Grit

When Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman and his co-founders opened their second-ever store, it was a “complete mess.” Located in Washington D.C.’s Dupont Circle and opening in the middle of the Great Recession, it was clearing less than $1000 per day at first. But Neman & co turned that crisis into opportunity the only way three 23-year-olds knew how: They bought a big speaker, started blasting music in the park, and turned their sleepy storefront into a party. That desperate play underscored one of Sweetgreen’s core values that they still work towards today: Healthy living can be fun.

In this episode, Jonathan and Joubin discuss Sweetgreen’s new office, its new tofu, avocado volatility, frozen yogurt, Persian families, the power of capitalism, the “House of Equilibrium,” the problem with franchising, healthy music festivals, scalable brands, people-driven companies, giving workers equity, “Behind the Greens,” overachievers, building a better McDonalds, and “conscious achievers.”

In this episode, we cover:

• Where the name Sweetgreen came from (05:42)
• Online ordering and the “second line” (08:34)
• Jonathan’s family and post-COVID attitudes about work (11:30)
• Returning to the office (17:20)
• Jonathan’s brief detour to Bain & Company, and the difference between entrepreneurs and consultants (20:58)
• The unusual way Sweetgreen raised its first several rounds, and scaling sustainably (27:00)
• Turning crisis into opportunity, and the Sweetlife Festival (33:10)
• Winning your category vs. becoming a lifestyle brand (37:40)
• Why Sweetgreen calls the general managers of its stores “head coaches,” and gives them equity (44:20)
• The health journeys of Sweetgreen’s staff, and the importance of the fundamentals (47:24)
• Shifting Sweetgreen’s strategic focus to build the restaurant company of the future (53:09)
• COVID-19 and “getting your ass kicked” (55:05)
• Letting go as a founder (59:51)

Links:

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

For more than 10 years, AOL co-founder and Revolution Chairman Steve Case has been investing in startups in all corners of the US — and urging others to do the same. His new book about this movement, The Rise of the Rest, explains why: The next wave of the tech industry, he argues, is not going to be anchored to physical offices in Silicon Valley alone. “The pandemic has created more attention on that,” he says. “That dispersion that started a decade ago accelerated over the last couple years ... people will be intrigued by the level of innovation happening in these cities.”

In this episode, Steve and Joubin discuss changing attitudes toward young CEOs, the future of entrepreneurship across the US, the benefits of not being headquartered in Silicon Valley, investing in startups around the world, integrating technology into other systems, revolutions as evolutions, delegating paranoia, shifting one’s mindset as CEO, the missing killer app for blockchain, the commercialization of the internet, the 50th anniversary of communism in China, “the worst merger of all time,” and how AOL almost bought eBay.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Steve got demoted as CEO of AOL before it went public (04:55)
• His new book, The Rise of the Rest, and his previous book, The Third Wave (11:08)
• Democratizing capital for startups across America — and flying on Air Force One (18:43)
• America’s entrepreneurial success “didn’t happen by accident” (22:36)
• AOL’s early market motions and the resurgence of the “business person” in tech (25:16)
• The earliest days of online computer services pre-AOL (29:13)
• Steve’s entrepreneurial origins and believing in the potential of the internet (35:20)
• A short-lived Apple partnership in the 1980s, and the invention of “America Online” (39:49)
• Being a shock absorber for the rest of the company (44:28)
• The difficulty of scaling AOL and betting big on community over content (48:54)
• AOL and Time Warner’s notorious merger, and Steve’s tactical decision to step down as CEO (56:08)
• The aftermath of his resignation: “It was frustrating to go from leading to watching” (01:03:25)
• Managing a family in tandem with a fast-scaling startup (01:07:54)

Links:

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

Intuit co-founder Scott Cook still remembers the first line of an email he received in 1994 from [email protected]: “This really is Bill Gates.” Intuit’s personal finance product Quicken had survived being crushed by Microsoft Money, and its new accounting software Quickbooks was thriving as well; instead of competing, Gates wanted to buy Intuit for $1.5 billion and take it worldwide. A deal was struck, hands were shook, but there was just one problem: The U.S. Department of Justice.

In this episode, Scott and Joubin discuss finding happiness in your career, who Scott aspired to emulate when he was a young CEO, recruiting for excellence, the radical decision to make Quicken easy to use, the power of paradigms, pulling out of the death spiral, the “oncoming train” of Microsoft, United States v. Microsoft Corp., stepping back from a leadership role, what Scott learned from his successor Bill Campbell, and investing in Snapchat.

In this episode, we cover:

• Allocating your time for both family and work (07:05)
• Working with Meg Whitman, Steve Ballmer, and other future stars (11:11)
• How Scott recruited his co-founder Tom Proulx, and other key figures at Intuit (15:32)
• Why more than two dozen venture capital firms refused to invest in Intuit (24:03)
• How Wells Fargo kept Intuit alive at its most desperate hour (33:00)
• The impact of Intuit’s struggle on Scott’s personal life, and going direct to consumers (37:45)
• Scott’s history with Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr (42:34)
• Quicken vs. Microsoft Money in an era when Microsoft crushed every competitor (45:31)
• Microsoft’s attempt to buy Intuit, and the antitrust lawsuit that sunk it all (54:32)
• Stepping down as CEO of Intuit and recruiting the “trillion-dollar coach,” Bill Campbell (01:02:00)
• How Scott met Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel and became one of his first investors (01:12:30)

Links:

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

Productboard founder and CEO Hubert Palan has made a point of studying the communication style of other leaders, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Elon Musk. But as the boss of a hot and growing tech startup, he’s realizing just how exceptional those people are. “You’re interviewing some of the top execs from companies are the Silicon Valley darling brands,” he says. “You leave the interview like, ‘This person has no idea what they’re doing. They just happen to be in the right spot at the right time.’” But that’s the necessary price, he explains, of doing something innovative instead of iterating on old ideas.

In this episode, Hubert and Joubin are joined by Kleiner Perkins partner and Productboard investor Ilya Fushman to discuss Christmas carp, entrepreneurial soft skills, extreme frugality, VCs-as-bosses, the unique reason Hubert went vegetarian, studying famous speeches, being self-critical, the truth about “killing it” in tech, mis-hiring, selling outside your target customer segment, and why Hubert schedules everything.

In this episode, we cover:

• How Hubert and Ilya conducted due diligence on each other (08:49)
• How Productboard drives revenue generation for modern companies (14:12)
• The wild fluctuations of the “founder mood meter” (20:00)
• The value of knowing how hard being a founder will be (28:25)
• Tough quarters and being transparent with your board (34:35)
• Holding oneself accountable vs. “showing what’s possible” (38:30)
• The risk of losing the mission as companies scale (43:15)
• Going upmarket is like running a new business (51:08)
• Hubert’s economic survey of Productboard’s board (57:39)
• Making time for your personal life (59:29)

Links:

• Connect with Hubert
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Ilya
  • 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

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon believes his company is perfectly positioned for the world economy of the future, connecting everything from phones to exercise bikes to cars. And he predicts we’re about to see AI-assisted cars  deployed at a “mass scale.” Fully autonomous vehicles, he concedes, will take longer — perhaps 5 or 10 years — but he says it’s in everyone’s interest to make an intermediate level of assisted driving available in every vehicle on the highway, not just premium cars like Teslas.

In this episode, Cristiano and Joubin discuss Cristiano’s brief diversion away from Qualcomm in venture capital, connecting smart devices, endurance and reinvention, growing up in Brazil, work-life balance, self-driving cars and vintage sports cars, making the “Star Wars hologram” real, digital twins, and introversion vs. extroversion.

In this episode, we cover:

• The semiconductor supply chain, and manufacturing chips in the US & EU (10:00)
• Why Qualcomm is in the “gladiator business” (14:30)
• Making time for your family and your health (18:57)
• Measuring Qualcomm in two-year and ten-year cycles (21:28)
• The incremental steps from today’s assisted driving to fully autonomous cars (24:41)
• Virtual reality, augmented reality, smart glasses, and the metaverse (30:31)
• Cristiano’s time demands and the difference between impatience and being in a hurry (36:41)
• Loving your job and making space for everything else (40:38)

Links:

• Connect with Cristiano
  • 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

“When I grew up in Bangalore, I’d never seen a computer,” says Thomas Kurian. The former president of Oracle, now the CEO of Google Cloud, remembers learning how to write while sitting outside his childhood home, and doing homework by candlelight during power blackouts. He credits his “trailblazer” mother, who instilled curiosity and discipline in all her children, with helping them understand the value of education beyond doing well on the next test. Something must have stuck, because Thomas is not the only Kurian in a major leadership position in Silicon Valley; his twin brother, George, is the CEO of NetApp. 

In this episode, Thomas and Joubin discuss how he accidentally got into computer programming, giving children the freedom to be curious, how to order a sandwich, leading 60 software acquisitions, knowing your own value-add, innovation through experimentation, investing in the future, and being competitor-aware and customer-obsessed.

In this episode, we cover:

• Thomas’ childhood in India (03:45)
• His twin brother George — the CEO of NetApp — and their trailblazing mother (07:40)
• Nostalgia for simpler times without responsibilities (14:03)
• Working up the ranks at Oracle, from product manager to president (21:40)
• The Google Cloud opportunity (30:12)
• How to succeed inside a huge organization (32:38)
• The big difference between Oracle and Google Cloud in 2019 (39:35)
• The “mother of God” opportunity of the cloud (42:35)
• The advice Thomas gives to other CEOs (48:25)

Links:

• Connect with Thomas
  • 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

After Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr first invested in Google — $12.8 million for 13 percent of the company — he told co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin that they needed to hire a CEO to help them build the business. After they took meetings with a variety of successful tech execs, they came back to Doerr and told him “We’ve got some good news and some bad news.” The good news was that they agreed on the need for a CEO; the bad news, Doerr recalls, is that they believed there was only one person qualified for the role: The then-CEO of Pixar and interim CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs. 

In the 100th episode of Grit, John and Joubin discuss the urgent need to act on the climate crisis, getting turned down by Kleiner Perkins, CEOs as sales leaders, the microprocessor revolution, balancing between work and family, the opportunity of AI and sustainability, what makes Jeff Bezos special, Bing Gordon and the invention of Amazon Prime, the Google CEO search, how the iPhone nearly killed Apple, Steve Jobs’ greatest gift, Bill Gates’ philanthropy, and how Doerr divides his time.

In this episode, we cover:

• John’s two books — Measure What Matters and Speed & Scale — and applying OKRs to the climate crisis (02:45)
• How John got to Silicon Valley and what he learned from his entrepreneurial father, Lou (09:00)
• “I didn’t want to be in venture capital” (16:28)
• Joining Kleiner Perkins at the dawn of personal computing (20:05)
• The internet, cloud computing, smartphones, and the next big tech wave: AI (24:53)
• How John met Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (29:48)
• Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and teaming up with Mike Moritz from Sequoia (38:29)
• John’s friendship with Steve Jobs and the creation of the $100 million iFund for iPhone apps (45:20)
• “Family first” and setting personal OKRs (50:14)
• Working with Bill Gates outside of Kleiner Perkins (52:53)
• Brian Roberts, Comcast, and hustling to make at-home broadband nationwide (59:30)

Links:

• Connect with John
  • 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

Touch The Top CEO Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to summit Mount Everest, climbs hundreds of mountains every year. And he’s learned over the years that sometimes, the smartest thing to do in the face of adversity is stop, turn around, and go home; but in other situations, like an unexpectedly icy day climbing Mount Kenya, one only has to change their approach. “The mountain doesn’t care, the mountain’s not gonna change,” he says. “We could still maybe get to the summit, even though the mountain gave us absolute, unforeseen challenges.”

In this episode, Erik and Joubin discuss climbing Mount Everest, kayaking the Grand Canyon, how Erik went blind, the “seven summits,” his relationship with his father, turning back vs. changing your approach, continually growing and scaring yourself, the Khumbu Icefall, what’s different about ice climbing, how to be OK with the small things, and what Erik learned from watching Canadian athlete Terry Fox.

In this episode, we cover:

• Are blind people’s other senses heightened?  (05:56)
• The different types of blindness and how Erik perceives the world — and dreams (09:17)
• The “double-knockout blow” of going blind and losing his mother (19:07)
• “No-mistakes moments” and pushing yourself to your limit (24:49)
• Erik’s relationship with death, and with the calm times between accomplishments (30:18)
• Needing to stand on the summit (36:31)
• Learning how to be miserable and training yourself to suffer (47:55)
• The importance of having a team you can trust with your life (52:05)
• The personal toll of climbing, and the terror of kayaking blind (55:20)
• Erik’s story’s resonance with the business community (01:00:46)
• Not letting yourself be imprisoned by fear, and realizing your full potential (01:04:06)

Links:

• Connect with Erik
  • 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

After rescuing his first startup BigMachines from the brink of bankruptcy and building it to positive cash flow, Godard Abel thought the express lane of life was opening up to him. But after the board replaced him as CEO, Godard — now the CEO of B2B tech buying firm G2 — found himself on a rocky road for 10 years. He had all the money he could want, but also overwhelming fear, anxiety, and depression. To break out of this funk, Godard says he had to embrace presence and reckon with why entrepreneurship called him.

In this episode, Godard and Joubin discuss the mental benefits of running, Silicon Valley during the dotcom boom, ex-Apple CEO John Sculley and “scale at all costs,” turning around a failing startup, a young founder’s “FU mentality,” Jim Dethmer and conscious leadership, the importance of “wallowing in the muck,” the best part about entrepreneurship, WFIO moments, and the advantage of getting older.

In this episode, we cover:

• The first company Godard co-founded, BigMachines (09:00)
• The race to IPO as soon as possible, and the “dot bomb” bubble (18:41)
• Rock bottom for BigMachines: “I felt like a massive failure every day” (23:20)
• How Godard lost the CEO job: A “Trojan horse” swap (26:55)
• Financial success and debilitating anxiety (32:30)
• Conscious leadership, being present, and embracing one’s emotions (36:12)
• Godard’s redemption: Joining, building, and selling SteelBrick (42:55)
• How often are you happy? (51:05)
• The humbling moments of starting G2, and staying an entrepreneur (53:35)

Links:

• Connect with Godard
  • 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

Mark Roberge’s first anxiety attack hit him six months after 9/11, and his second hit him in the middle of a big speech while he was an executive at HubSpot. And Roberge, who now lectures at Harvard Business School and co-founded the venture firm Stage 2 Capital, says it’s important to include that anxiety in his entrepreneurial story. “I talk about it because there is a stigma associated with it,” he says. “Society values some of the things I’ve accomplished, but when I admit to everyone that I have severe anxiety, it gives other people comfort.” 

In this episode, Mark and Joubin discuss the connections between HBS and KPCB, taking the long way around to get to MIT, Mark’s first company PawSpot, the meteoric rise of HubSpot, why it decided to zag when all the competition was moving upstream, being pigeonholed inside of big companies, what to say to reps who are trying to leave, extreme anxiety attacks, escaping to the gym, whether Mark would encourage his sons to work in tech, why customer retention matters more than revenue growth, becoming a VC, and why the best plan can be not having a plan.

In this episode, we cover:

• Mark’s first sales job — selling $2000 vacuum cleaners — and what he learned from his sales coach father (06:45)
• How he met and started working with HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah (10:24)
• Should you hire more sales reps, or incentivize existing reps to work harder? (19:40)
• Why established players can’t embrace product-led growth as quickly as smaller competitors (27:19)
• The stress of chasing a number and why “it’s always a grind” (36:03)
• Struggling with — and talking about — anxiety (41:01)
• Making time exercise and family dinners during the HubSpot journey (46:29)
• The reasons why someone might not want to join a startup (50:25)
• Ex-Shopify exec Loren Padelford’s big question for Mark (55:28)
• Do MBA programs “get” what’s happening in the tech sector? (59:54)
• Why Mark decided to get into venture capital with Stage 2 Capital (01:02:40)

Links:

• Connect with Mark
  • 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