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Thank you again, all of you, for taking the time from your very exciting week here to listen to me.
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And I hope I can share some insights with you.
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But before I dig into that, I just wanted to return Dean Joss. Amazing introduction.
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As you know, he's a very accomplished man.
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He's a man of grace, a lot of confidence.
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But I want you to know that below all this composure, there's a lot of fire burning.
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Just like it did for all of you and me when I first joined the school, and we all thought we were hot.
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We made it to the best business school in the world, and one of the things I learned was how to read the Wall Street Journal.
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So I picked up yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
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>> [LAUGH] >> The business school ratings, recruiters MBA picks and talks about something old, something new.
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And I was really curious whether I'll find my school here. So I started at the top.
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>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> University of Michigan, Berkeley, Thunderbird, Michigan State University.
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By the time I got to the bottom of the list, I was really happy I went to state school undergrad.
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>> [LAUGH] >> But I thought that the recruiter's view would be important, especially since you all are worried probably about how you're going to pay for all this great education you're going to get.
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And I got so actually I wanted to share a little bit more about what the article said, which is amazing.
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It talked about how the recruiter's view is the rankings aren't necessarily a reflection of the schools with the most celebrated academic reputation, although the 21 attributes include the curriculum and the faculty.
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Academic quality isn't the primary concern of most survey respondents.
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Instead, they care most about the MBA students interpersonal and communication skills.
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We have plenty of opportunities for you to learn all that with the LPF on Fridays, with the Tuesday nights, the Golf Access.
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And that help explain why some of the most renowned schools, such as Harvard and Stanford don't rank as highly as the services survey as the other schools, blah blah blah.
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And then it talks about basically we're all arrogant here and hard to deal with, and the recruiters don't like us.
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So of course I don't believe any of that.
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But in case you're worried about the jobs, we had an intern actually from your school in my class, and he told me I'm not worried about paying for the school because I learned how to use Google AdWords, which is our ad system, to actually create an arbitrage site and make money.
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And it's already paid, apparently for his school.
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I was talking to the Harvard alumni last night and I learned that they load up on loans, they hook up with their finance experts and classmates, and they figure out how to arbitrage.
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So I don't recommend any of this, but these are some techniques you may want to use if you don't end up with any jobs, given what the survey says.
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>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> So I'll hire you though. So let's see.
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Let me start all kidding aside with why I believe we're all here, and you are here and is it a break from your career?
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You wanted to step back and really immerse yourself in this amazing environment with your great classmates, with just incredible education institution that you have here and the environment.
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Is it really that you want to become a CEO and you want to know how to do that or become an entrepreneur or an investment banker or management consultant?
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Is it really to find a partner?
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In fact, there's an amazing story in the same auditorium, my dear classmate and actually board colleague, a fellow board member at the advisory board, met her future husband, Steve Jobs, and it happened in this room.
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My assistant reminded me I'm married, [LAUGH] so probably that one happened today.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Or is it really to challenge your comfort zone?
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And I think for me at least it was really all of the Bob wanted one more really incredible quality I cared about, which was really this openness to be surprised, to really get me out of this comfort zone, to really gain insights about myself and my ambitions.
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I thought again I was pretty hot.
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I was an engineer that made it to HP and became a product marketing person, traveled the world, had five years of this incredible experience when HP was very hot.
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And that I got the only school I applied to I got in thanks to Karen, and I thought I really just need a little bit of polishing and business experience.
4:32
And that's what the business school is going to do for me.
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And what it has really done though is this amazing portfolio of aha moments.
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When I look back at my education and I look back at my experience at Stanford, this is what I really recommend you guys focus on is that it's not really the specialization or the deep dive in the topics you're going to get.
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You're going to hear this from everyone, you're going to forget all that.
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It's really these incredible aha moments and these experiences that you have, not just in the class.
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It could be a quote from a professor, could be an experience you have with your classmate, traveling on one of the incredible projects that becomes available here.
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A bunch of my classmates went to see the wall fall down, that gives my age away, in Eastern Europe.
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And It is really those moments, and my goal today is really to share some of those that were very personal for me, that not only shaped my experience at Stanford, but really helped me and guided my career in a significant way.
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And let me start by recalling some of these classroom quotes and classroom moments.
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One of my favorite classes was leadership class by John Gardner, who I believe just passed away.
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And he was the president of Carnegie Corporation.
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If you're not familiar with him, he was the education secretary in the JFK administration.
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And he, at the time, I was an extrovert person in kind of a business environment, but I'm more of a person that really enjoys deeper, solid conversations with people.
5:54
So more of an introvert in that sense.
5:56
And I never thought of myself as a leader.
5:58
And now half the company, half of Google reports to me.
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And one thing he told me was that leadership can be learned.
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And that's the only thing I remember from that class.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Today, I did pass the course with good grades, but today that's the only thing I remember from that class. And it's incredible.
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Every time I remind myself I'm going to do something very tough or I'm going to take on a new challenge, I remember what he said, that I can learn this.
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And I really believe that.
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I never thought of myself being comfortable speaking to this incredible audience like I have today or thousands of people at a conference or mobilize my organization at Google, the way we have.
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And it was that thought that got planted in my head, that it can be learned.
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And again, a lot more I focused on that after I realized that at business school.
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Jeffrey Pfeffer One of my favorite classes was Managing with Power, Politics and Influence in Organizations.
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And one of the things that I remember from that class was this phrase.
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It was the last thing he said in the class was that he used lots of examples in his course about how in organizations and governments and institutions, you have people that are really successful, and they really push the envelope of leadership.
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They really push the envelope sometimes of ethics.
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And the question is for you to realize where that line is.
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And one of the students raised their hand and asked, that seems to be what you're telling us, that we have to push that line and maybe walk over that line of ethics.
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And he said, no, what I'm telling you is not telling you what choices to make.
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And I wrote down exactly what he told me, and I have it in my quotes files.
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But if ten years from now you're in a junior position deep inside an organization, I don't want you to wonder what happened to you.
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And it was so insightful, that quote, to me.
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And this happened to me, by the way.
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I learned this lesson in the class and I forgot it.
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And it happened to me in my first startup job, and then it just came back to me and hit me really hard.
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And in the next few jobs, I actually applied some of the principles in the book, and it worked, which I'll share some of it with you.
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It's the other experiences, like the entrepreneurship classes or the The various projects and team activities that you have.
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I met Bill Gates through this process.
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And I never forget at the time, Steve Jobs had left and started Next Corporation, which was a new, basically a hardware platform, software platform, operating system.
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And I think he was trying to convince Bill to port all of his applications, ward applications, which is the real needed ingredient for success of a new platform, having applications that run on this new computer.
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And afterwards, I was huddling with Bill in one of the auditoriums here, and he said, I just left Steve, and he's so amazing, and he's just so inspiring.
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And I just got to remember when I leave Steve, I got to come out, and kind of hit myself, and pinch myself to get up, to wake up whether this is the right thing to do or not.
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And it was really a statement about charismatic founders.
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And throughout my career, I actually hit this point where I was so in love with the founder.
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And I was so passionate about what I was hearing and the lessons I had and just admiring this brilliant founder that I would have made some bad choices, stayed at a company too long or a failing startup too long.
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And again, one of those moments helped me to be decisive and leave and go to the next startup that was hugely successful.
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And ultimately, a brown bag lunch here.
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With all due respect to the great bankers and consultants who are in the room or you have aspirations to be, I was really not meant to be one, but I got sidetracked thinking I could be one.
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And the side tracking happened in business school and the savior happened in business school.
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So I got sidetracked in business school, then came back to business school during a brown bag launch.
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And I'll talk about some of this later, that really made me and my heart really beat for the opportunity that I was really after.
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So both things happen in this business school.
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And again, all this collection of experiences and portfolio that I developed is something you were going to benefit from.
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And one of my key messages is that you have to really be open to that and don't worry too much about specialization or are you learning exactly everything you wanted to learn.
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And just be open to surprises and open to challenging yourself, your comfort zone, and kind of flowing in these next two years.
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So let me share with you some of these experiences more specifically and then relate it not only to my own experience at business school, but also my experience, my career.
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So coming to the GSB experiences, one of the things, again, I really completely believe in is this notion of following your instincts and passion.
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Sometimes it sounds corny, but let me highlight it for you.
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You absolutely should not focus on the money.
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And again, as MBAs, I think we like money, and we understand money, and we know how to calculate it.
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But I'll give you two examples, both at GSB and later in my career, the choice to go to Google, which had to do with absolutely not being focused on money.
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So the first part is that the I Banking and consulting frenzy, we're all going to get into when it gets to the jobs for the summer, right?
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Everybody wants to figure out how to have this great experience, this prestigious job in one of the great cities and then get this great bonus that you can use to pay off your loans.
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And then have to come back for a couple of years, and work really hard, and make a lot more money.
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Well, I joined that herd mentality as well.
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And then luckily though, I got rejected on every first round.
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[LAUGH] Every first round of a management consulting interview or I banking, I was rejected.
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I was just not smart enough, analytical enough to make the cut, but I was convinced this is what I want to do.
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And what happened at business school, which set me on the wrong course for a quarter, was these two great classes actually by Jack McDonald, which, what are they called? Investments.
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And is he still teaching?
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He's an amazing professor.
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And the class is this rite of passage.
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You have to, at the time, use up all your points to get into it.
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And then there's this whole mystique around how you get in there and then how you make it to the next round.
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And he does an incredible job.
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Warren Buffett usually comes to a school and talks to the whole university, and he has Warren Buffett just talking to the class.
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So it's just an amazingly well done class.
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And the learning was impressive.
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I learned that perhaps I could use my analytical and engineering skills to not only stay that way and stay analytical and interested in technology, but also be in a field where you can make a lot of money.
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And again, focus on money, wrong thing.
12:24
And I convinced myself I got to join one of these banks, and Robertson Stevens at the time was an investment bank that I was trying to get into.
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To make the long story short, I actually got invited to a baseball game with the director of the department and I thought I'd made it.
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And he was asking me all these weird questions like, tell me what was wrong at HP, and what did you do about it.
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And tell me what was wrong with this company that you hear about, and what are you going to do about it?
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And being a positive marketing person at the time, I was, here's what I would do, here's what I would fix, this is what I did at HP.
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And after that baseball game, I thought the offer is going to be in the mail the next day.
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And he was like, no calls from them, no news.
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So by the end of that week, I was so worried, I called them, and he said, sorry Amit, you're just too positive for this business. And I was like what?
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[LAUGH] He said, as investment bankers or VCs perhaps, you need to put the companies down below and have them crawl their way back up.
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You can't be that positive that you did this, that you're not, again objective enough, and you're too much of a biz dev person.
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Now it's really interesting he told me that, and I should have realized then that that's my career, biz dev being able to sell something.
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So what happened is I actually, so this tells you something about my selling skills, I guess.
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I convinced him to offer me a job still on that phone call.
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[LAUGH] So he offers me the job, >> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> And he offers me the job, and I walk back to the campus, and there's this brombeg lunch with this company called GO Corporation, which at the time was a PDA company.
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This is a precursor to all the devices you have now, all the trios and blackberries.
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This stuff was started by this company called GO Corporation.
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And one of our alumni was presenting actually there.
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And I went into the room listening to this presentation, and this is what I mean by instincts.
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And yes, sometimes it sounds corny, but you're human beings and it's real.
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I sat there and just my emotions, my heart was saying this is what I want to do, this is not the bank.
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I kind of had this sensation, and you get carried away by it.
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The money, it was a beautiful building in San Francisco.
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Robertson Stevens was this beautiful bank in Embarcadero Center, this sexy San Francisco high rise.
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And I was sitting in that lobby waiting for my interview one of those weeks prior, and I just didn't feel like it was me, I just didn't feel I belonged there.
14:55
And then yet in this brown bag launch, I could not wait to connect with this alumni to figure out how I can get into the company.
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So again, not only Stanford self corrected for me, this openness to just be there, be aware, be present, but also the alumni helped me because he eventually got me into the company.
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There's all these other stories about how I show up, and the bankers show up actually to take us public.
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And then they thought I had accepted the offer Robertson Stevens, and they realized no, I'm in this company now.
15:20
So there are all these hilarious comic situations, [LAUGH] but that was the GSP experience.
15:28
The other one, again, on the non-financial part, I like to emphasize, again, don't focus on the money, focus on your passion, is the Google story.
15:35
And this also shows you a little bit of the craziness of the bubble that we all faced in the 90s.
15:43
After I met, and I'll tell you more about the background with Google, but after I met Larry and Sergey and I got my offer, I negotiated over three weekends with him.
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Then I sat down and did a spreadsheet, and I had this offer to stay at AOL.
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And that's one thing we learned by the really.
16:00
Pretty well here, how to do those spreadsheets well, but you know what the spreadsheets are, right?
16:05
It's all the assumptions that matter and all my assumptions were crazy.
16:08
So I made this assumption about, you know, AOL is going to double every year.
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I assumed AOL Time Warner, that's going to be very conservative because my Netscape stock went from $15 to $100 split and went to $100 again.
16:21
And I said, I'm going to be conservative and just assume that AOL is going to double every year.
16:26
Now, forget the law of large numbers, right?
16:29
If you learned that here but the market valuation was probably a couple of tens of billions at the time and I still assumed it's going to double every year.
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And that shows you how bad the bubble was.
16:39
And then with Google, I said, I don't know, it's interesting founders, but very risky at best maybe I'll be able to convince them to sell this company to Yahoo for a couple hundred million dollars.
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And I never forget this, I have this spreadsheet to this day.
16:54
Financially, the two offers were a wash because I had a very low salary at Google and just all this equity.
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>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> So financially it was a complete wash and I looked to my wife and said, what do you think it was?
17:16
Just no salary and no nice corporate jets to fly around to Dulles.
17:23
And he said, Omid, you're just a startup person.
17:26
Your passion is to be in a smaller place and you're not going to be happy doing this bigger job in this very complicated organization.
17:32
And purely, again, based on that instinct and forgetting the financial calculation, I joined Google.
17:39
And again, it just shows you these decisions are really not about all the math you can do or all the assumptions.
17:44
A lot of it is about your passion and your gut feel and your instincts.
17:48
The next big lesson I would say is what I referred to earlier is this portfolio of insights and wisdom and not being worried about specializing or kind of learning one thing really well at the business school.
17:59
It's really finding the teachers that you find best that meet what your learning criteria is and the subjects that really attract you to it.
18:07
Avoiding, again, subject matter, comfort zone.
18:10
I didn't realize when I would come here that I would leave it the way I did.
18:16
I thought, I'm ready to be a CEO.
18:17
After I left HP and I was kind of very confident of that.
18:20
And I entered GSB thinking that, and I left it thinking that.
18:24
And the first company I got to GO corporation, I realized how unprepared I was to be a CEO.
18:30
And I still am not probably prepared to be a CEO.
18:33
So again, setting those kinds of objectives for yourself and just being rigid about it is the wrong thing.
18:38
It's really this portfolio of wisdom and learning that really matters.
18:43
Specifically, let me give you what this did for me.
18:45
So I started realizing I have none of the kind of the classic business training because I was an engineer and I really wanted to learn all that stuff and financial accounting and cost accounting and learn the process management stuff.
18:58
And again, I was sorry, bored to death about a lot of those topics.
19:02
And what my real passion was was organizations and building greatness, building companies.
19:07
And very quickly after I went to some of these organizational behavior classes and management principle classes, creativity classes, I just got completely attracted to that.
19:16
I'd never actually made it to some of the famous entrepreneurship courses, which is interesting.
19:20
I ended up being an entrepreneur afterwards but it was that portfolio of learning that I mentioned earlier.
19:24
Pfeffer's class, empowerment, politics, all these leadership classes.
19:28
What I missed that goal was this complete lesson.
19:31
I thought, just merits alone will do it.
19:34
If you do a great job, you're going to do it.
19:37
We were in a battle to win the operating system game against Microsoft with this PD devices at GO.
19:45
And the biggest account at the time was Compaq.
19:47
And I tried to win that account, had this amazing ability to try to win it, and I lost it to Bill Gates.
19:55
That's the one thing I can say.
19:57
He actually, basically convinced Compaq that with the benefits they're going to get with a Microsoft relationship, the operating system discounts they're going to get, and all these other things that they bundled, which is they're very good at this.
20:09
They bundled all the decisions to the operating system decision and I lost that.
20:15
And even though I had worked so hard to do this, I was in a sales organization, and what mattered at the time was your results.
20:22
And I had this colleague of mine that had joined, and he was a hot new hire and very experienced biz dev person, very strategic.
20:30
And I didn't care about the dynamics of the politics, and I didn't care about the leadership view of that.
20:36
And I literally kind of almost got demoted, I was kind of headed that way.
20:40
And I remembered Fairfax learning, ten years from now, if you end up in that position, I want you to know why it happened to you. And I remember that.
20:48
And I remembered I was so focused on just winning this one deal and completely oblivious to all the other things I got to do in an organization to establish myself, to really be aware of what I'm great at and where else I can contribute.
21:01
And I decided to leave, though.
21:02
I decided to leave because it was kind of the losses were too much at that point.
21:05
I couldn't recover from all that.
21:08
And I applied to 3DO, which was another hot company at the time in the Valley.
21:11
It was a gaming company, consumer gaming platform that was going to compete with the Nintendo's of the world and PlayStations of the world.
21:20
And the idea was that there's only one platform that's 3DO.
21:23
All the game companies like Nintendo will license this and develop games for it and we'll make all our money with royalties we get from that reference design.
21:32
So it was an ambitious goal.
21:33
It was an interesting idea but almost impossible to pull off.
21:37
I mean, it's just to imagine these giants of consumer electronics would trust this little Silicon Valley company with that platform and reference design was just unimaginable.
21:47
But we had this incredible founder, Trip Hawkins, a lot of respect for him, and he comes from that class of Steve Jobs and the great Apple entrepreneurs in the Valley.
21:57
And Trip was so amazing, he had these strategy sessions and these company meetings where you could sit there for four hours and just eat it all up, [LAUGH] and just be mesmerized by what he presents.
22:10
I think he has a GSPER, is his, or maybe not, I'm not sure.
22:14
Yeah, I think so and he's so impressive.
22:18
And we did a lot of things together, in that organization, I learned my lessons in power and politics and found my way to work very closely.
22:25
I'm not talking about brown nosing, but finding my way to establish myself not just as an individual contributor, but as a leader in that organization and be recognized as that.
22:35
And even survive a massive layoff above me and below me because I was recognized as that leader, even though around me things were falling apart.
22:43
The lessons of Pfeffer really helped because people knew what I'm capable of and I applied some of those learnings.
22:49
Some of it very silly, if you're interested and we can cover in Q&A.
22:54
But what happened is I left that one of these sessions.
22:56
It was after we lost a ton of money.
22:58
And Tripp, to his credit, was using his personal money, continuing to fund the company.
23:03
He was the founder of Electronic Arts, so he's very successful before he started 3DO.
23:09
And I left that and I remembered the Gates conversation.
23:12
I remembered Bill telling me, I have to leave Steve Jobs and kind of slap myself to wake up sometimes.
23:16
And that's what I remembered.
23:19
And again, that moment at Stanford completely unrelated to all the classes.
23:24
Guess what's the job it landed me next?
23:26
It was Netscape, when it was just getting started.
23:28
So again, I think if I hadn't been here, if I hadn't been in tune with that learning or in tune with that lesson, I would have maybe stayed there three more years and missed the Netscape rise and the whole Internet revolution.
23:41
So again, I really recommend you guys being being in tune with these things and this portfolio of learning and insights in these classes and in these moments.
23:51
The third thing I'd like to really share with you is the first steps do not have to be perfect.
23:55
You just can't be that precise to decide this is exactly what I'm going to do after business school.
24:00
School, and this is exactly the right path I'm going to be in because it's really the learnings that matter.
24:06
It is being decisive, it is building this portfolio of learning.
24:11
But it's about building relationships and credibility and kind of a track record, I really believe in that.
24:16
I mean, I think some of the problems with some of the jobs that are so specialized is that you go into these big organizations and you make a lot of money potentially, but you kind of don't interact with the world.
24:26
And that's one of the things I like about my job, being a partnership person and a sales executive is that you move through the industries and you move between jobs.
24:36
And then you carry those relationships with you, be it the customer relationships, the partners or the employees you're with.
24:42
And that again carries you forward.
24:44
So, for example, Bill Campbell was the CEO of GO Corporation, the first startup, and he was later CEO of Intuit.
24:53
And he's now an advisor to our management team and our board.
24:56
And at various points during my decisions, after I had left GO, after I had turned my back, I thought to that company and was a failure for me that first start.
25:04
He is now one of my biggest fans and one of my dearest friends and my coach.
25:08
And I continually get his advice on my career and the next steps, be it business or be it career development.
25:16
It's really those portfolios and those relationships and networks that carry you.
25:22
So again, the exact job doesn't even matte, I left, went into the biz dev job at Google.
25:27
Then I decided the reason GO failed, aside from my own failings, was that the product wasn't good.
25:32
So I want to be a product person again.
25:34
So I went through 3DO and I'm a terrible product manager.
25:37
[LAUGH] So I decided to become a product manager.
25:39
And it was like miserable the first year.
25:41
And then Pfeffer's thoughts woke me up and I connected myself with the COO of the company and I became a biz dev person.
25:47
Even though there was a VP of biz dev in the company, I was actually doing biz dev.
25:50
And again, this is what I mean, doesn't matter some of these steps, the specializations, doesn't matter, it's the path and the learnings that really matter.
25:58
And ultimately I landed at Netscape as an executive for biz dev and really kind of then finally felt this is my career and this is what I'm really good at.
26:05
And then later led to Google relationships.
26:08
At Google, for me was an opportunity to build a company.
26:13
And I think for all of you who have that ambition, I highly recommend that in that Netscape wasn't quite that.
26:19
By the time I joined, it was 200 people, they had our executive team all built up.
26:23
And I think as business people, we're actually probably not great at the garage state of a business.
26:29
Maybe I'm wrong, some of you may find that appealing, but I wanted to be right after the garage stage.
26:36
And Google just timing wise worked out that way for me.
26:39
But again, it happened because of this network and this relationship.
26:43
My previous boss at Netscape was very successful after Netscape and he Ram Shriram, he invested in Google as an angel round and he introduced me to the Google founders.
26:54
I thought for a business reason for me to consider the technology for Netscape and AOL.
27:00
And again, this is where it all comes back together again, the network of relationships, your instincts, your portfolio of learnings.
27:06
When I met the Google founders, it was a lunch meeting and it was a weird lunch meeting set up just to get introduced to them.
27:13
I looked in their eyes and I could just see whatever they're going to be built is going to be the next best thing.
27:21
I just could sense that even if we're going to build a mattress together, it didn't matter [LAUGH] what the company was going to be, is that what they're going to do is going to be fantastic.
27:31
And again, I was around technology enough that it worked.
27:36
Now you heard the interview story, of course, that had a huge part in it, but it was again the network that helped me, the references, for example.
27:44
So at Netscape, I was working at the time for a very successful executive, Mike Homer.
27:49
And Andy Bechtolsheim, who's a legendary figure in the Valley here, he was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and he sold several companies to Cisco and was an angel investor in Google.
28:02
Larry and Sergey were bright enough that they surrounded themselves with a lot of great advice.
28:06
And so how do they know, even if my interview went well and the dinner was good, that they're going to still trust me?
28:12
So they called up Andy Bechtolsheim and others to do reference checks on me.
28:16
So Andy calls me and again realize I'm in Netscape, pretty hot company, I'm a pretty successful executive, but it's still I'm not in the top echelon of the industry, even though I felt that way.
28:27
[LAUGH] So Andy calls me on my phone and says, the Google guys have asked me to talk to you and where do you work?
28:34
I said, Netscape, who do you fork for, Mike Homer. And he said thank you.
28:37
He hung up, I was like, okay.
28:39
And then I quickly realized what it's all about again, it's that network.
28:42
So he knew Mike like the back of like a true friend.
28:46
So all he needed to do is talk to Mike and not waste another half hour interviewing me for a reference check.
28:50
So it was really again this legacy of relationships, of being a solid business person.
29:00
And even though you leave these companies and you may turn your back to some of those colleagues.
29:05
You do it with confidence, but you do it in a nice way for the right reasons and that portfolio of relationships come back to help you.
29:14
Every relationship I've established at Google started with a bunch of these relationships coming together.
29:20
So my first hire was Joan Brada, one of the most successful executives at Google and she was my colleague at Netscape.
29:27
And by the way, I'm very happy to see the numbers on women increasing at the Stanford Business School.
29:33
A lot of my success at Google is thanks to incredible talent of women in my organization and half of my organization is women and it's about 4,000 people.
29:41
So [LAUGH], >> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you.
29:44
>> [APPLAUSE] >> And by the way, I've also become very talented at figuring out how to do the family life balance thing.
29:55
So I can give advice on that and also how to manage very successful career oriented women on my management team where they need to take breaks like that and come back and be stronger than any man I've seen.
30:04
So [LAUGH] congratulations on how you do this I don't know, [LAUGH]. Let's see.
30:13
So building this organization again was a lot of it was thanks to the ability of these relationships not only in terms of the partnerships and the business aspect, but also building the organization.
30:25
And that it's just something I really recommend to all of you is that I think building of organizations and if you have this in you or you think you have it in you and you're not sure.
30:35
I wasn't sure, I learned it at business school that I can be a leader, I highly recommend that.
30:40
And that's just I think ultimately when you build something and there were classes here talking about organizations, building organizations to last.
30:48
Doesn't have to be a whole company, it can be a department, it can be a small nonprofit organization.
30:53
There is just no greater to me sense of accomplishment than building something incredible in the world.
31:02
So I think I've talked probably too long now is this time for Q&A?
31:07
Let me just, I think, I weaved these comments throughout my talk, but just some nuggets that I'd like to share with you, which I think we all share when we make it to an incredible institution like Stanford.
31:23
Is that this notion of hiring greatness or getting students that are so incredible and so talented in one place is absolutely a key ingredient of success.
31:35
So at Google, we never compromise this.
31:37
And to this day, all the execs review every single hire, every single candidate, and every single package of hiring.
31:45
And it's painful, it really is painful to sit there Monday afternoon and review tens and tens of packages of hires.
31:52
And we hire a lot of people every week and go through that.
31:56
But it's absolutely true that As hire As, and you've heard about the, Google, maybe airport test that John Doerr and I coined at Google.
32:05
It really is true, and you'll see this among your classmates.
32:08
I mean, these classes are so intense, these classes, the learning is so amazing, it's because of the incredible talent that's in this room.
32:15
And when you go out there and you're trying to hire, do not make compromise on that because it doesn't matter how big your organization is, a single bad apple or a single bad hire can ruin it.
32:24
Global experience, I just cannot say enough about that.
32:27
When I was rejected with all these investment banking and managing consulting jobs, I went back and decided I really want to do something different.
32:35
So I went back to HP and found an opportunity to work in Japan for a summer.
32:39
And that learning alone, just learning how to show up in Japan and live in a company dormitory actually.
32:44
And it was very tough experience, but helped me in every one of these startups, every one of these companies actually had to deal with Japan.
32:52
Now it's going to be China probably as well as Japan, and you've gotta have that learning.
32:56
I basically got on a plane at Google three years ago and went out to establish all of our business operations outside of the United States.
33:03
And without that kind of confidence and that learning that I had, I was not going to be successful.
33:08
So having global experience, global learning, the diversity in this class is impressive to also provide a lot of that to you.
33:16
Putting yourself again out of that comfort zone and talking to a classmate which you may have a hard time communicating with or dismiss because they're not as good as you in having strong voices in the class.
33:28
Do not underestimate that, and that learning is very powerful.
33:33
And again, I would like to end this and get to the Q and A by just saying you're all incredibly talented and a lot of your time should be really spent on putting that aside and really relaxing, easing into this two years and do all the learning.
33:50
And build that portfolio with your classmates and really trust your gut, your passion and you'll find your path and you're going to be very, very successful.
33:58
Hope to run into you guys at Google or other places and I'm glad to answer any questions you may have, thank you.
34:02
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Speaker 1: Can you talk a bit more about your experience at because that seems like really transformation and how you managed to restart navigating the company and get [INAUDIBLE]- >> Yeah, the experience that we had, the part I referred to, and again, this stuff is not pushing the ethics envelope, which I was kind of my classmate was worried about in the power and politics class.
34:40
But I was in a role that was just not right for me.
34:43
I was trying to do product management, I wasn't good at it.
34:45
I was in an engineering driven company where engineers designed the products, not the product manager.
34:51
So my boss, very, very successful Lady McKinsey consultant was hammering me to develop the perfect product plan which I knew was going to be useless because the products are designed by the engineers.
35:02
And I was just in this no win situation that I didn't know really how I'm going to get out of.
35:06
And again it dawned on me, I gotta listen to the class learnings.
35:12
And this sounds really stupid, but I'll say it I found my way just doing even simple things where I would normally go to lunch a certain way and I just made a point of going through the kind of executive row [LAUGH] and just walk through the executive row.
35:26
And just have the opportunity to run into Trip and just have a conversation about what I'm doing or run into Hugh Martin who was the CEO of the company and what I'm doing.
35:33
Or volunteering myself to go on a trip as a product manager which I knew I'm not going to do anything because the product was designed there.
35:40
But go there to help and help with the situation the company was facing and be helpful and do something else actually in a company that was helpful, not my official job.
35:50
Which is again sometimes uncomfortable when you were in a small company and have a boss and you have a specific job.
35:55
But when you know something is wrong and you know the answer or you're trying to find the answer, just being open to kind of opening yourself up from the little corner you're in and not be heads down and connect yourself with other people, put yourself out there is really what matters.
36:13
So some of this stuff sounds kind of corny or sounds like I was trying to pass through the executive role.
36:18
And Brown knows it wasn't really that, it was just trying to be more aware, being more connected and then being available to help.
36:25
And that basically what happened is the CEO decided I'm so good at the biz dev even though they had a VP of biz dev that he's going to have me help with a bunch of these conversations.
36:34
And it wasn't easy and because there were some conflicts and a lot of great talent in the company and it was hard my relationship with my boss.
36:39
But ultimately it worked out for me where I learned a ton more than what I would have done, sweating in my cubicle doing a 50 page product plan which I knew was useless.
36:52
>> Speaker 1: You talked about your passion for startups and how being in Netscape was already a big organization. How do you feel now?
37:02
I mean, two, it's not a startup anymore.
37:05
>> Speaker 1: Good question.
37:06
That's the one thing, to be honest with you, I have a struggle with.
37:09
And I'll share with you something Eric told me, our CEO.
37:12
I really miss those days where everybody's in one room or one building or I talked to my entire staff in one kind of conference room, and now it's impossible to do it.
37:21
They're all over the world, video conferences, lots of trips.
37:25
And so there's definitely an aspect of that you miss.
37:27
And there are people that get to this stage that they just can't do it anymore and they have to go to a smaller environment.
37:33
And I think Eric gave me the best advice, which is you gotta have a morning session almost, that period is over.
37:41
So I can't pretend and tell you guys, Google is small and come there and it's like a startup, it's not true.
37:46
We do things that are very unique.
37:48
That I think for companies in the valley or companies in the world, is that we really believe in the power of small teams and keeping the management layers thin.
37:59
Eric literally counts when we get to promotions.
38:01
How many directors do we have in the company? How many VPs do we have?
38:03
The ratios based on the employees.
38:05
And to become a director or a VP at Google is just this incredible title and accomplishment to achieve.
38:14
But keeping the team small, keeping the company nimble, keeping it innovative, the 70, 2010 model, which you may have heard about, where 70% of our focus is on our core business, 20% is adjacent areas, and 10% is just wild.
38:27
Anything goes, ideas and experimentations that we do.
38:30
I mean, those kinds of things make this culture really still vibrant.
38:33
So our goal is to keep Google, this very nimble but large organization that's growing, and we'll see how successful we can be at it.
38:42
But obviously there's a definite distinction where, maybe I'm incorrect in this, but I think a lot of people, actually some of the early entrepreneurs left the company.
38:51
And what I hear again, is that a lot of them, again, enjoy maybe the time they're having off and dabbling in new things.
38:56
But there's a lot to be also said with the company of the culture that Google still has, where there is that nimbleness in small teams and that focus on innovation that is still very attractive.
39:06
Where you can work on something that is very small and make it a big business, given the resources that we have.
39:16
>> Speaker 1: When you arrived at Google, you were going on the 12th [INAUDIBLE] the first business person.
39:22
So how did you introduce this business side of things to a pure engineering environment?
39:28
>> Speaker 1: Good question.
39:29
I think one, the credit that goes to Larry and Sergey on this business savviness, which is, again, this is why founders are founders, they're just incredible talent.
39:38
Is that not only were they really passionate about technology, they were absolutely passionate about business also.
39:43
So it's very, very rare for me to actually experience that where a technical founder cares as much about business as they do about technology.
39:51
But one principle I always believe in, and believed in at the time, was that when it gets to partnerships and revenue, revenue will kind of illuminate, The path for you in a startup, and just like what I was talking about business school where the first step doesn't matter and a lot of us kind of sweat to get that first step perfect is that you got to get started.
40:10
You've got to try sell and establish partnerships in every direction you can and try to find a path.
40:15
So some of it is a little bit chaotic initially, but you've got to again know where you're headed, where to give up a path when you know it's a dead end and where to put your resources when you know this is the right one.
40:25
So I really tried everything.
40:26
I tried selling it to enterprises, license search to Yahoo and our competition, start advertising tests on Google and consider custom projects we'll do for companies.
40:39
Just decided which one of these things makes sense.
40:41
Be just out there, be global.
40:44
One of the things I talk about is that Google as a service was always ahead of Google as a company.
40:53
So from day one, Google's usage outside of US was accelerating to the point today where we're completely a minority.
41:00
The usage of Google in the United States is a minority given all the international usage of Google.
41:06
But our operations were so behind, we were very much a US centric company.
41:10
So get out there, establish business relationships outside the United States and start hiring people outside the United States.
41:18
So very strong recommendation that I think companies, especially startups, need a business executive that can have the confidence but also the flexibility to try many different things and the revenue flow will start illuminating the business model.
41:33
I gave a talk in Tokyo about a week and a half ago and we talked about how one of the ways to look at what's happening in the world today is this partial attentions that we all have partial attentions now.
41:46
There's no more focus, I hear now in business school, I guess people have laptops with wireless access.
41:51
At Google the staff meetings, I wish I could do a Doonesbury cartoon on this one day in the staff meetings.
41:57
I know a Googler here [LAUGH] in the audience, that everybody has laptops open.
42:03
To me, it's still so insulting.
42:05
But every time I argue with Larry and Sergey, they say, look, it's the job of the presenter to make the content interesting.
42:10
Otherwise I'd rather do my email.
42:14
[LAUGH] So it's a brutal environment we live in now.
42:17
And this partial attention, by the way, from a business perspective, partial attention creates a scarcity, just like when something is scarce it's more valuable.
42:25
And that's why our model is so successful now.
42:28
Targeted advertising to capture you when you are paying attention and be valuable to you has a lot of value.
42:33
And that's what the foundation of really our business model is today.
42:36
So to answer your question, I try to read as much as I can, but as quickly as I can.
42:44
So what happens is I don't read the full article anymore open to end.
42:49
I use the net a lot to search, Google News I love.
42:54
>> [LAUGH] >> But it's all out there now, which is amazing.
43:00
And to me the power of searching and news is very strong now.
43:06
[INAUDIBLE] >> Speaker 2: If you had a chance to come back to Stanford Business School today from where you are and have one course designed specially for you, how would you choose to structure that course?
43:20
What would you want in that course for yourself, what you're doing today and your career from here on?
43:25
>> Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think it's very hard.
43:27
I mean, I actually do not envy Dean's position and the faculty's position here because I do think it's so hard to do this.
43:33
And this is what I meant by the portfolio.
43:36
You really pick up things in every class you take.
43:39
And it could be something very small like what John Gardner said about leadership is something that can be learned.
43:45
And that's the only thing I really remember.
43:47
But I remember I was inspired in that class, but that's the one thing that stuck in my head.
43:51
So I think it's really that exposure that matters.
43:53
So if the course really exposes you.
43:56
Actually, before I go further, there was another class.
44:00
I forgot the name, it was Management course and it was a very light course.
44:06
And the professor was a wonderful professor here, I forget his name.
44:09
He was an old timer and he was actually very impressive.
44:13
He was an older professor, but he had these amazing biceps. He was like very fit.
44:18
[LAUGH] Do you remember him? What was the name? I'm not sure.
44:26
>> [LAUGH] >> Dean Josh is a young man.
44:32
No, no, he was impressive actually.
44:34
But the course was so light.
44:36
I mean in terms of like I just coasted through it, but it was like the basics of everything.
44:42
It was like doing financial teachings of what an IRR is and my investment backing classmates could probably slice and dice it in 10 million ways in more sophisticated classes than I was able to.
44:53
But it was just teaching me the basics of it and exposing me.
44:56
And he even did a silly case study on, let's say you come to your work and you have these priorities between like your management team is about to quit or if someone is about to quit, they want to talk to you and you have the customers calling, how do you, how do you choose between all these priorities?
45:10
And it was something like that.
45:11
But again, my point is I think it's very hard to do this.
45:14
I think the more you're exposed to the variety of organizational and leadership questions, either through the case studies or through the variety of courses you take is the key.
45:23
I don't think it's possible to do one course that really captures it all.
45:27
So I don't envy the position. I think it's very hard.
45:29
>> Speaker 1: Given the demands that your family and your career already have or had on your time, why have you decided to go hard standard?
45:39
>> Speaker 1: Good question, one of the things that actually I think is lacking from my, when I look at my accomplishments on bio is I've been terrible at just doing extracurricular stuff.
45:50
And again, thanks to Karen, who accepted me because compared to, I think what you guys have to go through now and the kinds of things you have to go through or my children probably have to go through to be not just a perfect violinist, but also been on an Asian shipping service and caught whales.
46:11
[LAUGH] Hopefully not to kill, to save, [LAUGH] but I was so focused on two things.
46:23
The family, two kids, my son was born the month I joined Google, and then these startups in my career that I literally just refused to do anything, any boards, any philanthropic stuff.
46:37
And again, my wife, thankfully did a lot more of that.
46:40
And today, this is one of my biggest challenges.
46:42
In fact, the day I came to the advisory board, it was miserable.
46:45
I mean, I felt really embarrassed because I came in late and had to go out, take calls.
46:50
But I got to become better at that.
46:51
I have to be able to, because I learn a lot through sessions like this.
46:56
I learn a lot through advisory committee and hearing the challenges of the business school and changing the curriculum, building the new building.
47:03
I'm not supposed to say that.
47:04
I know it's going to be nice, you can come back and visit it.
47:10
[LAUGH] I think it's important to do that.
47:14
It really is, and for those of you who can manage that, all the power to you.
47:19
I just needed to kind of put the energy all behind the career and the family.
47:24
And I guess the message is also, you can be successful.
47:27
You don't have to do everything at the same time, given the demands on our careers and our lives, it is doing what's important to you and what really matters.
47:36
And eventually you'll be able to come back and do more.
47:39
That's one of the advice I'm getting today, which is one of the other things I'm doing today, this afternoon, is how can I be more helpful to the school, both from my involvement financially, other ways I could help.
47:50
And the first thing you want to do is jump and do something, thankfully, I'm in a position that I can write a check if I want to.
47:59
I can just do this, but I felt like I need to know more.
48:03
I need to not be rushed to do this and really understand how to do it.
48:08
And again, my advice is just get started.
48:12
I fall in this pattern sometimes where I have to figure out the perfect next step, but it's really just getting started.
48:17
And I think maybe to end on this note, you guys have definitely picked the right place to start.
48:22
So the rest is up to you, thank you. >> [APPLAUSE]