Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…They do the natural thing at the time. These are bankers. Even though they're based in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, these aren't tech folks. They put out an RFP to folks like IBM, systems integrators, the Accenture's of the day to go build this technology for them. Go build a computerized authorization system for the BankAmericard Visa network. All the bids come back. Of course, they are all way over budget and way over time. Dee says, screw it, we're going to do it ourselves. How hard can it be? In his very Dee way, he goes and recruits the guy from the firm that impressed them the most throughout the bidding process. It was a firm named TRW and a guy named Ahram Detulian. Dee goes back to him and he's like, I like you. You come work for me. Leave TRW, I'm going to hire you, you build this here in-house. I'll give you the resources, you come join us, and you'll build out your own tech team here within NBI/Visa. Ahram comes and joins, and starts the core of the Visa tech team. Dee gives him nine months to build this entire thing from scratch. To do this, (1) it involves building a first nationwide and then ultimately worldwide telecom network so that the electronic communication can happen. (2) Installing computer systems in each of the member banks around the country so that instead of the banks calling the other banks, this can happen over computers. (3) Training the people at the banks on how to use these new computer systems. (4) Maybe most importantly for the long run, building a new centralized data center for Visa in the Bay Area. This becomes the San Mateo campus. You can see it right off of 101 as you're driving between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. It is, I believe, still the headquarters of Visa today now, a huge campus in San Mateo where they build the data center. Until I think next year, it's going to go back up to San Francisco when they finished the new building. That's right. I think it's going to Mission Bay. Miraculously, Ahram and his new tiger Visa tech team do it in nine months. And it works. Dave Stearns writes in his book about this whole situation and about Dee. "Dee maintained that if you give computer people more time, they will just consume it." So he always insisted—it's so true—on shorter projects with uncompromising deadlines.…

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