‘Godmother of Silicon Valley’ Esther Wojcicki, mother of the YouTube and 23andMe CEOs, shares her secret to raising future leaders 

Every parent wants their child to succeed, but some parents, like Esther Wojcicki, are especially adept at inspiring greatness in their child. 

Dubbed the “Godmother of Silicon Valley,” Wojcicki is the mother of Susan Wojcicki, the late YouTube CEO who left a secure job at Intel to help start Google out of her garage. She’s also the mom of 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki. And she’s also mother toJanet Wojcicki, a leading anthropologist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

Her philosophy toward raising impactful children comes down to two things: failing fast and revising. 

“I think that all learning involves failure. That means you try to do something, and then it doesn’t work out. And so the fact is, you just need to do it again and do it again until you get it right,” she said on a recent episode of Fortune’s Term Sheet podcast. 

Her TRICK method—which stands for Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness—can help parents raise successful and happy children. 

“Parents are dictating, telling kids what to do all the time. They’re worried they’re not on the right path,” she said. “There is no right path. What’s happening next century is different from what happened last century. Kids have to be able to think. Creativity is the most important. Critical thinking skills are the most important. And then, of course, kindness.” 

This thinking doesn’t just apply at home. Wojcicki taught English and journalism at Palo Alto High School, where her streak also carried over outside the family: former NBA superstar Jeremy Lin and actor James Franco rank among some of her successful students. The long-time educator said that the school system often only gives people one shot and can be discouraging. She offered her students a different approach. 

“You couldn’t get a bad grade in my class,” she explained. “You could just revise until you got it right, because all these mistakes that people were making were just examples of them just not knowing it. Somehow, they didn’t understand it. But when they revise, then they understand it, and they do it perfectly.” 

Learning from her children’s failures 

Wojcicki points to her children’s experiences for inspiration about how to navigate failure, especially when making big mistakes in the public eye.

Susan, an early Google employee, tried to launch an online video hosting service called Google Video in 2005. 

“Let me tell you, it was a colossal failure.” Wojcicki said. “Susan had to go before the board and say, ‘You spent all this money, and it didn’t work.’” 

Susan came to Wojcicki for advice about how to tell the board about the failure and offered a potential solution by acquiring a small video platform.

“I said, ‘Well, if you found something that you think is going to make a bigger difference and going to fulfill your dream, go for it. Don’t worry about telling them you made a mistake. Just do it,” Wojcicki said. 

Susan’s solution was acquiring YouTube, which Google bought in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Now, the video platform brings in more than $60 billion a year. 

The same upbringing kicked in when her youngest daughter, Anne, faced a series of public setbacks. After her company 23andMe went public in 2021, the company struggled to turn a profit. In Sept. 2024, Anne tried to take the company private, and all independent members of her board resigned en masse. A month later, the company attempted to restructure, cutting 40% of its workforce. In March 2025, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and Anne resigned as CEO, but pledged to get the company back. 

Anne’s tenacity was emblematic of Wojcicki’s philosophy of failing fast and then revising, even if others don’t believe in you.  

“It’s shocking, because every single lawyer that she had on her team, every single one said she was wasting her money. She’ll never get the company back. Never.” Wojcicki said . “She just plowed ahead anyway.” 

Three months after resigning, Anne’s nonprofit TTAM Research Institute purchased 23andMe’s assets for $305 million in July 2025, and the company is reinventing itself as a nonprofit medical research organization rather than a genetic testing kit company. 

“We were all shocked. We were all grateful,” Wojcicki said. “Now she’s using all that incredible DNA to find solutions to diseases and medications that we couldn’t do before. And she’s using it to make the world a better place for every single one of us. I’m so proud of her. What can I say? What a deal.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com