Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, on the day of its 2020 IPO. He is called a demanding chief, and straight shooter. "I've typically been in board c
Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, on the day of its 2020 IPO. He is called a demanding chief, and straight shooter. “I’ve typically been in board conferences at different corporations and the CEO will put up a listing of 10 priorities … properly, that is the identical as having no priorities,” he just lately advised CNBC.
CNBC
Boasting the most well liked tech IPO of the 12 months (and the most important software program IPO ever), Snowflake, the cloud-based data-warehousing firm has been on hearth in 2020. And its CEO Frank Slootman, on the middle of that success, has now delivered three corporations to the general public markets, incomes his place as probably the most revered CEOs in enterprise expertise.
Nineteen months in the past, Slootman was named CEO of Snowflake, which provides companies new methods to retailer and entry information, somewhat than counting on clunky databases tied to {hardware}. Earlier than he arrived, the corporate, guided by former Microsoft govt Bob Muglia, was already valued at about $four billion by enterprise buyers.
“He is probably the most spectacular, most completed, most revered CEOs in enterprise tech,” Asheem Chandna, a software program investor at Greylock Companions, advised CNBC a couple of months again. “He is a take-no-prisoners chief. He can level at a hill and encourage the complete group to comply with him to take the hill.”
Greylock invested within the first two corporations Slootman took public, Information Area (later acquired by EMC and now a part of Dell) and ServiceNow, the place he served as President and CEO from 2011 to 2017, taking the group from round $100 million in income, to $1.four billion post-IPO.
Earlier than going public, Snowflake ranked No. 40 on this 12 months’s CNBC Disruptor 50 listing.
There’s one query Slootman claims to ask everybody (together with himself): “Should you could not do something this 12 months aside from one factor — one factor and also you could not do anything — what would that be?”
Anybody who doesn’t have the reply to that query must be higher ready, as a result of it could make a distinction between focus and failure.
Slootman says he as soon as requested this of a candidate for chief product officer throughout his time at ServiceNow, who stared at him blankly.
“It is an extremely laborious query to reply,” Slootman mentioned ultimately month’s CNBC Know-how Government Council Summit. “It is very simple to give you three [things]. It is very laborious to give you one, since you might be mistaken.”
“I’ve typically been in board conferences at different corporations and the CEO will put up a listing of 10 priorities … properly, that is the identical as having no priorities,” Slootman mentioned. “Should you’re in an govt place, it’s a must to practice your self to be very, very clear. [The answer to that question] implies that’s an important factor, that is probably the most vital … and doing that arbitrage is what now we have to do.”
Folks wish to be patted on the again and really feel good — I am into not feeling good.
Frank Slootman
Snowflake CEO
The Snowflake CEO additionally embraces his contrasting fashion to many different Silicon Valley tech leaders, and whereas he bristles on the suggestion he’s not precisely “heat and fuzzy,” he’s no-nonsense in method and doesn’t disguise it.
“I put all the main focus not a lot on lattes and neck rubs, however on us succeeding as a group,” he advised CNBC’s Jon Fortt in October. “Silicon Valley could be very a lot a high-fiving, self-congratulatory tradition. They love to only do a victory lap. We’re not into that,” he mentioned. “Folks wish to be patted on the again and really feel good — I am into not feeling good.”
In keeping with earlier reporting from CNBC’s Ari Levy and Jordan Novet, “some individuals who had been at Snowflake for the transition from Muglia to Slootman described a tradition of concern that took over after the reshuffling, with workers, notably in gross sales, simply attempting to maintain their heads down and their jobs intact lengthy sufficient for the corporate to go public and their choices to vest.”
However in dialog with Fortt ultimately month’s CNBC Know-how Government Summit, Slootman defined that his method to breaking leaders and expertise of what he calls “incrementalism,” is asking them to decide on what’s most essential by that one particular, curated query:
“There are loads of issues that occur in expertise which might be incremental … that is simply the character of evolving a platform and fixing bugs and enhancing capabilities and so forth,” Slootman mentioned. “However when you utterly fall into that mode, after awhile, there’s nothing unique or compelling about what you are doing anymore.”
“You must be a extremely summary, very lateral thinker, very built-in thinker, to reach at your priorities.”