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- Frank Slootman doesn't launch companies,
but he certainly turns
them into successful
industry game-changers.
- I get hired not for people's
health, but they need change
and they need results.
- He focuses on winning.
- The only thing that matters
is that you win as an institution.
- Born in the Netherlands,
Frank came to the US with
a dream of working at IBM.
He was rejected repeatedly,
but losing didn't suit him.
He went on to become
the CEO of Data Domain.
- Made us feel good to
be wanted for a change.
- Then he took over Service Now,
which he dramatically
grew in revenue and reach.
- Well the company is now well over
a hundred billion dollars.
- Wow.
- So it's become a much
larger company, anybody ever,
envisioned.
- And in his latest job as CEO,
he set out to take Snowflake public.
It became the largest ever software IPO.
- What Snowflake does it
powers digital transformation.
Everybody talks about it and we do it.
- I'm pleased to have Frank
Slootman CEO of Snowflake
on the Inflection Point.
Welcome Frank to the Inflection Point.
- Good to be here Monica.
- Okay. You know, the name
of this show is called
the Inflection Point.
So my first question
to you is what was your
inflection point that moment
when everything changed
for you?
- You know I thought about
that question a little bit
because I've had like most people,
more than one inflection point,
but if I just go all the way back in time,
you know sort of when
I was in my mid teens
and every summer at age 14, 15, 16,
I was doing really dirty
jobs, harvesting tulip bulbs,
cleaning toilets in factories.
And I had a supervisor
that were incredibly ill
tempered and unreasonable.
And I remember complaining
about this to my dad one night
and he's like, well, you
don't get better grades,
those are the kinds of
people you'll be working for,
and you know, that that's
sorta put the rocket fuel
in my tank at that point
and I sort of never looked
back from that moment.
- That really gets us
back to where you started.
You were from the Netherlands
outside of Amsterdam,
and then with that
inflection point, you then
were able to shift your
sites from cleaning toilets
to wanting to come to
America and work for IBM.
What attracted you to IBM?
- They represented the
future at that time, you know
we didn't want to go
into smokestack industries
that were on decline and so on.
So that, that was a
reason, a lot of, a lot
of people out of school
into IBM, they train people
and they really started an advanced era
in their early careers.
- Did they say Frank Slootman
he's the young man we want.
(Frank laughing)
- It didn't exactly happen.
I think I applied at
least a half a dozen time
and yielded half a dozen rejections.
They couldn't pronounce my credentials
they didn't know what to make of it
there were all kinds of
factors in play there
and I, I finally gave up on that strategy.
At the time I was very unhappy with it
because I thought I was a worthy candidate
but you know, I've, I've
realized over the decades
that they probably did me
a favor by not hiring me
because it launched me on a
profoundly different path.
- Exactly. And so let's
talk about that path.
So you did come to America
of all places, South Bend,
Indiana with like a hundred dollars.
What got you here?
What was your first job in the USA?
- I've never been to the
US before back then people
didn't travel like they do now.
And you know, you took what you could get
so I ended up with Uniroyal, you know,
near South Bend, Indiana
they were making a product
called Naugahyde, which
you know, people of our
generation remember as, you know
artificial leather being used in cars
and boats and things of that sort.
And I was there for three
or four months during
the summer of, of 1982.
That was my introduction to America.
- And what was that like at Uniroyal?
I've heard you talk about
the importance of elevators.
Tell us about elevators.
- You may be, you know,
very talented person
very motivated person,
very hardworking person,
but if you step into the wrong elevator
it won't matter that much,
some elevators go up some
go down some don't move.
So it's really a
combination of picking
the right platform
in terms of the industry and the company
and where you are, as well
as your individual merit.
And, you know, for example
if you spend the last 20
years at Apple or Amazon
you had done pretty well
regardless (Frank laughs).
- Exactly. Now, ultimately you, you got
out of fake leather from
that start into computers
and then you really started doing well.
For several years, Frank
you worked your way up
in computer companies,
especially focused on fixing train wrecks.
When did you realize Frank,
I'm really good?
- Well, you know, I
I don't really spend
any second of the day
you know worrying about
whether I'm any good or not.
I worry about whether
I'm getting good results,
and hopefully that, that,
that speaks for itself.
My choice of working at train wrecks,
that was my career strategy because my
my exotic credentials kind of haunted me
for the first, you know, 10 years or so,
where people kept looking at me like, "God
"that guy's a strange animal,
he speaks with a fat accent."
"What do we do with him?"
So my career strategy was
like, I took jobs that
that nobody else would
touch with a 10-foot pole.
- Huh.
- And, you know, I was cocky
enough in my early days,
I guess I still am to this
day, you know, where I
thought I could make something
out of nothing, you know
lemon-lemonade out of lemons,
you know, that sort of thing,
and I did that for a long time.
And I, I realized in hindsight,
that was incredibly
formative and instructive.
I didn't like it at time.
You know, there's, it's not
fun running crappy businesses
but you learn so many things
about, you know, what ails
certain businesses, you know,
some things are changeable,
some things are not changeable.
So they were actually very important
lessons for me to learn.
It's very hard to learn
that lesson where you're
in a successful company,
you just get trapped along
with the momentum of,
you know, the success.
You know?
- Then your first job as CEO was
in 2003 at Data Domain, was
this a rescue mission also?
- Actually, I, I felt
that Data Domain was sort
of my first clean deal,
I mean, it wasn't a train
wreck and it certainly
wasn't a rescue mission either.
It was a early stage startup
Diane, no revenue or customers.
So it was unproven and
it had, you know, very
very typical crossing the
chasm type of problems, which
you know, that's sort of the
essence in Silicon Valley.
Learning to navigate the
chasm and getting across it,
most companies die in the
chasm but many of them linger
in the chasm and Data Domain
was definitely a company
like that.
So it was incredibly instructive for me,
and you know it was slow
going the first three years
at Data Domain, we were sort
of scratching the bottom
and gradually inching
our way forward and then
the thing went vertical and
grew at a hyperbolic rate.
So it was a terrific experience
for, for, for everybody,
- And you took it public on NASDAQ
and it shares rose 66%, I think.
And then it was bought, right?
- It was a very interesting time
because we had two primary competitors
EMC and Network Appliance,
and we fought them every
single day of the week.
We were obsessed with fighting these very
large companies that were very successful,
and then, you know, one day we ended up
in a bidding war to be acquired
between these two companies.
So we were sort of entertainment
for Wall Street there
for about a six week period
while this all unfolded.
So it's surreal to going
from being an absolute
nobody to the two biggest companies
in your world trying to buy the company.
So certainly, you know
(laughing)
made us feel good to
be wanted for a change.
- Exactly, and then because of that
great success with Data Domain
a lot of software companies came calling.
I mean, they were
interested in Frank Slootman
look what he can do.
So you go to ServiceNow
and I read that you
told the employees, we do not come
in peace and tell me what
that, what that meant
to you?
- Well, the thing to realize is that
you're not being received,
you know, with open arms.
Okay. You're viewed as-
- Not you Frank.
They don't say, oh my gosh,
look at this great man.
Look what he can do.
- No, they actually
looked at me like, oh
what is up with this guy?
And what threat does
that company represent
to the status quo?
So as a startup, you know
you have to have a combat mentality
because you're going to fight your way
into a world where, you
know, they don't want you.
Okay. And they're gonna try
and kill you in the cradle.
That's an expression
that they often use in larger companies.
They're not going to let you grow up
because once you grow up,
you become an even bigger
threat and you're unstoppable.
Right?
- So you came to ServiceNow more
as if you were in the Marine
Corps, then the Peace Corps?
- Yup.
- Got it.
So there was a memorable
exchange that was written
about when you were at ServiceNow
when someone on the board gave
you some unsolicited advice.
You the new CEO, let me
tell you what you should do.
How did you respond to that?
- I view the board as a governance vehicle
and that holds a fiduciary
role to represent shareholders.
You know, I need it much less
as people that want to sorta
you know, coach me and advise
me every step of the way.
I've been through many,
many wars, you know, and I'm
on it 24-7, right?
So I don't need to be
lectured by, by board members on
you know, on what it's
like, because I'm living it.
I mean, you hired me for a reason.
That's to run the place, right?
I don't need to be kept
on the short leash.
You know, you want me off the leash.
(Monica laughing)
In other words, don't
be halfhearted about it.
You know?
- So control has been a hallmark
of your management style
as evidenced by that exchange.
Another hallmark, I think
of your management style is
that you are like call it as I see it.
No BS, this is what's happening.
But a lot of people maybe,
especially in Silicon Valley
aren't used to that.
So what is that about you
and why do you feel that's
necessary to be that way?
- Well, it probably, you
know, a little bit of my work
the way I was brought up,
you know, they often say
you know, you can take
the boy out of the country
but you can't take the
country out of the boy.
And that's just, that's just how we are.
We're very direct, very
grounded, very high clarity
of thought.
Those are really important things.
- When you say you can't take
the country out of the boy.
Do you mean that from the
country perspective or culturally
from your family, what do
you mean when you say that?
- Oh, it's, it's very much that culture.
It's the country.
And, and it's just the
way that Dutch people are
they will just bore a
hole through your head.
(Monica laughing)
They are, they are no BS people
high clarity of mind
that is that is cultural.
And you know, you go to
Silicon Valley, I've often
referred it to, referred to it as Neverland.
(Monica laughing)
A lot of Peter pans
flying around their feet,
their feet don't touch the ground.
We had to have them checked into reality yet.
- Now this brass tax approach
to leadership does run counter
to what a lot of people want.
They've just the Peter Pans
or what, they want you to
coach people be more tolerant,
but have you found in your experience
that sometimes it's just
not going to happen?
It's better to pull the plug
quickly when you're working
with certain people.
- Yeah. You know, I've been doing this
for a long period of time.
The fastest way to get change
in organizations, is to change
people and that may sound harsh
to some people, but I get thrown
into situations where people,
and by the way, you know
I get hired not for people's health
but they need change and they need results
and they're looking to
optimize the outcome, right?
So I can't mess around, right?
I'm, I'm, I'm on the clock in a huge way
and we're moving very, very fast
to change the trajectory that we're on.
- Your methods obviously
worked at ServiceNow, too
as they did at Data Domain
because you took ServiceNow public
on the New York stock exchange.
- ServiceNow was a,
it was really interesting
because we were underdog
for, for a very long time.
Even when we went public
we had like a $2 billion valuation
which at the time it was
an awful lot of money,
and people felt, you know
they really were kind of
scratching their head
whether we were worth that kind of money.
But the company is now well
over a hundred billion dollars, right?
So it's become a much larger company
anybody ever envisioned, you
know it's very satisfying
every quarter, people were
surprised by the growth numbers.
- So after your successes ServiceNow,
you Frank Slootman retired.
What was that?
What'd you do?
- You know, I've been under
the gun for a very long time.
I really feel from the age
of six, you know, on (laughs)
- (Monica laughing)
- and you get to a point where, you know
you no longer need to be
under the gun and you go
and you also suffer from
combat fatigue mentally, right?
And in hindsight, I
realized, I didn't know it
at the time, but in hindsight,
I absolutely knew that
that I was burned out,
classically burned out.
And then in order to
sort of recover from that
that just takes time,
and, but I did retire
with the intention of
never taking it home again.
- And what did you do in your retirement?
You, you still wanted to win.
You didn't just say I'm
a different human being.
I'm going to lie around at a beach.
You went in some real racing of sailboats.
- Yeah. Racing was
already a passion for me
and, but it takes a lot
of time and you know, well
when you're a sitting CEO,
you don't have that much time.
So when I was retired, I
really ratcheted that up.
And it was awesome,
you know, because sailing
is, it's just like business
in many ways, because
it's about the talent.
It's about the competition.
It's about the conditions but
sailing is much more intense
because you make a mistake and
it's almost immediately obvious
that you made one, right?
And you have to recover
and if you get behind
it's very difficult to catch up.
It was a very good proxy for
- Exactly.
- you know, but it doesn't last,
nothing lasts, everything changes
okay? And, and after
a while you realize, wow
this is the rest of my life,
really? And we're very
similar to, you know
to the NFL quarterbacks that
don't know how to retire.
They think they want to
retire but when they're retired
they're like, "God, I miss that action."
That split second,
you know?
And, and it's very, very
addicting for people
with the temperament and personalities,
you know that we have.
So people always say, why did
you come out of retirement?
And I say, look, I didn't
really come out of retirement,
I work in retirement.
There's a difference.
- Now. So then Snowflake came calling
and you just jumped off that, that yacht.
What was it about Snowflake
that got you there?
- They just confronted
me with, hey, you know
would you consider taking
the helm at Snowflake?
And it just catalyzed me to, to no end
because I knew that company
somewhat from the outside,
and I thought Snowflake
was a very special company
you know, in the world of software,
when I've lived there
literally for decades
it's very rare, you know,
when you see companies
that have been built
in such a way that they can
really produce step function
changes.
Most often products
are highly incremental.
They clearly legacy forward.
I mean, you're, you're
almost yawning looking at it
and I had really no
energy or inspiration dealing
with some of that.
Snowflake, was definitely you know
but at a technical level
it was producing orders of
magnitude faster results, right?
I mean, not just 20% I'm talking
orders of magnitude, you know
10 times, 100 times,
Right? So this was revolutionary,
yeah ...
- Tell us exactly Frank,
what Snowflake does?
This is a broad audience,
not all people are in tech,
what does Snowflake do,
and what was your vision then when you had
this enthusiasm to jump in?
- So Snowflake reinvented data
management for cloud scale
computing and it completely
re-imagined the notion
of a database management system.
What Snowflake does it
powers digital transformation,
everybody talks about it,
we do it.
Data is the beating heart
of the modern enterprise
and modern institutions
in all the disciplines
around data science and machine learning
and artificial intelligence.
They're all powered by Snowflake.
- Well clearly you have sold this vision,
not only to the company,
and to customers because they
are believing in Snowflake
and then you went out to the marketplace
and had such monster success.
You did the largest ever software IPO
and it was the fifth largest
of all US-based tech listings, by the close
of Snowflake's first day of
trading, the stock shot up 165%.
How bout that?
- Look, you know, I mean,
we, we look at stuff
like that over the long
haul, you know, performance
we'll always intersect with
valuation over the long haul.
You know, we don't get fixated
on that because it's
only distracting to us.
- Okay but did you take
a moment to celebrate
and like get a puppy?
- Yeah. Celebrating is one thing that
we are not very good at,
I'm not a high-fiver, I
don't do victory laps.
That is another Silicon Valley hallmark
we're constantly patting
each other on the back.
We, when we came back
from the, from the IPO
we were anxious more than anything else
because now we have to deliver
on these monsterous numbers and
these expectations, right?
That's really more of the mindset
than, oh, we're so happy.
You know, IPOs are
really the starting gun.
They are not the exit or the endpoint.
- But I did see a puppy in
some, something with you is that
that wasn't because you
were celebrating Snowflake,
you just wanted a puppy?
- That's right, that humanizes me.
I have lots of dogs, cats, we
are big animal welfare people.
You will see that if you hang
around with me long enough,
you'll come across many animals so.
- You're not just that tough guy.
Every second of the day.
Now you, as the CEO of Snowflake,
you are talking to
other CEOs all the time.
Is it about digital transformation?
What is the topic right now
that they are obsessing about
and coming to you about?
- Yeah, well, it's, it's digital
transformation, obviously
is a, is a, is a big topic,
especially for, you know, for
older enterprises that are
just for lighting
the evolution.
- Right.
- You see it in healthcare,
you see it in retail.
Industries are changing in profound ways.
So, and, and we, we keep saying,
you know, the future is not
going to be the same as the path.
Don't steer the ship by its weight.
Eventually you're gonna get
caught with your pants down one
of these days.
I mean, we always said that
as, as a CEO, you're going to
be confronted with the need
for massive transformation
while you are at the helm.
The only question is, are
you going to recognize it?
Are you going to recognize it in time?
And will you be able to execute on it?
- Well it's clear from all these
successes that you have had
all these wins, that you have
programmed yourself to win.
From cleaning toilets,
to now being a three
times successful IPO CEO.
What is it about you
that gets you to be so
operationally focused?
What is one of your ingredients?
- Well, it starts with
having clarity of thought,
I mean, people don't hire a
CEO for their health, right?
They hire them because they
need the company to win, right?
It's no different than
being a football coach.
John Madden, you know,
once said, you know
the only thing that matters is winning
because when you win, nobody can hurt you.
And when you lose,
nobody can help you.
I often repeat this, this
citation or quotation
to other CEOs to help them get clarity
about what it is they're supposed to do
because a lot of them are
pleasers than up leaders.
They want to, you know
be in people's good graces,
none of that stuff matters.
- And you also say let's
narrow the focus, right?
And that is important
to set your priorities.
- Yeah. Focus is a, is
an important concept
because human nature, what it is,
people become less and less focused
because we pile things on
and before, you know it, you know
we're a mile wide and an inch deep
we're swimming in glue,
we're losing our momentum,
we're trying to just check boxes
and get things off our desk
I mean, the whole dynamic
goes to Hell, right?
So the computers can operate
in parallel really, really well.
You know, humans can not, and you know
most people are, are thinly spread.
That's, it's just a natural-
and by the way, it's
it's also very difficult to
decide what has priority
and this is the reason
why people don't do it.
I mean, I've been in many board meetings
with other companies where
people put up a PowerPoint slide
a CEO does, and there's
like 15 bullets on there.
That means you have no priority.
Okay. That's what that means.
- So what is your priority?
- Now that here's the,
here's the important thing
I only have one priority at a time.
They do change from time to time
you know, when I, when
I, for example, when I
when I first joined Snowflake
I had full priority on getting the right people
on the bus, wrong people off the bus
you know, I was very
operationally focused
to get the staff down.
Now I'm two years in, you
know, we're focused on bringing
about the data cloud I mean
that is our core strategy
for advancing Snowflake.
So data cloud is the
center of my radar screen
I talk about it all day long.
Everything that I do and say
has the context of, you know
advancing our strategy in that regard
- Frank, with all your
success, do you see yourself
as a visionary or more
as the result of all this
hard work or some of both?
- There's elements of both.
In other words, you need to
be operationally oriented
and focused because no strategy
is better than execution
but the strategic dimension
which I think you're, you're representing
as being visionary, is
also incredibly important.
If you look at the companies
that we've run, you know
we have massively opened
up the market opportunity
and how people viewed our companies,
in terms of the
opportunity that they address.
So there's very much a strategic component
to the successes that
our companies have had
it's not just hardcore execution.
- That's right
because if you look at those companies
they've been game changing
and have opened new areas
of business in a way.
- Yes. And you look at ServiceNow,
it massively changed from
you know what it was when
we joined a company versus
you know, what it is today,
just absolutely massive.
- Okay, well, let's go
to something you said.
It's never over. It's every interaction.
Every moment of the day
these situations are in front of you.
You need to be willing in terms
of mental energy to get
after it every single time.
So, I need to end our chat
so you can get after it.
So thank you so much.
Let's get after it.
It's been a fun and lively chat
but now back to work for both of us.
- You bet.
- Thank you.
- Thanks, Monica.
- I'd like to take a
moment to thank our viewers
and our shows guests for making season one
of the Inflection Point, a big success.
We'll be filming all
new episodes this summer
and coming back in
September for season two.
I look forward to seeing you then.
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