulled out one of the 2 Smile Cards that I picked up at your table and gave it to her. I said that I was only happy to be there with her and this
Smile card is something she can also pay-forward to someone. She smiled and kept it in her hand the whole way back home. What was a tedious affair on one level, was a beautiful ending to a buzzing evening.
Thank you for your talk and our conversation last night.
That ripple alone is more than enough for me.
