Frank Slootman CEO of Snowflake is a billionaire businessman, individual investor, technology executive, and the chairman and CEO of Snowflake a cloud-based data storage company since 2019.

Frank has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Mr. Slootman served as CEO and President of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from around $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Prior to that, Frank served as President of the Backup Recovery Systems Division at EMC following the acquisition of Data Domain Corporation/Data Domain, Inc., where he served as the Chief Executive Officer and President, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. Snowflake’s Frank Slootman doesn’t start companies. But no CEO has a better track record of turning the ideas of others into jackpots. Now the 3x IPO veteran is exclusively sharing his playbook with his new book, Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity.

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TRANSCRIPT 

Frank Slootman

[00:04:40] Sean: Frank, welcome back to What Got You There. How are you doing?

[00:04:44] Frank: Doing great. Good to be back with you, Sean.

Frank’s Mindset 

[00:04:45] Sean: It’s great to see you. You were originally on episode 223, where we talked so much about your past. We’re going to get a lot into your Amp It Up mindset and how you’ve run some of the most successful companies there are to date, but I would love to know, is there a mindset of yours that if you could pass on to anyone starting their career, you would love to give them?

[00:05:05] Frank: Yeah. And by the way, a mindset is what it is. It’s not a philosophy or methodology. It is a state of mind. That’s exactly what it is, and the state of mind is something that is always on. So every encounter, every message, every meeting, it’s like a filter or a way you sort of perceive reality as it folds in front of you, but big advice I give to people that are starting their careers or even people that are sort of within the first 10 years of their career is don’t worry about the job, don’t worry about the title, don’t worry about the pay, don’t worry about the location. You want to join a really good company.

I use this analogy of elevators. Some elevators go up, some go down, some of them don’t move and there’s nothing you can do about it. Once you stepped into the elevator, you have surrendered yourself to the fortunes or lack there off of the elevator that you stepped into. So that job is not that important because jobs come and go but the elevator has a long-lasting impact. That choice is incredibly important. And often people have that priority reverse, where they’re focused on titles and pay and location and all these kinds of things whereas that’s not that important. 

When I look at a resume, I look at, what choices did this person make over time? It says a lot when you see a sketchy random walk resume, it just makes you question somebody’s judgment, what their temperament is, about how they do things. That’s why I say the elevator is the critical choice. You step into a good elevator, like a million bucks, no matter what your merit might be. 

[00:06:48] Sean: You’re speaking from experience though. You mentioned those hard choices. You’ve actively taken on jobs that other people would have passed on because they were too difficult. Or the scenarios were too tough to take on. And so is this mindset something you’ve always had ingrained in you?

[00:07:02] Frank: Well, I’ve been in a lot of shitty businesses. I have learned the hard way hard it is to take something that is just inherently not good. I’ve taken on businesses that were already past the end of their productive life cycle. Why would you do that? You cannot reboot a company and reinvent, all of these kinds of things. Now you’re at a level of fundamental re-invention of everything, the risk is insanely high. I had a conversation with the CEO of a very large company and he always looks at me with a puzzling look on his face and he goes like, I can’t figure you out. Do you just know how to pick them or are you a really good CEO? I say you know what? I need to be both because if I am a really good CEO and I don’t know how to pick them, I still ended up with a mediocre outcome. So that is the answer to that question. It’s like being a card player, you need a good hand at cards, not just being a good card player.

Self-improvement

[00:08:02] Sean: It’s funny thinking about you being this almost enigma. I was thinking what is behind Frank today? You’ve accomplished more than anyone could dream of in multiple lifetimes. And then I came across this line in your new book that says, “I’m less driven by career ambition than by a hunger for sports, action, excitement, teamwork, and a never-ending pursuit of self-improvement.” I would love for you to just speak about that line, that drive, never-ending pursuit of self-improvement. How do you think about that?

[00:08:28] Frank: I don’t want you to take that in a noble or idealist type of manner. It’s a personal source of satisfaction when you become the best version of yourself. Becoming the best version of yourself, you have to subject yourself to very trying circumstances like an athlete. Do you think he just become great by just showing up? You’re going to have to confront the greatest circumstances. Steel sharpens steel, that’s how you become really strong. And I actually, know more about this now because I was off for two years, between 17 and 19. And I noticed that I suffered a level of atrophy because I was no longer in the heat of the fire, on the firing line where your senses are just incredibly elevated, and your reflexes are incredibly homed. 

You start losing that when you are no longer subjected to all these signals that you’re getting when you’re in a role like this. So that’s what it is. It’s just like a quarterback, you can’t get them off the field because they’re so damn addicted to the last two seconds throwing a long ball in the end zone. It was football season right now, so it’s a good analogy. How many times did you see these guys retire, and then they come back? They can’t help themselves. They crave the action. Think about Brady, why in the world is he still in the field. Well, because he would miss it. 

[00:09:58] Sean: Absolutely. It’s this never-ending thirst for excellence.

[00:10:03] Frank: You can’t do it anymore.

[00:10:05] Sean: You’re so far in your career right now, for you when you think about that self-improvement is it just being in the arena, or are there things outside of being in the arena? Let’s just call it studying or trying to learn from other leaders that you do, or is it more like, nope, I’m jumping in the deep end and I’m going to learn to swim by experience.

[00:10:24] Frank: I attributed the book to The Man in the Arena, the 1910 speech by Theodore Roosevelt. I have known about that speech for a very long time, and it inspires me because there’s a lot of people who have opinions on things, that have commentary on things, people that don’t build anything, but kind of live off what other people are building. That was always incredibly important to me. I want to be the man in the arena. I didn’t want to be the man that had an opinion about the man in the arena. Another aspect of this is, look, I don’t want to be a consultant and I don’t want to be an investor. Of course, we’re all investors who like to invest in companies and all of that but fundamentally those are passive roles. I want us to have an active role.

[00:11:17] Sean: You’ve talked about that, plenty of investors have this pattern matching experience, but so many times they’ve never actually run a business. And so you have to be careful of who you’re listening to, and those sources that are advising you in terms of how you should lead your company.

[00:11:33] Frank: That’s why the first book that we wrote, Tape Sucks, about 12 years ago, people just understood that the content in that book came from what I call a fellow traveler. In other words, somebody who lived it over and over for years and years and years. So people read it very differently when it comes from a fellow traveler than some academic or some objective bystander who has an analysis about how the world works. So there’s a level of credibility and authenticity that you just can’t get from anybody else, other than a fellow traveler or somebody that has lived your exact life, the anxiety, the trials, and tribulations, the terror, all that.

Organize & Develop a Strong Team

[00:12:19] Sean: I’m wondering for you as this major public company, CEO, what goes on behind the scenes for you that most people just aren’t aware of? What’s consuming your energy, your thinking because there are so many things that you have to have a pulse on to run a company like Snowflake.

[00:12:35] Frank: Well, don’t make yourself crazy because if you want to run a company and you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off, you’ll not last long. So the first order of business is to; a) get organized and b) develop an incredibly strong team. And when I say team it is not just the people that directly report to me, the team just permeates throughout the entire company, every country, every market, and so on, because if I’m needed every second of the day we have a real problem. 

I run the company in such a way that I can be gone for six months and we would never miss a beat. That’s how I operate. That is my mindset. That also forced me down a level of luxury that I have people that are much better than I am at doing what they do. And this is the way it should be. If I’m the best at everything, we have a real problem. But then I can also think much more strategically, much more abstract, at a much more high level rather than I’m buried so deep into the details that I have no perspective left. 

Now that said, I traversed during the day from the highest level to the lowest levels. I’m involved in individual transactions, and individual customers. I have dinner tonight with a big bank CEO. I do go the whole spectrum from the most granular to the least granular. And I like that. That is one of the great things about a job. Everything is my business and nothing is my business. I can be anywhere, I show up in any country in any meeting, that’s what’s so great about it. You can be like a free safety. You’re all over the field tackling the guy who comes from the secondary.

[00:14:14] Sean: I love it. You pull on analogies from so many different domains. It’s clear, you’ve got such a great understanding. I’m intrigued though, you mentioned just being that lateral abstract thinker CEO, which is much different than a functional executive, and I’m wondering were you always like that? Or did you almost have to cross this threshold of confidence in yourself to be that abstract lateral thinker CEO? Or is that something that from day one, that’s how you were, that’s how you operated?

[00:14:40] Frank: Yeah, that is the way I was from day one. And quite honestly, I wasn’t that good as a functional operative, I wouldn’t have been a good engineer. I wouldn’t have been a good finance guy, even though I’m dangerous in these fields because I was well educated and all those kinds of things, but I’m not a functional vision type of a person. Another football analogy, I have peripheral vision. I look all over the field, up, down sideways on every vector. That is my natural inclination. That’s just the way I am. 

Recommendations for Other CEOs

[00:15:13] Sean: I’m wondering with that, are there things you’d recommend to other lateral thinking CEOs in terms of how they can be better just from that high-level mindset?

[00:15:23] Frank: Yeah. If you don’t have it, you have to force yourself into that mode of thinking and expose yourself to content and people that are that way. You need to seek it out. The problem is often that people sort of gravitate towards where they’re good, where they’re comfortable as opposed to where they need to be. Often people ask me, what kind of a CEO are you? They want to stick a label on me. 

And the reality is I’m the CEO that the situation requires me to be. I always say that to my people. And by the way, that changes over time in the journey as well. I become what I need to be at this juncture, at this company, at this moment in time. So, forget labels. There is no label because they will change, and I just morph into what the situation dictates. Again, I use the word situational a lot because so much of what we do is situational.

[00:16:18] Sean: I had a high-level executive in the data space reach out to me. He knew you were coming back on and he had a question about handling the future. And I was like, you need to understand, Frank is so adaptable and flexible. No matter what is going to come next, he’s built the foundation, and framework that he can move and evolve and adapt to that, as opposed to those new situations that come at you, most people just try to tackle the situation.

It’s like, you get to the first principle of what it is you need to handle any situation that comes your way. I just think that’s such a crucial point. And one that I love, I just love these foundational skillsets, mindsets that you’ve had over time. And I love the story in your book, actually talking about your dad, one of the days when you were a janitor. Do you know what story I’m talking about that shaped your relentless drive for just betterment?

[00:17:04] Frank: I still remember that story. That’s why I wrote about us in the book because that level of frustration at a young age is very formative. 

Empowerment for Driver-type Personalities

[00:17:15] Sean: I would love for you to tell the story and then how that shaped you.

[00:17:18] Frank: I was 16 years old cleaning toilets in a very large factory of like thousand people working there. And I would cycle through every toilet between nine to five. And I had a supervisor, an ordinary guy, who would five o’clock in the afternoon say, “look at this bathroom over here”. And I go like, yeah, I hit that at nine o’clock this morning, what do you think happens during the day? I’m 16 years old, and I’m just almost incredulous that the guy would criticize me on that. So I get home that night and said to my dad, that guy is a real idiot. I certainly had a way with words, even back then in my language.

And he was like, yeah, those are the people that you’ll be working for if you don’t get better grades. And I’m like, God, that’s a scary vision that those are the kinds of people I will be working for when I’m all grown up and out of the house, that’s a nightmarish scenario. And quite honestly, I talk about this in the book as well. My career didn’t take off until I got my first CEO job, and I talk about the reasons why that is. That’s because my natural reflexes and instincts were exactly what people want from me. So it was a match from my natural disposition and temperament. 

Whereas all the years that went before, people always felt they needed to negate my natural instincts and reflexes because I exerted too much ownership and I was too far out front and, it appears I might’ve overstepped the bound here and there, everywhere. I talk about the lack of empowerment for driver-type personalities. It’s a huge problem. So one-on-one we hire drivers, my big thing is I’m going to unleash them. Okay. I’m going to let them run wild, not to the level of dysfunction. 

I always say you need wild ducks, but wild ducks also need to be able to fly information. That’s another way of thinking about it, but you have to empower strong people that by the way, is what motivates them. You want to turn them loose rather than sort of put a tight box around them where they can only do so much. You want to fully maximize their potential, not limit it.

AMP IT UP Framework

[00:19:30] Sean: We’re going to get into maximizing people’s potential, which is part of your AMP IT UP framework, which is the title of your new book, which I think is exceptional. I want to know about the evolution of this AMP IT UP framework. So we were talking about football. I know you’re a huge admirer like myself of Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks. The thing I found interesting about Pete Carrol is he didn’t start winning, and this is when he went to USC, until he developed his coaching philosophy, similar to your AMP IT UP framework. And he got that from John Wooden and John didn’t win a championship until he sat down and contextualized his thinking. So I’d love to know how the evolution of your AMP IT UP framework took place.

[00:20:09] Frank: It’s a very good question. I always have a word of caution for people that say, look, I want to just follow you around for a weekend and see what you do. And I always tell people, don’t try to be me. Do not try to be me. You need to become you, whatever the best version of you is. That is what you need to strive for. And by the way, struggle is the most formative aspect of that. That is how you become who you are meant to become. So that’s why I always say embrace struggle because it’s there for a reason you need struggle, that’s how you become the person that you need to become. 

And if you avoid being closer to the strain, if you avoid being where the shit hits the fan, then you’re not developing. You’re not learning, you’re not becoming the person that you’re supposed to be. You learn over time. And in my particular case, I learned fairly early on that if you are insanely focused and driven and relentless about pursuing what you do, everything will give way in the process. Once you figure out that you cannot be stopped, by sheer effort, determination, resourcing, focus, then you start applying it to everything, and all of a sudden everything gives way. 

Over time everything gives way. And these are personal sorts of discoveries that all of a sudden become your MO. You’re like, hell, I’m approaching everything that way because that works. You do what works. You stop doing what doesn’t work.

[00:21:41] Sean: You mentioned that you have to go through those challenging times. One of the funny things is there are all these people that like ourselves, are obsessed with growth and development, and when these hard times come and we kind of shy away from, and it’s like, why the hell are you spending all this time working in developing these skills? It’s like an athlete, there are 30 seconds left, Brady wants the ball every time because he spent his life developing these skills. The same thing in the business arena, when you get challenges, unleash the skills you’ve worked on and that’s just something you’ve embodied. And so we talk about the AMP-IT-UP process.

I would love to dive specifically into these, the five steps in the AMP IT UP process: 

• raise your standards

• align your people

• sharpen your focus

• pick up the pace

• transform your strategy. 

I would love to start with raising your standards. And I know you admire Steve Jobs and he had that line, “it’s either insanely great or total shit.” And I would just like to know for you as the leader, the CEO, what do you do instantaneously upon entering a new scenario where you just raise those standards just like an overall step function improvement?

[00:22:36] Frank: Well, whenever the conversation is at hand, first of all, I’m trying to determine, do I like this? Do I not like this? But then I want to know what the group thinks or the person who is presenting something. What do you think? How excited are you? Why? Sometimes you find yourself in a conversation where everybody’s kind of lukewarm to an idea I’m like, as long as we’re lukewarm, we’re not going to do anything until we are bursting with excitement because we’re going to conquer the world or some other insanely great vision of the world. 

We want to do things that get us out of bed in the morning. We want to do insanely great things. Because if not, we’re just dragging ourselves through the day, checking boxes, trying to get things off our desk, being passable, which is the worst words in the English language. I always have the standard of excitement, enthusiasm. This is cool as opposed to it’s good enough or it’s okay. In other words that passable standard is very common in organizations. People are just kind of trying to do things that make them not fail that make them not get fired, as opposed to I want to reach for something special here.

And by the way, that is cultural and that can be taught and it can be learned and it can become an attitude and the mindset that everybody can embrace, because it’s much more fun, it’s much more energizing. It’s just how you want to be when you get through the day. Where you’re just engaged, you’re fully in the zone, as opposed to, I’m just trying to get the hell out of here because I’m tired of them, and I need a drink.

[00:24:22] Sean: You’re not going to get into that absolute zone flow state, if you’re just like you said, operating lukewarm water and until it hits 212 degrees Fahrenheit that water is not going to boil. And so I’m wondering, are the majority of companies and leaders, are their standards just way too low? They don’t set inspiring enough visions for their people, is that one of the key things here then?

[00:24:44] Frank: They’re trying to be respectable, they’re trying to be safe, trying not to get fired. One of the things I talk about in this book is this whole notion of incrementalism, which is one of the worst things in the world where people take the current situation as a given, and then we’re going to sort of inch our way forward from that style. It’s exhausting because what if we didn’t have the status quo? Well, what if there was nothing? Because there are people out there who think that way because they don’t have anything right there. They’re trying to invent the future, by the way, that’s what Snowflake did. They had nothing, they reimagined and redesigned the future of data operations and data management.

Those people are incredibly dangerous, as now has been proven. So why wouldn’t we think that way? Forget what we already know, what we already do. We have a clean sheet of paper, what would we do? And now you get all the juices flowing and you get the engagement, and then you can start working back to the present from your future state that you just envisioned for yourself. That leads to very different outcomes, very different approaches, and that’s really what you want. Let’s be 2% better than we were last year. It’s just exhausting to even talk about it.

Accelerating People in their Careers

[00:26:00] Sean: You mentioned being able to see that future state, that’s something you do extremely well. And you’ve said to me in the past, there’s a huge gap between the embryonic stage, where things are to where they can become. And you seem to be able to see those things in the future. Is there anything you’ve done over time to see the potential, both in the companies you’re involved with, but also the people? You do a hell of a job accelerating people in their careers.

[00:26:23] Frank: The reality is that this is people’s natural state. I just have learned that somewhere along the way. And so what you do is you want to change their perspective and say, look, forget what you know, let’s go rethink. And once people pick up that sense, you can’t shut them down anymore because they have that crazy look in their eyes where they want to do something insanely great. Now they’re on a different plane. And if you don’t enable it or empower them, then they’re going to go somewhere else because you can’t put them back in the box. 

Especially people that come from big companies, they want to replicate their MO from the prior company because that’s their comfort zone, that’s their comfort level, however inappropriate that may be for the current conditions. I remember hiring people out of SAP many years ago and we were a very small company and then they want to implement SAP-style programs. I’m like, you’re not thinking, we’re not SAP. We can’t even hold a candle to SAP. Why on earth would you act as if you were at SAP. In other words, again, everything is situational. There’s an appropriate way of doing things for companies in a certain situation, a certain state of development, rather than kind of mindlessly replicating what I did in my last job.

[00:27:47] Sean: You’ve such done such a good job in entering the scenarios and even let’s call it when you came into Snowflake as the CEO, and you’ve gotten everyone to shift and maybe I’m wrong there, but you’ve got everyone rowing in the same direction which is such an incredibly impressive and monumental task. Is there something that you do differently? I feel like this is one of those things where it seems so hard to teach and it’s got to be an embodiment, but I’m wondering since you came in with very few numbers of employees, who’ve been with you in the past how do you get that tidal wave shift in the entire company?

[00:28:22] Frank: The most important thing is, contrary to popular belief, I’m not a command and control guy. I’m not somebody that takes the tablets down the mountain and tells people, you do what I tell you, or else, that is not the way I operate. I‘m a full-blown team collaborator, a facilitator. I bring people together. We are highly lateral and network as opposed to following an org chart and the org chart almost doesn’t exist in our company. That is important because people operate through influence, not through rank and title. We have a saying, we always go direct.

In other words, when you want to do something, you find a person in whatever part of the organization, where they live, you just go directly to them. It doesn’t matter whether you outrank them or under rank them, whether you’re a peer, none of that matters. All those organizations’ constructs are there for a reason, but they don’t matter. We are one giant team and we work in a full network manner, and people will engage with you to the extent that you have influence that they think you are authoritative and impactful. And that’s really what you want. 

You want people who have influence, who are impactful. You don’t want people to have influence who just have a title, that’s still the worst of all worlds. So you need to test yourself, but an organization that is designed that way, just look at you, not what the assessment, your business card, even if you have, they listen to what you’re saying. And if that makes sense, they’re going to agree and you’re going to go like, yeah, let’s do this. That’s a natural way of how organizations function because you’re helping us, collectively us, be better. That’s the value we’re going to embrace you. 

That’s really how it works. But a lot of people that come into the company, they’re not used to that. They’ve never learned that behavior and they’re reticent, they’d rather send an email to their manager hoping their manager might call upper delegation, but I say there’s no such thing. Delegation is down, not up. But they’re nervous. They’re like, I’d rather write an email to my manager and saddle him or her with the issue than go straight forward. So you need to teach that behavior. Every couple of months, I talk about going direct because there are so many new people who’ve never heard of it. 

So I have to repeat myself. I say this is how we do it here, we go direct. And if you can’t make the case, in other words, that people don’t think what you’re saying makes sense then you’re losing the argument. Hell, I lose the argument often enough and I don’t mind. If I need to lose the argument, I better be losing the argument. Suppose I’m winning a lousy argument that’s the worst of all scenarios. 

Trust

[00:31:08] Sean: Absolutely. I think a lot of the people who’ve seen what you’ve done, would have assumed complete command and control. But no, you almost take that Lao Tzu approach and empower those others underneath you, like the water is going to flow to them and then they feel like they’ve completely done it themselves. And they’ve been able to watch and replicate. And I think a lot of this gets built on trust. I know you put so much into trust. What do you do well to develop trust as soon as possible with the other people in your organization?

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”- Lao Tzu

[00:31:36] Frank: Trust is a universal currency, it’s what makes the world go round or not if it’s missing. Things get very easy when there’s trust and they get incredibly hard when there isn’t and it’s an underrated thing, currency quality or whatever you want to call it, so you don’t get trust, you don’t get the benefit of it. When I come into organizations, people are incredibly wary of me and then they don’t trust me. They discount what I’m saying but over time when you are true to the word and the things happen exactly as you said they would, the trust builds more and more to the point where they go in blind on what you saying.

Do they accept it, and assume it’s correct without even thinking about it because you have earned the trust. But you have to be very careful about it. And I remember in one of the first, all-hands meetings at Snowflake, I tried to explain to people that through solid execution, focus, et cetera, this company could be worth 10 fold of what it was at the time. I said, at least tenfold and I was only eight weeks in or whatever it was, and so many people who were like, yeah, whatever, 10 X. 

And I said within 12 to 18 months, I gave a timeframe for it. We didn’t just do 10 X, we did like 30 X in that period. And I remember on the day of the IPO, I got emails from people saying, we didn’t believe you that day. But not only did you do what you said,  but you did it several times over. So what do you think that does to trust? All of a sudden what you say has a whole different meaning than what it did before, when they were like, yeah, whatever.

Focus & Priorities

[00:33:30] Sean: Absolutely. One of the things to be able to 30 X those expectations, obviously part of the framework as well, is to sharpen the focus. And I was recently spending some time with the winningest Olympic Winter Medalist short track speed skating, Apolo Ohno, and he was saying every single day, I got so focused and intentional in what I was trying to do that day. And I’m just wondering when you’re talking to other executives, what can they do to narrow the focus? When you’re looking at three shiny objects, how do you narrow it down to just one? What do you do extremely well to be able to do that?

[00:34:03] Frank: Well, that’s hard and that’s the whole point of it. A laser can cut through steel, why? Because of focus whereas if you diffuse the light, it does nothing. There’s a simple concept. If you’re a mile wide and an inch deep, you’re going to be swimming in molasses. Certainly, it is the most awful sensation when you’re just not making headway. And that happens because we’re spread too thin. It’s human nature, by the way, to keep adding things, I always try to take things off people’s plates or I try to sequence it. In other words, let’s do this first and this last. I’m not taking it off your plate, but I’m changing the order. 

The question I always ask is, I say, look, let’s do an exercise here. If you could do only one thing for the rest of this year, let’s say it’s mid-year, if you could only do one thing, what would it be and why? Talk me through the what and the why. Most people never ask that question, but it’s really important because then you know how to amass your resources behind one thing. The impact is going to be far greater than when you’re amassing the resources behind five things or 10 things. I’ve been in numerous meetings with other CEOs and board meetings and they put their priorities up and there’s like 15 of them.

You have none when you have 15. So you got to bring that back to what is the one thing, not because you only will be doing one thing, but it starts to clarify what is important here. If you get that wrong, then basically you’re wasting and diluting and misdirecting the resources of the enterprise. That’s what you’re doing. And your job is to do exactly not that. You have to focus the resources the right way, then you can move mountains. 

Execution Vs Strategy

[00:35:53] Sean: What I love about that question is just the power. If you want better answers in life, you have to ask better questions. That’s one of those extremely potent questions you were talking about. That one thing you’re going to focus on, I think of that as strategy, and please correct me here if I’m wrong in any of this. And one of the things that you talk about is you want to focus first on execution, as opposed to strategy. I would like for you to talk about that because so much light gets shined on strategy, strategy, strategy, but you’re approaching this differently, thinking execution first. I’d love for you to just describe this.

[00:36:22] Frank: Andy Grove of Intel said no strategy is better than execution, which pretty much summed it up. In other words, your strategy is not worth a goddamn thing if you can’t execute it. He had this incredible way of saying complex things in very simple ways. You can go far with a mediocre strategy, but very, very strong execution. And, the reason is if you’re a good executer, you will also gradually become a better strategist because you can now distinguish between what are the sources of problems, whether strategic or execution operations. That’s pretty damn important because what happens a lot in Silicon Valley is we always want to tweak the strategy.

We don’t give execution another thought, but we want to tweak the strategy at the drop of a hat because execution is just something you do day to day, and strategy is the high-minded game that we all want to play. Oh, this company is doing that. Oh, that company is doing that. And people lose their nerve, they start tweaking and changing their strategy at the drop of a hat. That’s how you lose. 

One of the things that we did really well in the data domain is we had a strategy and we never wavered from it over seven years.We just relentlessly executed that strategy over and over and over. And, in the end, we had 15 X, compared to the nearest player. We had a better outcome than all other players combined. So we focused on being insanely good executor’s and we trusted our strategy. It’s exactly the opposite of what happens in most companies. They don’t trust their strategy. They’re constantly tweaking it, and then the execution is failing as well. I have numerous examples in the book as well about things we did differently. We trusted because we were not mindlessly doing what people had done before.

We were original thinkers. We were first principle thinkers, and that just served us incredibly well, but you need to learn to trust your strategy until you’re such a good executor that you can discern between strategy problems and execution problems. 

I’ll give you a very simple example. This is very common in Silicon Valley. Every time they have a sales problem, they fire the VP of sales and hire another one because the analysis has to be that there’s a sales problem, but what if it’s a product problem? Because most sales problems are product problems. This is just an absolute fact, it is a lack of product-market fit, but they don’t want to entertain that possibility. Why? Don’t call my baby ugly, but intellectual honesty is the first victim here. Being able to see things as they are versus the way you’d like them to be. And of course, founders don’t like fingering the product that goes, hell, they just convinced investors to put millions of dollars in. How am I going to tell them that the product is not that good. So let’s go hire another VP of sales. That’s not going to solve the problem.

Striking the Balance between Growing Too Fast & Not Growing Fast Enough

[00:39:24] Sean: I can see how all the parts of these frameworks work together which is just so essential, so important. One of the things I’m always intrigued about is you just go so fast. You push, push, push. How do you balance between growing too fast as opposed to not growing fast enough? I know this is like a nuanced fine question. There’s a lot of variables there. I’m just wondering how you think that through.

[00:39:46] Frank: Well, if I think back about everything I did and didn’t do I’ve never overdone it, but I have underdone it many times. So basically the problem is, I dare you to lean in harder because most people just don’t lean in far enough. If you’re really overdoing it you’ll know it because there are signals and signs and everything that will indicate it. There are times where you’re not ready to scale, I talk about these different stages of development, embryonic, formative, and scale. If you’re in a formative stage, you’re not ready to scale. 

You can blow a ton of resources at that stage, and they will not translate to yield. They will not because you simply are too formative. You’re not ready for scale depending on what stage you’re in. You can overdo it and that’s typically what happens. I’m going to hire 10 salespeople when I don’t even know how to make one successful. That’s incredibly stupid. You’re in a formative stage you’re not ready to open the flood gates. But once you are ready to open the flood gates, then people hold back. In other words, they have the exact opposite reflex. 

When they have to open the flood gate, they don’t do it. They don’t pivot. You have to pivot hard in all these different stages. Once you get the recipe and the formula down, and you have a repeatable system, holy cow, you pour on the resources like there’s no tomorrow. But the opposite is also true. When you can’t convert to yield, that’s the whole point of crossing the chasm, you have to get to the other side before you can pour on the resources. So it’s not mindless, there is no sort of a one-size-fits-all. I just hire up a salesforce and we’ll be rich.

No, it’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that. So it’s a bigger conversation, what I’m saying it’s very logical and common sense once you try it on for size. But, again, there are VCs around the table, they’re in a hurry, they’re pouring the resources. When I joined Snowflake, the board was telling the management team staff to a billion. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, staff to a billion, you can organize to a billion, but staffing to a billion, you’re just going to slam bodies. And they were because they took it literally.

So you cannot take these simplistic mindless ways of doing things, and by the way, we were blowing huge amounts of money. We were 200 million negative when I joined and it was unbelievable and you look at the P&L it takes you 10 seconds to figure it out. This is a slob fat pig, way too many resources, zero discipline.

Influential Persons & Enduring Institutions 

[00:42:24] Sean: Every time we talk, I just get so amped up. It’s clear why so many of your employees get so inspired by this. I know you’ve got George Washington there over your shoulder. Last time in our conversation you mentioned him as an inspiration. Who else for you? I know you mentioned Roosevelt as well. Is there anyone else that you’ve looked to over and over again, as someone who was just like, man, that’s the embodiment of someone who’s searching for excellence within themselves?

[00:42:48] Frank: As I look at people, I also look at enduring institutions. For example, I’m a big fan of Amazon, and they’re a big partner of ours as well, huge partner. But it was clear as day what Amazon was trying to do from day one, people just didn’t understand. They didn’t believe it, whatever the hell it was, but their ability to commit themselves to a strategy 20-25 years. It was just unbelievable. By the way, they have these concepts, they don’t talk about it that much, but I just observe it from what they do. 

I mean their whole game because they’re in businesses that are incredibly commoditized, usually commoditized. The value-adds and commoditized businesses take the friction out of everything and they understand how important the notion of friction is in the world of business. If you can take friction away, you can go very far. And they’re very subtle things, one-click and it shows up two days later, consistently. Who does that? Nobody did that ever. The same thing, you could buy virtual machine minutes, with the credit card, which takes friction away. And there’s no, “I’ll have to go get a purchase order and ask my manager”. I’m going to stop now because I’m already exhausted just thinking about that. 

I talk about friction all the time. I have my filter out for friction in everything. And these are things I learned from observing what Amazon has done over the years. Other companies have also done well. I am a huge admirer of Apple. I’ve already said that because of the reinventing the world of music and all these things. The friction is gone. I can just be streaming music, what an insane invention, I’m sold. I can remember when we had cassette tapes. We were copying content from the radio. You just can’t even imagine how great things are compared to how they once were. You just can’t. But they did.

Frank’s New Book- Amp It Up

[00:44:40] Sean: Talking about removing the friction there, you guys listening to this can just click or go down to the transcript for Frank’s new book, Amp It Up: Leading for Hyper-growth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity. Frank, I did enjoy this. You are so precise with your words. It’s just like 100% signal, no noise in that book, which I think is great. Everything will be linked up. Anything you want the listeners to know about the book? I know we dove into a lot of these big principles, there’s so much more in the book. Just want to make sure I open it up to you.

[00:45:11] Frank: No. The important thing is that you know the book is not lessons, it’s not wisdom, they’re just our observations about our world and how we did things. And I’m trying to answer the question that people ask us over and over again. What did you guys do? Because you have achieved extraordinary successes with different businesses at different periods, in different business models, and with different competitors, different technologies. I hate to lecture the world on this is what you should do. 

You need to become the best version of yourself and there are certain timeless principles and observations and ways of thinking about situations but it’s not a prescription, you cannot just read the book and throw it away, like, okay, I got it, check we’re done. It’s much harder than that, unfortunately. But once you know how to approach situations you’re on your way to becoming a much better version than you would have been otherwise. And that’s really what we want for this whole process to be.

[00:46:13] Sean: No better place to end there. Frank, I can’t thank you enough for joining us on What Got You There.

[00:46:18] Frank: You bet. Good to see you, Sean.

[00:46:21] Sean: You guys made it to the end of another episode of What Got You There. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I do appreciate you taking the time to listen all the way through. If you found value in this, the best way you can support the show is by giving us a review, rating it, sharing it with your friends, and also sharing on social. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Looking forward to you guys, listening to another episode.