Grit

Grit has never been just about business, and success is not a vaccine against stress, anxiety, or depression. On today’s special episode, Joubin looks back at nine past interviews and the advice shared by guests who have been through difficult personal challenges. You can find links to the full interviews these clips came from below.

In this episode: 

• CCO Forter, Ozge Ozcan on burning out like a phoenix and the “dark side” of grit (01:05)
• CMO Samsara, Sarah Patterson on the value of being vulnerable — and specific — with your employees (06:14)
• Co-Founder & CEO Clari, Andy Byrne on his “dark year” and reframing big problems as moments in time (11:00)
• Former CRO at Notion, Olivia Nottebohm on accountability, empathy, and what people will remember when you’re dead (21:28)
• Former CRO at HubSpot, Mark Roberge on crippling anxiety attacks and the importance of finding time for your own health (28:25)
• Founder & CEO Thrive, Arianna Huffington on the growing cultural acceptance of talking about burnout, stress, and sleep (37:13)
• Co-founder of Intuit, Scott Cook on spending time with family and recording your memories (44:11)
• Former President at NetApp, Tom Mendoza on how to find out who your real friends are (49:15)
• CRO Snowflake, Chris Degnan on the motivating power of fear (55:53)

Links:

• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

SAP Executive Board Member Scott Russell used to avoid talking about his personal life with coworkers. But “we want to understand and relate to each other,” he says, and being more open has made people more willing to trust and follow him. “Authenticity, you cannot manufacture that,” Scott says. “When you’re only showing a part of who you are to your team, you’re not showing your true, authentic self.” 

In this episode, Scott and Joubin discuss European business structures, three-year contracts, creating a positive impact, informed feedback loops, maintaining a good emotional quotient, too much optimism, tough phone calls, playing the movie forward, helping your community, life balance, implicit trust and authenticity, finding new opportunities, considering other points of view, and speedboats vs. load-bearers.

In this episode, we cover:

• Living around the world and away from HQ (01:05)
• Signing a three-year contract with yourself (08:09)
• The responsibility of delivering $1 billion in revenue every week (11:55)
• Getting to the truth when you’re near the top of a huge organization (14:07)
• The unintended consequences of optimism (17:11)
• Missing earnings and “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” (20:11)
• Scott’s childhood in Australia and his lifelong passion for basketball (26:21)
• Why the “work version” of Scott isn’t the best version (30:15)
• Being authentic with coworkers and how to drive outcomes in your personal life (33:53)
• The one place Scott’s family hasn’t been able to relocate happily (38:47)
• Loyalty to your work and your family (42:42)
• How competition drives better performance and keeps you honest (47:45)
• Finding discipline in your schedule and forcing yourself to relax (54:46)
• Where SAP is hiring, and Scott’s view of  potential M&A or strategic partnerships (57:08)

Links:

• Connect with Scott
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

In Silicon Valley when business is good, it's normal for top talent to hop from company to company to company. But GE's Linda Boff, described by at least one of her peers as the "Beyoncé of CMOs," has stayed at the 130-year-old conglomerate for nearly 20 years, through radical changes to the business structure, and with plans to split into three public companies on the horizon. She attributes her longevity to the fact that four out of five days of any week, she's excited to come in: "I believe in this company," Linda says. "I would have the hardest time if that went away, and it never has."

In this episode, Linda and Joubin discuss helping young people succeed, finding your passion, the 1980 Winter Olympics, Thomas Edison, Twitter advertising, sticktoitiveness, being excited for work, being impatient, trying to please everybody, and calendar time management.

In this episode, we cover:

• How a chance encounter with Video Monitoring Systems founder Robert Cohen changed Linda's life (03:17) 
• Where Linda's work ethic came from, and her serial internships (06:21)
• Elon Musk and brand safety on Twitter (12:47) 
• Why Linda has worked at GE for almost 20 years, and how it became an "industrial powerhouse" (15:22) 
• Choosing to stay and giving a shit (21:40) 
• How much should you love your job? (25:57) 
• If she were starting over, what would Linda do differently? (32:09) 
• Getting the truth & what other people think (34:38) 
• Linda's calendar and writing thank-you notes to coworkers (38:55)

Links:

• Connect with Linda
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada has mixed feelings about how she is often portrayed in the press, as a “badass woman CEO.” The scarcity of female executives in enterprise means that it’s often the first thing anyone wants to talk about — not her performance leading a $2 billion company, or her team. She has specifically designed that team to include more under-represented people like her, so that she is not “the only one in the room” — but one executive team isn’t enough. “In my peer group, there’s still not enough Hayden Browns, there’s not enough Yamini Rangans, there’s not enough Safra Katzes,” Jennifer says. “And that is a failing of the industry.”

In this episode, Jennifer and Joubin discuss IPO chasers, the P&G Mafia, reward-centered leadership, participation trophies, serving others in a crisis, working women, plate spinning, perfect girl syndrome, unconscious bias, competitive offshore yacht racing, disconnecting from work, “re-finders,” interrupt work, consistent high standards, beginner’s mind, talent identification, weird but beloved brand names, and dealing with grief.

In this episode, we cover:

• The good side of market corrections, and investing in people (00:58)
• Learning how to fail and where Jennifer’s work ethic came from (05:28)
• Her father’s death and how she adjusts “when shit hits the fan” (13:03)
• Recognizing your own limits and working for your family (17:43)
• The double-edged sword of being a visible female CEO (23:13)
• Taking a break from your career to work on yourself (28:42)
• Identity in Silicon Valley and getting put in a box (35:09)
• How Jennifer got to PagerDuty and delivering value to customers (40:17)
• PagerDuty’s IPO in the middle of a major pivot (45:23)
• Responsibility overload and self-criticism (49:36)
• Founder-led companies and the advantages of being a “re-finder” (52:55)
• PagerDuty’s transition from one product to many (57:56)
• The “unfathomable loss” of Phylicia “PJ” Jones and being vulnerable with coworkers (1:00:36)
• Why grit is a requirement for success (01:06:52)

Links:

• Connect with Jennifer
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected]
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

When DVx Ventures co-founder Jon McNeill joined Tesla in 2015, he told his new boss Elon Musk: “You won’t see me at least a day a week.” That’s because Jon believes the job of any leader is to make time to talk to front-line workers who know things executives don’t. While he was at Tesla he spent 20% of his time in service centers, support centers, or in retail stores, asking the people who worked there the same question: “If you had had my job for a day, what are the two things you would do to make this place better?”

In this episode, Jon and Joubin discuss serial entrepreneurship, growing up without money, road trips, horizontal and vertical mentors, “our generation’s Da Vinci,” first-principles thinking, sleeping in the factory, solving problems together, accelerometers, sharing bad news, the similarities between Lululemon and Tesla, “perfect product,” cash-incinerating businesses, transitioning legacy companies, and the Sutter Hill method.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Elon Musk bought Twitter and how he’s running it, two weeks in (03:46)
• How Jon’s father nudged him into an entrepreneurial mindset (06:12)
• Building an intentional, present  relationship with your family (10:15)
• What Jon learned from Intuit co-founder Scott Cook (15:55)
• How he got to Tesla, and learned how to work with Elon (18:55)
• The east Asia trip that birthed Neuralink and The Boring Company (24:56)
• Ramping up demand for the Tesla Model S and the “manufacturing hell” of the Model X (29:54)
• Solving problems under pressure and Jon’s hack for staying sane (35:57)
• Recruiting world-class talent (41:05)
• What Jon asked Elon before joining Tesla (45:37)
• “Make them talk about you at dinner” (50:47)
• Simplifying things is an unfair advantage (54:27)
• What frontline workers know, and Jon’s 20% rule (57:08)
• Lyft’s “arms race” with Uber and what DVx’s companies do differently (1:00:36)
• How Jon got to be on the board of GM (1:08:00)

Links:

• Connect with Jon
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Health monitoring company Whoop, founded and led by CEO Will Ahmed, hid a secret message on the circuitboard of its latest wearable device. “It says, ‘Don’t bother copying us, we will win,’” Will says. “And it also has every engineer who worked on Whoop 4.0’s initials.” For more than 10 years, Whoop has attracted fans from world-famous athletes to everyday consumers, and its deep-pocketed rivals have noticed. After financing talks with Amazon fell apart, “they just directly ripped us off” and made a copycat product called the Amazon Halo. “We were energized by it and we were kinda like, ‘OK, bring it on,’” Will says.

In this episode, Will and Joubin discuss sounding relatable, only children, Persian taarof, Michael Jordan’s birthday party, why measuring sleep is more important than measuring steps, overcoming doubt, understanding sleep, 24/7 wearables, the sleep leaderboard, LeBron James, Will’s wearable “hit list,” getting ripped off by Amazon, detecting COVID-19, cold showers, disassociating yourself from your business, and the misguided “Zoom craze."

In this episode, we cover: 

• Simple, clear communication (04:31)
• What Will has learned from his unique parents, and his Persian wife (08:35) 
• Checking people’s wrists and why Joubin doesn’t have a Whoop yet (15:28)
• Hanging out with sports idols (20:08)
• How Whoop got started (23:07)
• Staying confident in the face of doubters (27:59)
• How Whoop decided what to measure, and why it’s not a smartwatch (31:44)
• The $100 sleep bonus and “red recoveries" (38:07)
• Competing against Nike, Under Armour, Apple, and more (42:21)
• Pivoting to a subscription model and the impact of COVID (45:04)
• Getting ripped off by Amazon (49:11)
• How Whoop got started on COVID research early (51:29)
• Will’s everyday habits, including cold showers and meditation (57:21)
• What Whoop is hiring for, and why they are largely in-office (01:01:16)

Links:

• Connect with Will
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

As a veteran of several high-powered organizations — including McKinsey, Google, Dropbox — Notion advisor Olivia Nottebohm has learned the importance of respecting her teams’ personal journeys. She believes none of the 10 most important milestones in any person’s life will be career-related, and it’s important for leaders like her to strike a balance between accountability and empathy. “Before I need to have a tough conversation,” she says, “I try to put myself in their situation and think, ‘OK, how would I best receive something? ... [And] how is this person different from me?’”

In this episode, Olivia and Joubin discuss immigrant assimilation, the joy of learning, college vs. startups, stepping away from work, growth vs. profits vs. product, steep learning curves, working through a restructuring, collaborative creativity, what CEOs care about, community-led growth, screening for Grit, finding focus, and the only things people will remember about us when we’re gone.

In this episode, we cover:

• Olivia’s parents and how she became a grammar stickler (01:00)
• Small-town ice hockey and playing with the boys (03:54)
• Why her parents didn’t want Olivia to go to Harvard, and what she wants for her own kids (08:49)
• Choosing to go into business instead of science (15:32)
• What changed for Olivia when her brother passed away unexpectedly (18:42)
• “Grow Fast or Die Slow” (24:29)
• Who doesn’t believe in growth in 2022? (31:37)
• Leaving McKinsey after making partner (35:32)
• Six years at Google and one year at Dropbox — starting right before COVID (39:34)
• How Olivia got to Notion, the crowded “all-in-one” space, and its enormous addressable market (42:36)
• The evolution of go-to-market strategies (49:43)
• Accountability, empathy, and the biggest milestones in everyone’s life (58:36)

Links:

• Connect with Olivia
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

“I literally thought to myself, I probably made the biggest mistake of my life taking this job.” That’s what Ali Ghodsi recalls about his decision step up the CEO role at Databricks, which would mean leaving a desirable post at UC Berkeley. He wasn’t sure if the company would make it, and some of Databricks’ board agreed that as an academic, he wasn’t right for the job. But they all wound up being wrong: Ali has led the company from $3 million ARR to $800 million, and the data-analytics company was valued at $38 billion after raising $2.5 billion last year.

In this episode, Ali and Joubin discuss fleeing Iran in the 1980s, immigrating to Sweden,  coding as an escape, order out of chaos, learning how to value work, right place right time, Ben Horowitz, whole genome sequencing, Turing Tests, academics as CEOs, leveling up executives, what great leaders look like, the communication needed to raise, and the problem with “data-driven” cultures. 

In this episode, we cover:

• What Ali remembers from before his family left Iran (01:00)
• Moving to Sweden and Ali’s first jobs (04:00)
• What if your wealth and privilege suddenly disappeared? (10:01)
• Finding time for family and oneself while working insane hours (14:04)
• Over-working, panic attacks, and PTSD (18:08)
• Researching cloud computing at UC Berkeley, and the start of Databricks (26:06)
• What Databricks does for companies with lots of data (31:22)
• The anxiety of competing against an incumbent as a 10-person team (36:03)
• The concerns of the Databricks board — and Ali himself — about him becoming the CEO (42:42)
• Learning from more experienced CEOs and other executives (48:27)
• Approving new hires and what Ali looks for when grilling job candidates (52:02)
• Deposits, withdrawals and how much time he spends on hiring (56:08)
• What it means to have a culture of “truth-seeking” (01:00:03)

Links:

• Connect with Ali
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Before Zscaler’s Dali Rajic arrived at his current company, he helped grow AppDynamics from $7 million in annual recurring revenue to nearly $1 billion — and for his next move, he knew he had to do something even bigger. That’s why he was excited to transition to Zscaler’s COO in February after more than two years as its CRO: “It was a job worth taking because it stretched me and it made me uncomfortable.”

In this episode, Dali and Joubin discuss the state of tech M&A, the meaning of wealth and comfort, the value of hard work, being perceived as intense, going into business instead of science, inspiring your kids, bucketing how your spend your time, integrity and self-awareness, how to recognize your teammates’ contributions, injecting tension, cutting through the noise, demanding excellence of yourself, celebrating the moment, and allowing yourself to unwind.

In this episode, we cover:

• Adobe’s $20 billion acquisition of Figma, compared to Cisco’s 2017 acquisition of AppDynamics (01:18)
• What AppDynamics could have become if it hadn’t sold (08:17)
• Remembering your roots when you get a life-changing amount of money (12:26)
• Growing up in Germany, and why Dali came to the US when he was 16 (18:56) 
• Living to work and finding fulfillment (23:16)
• The old-school sales style vs. the new generation’s (26:10) 
• The unusual way Dali got hired at AppDynamics, and how he thinks about the arc of his career (30:15)
• Asking for the things you want and prioritizing your responsibilities (35:59)
• Hiring mistakes and what traits Dali looks for in candidates (45:36)
• How to turn big wins into learning moments (50:28)
• The benefits of making people “uncomfortable” in their jobs (55:23)
• Maximizing yield for individuals vs. organizations (01:01:39)
• Why Dali schedules his time off as strictly as his time on (01:08:35)

Links:

• Connect with Dali
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

“Everyone excellent at their craft starts from a place of deep insecurity,” says Flexport’s founding CRO Ben Braverman. People are “slow-burning fireworks,” he explains, and we need time to learn how to do anything well. If you lie to yourself, you won’t ever improve; but if you admit the truth and approach people who know more with genuine curiosity and enthusiasm, Ben says,  you’ll be able to level up faster and do things you never could before.

In this episode, Ben and Joubin discuss giving speeches without prep, soliciting negative feedback, genuine curiosity, dropping out of college, valuing your experience, embracing Buddhism, outside dogs vs. inside dogs, hiring with enthusiasm, “Goldilocks companies,” the secondary sales paradox, the value of exercise, building an outbound sales machine, “natural” sellers vs. fast learners, and the warning signs that 2021 venture funding was “off.”

In this episode, we cover:

• Being yourself and the pressure to be someone else in business (08:23)
• What Flexport does and how it cracked a low-tech industry (15:36)
• The advice Ben would give to his younger self: Enjoy the ride (21:09)
• How he became the founding CRO of Flexport (26:43)
• Turning on sales and hiring Justin Schafer (31:25)
• Growing from thousands in revenue to $3.3 billion (36:59)
• The trade-offs of always being on the road (40:41)
• Personal growth in the face of exponential product growth (45:30)
• Product-led growth and the magic of list construction (50:36)
• The unique way Flexport sales managers earn equity (53:29)
• How to spot the next Ben Braverman (57:26)
• The connection between excellence and insecurity (01:03:00)
• Going from operating to investing and the long window of venture (01:05:43)
• How and why both Ben and Flexport’s founding CEO Ryan Petersen stepped aside and passed the baton (01:12:08)

Links:

• Connect with Ben
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [email protected] 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm