Adam Miller
Co-founder and CEO, Better Angels. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorbetterangels.la ↗Wikipedia ↗
Adam Miller founded the cloud human capital management platform Cornerstone OnDemand in 1999, taking it public in 2011 and leading it through its $5.2 billion sale to Clearlake Capital in 2021. Following Cornerstone, he established the Los Angeles homelessness non-profit Better Angels and directs impact initiatives and investments via 1P.org and 1P Ventures.
1shows
1appearances
18statements
6resolved
2supported
1contradicted
33%fully supported
Everything Adam Miller said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Founding a tech startup in LA was cheaper and easier than SF
“And I thought it would be cheaper and easier to start a company here and be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. And this is, I mean, that turned out to be absolutely true.”
Non-profits are trapped by bureaucracy unlike the forward-looking tech sector
“Government sector, and in particular, the nonprofit sector is filled with well-intentioned, hardworking people, but often are trapped in Infrastructure and ecosystem that has been built and most importantly, the bureaucracy that is surrounding them and they ca…”
Advocating for gun safety is much harder for public company CEOs
“It would be much harder to do as a public company CEO.”
Cornerstone was the first SaaS vendor for every early enterprise client
“Every single deal we did, we were the first software service company at that enterprise in the early days of SAS.”
Cornerstone raised in 2008, grew 60%, and never spent the money
“We ended up raising around Meritech led that round. We ended up growing 60% that year. And we never used a dollar of the money.”
Modern high-impact philanthropy requires multi-entity conglomerate structures
“Which is instead of thinking about a foundation as a single grant giving organization, they built a conglomerate. And the conglomerate contains a grant giving foundation, typically called a private foundation, a private operating foundation, which is also a fi…”
Synchronous learning fails for working adults due to time constraints
“Adults have the least access to education because they often are working nine to five or more. And so they can't leave in the middle of the day to go to class. So synchronous learning doesn't work that well.”
Every person in Miller's Wall Street chain of command invested in Cornerstone
“Every single person in my chain of command invested in the company. This wasn't. Personally. And the analysts who work for me also put in 5000 bucks.”
Cornerstone delivered two billion courses before its sale
“But when I sold the company, we had delivered two billion courses.”
Cornerstone would have died had it signed the 2000 AOL deal
“And had we signed that deal, we definitely would have been out of business.”
Cornerstone closed enterprise deals with Smith Barney and Aon post-9/11
“We had four deals that we were working on at the time that were all close to signature. We ended up closing three of those deals. And how had we fired those people? There's no way we could have service those companies. These were enormous companies, Smith Barn…”
Cornerstone grew 60% every year from 2005 to 2014
“From 2005 until 2014, every single year we're growing 60%.”
Cornerstone was Bessemer partner Byron Deeter's first cloud deal and unicorn
“When we finally raised venture capital, Bessemer led the round, Byron Dieter led the round. It was his first true cloud deal. We ultimately became his first unicorn, first of many, many unicorns that he's had.”
Bessemer did not know Cornerstone was almost broke when investing
“Bessemer actually never knew this right at the time that they invested. We were down to almost nothing. Because they kept delaying the close date, and if they delayed it much longer, you were going to be out. We went to made it.”
Cornerstone achieved 100% retention and zero churn in 2007
“And 2007, the company was still growing very well. We're getting into more and more deals, bigger and bigger deals. The deal sizes themselves were getting bigger. So we're talking about, you know, first six figure deals and we're starting to do seven figure de…”
LA tech talent scarcity forced early Cornerstone to hire for potential
“Being one of the earliest tech companies in LA, we were hiring predominantly for potential, not for experience because nobody had experience doing B to B software. So we had to hire for potential and that I think served us very well.”
Delivering online training in 1999 was impossible due to bandwidth limits
“Training requires a lot of bandwidth. So not only did you need the web to be able to deliver this concept, But you actually needed enough bandwidth that a course could be delivered online. Today, obviously super easy to do. In 1999, it was impossible. This is …”
Cornerstone delayed its IPO to list with Goldman Sachs in 2011
“We could have cheated and went public sooner with a smaller bank, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go public with a top tier bank and we got Goldman Sachs to lead the round to lead the IPO. And we ended up going public in March of. 2021 of 20 11.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Adam's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-founder and CEO, Better Angels | 1 | 18 | 33% 2/6 | full record on Masters of Scale → |