The Exchanges

Q Yeah, I think where you have the surprise, you have the problems. We mentioned a lot about kind of how your family values have instilled into your work values. In terms of actually your takings from your parents, what was the single most important thing that your parents drove into you at a young age?

A Just hard work. My mom worked three jobs growing up. There was almost like, uh, there was never a day she wasn't working. Like a day off was an eight hour day. And so I think like I felt obligated to work just as hard as she did. And in fact, like in the early days of success at zoom info, I always felt kind of bad about it. I was like, you know, people would be like, man, you work really hard. I'd be like, you know, I worked like 11 hours today. My mom worked 16 hours on a normal day on her feet in a hospital. Like this is not really hard work, yet the outcome on the other side of it, like way Outperforms what my mom was doing. That always felt like, uh, you know, unfair. Just unfair.

AI assessment note: “Just hard work. My mom worked three jobs growing up.”

Q Not at all. Now this direction of conversation is going to go in a couple of different ways, but I want to start on the founding story. How did you come to found the incredible brand that is ZoomInfo today?

A Yeah. So I actually, this started when I was in college. I was a, I went to college in Las Vegas. Um, when I went to college, I grew up in a pretty, um, sort of middle-class family. My mom was a nurse. Uh, I was raised by my mom. She was a nurse. She worked three jobs. When I graduated high school, she gave me 5000 dollars, which was the like remnants of a old life insurance policy. And she said, here's your college fund. Like, good luck. So I went to college. I ran out of that money my first year and I went searching for a new job. Uh, so I applied everywhere around Las Vegas and I ended up landing at this small SAS early stage SAS company. It was the founder and one other person who was looking for someone to do administrative work. This is like 2002. Um, and he sold an annual subscription service to a database, uh, of basically reports on the information technology departments of large companies. Uh, and then he would send out a CD that had all the reports to, to these companies. And so I got this front row seat at a super early entrance in SAS. It was 300,000 in revenue between O two and Uh, oh six, we grew it from 300,000 in revenue to just under five million in revenue. The business was five million in revenue and doing like 4.7 million in EBITDA. And so there wasn't much of a business. It was this incredibly high margin company without much of a business infrastructure. …

AI assessment note: “a friend of mine and I said, Hey, why don't we start something”

Q Yeah, I think where you have the surprise, you have the problems. We mentioned a lot about kind of how your family values have instilled into your work values. In terms of actually your takings from your parents, what was the single most important thing that your parents drove into you at a young age?

A Just hard work. My mom worked three jobs growing up. There was almost like, uh, there was never a day she wasn't working. Like a day off was an eight hour day. And so I think like I felt obligated to work just as hard as she did. And in fact, like in the early days of success at zoom info, I always felt kind of bad about it. I was like, you know, people would be like, man, you work really hard. I'd be like, you know, I worked like 11 hours today. My mom worked 16 hours on a normal day on her feet in a hospital. Like this is not really hard work, yet the outcome on the other side of it, like way Outperforms what my mom was doing. That always felt like, uh, you know, unfair. Just unfair.

AI assessment note: “Just hard work. My mom worked three jobs growing up.”

Q I think it's fine not being on it. You mentioned bringing in the exec team around you and kind of fostering that culture. I honestly hate the word culture because it's so misused and kind of fluffy, but I think it's important to start at home. What type of culture are you fostering within your own family?

A Yeah, I think probably the biggest one or the biggest Thing that I'm fostering in my family is nothing comes easy and practices everything. Um, and so my daughter actually the one time I've made my daughter cry with words. Yeah, only one time. And we were driving, uh, we were driving in the car. We had like a two hour drive and she was talking about one of her friends who's really great at soccer. And her friend is like four years older than her. She's been on like a club team. She practices three times a week. She's really like great at soccer. And my daughter goes, and my, my daughter's like never really played, uh, soccer. And she, uh, and she goes, Daddy, I'm better than Colby at soccer. And I was like, that's ridiculous. You are not better than Colby at soccer. You could be if you practiced as much as her. She goes to practice three days a week. She's on two teams. She's been doing it for five years. I'm sure you could be as good, if not better than Colby, if you did all of that, but you're not just like out of the gates better than Colby. That makes no sense. And she started crying and my wife was like, Whoa, take it easy. Like, you know, you don't have to be like that hard on her, but in my head it was like, listen, she's got to know that like, you don't just walk into situations and expect to be amazing at them, but that you have to work really hard and practice and put…

AI assessment note: “biggest Thing that I'm fostering in my family is nothing comes easy and practices everything”

Q I think it's fine not being on it. You mentioned bringing in the exec team around you and kind of fostering that culture. I honestly hate the word culture because it's so misused and kind of fluffy, but I think it's important to start at home. What type of culture are you fostering within your own family?

A Yeah, I think probably the biggest one or the biggest Thing that I'm fostering in my family is nothing comes easy and practices everything. Um, and so my daughter actually the one time I've made my daughter cry with words. Yeah, only one time. And we were driving, uh, we were driving in the car. We had like a two hour drive and she was talking about one of her friends who's really great at soccer. And her friend is like four years older than her. She's been on like a club team. She practices three times a week. She's really like great at soccer. And my daughter goes, and my, my daughter's like never really played, uh, soccer. And she, uh, and she goes, Daddy, I'm better than Colby at soccer. And I was like, that's ridiculous. You are not better than Colby at soccer. You could be if you practiced as much as her. She goes to practice three days a week. She's on two teams. She's been doing it for five years. I'm sure you could be as good, if not better than Colby, if you did all of that, but you're not just like out of the gates better than Colby. That makes no sense. And she started crying and my wife was like, Whoa, take it easy. Like, you know, you don't have to be like that hard on her, but in my head it was like, listen, she's got to know that like, you don't just walk into situations and expect to be amazing at them, but that you have to work really hard and practice and put…

AI assessment note: “biggest Thing that I'm fostering in my family is nothing comes easy and practices everything”

Q I totally get that. Can I ask the other question, which is like, morale in these times is tough when team members come in and they see that actually their stock is worth considerably less than it was yesterday just because of the fucking market. Like, how do you think about managing employee morale in volatile stock price environments?

A Yeah, I think, look, first of all, people have to understand, like, uh, what, what is going on, which they don't, right? Like, there isn't a fundamental understanding of how the stock market works and what's happening. So, You know, if you track our peer group, there will be a day where our peer group goes up seven percent, and there will be a day where our peer group goes down seven percent, and those days don't matter at all, right? Like, they are just like, the market's doing a thing, and I'm not ever gonna pay attention in any situation where we're not, where we're in line with our peer group. It's when we fall outside of the peer group, which is usually around earnings time, Um, where we will either go up or down relative to what the peer group is doing. The employees don't know that's how it works. And so they're like, oh, I think it's the shorts, the shorts. There's just a lot of shorts on this thing. Or, hey, I want, do you know what happened? I wonder if there's like a thing that happened and that's what's taking it down or up. So the biggest thing is you have to, first of all, explain, like, this is how the thing works. You get valued on growth and profitability over time. It's our job to execute on the strategy that we told the market we're going to execute on. That's how we get rewarded as we execute well for a long period of time. They have to understand those fund…

AI assessment note: “the biggest thing is you have to, first of all, explain”

Q The one thing I really want to pick up there is, you mentioned in 21, they'd also say, hey, and can we add 25? Now they're cutting most of their teams as well. Are you seeing that in terms of the seat churn, just not because of the product usage, but just because of team size reduction?

A Yeah, so typically, not typically, but by, like, 99% of our accounts, we're not wall-to-wall in those accounts, and so we're, you know, much less penetrated within an account, and so the chance that the cut actually hits our user base is unlikely, but, uh, what I will say is that there is a lot of focus on the usage of the seats, And so if you didn't have, if you bought 25 seats and you really only provisioned and use 20 of them, no one's going to hope for the five to get like used in the upcoming year. They're just going to cut those five out. Um, and so that's happening for sure. The other thing I would tell you is like, we sell to sales departments, marketing departments, and even if there is a layoff of us, of a SAS salesperson, I don't see them not like struggling to get another job. Like there is a very strong environment for hiring software salespeople today. Any of my salespeople have seven recruiting offers in their LinkedIn in mail today. Um, and so I think what people may be laid off of their existing software sales job, but they're going to land in some other sales job, probably in software. At least today you're seeing that happening. You know, I anticipate that That continues. There's a really tight labor market for software salespeople, so I don't see people sitting on the sidelines very long.

AI assessment note: “if you bought 25 seats and you really only provisioned and use 20 of them”

Q had that same feeling of like the inevitability of success. I wasn't sure how it would come, but I just knew it would come. But I do doubt myself and I have doubted myself and suddenly that, oh, well obviously it will come. Suddenly it goes, what if it goes wrong? Like what if, what if I'm not as good as I think I am? Did you ever have that?

A Oh yeah. I mean, I have it today. Like, you know, like all the time. Um, and I think like part of it is, uh, You, I think that, I think what you're saying there, I think when I think about that, it's like, what if I don't reach my potential? What if I do something that robs me of reaching the potential that I had that was like, you know, navigatable? Um, I think that's the big fear is, Hey, I believe you and I believe that we can be much more than we are today. And we can see, we can see it. And what if we don't reach it because of something that we could have overcome? That's the real fear that we could have learned, that we could have paid more attention to, that we made a bad decision that took us away from. That's the big concern. It's not that we're not capable of it. It's that probably we make the wrong decisions on our journey there.

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah. I mean, I have it today. Like, you know, like all the time.”

Q This is so hard. What do you know now that you wish you could tell your twenty-three-year-old self founding the business back then?

A You know, believe in yourself. Like you're the, the, probably the biggest thing I would say is along these lines is don't worry about what the Silicon Valley companies are doing. You're charting your own course. It's unique and it's going to be rewarded. Just have a lot of confidence in that because to your point, Harry, like when we were growing, it was really easy to look at like what was happening in Stanford. We, we grew the business in Portland, Oregon. Um, and, but it was really easy to look down in Silicon Valley and see what, you know, how the VCs were funding box and Dropbox and, you know, all of these kind of like darlings of the like early 2010. Um, and then just look at our business and go like, yeah, It's just doesn't feel like that. Um, you know, like why doesn't it feel like that? And then be really hard on yourself for not growing it profitably and growing it as fast.

AI assessment note: “don't worry about what the Silicon Valley companies are doing. You're charting your own course.”

Q on a golf course for eight dollars an hour at 80. I have an EA bring me a macchiato at my nice desk and a jumper. Like, not really. Do you struggle then with this, like, entitlement culture and this anti-hustle, You know, let's have Fridays off every other week. I'm just fucking pissed off about it. I'm like, I'm sorry, no. Like, you want to be great? Work hard.

A I do struggle with that. I have forever, by the way, it's just the, the, the, the, the noise to signal ratio has amped up over the last few years. Um, I really believe that my success is attributed to how hard I worked in the business and that all, not just the business, but growing up, like in college, in law school, I always told myself, listen, I'm going to all these, I would walk into, I remember walking into law school And I, all of a sudden was surrounded by a bunch of people who went to Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley. And I was like, okay, all of them are smarter than me, but I need to outwork all of them because if I outwork them, I can outperform them. And I did, you know, like that worked for me. And, and then in business, I felt the same way, like just outwork these people out, hustle these people, and then you will win. And I also think it takes away, uh, That's a pretty shitty reason to not succeed. I didn't work as hard as the other people. And I don't want to wake up and go like, oh, you know, I didn't succeed, but geez, if I had just worked a little bit harder, then I could have succeeded in this thing. What it like horrible regret, I feel like. So I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can. I'm going to have like boundaries in place to make sure that I'm Also giving to myself and my family, but I will never walk away from an unsuccessful situation and think…

AI assessment note: “I do struggle with that. I have forever, by the way”

Q I totally get that. Can I ask the other question, which is like, morale in these times is tough when team members come in and they see that actually their stock is worth considerably less than it was yesterday just because of the fucking market. Like, how do you think about managing employee morale in volatile stock price environments?

A Yeah, I think, look, first of all, people have to understand, like, uh, what, what is going on, which they don't, right? Like, there isn't a fundamental understanding of how the stock market works and what's happening. So, You know, if you track our peer group, there will be a day where our peer group goes up seven percent, and there will be a day where our peer group goes down seven percent, and those days don't matter at all, right? Like, they are just like, the market's doing a thing, and I'm not ever gonna pay attention in any situation where we're not, where we're in line with our peer group. It's when we fall outside of the peer group, which is usually around earnings time, Um, where we will either go up or down relative to what the peer group is doing. The employees don't know that's how it works. And so they're like, oh, I think it's the shorts, the shorts. There's just a lot of shorts on this thing. Or, hey, I want, do you know what happened? I wonder if there's like a thing that happened and that's what's taking it down or up. So the biggest thing is you have to, first of all, explain, like, this is how the thing works. You get valued on growth and profitability over time. It's our job to execute on the strategy that we told the market we're going to execute on. That's how we get rewarded as we execute well for a long period of time. They have to understand those fund…

AI assessment note: “So the biggest thing is you have to, first of all, explain”

Q actually spoke to some of your colleagues and friends, and they said that your, you know, more humble upbringing, not being born into a life of great wealth, actually gave you a mindset of frugality building the business, but in some ways it prevented you from going for all-out growth early on. Would you agree with that, and how do you think your humble upbringing impacted your mindset to growth?

A Yeah. So I don't think of it so much about my upbringing. I think of it like when I worked at that, um, startup company in college, one of the things I learned was just what do you do with resource scarcity? So there was this moment where I met, um, the founder of that company. We actually acquired that company in. But the founder of that company, his brother was like this big sort of grow without grow at all costs, BC guy. And we met him one night and he, and it was me and the founder and his brother and his brother, the VC and his brother, the VC goes, why are you not investing in this business? It's just resource starved. Every dollar you put in, you're generating, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on the other side. Why are you not just aggressively investing in this thing? And when we walked away from that conversation, the founder said to me, he goes, you know, he's always like spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. I like a business that's resource constrained because it ensures that the next investment you make is always the most important investment you can be making. And it was like, okay, I get it. There is like a, uh, a continuum there where it's like, you're not investing enough to where you're investing way too much and you're getting sloppy with it. And so I think what was instilled in me was good businesses run profitably. And you're just not really a real …

AI assessment note: “So I don't think of it so much about my upbringing.”

Q This is so hard. What do you know now that you wish you could tell your twenty-three-year-old self founding the business back then?

A You know, believe in yourself. Like you're the, the, probably the biggest thing I would say is along these lines is don't worry about what the Silicon Valley companies are doing. You're charting your own course. It's unique and it's going to be rewarded. Just have a lot of confidence in that because to your point, Harry, like when we were growing, it was really easy to look at like what was happening in Stanford. We, we grew the business in Portland, Oregon. Um, and, but it was really easy to look down in Silicon Valley and see what, you know, how the VCs were funding box and Dropbox and, you know, all of these kind of like darlings of the like early 2010. Um, and then just look at our business and go like, yeah, It's just doesn't feel like that. Um, you know, like why doesn't it feel like that? And then be really hard on yourself for not growing it profitably and growing it as fast.

AI assessment note: “probably the biggest thing I would say is along these lines is don't worry”

Q the fat kid at school with no friends, and it impacts my ability to be a leader, because I just want everyone to like me, and so I struggle to deal with underperformance. So going to your point there of, okay, here are the three things. Henry, I'm sorry, I've missed all three things. How do you deal with underperformance in the right way? Because right now I'm too soft.

A Yeah, so I think I talk about it a lot. No one's ever, like, surprised that they're underperforming. And so, uh, we're just, we're, you know, you're seeing that happen. Quarter one, it's missed. Quarter two, it's missed. By the time quarter three or four comes up, it's like, you know, hey, listen, maybe it's not working. Um, and at that point, actually, the conversation's not that hard. Like, as long as you're Constantly talking about the things that are not working and trying to help them achieve it, right? Like I'm in this game, right? When things are not going right in engineering or product or sales or wherever it is, I'm totally in the game with, with my leaders and trying to support and figure out how to, uh, how to fix things and get them on the right track. If ultimately it doesn't work out, everybody knows like that it's not working out. They're not caught off guard.

AI assessment note: “Constantly talking about the things that are not working and trying to help them”

Q on a golf course for eight dollars an hour at 80. I have an EA bring me a macchiato at my nice desk and a jumper. Like, not really. Do you struggle then with this, like, entitlement culture and this anti-hustle, You know, let's have Fridays off every other week. I'm just fucking pissed off about it. I'm like, I'm sorry, no. Like, you want to be great? Work hard.

A I do struggle with that. I have forever, by the way, it's just the, the, the, the, the noise to signal ratio has amped up over the last few years. Um, I really believe that my success is attributed to how hard I worked in the business and that all, not just the business, but growing up, like in college, in law school, I always told myself, listen, I'm going to all these, I would walk into, I remember walking into law school And I, all of a sudden was surrounded by a bunch of people who went to Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley. And I was like, okay, all of them are smarter than me, but I need to outwork all of them because if I outwork them, I can outperform them. And I did, you know, like that worked for me. And, and then in business, I felt the same way, like just outwork these people out, hustle these people, and then you will win. And I also think it takes away, uh, That's a pretty shitty reason to not succeed. I didn't work as hard as the other people. And I don't want to wake up and go like, oh, you know, I didn't succeed, but geez, if I had just worked a little bit harder, then I could have succeeded in this thing. What it like horrible regret, I feel like. So I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can. I'm going to have like boundaries in place to make sure that I'm Also giving to myself and my family, but I will never walk away from an unsuccessful situation and think…

AI assessment note: “I do struggle with that. I have forever, by the way”

Q What are you seeing in overall buying patterns? And how do you think 2023 will look?

A Yeah. So I think the biggest thing we see today is people are rationalizing spend in a way very different from 20 21 or even the end of 20 20. And I don't think I really believe that there wasn't like a COVID pull forward for our business and many other software businesses. But what did happen was that there was a tremendous amount of money in the economy that the government put in the economy in 20 in late 2020 or early 20 21. So decisions about spending that money were very different in 21 than they are in 22 or, you know, from kind of after the first quarter of 22 is what, when we started seeing it. And so today or in 21, let's say you have a sale to a midsize technology company. The way that the renewal would work is we'd send over the renewal paperwork to our main point of contact in the business. The main point of contact in the business would say, great, thank you for sending this. Can we actually add? 25 users. We're going to grow into that. Great. Thank you. We send back the invoice signed. Done. Your renewals done. You're off looking to upsell other clients and get your other renewals done today. That same renewal actually feels like this. Here's your invoice. Okay. Thank you. We have to go take this to my VP and SVP to get this approved. Can we meet next week to discuss putting together a deck? Get me these stats on usage. Get me these stats on ROI. And then let's go…

AI assessment note: “the biggest thing we see today is people are rationalizing spend”

Q What are you seeing in overall buying patterns? And how do you think 2023 will look?

A Yeah. So I think the biggest thing we see today is people are rationalizing spend in a way very different from 20 21 or even the end of 20 20. And I don't think I really believe that there wasn't like a COVID pull forward for our business and many other software businesses. But what did happen was that there was a tremendous amount of money in the economy that the government put in the economy in 20 in late 2020 or early 20 21. So decisions about spending that money were very different in 21 than they are in 22 or, you know, from kind of after the first quarter of 22 is what, when we started seeing it. And so today or in 21, let's say you have a sale to a midsize technology company. The way that the renewal would work is we'd send over the renewal paperwork to our main point of contact in the business. The main point of contact in the business would say, great, thank you for sending this. Can we actually add? 25 users. We're going to grow into that. Great. Thank you. We send back the invoice signed. Done. Your renewals done. You're off looking to upsell other clients and get your other renewals done today. That same renewal actually feels like this. Here's your invoice. Okay. Thank you. We have to go take this to my VP and SVP to get this approved. Can we meet next week to discuss putting together a deck? Get me these stats on usage. Get me these stats on ROI. And then let's go…

AI assessment note: “the biggest thing we see today is people are rationalizing spend”

Q What worries me more is if I look at today's environment and I place you in it at the start, you would have got venture funding very easily, and you would have got a lot of it. Do you think you would have charted your course differently had you had a lot more money a lot sooner?

A So one of the real benefits of My journey is I started at 23. I didn't get any outside funding till I was 30. The business, we didn't do any really big M&A until I was 32, 33. And I, so I had all of this time to mature and grow as a leader and build an executive team and build the foundations of a good operation and bring in a CFO. And I think if you round back to 2014, Where we took our first outside funding or even earlier than that. And you said like, Hey, here's forty million dollars. Just like go, you know, go spend the forty million dollars. I would make a tremendous amount of bad decisions along the way. I wouldn't have been as grown up and mature of a leader as I've become. And so the benefit of time has actually like the, the benefit of not being an overnight success. But being more like an overnight success, 15 years in the making, I think has been beneficial for the whole business and definitely beneficial for me. When we were going on the IPO roadshow, I remember I sat down with this one set of investors and they had printed out all of these like glass door reviews. By the way, we're like one, we have a really great glass door rating and really great, like, uh, recommendations of me and the employees, but they, Obviously not interested in those ones. They want to talk about the bad ones. And so they pulled up the bad reviews and they were like, Hey, so we read these…

AI assessment note: “I would make a tremendous amount of bad decisions along the way.”

Q What's the most challenging thing about parenthood and fatherhood?

A I think there's a bigger question, which is I work really hard to be the best dad, the best CEO, the best husband, um, possible. Those are like kind of the three things. Then I have to find time to be like the best to myself. But those three things are always stealing from each other, right? Like more time at work, less time at home or less time, more time being a great CEO, less time being a great father, more time being a great father, less time being a great CEO, more time being a great husband, less time being a great CEO. And so the hardest thing is, um, Building a framework that says in order for you to be a great father, this is like the minimum necessary time and, uh, involvement that you need to be doing. Don't ever fall below that. And then always look for opportunities to do more. Um, and so I put that in place, uh, in the way that I interact with my daughter and my family, but that was, that's You know, it's challenging. There's, it's always challenging, because left to my own devices, ZoomInfo would take all of my mindshare, 100%. It's very selfish.

AI assessment note: “the hardest thing is, um, Building a framework”

Q The one thing I really want to pick up there is, you mentioned in 21, they'd also say, hey, and can we add 25? Now they're cutting most of their teams as well. Are you seeing that in terms of the seat churn, just not because of the product usage, but just because of team size reduction?

A Yeah, so typically, not typically, but by, like, 99% of our accounts, we're not wall-to-wall in those accounts, and so we're, you know, much less penetrated within an account, and so the chance that the cut actually hits our user base is unlikely, but, uh, what I will say is that there is a lot of focus on the usage of the seats, And so if you didn't have, if you bought 25 seats and you really only provisioned and use 20 of them, no one's going to hope for the five to get like used in the upcoming year. They're just going to cut those five out. Um, and so that's happening for sure. The other thing I would tell you is like, we sell to sales departments, marketing departments, and even if there is a layoff of us, of a SAS salesperson, I don't see them not like struggling to get another job. Like there is a very strong environment for hiring software salespeople today. Any of my salespeople have seven recruiting offers in their LinkedIn in mail today. Um, and so I think what people may be laid off of their existing software sales job, but they're going to land in some other sales job, probably in software. At least today you're seeing that happening. You know, I anticipate that That continues. There's a really tight labor market for software salespeople, so I don't see people sitting on the sidelines very long.

AI assessment note: “the chance that the cut actually hits our user base is unlikely”

Q What's the most challenging thing about parenthood and fatherhood?

A I think there's a bigger question, which is I work really hard to be the best dad, the best CEO, the best husband, um, possible. Those are like kind of the three things. Then I have to find time to be like the best to myself. But those three things are always stealing from each other, right? Like more time at work, less time at home or less time, more time being a great CEO, less time being a great father, more time being a great father, less time being a great CEO, more time being a great husband, less time being a great CEO. And so the hardest thing is, um, Building a framework that says in order for you to be a great father, this is like the minimum necessary time and, uh, involvement that you need to be doing. Don't ever fall below that. And then always look for opportunities to do more. Um, and so I put that in place, uh, in the way that I interact with my daughter and my family, but that was, that's You know, it's challenging. There's, it's always challenging, because left to my own devices, ZoomInfo would take all of my mindshare, 100%. It's very selfish.

AI assessment note: “the hardest thing is, um, Building a framework that says”

Q the fat kid at school with no friends, and it impacts my ability to be a leader, because I just want everyone to like me, and so I struggle to deal with underperformance. So going to your point there of, okay, here are the three things. Henry, I'm sorry, I've missed all three things. How do you deal with underperformance in the right way? Because right now I'm too soft.

A Yeah, so I think I talk about it a lot. No one's ever, like, surprised that they're underperforming. And so, uh, we're just, we're, you know, you're seeing that happen. Quarter one, it's missed. Quarter two, it's missed. By the time quarter three or four comes up, it's like, you know, hey, listen, maybe it's not working. Um, and at that point, actually, the conversation's not that hard. Like, as long as you're Constantly talking about the things that are not working and trying to help them achieve it, right? Like I'm in this game, right? When things are not going right in engineering or product or sales or wherever it is, I'm totally in the game with, with my leaders and trying to support and figure out how to, uh, how to fix things and get them on the right track. If ultimately it doesn't work out, everybody knows like that it's not working out. They're not caught off guard.

AI assessment note: “Constantly talking about the things that are not working and trying to help them achieve”

Q had that same feeling of like the inevitability of success. I wasn't sure how it would come, but I just knew it would come. But I do doubt myself and I have doubted myself and suddenly that, oh, well obviously it will come. Suddenly it goes, what if it goes wrong? Like what if, what if I'm not as good as I think I am? Did you ever have that?

A Oh yeah. I mean, I have it today. Like, you know, like all the time. Um, and I think like part of it is, uh, You, I think that, I think what you're saying there, I think when I think about that, it's like, what if I don't reach my potential? What if I do something that robs me of reaching the potential that I had that was like, you know, navigatable? Um, I think that's the big fear is, Hey, I believe you and I believe that we can be much more than we are today. And we can see, we can see it. And what if we don't reach it because of something that we could have overcome? That's the real fear that we could have learned, that we could have paid more attention to, that we made a bad decision that took us away from. That's the big concern. It's not that we're not capable of it. It's that probably we make the wrong decisions on our journey there.

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah. I mean, I have it today. Like, you know, like all the time.”

Q actually spoke to some of your colleagues and friends, and they said that your, you know, more humble upbringing, not being born into a life of great wealth, actually gave you a mindset of frugality building the business, but in some ways it prevented you from going for all-out growth early on. Would you agree with that, and how do you think your humble upbringing impacted your mindset to growth?

A Yeah. So I don't think of it so much about my upbringing. I think of it like when I worked at that, um, startup company in college, one of the things I learned was just what do you do with resource scarcity? So there was this moment where I met, um, the founder of that company. We actually acquired that company in. But the founder of that company, his brother was like this big sort of grow without grow at all costs, BC guy. And we met him one night and he, and it was me and the founder and his brother and his brother, the VC and his brother, the VC goes, why are you not investing in this business? It's just resource starved. Every dollar you put in, you're generating, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on the other side. Why are you not just aggressively investing in this thing? And when we walked away from that conversation, the founder said to me, he goes, you know, he's always like spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. I like a business that's resource constrained because it ensures that the next investment you make is always the most important investment you can be making. And it was like, okay, I get it. There is like a, uh, a continuum there where it's like, you're not investing enough to where you're investing way too much and you're getting sloppy with it. And so I think what was instilled in me was good businesses run profitably. And you're just not really a real …

AI assessment note: “I don't think of it so much about my upbringing.”

Q You absolutely do. I can ask, you mentioned that about kind of the, the practice and the hard work and then seeing outcomes. How do you think about kind of culture then at work? And is it the same values that you instill from family values that you instill at the workplace?

A Yes, absolutely. I think, look, here's the interesting thing about culture and I've read the books and we've talked about Frank Slootman and, uh, Snowflake. And I think the hard part about culture is like you read Frank Slootman's book and you walk out and you go like, okay, take the slack out of the rope. It's like, okay, I don't know really like what, like, what is the, bring your spear, kill someone. And that is like the feeling But like, what do I do with that? You know, like what, what do I come into work and change and do? That's the hard part. Um, like we have a, we have a mantra that's get one percent better every day. Um, that's a great part of the culture, but what are you doing to make sure everybody appreciates that and is looking for opportunities actually to improve? I think the hard part about getting a culture is, I can describe it to you, but what it really takes is really great questions about how the company operates and how it makes decisions that really can tell you the cultural story. The easy thing for me to tell you is it is a culture of constant improvement. You can't improve unless you have data that tells you how the business is operating and then that you're, you're, and then look for improvement against those. Ask questions about, Hey, Why is this worse than it was last quarter? Why is this worse than it was last year? If this is improving, why is i…

AI assessment note: “Yes, absolutely. I think, look, here's the interesting thing about culture”

Q You absolutely do. I can ask, you mentioned that about kind of the, the practice and the hard work and then seeing outcomes. How do you think about kind of culture then at work? And is it the same values that you instill from family values that you instill at the workplace?

A Yes, absolutely. I think, look, here's the interesting thing about culture and I've read the books and we've talked about Frank Slootman and, uh, Snowflake. And I think the hard part about culture is like you read Frank Slootman's book and you walk out and you go like, okay, take the slack out of the rope. It's like, okay, I don't know really like what, like, what is the, bring your spear, kill someone. And that is like the feeling But like, what do I do with that? You know, like what, what do I come into work and change and do? That's the hard part. Um, like we have a, we have a mantra that's get one percent better every day. Um, that's a great part of the culture, but what are you doing to make sure everybody appreciates that and is looking for opportunities actually to improve? I think the hard part about getting a culture is, I can describe it to you, but what it really takes is really great questions about how the company operates and how it makes decisions that really can tell you the cultural story. The easy thing for me to tell you is it is a culture of constant improvement. You can't improve unless you have data that tells you how the business is operating and then that you're, you're, and then look for improvement against those. Ask questions about, Hey, Why is this worse than it was last quarter? Why is this worse than it was last year? If this is improving, why is i…

AI assessment note: “Yes, absolutely. I think, look, here's the interesting thing about culture”

Q What worries me more is if I look at today's environment and I place you in it at the start, you would have got venture funding very easily, and you would have got a lot of it. Do you think you would have charted your course differently had you had a lot more money a lot sooner?

A So one of the real benefits of My journey is I started at 23. I didn't get any outside funding till I was 30. The business, we didn't do any really big M&A until I was 32, 33. And I, so I had all of this time to mature and grow as a leader and build an executive team and build the foundations of a good operation and bring in a CFO. And I think if you round back to 2014, Where we took our first outside funding or even earlier than that. And you said like, Hey, here's forty million dollars. Just like go, you know, go spend the forty million dollars. I would make a tremendous amount of bad decisions along the way. I wouldn't have been as grown up and mature of a leader as I've become. And so the benefit of time has actually like the, the benefit of not being an overnight success. But being more like an overnight success, 15 years in the making, I think has been beneficial for the whole business and definitely beneficial for me. When we were going on the IPO roadshow, I remember I sat down with this one set of investors and they had printed out all of these like glass door reviews. By the way, we're like one, we have a really great glass door rating and really great, like, uh, recommendations of me and the employees, but they, Obviously not interested in those ones. They want to talk about the bad ones. And so they pulled up the bad reviews and they were like, Hey, so we read these…

AI assessment note: “I would make a tremendous amount of bad decisions along the way.”