[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_139":-5,"_140":-5,"_141":142,"_143":144,"_145":146},"routes/clips.$id.$slug",{"_9":10,"_11":12},"clip",{"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":-5,"_18":19,"_20":-5,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_25":26,"_27":28,"_29":30,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_44":45,"_46":-5,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":-5},"canonicalUrl","https://howleaderslead.com/clips/2931/iteration-is-a-competitive-advantage","id",2931,"title","Iteration is a competitive advantage","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.240\nwe call it running feedback loops. This idea of iterating, spending time with\n\n2\n00:00:04.240 --> 00:00:04.880\nour customers,\n\n3\n00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:08.280\nfiguring out, well, how could you make it better? Because like you said, the\n\n4\n00:00:08.280 --> 00:00:09.120\nodds that you got it\n\n5\n00:00:09.120 --> 00:00:12.300\nright on the first try are kind of zero, right? There's always a way for\n\n6\n00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:13.520\nsomething to be better.\n\n7\n00:00:13.520 --> 00:00:16.330\nThe question is, well, where should we invest our energy? What should we do\n\n8\n00:00:16.330 --> 00:00:17.440\nnext? That applies,\n\n9\n00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:22.140\nby the way, to products and product management. But it equally applies to your\n\n10\n00:00:22.140 --> 00:00:23.040\nsales process\n\n11\n00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:26.370\nor your marketing message. Like, there's a lot of things you can kind of tune\n\n12\n00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:27.040\nand tweak.\n\n13\n00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:31.960\nAnd I think in today's age, it's gotten way easier to essentially iterate on\n\n14\n00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:32.400\nthe fly\n\n15\n00:00:32.400 --> 00:00:36.430\nand do it in a thoughtful way. It's not sort of haphazard, but the idea that we\n\n16\n00:00:36.430 --> 00:00:36.880\n're going to run\n\n17\n00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:40.400\na process, we're going to get something out, whether it's a beta product or\n\n18\n00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:41.440\nearly access or whatever\n\n19\n00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:44.400\nyou want to call it, and get feedback I think is really important.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",947549,"end_time",992379,"keywords","iteration, feedback loops, product development, customer feedback, testing, continuous improvement, agility","slug","iteration-is-a-competitive-advantage","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","4fieFANJxZFErWSXTJzypQKgU02GSoPGchAHA2cXrlCc","mux_asset_id","a5Wkfqjq3E99SgPvYTnLE4jB6ssjyWjxCphcRAKy99k","leader_id",232,"episode_id",384,"updated_at","2025-06-19T16:23:42.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/2931/iteration-is-a-competitive-advantage","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_103":104,"_105":106,"_107":108,"_25":109,"_110":111,"_62":112,"_59":112,"_113":114,"_69":115,"_39":116,"_117":-5,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_118":119,"_91":120,"_44":121,"_122":123,"_124":125,"_46":-5,"_126":127,"_128":129,"_95":130,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":58,"_59":60,"_61":-5,"_62":60,"_63":-5,"_64":65,"_66":67,"_68":-5,"_69":-5,"_70":71,"_72":73,"_74":75,"_35":36,"_39":76,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_77":78,"_79":80,"_81":82,"_83":84,"_85":-5,"_86":-5,"_87":88,"_89":90,"_91":-5,"_46":-5,"_92":93,"_94":-5,"_95":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","Big eyes, big ears","big-eyes-big-ears","Listen to this leadership podcast with Sanjit Biswas, Cofounder and CEO of Samsara, and discover how to tune into what your customers really want.","summary","

If you want to build smarter solutions and truly serve your customers, you’ve got to get closer to what they’re struggling with. In this episode, Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas shares how his “big eyes, big ears” mindset helps uncover those opportunities.

You’ll also learn:

How to make your engineers love sales (no, really)
The one thing you’re missing about curiosity
Practical ideas to put your core values into action
A helpful formula to prioritize your R&D budget

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.900\nWhen we get on site, I always tell people like big eyes and big ears, like let\n\n2\n00:00:03.900 --> 00:00:04.720\n's see how these\n\n3\n00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:09.530\noperations really run. Let's listen to where those pain points are. So I love\n\n4\n00:00:09.530 --> 00:00:10.800\nit in terms of\n\n5\n00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:15.600\nhelping me understand what problems need solving next.\n\n6\n00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:26.500\nYou can build fast, you can scale smart, but if you're not solving the right\n\n7\n00:00:26.500 --> 00:00:27.280\nproblems,\n\n8\n00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:32.000\nwhat's the point? Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak and every week I\n\n9\n00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:32.960\nhave conversations\n\n10\n00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:36.740\nwith the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you\n\n11\n00:00:36.740 --> 00:00:37.280\ncan be.\n\n12\n00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:43.250\nMy guest today is Sanjit Viswas, the co-founder and CEO of Sam Sarra. It's a\n\n13\n00:00:43.250 --> 00:00:44.160\ncompany that helps\n\n14\n00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:49.810\ndigitize physical operations and logistics so they're safer and more efficient.\n\n15\n00:00:49.810 --> 00:00:50.160\nThis isn't\n\n16\n00:00:50.160 --> 00:00:55.220\nSanjit's first rodeo. Before this, he co-founded Moraki and sold it to Cisco\n\n17\n00:00:55.220 --> 00:00:56.320\nfor over a billion\n\n18\n00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:02.360\ndollars. And what drives him is the mindset he calls big eyes, big ears. I\n\n19\n00:01:02.360 --> 00:01:03.360\ngotta tell you,\n\n20\n00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:08.010\nI love this phrase so much and I just wish I'd come up with it. And you're\n\n21\n00:01:08.010 --> 00:01:09.360\ngonna love it too,\n\n22\n00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:13.040\nbecause it's all about staying close to your customer. You watch what they\n\n23\n00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:13.680\nstruggle with,\n\n24\n00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:17.360\nyou listen to what they can't quite articulate, and when you do, you uncover\n\n25\n00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:18.160\nthe problems that\n\n26\n00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:22.930\nactually need solving. Stay tuned to see how he does it. Plus, how Sanjit is\n\n27\n00:01:22.930 --> 00:01:24.160\nthinking about AI\n\n28\n00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:28.320\nand his business and a hiring tip you're gonna want to use in your next\n\n29\n00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:29.280\ninterview.\n\n30\n00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:34.290\nSo let's get into it. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to\n\n31\n00:01:34.290 --> 00:01:36.160\nyours, Sanjit Viswas.\n\n32\n00:01:36.160 --> 00:01:46.460\nYou got to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in December of\n\n33\n00:01:46.460 --> 00:01:47.760\n2021\n\n34\n00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:52.560\nwhen you took Sam Sarra public. Now what's a behind the scenes story of that\n\n35\n00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:53.200\nexperience that\n\n36\n00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:57.320\nyou've never told anybody? Well, first of all, it's definitely one of those\n\n37\n00:01:57.320 --> 00:01:58.240\nmilestone moments.\n\n38\n00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:01.460\nI think as an entrepreneur, it's actually hard to imagine that you're gonna get\n\n39\n00:02:01.460 --> 00:02:02.560\nto the point where\n\n40\n00:02:02.560 --> 00:02:06.830\nthe company is going public and there's all this fanfare. One behind the scenes\n\n41\n00:02:06.830 --> 00:02:07.680\nstory that I don't\n\n42\n00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:12.850\nthink a lot of people know is that that opening bell ring is by a button, right\n\n43\n00:02:12.850 --> 00:02:13.840\n? So you're on this\n\n44\n00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:17.540\npodium. They ask you when the market opens to press the button. They actually\n\n45\n00:02:17.540 --> 00:02:18.320\nhave someone with\n\n46\n00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:22.850\na fail safe because it turns out a number of people forget to hit the button.\n\n47\n00:02:22.850 --> 00:02:23.920\nSo I was not aware of\n\n48\n00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:26.430\nthat. I didn't know how any of that stuff worked. They guided us through it. It\n\n49\n00:02:26.430 --> 00:02:27.200\nwas a lot of fun,\n\n50\n00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:31.590\nbut it was actually funny to hear maybe 10, 15% of people actually forget to\n\n51\n00:02:31.590 --> 00:02:32.480\npress the button and\n\n52\n00:02:32.480 --> 00:02:35.940\nthe market doesn't open unless someone hits it. Yeah, that's great. I was\n\n53\n00:02:35.940 --> 00:02:37.440\nreally lucky to have\n\n54\n00:02:37.440 --> 00:02:42.080\nto be able to do that a couple times. It's a great experience. And you have\n\n55\n00:02:42.080 --> 00:02:43.520\nbuilt two billion\n\n56\n00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:48.880\ndollar businesses with your co-founder, John, John Bicket. And I want to learn\n\n57\n00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:49.440\nhow you two\n\n58\n00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:53.710\nmake decisions. So I got to know, how'd you decide that you were going to be\n\n59\n00:02:53.710 --> 00:02:55.280\nthe guy to push that\n\n60\n00:02:55.280 --> 00:03:00.160\nbutton and ring that bell and not him? Well, you know, it's funny. John and I\n\n61\n00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:00.400\nhave known\n\n62\n00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:04.780\neach other now over 20 years. We met as grad students back at MIT, and it's\n\n63\n00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:05.440\nalways been a\n\n64\n00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:09.090\ngreat partnership. So even before we started any companies, we were working\n\n65\n00:03:09.090 --> 00:03:10.160\ntogether. We were\n\n66\n00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:14.330\ndoing research together. He was the guy who loved to write code. And if he\n\n67\n00:03:14.330 --> 00:03:15.200\ncould just spend all\n\n68\n00:03:15.200 --> 00:03:19.610\nof his time just in the details of the technology, he would. And I was the\n\n69\n00:03:19.610 --> 00:03:20.800\nperson who kind of did\n\n70\n00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:25.720\na bit of the research, but also the everything else. So in some sense, as you\n\n71\n00:03:25.720 --> 00:03:26.240\n're founding a\n\n72\n00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:29.550\ncompany, you need someone to do the everything else. That person in my case\n\n73\n00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:30.240\nbecame the CEO.\n\n74\n00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:35.530\nAnd it's a partnership we've had across both companies. So he's been CTO, I've\n\n75\n00:03:35.530 --> 00:03:36.400\nbeen CEO.\n\n76\n00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:41.200\nAnd I think from an opening bell perspective, he's like, I don't want to do it.\n\n77\n00:03:41.200 --> 00:03:41.600\nYou do it.\n\n78\n00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:48.640\nIt's something else. You see everything else. That's a great reason why. And I\n\n79\n00:03:48.640 --> 00:03:49.760\ncan't wait to\n\n80\n00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:55.680\nreally dig into how you're leading at Sam Sarabut. But first, Sanjid, I want to\n\n81\n00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:56.400\ntake you back a\n\n82\n00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:01.520\nlittle bit and start at the beginning. What's the story from your childhood\n\n83\n00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:02.160\nthat shaped the kind\n\n84\n00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:09.640\nof leader you are today? Well, if we go way back 40 years or maybe a little bit\n\n85\n00:04:09.640 --> 00:04:10.640\nless to when I was in\n\n86\n00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:17.270\nmiddle school or high school, I always love technology. It's my background. My\n\n87\n00:04:17.270 --> 00:04:18.480\ndad was actually a computer\n\n88\n00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:22.090\nscience professor, an electrical engineering professor. So I grew up with a lot\n\n89\n00:04:22.090 --> 00:04:23.040\nof this technology\n\n90\n00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:26.110\naround me. One of the things that I like is actually seeing other people use\n\n91\n00:04:26.110 --> 00:04:27.680\ntechnology. Other people\n\n92\n00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:31.650\nget utility or value from it. And going all the way back to middle school or\n\n93\n00:04:31.650 --> 00:04:33.360\nhigh school, I remember\n\n94\n00:04:33.360 --> 00:04:37.680\nbeing really enthusiastic about bringing this idea of internet access, which\n\n95\n00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:38.400\nwas really new at\n\n96\n00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:43.520\nthe time. This is back in the 1990s to other high school kids. And now that I\n\n97\n00:04:43.520 --> 00:04:44.000\nkind of think\n\n98\n00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:47.800\nback on, I was like, that's a really unusual thing that I felt passionate about\n\n99\n00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:48.560\n. But I just\n\n100\n00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:51.690\nthought it was the coolest thing. And I just wanted everybody else that I knew\n\n101\n00:04:51.690 --> 00:04:52.960\nto use it. So that\n\n102\n00:04:52.960 --> 00:04:57.550\nmaybe was a formative moment that didn't make sense at the time. But in\n\n103\n00:04:57.550 --> 00:04:58.400\nretrospect,\n\n104\n00:04:58.400 --> 00:05:02.490\nactually fits a lot of what I've been doing for the last 30 years, which is\n\n105\n00:05:02.490 --> 00:05:03.360\nbringing technology\n\n106\n00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:07.680\nto people. Yeah, that's amazing. You had that insight so early in your life.\n\n107\n00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:09.840\nAnd you feel like\n\n108\n00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:14.740\nthat was driven from your background with your father. I think so. And it's\n\n109\n00:05:14.740 --> 00:05:16.000\nhard to say where\n\n110\n00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:21.220\nwhich influences caused which decisions and actions. But I was really fortunate\n\n111\n00:05:21.220 --> 00:05:22.320\nthat even back in the\n\n112\n00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:26.000\n1980s when computers are pretty expensive and hard to get a hold of, we did\n\n113\n00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:26.800\nhave one at home\n\n114\n00:05:26.800 --> 00:05:31.240\nbecause of his work. And he was always around to answer questions, curiosity\n\n115\n00:05:31.240 --> 00:05:32.560\nquestions. And\n\n116\n00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:36.680\nI was able to kind of go down the rabbit hole early as a side effect of that of\n\n117\n00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:36.960\njust, well,\n\n118\n00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:40.630\nhow does this stuff really work? And what could you do with it, that sort of\n\n119\n00:05:40.630 --> 00:05:41.040\nthing?\n\n120\n00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:45.720\nFantastic. And this was really hard for me to believe. But I understand that at\n\n121\n00:05:45.720 --> 00:05:46.640\n15 years old,\n\n122\n00:05:46.640 --> 00:05:50.330\nyou were hired by Oracle. What's the key lesson you picked up from that\n\n123\n00:05:50.330 --> 00:05:51.200\nexperience?\n\n124\n00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:57.200\nWell, yeah, this is my first job, a summer internship that I got at Oracle. I\n\n125\n00:05:57.200 --> 00:05:58.000\ndon't think they knew I\n\n126\n00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.140\nwas 15 when I interviewed because it was like a coding interview and it was all\n\n127\n00:06:02.140 --> 00:06:03.200\nvery technical.\n\n128\n00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:06.720\nI think they figured out when I showed up and it was my mom that had to drop me\n\n129\n00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:07.200\noff because I was\n\n130\n00:06:07.200 --> 00:06:11.880\ntoo young to have a driver's license. So that was definitely interesting. I\n\n131\n00:06:11.880 --> 00:06:12.800\nlearned a lot in that\n\n132\n00:06:12.800 --> 00:06:16.860\nfirst job. I actually still have pretty vivid memories of everything from the\n\n133\n00:06:16.860 --> 00:06:17.440\ncode and the\n\n134\n00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:21.520\ntechnology to the team that I worked with. It was again, the first time really\n\n135\n00:06:21.520 --> 00:06:22.960\nseeing a company.\n\n136\n00:06:22.960 --> 00:06:26.790\nThis idea that you could get paid to basically do your hobby. It was\n\n137\n00:06:26.790 --> 00:06:27.680\nprogramming was a hobby of\n\n138\n00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.020\nmine at that point. And it was really interesting work. And you got to work\n\n139\n00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:32.560\nwith really smart people.\n\n140\n00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:38.240\nThat was energizing in a really deep way. And you were the youngest engineer to\n\n141\n00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:38.960\never be hired\n\n142\n00:06:38.960 --> 00:06:45.760\nthere as I understand that. And you've had a rocket ship career. Do you think\n\n143\n00:06:45.760 --> 00:06:46.320\nthat really\n\n144\n00:06:46.320 --> 00:06:50.950\ntaught you how to deal with people that are more experienced and older than you\n\n145\n00:06:50.950 --> 00:06:51.680\n? And how do you\n\n146\n00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:54.260\nthink about that now? Because you're still a young guy. I'm sure you've got a\n\n147\n00:06:54.260 --> 00:06:55.520\nlot of guys older than\n\n148\n00:06:55.520 --> 00:07:00.880\nyou that work where you. Yeah, you know, for me, it's never actually been about\n\n149\n00:07:00.880 --> 00:07:01.920\nage or even years\n\n150\n00:07:01.920 --> 00:07:04.720\nof experience. It's actually what do you bring to the table in terms of the\n\n151\n00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:05.600\ndiscussion. So if\n\n152\n00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:10.090\nit's a technical discussion, what ideas are you kind of debating or navigating?\n\n153\n00:07:10.090 --> 00:07:10.720\nI think when it\n\n154\n00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:14.220\ncomes to business discussions, we have a lot of really young salespeople that\n\n155\n00:07:14.220 --> 00:07:15.120\nare very close to\n\n156\n00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:18.960\nour customers. I want to hear them out. So I've kind of learned to ignore the\n\n157\n00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:20.080\nage component of it.\n\n158\n00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:23.840\nThere's a lot that comes with experience where there's some wisdom there. But\n\n159\n00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:24.960\nso much of it is\n\n160\n00:07:24.960 --> 00:07:29.200\nthe type of experience and your insights and your knowledge. So maybe that was\n\n161\n00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:30.560\na deep learning from\n\n162\n00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:35.570\nback in my 15 year old days. You know, you then go on to Stanford to get your\n\n163\n00:07:35.570 --> 00:07:36.560\nundergrad. And\n\n164\n00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:41.640\nwhat impact did that have on the way you think as a leader going to school like\n\n165\n00:07:41.640 --> 00:07:42.400\nStanford?\n\n166\n00:07:42.400 --> 00:07:47.760\nWell, first of all, it was an amazing undergrad institution, right, in terms of\n\n167\n00:07:47.760 --> 00:07:48.720\nthe breadth and\n\n168\n00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:52.200\nthe sort of diversity of ideas that are thrown around. One of the things I\n\n169\n00:07:52.200 --> 00:07:53.200\nloved about Stanford\n\n170\n00:07:53.200 --> 00:07:56.580\nis it is very strong in both the humanities and the sciences, right? So you\n\n171\n00:07:56.580 --> 00:07:57.840\nhave engineers, you have\n\n172\n00:07:57.840 --> 00:08:04.160\npeople who are just out of this world in the liberal arts. And that balance of\n\n173\n00:08:04.160 --> 00:08:05.360\nsort of numbers\n\n174\n00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:11.400\nand sort of qualitative or ideas or, you know, that side of things, that\n\n175\n00:08:11.400 --> 00:08:12.160\nbalance is something\n\n176\n00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:15.970\nthat I really took away from that experience. And even when I look back, and\n\n177\n00:08:15.970 --> 00:08:18.000\nthis is now 25 years\n\n178\n00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.510\nago, some of my most formative experiences in college were actually not\n\n179\n00:08:21.510 --> 00:08:22.720\nnecessarily my computer\n\n180\n00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:26.830\nscience classes. It was when I took a Zen Buddhism class to fulfill a\n\n181\n00:08:26.830 --> 00:08:28.320\nrequirement. I thought I was\n\n182\n00:08:28.320 --> 00:08:31.650\nbeing very clever because I think that class fulfilled two requirements at once\n\n183\n00:08:31.650 --> 00:08:32.400\n, culture and\n\n184\n00:08:32.400 --> 00:08:36.470\nreligion or something like that. But just some of the philosophies have stuck\n\n185\n00:08:36.470 --> 00:08:38.400\nwith me decades later.\n\n186\n00:08:38.400 --> 00:08:42.870\nAnd so really thankful that I had that experience. And an experience I wasn't\n\n187\n00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:43.520\nexpecting to have.\n\n188\n00:08:43.520 --> 00:08:46.930\nI went in thinking, okay, I'm going to take as many engineering classes as I\n\n189\n00:08:46.930 --> 00:08:48.480\ncan. But I'm really\n\n190\n00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:51.620\nglad that I had that sort of well-rounded side of things as well. So how do you\n\n191\n00:08:51.620 --> 00:08:52.480\nthink about hiring\n\n192\n00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:56.220\npeople now when you think about right brain, left brain, you know, do you look\n\n193\n00:08:56.220 --> 00:08:57.360\nfor the balance or,\n\n194\n00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:00.710\nyou know, how do you how do you think about that? Well, we want the whole brain\n\n195\n00:09:00.710 --> 00:09:02.720\n. So, you know,\n\n196\n00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:06.320\nthere's there are folks that are really good at again the kind of quantitative\n\n197\n00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:06.960\nside of things and\n\n198\n00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:11.600\nnumbers and the math and so on. But their ability to apply it to understand how\n\n199\n00:09:11.600 --> 00:09:12.480\nis this going to\n\n200\n00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:17.270\nbenefit a customer or, you know, change their world. That's what makes that\n\n201\n00:09:17.270 --> 00:09:18.160\nengineering innovation\n\n202\n00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:21.680\nrelevant, right? So I think that's important on the R&D side. And then\n\n203\n00:09:21.680 --> 00:09:22.880\nsimilarly on the kind of\n\n204\n00:09:22.880 --> 00:09:28.200\nsales or marketing side, you need to not just have great sort of marketing\n\n205\n00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:29.760\nideas or a clever tagline\n\n206\n00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:33.270\nor something like that. But you do need to understand what's having an impact.\n\n207\n00:09:33.270 --> 00:09:33.840\nSo I think\n\n208\n00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:37.670\nthere's a really important balance between those two. I agree. And, you know,\n\n209\n00:09:37.670 --> 00:09:38.720\nafter Stanford,\n\n210\n00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:44.960\nyou made the move across the country to get your PhD at MIT, another very good\n\n211\n00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:46.000\nschool. And now I\n\n212\n00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:49.540\ngot to ask you, you know, when you're surrounded by some of the smartest people\n\n213\n00:09:49.540 --> 00:09:50.320\nin the world,\n\n214\n00:09:50.320 --> 00:09:55.150\nwhich you certainly were with Stanford and MIT, what did that teach you about\n\n215\n00:09:55.150 --> 00:09:56.160\nworking with and\n\n216\n00:09:56.160 --> 00:10:01.920\nleading other really high performers? You know, what do you think is the key to\n\n217\n00:10:01.920 --> 00:10:03.840\nworking with people\n\n218\n00:10:03.840 --> 00:10:10.340\nlike that? Well, at a deep level, it's, you know, I think I learned a lot about\n\n219\n00:10:10.340 --> 00:10:11.360\nthis idea of working\n\n220\n00:10:11.360 --> 00:10:16.790\nin a team. So, you know, in some situations, there's a leader who is the\n\n221\n00:10:16.790 --> 00:10:17.920\neverything. They're\n\n222\n00:10:17.920 --> 00:10:21.320\nthe commander and they're calling all the shots and so on. That was never the\n\n223\n00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:22.080\ncase, whether it was\n\n224\n00:10:22.640 --> 00:10:26.000\nin my undergrad or graduate research or something like that. It was always a\n\n225\n00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:27.440\nreally amazing group\n\n226\n00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:30.570\nof people. And people at different talents, some people were really good at\n\n227\n00:10:30.570 --> 00:10:31.120\nanalysis,\n\n228\n00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:34.490\nother people were good at coding, other people building things. But this idea\n\n229\n00:10:34.490 --> 00:10:35.360\nthat you can form\n\n230\n00:10:35.360 --> 00:10:39.400\npeople together in a team and that the sort of some of the parts is greater\n\n231\n00:10:39.400 --> 00:10:40.880\nthan just the whole\n\n232\n00:10:40.880 --> 00:10:44.690\nwas really compelling there. And I was really fortunate. The research projects\n\n233\n00:10:44.690 --> 00:10:45.360\nwe worked on\n\n234\n00:10:45.360 --> 00:10:50.720\nended up going on to win some amazing academic research awards. Some of that\n\n235\n00:10:50.720 --> 00:10:52.000\nresearch is still\n\n236\n00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:56.330\ntaught in class today. And when I look back on it, it wasn't just like the\n\n237\n00:10:56.330 --> 00:10:57.840\nfirst author or any\n\n238\n00:10:57.840 --> 00:11:01.840\nindividual like the PhD advisor that was responsible for those insights. It\n\n239\n00:11:01.840 --> 00:11:03.200\nreally was the discussion\n\n240\n00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:07.110\nand debate that we had as a team, the way we built and the way we built over a\n\n241\n00:11:07.110 --> 00:11:08.000\nlong period of time\n\n242\n00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:12.640\nthat made some of that research impactful. So, that was a pretty important\n\n243\n00:11:12.640 --> 00:11:13.440\nlearning at MIT.\n\n244\n00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:16.440\nAnd something that I've taken with me into Meraki and to say I'm sorry, the\n\n245\n00:11:16.440 --> 00:11:17.360\ncompanies we found it\n\n246\n00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:20.620\nafter is just the importance of the team kind of playing to the different team\n\n247\n00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:21.600\nmembers' strengths.\n\n248\n00:11:21.600 --> 00:11:26.160\nAnd then really being cohesive. And speaking of Meraki, this was the company\n\n249\n00:11:26.160 --> 00:11:27.440\nthat was your first\n\n250\n00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:32.320\ncompany. And you can almost say it was almost formed by accident. I don't know\n\n251\n00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:33.200\nthat maybe going\n\n252\n00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:39.530\na little bit too far. But talk about that. Talk about Meraki. Yeah, I think a\n\n253\n00:11:39.530 --> 00:11:40.720\nlot of startup stories\n\n254\n00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:44.680\nhave a tremendous amount of purpose at the very beginning of like, oh, we had a\n\n255\n00:11:44.680 --> 00:11:45.680\nbusiness plan and\n\n256\n00:11:45.680 --> 00:11:49.770\nwe want to go raise funding. And in Silicon Valley, there's a number of those\n\n257\n00:11:49.770 --> 00:11:50.720\nkinds of tales.\n\n258\n00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:56.800\nFor us, this was actually more of we had a technology that we'd been working on\n\n259\n00:11:56.800 --> 00:11:57.680\nas graduate students,\n\n260\n00:11:57.680 --> 00:12:01.950\nwhich is this idea of like, we were building basically large scale Wi-Fi\n\n261\n00:12:01.950 --> 00:12:02.960\nnetworks before\n\n262\n00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:07.480\nWi-Fi was mainstream. So again, this is the early 2000s. That was the research\n\n263\n00:12:07.480 --> 00:12:08.320\nthat we did at MIT.\n\n264\n00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:11.480\nIt was a project called Rufenet. We covered all of Cambridge, Massachusetts\n\n265\n00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:12.240\nwith free Wi-Fi.\n\n266\n00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:16.480\nAnd that was really exciting because we got to be able to provide something of\n\n267\n00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:17.360\nutility to our\n\n268\n00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:20.730\nfellow students. So all the grad students had broadband internet without having\n\n269\n00:12:20.730 --> 00:12:21.920\nto pay for it.\n\n270\n00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:25.600\nWe got to do really interesting research. And in that process, we said, well,\n\n271\n00:12:25.600 --> 00:12:26.080\nwouldn't it be\n\n272\n00:12:26.080 --> 00:12:30.600\namazing if other people could build networks like this? Like in their apartment\n\n273\n00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:31.680\ncomplexes or on\n\n274\n00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:35.570\nMain Street and that kind of thing. So with Meraki, it was actually simply we\n\n275\n00:12:35.570 --> 00:12:36.560\nwanted other people to\n\n276\n00:12:36.560 --> 00:12:40.710\nbe able to build big Wi-Fi networks. We didn't know the first thing about\n\n277\n00:12:40.710 --> 00:12:42.480\nstarting a company. We had\n\n278\n00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:47.510\nno capital of our own. We had no access to venture capital. But we just had\n\n279\n00:12:47.510 --> 00:12:48.800\nthis desire to bring it\n\n280\n00:12:48.800 --> 00:12:52.240\nto the world. So that's how that company got started. A little bit of a\n\n281\n00:12:52.240 --> 00:12:53.840\ndifferent story than I think\n\n282\n00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:57.630\nwhat you hear about some days, some companies now start with the seed round and\n\n283\n00:12:57.630 --> 00:12:58.640\nthen the series A\n\n284\n00:12:58.640 --> 00:13:05.360\nand so on. It almost goes back to your middle school idea that you have. It\n\n285\n00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:06.480\ngoes full circle.\n\n286\n00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:10.680\nThat's amazing. How do you think you lead differently given your engineering\n\n287\n00:13:10.680 --> 00:13:11.280\nbackground?\n\n288\n00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:15.280\nAnd perhaps leaders with a different skill set and background.\n\n289\n00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:20.780\nYeah, I think every entrepreneur figures this out. What is their true strengths\n\n290\n00:13:20.780 --> 00:13:21.520\n? What's authentic\n\n291\n00:13:21.520 --> 00:13:25.550\nto them? For me, I'm still a product person at my core. I love the technology\n\n292\n00:13:25.550 --> 00:13:26.160\nside of things,\n\n293\n00:13:26.160 --> 00:13:30.970\nbut I do love spending time with customers and seeing that impact. And that's\n\n294\n00:13:30.970 --> 00:13:31.600\nhow I spend my\n\n295\n00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:36.060\ntime. I love to spend time out on the road at Samsara. We've got customers in\n\n296\n00:13:36.060 --> 00:13:36.560\nreally diverse\n\n297\n00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:39.930\nindustries all over the US and really all over the world now. So I like to get\n\n298\n00:13:39.930 --> 00:13:40.960\nout in the field.\n\n299\n00:13:40.960 --> 00:13:44.640\nI like to stay current with the engineers on what they're building and what new\n\n300\n00:13:44.640 --> 00:13:45.440\nchips are available\n\n301\n00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:49.000\nor what new advances are happening in the world of AI and all that kind of\n\n302\n00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:49.680\ninnovation.\n\n303\n00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:52.910\nAnd then I like to connect those dots. So for me, it's about being true to\n\n304\n00:13:52.910 --> 00:13:53.360\nmyself.\n\n305\n00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:57.760\nI'm probably not your best salesperson. I'm not a finance wizard. I know sort\n\n306\n00:13:57.760 --> 00:13:59.040\nof what I'm good at\n\n307\n00:13:59.040 --> 00:14:02.410\nand where I need help. And so I try to focus on that kind of product and that\n\n308\n00:14:02.410 --> 00:14:03.680\ncustomer experience.\n\n309\n00:14:03.680 --> 00:14:07.750\nYou know, when you see these areas that maybe you're not as strong at, whether\n\n310\n00:14:07.750 --> 00:14:08.640\nit's sales or\n\n311\n00:14:08.640 --> 00:14:13.350\nmaybe it's working with the investment community, I don't know what. We all go\n\n312\n00:14:13.350 --> 00:14:14.000\nthrough things for\n\n313\n00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:18.160\nthe first time. How do you go about sharpening your acts? Well, for me, it's\n\n314\n00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:20.320\nreally about just\n\n315\n00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:26.080\ngetting in there. So none of us are born knowing how to do these jobs, right?\n\n316\n00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:27.360\nLike, especially as a\n\n317\n00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:30.970\nCEO or a founder of a company, you're figuring it out as you go. I think\n\n318\n00:14:30.970 --> 00:14:32.400\nlearning by doing is\n\n319\n00:14:32.400 --> 00:14:36.230\nreally key for me. I love the interactions and the engagement. So for example,\n\n320\n00:14:36.230 --> 00:14:37.600\non the sales side,\n\n321\n00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:43.410\nI had never sold a thing in my life. Through MIT, I was a research scientist,\n\n322\n00:14:43.410 --> 00:14:44.080\nkind of\n\n323\n00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:49.440\nengineer student. And I'll tell you, anything that involves selling, even in\n\n324\n00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:50.080\nmiddle school or\n\n325\n00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:53.270\nhigh school, there would be those projects we have to sell to candy bars. I\n\n326\n00:14:53.270 --> 00:14:54.080\nwould just find a way\n\n327\n00:14:54.080 --> 00:14:57.620\nto get out of it or shy away from it. I just did not like doing that. But when\n\n328\n00:14:57.620 --> 00:14:58.640\nit came time to\n\n329\n00:14:58.640 --> 00:15:01.790\nfigure out how to get our first sale to happen for Muraki, because we didn't\n\n330\n00:15:01.790 --> 00:15:02.640\nhave any money to\n\n331\n00:15:02.640 --> 00:15:06.860\nrun the company otherwise, we figured it out. We figured out what a PO was. I\n\n332\n00:15:06.860 --> 00:15:07.760\ndiscovered that\n\n333\n00:15:07.760 --> 00:15:11.610\nmeans purchase order. I figured out, okay, how do you translate that into an\n\n334\n00:15:11.610 --> 00:15:12.560\nactual check?\n\n335\n00:15:12.560 --> 00:15:17.440\nAll of that happened by just trying it out. And it's actually much more\n\n336\n00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:18.000\nstraightforward\n\n337\n00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:21.710\nthan people sometimes realize. Like, you could read books and books and books\n\n338\n00:15:21.710 --> 00:15:22.240\nabout how to start\n\n339\n00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:25.790\na company, or you could just try it. And so I always recommend people to just\n\n340\n00:15:25.790 --> 00:15:26.320\ntry it.\n\n341\n00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:32.640\nYou know, that almost takes me my next question. As an engineer, you know, as\n\n342\n00:15:32.640 --> 00:15:33.680\nwell as anyone,\n\n343\n00:15:33.680 --> 00:15:38.840\nnothing is perfect on the first try. Okay, it's all about version two, version\n\n344\n00:15:38.840 --> 00:15:39.840\nthree, and so on.\n\n345\n00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:44.920\nWhat do you do to create a work environment that embraces that kind of iter\n\n346\n00:15:44.920 --> 00:15:46.080\native approach?\n\n347\n00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:51.120\nYeah. Well, at work, we call it running feedback loops, this idea of iterating,\n\n348\n00:15:51.120 --> 00:15:53.570\nspending time with our customers, figuring out, well, how could you make it\n\n349\n00:15:53.570 --> 00:15:54.720\nbetter? Because,\n\n350\n00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:59.010\nlike you said, the odds that you got it right on the first try are kind of zero\n\n351\n00:15:59.010 --> 00:15:59.440\n, right? There's\n\n352\n00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:02.200\nalways a way for something to be better. The question is, well, where should we\n\n353\n00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:02.640\ninvest our\n\n354\n00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:06.500\nenergy? And what should we do next? That applies, by the way, to products and\n\n355\n00:16:06.500 --> 00:16:07.520\nproduct management.\n\n356\n00:16:07.520 --> 00:16:12.250\nBut it equally applies to your sales process or your marketing message. Like,\n\n357\n00:16:12.250 --> 00:16:12.640\nthere's a lot of\n\n358\n00:16:12.640 --> 00:16:17.330\nthings you can kind of tune and tweak. And I think in today's age, it's gotten\n\n359\n00:16:17.330 --> 00:16:18.080\nway easier\n\n360\n00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:22.470\nto essentially iterate on the fly and do it in a thoughtful way. It's not sort\n\n361\n00:16:22.470 --> 00:16:23.120\nof haphazard,\n\n362\n00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:25.700\nbut the idea that we're going to run a process, we're going to get something\n\n363\n00:16:25.700 --> 00:16:26.240\nout,\n\n364\n00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:30.220\nwhether it's a beta product or early access or whatever you want to call it,\n\n365\n00:16:30.220 --> 00:16:30.960\nand get feedback,\n\n366\n00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:35.280\nI think is really important. You know, I've heard you describe your company\n\n367\n00:16:35.280 --> 00:16:36.560\nculture as shared code.\n\n368\n00:16:36.560 --> 00:16:42.880\nExplain what you mean by that. Shared code kind of refers to, well, what are\n\n369\n00:16:42.880 --> 00:16:43.120\nthe,\n\n370\n00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:47.340\nwhat's the sort of common way that we all operate? And if you think about\n\n371\n00:16:47.340 --> 00:16:48.400\nsoftware,\n\n372\n00:16:48.400 --> 00:16:52.110\nsoftware has many forms of manifestations, but ultimately, it's code down at\n\n373\n00:16:52.110 --> 00:16:53.040\nthe bottom of it.\n\n374\n00:16:53.040 --> 00:16:56.480\nAnd you might have lots of different users, but they're all running on that\n\n375\n00:16:56.480 --> 00:16:57.440\nsame code base.\n\n376\n00:16:57.440 --> 00:17:01.040\nWhat I found is, unless you're explicit about it, the way you are with\n\n377\n00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:02.000\nengineering a product,\n\n378\n00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.600\nyou can have people running different code, right? So that you may be under the\n\n379\n00:17:05.600 --> 00:17:06.320\nsame\n\n380\n00:17:06.320 --> 00:17:10.080\ncompany banner, but if you're operating in two totally different ways, the way\n\n381\n00:17:10.080 --> 00:17:10.480\npeople\n\n382\n00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:13.490\nperceive the company, the way they engage with the company is going to be two\n\n383\n00:17:13.490 --> 00:17:14.160\ntotally different\n\n384\n00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:18.300\nexperiences. So by having this, the sort of shared code, if you will, the\n\n385\n00:17:18.300 --> 00:17:19.360\nconsistency of the\n\n386\n00:17:19.360 --> 00:17:24.480\nexperience is really common. Have you gone about really identifying the\n\n387\n00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:26.320\nbehaviors or the operating\n\n388\n00:17:26.320 --> 00:17:30.600\nprinciples that you know that if you execute them, you know you're going to get\n\n389\n00:17:30.600 --> 00:17:31.360\nresults?\n\n390\n00:17:31.360 --> 00:17:36.240\nYeah, and I think that's really about distilling down what's worked for us so\n\n391\n00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:36.960\nfar. You know,\n\n392\n00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:42.210\nwhat we've done in both companies seems to be something people like. Well, what\n\n393\n00:17:42.210 --> 00:17:43.840\nis it about our\n\n394\n00:17:43.840 --> 00:17:48.240\nway of running? And so we do call them operating principles is basically, okay,\n\n395\n00:17:48.240 --> 00:17:49.120\nwhat is it that\n\n396\n00:17:49.120 --> 00:17:53.440\nwe want to make sure everybody's doing? And for us, this idea of focusing on\n\n397\n00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:54.480\nour customer success\n\n398\n00:17:54.480 --> 00:17:58.080\nis really core. It doesn't matter which team you're on. That's something that's\n\n399\n00:17:58.080 --> 00:17:58.640\nreally important.\n\n400\n00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:02.640\nBuilding for the long term is another one of, you know, there's always a bit of\n\n401\n00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:03.440\na trade off of\n\n402\n00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:06.850\nare we doing something for, you know, this month or this quarter, we're\n\n403\n00:18:06.850 --> 00:18:08.000\nactually going to like live\n\n404\n00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:11.150\nwith this decision. That's also something that's really important again, that\n\n405\n00:18:11.150 --> 00:18:11.840\napplies across\n\n406\n00:18:11.840 --> 00:18:16.400\ndepartments and so on. So we've got about eight of these operating principles.\n\n407\n00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:17.200\nWe evolve them\n\n408\n00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:20.500\nevery couple of years. We had refresh on them. But the idea is this is what's\n\n409\n00:18:20.500 --> 00:18:21.440\nworked for us so far.\n\n410\n00:18:21.440 --> 00:18:26.000\nWe really try to think about them distill them down, share them with everyone,\n\n411\n00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:26.720\nespecially new\n\n412\n00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:29.880\nhires. So as they're coming in, hey, this is what's worked for Sam Sarra, for\n\n413\n00:18:29.880 --> 00:18:30.480\nexample.\n\n414\n00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:34.950\nAnd this is something we want to do more of. So for us, those operating\n\n415\n00:18:34.950 --> 00:18:36.000\nprinciples are kind of key\n\n416\n00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:40.720\nto how we run. So you have these eight operating principles, you know, I call\n\n417\n00:18:40.720 --> 00:18:41.520\nthem more how we work\n\n418\n00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:47.050\ntogether principles when I was at Yumbrand. So you have these principles. What\n\n419\n00:18:47.050 --> 00:18:48.080\ndo you do to\n\n420\n00:18:48.080 --> 00:18:54.960\nrecognize people who actually execute those principles? And how do you build\n\n421\n00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:56.080\nyour HR system\n\n422\n00:18:56.080 --> 00:19:01.650\nor your compensation system around those or do you? We try to operationalize\n\n423\n00:19:01.650 --> 00:19:02.400\nthem in a few\n\n424\n00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:06.720\ndifferent ways. So at the very beginning of the process, which is the interview\n\n425\n00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:07.360\nprocess,\n\n426\n00:19:07.360 --> 00:19:10.480\nwe actually interview based on those operating principles. So behind the scenes\n\n427\n00:19:10.480 --> 00:19:11.040\n, we kind of\n\n428\n00:19:11.040 --> 00:19:15.360\nassign different principles out of, hey, see if you can figure out how they\n\n429\n00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:16.000\nbuilt for the long\n\n430\n00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:19.410\nterm, like ask them for an example of that or how they adopted a growth mindset\n\n431\n00:19:19.410 --> 00:19:20.080\nor something about\n\n432\n00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:23.870\nthem, their customer centricity. Those are things you can filter for at the\n\n433\n00:19:23.870 --> 00:19:24.720\nbeginning.\n\n434\n00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:28.560\nAnd then like you said, it's what you recognize and what your reward is also\n\n435\n00:19:28.560 --> 00:19:29.280\nreally important.\n\n436\n00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:33.920\nSo we ask for nominations. So we have different awards and different teams.\n\n437\n00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:37.280\nAnd we'll try to align those with the principles. So so and so adopted growth\n\n438\n00:19:37.280 --> 00:19:38.000\nmindset. Here's an\n\n439\n00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:44.400\nexample of how they picked up a new skill or something like that. And then what\n\n440\n00:19:44.400 --> 00:19:45.440\nwe talk about\n\n441\n00:19:45.440 --> 00:19:49.670\nat call it a town hall, like a broadcast meeting that goes to thousands of\n\n442\n00:19:49.670 --> 00:19:50.320\nemployees,\n\n443\n00:19:50.320 --> 00:19:54.560\nthat's also important because that sets the tone that says, okay, that's really\n\n444\n00:19:54.560 --> 00:19:55.120\nimportant to the\n\n445\n00:19:55.120 --> 00:19:59.600\ncompany. You know, there's better than most. Obviously, the best solutions are\n\n446\n00:19:59.600 --> 00:20:01.280\nalmost always\n\n447\n00:20:01.280 --> 00:20:05.450\nthe simplest ones or the ones that you can simplify. Can you tell me a story of\n\n448\n00:20:05.450 --> 00:20:06.640\nwhere you've pushed\n\n449\n00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:12.130\nthe team to eliminate unnecessary complexity? There's there's a few that come\n\n450\n00:20:12.130 --> 00:20:12.560\nto mind.\n\n451\n00:20:12.560 --> 00:20:17.600\nSome of it just actually relates to the way that people try out our products.\n\n452\n00:20:17.600 --> 00:20:19.600\nSo something about\n\n453\n00:20:19.600 --> 00:20:23.620\nSamsara that people sometimes don't appreciate is in order to adopt technology\n\n454\n00:20:23.620 --> 00:20:24.480\nand operations,\n\n455\n00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:27.610\nyou sometimes need to install a piece of hardware. There's some software\n\n456\n00:20:27.610 --> 00:20:29.520\nconfiguration and so on.\n\n457\n00:20:29.520 --> 00:20:34.100\nA lot of that, by the way, can be made plug and play. So it used to be that in\n\n458\n00:20:34.100 --> 00:20:34.800\norder to install\n\n459\n00:20:34.800 --> 00:20:37.810\ntechnology, you need it to be an engineer. You need to have someone come on\n\n460\n00:20:37.810 --> 00:20:38.560\nsite and\n\n461\n00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:41.900\nspice a bunch of wires or write some code. You know, there was like a little\n\n462\n00:20:41.900 --> 00:20:42.640\nbit of a hurdle.\n\n463\n00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:47.280\nSomething we emphasized very early here was, well, how do we simplify it? So it\n\n464\n00:20:47.280 --> 00:20:48.240\njust always lands on\n\n465\n00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:52.820\nits feet, just works out of the box. That is something that enabled us to do\n\n466\n00:20:52.820 --> 00:20:54.400\nfree trials. So,\n\n467\n00:20:54.400 --> 00:20:57.760\nin other words, we don't even need to set foot on site. If you're up for it,\n\n468\n00:20:57.760 --> 00:20:58.560\nyou can just plug this\n\n469\n00:20:58.560 --> 00:21:03.150\nthing in and try it out for yourself and experience the technology. That's a\n\n470\n00:21:03.150 --> 00:21:04.320\nradical simplification of\n\n471\n00:21:04.320 --> 00:21:07.800\nthe customer experience. It's very complicated behind the scenes, but the\n\n472\n00:21:07.800 --> 00:21:08.640\nresult was we were able to\n\n473\n00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:12.290\ngrow our business very quickly because we could essentially engage with people\n\n474\n00:21:12.290 --> 00:21:13.040\nover Zoom or on\n\n475\n00:21:13.040 --> 00:21:18.990\nthe phone, convince them that they wanted to try it out and then just send them\n\n476\n00:21:18.990 --> 00:21:20.560\na unit or five units\n\n477\n00:21:20.560 --> 00:21:25.140\nor something like that. That's cool. I love that. And I want to get to Samsara\n\n478\n00:21:25.140 --> 00:21:26.160\nin just a second here,\n\n479\n00:21:26.160 --> 00:21:32.520\nbut I want to go back a little bit to Meraki. What do you think we're one or\n\n480\n00:21:32.520 --> 00:21:33.920\ntwo, the one or two\n\n481\n00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:39.120\nsmartest strategic bets that you made that really help the company scale?\n\n482\n00:21:39.120 --> 00:21:46.190\nWell, like many businesses, we were lucky to be in the right place the right\n\n483\n00:21:46.190 --> 00:21:46.960\ntime. So, we were\n\n484\n00:21:46.960 --> 00:21:52.970\nstarting a company that was making it easy to deploy Wi-Fi in the mid-2000s. We\n\n485\n00:21:52.970 --> 00:21:54.080\nstarted in 2006.\n\n486\n00:21:54.080 --> 00:21:57.840\nThat was about the year before the iPhone was introduced. So, we ended up in\n\n487\n00:21:57.840 --> 00:21:58.320\nthe right place\n\n488\n00:21:58.320 --> 00:22:01.200\nthe right time in the sense that all of a sudden, after the iPhone and then\n\n489\n00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:02.400\neventually the iPad and\n\n490\n00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:07.920\nso on came out, people wanted Wi-Fi. They wanted guest Wi-Fi to offer to their\n\n491\n00:22:07.920 --> 00:22:08.560\nclients and their\n\n492\n00:22:08.560 --> 00:22:12.640\ncustomers and that kind of thing. We were just really lucky that that happened.\n\n493\n00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:13.280\nNow, from a\n\n494\n00:22:13.280 --> 00:22:16.950\nstrategic perspective, we had a sense that there were going to be a number of\n\n495\n00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:18.080\nchallenges with doing\n\n496\n00:22:18.080 --> 00:22:21.340\nthat at scale. It would have to be secure, it would have to be easy to set up,\n\n497\n00:22:21.340 --> 00:22:22.240\nyou'd need lots of\n\n498\n00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:26.200\ngreat coverage. And so, we set up the product and the company to be ambitious\n\n499\n00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:27.520\nin that sense. We didn't\n\n500\n00:22:27.520 --> 00:22:31.360\njust do hardware, for example. We did the software, we did the configuration,\n\n501\n00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:32.160\nwe did the security and\n\n502\n00:22:32.160 --> 00:22:37.490\neverything. And so, strategically, that ambition paid off when the complexity\n\n503\n00:22:37.490 --> 00:22:38.080\nreally went up for\n\n504\n00:22:38.080 --> 00:22:42.000\nthe customer and they needed something that just was all in one that worked\n\n505\n00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:43.600\nentirely. The same thing\n\n506\n00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:47.870\npaid off years later as we continued to be ambitious, we built ethernet\n\n507\n00:22:47.870 --> 00:22:49.200\nswitches and routers. These\n\n508\n00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:52.400\nare all the building blocks of a big network. We didn't just stop at Wi-Fi in\n\n509\n00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:53.280\nothers, we kind of\n\n510\n00:22:53.280 --> 00:22:57.200\nbuilt everything the customer needed. And then, we saw a customer saying, \"Hey,\n\n511\n00:22:57.200 --> 00:22:57.840\nI love what you\n\n512\n00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:01.550\nguys have done for Wi-Fi. I need that for my whole network. Can you do that?\"\n\n513\n00:23:01.550 --> 00:23:02.400\nAnd we were in that\n\n514\n00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:05.440\nright place at the right time. So, the ambition, I think, is really key.\n\n515\n00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:09.520\nHey, everyone. It's Kula from How Leaders Lead. And if you've watched our\n\n516\n00:23:09.520 --> 00:23:10.480\npodcast for any number\n\n517\n00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:14.220\nof episodes, you probably know that a common theme from all of the great\n\n518\n00:23:14.220 --> 00:23:15.440\nleaders we interview\n\n519\n00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:19.850\nis that they are active learners. They had this commitment to continuing to\n\n520\n00:23:19.850 --> 00:23:20.880\nlearn and grow so\n\n521\n00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:24.590\nthat they don't say a statement and so that they continue to see success in\n\n522\n00:23:24.590 --> 00:23:25.520\ntheir leadership\n\n523\n00:23:25.520 --> 00:23:30.080\nand in their life. This theme of active learning is so important. And it's what\n\n524\n00:23:30.080 --> 00:23:31.280\nDavid's latest book,\n\n525\n00:23:31.280 --> 00:23:35.680\nHow Leaders Learn, is all about. It's all about helping you develop that skill\n\n526\n00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:36.560\nof active learning\n\n527\n00:23:36.560 --> 00:23:40.840\nso that you too can continue to see success in your leadership and in your life\n\n528\n00:23:40.840 --> 00:23:41.600\n. The book is\n\n529\n00:23:41.600 --> 00:23:45.690\nreally entertaining. It pulls stories from some of our greatest podcast guests\n\n530\n00:23:45.690 --> 00:23:46.400\nand pairs those\n\n531\n00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:50.530\nstories with insights that you can incorporate into your leadership and into\n\n532\n00:23:50.530 --> 00:23:51.920\nyour life right away.\n\n533\n00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:56.320\nGrab How Leaders Learn on Amazon or wherever books are sold. And I think you're\n\n534\n00:23:56.320 --> 00:23:56.880\nreally going to love\n\n535\n00:23:56.880 --> 00:24:00.960\nit. You feel David's personality through the pages and through history telling.\n\n536\n00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:01.280\nAnd it's a\n\n537\n00:24:01.280 --> 00:24:05.900\nreally powerful way to level up your leadership. It's interesting. You\n\n538\n00:24:05.900 --> 00:24:07.120\nmentioned earlier, you didn't\n\n539\n00:24:07.120 --> 00:24:12.370\nknow how to sell anything. And when you're starting a company like that, how\n\n540\n00:24:12.370 --> 00:24:14.160\ndid you really get the\n\n541\n00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:18.050\ncompany to learn how to sell? I mean, you got all these guys that can make all\n\n542\n00:24:18.050 --> 00:24:19.040\nthe stuff that nobody\n\n543\n00:24:19.040 --> 00:24:25.040\ncan understand. But how did you make the strategic shift to really drive sales?\n\n544\n00:24:25.040 --> 00:24:31.560\nWell, I think most engineers are driven by a love for solving problems. They\n\n545\n00:24:31.560 --> 00:24:32.320\nwant to see\n\n546\n00:24:32.320 --> 00:24:35.680\ntheir their hardware have impact. And so they want to see their technology use\n\n547\n00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:36.560\nin other words.\n\n548\n00:24:36.560 --> 00:24:41.200\nWhen we connected those two dots that sales basically translates to customer\n\n549\n00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:41.920\nimpact people\n\n550\n00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:45.570\nusing your stuff, everyone got into it. Even engineers who had no interest in\n\n551\n00:24:45.570 --> 00:24:46.000\nselling,\n\n552\n00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:49.050\neveryone wanted to see, okay, what's the customer using? Like, did they turn\n\n553\n00:24:49.050 --> 00:24:50.000\nthat feature on? Like,\n\n554\n00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:52.940\nwow, this thing's getting like, you know, thousands of users, that kind of\n\n555\n00:24:52.940 --> 00:24:54.560\nthing. So connecting that\n\n556\n00:24:54.560 --> 00:24:58.600\nfeedback loop to the engineering teams and not making sales a bad word or\n\n557\n00:24:58.600 --> 00:24:59.600\nsomething a different\n\n558\n00:24:59.600 --> 00:25:03.830\nteam does. But we're all in this together. And by the way, those sales, those\n\n559\n00:25:03.830 --> 00:25:04.640\ndollars that come\n\n560\n00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:07.880\nfrom those revenue dollars get reinvested right back in the company means we\n\n561\n00:25:07.880 --> 00:25:09.040\ncan build more product,\n\n562\n00:25:09.040 --> 00:25:13.600\nright? And so going back to this idea of being ambitious, we felt like, well,\n\n563\n00:25:13.600 --> 00:25:14.000\nokay, if you want\n\n564\n00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.400\nto build a lot of stuff, you're going to need more than a handful of people.\n\n565\n00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:18.240\nYou're going to need a\n\n566\n00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:22.400\nsustainable, you know, R&D effort. The way to do that is not necessarily raise\n\n567\n00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:23.440\nmore and more venture\n\n568\n00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:28.240\ncapital. It's actually go get your sales engine running. So and have a\n\n569\n00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:29.760\nreasonable set of margins\n\n570\n00:25:29.760 --> 00:25:33.160\nand all that stuff. So you have a sustainable enterprise that you can keep\n\n571\n00:25:33.160 --> 00:25:34.320\nreinvesting in for\n\n572\n00:25:34.320 --> 00:25:38.620\nfor a long, long time. And so you build this morocchi into a billion dollar\n\n573\n00:25:38.620 --> 00:25:39.760\nbusiness. It's your\n\n574\n00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:43.200\nbaby. You know, when you, when you talk to entrepreneurs, it's like, you know,\n\n575\n00:25:43.200 --> 00:25:44.240\nI mean,\n\n576\n00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:48.610\nthey're so passionate of what they built and it's their baby. And you love it\n\n577\n00:25:48.610 --> 00:25:49.920\nlike a child. There's\n\n578\n00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:54.910\nno question about it. You know, but you end up selling it to Cisco. How hard\n\n579\n00:25:54.910 --> 00:25:55.680\nwas that for you\n\n580\n00:25:55.680 --> 00:26:00.390\nto do? I mean, you know, take us through how you made that decision. First of\n\n581\n00:26:00.390 --> 00:26:01.840\nall, I again,\n\n582\n00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:05.540\nI kind of still think of morocchi as like this project that took on a life of\n\n583\n00:26:05.540 --> 00:26:06.320\nits own, right?\n\n584\n00:26:06.320 --> 00:26:09.540\nThis idea of like, can we make it possible for other people to build networks?\n\n585\n00:26:09.540 --> 00:26:11.120\nAnd yes, you know,\n\n586\n00:26:11.120 --> 00:26:14.640\nthat that's what became the business. What was what was happening just for a\n\n587\n00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:14.960\nlittle bit of\n\n588\n00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:18.570\nhistoric context is we were doubling revenue every single year. And this is a\n\n589\n00:26:18.570 --> 00:26:19.200\ncompany that,\n\n590\n00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:23.370\nby the way, was really growing in the global financial crisis era. So the idea\n\n591\n00:26:23.370 --> 00:26:23.760\nthat we're\n\n592\n00:26:23.760 --> 00:26:26.800\nable to double revenue every year was really astounding. And I think that goes\n\n593\n00:26:26.800 --> 00:26:27.280\nto show just\n\n594\n00:26:27.280 --> 00:26:31.510\nhow much market pull there was for the product. The company was getting to the\n\n595\n00:26:31.510 --> 00:26:32.240\npoint where\n\n596\n00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:36.650\nmorocchi was getting ready to go public. We had enough revenue scale. We were,\n\n597\n00:26:36.650 --> 00:26:36.880\nyou know,\n\n598\n00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:41.360\nfrom a free cash flow perspective, all the kind of numbers and sense made sense\n\n599\n00:26:41.360 --> 00:26:42.400\nto go public.\n\n600\n00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:46.800\nAnd at that point, Cisco approached us and just, you know, for those people who\n\n601\n00:26:46.800 --> 00:26:47.200\naren't in the\n\n602\n00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:51.390\nnetworking industry, Cisco is like the big name, right? They are like the\n\n603\n00:26:51.390 --> 00:26:53.520\nbiggest brand, best known,\n\n604\n00:26:53.520 --> 00:26:57.550\nthey have, you know, majority markets share in most of the products they sell.\n\n605\n00:26:57.550 --> 00:26:58.000\nAnd so they were\n\n606\n00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:01.950\neffectively our biggest competitor. Now that actually made it kind of high\n\n607\n00:27:01.950 --> 00:27:02.800\nstakes because they\n\n608\n00:27:02.800 --> 00:27:05.630\napproached us and we're like, we don't want to share numbers with you like, you\n\n609\n00:27:05.630 --> 00:27:06.720\nknow, we compete\n\n610\n00:27:06.720 --> 00:27:11.230\nin the market. But they said, no, no, we get it. But we hear great things about\n\n611\n00:27:11.230 --> 00:27:12.000\nthe product.\n\n612\n00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:15.500\nAnd we want you to think about one thing, which is what would happen if your\n\n613\n00:27:15.500 --> 00:27:16.960\nproduct could be sold\n\n614\n00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:21.510\nthrough the Cisco Salesforce and the Cisco partner channel with the Cisco logo,\n\n615\n00:27:21.510 --> 00:27:22.000\nthink about how\n\n616\n00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:26.280\nmany more people would get access to it. And that was actually the compelling\n\n617\n00:27:26.280 --> 00:27:27.200\nsort of reason for\n\n618\n00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:30.370\ndoing it. You know, they had to make the numbers make sense from a finance\n\n619\n00:27:30.370 --> 00:27:32.240\nperspective. The investors\n\n620\n00:27:32.240 --> 00:27:36.510\nneeded to be able to get a return. But for me, it was actually more about\n\n621\n00:27:36.510 --> 00:27:37.600\nimpact as well.\n\n622\n00:27:37.600 --> 00:27:41.280\nWe kind of did this as an experiment. We can keep doing what we're doing, but\n\n623\n00:27:41.280 --> 00:27:42.000\nwe had a long way\n\n624\n00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:45.970\nto grow. Like we were a relatively small company compared to a Cisco. Now, what\n\n625\n00:27:45.970 --> 00:27:46.720\nif you could do\n\n626\n00:27:46.720 --> 00:27:50.470\nthe experiment of, well, what would happen if you turbocharged it and, you know\n\n627\n00:27:50.470 --> 00:27:51.280\n, made it available\n\n628\n00:27:51.280 --> 00:27:55.140\nall over the world? And that's exactly what happened is if you now look at\n\n629\n00:27:55.140 --> 00:27:56.560\nwhere Maraki is now,\n\n630\n00:27:56.560 --> 00:28:00.160\nI don't know the exact numbers, but it's billions of dollars of sales a year.\n\n631\n00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:04.720\nWhenever I walk into Starbucks coffee and I look up, I see a Maraki access\n\n632\n00:28:04.720 --> 00:28:06.240\npoint. My kids schools\n\n633\n00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:10.150\nhave Maraki access points. I go to an airport, you see it. And that is\n\n634\n00:28:10.150 --> 00:28:11.280\nultimately what we were\n\n635\n00:28:11.280 --> 00:28:15.230\nthere for was to see that impact happen. So that that's ultimately what what\n\n636\n00:28:15.230 --> 00:28:16.400\ndid it for us was this\n\n637\n00:28:16.400 --> 00:28:19.580\nidea that, wow, you could really get this out to a lot of people. How do you\n\n638\n00:28:19.580 --> 00:28:20.800\nfeel when you walk\n\n639\n00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:24.990\ninto Starbucks and you see your imprint? Proud. Absolutely. So you mentioned it\n\n640\n00:28:24.990 --> 00:28:26.080\n's like, you know,\n\n641\n00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:30.080\nit's like a child. It's the kind of pride that you get of like, wow, we really\n\n642\n00:28:30.080 --> 00:28:31.280\ndid something meaningful.\n\n643\n00:28:31.280 --> 00:28:35.200\nYeah, that's cool. You know, how'd you figure out, Sanjay, you know, you sell\n\n644\n00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:36.080\nthe company,\n\n645\n00:28:36.080 --> 00:28:41.600\nI think for $1.2 billion. So, you know, that's that had to be exciting. But how\n\n646\n00:28:41.600 --> 00:28:42.480\n'd you figure out\n\n647\n00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:48.800\nwhat you wanted to do next? Well, at the beginning, we just spent our time\n\n648\n00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:50.480\nmaking sure that we\n\n649\n00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:54.240\nintegrated the products well inside Cisco. So there was no plan to do anything\n\n650\n00:28:54.240 --> 00:28:55.600\nnext. But,\n\n651\n00:28:55.600 --> 00:28:58.880\nyou know, within a few years, it was pretty clear that this was working, right?\n\n652\n00:28:58.880 --> 00:28:59.760\nLike the products were\n\n653\n00:28:59.760 --> 00:29:03.500\ngrowing at an even faster rate than they had before. So that was excellent to\n\n654\n00:29:03.500 --> 00:29:05.840\nsee. And at the same time,\n\n655\n00:29:05.840 --> 00:29:10.180\nCisco said, Hey, you guys have done a great job with this. Are you interested\n\n656\n00:29:10.180 --> 00:29:10.640\nin their head\n\n657\n00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:13.370\nquarter down in San Jose, California? We're in San Francisco. Do you guys want\n\n658\n00:29:13.370 --> 00:29:13.920\nto come down to\n\n659\n00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:18.800\nSan Jose and take on some more of the business, like some of the other parts?\n\n660\n00:29:18.800 --> 00:29:19.600\nAnd that didn't feel\n\n661\n00:29:19.600 --> 00:29:24.000\nlike it fit for us because, you know, we're not professional operators in the\n\n662\n00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:24.880\nsense that we come\n\n663\n00:29:24.880 --> 00:29:28.720\nin and we run your business that you've already got. We're builders. We want to\n\n664\n00:29:28.720 --> 00:29:29.360\nbuild something\n\n665\n00:29:29.360 --> 00:29:33.040\nfrom scratch. And so we said, okay, well, that's probably not for us. But it's\n\n666\n00:29:33.040 --> 00:29:34.000\nnot like we left\n\n667\n00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:38.020\nwith the here's the next idea we want to pursue. For context, John and I\n\n668\n00:29:38.020 --> 00:29:39.520\nbasically hadn't really\n\n669\n00:29:39.520 --> 00:29:44.550\ntaken time off. You know, Morocco was an intense experience. So first thing we\n\n670\n00:29:44.550 --> 00:29:45.440\ndecided to do is\n\n671\n00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:51.670\nlike take a real vacation. And I remember for me personally, we just had our\n\n672\n00:29:51.670 --> 00:29:54.080\nfirst child. So had a,\n\n673\n00:29:54.080 --> 00:29:57.420\nyou know, baby around that kind of thing. So I was just thinking like, I'm just\n\n674\n00:29:57.420 --> 00:29:58.160\ngoing to take a\n\n675\n00:29:58.160 --> 00:30:02.610\nlittle bit of time to reset. And my initial thinking was actually to go back to\n\n676\n00:30:02.610 --> 00:30:03.440\nacademia,\n\n677\n00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:06.590\nbecause the two of us left without finishing our PhDs, we were all the\n\n678\n00:30:06.590 --> 00:30:07.760\ndissertation, we were just\n\n679\n00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:11.500\nlike right there at the finish line. Long story short, we realized academia\n\n680\n00:30:11.500 --> 00:30:12.400\nwasn't going to be for\n\n681\n00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:15.270\nus or at least I realized it wasn't going to be for me. Because the feedback\n\n682\n00:30:15.270 --> 00:30:16.320\nloops were really long.\n\n683\n00:30:16.320 --> 00:30:19.940\nIt takes months to find out if your paper gets into a conference and then, you\n\n684\n00:30:19.940 --> 00:30:20.000\nknow,\n\n685\n00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.730\nit's really hard to see people use your stuff. So, you know, I figured that out\n\n686\n00:30:24.730 --> 00:30:25.200\nthe hard way,\n\n687\n00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:29.570\nactually wrote a paper, got into a conference, etc. John was, he's way smarter\n\n688\n00:30:29.570 --> 00:30:30.560\nthan me. He's like,\n\n689\n00:30:30.560 --> 00:30:35.540\nI knew that wasn't going to work for us kind of thing. But after a couple of\n\n690\n00:30:35.540 --> 00:30:36.480\nmonths, we kind of\n\n691\n00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:41.710\nwent back to our kind of curious selves outside of IT. So we were just kind of\n\n692\n00:30:41.710 --> 00:30:42.960\ncurious about the\n\n693\n00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:47.070\nworld, found ourselves really fascinated by the world of operations. And that's\n\n694\n00:30:47.070 --> 00:30:47.920\nultimately what\n\n695\n00:30:47.920 --> 00:30:52.550\nled us to start Samsara was that same curiosity that got us excited about Wi-Fi\n\n696\n00:30:52.550 --> 00:30:53.840\na decade earlier,\n\n697\n00:30:53.840 --> 00:30:57.570\ngot us excited about operations, because we were just wondering like, how does\n\n698\n00:30:57.570 --> 00:30:58.320\nall this stuff work?\n\n699\n00:30:58.320 --> 00:31:04.400\nYou know, I've heard you say, take the time to get bored. You know, I think\n\n700\n00:31:04.400 --> 00:31:05.120\nthat's where a lot\n\n701\n00:31:05.120 --> 00:31:11.120\nof great ideas come from. You know, say more. Curiosity is just, it's such an\n\n702\n00:31:11.120 --> 00:31:11.680\nimportant and\n\n703\n00:31:11.680 --> 00:31:15.730\nspecial thing, right? And curiosity is sort of like when you let your mind\n\n704\n00:31:15.730 --> 00:31:17.280\nwander a little bit and\n\n705\n00:31:18.080 --> 00:31:20.810\nbecome fascinated. And it's something we all have as kids, right? Like you're\n\n706\n00:31:20.810 --> 00:31:21.760\nkind of wondering,\n\n707\n00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:25.710\nlike, okay, you know, how does that airplane fly or whatever it is, right? Like\n\n708\n00:31:25.710 --> 00:31:26.720\nthere's something\n\n709\n00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:31.200\nthere that doesn't go away. It's just you get really busy and you get kind of\n\n710\n00:31:31.200 --> 00:31:32.160\nsucked up in the\n\n711\n00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:36.320\nflow of things. If you ever get a chance to like basically hit pause or hit\n\n712\n00:31:36.320 --> 00:31:37.840\nstop, sometimes you can\n\n713\n00:31:37.840 --> 00:31:40.910\ndo this if you take a week-long vacation or something and you let your mind\n\n714\n00:31:40.910 --> 00:31:42.160\nwander, you're sitting on\n\n715\n00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:47.280\na beach or in a mountain somewhere, then your mind takes you to something that\n\n716\n00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:48.080\nmight be really\n\n717\n00:31:48.080 --> 00:31:51.680\ninteresting in a deep level that you couldn't articulate. For me, that was how\n\n718\n00:31:51.680 --> 00:31:52.640\nwe found operations,\n\n719\n00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:57.370\nbut it happens all the time if you give it time to happen. So tell me about Sam\n\n720\n00:31:57.370 --> 00:31:58.160\nSarah,\n\n721\n00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:03.840\ngive me a snapshot of the business you lead today. Yeah, so as I alluded to, we\n\n722\n00:32:03.840 --> 00:32:04.560\nfocus on the world\n\n723\n00:32:04.560 --> 00:32:08.650\nof operations. This is kind of the infrastructure of our planet, if you will,\n\n724\n00:32:08.650 --> 00:32:09.920\nright? So think about\n\n725\n00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:14.260\nthe supply chain or the utilities, the construction companies, all the people\n\n726\n00:32:14.260 --> 00:32:14.960\nthat keep our planet\n\n727\n00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:18.950\nrunning. That's what we're referring to with physical operations. And what we\n\n728\n00:32:18.950 --> 00:32:19.600\ndo is we try to\n\n729\n00:32:19.600 --> 00:32:23.830\nbring them new digital technologies to improve how they run, basically make it\n\n730\n00:32:23.830 --> 00:32:25.600\npossible to run smarter.\n\n731\n00:32:25.600 --> 00:32:30.320\nOne interesting thing about operations is just how intense it is, right? You've\n\n732\n00:32:30.320 --> 00:32:30.320\ngot\n\n733\n00:32:30.320 --> 00:32:33.620\nmillions of trucks out on the road, you've got hundreds of millions of\n\n734\n00:32:33.620 --> 00:32:34.480\nfrontline workers,\n\n735\n00:32:34.480 --> 00:32:38.240\nand so there's this kind of tremendous orchestra, almost ballet, that happens\n\n736\n00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:38.880\nbehind the scenes\n\n737\n00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:42.960\nthat no one really thinks about. But it's an area that technology can really\n\n738\n00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:43.920\nhelp because you can\n\n739\n00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:49.150\nmake way smarter decisions if you have cameras that are able to see risky\n\n740\n00:32:49.150 --> 00:32:50.080\nbehavior out on the road,\n\n741\n00:32:50.080 --> 00:32:55.000\nor you have GPS trackers that understand fuel consumption and analyze all that\n\n742\n00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:55.920\ndata. So those\n\n743\n00:32:55.920 --> 00:33:00.080\nare the kinds of things we work on. I'm sure you probably know this, Sanjit,\n\n744\n00:33:00.080 --> 00:33:02.320\nbut you're what they\n\n745\n00:33:02.320 --> 00:33:09.580\ncall a duocorn. You're someone who has built not one, but two billion-dollar\n\n746\n00:33:09.580 --> 00:33:10.480\nbusinesses from the\n\n747\n00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:16.870\nground up. And Sam Sarri, you've grown on an extremely rapid level. What is it\n\n748\n00:33:16.870 --> 00:33:18.240\nabout how you\n\n749\n00:33:18.240 --> 00:33:23.070\nshow up as a leader that's helped make this possible? I mean, if you were going\n\n750\n00:33:23.070 --> 00:33:24.000\nto try to define\n\n751\n00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:30.480\nthe couple of differentiating things that you do, what do you think it is?\n\n752\n00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:32.240\nThose are big businesses,\n\n753\n00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:38.480\nyou've built. Yeah, it's really hard to pinpoint, but I've kind of thought\n\n754\n00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:39.600\nabout this over the years\n\n755\n00:33:39.600 --> 00:33:43.380\nof, well, and I've studied leaders like your listeners have, right? I've\n\n756\n00:33:43.380 --> 00:33:44.400\nlistened to so many\n\n757\n00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:49.480\npodcasts, I've read so many books. And one interesting takeaway is everybody\n\n758\n00:33:49.480 --> 00:33:51.440\nneeds to figure out their\n\n759\n00:33:51.440 --> 00:33:57.280\nown authentic style or form of leadership, right? And so there are things that\n\n760\n00:33:57.280 --> 00:33:58.880\nwe have natural\n\n761\n00:33:58.880 --> 00:34:04.580\ntalents at, and I try to focus on the product side and the customer side. And\n\n762\n00:34:04.580 --> 00:34:05.280\nthen there are\n\n763\n00:34:05.280 --> 00:34:08.990\nthings that you're not so talented at. And for me, sometimes it's actually\n\n764\n00:34:08.990 --> 00:34:10.960\ncommunication. I'm great\n\n765\n00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:14.640\nin terms of a one-on-one communication. I enjoy getting to know people, but\n\n766\n00:34:14.640 --> 00:34:15.360\ncommunicating with\n\n767\n00:34:15.360 --> 00:34:18.250\nthousands of employees is actually really tough because you can't read their\n\n768\n00:34:18.250 --> 00:34:19.040\nfaces, you can't\n\n769\n00:34:19.040 --> 00:34:22.340\nengage and interact with them. So that's the kind of thing that as a leader, I\n\n770\n00:34:22.340 --> 00:34:23.680\n've had to try different\n\n771\n00:34:23.680 --> 00:34:31.030\nideas and iterate a little bit. But again, leadership is really a personal fit.\n\n772\n00:34:31.030 --> 00:34:31.840\nEverybody's got their\n\n773\n00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:36.410\nown leadership style. And then it's also a contextual fit. The way you lead a\n\n774\n00:34:36.410 --> 00:34:37.760\ntiny company, a startup,\n\n775\n00:34:37.760 --> 00:34:41.470\nthat has a dozen people versus the way you lead a company with thousands of\n\n776\n00:34:41.470 --> 00:34:41.840\npeople,\n\n777\n00:34:41.840 --> 00:34:44.890\nis a little bit different. You've got to have to figure it out along the way.\n\n778\n00:34:44.890 --> 00:34:45.920\nSo for me, that's\n\n779\n00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:49.410\nbeen a big takeaway. What was the biggest thing you figured out, Sanjit, went\n\n780\n00:34:49.410 --> 00:34:50.480\nfrom going from 12\n\n781\n00:34:50.480 --> 00:34:56.480\nto 1000? What was that thing that you had to learn? Maybe the hard way.\n\n782\n00:34:56.480 --> 00:35:02.320\nFor me, I was fortunate to have had the Maraki experience. So as we scaled,\n\n783\n00:35:02.320 --> 00:35:06.960\nSanfsara, I was very mindful of this. When you bring in hundreds of new people\n\n784\n00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:07.680\nevery year\n\n785\n00:35:07.680 --> 00:35:12.960\ninto an organization, it's very easy for the culture to drift. And it's a very\n\n786\n00:35:12.960 --> 00:35:13.760\npractical thing,\n\n787\n00:35:13.760 --> 00:35:17.360\nwhich is that people are bringing their own way of doing things with them. And\n\n788\n00:35:17.360 --> 00:35:18.640\nyou're not able to\n\n789\n00:35:18.640 --> 00:35:22.560\nbe everywhere. So the Sanfsara way or the Maraki way, it's hard to transmit\n\n790\n00:35:22.560 --> 00:35:24.480\nwhen folks are reporting\n\n791\n00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:28.640\nto a manager who just started through weeks before them kind of things. So that\n\n792\n00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:29.680\nkind of dispersion\n\n793\n00:35:29.680 --> 00:35:33.750\nis something that I was very mindful of with Sanfsara. And we were lucky that\n\n794\n00:35:33.750 --> 00:35:34.720\nour business grew\n\n795\n00:35:34.720 --> 00:35:38.880\nreally quickly. So we had to really stay on it. It's not like we could just add\n\n796\n00:35:38.880 --> 00:35:40.000\n5% new people\n\n797\n00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:43.770\nevery year. It's like we had years where we doubled the size of the company. We\n\n798\n00:35:43.770 --> 00:35:44.160\nhad one year\n\n799\n00:35:44.160 --> 00:35:47.680\nwhere we tripled the size of the company. That's really hard. So you double\n\n800\n00:35:47.680 --> 00:35:48.640\ntriple the size of the\n\n801\n00:35:48.640 --> 00:35:52.400\ncompany. What process did you put in place to really get the culture seated\n\n802\n00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:53.680\nwith everybody? I mean,\n\n803\n00:35:53.680 --> 00:35:58.910\nbecause you're right, you're bringing people in from meta, Google, all these\n\n804\n00:35:58.910 --> 00:36:00.000\ngreat companies.\n\n805\n00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.550\nAnd they may be great companies, but those playbooks, if you will, may not\n\n806\n00:36:04.550 --> 00:36:06.480\napply in our environment.\n\n807\n00:36:06.480 --> 00:36:10.740\nSo a lot of what we did was keep it simple. We would go on customer calls\n\n808\n00:36:10.740 --> 00:36:12.080\ntogether. Let's go\n\n809\n00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:17.360\nand do a product demo and actually show what the product does. That was foreign\n\n810\n00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:17.840\nto a lot of\n\n811\n00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:20.920\npeople that came from companies where they never demoed their product. It was\n\n812\n00:36:20.920 --> 00:36:21.840\ntoo complicated or\n\n813\n00:36:21.840 --> 00:36:26.080\nsold differently. So just showing the way we do things, like in a very\n\n814\n00:36:26.080 --> 00:36:27.040\npractical way,\n\n815\n00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:32.480\nhelped build some of that culture, the interactions. We love to grab lunch or\n\n816\n00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:33.920\ngrab dinner or just\n\n817\n00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:37.360\ncoffee with each other and get to know each other, answer questions. And then\n\n818\n00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:38.000\nthat's the other one,\n\n819\n00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:42.150\nis ask me anything session. So I still do these, the new hires that come in, we\n\n820\n00:36:42.150 --> 00:36:43.120\ndo a big Zoom call.\n\n821\n00:36:43.120 --> 00:36:47.140\nAnd I'll answer whatever questions are on their mind. We'll do that with top\n\n822\n00:36:47.140 --> 00:36:48.000\ntalent. We'll do that\n\n823\n00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:52.800\nwith certain kinds of teams. But that interactivity, I think, is really key to\n\n824\n00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:53.360\nkind of creating the\n\n825\n00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:57.900\ncohesion. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Sanjay Bizwas in\n\n826\n00:36:57.900 --> 00:36:58.640\njust a moment.\n\n827\n00:36:58.640 --> 00:37:03.580\nYou know, I love how Sanjay develops his strategies by looking at customers'\n\n828\n00:37:03.580 --> 00:37:04.400\nneeds.\n\n829\n00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:08.160\nAnd it reminds me of another fantastic way to approach your strategy. And that\n\n830\n00:37:08.160 --> 00:37:08.880\n's by using\n\n831\n00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:14.400\nWar Games. This is an idea that UPSCO, Carol Tomay shared with me. And I think\n\n832\n00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:14.960\nit's something\n\n833\n00:37:14.960 --> 00:37:19.260\nevery leader should have in their toolkit. I love War Gaming as a part of\n\n834\n00:37:19.260 --> 00:37:20.400\nstrategy.\n\n835\n00:37:20.400 --> 00:37:26.240\nSo the first time we did it, everybody thought I had lost my mind. But what I\n\n836\n00:37:26.240 --> 00:37:27.200\nasked the team to do\n\n837\n00:37:27.200 --> 00:37:33.230\nwas to assume the personality of one of our competitors and to attack us. And\n\n838\n00:37:33.230 --> 00:37:33.760\nto tell us what\n\n839\n00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:38.560\nthe attack plan was. So they did. And the attack plans were super scary and\n\n840\n00:37:38.560 --> 00:37:39.760\nreally thoughtful.\n\n841\n00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:44.940\nSo they attacked. And then I said, okay, now, assume the persona or return to\n\n842\n00:37:44.940 --> 00:37:45.920\nUPS persona\n\n843\n00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:50.160\nand fight the attack. Because by fighting the attack, it actually created\n\n844\n00:37:50.160 --> 00:37:51.360\nopportunities for\n\n845\n00:37:51.360 --> 00:37:54.380\ninitiatives and growth. It's a really, really clever way to think about\n\n846\n00:37:54.380 --> 00:37:55.040\nstrategy.\n\n847\n00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:00.030\nWe've just released my conversation with Carol Tomay on YouTube. So subscribe\n\n848\n00:38:00.030 --> 00:38:00.400\nto the\n\n849\n00:38:00.080 --> 00:38:22.320\nforms, but it's\n\n850\n00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:05.160\nHow Leaders Lead channel or find it wherever you get your podcast. It's episode\n\n851\n00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:07.440\n118 here on How Leaders Lead.\n\n852\n00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:12.860\nYou know, something I know you push your team on is discipline. You know,\n\n853\n00:38:12.860 --> 00:38:14.240\ndefine that in Sam\n\n854\n00:38:14.240 --> 00:38:00.080\nSarah terms and how you lead that way as a CEO. Discipline has many different\n\n855\n00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:27.200\nultimately about, for me, it's at least about sustainability. So if we take\n\n856\n00:38:27.200 --> 00:38:28.160\nfinancial discipline,\n\n857\n00:38:28.160 --> 00:38:32.000\nfor example, there's always a temptation to spend a little bit more\n\n858\n00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:33.600\naggressively, whether it's like\n\n859\n00:38:33.600 --> 00:38:37.270\non product development or marketing campaign or something. But if you over\n\n860\n00:38:37.270 --> 00:38:38.320\nspend, you're not going\n\n861\n00:38:38.320 --> 00:38:41.580\nto be able to do that over and over and over. Which means that like what worked\n\n862\n00:38:41.580 --> 00:38:42.480\nfor you this year,\n\n863\n00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:46.170\nyou probably can't keep up for five or 10 years because at some point your\n\n864\n00:38:46.170 --> 00:38:47.600\nfinances wouldn't tie,\n\n865\n00:38:47.600 --> 00:38:51.360\nright? They wouldn't make sense. The same thing, by the way, applies to the way\n\n866\n00:38:51.360 --> 00:38:52.080\nyou build product.\n\n867\n00:38:52.080 --> 00:38:55.690\nLike sometimes you can duct tape something together and sort over the fence and\n\n868\n00:38:55.690 --> 00:38:56.880\nthat might like,\n\n869\n00:38:56.880 --> 00:39:00.560\nyou know, help in the short term, but it's going to blow up on you a little bit\n\n870\n00:39:00.560 --> 00:39:00.560\nlater.\n\n871\n00:39:00.560 --> 00:39:05.290\nDoing that right thing for the long term benefit is for me, at least what it\n\n872\n00:39:05.290 --> 00:39:06.480\nmeans to have discipline.\n\n873\n00:39:06.480 --> 00:39:09.940\nSo it's just something that I've seen play out so many times. It's a lesson I\n\n874\n00:39:09.940 --> 00:39:10.400\n've learned the\n\n875\n00:39:10.400 --> 00:39:13.480\nhard way. And so I just want to make sure everyone else is able to save a\n\n876\n00:39:13.480 --> 00:39:14.640\nlittle bit of that sort\n\n877\n00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:19.740\nof pain and just benefit from that. What's a big growth opportunity that you\n\n878\n00:39:19.740 --> 00:39:20.720\nsee for your business\n\n879\n00:39:20.720 --> 00:39:25.180\nright now and how are you attacking it and getting the organization galvanized\n\n880\n00:39:25.180 --> 00:39:25.760\naround it?\n\n881\n00:39:25.760 --> 00:39:30.880\nWell, for us, we're very focused on artificial intelligence and really how it\n\n882\n00:39:30.880 --> 00:39:31.760\ncan be practically\n\n883\n00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:36.800\nuseful to our customers. Now AI is a very buzzy concept, but I think it's buzzy\n\n884\n00:39:36.800 --> 00:39:37.520\nbecause of its\n\n885\n00:39:37.520 --> 00:39:42.660\npotential utility. Like it's basically this idea that now the computer can give\n\n886\n00:39:42.660 --> 00:39:43.680\nyou leverage on\n\n887\n00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:48.340\nintelligence. Like it can think for you. And for a lot of our customers, they\n\n888\n00:39:48.340 --> 00:39:49.200\nare short staff.\n\n889\n00:39:49.200 --> 00:39:53.090\nLike they could always use some more headcount, whether it's to help improve\n\n890\n00:39:53.090 --> 00:39:54.720\ntheir safety or help\n\n891\n00:39:54.720 --> 00:39:59.680\nfill out tax forms or whatever it is. So this idea that AI or the computer\n\n892\n00:39:59.680 --> 00:40:00.480\ncould help with those\n\n893\n00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:05.340\ntasks is really profound. For us as a company, we've been very successful with\n\n894\n00:40:05.340 --> 00:40:06.720\nproducts that have\n\n895\n00:40:06.720 --> 00:40:10.950\nlittle bits and pieces of AI, but we're now infusing it across the board,\n\n896\n00:40:10.950 --> 00:40:12.080\nbringing that to market,\n\n897\n00:40:12.080 --> 00:40:16.160\neducating customers on what's possible, and then actually making it happen is\n\n898\n00:40:16.160 --> 00:40:16.720\nsomething that we're\n\n899\n00:40:16.720 --> 00:40:20.960\nall focused on as a company. It requires real effort and rethinking how we do\n\n900\n00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:22.080\nbusiness internally.\n\n901\n00:40:22.080 --> 00:40:26.880\nLike how do our internal processes run when we take the benefits of AI? It\n\n902\n00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:27.840\nrequires really\n\n903\n00:40:27.840 --> 00:40:30.800\nkind of hitting refresh mentally. And it's a big effort for us.\n\n904\n00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:36.330\nYou know, you've mentioned customers over and over in this discussion. And you\n\n905\n00:40:36.330 --> 00:40:36.560\nknow,\n\n906\n00:40:36.560 --> 00:40:40.160\nyou're an engineer and engineers are not necessarily supposed to be customer\n\n907\n00:40:40.160 --> 00:40:40.480\nfocused,\n\n908\n00:40:40.480 --> 00:40:45.860\nbut you definitely offer sure. What rhythms do you have to stay connected to\n\n909\n00:40:45.860 --> 00:40:46.960\ncustomers?\n\n910\n00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:51.770\nWell, for me, it's a treat to be able to interact with customers. And that's\n\n911\n00:40:51.770 --> 00:40:52.960\nactually one of the\n\n912\n00:40:52.960 --> 00:40:56.640\nbest side effects or benefits of scales. We have customers all over the world\n\n913\n00:40:56.640 --> 00:40:57.520\nin every\n\n914\n00:40:57.520 --> 00:41:01.840\npotential industry that we want to serve. And so you get to go on site on these\n\n915\n00:41:01.840 --> 00:41:03.680\nfascinating on site\n\n916\n00:41:03.680 --> 00:41:08.760\ntours and see how their operations run. So that's what gives me a ton of energy\n\n917\n00:41:08.760 --> 00:41:10.000\n. It also gives me a\n\n918\n00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.800\nlot of new ideas for what other products we can build. So when we get on site,\n\n919\n00:41:14.800 --> 00:41:15.840\nI always tell people\n\n920\n00:41:15.840 --> 00:41:19.870\nlike big eyes and big ears, like let's see how these operations really run. Let\n\n921\n00:41:19.870 --> 00:41:20.800\n's listen to where\n\n922\n00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:24.800\nthose pain points are. Because sometimes people can't say I need a product that\n\n923\n00:41:24.800 --> 00:41:26.000\ndoes X, but you\n\n924\n00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:29.710\nsee them doing something in a difficult way over and over. And then you say,\n\n925\n00:41:29.710 --> 00:41:30.800\nwell, if we could build\n\n926\n00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:34.060\nyou technology that just did that for you, would that be great? And they'll\n\n927\n00:41:34.060 --> 00:41:35.040\nusually say, yeah,\n\n928\n00:41:35.040 --> 00:41:39.670\nabsolutely. So I love it in terms of helping me understand what problems need\n\n929\n00:41:39.670 --> 00:41:40.560\nsolving next.\n\n930\n00:41:40.560 --> 00:41:44.310\nAnd you see that usually the patterns become really clear if you can get out\n\n931\n00:41:44.310 --> 00:41:46.720\nthere. So kind of\n\n932\n00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:50.880\nback to kind of practicality. For me, I just try to get on the road. Maybe not\n\n933\n00:41:50.880 --> 00:41:51.280\nevery other\n\n934\n00:41:51.280 --> 00:41:54.990\nweek, but every third week, I'm just out there trying to see it for myself and\n\n935\n00:41:54.990 --> 00:41:55.920\nthen share that\n\n936\n00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:59.560\ninformation with everyone that I can inside the company. Big eyes, big ears. I\n\n937\n00:41:59.560 --> 00:42:00.240\nwould have\n\n938\n00:42:00.240 --> 00:42:04.480\nripped that off. And I would love that. I would be told everybody that, you\n\n939\n00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:04.560\nknow,\n\n940\n00:42:04.560 --> 00:42:08.240\nwhat's the best example you could share where you had big eyes?\n\n941\n00:42:08.240 --> 00:42:14.000\nOh, well, lots of examples. You know, one of them that takes me back to the\n\n942\n00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:15.040\nvery early days of the\n\n943\n00:42:15.040 --> 00:42:19.270\ncompany, when we started SimSara, we didn't know that the products that we've\n\n944\n00:42:19.270 --> 00:42:20.320\nbrought to market\n\n945\n00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:23.990\ntoday would be the product. So we had some ideas of, okay, technology could\n\n946\n00:42:23.990 --> 00:42:25.040\nhelp operations.\n\n947\n00:42:25.040 --> 00:42:28.750\nSo we started with a very simple set of products. One was like a temperature\n\n948\n00:42:28.750 --> 00:42:29.200\nsensor.\n\n949\n00:42:29.840 --> 00:42:33.510\nAnd I remember taking it out to these beta customers and we'd say like, you\n\n950\n00:42:33.510 --> 00:42:33.600\nknow,\n\n951\n00:42:33.600 --> 00:42:38.400\nplease install them. The big eyes part was, you know, they'd be doing install.\n\n952\n00:42:38.400 --> 00:42:38.960\nBut then on their\n\n953\n00:42:38.960 --> 00:42:43.700\nscreen, you could see the system they were using to run their operations. So\n\n954\n00:42:43.700 --> 00:42:44.480\nthis is 2015,\n\n955\n00:42:44.480 --> 00:42:49.120\nit's only about 10 years ago. They were still running IBM mainframe systems,\n\n956\n00:42:49.120 --> 00:42:50.000\nlike green screen\n\n957\n00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.240\nsystems that you'd recognize from like the 80s or earlier. They were still\n\n958\n00:42:54.240 --> 00:42:55.200\nrunning in place.\n\n959\n00:42:55.200 --> 00:42:57.890\nAnd that's how they were getting their orders. And it's just, it's because it's\n\n960\n00:42:57.890 --> 00:42:58.720\nwhat worked.\n\n961\n00:42:58.720 --> 00:43:02.880\nAnd then what they were using to track their vehicles was either if they had\n\n962\n00:43:02.880 --> 00:43:03.440\ntechnology,\n\n963\n00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:07.880\nit was something that looked like map quests from the 1990s, or it was a white\n\n964\n00:43:07.880 --> 00:43:08.880\nboard that had like\n\n965\n00:43:08.880 --> 00:43:12.690\na list of where everyone was. That was big eyes because, you know, we were\n\n966\n00:43:12.690 --> 00:43:13.280\nthere to install\n\n967\n00:43:13.280 --> 00:43:16.560\ntemperature sensors, but you look over at their office and you're like, well,\n\n968\n00:43:16.560 --> 00:43:17.360\nwhat's that system\n\n969\n00:43:17.360 --> 00:43:20.710\ndoing? What's with that whiteboard? That's how we figured out what the real\n\n970\n00:43:20.710 --> 00:43:21.520\nproduct should be.\n\n971\n00:43:21.520 --> 00:43:25.120\nIt was okay, it seems like that's a more important problem than knowing what\n\n972\n00:43:25.120 --> 00:43:26.080\nthe temperature is.\n\n973\n00:43:26.080 --> 00:43:32.140\nGreat example. How about big ears? Big ears would be kind of similar. Like you\n\n974\n00:43:32.140 --> 00:43:33.440\n'd actually listen\n\n975\n00:43:33.440 --> 00:43:37.450\nto when, you know, in operations, people often just come by the operations\n\n976\n00:43:37.450 --> 00:43:38.320\nmanager director's\n\n977\n00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:42.800\noffice, knock on their door and say, hey, we just had a wreck over, you know,\n\n978\n00:43:42.800 --> 00:43:44.480\nin Idaho. Can you take\n\n979\n00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:48.560\na look? We got to figure out what happened there. You would just actually hear\n\n980\n00:43:48.560 --> 00:43:49.520\nwhat happens in\n\n981\n00:43:49.520 --> 00:43:54.200\nthe meetings in terms of interruptions. And when we would demo the product, the\n\n982\n00:43:54.200 --> 00:43:55.440\nbig years part is\n\n983\n00:43:55.440 --> 00:44:00.290\nwe would hear, we'd actually hear people say, wow, like you just under the\n\n984\n00:44:00.290 --> 00:44:01.600\nbreath. And that's when\n\n985\n00:44:01.600 --> 00:44:07.490\nyou know you've got a feature that's differentiated, it's useful. But you know,\n\n986\n00:44:07.490 --> 00:44:08.800\nno amount of like\n\n987\n00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:13.440\nreading market research reports tells you that you do one demo and you know,\n\n988\n00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:14.320\nthe room's silent,\n\n989\n00:44:14.320 --> 00:44:16.880\nsomeone says, wow, that's when you know you got something good.\n\n990\n00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:23.060\nI love it. You know, tell me about your 70, 20, 10 model as you think about\n\n991\n00:44:23.060 --> 00:44:24.240\ninvesting back in your\n\n992\n00:44:24.240 --> 00:44:29.920\nbusiness. Yeah, this is really related to, you know, if you're fortunate enough\n\n993\n00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:31.040\nto get to some scale,\n\n994\n00:44:31.040 --> 00:44:34.720\nyou can invest in multiple R&D projects, then there's a question of which ones,\n\n995\n00:44:34.720 --> 00:44:36.240\nright? 70,\n\n996\n00:44:36.240 --> 00:44:40.480\n20, 10 basically is a reflection of time horizon. So, you know, a lot of R&D\n\n997\n00:44:40.480 --> 00:44:41.360\nthat we do,\n\n998\n00:44:41.360 --> 00:44:45.440\nit's based on immediate needs that customers have. That's like this, this year,\n\n999\n00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:45.920\nnext year,\n\n1000\n00:44:45.920 --> 00:44:51.920\nkind of stuff. That's the 70%. And that might be an integration or a new app or\n\n1001\n00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:52.560\nit's like something\n\n1002\n00:44:52.560 --> 00:44:57.360\nthat really needs to happen today. The 20 would be stuff that's a couple years\n\n1003\n00:44:57.360 --> 00:44:58.320\nout. And that might\n\n1004\n00:44:58.320 --> 00:45:03.500\nbe related to, you know, recently electric cars started becoming more common in\n\n1005\n00:45:03.500 --> 00:45:04.720\noperations. They're\n\n1006\n00:45:04.720 --> 00:45:08.150\nnot the most common, but they're out there. And we could see that pattern that\n\n1007\n00:45:08.150 --> 00:45:08.800\nwe need to be\n\n1008\n00:45:08.800 --> 00:45:13.200\ncompatible with that. So we invested that out of the 20 bucket. And then the 10\n\n1009\n00:45:13.200 --> 00:45:13.840\nwould be things\n\n1010\n00:45:13.840 --> 00:45:18.820\nthat are really speculative. And this is kind of like the stuff that if it pays\n\n1011\n00:45:18.820 --> 00:45:19.760\noff, it could be\n\n1012\n00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:23.190\na really big deal. But there's not, it's not obvious that this is going to work\n\n1013\n00:45:23.190 --> 00:45:24.000\n. And in fact,\n\n1014\n00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:28.240\nit's probably more likely than not, it's not going to work. And so it's the\n\n1015\n00:45:28.240 --> 00:45:29.680\nkind of risky set of\n\n1016\n00:45:29.680 --> 00:45:34.700\nideas that might be beneficial five to 10 years out. So for us, it was AI that\n\n1017\n00:45:34.700 --> 00:45:34.960\nwe've been\n\n1018\n00:45:34.960 --> 00:45:40.800\ninvesting in now for over five years. It's now really kind of come into Vogue,\n\n1019\n00:45:40.800 --> 00:45:41.360\nbut we were\n\n1020\n00:45:41.360 --> 00:45:45.130\nexperimenting within a deep way because we knew how useful it could be. Even\n\n1021\n00:45:45.130 --> 00:45:45.680\nthough it wasn't\n\n1022\n00:45:45.680 --> 00:45:49.280\nsomething customers were asking for, which is I need AI, nobody ever said that.\n\n1023\n00:45:49.280 --> 00:45:50.960\nBut we saw the\n\n1024\n00:45:50.960 --> 00:45:54.990\ntransformed of potential. And that takes a lot of courage and conviction to go\n\n1025\n00:45:54.990 --> 00:45:55.920\nin that direction\n\n1026\n00:45:55.920 --> 00:45:59.410\nwhen people are waiting to see if it's really going to happen. How do you\n\n1027\n00:45:59.410 --> 00:46:00.400\nmuster that up as a\n\n1028\n00:46:00.400 --> 00:46:04.780\nleader? Well, I think you have to have your own conviction, right? That if we\n\n1029\n00:46:04.780 --> 00:46:06.160\nbuild this, I believe\n\n1030\n00:46:06.160 --> 00:46:09.660\nbased on my experience, based on my interactions, that this is going to be\n\n1031\n00:46:09.660 --> 00:46:10.800\nvaluable. And this is\n\n1032\n00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:14.260\ngoing to make a difference. So that conviction, I think, does come from\n\n1033\n00:46:14.260 --> 00:46:15.440\nexperience and that kind\n\n1034\n00:46:15.440 --> 00:46:19.610\nof big eyes, big ears kind of concept. And then sometimes, again, it's this\n\n1035\n00:46:19.610 --> 00:46:20.800\nwillingness to take\n\n1036\n00:46:20.800 --> 00:46:24.640\na risk, but then also change your mind, say, hey, we got that wrong, or we need\n\n1037\n00:46:24.640 --> 00:46:25.280\nto do it a little\n\n1038\n00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:29.050\nbit differently. And like I was saying earlier, I've learned a lot just by\n\n1039\n00:46:29.050 --> 00:46:31.360\ndoing. A lot of it is\n\n1040\n00:46:31.360 --> 00:46:35.040\ngetting to the point of, okay, we're going to try this. And if it doesn't work,\n\n1041\n00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:36.640\nwe're all going to\n\n1042\n00:46:36.640 --> 00:46:39.660\nlike say, okay, that was a beta test. And we learned from it. Now let's try\n\n1043\n00:46:39.660 --> 00:46:40.560\nthis other thing.\n\n1044\n00:46:40.560 --> 00:46:44.260\nIt's really interesting. You know, you might have started out with sort of an\n\n1045\n00:46:44.260 --> 00:46:45.200\nacademic goal, but\n\n1046\n00:46:45.200 --> 00:46:49.980\nthat's you're not like that at all as a leader. You're not you're you're like,\n\n1047\n00:46:49.980 --> 00:46:51.360\nhey, you can't read\n\n1048\n00:46:51.360 --> 00:46:54.380\nthis stuff up. You know, let's make it happen and see what happens and adjust,\n\n1049\n00:46:54.380 --> 00:46:55.360\nyou know, which is\n\n1050\n00:46:55.360 --> 00:46:59.060\ngreat. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of, by the way, I just have to say a lot of\n\n1051\n00:46:59.060 --> 00:47:00.400\ngreat academic research\n\n1052\n00:47:00.400 --> 00:47:04.440\nis done the same way. So it's interesting how many parallels they are. There\n\n1053\n00:47:04.440 --> 00:47:05.600\nare between product\n\n1054\n00:47:05.600 --> 00:47:10.000\nbuilding and company building and in great like practical academic research.\n\n1055\n00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:11.280\nNow, if you're a\n\n1056\n00:47:11.280 --> 00:47:14.870\ntheoretician, that's a very different thing. But there's a lot to be said, it's\n\n1057\n00:47:14.870 --> 00:47:15.520\nalmost like a\n\n1058\n00:47:15.520 --> 00:47:19.580\nlab science, right? Like this kind of idea of being experimental. Good point.\n\n1059\n00:47:19.580 --> 00:47:20.720\nYou know, a lot of\n\n1060\n00:47:20.720 --> 00:47:25.320\npeople, Sanjit, they want to be successful. And I'm curious, you know, what's\n\n1061\n00:47:25.320 --> 00:47:26.240\nsomething that you've\n\n1062\n00:47:26.240 --> 00:47:31.660\nhad to sacrifice to achieve what you've been able to achieve in your career so\n\n1063\n00:47:31.660 --> 00:47:34.160\nfar? That's a great\n\n1064\n00:47:34.160 --> 00:47:41.040\nquestion. You know, I think a lot of what entrepreneurs say this all the time,\n\n1065\n00:47:41.040 --> 00:47:43.520\nthe intensity of the\n\n1066\n00:47:43.520 --> 00:47:48.120\nstartup life and the kind of entrepreneur's journey is really high, right? So\n\n1067\n00:47:48.120 --> 00:47:49.280\nthe highs are high, the\n\n1068\n00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:54.340\nlows are low. And some of the sacrifice is that kind of idea of free or un\n\n1069\n00:47:54.340 --> 00:47:56.000\nstructured time because\n\n1070\n00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:58.450\nusually when you're working on something that's interesting, it just kind of\n\n1071\n00:47:58.450 --> 00:47:59.600\ngrows to fill,\n\n1072\n00:47:59.600 --> 00:48:02.800\nfill the space, right? And so that's why I was talking earlier about, well,\n\n1073\n00:48:02.800 --> 00:48:03.440\nsometimes you got a\n\n1074\n00:48:03.440 --> 00:48:08.650\nreally clear out your mind a little bit. But for me, maybe one sacrifice is\n\n1075\n00:48:08.650 --> 00:48:09.200\njust from like\n\n1076\n00:48:09.200 --> 00:48:13.280\npursuing hobbies and you know, people ask, what are you doing outside of work?\n\n1077\n00:48:13.280 --> 00:48:13.840\nWell, I've got three\n\n1078\n00:48:13.840 --> 00:48:18.490\nkids. So that really takes up almost all my time. And for me, it's about kids\n\n1079\n00:48:18.490 --> 00:48:19.520\nand the work that I\n\n1080\n00:48:19.520 --> 00:48:23.440\ndo don't have, you know, I don't have like a great pickleball or golf game or\n\n1081\n00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:24.240\nany of that kind of\n\n1082\n00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:27.820\nstuff going because for me, like those are the two things that drive my life,\n\n1083\n00:48:27.820 --> 00:48:29.200\nat least at this moment.\n\n1084\n00:48:29.200 --> 00:48:34.240\nSo maybe the sacrifice is that kind of free time or hobby space, but I love the\n\n1085\n00:48:34.240 --> 00:48:35.120\nwork. So maybe that\n\n1086\n00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:38.640\nactually filled the hobby side of things. Yeah, that's what you said earlier.\n\n1087\n00:48:38.640 --> 00:48:40.000\nWhen you're 15,\n\n1088\n00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:43.040\nyou didn't know that you could actually get paid doing what you love. That was\n\n1089\n00:48:43.040 --> 00:48:44.400\na pretty good thing\n\n1090\n00:48:44.400 --> 00:48:48.550\nto be able to do. Yeah, that's your hobby, you said it is. You know, says it\n\n1091\n00:48:48.550 --> 00:48:49.840\nhas been so much fun.\n\n1092\n00:48:49.840 --> 00:48:53.320\nAnd I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you\n\n1093\n00:48:53.320 --> 00:48:54.240\nready for this?\n\n1094\n00:48:54.240 --> 00:48:59.840\nLet's do it. Okay. What's what three words best destroy you? Curious if I can\n\n1095\n00:48:59.840 --> 00:49:01.040\nget a double word\n\n1096\n00:49:01.040 --> 00:49:05.980\nhardworking focused. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who\n\n1097\n00:49:05.980 --> 00:49:06.560\nwould it be?\n\n1098\n00:49:06.560 --> 00:49:12.320\nI'm a student of history. So I would probably find I'm very curious sometimes\n\n1099\n00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:13.920\nwhat, you know,\n\n1100\n00:49:13.920 --> 00:49:18.560\nwhat life was like 10,000 years ago. It's a weird thing to to wonder about, but\n\n1101\n00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:19.360\nit's not a famous\n\n1102\n00:49:19.360 --> 00:49:22.640\nperson. I would just be kind of curious. And maybe it wasn't so great, but I'd\n\n1103\n00:49:22.640 --> 00:49:23.440\nlove to see it.\n\n1104\n00:49:23.440 --> 00:49:28.400\nWhat's your biggest pet pee when people aren't in the details, the kind of like\n\n1105\n00:49:28.400 --> 00:49:29.360\ngloss over things\n\n1106\n00:49:29.360 --> 00:49:35.040\nEast Coast or West Coast? Oh, that's a tough one. Having lived on both, I got\n\n1107\n00:49:35.040 --> 00:49:35.760\nto say the weather's\n\n1108\n00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:39.910\nbetter on the West Coast. So I would go West Coast. What's your go to order at\n\n1109\n00:49:39.910 --> 00:49:41.280\nbuy right creamery?\n\n1110\n00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:49.080\nSo that's a local ice cream shop here in San Francisco. They have it's not all\n\n1111\n00:49:49.080 --> 00:49:49.360\nthe time,\n\n1112\n00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:53.800\nbut they have a pretty awesome like like bourbon pecan kind of thing. So I'm a\n\n1113\n00:49:53.800 --> 00:49:54.400\nsucker for that.\n\n1114\n00:49:54.400 --> 00:49:59.190\nIt's sweet, but it's good. Okay, you get two front road tickets to anything you\n\n1115\n00:49:59.190 --> 00:49:59.760\nwant.\n\n1116\n00:49:59.760 --> 00:50:03.530\nWhere are you going and who are you going to take with you? So I'm not a big\n\n1117\n00:50:03.530 --> 00:50:05.040\nsports guy. Like,\n\n1118\n00:50:05.040 --> 00:50:09.440\nI couldn't tell you even what season it is, whether it's football or basketball\n\n1119\n00:50:09.440 --> 00:50:10.000\n. But something\n\n1120\n00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:13.040\nthat I look forward to every four years are the Olympics because it's really\n\n1121\n00:50:13.040 --> 00:50:14.400\njust incredible,\n\n1122\n00:50:14.400 --> 00:50:18.170\njust the level of excellence these athletes have. So something we're looking\n\n1123\n00:50:18.170 --> 00:50:19.200\nforward to at the next\n\n1124\n00:50:19.200 --> 00:50:23.310\nOlympics, which is here in the US is actually bringing the kids and getting the\n\n1125\n00:50:23.310 --> 00:50:24.160\ntickets early\n\n1126\n00:50:24.160 --> 00:50:27.680\nand doing all that kind of stuff. So if we can get front road tickets to any of\n\n1127\n00:50:27.680 --> 00:50:28.240\nthose Olympic\n\n1128\n00:50:28.240 --> 00:50:31.760\nsports, I think it would be amazing. What's the one thing you do just for you?\n\n1129\n00:50:31.760 --> 00:50:39.100\nYou know, it's funny. I still like to tinker. And so, you know, sometimes those\n\n1130\n00:50:39.100 --> 00:50:39.840\ntinker ideas\n\n1131\n00:50:39.840 --> 00:50:45.490\nturn into products, but whether it's, you know, just trying out like a new AI\n\n1132\n00:50:45.490 --> 00:50:46.720\nmodel or checking\n\n1133\n00:50:46.720 --> 00:50:49.890\nout a chip or something like that, that's my idea of fun. So that's something I\n\n1134\n00:50:49.890 --> 00:50:50.640\ndo just for me.\n\n1135\n00:50:50.640 --> 00:50:55.680\nBesides your family, what is your most prized possession? I'm not a big\n\n1136\n00:50:55.680 --> 00:51:02.870\npossession sky, to be honest. You know, I got like, this isn't surprising, but\n\n1137\n00:51:02.870 --> 00:51:03.920\nlike everybody else,\n\n1138\n00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:08.320\nI'm amazed by like how useful my phone is. But that's not like the most\n\n1139\n00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:09.920\nexpensive or special thing.\n\n1140\n00:51:09.920 --> 00:51:15.040\nYou know, if I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear?\n\n1141\n00:51:15.040 --> 00:51:20.960\nWell, right now I'm in a 80s throwback mode. So you'd probably hear, you know,\n\n1142\n00:51:20.960 --> 00:51:21.200\nsome,\n\n1143\n00:51:21.200 --> 00:51:25.690\nlike whatever best of the 80s, it's cheesy, but it's good music and my kids\n\n1144\n00:51:25.690 --> 00:51:27.120\nfind it hilarious.\n\n1145\n00:51:27.120 --> 00:51:29.840\nWhat's one of your daily rituals? Something that you never miss?\n\n1146\n00:51:31.040 --> 00:51:36.010\nSomething I try to do every day that I'm home like here in California is do\n\n1147\n00:51:36.010 --> 00:51:36.800\nschool drop off.\n\n1148\n00:51:36.800 --> 00:51:42.040\nAnd it's funny. It's not like the most glamorous thing to do, but it's a great\n\n1149\n00:51:42.040 --> 00:51:42.640\nexcuse to just\n\n1150\n00:51:42.640 --> 00:51:45.840\nhang out with the three kids in the back of the car. And they'll just tell you\n\n1151\n00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:46.560\nthings in the car\n\n1152\n00:51:46.560 --> 00:51:50.000\nthat you won't get at the dinner table and that kind of thing. That's great. We\n\n1153\n00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:50.400\n're out of the\n\n1154\n00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:53.700\nlightning round. Thank you very much for that. Okay. I've got a few more\n\n1155\n00:51:53.700 --> 00:51:54.560\nquestions here and I'll\n\n1156\n00:51:54.560 --> 00:52:00.510\nlet you go. You've obviously been enormously successful on many fronts, but and\n\n1157\n00:52:00.510 --> 00:52:00.720\nyou've\n\n1158\n00:52:00.720 --> 00:52:05.280\nobviously made a lot of money. You made a ton of money. How much did making\n\n1159\n00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:06.480\nmoney drive what you\n\n1160\n00:52:06.480 --> 00:52:12.400\ndid and you're doing? Well, I think if you sort of step back and look at the\n\n1161\n00:52:12.400 --> 00:52:13.200\npattern,\n\n1162\n00:52:13.200 --> 00:52:18.070\nlike I said earlier, John and I started out as PhD students, you don't\n\n1163\n00:52:18.070 --> 00:52:19.280\ntypically go get a\n\n1164\n00:52:19.280 --> 00:52:22.690\ngraduate degree to make money. Like you do it because you're curious about\n\n1165\n00:52:22.690 --> 00:52:23.680\nsomething or you love\n\n1166\n00:52:23.680 --> 00:52:29.240\nthe science. And for me, like that, that was really and still is so much of\n\n1167\n00:52:29.240 --> 00:52:30.480\nwhat drives me.\n\n1168\n00:52:30.480 --> 00:52:34.670\nThe money has been a really fascinating kind of side effect. And we went from\n\n1169\n00:52:34.670 --> 00:52:35.680\nbeing grad students\n\n1170\n00:52:35.680 --> 00:52:39.720\nwith no money to being entrepreneurs that had successful exit. Ultimately,\n\n1171\n00:52:39.720 --> 00:52:40.640\nthough, we're still\n\n1172\n00:52:40.640 --> 00:52:44.140\ndoing the same things we were doing 20 years ago, which is tinkering around and\n\n1173\n00:52:44.140 --> 00:52:45.440\nbuilding things and\n\n1174\n00:52:45.440 --> 00:52:49.720\nhaving fun in that sense. So now, like money makes a lot of other things in\n\n1175\n00:52:49.720 --> 00:52:50.640\nlife a lot easier. You're\n\n1176\n00:52:50.640 --> 00:52:54.520\nnot stressing about your house payments and things like that. And in some sense\n\n1177\n00:52:54.520 --> 00:52:55.840\n, it lets you kind of\n\n1178\n00:52:55.840 --> 00:53:00.400\nbe in that same mode that we were in when we were in our early 20s. So anyway,\n\n1179\n00:53:00.400 --> 00:53:01.040\nthat's kind of my\n\n1180\n00:53:01.040 --> 00:53:05.870\nreflections on that whole side of things. Yeah, you and your wife, Hope started\n\n1181\n00:53:05.870 --> 00:53:07.120\nthe Bisswas Family\n\n1182\n00:53:07.120 --> 00:53:14.660\nFoundation in 2023. What's the larger mission that you and Hope are pursuing?\n\n1183\n00:53:14.660 --> 00:53:15.600\nThe Family Foundation\n\n1184\n00:53:15.600 --> 00:53:19.220\nis something we've it's kind of the side project, but it's a reflection of our\n\n1185\n00:53:19.220 --> 00:53:20.320\ninterest. So my\n\n1186\n00:53:20.320 --> 00:53:24.870\nwife is an infectious disease epidemiologist. That's a profession, not a lot of\n\n1187\n00:53:24.870 --> 00:53:25.920\npeople had heard of\n\n1188\n00:53:25.920 --> 00:53:30.130\nuntil 2020. And now everybody knows what an epidemiologist does. So she's kind\n\n1189\n00:53:30.130 --> 00:53:30.960\nof got a public\n\n1190\n00:53:30.960 --> 00:53:35.050\nhealth background. I have an interest in, like I said, engineering and AI and\n\n1191\n00:53:35.050 --> 00:53:36.320\nso on. So what we're\n\n1192\n00:53:36.320 --> 00:53:40.590\ndoing with the foundation is at that intersection of AI and health. This idea\n\n1193\n00:53:40.590 --> 00:53:42.080\nthat, you know, with\n\n1194\n00:53:42.080 --> 00:53:45.690\nthe newer technologies that are coming out, it may be possible for everyone to\n\n1195\n00:53:45.690 --> 00:53:46.560\nhave a doctor in\n\n1196\n00:53:46.560 --> 00:53:51.030\ntheir pocket. It may be possible to discover entirely new therapies and\n\n1197\n00:53:51.030 --> 00:53:51.840\ntreatments,\n\n1198\n00:53:51.840 --> 00:53:56.320\nwhether it's for cancer or other kinds of disease, using a lot of data. So we\n\n1199\n00:53:56.320 --> 00:53:57.120\n're helping fund\n\n1200\n00:53:57.120 --> 00:54:01.910\nideas that are kind of high risk, high reward and not in the lab science kind\n\n1201\n00:54:01.910 --> 00:54:02.640\nof mad scientist\n\n1202\n00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:07.780\nway, but more of like, well, could an AI really detect, you know, that form of\n\n1203\n00:54:07.780 --> 00:54:08.880\ncancer just from\n\n1204\n00:54:08.880 --> 00:54:13.260\nimagery or from, you know, an ECG or something like that. So that's a lot of\n\n1205\n00:54:13.260 --> 00:54:14.240\nwhat we're doing\n\n1206\n00:54:14.240 --> 00:54:19.810\nright now is helping seed fund a lot of these kind of ideas that are on the\n\n1207\n00:54:19.810 --> 00:54:21.360\nfrontiers of science\n\n1208\n00:54:21.360 --> 00:54:25.120\nthat could ultimately have a huge impact for human health. Well, that's really\n\n1209\n00:54:25.120 --> 00:54:25.760\npowerful. And\n\n1210\n00:54:25.760 --> 00:54:29.820\nthank you and hope for really focusing on that and really appreciate that. You\n\n1211\n00:54:29.820 --> 00:54:30.960\nknow, I'm curious,\n\n1212\n00:54:30.960 --> 00:54:37.670\nSanjay, you know, how do you lead at home? In terms of keeping the kids on\n\n1213\n00:54:37.670 --> 00:54:38.720\ntrack or\n\n1214\n00:54:39.680 --> 00:54:43.680\nor just leading, you know, you've got a partner and hope you've got your kids.\n\n1215\n00:54:43.680 --> 00:54:44.880\nI mean, when you\n\n1216\n00:54:44.880 --> 00:54:50.220\ncome home, what's your leadership philosophy or do you have one? Well, for us,\n\n1217\n00:54:50.220 --> 00:54:51.680\nwe've got pretty\n\n1218\n00:54:51.680 --> 00:54:56.000\nyoung kids or their elementary school age. So a lot of it is being present,\n\n1219\n00:54:56.000 --> 00:54:57.920\nwhich as a CEO,\n\n1220\n00:54:57.920 --> 00:55:01.270\nthere's always demands on your time, right? Like someone's always sending you a\n\n1221\n00:55:01.270 --> 00:55:02.160\nmessage or wants\n\n1222\n00:55:02.160 --> 00:55:06.270\nyou to put, you know, respond or email or something. So I try to really make a\n\n1223\n00:55:06.270 --> 00:55:07.360\nbig effort to be\n\n1224\n00:55:07.360 --> 00:55:12.880\npresent as a leader at home. And then again, engage, right? So like here, what\n\n1225\n00:55:12.880 --> 00:55:13.760\n's going on in the kids\n\n1226\n00:55:13.760 --> 00:55:16.930\nworld? Like fourth grade is way more complicated than I remember, by the way,\n\n1227\n00:55:16.930 --> 00:55:17.920\nright? Like there's\n\n1228\n00:55:17.920 --> 00:55:22.850\nlots of relationships and interactions and things are learning. There's no\n\n1229\n00:55:22.850 --> 00:55:24.480\nsubstitute for being\n\n1230\n00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:28.500\npresent in that way. Like it's not something that, you know, your spouse can\n\n1231\n00:55:28.500 --> 00:55:29.680\ntell you, okay,\n\n1232\n00:55:29.680 --> 00:55:33.500\nlike there's there's something really special about being there. So for me, it\n\n1233\n00:55:33.500 --> 00:55:34.480\n's about the same way\n\n1234\n00:55:34.480 --> 00:55:38.620\nthat I lead at work, which is showing up on the front lines. I like to show up\n\n1235\n00:55:38.620 --> 00:55:39.120\non the front lines,\n\n1236\n00:55:39.120 --> 00:55:43.300\neven with the kids. You know, you mentioned at Stanford, you took a Zen\n\n1237\n00:55:43.300 --> 00:55:45.680\nBuddhism course, you know,\n\n1238\n00:55:45.680 --> 00:55:51.170\nand you mentioned being present is, you know, do you spend time on the idea of\n\n1239\n00:55:51.170 --> 00:55:52.240\nspiritual growth\n\n1240\n00:55:52.240 --> 00:55:56.580\nand being present and focusing on the now is that you know, where does that fit\n\n1241\n00:55:56.580 --> 00:55:57.520\nin your life?\n\n1242\n00:55:57.520 --> 00:56:03.790\nYeah, I do. I think it's just even that awareness of it. Now, like you could,\n\n1243\n00:56:03.790 --> 00:56:04.320\nyou have people\n\n1244\n00:56:04.320 --> 00:56:09.760\nwho go become monks and spend all their time focusing on that. That's not a\n\n1245\n00:56:09.760 --> 00:56:10.240\nkind of place I\n\n1246\n00:56:10.240 --> 00:56:15.830\nam in life right now. But for me, this idea of sort of being present in the now\n\n1247\n00:56:15.830 --> 00:56:17.280\nis really important.\n\n1248\n00:56:17.280 --> 00:56:21.220\nAnd then also something else I took away from the Zen practice is this idea of\n\n1249\n00:56:21.220 --> 00:56:22.640\nbeginner's mind,\n\n1250\n00:56:22.640 --> 00:56:28.430\nwhich the longer you sort of do a job, whether it's being a parent or, you know\n\n1251\n00:56:28.430 --> 00:56:29.440\n, being a CEO or\n\n1252\n00:56:29.440 --> 00:56:33.460\nbeing a founder, the easier it is to kind of fall on to old habits, right? Like\n\n1253\n00:56:33.460 --> 00:56:34.640\n, oh, I can kind of\n\n1254\n00:56:34.640 --> 00:56:38.270\ndo this in my sleep. There's something really special when you're fully present\n\n1255\n00:56:38.270 --> 00:56:38.880\n. And when you\n\n1256\n00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:42.420\napproach things with a complete beginner's mind, and I try to make sure I do\n\n1257\n00:56:42.420 --> 00:56:43.680\nthat as often as I can,\n\n1258\n00:56:43.680 --> 00:56:47.620\nit's not the easiest thing to do. But it actually kind of like opens up your\n\n1259\n00:56:47.620 --> 00:56:48.800\nthinking quite a lot.\n\n1260\n00:56:48.800 --> 00:56:54.480\nSo what do you, what do you see as your unfinished business now, Sanji? Un\n\n1261\n00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:56.160\nfinished business. Well,\n\n1262\n00:56:56.160 --> 00:56:59.650\nI think my mom would tell you my academic research career is still unfinished\n\n1263\n00:56:59.650 --> 00:57:00.480\nbusiness because I\n\n1264\n00:57:00.480 --> 00:57:04.380\nnever finished a PhD. I think I'm firmly over that, especially because I\n\n1265\n00:57:04.380 --> 00:57:06.160\nresearch is like 20 years old.\n\n1266\n00:57:06.160 --> 00:57:10.500\nBut for me, the unfinished business is like, I just feel like there's not\n\n1267\n00:57:10.500 --> 00:57:12.080\nenough hours in the day\n\n1268\n00:57:12.080 --> 00:57:16.560\nif you want to read and be curious. And so something I still do every night is\n\n1269\n00:57:16.560 --> 00:57:17.920\nI try to get a couple\n\n1270\n00:57:17.920 --> 00:57:21.790\nof pages of reading in because there's always something that you kind of want\n\n1271\n00:57:21.790 --> 00:57:22.480\nto tug on the\n\n1272\n00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:27.520\nthread of. Last question here. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone\n\n1273\n00:57:27.520 --> 00:57:28.160\nwho wants to be a\n\n1274\n00:57:28.160 --> 00:57:33.040\nbetter leader? Well, I would say just do it, right? You have an idea of what it\n\n1275\n00:57:33.040 --> 00:57:34.000\nmeans to be a better\n\n1276\n00:57:34.000 --> 00:57:40.910\nleader start operating that way. And that's actually it's easy to say, but it's\n\n1277\n00:57:40.910 --> 00:57:41.600\nhard to do,\n\n1278\n00:57:41.600 --> 00:57:45.600\nbecause sometimes you get sort of racked with anxiety of like, I should I do it\n\n1279\n00:57:45.600 --> 00:57:46.240\nthis framework\n\n1280\n00:57:46.240 --> 00:57:50.670\nor that framework, a lot of it's it's kind of a gut feel. And again, you kind\n\n1281\n00:57:50.670 --> 00:57:51.760\nof learn by doing.\n\n1282\n00:57:51.760 --> 00:57:55.680\nSo for me, the advice I'd give that person is dive in, just go for it.\n\n1283\n00:57:55.680 --> 00:58:01.440\nWell, I have to tell you, Sean, Zee, after reading about you and watching a lot\n\n1284\n00:58:01.440 --> 00:58:02.320\nof things that you've\n\n1285\n00:58:02.320 --> 00:58:07.700\ndone and hearing your thoughts on business, I knew I would have a lot of fun\n\n1286\n00:58:07.700 --> 00:58:09.360\nwith this conversation.\n\n1287\n00:58:09.360 --> 00:58:12.720\nAnd I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for what you're\n\n1288\n00:58:12.720 --> 00:58:14.160\ndoing in the world\n\n1289\n00:58:14.160 --> 00:58:18.160\nand make the world a better place. And you're one heck of a guy.\n\n1290\n00:58:18.720 --> 00:58:22.240\nThank you, David. Thanks for having me on.\n\n1291\n00:58:22.240 --> 00:58:31.440\nGreat leaders move fast and scale smart, but what sets Sanjito part is how\n\n1292\n00:58:31.440 --> 00:58:32.240\nclosely it pays\n\n1293\n00:58:32.240 --> 00:58:37.100\nattention. He doesn't assume he's got the answers, but he watches and he\n\n1294\n00:58:37.100 --> 00:58:38.880\nlistens. And because of that\n\n1295\n00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:44.460\nbig eyes, big ears mentality, he finds the problems that actually need solving.\n\n1296\n00:58:44.460 --> 00:58:45.600\nAnd that's the takeaway\n\n1297\n00:58:45.600 --> 00:58:52.280\nhere. Big eyes, big ears. And it isn't just a catchy phrase. It's a discipline.\n\n1298\n00:58:52.280 --> 00:58:53.040\nIt's a curious\n\n1299\n00:58:53.040 --> 00:58:58.110\nmindset. And it's a great way to become more innovative and customer focus. So\n\n1300\n00:58:58.110 --> 00:58:58.480\nthis week,\n\n1301\n00:58:58.480 --> 00:59:04.000\nfind one place to observe more and talk less. Sit in on a customer service call\n\n1302\n00:59:04.000 --> 00:59:04.000\n,\n\n1303\n00:59:04.000 --> 00:59:07.690\nshadow your team in the field, ask your frontline people what's working and\n\n1304\n00:59:07.690 --> 00:59:08.400\nwhat's not.\n\n1305\n00:59:08.400 --> 00:59:12.560\nBecause when you pay closer attention to what's really happening, you get the\n\n1306\n00:59:12.560 --> 00:59:13.600\nkind of insights\n\n1307\n00:59:13.600 --> 00:59:18.400\nthat can take your business and your leadership to the next level. So do you\n\n1308\n00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:19.280\nwant to know how leaders\n\n1309\n00:59:19.280 --> 00:59:23.660\nlead? What we learned today is the great leaders lead with big eyes and big\n\n1310\n00:59:23.660 --> 00:59:24.720\nears. Coming up next\n\n1311\n00:59:24.720 --> 00:59:28.670\non how leaders lead, you're going to want to fasten your seat belts and make\n\n1312\n00:59:28.670 --> 00:59:30.160\nsure your tray table\n\n1313\n00:59:30.160 --> 00:59:35.020\nis in its full upright and locked position, because I'm talking with Bob Jordan\n\n1314\n00:59:35.020 --> 00:59:36.640\n, CEO of Southwest\n\n1315\n00:59:36.640 --> 00:59:42.040\nAirlines. So be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts\n\n1316\n00:59:42.040 --> 00:59:42.800\nso you don't miss\n\n1317\n00:59:42.800 --> 00:59:46.930\nit. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where\n\n1318\n00:59:46.930 --> 00:59:47.920\nevery Thursday you get\n\n1319\n00:59:47.920 --> 00:59:52.040\nto listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I\n\n1320\n00:59:52.040 --> 00:59:52.720\nmake it a point to\n\n1321\n00:59:52.720 --> 00:59:56.860\ngive you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business\n\n1322\n00:59:56.860 --> 00:59:58.080\nso that you will become\n\n1323\n00:59:58.080 --> 00:59:59.600\nthe best leader you can be.\n","

Sanjit Biswas 0:00

When we get on site, I always tell people like, big eyes and big ears, like, let's see how these operations really run. Let's listen to where those pain points are. So I love it in terms of helping me understand what problems need solving next.

David Novak 0:22

You can build fast, you can scale smart, but if you're not solving the right problems, what's the point? Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be. My guest today is Sanjit Biswas, the co founder and CEO of Sam Sarah. It's a company that helps digitize physical operations and logistics so they're safer and more efficient. This isn't Sanjit first rodeo before this. He co founded Meraki and sold it to Cisco for over a billion dollars. And what drives him is the mindset he calls big eyes, big ears. I gotta tell you, I love this phrase so much, and I just wish I'd come up with it, and you're gonna love it too, because it's all about staying close to your customer. You watch what they struggle with, you listen to what they can't quite articulate, and when you do you uncover the problems that actually need solving. Stay tuned to see how he does it, plus how Sanjit is thinking about AI and his business and the hiring tip you're going to want to use in your next interview. So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Sanjit Biswas,

you got to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in December of 2021 when you took Sam Sarah public. Now what's a behind the scenes story of that experience that you've never told anybody?

Sanjit Biswas 1:54

Well, first of all, it's definitely one of those milestone moments. I think, as an entrepreneur, it's actually hard to imagine that you're going to get to the point where the company is going public, and there's all this fanfare. One behind the scenes story that I don't think a lot of people know is that that opening bell ring is by a button, right? So you're on this podium, they ask you when the market opens to press the button, they actually have someone with a fail safe, because it turns out a number of people forget to hit the button, so I was not aware of that. I didn't know how any of that stuff worked. They guided us through it. It was a lot of fun, but it was actually funny to hear maybe 10 15% of people actually forget to press the button, and the market doesn't open unless someone hits it. That's great. I was really lucky to have to be able to do that a couple times. It's a great experience,

David Novak 2:40

and you you've built $2 billion businesses with your co founder, John, John bickett, and I want to learn how you two make decisions. So I got to know, how did you decide that you were going to be the guy to push that button and ring that bell and not him?

Sanjit Biswas 2:58

Well, you know, it's funny, John and I have known each other now over 20 years. We met as grad students back at MIT, and it's always been a great partnership. So even before we started any companies, we were working together. We were doing research together. He was the guy who loved to write code and like, if he could just spend all of his time just in the details of the technology he would and I was the person who kind of did, you know, a bit of the research, but also the everything else. So in some sense, as you're founding a company, you need someone to do the everything else. That person, in my case, became the CEO, and it's a partnership we've had across both companies. So he's been CTO, I've been CEO, and, you know, I think, from an opening bell perspective, he's like, I don't want to do it. You do it.

David Novak 3:43

It's It's something else. See, everything else. That's a great reason why, you know, and you know, I can't wait to really dig into, you know how you're leading at Sam, Sarah, but, but first, Sanjit, I want to take you back a little bit and start at the beginning. What's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today.

Sanjit Biswas 4:03

Well, you know, if we go way back, you know, 40 years, or maybe a little bit less, to when I was in middle school or high school, I always loved technology. You know, as my background, my dad was actually a computer science professor and electrical engineering professor. So I grew up with a lot of this technology around me. One of the things that I like is actually seeing other people use technology, other people get utility or value from it. And going all the way back to middle school or high school, I remember being really enthusiastic about bringing this idea of internet access, which was really new at the time, this is back in the 1990s to other high school kids, and now that I kind of think back on I was like, that's a really unusual thing that I felt passionate about, but I just thought it was the coolest thing, and I just wanted everybody else that I knew to use it so that maybe was a formative moment that didn't make sense at the time, but in retrospect, actually fits a lot of what I've been. Doing for the last 30 ish years, which is bringing technology to people.

David Novak 5:04

Yeah, that's amazing. You had that insight so early in your life, you know, it's, you know, and you feel like that was driven from your your background with your father,

Sanjit Biswas 5:12

I think so. And, you know, it's hard to say where, which influences cause, which decisions and actions. But I was really fortunate that, you know, even back in the 1980s when computers were pretty expensive and hard to get a hold of, we did have one at home because of his work, and he was always around to answer questions, curiosity questions, and I was able to kind of go down the rabbit hole early as a side effect of that of just, well, how does this stuff really work? And, you know, what could you do with it, that sort of thing, fantastic. And this was really hard for me to believe, but I understand that at 15 years old, you were hired by Oracle. What's the key lesson you picked up from that experience? Well, yeah, this is my first job as a summer internship that I got at Oracle. I don't think they knew I was 15 when I interviewed, because it was like a coding interview, and it was, it was all very technical. I think they figured out when I showed up and it was my mom that had to drop me off because I was too young to have a driver's license. So that was, that was definitely interesting. I learned a lot in that first job. I actually still have pretty vivid memories of everything from the code and the technology to the team that I worked with. It was again, the first time really seeing a company. Then this idea that you could get paid to basically do your hobby. It was programming. Was a hobby of mine at that point, and it was really interesting work. And you got to work with really smart people. That was energizing in a really deep way. And you were the youngest engineer to ever be hired there, as I understand that and and you've had a rocket ship career, you know, do you think that really taught you how to deal with people that are more experienced and older than you? And how do you think about that now? Because you're still a young guy, I'm sure you got a lot of guys older than you that work where you Yeah, you know, for me, it's never actually been about age or even years of experience, is actually what do you bring to the table in terms of the discussion? So if it's a technical discussion, what ideas are are you kind of debating or navigating? I think when it comes to business discussions, we have a lot of really young sales people that are very close to our customers. I want to hear them out. So I've kind of learned to ignore the age component of it. There's a lot that comes with experience where there's some wisdom there, but so much of it is the type of experience and your insights and your knowledge. So maybe that was a deep learning from back in my 15 year old days. You know, you then go on to Stanford to get your undergrad, and what impact did that have on the way you think as a leader going to a school like Stanford? Well, first of all, it was an amazing undergrad institution, right in terms of the breadth and the sort of diversity of ideas that are thrown around. One of the things that I loved about Stanford is it is very strong in both the humanities and the sciences, right? So you have engineers, you have people who are just out of this world in the liberal arts, and that balance of sort of numbers and and sort of qualitative or ideas, or you know that that side of things, that balance, is something that I really took away from that experience. And even when I look back, and this is now, 25 years ago, some of my most formative experiences in college were actually not necessarily my computer science classes. It was when I took like a Zen Buddhism class to fulfill a requirement. I thought I was being very clever, because I think that class fulfilled two requirements at once culture and religion or something like that. But just some of the philosophies have stuck with me decades later, and so really thankful that I had that experience and an experience I wasn't expecting to have. I went in thinking, Okay, I'm going to take as many engineering classes as I can, but I'm really glad that I had that sort of well rounded side of things as well. So how do you think about hiring people now, when you think about right brain, left brain, you know, do you look for the balance or, you know, how do you how do you think about that? Well, we want the whole brain. So, you know, there's there folks that are really good at, again, the kind of quantitative side of things, the numbers and the math and so on. But their ability to apply it to understand, how is this going to benefit a customer, or, you know, change their world, that's what makes that engineering innovation relevant, right? So I think that's important on the R D side, and then similarly, on the kind of sales or marketing side, you need to not just have great sort of marketing ideas or a clever tagline or something like that, but you do need to understand what's having an impact. So I think there's a really important balance between those two. I agree. And you know, after Stanford, you made the move across the country to get your PhD at MIT,

David Novak 9:43

another very good school. And now I got to ask you, you know, when you're surrounded by some of the smartest people in the world, which you certainly were with at Stanford and MIT, what did that teach you about working with and leading other really high performers? So you know what? Do you what do you think is the key to working with people like that?

Sanjit Biswas 10:04

Well, at a deep level, it's, you know, I think I learned a lot about this idea of working in a team. So, you know, in some situations, there's leader who is, is the everything. They're the commander, and they're calling all the shots and so on. That was never the case, whether it was in my undergrad or graduate research or something like that. It was always a really amazing group of people, and people had different talents. Some people were really good at analysis, other people were good at coding, other people building things. But this idea that you can form people together in a team, and that the sort of sum of the parts is greater than just the whole was really compelling there, and I was really fortunate. The research projects we worked on ended up going on to win some amazing academic research awards. Some of that research is still taught in class today, and when I look back on it, it wasn't just like the first author or any individual like the PhD advisor that was responsible for those insights. It really was the discussion and debate that we had as a team, the way we built and the way we built over a long period of time that made some of that research impactful. So that was a pretty important learning at MIT, and something that I've taken with me into Meraki, and as I'm sorry the companies we founded after, is just the importance of the team kind of playing to the different team members strengths and then really being cohesive. And

David Novak 11:24

speaking of Meraki, this was the company that was your first company, and you can almost say that was almost formed by accident. I don't know that may be going a little bit too far, but talk about that. Talk about Meraki.

Sanjit Biswas 11:36

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of startup stories have a tremendous amount of purpose. At the very beginning, of like, oh, we had a business plan, and we want to go raise funding, and that, you know, in Silicon Valley, there's a number of those kinds of tales for us. This was actually more of we had a technology that we'd been working on as graduate students, which is this idea of like, we were building basically, large scale Wi Fi networks before Wi Fi was mainstream. So again, this is the early 2000s that was the research that we did at MIT. It was a project called roof net. We covered all of Cambridge, Massachusetts with free Wi Fi. And that was really exciting, because we got to be able to provide something of utility to our fellow students. So all the grad students had broadband internet without having to pay for it. We got to do really interesting research. And in that process, we said, well, wouldn't it be amazing if other people could build networks like this, like in their apartment complexes or on Main Street and that kind of thing. So with Meraki, it was actually simply we wanted other people to be able to build big Wi Fi networks. We didn't know the first thing about starting a company. We had no capital of our own. We had no access to venture capital, but we just had this desire to bring it to the world. So that's how that company got started. A little bit of a different story than, I think, what you hear about some days, you know, some companies now start with the seed round, and then the series a and so on. It almost

David Novak 13:00

goes back to your your middle school idea that you have, you know? Yeah, it comes full circle. That's amazing. How do you think you lead differently given your engineering background and perhaps leaders with a different skill set and background? Yeah,

Sanjit Biswas 13:15

I think every, every entrepreneur figures this out, you know, what is their true strengths, what's authentic to them. For me, I'm still a product person at my core. I love the technology side of things, but I do love spending time with customers and seeing that impact, and that's how I spend my time. I love to spend time out on the road at samsara, we've got customers in really diverse industries all over the US, really all over the world now. So I like to get out in the field, I like to stay current with the engineers on what they're building, and you know, what new chips are available, or what new advances are happening in the world of AI and all that kind of innovation. And then I like to connect those dots. So for me, it's about being true to myself. I'm probably not your best salesperson. I'm not a finance wizard. I know sort of what I'm good at and where I need help. And so I try to focus on that kind of product and that customer. That

David Novak 14:03

customer experience. You know, when you see these areas that maybe you're not as strong at whether it's sales or maybe it's working with the investment community, I don't know what. You know, we all go through things for the first time. How do you go about sharpening your ax?

Sanjit Biswas 14:17

Well, for me, it's really about just getting in there. So, you know, none of us are born knowing how to do these jobs, right. Like, especially as a CEO or a founder of a company, you're figuring it out as you go. I think learning by doing is really key for me. I love the interactions and the engagement. So, for example, on the sales side, I had never sold a thing in my life, like through MIT. I was a, you know, research scientist kind of engineer student, and I'll tell you, like anything that involves selling, even in middle school or high school, like, you know, there would be those projects we have to sell the candy bars. I would just find a way to get out of it or shy away from I just did not like doing that. But when it came time to figure out how to get our first. Sale to happen for Meraki, because we didn't have any money to run the company. Otherwise, we figured it out. We figured out what a PO was. I discovered that means purchase order. I figured out, okay, how do you translate that into an actual check? All of that happened by just trying it out. And it's actually much more straightforward than people sometimes realize. Like, you could read books and books and books about how to start a company, or you could just try it. And so I always recommend people to just try it. You know, that's

David Novak 15:27

that almost takes me my next question, you know, as an engineer, you know, as well as anyone, nothing is perfect on the first try. Okay, it's all about version two, version three and so on. What do you do to create a work environment that embraces that kind of iterative approach?

Sanjit Biswas 15:46

Yeah. Well, at work, we call it running feedback loops, this idea of iterating, spending time with our customers, figuring out, well, how could you make it better? Because, like you said, the odds that you got it right on the first try are kind of zero, right? There's always a way for something be better. The question is, well, where should we invest our energy and what should we do next? That applies, by the way, to products and product management, but it equally applies to your sales process or your marketing message. Like there's a lot of things you can kind of tune and tweak. And I think in today's age, it's gotten way easier to essentially iterate on the fly and do it in a thoughtful way. It's not sort of haphazard, but the idea that we're going to run a process, we're going to get something out, whether it's a beta product or early access or whatever you want to call it, and get feedback, I think, is really important.

David Novak 16:31

You know, I've heard you describe your your company culture as shared code. Explain what you mean by that.

Sanjit Biswas 16:40

Shared code kind of refers to, well, what are the what's the sort of common way that we all operate? And if you think about software, software has many forms of manifestations, but ultimately it's code down at the bottom of it. And you might have lots of different users, but they're all running on that same code base. What I found is, unless you're explicit about it, the way you are with engineering a product, you can have people running different code, right so that you may be under the same company banner, but if you're operating in two totally different ways, the way people perceive the company, the way they engage with the company, is going to be two totally different experiences. So by having this sort of shared code, if you will, the consistency of the experience is really common.

David Novak 17:21

Have you gone about really identifying the behaviors or the operating principles that you know that if you execute them, you know you're going to get results?

Sanjit Biswas 17:31

Yeah, and I think that's really about distilling down what's worked for us so far. You know, what we've done in both companies seems to be something people like, well, what is it about our way of running, and so we do call them operating principles, is basically okay? What is it that we want to make sure everybody's doing and for us, this idea of focusing on our customer success is really core. It doesn't matter which team you're on. That's something that's really important building for the long term. Is another one of, you know, there's always a bit of a trade off of, are we doing something for, you know, this month or this quarter? We were actually going to, like, live with this decision. That's also something that's really important, again, that applies across departments and so on. So we've got about eight of these operating principles. We evolve them every couple of years. We hit refresh on them. But the idea is, this is what's worked for us so far. We we really try to think about them, distill them down, share them with everyone, especially new hires, so as they're coming in, hey, this is what's worked for samsara, for example, and this is something we want to do more of. So for us, those operating principles are kind of key to how we run. So you have

David Novak 18:37

these eight operating principles, you know, I call them our how we work together principles when I was at young brand. So you have these principles, what do you do to to recognize people who actually execute those principles? And how do you, how do you build your HR system or your compensation system around those? Or do you we,

Sanjit Biswas 19:00

we try to operationalize them in a few different ways. So at the very beginning of the process, which is the interview process, we actually interview based on those operating principles. So behind the scenes, we kind of assign, you know, different principles out of Hey, see if you can figure out how they built for the long term, like ask them for an example of that, or how they adopted a growth mindset, or something about them, their customer centricity, those are things you can filter for at the beginning, and then, like you said, it's what you recognize and what you reward is also really important. So we ask for nominations. So we have different awards and different teams, and we'll try to align those with the principles so SO and SO adopted a growth mindset. Here's an example of how they picked up a new skill, or, you know, something like that. And then what we talk about at call it a town hall, like a, you know, a broadcast meeting that goes to 1000s of our employees. That's also important, because that sets the tone that says, Okay, that's really important to the company.

David Novak 19:55

You know this better than most. Obviously, you know the best solutions are. Are almost always the simplest ones are the ones that you can simplify. Can you tell me a story of where you've you've pushed the team to eliminate unnecessary complexity?

Sanjit Biswas 20:10

There's there's a few that come to mind. Some of it just actually relates to the way that people try out our products. So something about samsara that people sometimes don't appreciate is, in order to adopt technology and operations, you sometimes need to install a piece of hardware, there's some software configuration and so on. A lot of that, by the way, can be made plug and play. So it used to be that in order to install technology, you needed to be an engineer. You need to have someone come on site and splice a bunch of wires or write some code, or, you know, there was, like, a little bit of a hurdle, something we emphasized very early here was, well, how do we simplify it so it just always lands on its feet? Just works out of the box. That is something that enabled us to do free trials. So in other words, we don't even need to set foot on site. If you're up for it, you can just plug this thing in and try it out for yourself and experience the technology that's a radical simplification of the customer experience. It's very complicated behind the scenes, but the result was we were able to grow our business very quickly because we could essentially engage with people over zoom or on the phone, convince them that they wanted to try it out, and then just send them a unit, or five units or something like that.

David Novak 21:21

That's cool. I love that. And I want to get to samsara in just a second here. But, you know, I want to go back a little bit to Meraki. You know, what do you think were one or two, the one or two smartest strategic bets that you made that really helped the company scale?

Sanjit Biswas 21:40

Well, you know, like many businesses, we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time. So we were starting a company that was making it easy to deploy Wi Fi in the mid 2000s that was maybe we started in 2006 that was about the year before the iPhone was introduced. So we ended up in the right place at the right time, in the sense that all of a sudden, after the iPhone, and then eventually the iPad and so on came out. People wanted Wi Fi. They wanted guest Wi Fi to offer to their clients and their customers and that kind of thing. We were just really lucky that that happened. Now, from a strategic perspective, we had a sense that there were going to be a number of challenges with doing that at scale, right? It would have to be secure. It have to be easy to set up. You need lots of great coverage. And so we set up the product and the company to be ambitious. In that sense, we didn't just do hardware, for example, we did the software, we did the configuration, we did the security and everything. And so strategically, that ambition paid off when the complexity really went up for the customer and they needed something that just was all in one that worked entirely. The same thing paid off years later, as we continued to be ambitious, we built Ethernet switches and routers. These are all the building blocks of a big network. We didn't just stop at Wi Fi. In other words, we kind of built everything the customer needed, and then we saw customers saying, Hey, I love what you guys have done for Wi Fi. I need that for my whole network. Can you do that? And we were in that right place at the right time. So the ambition, I think, is really

Koula Callahan 23:05

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David Novak 24:03

You know, it's interesting. You know, you mentioned earlier you didn't know how to sell anything, and when you're starting a company like that, you know, how did you really get the company to learn how to sell? I mean, you know, you got all these guys that could make all this stuff that nobody could understand. But how did you get the make the strategic shift to really drive sales?

Sanjit Biswas 24:25

Well, I think most engineers are driven by a love for solving problems. They want to see their their hard work, have impact, and so they want to see their technology used. In other words, when we connected those two dots, that sales basically translates to customer impact. People using your stuff. Everyone got into it, even engineers who had no interest in selling. Everyone wanted to see, okay, what's the customer using? Like, did they turn that feature on? Like, wow, this thing's getting like, you know, 1000s of users, that kind of thing. So connecting that feedback loop to the engineering teams and not making sales a bad word or something, a different team does. Was, but we're all in this together. And by the way, those sales, those dollars that come from, those revenue dollars get reinvested right back in the company, means we can build more product, right? And so going back to this idea of being ambitious, we felt like, well, okay, if you want to build a lot of stuff, you're going to need more than a handful of people. You're going to need a sustainable, you know, R and D effort. The way to do that is not necessarily raise more and more venture capital, it's actually go get your sales engine running so and have a reasonable set of margins and all that stuff. So you have a sustainable enterprise that you can keep reinvesting in for for a long, long time.

David Novak 25:35

And so you build this Meraki into a billion dollar business. It's your baby. You know, when you, when you talk to entrepreneurs, it's like, you know, I mean, they're so passionate what they built, and it's their baby, and you love it like a child. There's no question about it, you know. But you end up selling it to Cisco. How hard was that you to do? I mean, you know, take us through how you made that decision.

Sanjit Biswas 26:00

First of all, I, again, I kind of still think of Meraki as, like, this project that took on a life of its own, right, this idea of, like, can we make it possible for other people to build networks? And yes, you know that that's what became the business. What was was happening, just for a little bit of historic context, is we were doubling revenue every single year. And this is a company that, by the way, was really growing in the global financial crisis era. So the idea that we're able to double revenue every year was really astounding. And I think that goes to show just how much market pull there was for the product. The company was getting to the point where Meraki was getting ready to go public. We had enough revenue scale. We were, you know, from a free cash flow perspective, all the kind of numbers and cents made made sense to go public, and at that point, Cisco approached us and just, you know, for those people who aren't in the networking industry, Cisco is like the big name, right? They are like the biggest brand, best known. They have, you know, majority market share in most of products they sell, and so they were effectively our biggest competitor. Now that actually made it kind of high stakes, because they approached us and we're like, we don't want to share numbers with you, like, you know, we compete in the market. But they said, no, no, we get it, but we hear great things about the product, and we want you to think about one thing, which is, what would happen if your product could be sold through the Cisco Salesforce and the Cisco Partner channel with the Cisco logo, think about how many more people would get access to it. And that was actually the compelling sort of reason for doing it that, you know, they had to make the numbers make sense from a finance perspective, the investors needed to be able to get a return. But for me, it was actually more about impact as well. We kind of did this as an experiment. We can keep doing what we're doing, but we had a long way to grow like we were a relatively small company compared to a Cisco. Now, what if you could do the experiment of, well, what would happen if you turbocharged it and, you know, made it available all over the world? And that's exactly what happened. Is, if you now look at where Meraki is, now, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's billions of dollars of sales a year. Whenever I walk into a Starbucks coffee and I look up, I see a Meraki access point. My kids schools have Meraki access points. I go to an airport, you see it. And that is ultimately what we were there for, was to see that impact happen. So that's ultimately what did it for us, was this idea that, wow, you could really get this out to a lot of people.

David Novak 28:18

How do you feel when you walk into Starbucks, did you see your imprint

Sanjit Biswas 28:23

proud Absolutely. So you mentioned it's like, you know, it's like a child, it's, you know, the kind of pride that you get of, like, wow, we really did something meaningful.

David Novak 28:31

Yeah, that's cool, you know, How'd you figure out, Sanjit, you know, you sell the sell the company, I think, for $1.2 billion so, you know, that's that had to be exciting, but How'd you figure out what you wanted to do next?

Sanjit Biswas 28:45

Well, at the beginning, we just spent our time making sure that we integrated the products well inside Cisco, so there was no plan to do anything next. But, you know, within a few years, it was pretty clear that this this was working right, like the products were growing at an even faster rate than they had before. So that was excellent to see. And at the same time, Cisco said, Hey, you guys have done a great job with this. Are you interested in their headquarter down in San Jose, California, we're in San Francisco. Do you guys want to come down to San Jose and take on some more of the business, like some of the other parts? And that didn't feel like it fit for us, because, you know, we're not professional operators in the sense of, we come in and we run your business that you've already got. We're builders. We want to build something from scratch. And so we said, Okay, well, that's probably not for us, but it's not like we left with the here's the next idea we want to pursue. For context, John and I basically hadn't really taken time off, you know, Meraki was an intense experience. So first thing we decided to do is, like, take a real vacation. And I remember, for me, personally, we just had our first child, so had a, you know, baby around that kind of thing. So I was just thinking, like, I'm just going to take a little bit of time to reset. You. And my initial thinking was actually to go back to academia, because the two of us left without finishing our PhDs. We were all but dissertation. We were just like, right there at the finish line. Long story short, we realized academia wasn't going to be for us, or at least I realized it wasn't going to be for me, because the feedback loops really long. It takes months to find out if your paper gets into a conference, and then, you know, it's really hard to see people use your stuff. So, you know, I figured that out the hard way. Actually wrote a paper, got into a conference, etc. John was, he's way smarter than me. He's like, I knew that wasn't going to work for us kind of thing. But after a couple of months, we kind of went back to our our kind of curious selves outside of it. So we were just kind of curious about the world. Found ourselves really fascinated by the world of operations, and that's ultimately what led us to start samsara. Was that same curiosity that got us excited about Wi Fi a decade earlier, got us excited about operations, because we were just wondering, like, how does all this stuff

David Novak 30:58

work? You know, I've heard you say, take the time to get bored, you know, I think that's where a lot of great ideas come from. You know. Say, more

Sanjit Biswas 31:09

curiosity is just it's such an important and special thing, right? And curiosity is sort of like when you let your mind wander a little bit and become fascinated, and it's something we all have as kids, right? Like, you're kind of wondering, like, okay, you know, how does that airplane fly, or whatever it is, right? Like, there's, there's something there that doesn't go away. It just, you get really busy, and you get kind of sucked up in the flow of things. If you ever get a chance to, like, basically hit pause or hit stop. Sometimes you can do this if you take a week long vacation or something, and you let your mind wander, you're sitting on a beach or in a mountain somewhere, then your mind takes you to something that might be really interesting in a deep level that you couldn't articulate. For me, that was how we found operations. But it happens all the time, if you give it time to happen. So

David Novak 31:56

tell me about Sam, Sarah, give me a snapshot of the business you lead today.

Sanjit Biswas 32:01

Yeah. So as I alluded to, we focus on the world of operations. This is kind of the infrastructure of our planet, if you will, right? So think about the supply chain, or the utilities, the construction companies, all the people that keep our planet running. That's what we're referring to with physical operations. And what we do is we try to bring them new digital technologies to improve how they run, basically make it possible to run smarter. One interesting thing about operations is just how intense it is, right? You've got millions of trucks out on the road, you've got hundreds of millions of frontline workers, and so there's this, this kind of tremendous orchestra, almost ballet, that happens behind the scenes that no one really thinks about. But it's an area that technology can really help, because you can make way smarter decisions. If you have, you know, cameras that are able to see risky behavior out on the road, or you have GPS trackers that understand fuel consumption and analyze all that data. So those are the kinds of things we work on. I'm

David Novak 32:57

sure you probably know this Sanjit but, but you're what they call a duo corn. You know, you're someone who has built not one but $2 billion businesses from the ground up. You and You know, Sam, Sarah, you've grown an extremely rapid level. What is it about how you show up as a leader that's helped make this possible. I mean, if you're going to try to define, you know, the the a couple of differentiating things that you do, you know, what do you think it is? Those are big businesses you've built?

Sanjit Biswas 33:33

Yeah, you know, it's really hard to pinpoint, but I've kind of thought about this over the years of well, and I've studied leaders like your listeners have, right? Like I've listened to so many podcasts, I've read so many books. And one interesting takeaway is, everybody needs to figure out their own authentic style or form of leadership, right? And so, you know, there are things that that we have natural talents at, and I try to, like, focus on, like I said, the product side and the customer side. And then there are things that you're not so talented at. And for me, sometimes it's actually communication, like, I'm great in terms of a one on one communication, like, I enjoy getting to know people, but communicating with 1000s of employees is actually really tough because you can't read their faces, you can't engage and interact with them. So that's the kind of thing that as a leader, I've had to try different ideas and iterate a little bit. But again, leadership is really a personal sort of fit, like everybody's got their own leadership style, and then it's also a contextual fit, like the way you lead a tiny company, a startup that has a dozen people, versus the way you lead a company with 1000s of people is a little bit different. You kind of have to figure it out along the way. So for me, that's been a big takeaway. What was the

David Novak 34:47

biggest thing you figured out Sanjit went from going from 12 to 1000 and what did you have to what was that thing that you know, you had to learn, maybe the hard way

Sanjit Biswas 34:57

for me, and you know, I was. Fortunate to have had the Meraki experience. So as we scaled samsara, I was very mindful of this. When you bring in hundreds of new people every year into an organization, it's very easy for the culture to drift right. And it's a very practical thing, which is that people are bringing their own way of doing things with them, and you're not able to be everywhere. So the Samsara way, or the Meraki way, it's hard to transmit When, when, you know, folks are reporting to a manager who just started, you know, three weeks before them, kind of thing. So that kind of dispersion is something that I was very mindful of with samsara. And we were lucky that our business grew really quickly, so we had to really stay on it. It's not like we could just add 5% new people every year. It's like we had years where we doubled the size of the company. We had one year where we tripled the size of the company. That's really hard.

David Novak 35:46

So you double, triple the size of the company. What process did you put in place to really get the culture seated with everybody? I mean, because you're right, you're bringing every people in from meta, Google, you know, all these great companies,

Sanjit Biswas 36:00

and they may be great companies, but those playbooks, if you will, may not apply in our environment, right? So a lot of what we did was keep it simple, like we would go on customer calls together, right? Like, let's go show and do a product demo, right? And actually show what the product does that was foreign to a lot of people that came from companies where they never demoed their product. It was too complicated, or, you know, sold differently. So just showing the way we do things like in a very practical way, helped build some of that culture, the interactions, you know, we love to grab lunch or grab dinner, or just, you know, coffee with each other and get to know each other, answer questions, and then that's the other one, is Ask Me Anything sessions. So I still do these, the new hires that come in, we do a big zoom call, and I'll answer whatever questions are on their mind. We'll do that with top talent. We'll do that with certain kinds of teams, but that interactivity, I think, is really key to kind of creating that cohesion. We'll

David Novak 36:55

be back with the rest of my conversation with Sanjit Biswas in just a moment. You know, I love how Sanjit develops his strategies by looking at customers needs, and it reminds me of another fantastic way to approach your strategy, and that's by using war games. This is an idea that UPS CEO, Carol Tomei shared with me, and I think it's something every leader should have in their toolkit.

Carol Tomé 37:17

I love war gaming as a part of strategy, so the first time we did it, everybody thought I lost my mind. But what I asked the team to do was to assume the personality of one of our competitors and to attack us and to tell us what the attack plan was. So they did, and the attack plans were super scary and really thoughtful. So they attacked, and then I said, Okay, now assume the persona, or return to your UPS persona and fight the attack, because by fighting the attack, it actually created opportunities for initiatives and growth. It's a really, really clever way to think about strategy.

David Novak 37:56

We just released my conversation with Carol Tomei on YouTube. So subscribe to The HAL leaders lead channel or find it wherever you get your podcast. It's episode 118 here on Hal leaders lead. You know, something I know you push your team on is, is discipline. You know, define that in SAM Sarah terms and how you lead that way as a CEO.

Sanjit Biswas 38:19

Discipline has, many different forms, but it's ultimately about for me, it's at least about sustainability. So if we take financial discipline, for example, there's always a temptation to spend a little bit more aggressively, whether it's like on product development or marketing campaign or something, but if you overspend, you're not going to be able to do that over and over and over, which means that, like, what worked for you this year, you probably can't keep up for five or 10 years, because at some point your your finances wouldn't, wouldn't tie right? Would? They wouldn't make sense. The same thing, by the way, applies to the way you build product. Like, sometimes you can duct tape something together and throw it over the fence and that might like, you know, help in the short term, but it's going to blow up on you a little bit later. Doing that right thing for the long term benefit is, for me, at least what it means to have discipline. So it's just something that I've seen play out so many times. It's a lesson I've learned the hard way. And so I just want to make sure everyone else is able to save a little bit of that, that sort of pain, and just benefit from that.

David Novak 39:17

What's a big growth opportunity that you see for your business right now, and how are you attacking it and getting the organization galvanized around it?

Sanjit Biswas 39:26

Well, for us, we're very focused on artificial intelligence and really how it can be practically useful to our customers now, AI is a very buzzy concept, but I think it's buzzy because of its potential utility. Like it's basically this idea that now the computer can give you leverage on intelligence like it can think for you and for a lot of our customers, they are short staffed, like they could always use some more headcount, you know, whether it's to help improve their safety or help fill out tax forms or whatever it is. So this idea that AI or the computer could. Help with those tasks is really profound for us as a company. We've been very successful with products that that have little bits and pieces of AI, but we're now infusing it across the board, bringing that to market, educating customers on what's possible, and then actually making it happen is something that we're all focused on as a company. It requires real effort and rethinking how we do business internally, like, how do our internal processes run when we take the benefits of AI, it requires really kind of hitting refresh mentally, and it's a big effort for us. You know, you've mentioned

David Novak 40:32

customers over and over in this discussion, and you know, you're an engineer, and engineers are not necessarily supposed to be customer focus, but you definitely are, for sure, you know, what rhythms do you have to stay connected to customers?

Sanjit Biswas 40:47

Well, for me, it's a treat to be able to interact with customers. And that's actually one of the best side effects, or benefits of scale, is we have customers all over the world, in every potential industry that we want to serve. And so you get to go on site on these like, fascinating on site tours, right, and see how their operations run. So that's what gives me a ton of energy. It also gives me a lot of new ideas for what other products we can build. So when we get on site, I always tell people, like, big eyes and big ears, like, let's see how these operations really run. Let's listen to where those pain points are, because sometimes people can't say, I need a product that does x, but you see them doing something in a difficult way over and over, and then you say, Well, if we could build you technology that just did that for you, would that be great? And they'll usually say, yeah, absolutely. So I love it in terms of helping me understand what problems need solving next. And you see that usually the patterns become really clear if you can get out there. So kind of back to kind of practicality. For me, I just try to get on the road, maybe not every other week, but every third week, I'm just out there trying to see it for myself, and then share that information with everyone that I can inside the company. Big

David Novak 41:58

eyes, big ears. I would have ripped that off, and I would love that. I told everybody that, you know, what's the best example you could share where you had big eyes?

Sanjit Biswas 42:08

Oh, well, lots of examples, you know, one of them that takes me back to the very early days of the company, when we started samsara, we didn't know that the products that we've brought to market today would be the product. So we had some ideas of, okay, technology could help operations. So we started with a very simple set of products. One was, like, a temperature sensor, and I remember taking it out to these beta customers, and we'd say, like, you know, please install them. The big eyes part was, you know, they'd be doing the install. But then on their screen, you could see the system they were using to run their operations. So this is 2015. Is only about 10 years ago. They were still running IBM mainframe systems, like green screen systems that you'd recognize from like the 80s or earlier. They were still running in place, and that's how they were getting their orders. And it's just, it's because it's what worked, and then what they were using to track their vehicles was either, if they had technology, it was something that looked like Mapquest from the 1990s or it was a whiteboard that had, like a list of where everyone was That was big eyes because, you know, we were there to install temperature sensors. But you look over at their office and you're like, Well, what's that system doing? What's with that whiteboard? That's how we figured out what the real product should be. It was, was okay. It seems like that's a more important problem than knowing what the temperature is.

David Novak 43:26

Great example, how about big ears?

Sanjit Biswas 43:29

Big ears would be kind of similar, like you'd actually listen to when, when, you know, in operations, people often just come by the operations manager director's office, knock on their door and say, Hey, we just had a wreck over, you know, in Idaho, can you take a look? We got to figure out what happened there. You would just actually hear what happens in the meetings in terms of interruptions. And when we would demo the product, the big ears part is we would hear, we'd actually hear people say, wow, like you just under the breath, and that's when you know you've got a feature that's differentiated. It's useful. But you know, no amount of like reading market research reports tells you that you do one demo and you, you know, the room silent, someone says, Wow, that's when you know you got something good.

David Novak 44:17

I love it, you know. Tell me about your 7020, 10 model, as you think about investing back in your business,

Sanjit Biswas 44:25

yeah, this is really related to, you know, if you're fortunate enough to get to some scale, you can invest in multiple R and D projects. Then there's a question of which ones, right? 7020 10 basically, is a reflection of time horizons. So, you know, a lot of r, d that we do, it's based on immediate needs that customers have, that's like the this, this year, next year, kind of stuff that's the 70% and that might be an integration or a new app, or it's like something that really needs to happen today. The 20 would be stuff that's a couple years out and that might be related to. Uh, you know, recently electric cars started becoming more common in operations. They're not the most common, but they're out there, and we could see that pattern that we need to be compatible with that. So we invest in that out of the 20 bucket, and then the 10 would be things that are really speculative. And this is kind of like the stuff that, if it pays off, it could be a really big deal, but there's not, it's not obvious that this is going to work, and in fact, it's, it's probably more likely than not it's not going to work. And so it's the kind of risky set of of ideas that might be beneficial five to 10 years out. So for us, it was AI that we've been investing in now for for over five years. It's now really kind of come into vogue, but we were experimenting with in a deep way, because we knew how useful it could be, even though it wasn't something customers were asking for, which is, I need AI. Nobody ever said that, but we saw the transformative potential.

David Novak 45:52

Yeah, that takes a lot of courage and conviction to go in that direction when people are waiting to see if it's really going to happen. How do you muster that up as a leader.

Sanjit Biswas 46:00

Well, I think you have to have your own conviction, right? That if we build this, I believe, based on my experience, based on my interactions, that this is going to be valuable, and this is going to make a difference. So that conviction, I think, does come from experience, and that kind of big eyes, big ears kind of concept, and then sometimes, again, it's this willingness to take a risk, but then also change your mind, say, Hey, we got that wrong, or we need to do it a little bit differently. And like I was saying earlier, I've, I've learned a lot just by doing a lot of it is, is getting to the point of, okay, we're going to try this, and if it doesn't work, we all, we're all going to, like, say, Okay, that was a beta test, and we learned from it. Now, let's try this other thing,

David Novak 46:41

it's really interesting. You know, you might have started out with sort of an academic goal, but that's you're, you're not like that at all as a leader. You're not, you're you're like, Hey, you can't read this stuff up, you know. Let's make it happen and see what happens and adjust. You know, which is great, yeah,

Sanjit Biswas 46:55

absolutely. By the way, I just have to say, a lot of great academic research is done the same way. So it's interesting how many parallels they are. There are between product building and company building and in great like practical academic research. Now, if you're a theoretician, that's a very different thing, but there's a lot to be said. It's almost like a lab science, right? Like this kind of idea of being experimental, yeah, good

David Novak 47:19

point. You know, a lot of people, Sanjit, they want to be successful. And I'm curious, you know, what's something that you've had to sacrifice to achieve what you've been able to achieve in your career so far?

Sanjit Biswas 47:33

That's a great question. You know, I think a lot of what and entrepreneurs say this all the time, the intensity of of the startup life and the kind of entrepreneurs journey is really high, right? So the highs are high, the lows are low, and some of the sacrifice is that kind of idea of free or unstructured time, because usually when you're working on something that's interesting, it just kind of grows to fill, fill the space, right? And so that's why I was talking earlier about, well, sometimes you got to really clear out your mind a little bit. But for me, maybe one sacrifice is just from, like, pursuing hobbies. And, you know, people ask, what are you doing outside of work? Well, I've got three kids, so that really takes up almost all my time. And for me, it's about kids, and the work that I do don't have, you know, I don't have, like, a great pickleball or golf game or any of that kind of stuff going because for me, like, those are the two things that drive my life, at least at this moment. So maybe the sacrifice is that kind of free time or hobby space, but I love the work, so maybe that actually filled the hobby side of things. Yeah,

David Novak 48:37

that's what you said earlier. You When You're 15, you didn't know that you could actually get paid doing what you love. That was that was pretty good to be able to do. That's your hobby. You said it is. You know, Sanji, this has been so much fun, and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Let's do it. Okay, what's what three words best describe? You curious

Sanjit Biswas 48:59

if I can get a double word, hard working, focused.

David Novak 49:02

If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it

Sanjit Biswas 49:06

be? I'm a student of history, so I would probably find I'm very curious sometimes what you know, what life was like 10,000 years ago? It's a weird thing to wonder about, but it's not a famous person. I would just be kind of curious, and maybe it wasn't so great, but I would love to see it. What's your biggest pet peeve when people aren't in the details to kind of like, gloss over things east coast or west coast? Oh, that's a tough one. Having lived on both, I gotta say the weather's better on the West Coast, so I would go west coast.

David Novak 49:37

What's your go to order at buy right Creamery.

Sanjit Biswas 49:43

So that's a local ice cream shop here in San Francisco. They have, it's not all the time, but they have a pretty awesome, like, like, Bourbon pecan kind of thing. So I'm a sucker for that. It's it's sweet, but it's good.

David Novak 49:56

Okay, you get two front row tickets to anything you want. We're. Where are you going and who are you going to take with

Sanjit Biswas 50:02

you? So I'm not a big sports guy, like I couldn't tell you even what season it is, whether it's football or basketball, but something that I look forward to every four years are the Olympics, because it's really just incredible, just the level of excellence that these athletes have. So something we're looking forward to at the next Olympics, which is here in the US is actually bringing the kids and getting, you know, the tickets early and doing all that kind of stuff. So if we can get front row tickets to any of those Olympic sports, I think it'd

David Novak 50:29

be amazing. What's the one thing you do just for you?

Sanjit Biswas 50:33

You know, it's funny, I still like to tinker. And so, you know, in sometimes those tinkering ideas turn into products. But whether it's, you know, just trying out, like a new AI model, or checking out a chip or something like that, that's my idea of fun. So that's something I do, just for me,

David Novak 50:50

besides your family, what is your most prized possession?

Sanjit Biswas 50:54

I'm not a big possessions guy to be honest. You know, I got it like, this isn't surprising, but like everybody else, I'm amazed by, like, how useful my phone is, but that's not like, the most expensive or special thing.

David Novak 51:12

You know, if I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear?

Sanjit Biswas 51:15

Well, right now, I'm in a 80s throwback mode, so you'd probably hear, you know, some like whatever, best of the 80s. It's cheesy, but it's good music, and my kids find it hilarious.

David Novak 51:26

What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss?

Sanjit Biswas 51:31

Something I try to do every day that I'm home like here in California, is do school drop off. And it's funny. It's not like the most glamorous thing to do, but it's a great excuse to just hang out with the three kids in the back of the car, and they'll, they'll just tell you things in the car that you won't get at the dinner table, and that kind of thing. That's

David Novak 51:49

great. We're out of the lightning round. Thank you very much for that. Okay, I've got a few more questions here, and I'll let you go. You've obviously been enormously successful on many fronts, but and you've obviously made a lot of money. Now, you made a ton of money. How much did making money drive what you did? And you're doing

Sanjit Biswas 52:09

well, I think if you, if you sort of step back and look at the pattern, like I said earlier, we John and I started out as PhD students, you don't typically go get a graduate degree to make money like you do it because you're curious about something, or you love the science. And for me, like that, that was really and still is so much of what drives me. The money has been a really fascinating kind of side effect. And we went from being grad students with no money to being entrepreneurs that had successful exit Ultimately, though, we're still doing the same things we were doing 20 years ago, which is tinkering around and building things and having fun, in that sense. So now, like, money makes a lot of other things in life a lot easier. You're not stressing about your house payments and things like that. And in some sense, it lets you kind of be in that same mode that we were in when we were in our early 20s. So anyway, that's kind of my reflections on that whole side of things.

David Novak 53:03

Yeah, you and your wife, hope started the Biswas Family Foundation in 2023 what's the larger mission that you and hope are pursuing?

Sanjit Biswas 53:14

The Family Foundation is something we've it's kind of the side project, but it's a reflection of our interests. So my wife is an infectious disease epidemiologist. That's a profession not a lot of people had heard of until 2020, and now everybody knows what an epidemiologist does. So she's kind of got a public health background. I have an interest in, like I said, engineering and AI and so on. So what we're doing with the foundation is at that intersection of AI and health, this idea that, you know, with the newer technologies that are coming out, it may be possible for everyone to have a doctor in their pocket. It may be possible to discover entirely new therapies and treatments, whether it's for cancer or other kinds of disease, using a lot of data. So we're helping fund ideas that are kind of high risk, high reward, and not in the lab science kind of mad scientist way, but more of like, well, could an AI really detect, you know, that form of cancer just from imagery, or from, you know, an ECG or something like that. So that's a lot of what we're doing right now is helping seed fund a lot of these kind of ideas that are on the frontiers of science that could ultimately have a huge impact for human

David Novak 54:24

health. Oh, that's really powerful. And thank you, and hope for really focusing on that, and really appreciate that. You know, I'm curious, Sanjit, you know, how do you lead at home

Sanjit Biswas 54:36

in terms of keeping the kids on on track or

David Novak 54:38

or just leading? You know you've got to you've got a partner, and hope you've got your kids. I mean, when you come home, what's your leadership philosophy? Or do you have one?

Sanjit Biswas 54:48

Well, for us, we've got pretty young kids. They're elementary school age, so a lot of it is being present, which, as a CEO, there's always demands on your time, right? Like. Someone's always sending you a message, or, once you put, you know, respond to an email or something. So I try to really make a big effort to be present as a leader at home and then again, engage, right? So hear what's going on in the kids world. Like fourth grade is way more complicated than I remember, by the way, right? Like there's lots of relationships and interactions and things they're learning there's no substitute for being present in that way. Like it's not something that you know your spouse can tell you, okay, like there's something really special about being there. So for me, it's about the same way that I lead at work, which is showing up on the front lines. I like to show up on the front lines even with the kids

David Novak 55:40

you know, you mentioned at Stanford, you took a Zen Buddhism course, you know. And you mentioned being present is, you know, do you spend time on the idea of spiritual growth and being present and focusing on the now? Is that, you know? Where does that fit in your

Sanjit Biswas 55:57

life? Yeah, I do. I think it's just even that awareness of it now, like you could, you have people who go become monks and spend all their time focusing on that. That's not a kind of place I am in life right now. But for me, this idea of sort of being present in the now is really important. And then also, something else I took away from the Zen practice is this idea of beginner's mind, which, the longer you sort of do a job, whether it's being a parent or, you know, being a CEO or being a founder, the easier it is to kind of fall onto old habits, right? Like, oh, I can kind of do this in my sleep. There's something really special when you're fully present and when you approach things with a complete beginner's mind. And I try to make sure I do that as often as I can. It's not the easiest thing to do, but it actually kind of like opens up your thinking

David Novak 56:48

quite a lot. So what do you what do you see as your unfinished business? Now? Sanjeev

Sanjit Biswas 56:54

unfinished business? Well, I think my mom would tell you my academic research career is still unfinished business because I never finished the PhD. I think I'm, I'm firmly over that, especially because that research is like, 20 years old, but, but for me, the unfinished business is like, I just feel like there's not enough hours in the day if you want to read and be curious. And so something I still do every night is I, I try to get a couple of pages of reading in because there's always something that you kind of want to tug on, the threat of

David Novak 57:24

last question here, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

Sanjit Biswas 57:29

Well, I would say, just do it right. You have an idea of what it means to be a better leader. Start operating that way. And that's actually, it's easy to say, but it's hard to do, because sometimes you get sort of racked with anxiety of like, Should I do it this framework or that framework? A lot of it's kind of a gut feel. And again, you kind of learn by doing. So for me, the advice I'd give that person is, dive in. Just go for it. Well,

David Novak 57:56

I have to tell you, shanji, after reading about you and watching a lot of things that you've done, and hearing your thoughts on business, I knew I would have a lot of fun with this conversation, and I want to thank you for your time. Want to thank you for what you're doing in the world to make the world a better place. And you're one heck of a guy. Oh,

Sanjit Biswas 58:18

thank you, David, thanks for having me on

David Novak 58:22

you. Great leaders move fast and scale smart. But what sets Sanjit apart is how closely he pays attention. He doesn't assume he's got the answers, but he watches and he listens, and because of that big eyes big ears mentality. He finds the problems that actually need solving, and that's the takeaway here, big eyes, big ears. And it isn't just a catchy phrase, it's a discipline, it's a curious mindset, and it's a great way to become more innovative and customer focus. So this week, find one place to observe more and talk less, sit in on a customer service call, Shadow your team in the field, ask your frontline people what's working and what's not, because when you pay closer attention to what's really happening, you get the kind of insights that can take your business and your leadership to the next level. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders lead with big eyes and big ears coming up next on how leaders lead, you're going to want to fasten your seat belts and make sure your tray table is in its full upright and locked position, because I'm talking with Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines. So be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be.

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