The Exchanges

Q does this go? I hope you're my friend. Please advise me. I'm seeing, you know, Mark invest sixty five billion dollars in data centers. You're seeing the five hundred billion dollar announcement of Stargate. I know there's equity in debt and it's not such a straightforward deal, but we've never seen money thrown at anything like this. This is the kind of arms race of AI. Where does it end?

A I mean, with a bubble bursting, as all bubbles do, uh, there's like this super, um, funny conversation and, you know, insightful conversation that, uh, um, Ben Thompson from Stratechery had with, uh, uh, Nat Friedman, uh, where they talk about, you know, is this a good bubble, um, like the telecom bubble in the nineties that eventually laid, you know, Fiber for the whole world that Google and Facebook and you and I took advantage of? Or is this the dumber web van stuff that just, like, burnt money in the early 2000 trying to get you groceries and we had to wait 15 years for Instacart to then show up? Let's face it, you and I don't know. And if the bulk of those investments are going into things like power and buildings, you can say, like, okay, it's created surplus for the world. Something good is going to come out of it. If on the other hand, it goes into crazily depreciating hardware, you know, that is value disappearing, uh, in a poof. I think it's early, but back to your point about what do we do? There's still scope for innovation. I think like every OpenAI cannot possibly do every workflow that there is, and what you and I need to do is what are the things that are, you know, still ripe for disruption? Where is value being created? I think Harvey is a great company. I don't think it's going to get disrupted by open AI. And so I think finding niches like that and investing…

AI assessment note: “with a bubble bursting, as all bubbles do”

Q When you go back to those days and you reflect on them, is there anything now where you sit as CEO of an incredible three and a half billion dollar revenue generating public company, and you think back and go, I can take that. I can learn my lesson here. What are those?

A Um, relentlessness. I still remember like every discussion with Larry and Sergey used to be exhausting. They never ended. They just argued with like every single topic. Um, but you know, good stuff came out of that. You examined every possible thing, um, and you pushed yourself really hard. I also joke to people that, uh, by the time I became head of ads, um, things like working with the legal team was a whole lot easier because they had been battered on by Larry and Sergey just pushing the envelope with things like Google Books or YouTube, um, which was a legal nightmare, um, early on. Um, and so, you know, I, that is my sort of, like, My lifelong takeaway, um, which is pressing hard, being, you know, being very first principles. Remember the Dutch auction? What other company has done the Dutch auction? Um, and, you know, for IPOs, they did it. Obviously, it's Google, but still, I think just the amount of energy that they brought into every discussion and the relentlessness of driving, um, to the truth, to the right business outcome, It's absolutely something that I carry forward to this day.

AI assessment note: “relentlessness... That is my sort of, like, My lifelong takeaway”

Q What's happened? Have you ever seen incumbents move this fast?

A I think it is three cycles of disruption. All of us remember our history. We all know no one wants to be the person that is going to be known for the IBM deal with Microsoft. Um, people understand how much of a dramatic shift that was, um, and how, you know, companies like DEC, remember DEC? Disappeared, man. We took over SGI's buildings. They were the darlings. Um, the first buildings that Google took over in Mountain View, um, was the SGI Plex with that funky purple. Uh, and I used to tell all, uh, you know, everyone that joined my team for like five years after that, you know, SGI built these buildings. Um, and then I would look at them to see if they got it. And so, we learned from that. Um, but I would actually say that mobile was a big platform shift in which the incumbents did pretty well. Um, you know, remember Mark went after mobile web for Facebook and then said, forget it. I'm doing an app. Similarly, same with Google. They, they, they took search, um, moved it over. I led my team for five terrifying years when we took mobile monetization from being 10% of desktop to being a hundred percent. And so I would actually say even in the previous round, all of the tech players got pretty smart. Amazon didn't get disrupted because of mobile. Mobile did produce truly new things like Uber and Lyft, but I would say that generation of companies had already smarted up to the worl…

AI assessment note: “I think it is three cycles of disruption. All of us remember our history.”

Q When you go back to those days and you reflect on them, is there anything now where you sit as CEO of an incredible three and a half billion dollar revenue generating public company, and you think back and go, I can take that. I can learn my lesson here. What are those?

A Um, relentlessness. I still remember like every discussion with Larry and Sergey used to be exhausting. They never ended. They just argued with like every single topic. Um, but you know, good stuff came out of that. You examined every possible thing, um, and you pushed yourself really hard. I also joke to people that, uh, by the time I became head of ads, um, things like working with the legal team was a whole lot easier because they had been battered on by Larry and Sergey just pushing the envelope with things like Google Books or YouTube, um, which was a legal nightmare, um, early on. Um, and so, you know, I, that is my sort of, like, My lifelong takeaway, um, which is pressing hard, being, you know, being very first principles. Remember the Dutch auction? What other company has done the Dutch auction? Um, and, you know, for IPOs, they did it. Obviously, it's Google, but still, I think just the amount of energy that they brought into every discussion and the relentlessness of driving, um, to the truth, to the right business outcome, It's absolutely something that I carry forward to this day.

AI assessment note: “the relentlessness of driving, um, to the truth... It's absolutely something that I carry forward”

Q and I'm looking at this market today as an investor going, where is that sustainable value going to be generated? It seems like models get commoditized faster than anything. DeepSeek has shown that in the last few weeks. A lot of application layer material seems pretty light in terms of just building on top of commoditized models. How do you think about where sustainable value is in today's AI market?

A I think part of, you know, I had a conversation with some folks from OpenAI and an application company, one of these coding platforms. Um, and what I was telling, uh, you know, what this conversation was about is, um, the, the line between an infrastructure provider and an application provider today is super blurry. In a weird way, um, if there is a, um, let's say a brand new application to be created, Um, there's basically no guarantee that OpenAI or Anthropic or Microsoft or Google are not going to go create it. All of these at this point are driven, motivated companies, and they pretty much go like, ooh, coding assistant. That's taking off. Oh, that's fine. I'll do a coding assistant, um, or something else. Oh, I see. People are, uh, uh, generating much better legal documents. Ah, maybe we should release, like, a, a legal, uh, chat GPT, something. Um, to me, I think that is part of what makes value creation in today's environment, like, really tricky. Um, to figure out. I would say that the place where, um, there absolutely is value, you know, creation is with companies, um, that have a set of customer relationship, deliver clear value, and are willing to embrace AI fast enough that a disruptor is not going to unseat them. This is why I feel good about Snowflake, because we are a data platform. We help people, you know, um, collect data, make sense of data, run analytics on …

AI assessment note: “the place where, um, there absolutely is value, you know, creation is with companies”

Q to actually force the hard conversations? Don't laugh. Whenever I have an email that I don't want to send or don't know how to send it, I force myself to go in the lift in my apartment building, and whatever I've written by the time I get to the other end gets sent. And that's the deal with myself. Do you have any tips on how to actually force that?

A Yeah, I mean, the first thing to remember, Is that, you know, conflicts typically do not resolve themselves. And so, you kind of have to internalize that postponing things is going to make them worse. The more you postpone, the worse it gets. Um, I think, like, just telling yourself that is, um, is important. Uh, and the other thing is, uh, avoiding the hard conversation is typically also doing the other person a disservice, um, because you're not helping them. Not all hard, hard conversations need to be like, you know, um, you're out of your job. They can be much more of here are areas where I think things need to go better, and let me tell you why. Let me tell you what my expectations are. And I think it's also important to be respectful, and I, I find it important to be just painfully humble in these conversations, um, where I will typically go into, go into the conversation, and I'll go, Listen, this is going to be a difficult, um, and unpleasant conversation for us. I'm just coming out and telling you, and I'm not pretending I know all the answers. This is super awkward for me to have this conversation, but I feel it's important that we have that, we have the conversation. Um, to me, that combination of, you know, respect, straightforwardness, and humility goes a long way.

AI assessment note: “Listen, this is going to be a difficult, um, and unpleasant conversation for us.”

Q to AI. You mentioned like the demotion element there. That's a really hard thing to do. If you're willing to demote someone, does that not just mean you should fire them? Someone once said to me, if you're willing to take less, you should never do the deal. And I kind of apply that here. If you're willing to have them, but give them less, should they not just go?

A Um, there are situations. Remember, all of these are fast moving environments. Okay. An area that you thought could be done fine with 20 engineers blew up. All of a sudden, it needs a hundred people. Um, and the person that did the job fine with 20 now is holding a portfolio of like 40 people needing to grow a hundred and they're struggling and the business can't wait. It's not that they're bad people. It's not that they were incapable of doing a good job. But to me, finding the, uh, like the right context, finding the right framework to help somebody succeed at a given point in time, you know, It's, it's okay to have those sorts of conversations. I had one director, um, who, uh, was in charge of, accidentally became in charge of two different areas, um, and part of what I went and told them was, I am taking one of these areas away. By the way, the thing that you have in your hands is going to grow to be, I think I promised him a forty billion dollar business. Ok, but I was like, in five, six years, that is, this was Google Shopping. This is what we are, um, looking at. And, and it is a big opportunity, but you get to focus on a single job. You know, that person took the job, eventually became a, eventually became a VP, was enormously successful. Um, that's a lot of selling, man, because people are like, you know, I mean, whenever you have a conversation like that, the first re…

AI assessment note: “Um, there are situations. Remember, all of these are fast moving environments.”

Q My question on NVIDIA was one side of that. The other side you mentioned was Databricks. And, you know, I spoke to friends, board members, investors, and they said that essentially Databricks might be ahead in AI workloads with Mosaic, with MLflow, direct model hosting. How do you think about that? Do you think Snowflake's behind in that respect?

A Uh, so we should separate out, um, machine learning from AI. Um, I joke to people that all of the machine learning people branded themselves as classic AI. Um, and, uh, uh, look, uh, they were first to market. That was their sweet spot, and they've been good at it for a, um, for a while. Um, we were very much in, uh, in catch up mode. Um, but AI is a much younger field. Uh, didn't really exist, let's call it pre-ChatGPT. Um, there, I feel incredibly confident, um, that we are not only cutting edge, um, but ahead of them, uh, on a number of fronts. Um, we have thought of, um, both methodically, but very quickly made AI into a reality at Snowflake in everything from How do you do data transformations, data engineering better? To how do you make sense of unstructured data? Um, and how do you, you know, how do you get reliably, um, to structured data? And then we are putting all of this into, into this agentic framework called Snowflake Intelligence that is coming out. Um, that, when it comes to AI, I feel very good about where Snowflake is. Um, that isn't an issue. I have work to do. In terms of, uh, getting the word out there, um, getting more and more customers. We have amazing marquee names, um, you know, like Siemens, like Elevance, like Bayer, a ton of them that are using Snowflake AI in, um, in production. So I feel good about where we are on, um, where we are on that side. …

AI assessment note: “we are not only cutting edge, um, but ahead of them”

Q were like, hey, you know, we're still waiting on you fuckers from technology land to actually deliver much ROI. And my question to you is, Do you think we've seen, like, excitement, and then we're gonna plateau like we did with self-driving? Or will we actually just see the exponential acceleration of adoption within enterprise, and it will bluntly be a very smooth hockey stick up and to the right?

A I think it is going to be gentler. In terms of, uh, just growth. On the other hand, um, I can very confidently tell you that AI is creating, um, value today, and it'll continue to create enduring value. Um, Many, many things that used to be just crazy hard for you and me to deal with are easier. You know that. I know that. And if some CEO is telling you that they're seeing no value from AI, I'd be like, I'm not sure you know a whole lot. Um, so let's get into the examples, right? The obvious easy ones. Okay, I was at Davos. I did 30, uh, 30 meetings. Um, I absolutely used things like dictation and transcribing tools to write, uh, to write notes for myself. I also hand wrote a whole lot Of notes. And, uh, you know, somebody on my team is like, oh, dude, 25 pages, really? I don't want to read this. How about you give me a summary? I just take it, I plunk all of my notes into cloud, and I go like, I want a one-line summary per meeting. Out comes the beautiful, concise summary. It's magical. Similarly, um, you know, we have, uh, uh, internal, uh, chatbots that have access to structured data, um, and they can handle questions that you have to, like, click around in dashboards and, like, you need to provide a lot of context. Um, again, incredible value.

AI assessment note: “I think it is going to be gentler. In terms of, uh, just growth.”

Q when you look at, bluntly, graduates coming out today and entering the workforce, I know you also have two boys whom Mario told me about. What would you advise? 20, 20 one-year-olds coming into today's workforce who are bluntly scared in some ways, looking at AI going, where is there going to be long-term jobs? Where is there not? What would you advise a 20, 20 one-year-old entering a workforce?

A My kids and I used to talk a lot. They're 25 and 23, um, about what they should work on. Roughly my advice to them was find something that you're passionate about that society values. Um, I was like, yeah, don't pick these noble professions that we all pretend we value, but in fact, we don't. I was like, being a teacher is really hard. Like, God bless them, but, you know, um, and so, hopefully, by the time you have graduated, you have skills and passion in something that society values. Obviously, everything is undergoing a lot of change. The best advice I have for navigating the, um, environment Um, is be open, be nimble about where change is coming. Embrace change. Don't be one of those people that's like, yeah, the internet is never going to be a thing. It is. AI is. And so, embracing the change, seeing what is, uh, seeing what is possible, and, you know, putting in the time, putting in the dedication, uh, to both excel at the job, but be thinking about where things can go. Um, I think that core formula Um, of drive and malleability is the advice that I give to a twenty-one-year-old. Honestly, it's the thing that I look for when I am trying to hire, uh, you know, take your pick, a senior exec into Snowflake.

AI assessment note: “Roughly my advice to them was find something that you're passionate about that society values.”

Q and I'm looking at this market today as an investor going, where is that sustainable value going to be generated? It seems like models get commoditized faster than anything. DeepSeek has shown that in the last few weeks. A lot of application layer material seems pretty light in terms of just building on top of commoditized models. How do you think about where sustainable value is in today's AI market?

A I think part of, you know, I had a conversation with some folks from OpenAI and an application company, one of these coding platforms. Um, and what I was telling, uh, you know, what this conversation was about is, um, the, the line between an infrastructure provider and an application provider today is super blurry. In a weird way, um, if there is a, um, let's say a brand new application to be created, Um, there's basically no guarantee that OpenAI or Anthropic or Microsoft or Google are not going to go create it. All of these at this point are driven, motivated companies, and they pretty much go like, ooh, coding assistant. That's taking off. Oh, that's fine. I'll do a coding assistant, um, or something else. Oh, I see. People are, uh, uh, generating much better legal documents. Ah, maybe we should release, like, a, a legal, uh, chat GPT, something. Um, to me, I think that is part of what makes value creation in today's environment, like, really tricky. Um, to figure out. I would say that the place where, um, there absolutely is value, you know, creation is with companies, um, that have a set of customer relationship, deliver clear value, and are willing to embrace AI fast enough that a disruptor is not going to unseat them. This is why I feel good about Snowflake, because we are a data platform. We help people, you know, um, collect data, make sense of data, run analytics on …

AI assessment note: “place where, um, there absolutely is value, you know, creation is with companies”

Q Revolute, which is like, when you're talking, you're like, you know what? I don't want to fight you. You do you. I'm going to support you. I'm a believer, dude. Keep going. Um, so yes, I completely get you. Can I ask, which structure do you think AIDS innovation better and AIDS winning better? Being a super late stage private today, like Databricks, or being a public company like Snowflake?

A Innovation is not an option. It's just something that we have to do. Do I have more constraints than Databricks being private? Absolutely. I mean, it's very clear that they're buying a bunch of business. Um, that they don't have to worry about things like, uh, you know, uh, free cash flow. Uh, they have doubled the number of sales people that we have. Um, but as I also tell people, you know, It's easy to lose a lot of money. It's very easy to be uncalibrated about spending money. Uh, you should be careful what you, um, wish for. Do we operate under constraints? Absolutely. But that's what innovation is about is how can you drive in the face of constraints? And you know, this in some ways like deep seek is yet another illustration, um, that, you know, uh, having rich uncles is not always a good thing.

AI assessment note: “Do we operate under constraints? Absolutely. But that's what innovation is about”

Q know, praise of Sridhar. They said, but no, Because people around you struggle to keep up, and I'm by no means running 20 miles and, you know, as athletic as you, but I am intense, and people struggle to keep up with me too, and I struggle with that. What advice would you have for me and other high-intent CEOs who need to bring people with them, but it's difficult?

A I think making sure that people understand the big picture. Ah, the fleeting nature of opportunity. Um, and how quickly it can, uh, disappear. You know, I run a company that is making, call it three and a half billion dollars roughly a year. If you think about things like the world GDP, um, inflation adjusted, it grows by what? One, two, three percent a year. You know, it's, uh, it is, uh, a hundred years, uh, if something is growing at a percent for it to kind of double. Or a little bit less than that, give or take. You're talking about doing that in two years. Um, I think the first thing that I tell people is, um, we are extraordinarily lucky to be in environments that can generate this much value and this much growth, and to sustain it and accelerate takes extraordinary people. It's not for everyone, and I'm okay with that, but let me tell you what it takes to succeed at Snowflake. The expectations are high because the returns are high. The opportunity is big, and the opportunity cost is even bigger. And so I think it's a question of what do people want to be a part of. Um, at Snowflake, we absolutely want to be that data engine for every single enterprise on the planet. I think that's a pretty amazing mission. Plus, we get to build an iconic company along the way. It takes special people. I don't have to make excuses for that.

AI assessment note: “I think making sure that people understand the big picture. Ah, the fleeting nature”

Q to actually force the hard conversations? Don't laugh. Whenever I have an email that I don't want to send or don't know how to send it, I force myself to go in the lift in my apartment building, and whatever I've written by the time I get to the other end gets sent. And that's the deal with myself. Do you have any tips on how to actually force that?

A Yeah, I mean, the first thing to remember, Is that, you know, conflicts typically do not resolve themselves. And so, you kind of have to internalize that postponing things is going to make them worse. The more you postpone, the worse it gets. Um, I think, like, just telling yourself that is, um, is important. Uh, and the other thing is, uh, avoiding the hard conversation is typically also doing the other person a disservice, um, because you're not helping them. Not all hard, hard conversations need to be like, you know, um, you're out of your job. They can be much more of here are areas where I think things need to go better, and let me tell you why. Let me tell you what my expectations are. And I think it's also important to be respectful, and I, I find it important to be just painfully humble in these conversations, um, where I will typically go into, go into the conversation, and I'll go, Listen, this is going to be a difficult, um, and unpleasant conversation for us. I'm just coming out and telling you, and I'm not pretending I know all the answers. This is super awkward for me to have this conversation, but I feel it's important that we have that, we have the conversation. Um, to me, that combination of, you know, respect, straightforwardness, and humility goes a long way.

AI assessment note: “you kind of have to internalize that postponing things is going to make them worse”

Q to AI. You mentioned like the demotion element there. That's a really hard thing to do. If you're willing to demote someone, does that not just mean you should fire them? Someone once said to me, if you're willing to take less, you should never do the deal. And I kind of apply that here. If you're willing to have them, but give them less, should they not just go?

A Um, there are situations. Remember, all of these are fast moving environments. Okay. An area that you thought could be done fine with 20 engineers blew up. All of a sudden, it needs a hundred people. Um, and the person that did the job fine with 20 now is holding a portfolio of like 40 people needing to grow a hundred and they're struggling and the business can't wait. It's not that they're bad people. It's not that they were incapable of doing a good job. But to me, finding the, uh, like the right context, finding the right framework to help somebody succeed at a given point in time, you know, It's, it's okay to have those sorts of conversations. I had one director, um, who, uh, was in charge of, accidentally became in charge of two different areas, um, and part of what I went and told them was, I am taking one of these areas away. By the way, the thing that you have in your hands is going to grow to be, I think I promised him a forty billion dollar business. Ok, but I was like, in five, six years, that is, this was Google Shopping. This is what we are, um, looking at. And, and it is a big opportunity, but you get to focus on a single job. You know, that person took the job, eventually became a, eventually became a VP, was enormously successful. Um, that's a lot of selling, man, because people are like, you know, I mean, whenever you have a conversation like that, the first re…

AI assessment note: “It's not that they're bad people. It's not that they were incapable”

Q Do you think richer leaders make better leaders? Because you are more convicted, you're not so worried about downside, you're not Be fearful about, bluntly, what happens if I lose my job, or if something happens? Do richer leaders make better leaders?

A No. I mean, I think it can make them, ah, callous. It can make them a little too tolerant of massive amounts of risk. It's a, it's a balance. You always have different constituents, and it's important to remember that as a leader, like, it's not just you. It's the employees in your company. It's your, ah, it's your shareholders. It's your customers. Um, we went through, ah, a pretty difficult, ah, time as a company last year, and that's when it sort of clearly came into focus. This affects a lot of different people, um, and, ah, it isn't always about swinging for the fences. Yes, sometimes you have to make that dramatic ninety-degree left turn, ah, to get to some, to get to some place, um, but You know, I, I, I don't think that being in positions where you're personally unaffected by the outcome from a dollar perspective is necessarily a positive thing.

AI assessment note: “No. I mean, I think it can make them, ah, callous.”

Q My question on NVIDIA was one side of that. The other side you mentioned was Databricks. And, you know, I spoke to friends, board members, investors, and they said that essentially Databricks might be ahead in AI workloads with Mosaic, with MLflow, direct model hosting. How do you think about that? Do you think Snowflake's behind in that respect?

A Uh, so we should separate out, um, machine learning from AI. Um, I joke to people that all of the machine learning people branded themselves as classic AI. Um, and, uh, uh, look, uh, they were first to market. That was their sweet spot, and they've been good at it for a, um, for a while. Um, we were very much in, uh, in catch up mode. Um, but AI is a much younger field. Uh, didn't really exist, let's call it pre-ChatGPT. Um, there, I feel incredibly confident, um, that we are not only cutting edge, um, but ahead of them, uh, on a number of fronts. Um, we have thought of, um, both methodically, but very quickly made AI into a reality at Snowflake in everything from How do you do data transformations, data engineering better? To how do you make sense of unstructured data? Um, and how do you, you know, how do you get reliably, um, to structured data? And then we are putting all of this into, into this agentic framework called Snowflake Intelligence that is coming out. Um, that, when it comes to AI, I feel very good about where Snowflake is. Um, that isn't an issue. I have work to do. In terms of, uh, getting the word out there, um, getting more and more customers. We have amazing marquee names, um, you know, like Siemens, like Elevance, like Bayer, a ton of them that are using Snowflake AI in, um, in production. So I feel good about where we are on, um, where we are on that side. …

AI assessment note: “we are not only cutting edge, um, but ahead of them”

Q were like, hey, you know, we're still waiting on you fuckers from technology land to actually deliver much ROI. And my question to you is, Do you think we've seen, like, excitement, and then we're gonna plateau like we did with self-driving? Or will we actually just see the exponential acceleration of adoption within enterprise, and it will bluntly be a very smooth hockey stick up and to the right?

A I think it is going to be gentler. In terms of, uh, just growth. On the other hand, um, I can very confidently tell you that AI is creating, um, value today, and it'll continue to create enduring value. Um, Many, many things that used to be just crazy hard for you and me to deal with are easier. You know that. I know that. And if some CEO is telling you that they're seeing no value from AI, I'd be like, I'm not sure you know a whole lot. Um, so let's get into the examples, right? The obvious easy ones. Okay, I was at Davos. I did 30, uh, 30 meetings. Um, I absolutely used things like dictation and transcribing tools to write, uh, to write notes for myself. I also hand wrote a whole lot Of notes. And, uh, you know, somebody on my team is like, oh, dude, 25 pages, really? I don't want to read this. How about you give me a summary? I just take it, I plunk all of my notes into cloud, and I go like, I want a one-line summary per meeting. Out comes the beautiful, concise summary. It's magical. Similarly, um, you know, we have, uh, uh, internal, uh, chatbots that have access to structured data, um, and they can handle questions that you have to, like, click around in dashboards and, like, you need to provide a lot of context. Um, again, incredible value.

AI assessment note: “I think it is going to be gentler. In terms of, uh, just growth.”

Q does this go? I hope you're my friend. Please advise me. I'm seeing, you know, Mark invest sixty five billion dollars in data centers. You're seeing the five hundred billion dollar announcement of Stargate. I know there's equity in debt and it's not such a straightforward deal, but we've never seen money thrown at anything like this. This is the kind of arms race of AI. Where does it end?

A I mean, with a bubble bursting, as all bubbles do, uh, there's like this super, um, funny conversation and, you know, insightful conversation that, uh, um, Ben Thompson from Stratechery had with, uh, uh, Nat Friedman, uh, where they talk about, you know, is this a good bubble, um, like the telecom bubble in the nineties that eventually laid, you know, Fiber for the whole world that Google and Facebook and you and I took advantage of? Or is this the dumber web van stuff that just, like, burnt money in the early 2000 trying to get you groceries and we had to wait 15 years for Instacart to then show up? Let's face it, you and I don't know. And if the bulk of those investments are going into things like power and buildings, you can say, like, okay, it's created surplus for the world. Something good is going to come out of it. If on the other hand, it goes into crazily depreciating hardware, you know, that is value disappearing, uh, in a poof. I think it's early, but back to your point about what do we do? There's still scope for innovation. I think like every OpenAI cannot possibly do every workflow that there is, and what you and I need to do is what are the things that are, you know, still ripe for disruption? Where is value being created? I think Harvey is a great company. I don't think it's going to get disrupted by open AI. And so I think finding niches like that and investing…

AI assessment note: “I mean, with a bubble bursting, as all bubbles do”

Q Revolute, which is like, when you're talking, you're like, you know what? I don't want to fight you. You do you. I'm going to support you. I'm a believer, dude. Keep going. Um, so yes, I completely get you. Can I ask, which structure do you think AIDS innovation better and AIDS winning better? Being a super late stage private today, like Databricks, or being a public company like Snowflake?

A Innovation is not an option. It's just something that we have to do. Do I have more constraints than Databricks being private? Absolutely. I mean, it's very clear that they're buying a bunch of business. Um, that they don't have to worry about things like, uh, you know, uh, free cash flow. Uh, they have doubled the number of sales people that we have. Um, but as I also tell people, you know, It's easy to lose a lot of money. It's very easy to be uncalibrated about spending money. Uh, you should be careful what you, um, wish for. Do we operate under constraints? Absolutely. But that's what innovation is about is how can you drive in the face of constraints? And you know, this in some ways like deep seek is yet another illustration, um, that, you know, uh, having rich uncles is not always a good thing.

AI assessment note: “that's what innovation is about is how can you drive in the face of constraints”

Q When you hire someone thinking that they are able to scale through different stages of company development, and you are wrong, why have you been wrong?

A These things are unpredictable. Life is very long, um, and people also change over time. Um, there is a certain something that, take your pick, 10, fifty million pounds is going to do to people. Um, part of the reason why I joined Google in 2003, a year before the IPO. Honestly, part of the reason why I succeeded, because a bunch of people that joined in 2001 and two, all of a sudden were worth fifty hundred million dollars, and they said, life's great, I'm out. Honestly, yeah, I don't blame that. Um, and, but that's part of, uh, you know, what it takes to, um, have a driven team. Uh, not everybody can scale. I've had lots of conversations with people about what does it take to double your team, and roughly my advice has always been, listen, every time your team doubles in size, um, all of the things that used to make you wonderful for your previous team Are typically massive inhibitors for you to succeed in your new job. I'm not sure you like, you really internalize that. Um, and it requires a lot of reinvention for what people have to be and how they have to operate. Um, you know, there are quite a few people that can make these transitions that will adapt and that will thrive. Um, I almost see it as my, my duty, my job, my Responsibility to give people those kinds of opportunities. But look, I'm also kind of, um, relentless and cutthroat in that I give people time. I give pe…

AI assessment note: “These things are unpredictable. Life is very long, um, and people also change over time.”

Q Do you think richer leaders make better leaders? Because you are more convicted, you're not so worried about downside, you're not Be fearful about, bluntly, what happens if I lose my job, or if something happens? Do richer leaders make better leaders?

A No. I mean, I think it can make them, ah, callous. It can make them a little too tolerant of massive amounts of risk. It's a, it's a balance. You always have different constituents, and it's important to remember that as a leader, like, it's not just you. It's the employees in your company. It's your, ah, it's your shareholders. It's your customers. Um, we went through, ah, a pretty difficult, ah, time as a company last year, and that's when it sort of clearly came into focus. This affects a lot of different people, um, and, ah, it isn't always about swinging for the fences. Yes, sometimes you have to make that dramatic ninety-degree left turn, ah, to get to some, to get to some place, um, but You know, I, I, I don't think that being in positions where you're personally unaffected by the outcome from a dollar perspective is necessarily a positive thing.

AI assessment note: “No. I mean, I think it can make them, ah, callous.”

Q When you hire someone thinking that they are able to scale through different stages of company development, and you are wrong, why have you been wrong?

A These things are unpredictable. Life is very long, um, and people also change over time. Um, there is a certain something that, take your pick, 10, fifty million pounds is going to do to people. Um, part of the reason why I joined Google in 2003, a year before the IPO. Honestly, part of the reason why I succeeded, because a bunch of people that joined in 2001 and two, all of a sudden were worth fifty hundred million dollars, and they said, life's great, I'm out. Honestly, yeah, I don't blame that. Um, and, but that's part of, uh, you know, what it takes to, um, have a driven team. Uh, not everybody can scale. I've had lots of conversations with people about what does it take to double your team, and roughly my advice has always been, listen, every time your team doubles in size, um, all of the things that used to make you wonderful for your previous team Are typically massive inhibitors for you to succeed in your new job. I'm not sure you like, you really internalize that. Um, and it requires a lot of reinvention for what people have to be and how they have to operate. Um, you know, there are quite a few people that can make these transitions that will adapt and that will thrive. Um, I almost see it as my, my duty, my job, my Responsibility to give people those kinds of opportunities. But look, I'm also kind of, um, relentless and cutthroat in that I give people time. I give pe…

AI assessment note: “all of the things that used to make you wonderful... are typically massive inhibitors”

Q Davos is an interesting collection of world's biggest CEOs. Was there any enduring takeaways for you from the sentiment that you saw at Davos?

A I mean, first of all, I took a very utilitarian view of Davos and less into, you know, um, uh, the bigger thing. This was my first time and I was terrified by the idea of spending five days, um, away from work, uh, especially with like board and earnings, uh, coming up was well worth it. Uh, amazing number of meetings, um, amazing number of key folks from, uh, uh, from companies. You know, the message that I heard, uh, from, um, uh, CEOs was much more that of help us create utility. Tell us what is possible. And when I talk to them both about what we can do with unstructured data, um, in terms of being able to create a chatbot on a document corpus quickly, our structured data, they got it. But then when I tell them now you get to mix and match them and create, um, agentic platforms, um, where you can access a whole lot of related information in one place. Um, people are excited. Um, when I talk to them about, here is how you can automate parts of underwriting by bringing together all of the structured and unstructured information that you need to have in order to underwrite and, you know, like, insurance for a building, people are like, oh my god, that is, that is amazing. You're correct. We need to continue to be focused on utility, but I didn't face a lot of, like, rampant skepticism about Hui, Because I just whip out my phone and show them here are the five stupid and fun th…

AI assessment note: “the message that I heard, uh, from, um, uh, CEOs was much more that of help us create utility.”

Q software engineering and like engineering, it's like the first place that AI is going to really dominate, and you're starting to see that with Copilot and a lot of the tools that we see around that. Do you disagree And say, no, there is immense value in software engineering moving forwards. Do do it. Students keep going. Or do you go, no, that is actually the first to be impacted?

A I think all kinds of knowledge professions are going to be impacted in a pretty big, big, big, big way. You know, my sort of the, the simplistic, but, um, fairly accurate description of what AI can do is like, it is this incredible Translation layer between all kinds of knowledge. Unstructured. Structured, um, you can make sense of it all in a way that only humans were able to. So I would say any knowledge worker, absolutely, including software engineers, should embrace and see where this technology is going to go. Um, I think it is too early, uh, to kind of jump to conclusions on does this mean then That even software engineering becomes an apex profession or becomes like a thinned out profession. What I mean by that is, uh, you know, look after the internet, there was not a particularly good reason for every city in every country, um, to have like foreign bureaus sitting in Washington. It's like, why? Because the big ones, the New York Times can reach every part of the world. You get pretty good coverage. Maybe you don't like them. Maybe you want some other viewpoint, but it became a handful. And so, you know, so things like journalism went from being a broad-based profession to one that was narrow. Same thing happened to music. Same thing happened, you know, so these, it is, I would say, a little hard to predict how much impact it is, it is going to have. Um, but to the exte…

AI assessment note: “I'm kind of not down on software engineering as a profession”

Q If you could, would you rather take the company private and remove the constraints?

A I think the visibility is a good thing. You don't get to bullshit anymore. Um, I think, uh, it provides for, uh, uh, it provides for liquidity. Um, and, uh, being able to grade yourself, I think is an important part. Um, it is very easy to fool yourself into thinking, um, that things are gonna be great, and you don't get, actually get any, uh, any feedback. We are in the world of, like, almighty dollars. Um, they are well calibrated. I can't like, you know, either you make money or you don't. Either there's free cash flow or there's not. I think that dose of reality is actually helpful. I mean, even if you, even if you look at, you know, um, the competitor that we talked about for a few months, it was all about like amazing. AI is going through the roof. I haven't heard much from them about AI recently. All of a sudden, amazing. It's equal going through the roof. Um, it feels like a bit of three card Monty to me. And I think being a public company, Forces you to be open and, you know, and, and show your work all along the way.

AI assessment note: “I think the visibility is a good thing. You don't get to bullshit anymore.”

Q Can I ask? Where have the constraints helped you, and where have they hurt you?

A I mean, like, with AI, for example, we said we were not going to be unreasonable about how large that team is. I didn't ask for a blank check. We said, we know what we need to do. We need to focus, we need to have clarity around the things that we need to build, and we need to be very good at, um, at, at doing it. And, uh, you know, so, um, with a modest investment, Um, we were able to very quickly catch up in AI. Um, I think having those constraints drives clarity. You're not trying to do everything, and you're not also trying to chase every possible unscalable, you know, kind of, ah, kind of business. Um, constraints can be problematic, um, when, um, there are dramatic market reactions, for example, because people can over interpret, um, you know, changes that happen, um, quarter to quarter in numbers, uh, and, um, and I would say in some ways, um, like the snowflake stock journey, the ups and the downs, and then the ups, um, are a reflection of, like, the scrutiny, Um, that a public company faces. In an ideal world, I am able to tell my team and investors, we got this covered. Um, you know, just don't worry about it. Everything will be great. Um, absolutely you have to worry about it because people are making mortgages based on what their stock is worth. And so you get into externalities, um, that are difficult to, uh, you know, difficult to manage. Um, it raises the bar on …

AI assessment note: “having those constraints drives clarity... constraints can be problematic”

Q Can I ask? Where have the constraints helped you, and where have they hurt you?

A I mean, like, with AI, for example, we said we were not going to be unreasonable about how large that team is. I didn't ask for a blank check. We said, we know what we need to do. We need to focus, we need to have clarity around the things that we need to build, and we need to be very good at, um, at, at doing it. And, uh, you know, so, um, with a modest investment, Um, we were able to very quickly catch up in AI. Um, I think having those constraints drives clarity. You're not trying to do everything, and you're not also trying to chase every possible unscalable, you know, kind of, ah, kind of business. Um, constraints can be problematic, um, when, um, there are dramatic market reactions, for example, because people can over interpret, um, you know, changes that happen, um, quarter to quarter in numbers, uh, and, um, and I would say in some ways, um, like the snowflake stock journey, the ups and the downs, and then the ups, um, are a reflection of, like, the scrutiny, Um, that a public company faces. In an ideal world, I am able to tell my team and investors, we got this covered. Um, you know, just don't worry about it. Everything will be great. Um, absolutely you have to worry about it because people are making mortgages based on what their stock is worth. And so you get into externalities, um, that are difficult to, uh, you know, difficult to manage. Um, it raises the bar on …

AI assessment note: “with AI, for example... having those constraints drives clarity... constraints can be problematic”

Q If you could, would you rather take the company private and remove the constraints?

A I think the visibility is a good thing. You don't get to bullshit anymore. Um, I think, uh, it provides for, uh, uh, it provides for liquidity. Um, and, uh, being able to grade yourself, I think is an important part. Um, it is very easy to fool yourself into thinking, um, that things are gonna be great, and you don't get, actually get any, uh, any feedback. We are in the world of, like, almighty dollars. Um, they are well calibrated. I can't like, you know, either you make money or you don't. Either there's free cash flow or there's not. I think that dose of reality is actually helpful. I mean, even if you, even if you look at, you know, um, the competitor that we talked about for a few months, it was all about like amazing. AI is going through the roof. I haven't heard much from them about AI recently. All of a sudden, amazing. It's equal going through the roof. Um, it feels like a bit of three card Monty to me. And I think being a public company, Forces you to be open and, you know, and, and show your work all along the way.

AI assessment note: “I think the visibility is a good thing. You don't get to bullshit anymore.”

Q Davos is an interesting collection of world's biggest CEOs. Was there any enduring takeaways for you from the sentiment that you saw at Davos?

A I mean, first of all, I took a very utilitarian view of Davos and less into, you know, um, uh, the bigger thing. This was my first time and I was terrified by the idea of spending five days, um, away from work, uh, especially with like board and earnings, uh, coming up was well worth it. Uh, amazing number of meetings, um, amazing number of key folks from, uh, uh, from companies. You know, the message that I heard, uh, from, um, uh, CEOs was much more that of help us create utility. Tell us what is possible. And when I talk to them both about what we can do with unstructured data, um, in terms of being able to create a chatbot on a document corpus quickly, our structured data, they got it. But then when I tell them now you get to mix and match them and create, um, agentic platforms, um, where you can access a whole lot of related information in one place. Um, people are excited. Um, when I talk to them about, here is how you can automate parts of underwriting by bringing together all of the structured and unstructured information that you need to have in order to underwrite and, you know, like, insurance for a building, people are like, oh my god, that is, that is amazing. You're correct. We need to continue to be focused on utility, but I didn't face a lot of, like, rampant skepticism about Hui, Because I just whip out my phone and show them here are the five stupid and fun th…

AI assessment note: “the message that I heard from CEOs was much more that of help us create utility”