I've been called 'paranoid,' 'schizophrenic,' 'the wild child of Silicon Valley.'
Mark Zuckerberg was named Time's Person of the Year. I'm sorry if you don't recognize the name. A magazine is something people used to read.
I'm probably the worst Silicon Valley insider ever. I don't hang out with Silicon Valley people.
I didn't set out to be at the top of technology companies. I'm just geeky and shy, and I like to code.
Who co-founded Google? Sergey Brin, a Russian-born Jew whose family fled anti-semitism in the Soviet Union to settle here and who considers himself a refugee.
Nvidia's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, is an engineer and a chip designer. He cofounded Nvidia and still runs it like a startup.
Ben Horowitz, he's the guy. He's really big into hip-hop, and he's a brainiac.
Although he's no longer with us, Steve Jobs is still inspirational to me, as he managed to find the balance between right brain/left-brain thinking that is crucial to building a creative technology business.
When time permits, I try to see interesting people in the cities I visit. In Seattle, I met Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is shy in personality but flamboyant in his philanthropy.
Mark Zuckerberg is the product of Facebook just as surely as Facebook is the product of Mark Zuckerberg.
The myth of the peachfuzz billionaire has emerged. This new Horatio Alger typically launches his first start-up in middle school, and somewhere between the campus computer-science lab and a move to Palo Alto hacks up a Web site where users provide fun or useful content.
My products and magic are free, but on the commercial side of what I do, the big tech companies are impressed with somebody like me who can emotionalize a piece of technology.
This paradox of vision - the genius of youthful ignorance - is nothing new. Had Bill Gates not been in diapers in the early days of computer software, he might have understood that there could never be a market for consumer software - but the 19-year-old Gates went ahead and cofounded Microsoft.
I resigned from my position as Ushahidi Executive Director and member of the Board in 2010. However, my role as a co-founder and my journey as a woman in the technology space means that I remain inextricably linked to Ushahidi, for better or worse.
