Patel: Stamina and hunger matter far more than raw intellect
Jeetu Patel · AI is critical for humanity’s survival: Cisco President on the AI revolution | Jeetu Patel · Feb 26, 2026 · at 1:22:34
Jeetu Patel is President and CPO at Cisco. He shares his primary life motto and management heuristic with Lenny Rachitsky.
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“Stamina trumps intellect. I feel like it's very important to have smart people, but you can become smart if you have curiosity and hunger and staying power and persistence. And so I think that trait of like learning to learn and constantly being hungry and having the stamina and persistence is far more important than the absolute measure of intellect that you might have, because that is very, very trainable and learnable over time and improvable over time. But hunger is very, it's not teachable is what I've found.”
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