Speaker unverified: belief

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…. That said, there's also probably things that only show up at the 200,000 person city state size that I wouldn't be aware of at the 10,000 person size. What effects only show up when you're that big? There are two things I would say. Quite honestly, having only worked at Microsoft, it's not that I'm like an expert, but the one thing I would say taking over for a founder— Steve and Bill built the company. I mean Paul and Bill started it and Steve and Bill scaled it, and I was sort of the first “non-founder” person. The thing I realized quickly, or in fact I got into the job and I realized that I need a team. And just to have the ability to manage the scope, but then that A.G. Lafly thing that we put out there, which I think is a great one. Being clear about what the CEO clearly needs to do, which businesses are you in? Which businesses are you synthesizing from the outside? Having the standards, setting the standards for culture, and then the ability to your point about having that performance culture that you can't say, “Hey, I'm only about the long term, or I'm all over the short term.” You’ve got to deliver both. Getting a real grip of the four or five things that only you can do, and then building the team. You'd say even at 500 people, that's what you do, but quite frankly, you can keep in your working memory. Growing up as a developer, there was a set of things everybody would talk about. How many lines of code do you know personally? At some point you sort of say, “Oh, that's the person who knows that module or that library”. That becomes more. Everybody starts where they know every line of code at some level. Then you have to get to the person who knows, “Oh, I know the person who wrote that,” and I think that that modularity and team building and the cohesiveness is— Am I understanding you correctly that maybe it's Stripe scale or at a smaller scale you can still reason about the product as a product and know everything that you're shipping and everything— I also think founders are unique in that sense because the founders are, that's kind of what is singular about them because they've grown up with it from day one. See, it's kind of hard to take the working memory of a founder and say, “Oh, let me take it and imprint it”—sort of a professional CEO.” It just doesn't work because even for me, I joined the company in ‘92. I was not there in the early eighties, and so to some degree it was a continuous scale that only the founder CEO or the founders see it. And so that's why I think having respect for what founders can do uniquely.And founders having respect for whoever comes next, that they can't be doing exactly the same thing that they did. So that's why I think this founder mold thing is interesting, which is clearly the culture personality of a founder is unbelievable and you use it, maximize it. Then mental model CEOs like us have to also be, you can sort of be in the founder mold but don't think you're a founder, and that nuance I think is an important one. vable and you use it, maximize it. Then mental model CEOs like us have to also be, you can sort of be in the founder mold but don't think you're a founder, and that nuance I think is an important one. Last question. We're running up against time. As we talk about cultures and building them, what's going on in the water in Hyderabad where the school that you went to, also Shantanu went there, Ajay Banga went there. Bunch of good chess players are similarly from there and southern India more broadly and things like that. But do you have any theory on the local outperformance? Yeah. The high school we went to, in fact until I would say Nvidia and Jensen, because Jensen has it now covered for all of us between me and Ajay and Shantanu. In fact, the CEO of Proctor Gamble today is also from my high school. See, it's a cabal. It's kind of a cabal. I would say one of the fascinating things about growing up in Hyderabad and going to that school in the middle of nowhere at that time in the late seventies and the early eighties. I would say, I think it gave us a lot more space. If you look at even each of us, academics was a thing, but quite frankly, we mostly, all of us had things we excelled at a lot of other things beyond academics, in fact. That was a pretty rare thing at that time in that country, and so I attribute it a lot to my high school because I feel that it is a place where it gave us a lot more space and room to follow what really became your passion, but you were able to take your time to discover it. Versus sort of feeling that, hey, I had to join some kind of a race. It wasn't as tracked as— That's right. Right. What was your passion in high school? Cricket, in fact, this by the way. Yeah, Samuel Beckett. Yeah, so I want to know this story. Sure. If you asked the question, who is the one sports person who played professionally? I guess he played one or two matches for I guess the Dublin University, and he played first-class cricket, and so he's the only person who played professional cricket and won a Nobel Prize. Really? That's really funny. So you can have it all. There you go. The chess boxing of its day or something. That's awesome. Well, you came close, but another life that could have been you. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure. Thanks Satya.…

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