Jan 11, 2022
On today’s show, Liz talks with Eva Nahari—The Queen of Garbage Collection. Eva developed her love for computer science after a strange encounter with a creepy guy on a subway platform in her native home of Stockholm, Sweden. She graduated during the post dot-com bubble and had a tough time finding a job, until she described a way to clean up garbage java code to a prospective employer.
That first job launched a two-decade career solving difficult problems across a variety of Silicon Valley tech companies as a top Product Manager. But eventually, her career plateaued and she got stuck—unable to figure out how to get to the next level and increasingly angrier with her inability to solve the problem. Fortunately, a good friend introduced her to an older and wiser career coach who taught her how to allow herself to exist in an uncomfortable state with no plan and no immediate problem to solve. She told Eva that this state would allow her to be open to the most possibilities and, lo and behold, it worked.
Today, Eva is applying her problem-solving skills as Principal at DNX Ventures, a Tokyo and Silicon Valley VC where she continues her love of software development as an investor in early-stage tech companies.