Now, most organizations are incredibly in up still in terms of their data promise. After all, he has experience on his side. They knew exactly what we meant. And when you buy companies, it gets worse, right? Leaders such as Slootman, Scott McNealy , Jayshree Ullal and my old boss Pat McGovern have inspired me over the. By the way, our two largest competitors were both bidding for the company at the same time. Frank Slootman has written another book about how to run a business based on his time at Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake. For example, he made a few changes at Snowflake when he became CEO. It doesn't matter how big we are, as long as we have a compelling mission that we want to get up for every day and swing for defenses and then, it's not hard. If it's not related to our core mission, we don't want to hear about it. So after a while, it's like, "Okay, we've done enough of this." That's awesome. And that really allowed me to do this at 6:00 AM on weekdays and weekends and the holidays. What's the playbook?" I mean, it was a super crowded field, but we just crushed that entire field. But it's not what it really is, so it wasn't an enormous surprise to me to come here. But one day, and this was in March of 2019 and he said, "What would it take for you to take the helm?" That's when you're at risk. What attracted you to the space? I mean, the problem with backup and recovery is, yeah, you can do backups, but the point of backup is recovery because if I can't find or read tapes, I'm still up the creek without a paddle. I don't think about what's next. But as I got into retirement, the whole experience of retirement changes in the beginning, it's very euphoric, right? And I said, "Why not?" Insurance companies historically have not been because they are data companies by their essence, right? You want to be that person, okay? But 233 years later, American, Dutch and British interests are inexorably intertwined. [2], In May 2019, Frank Slootman joined Snowflake Inc. as its CEO. And then I change myself to become that flavor of CEO. It was originally known in Dutch as de Waalstraat when it was part of new Amsterdam in the 17th Century, an actual wall existed on the street from 1685 to 1699, protecting the early entrepreneurs and fur traders of Fort Amsterdam from encroachment from the north. We're two sides of a coin, which is a reason why we've shown up in so many companies together. So, a book becomes highly scalable way of really creating some well-curated observations around "Look, here's what we believe to be true about the trajectory that we've been on. I always talk about mission posture, which really means having a very, very intense visceral sense of what the company is trying to achieve. I'm just, I'm fighting that tide. It is hard when you lose your sense of mission, when you lose your desire and your boldness and your aggression in the marketplace and want to go after competition. The name was also fitting because a few years later, Snowflake burst onto the tech scene with a one of a time groundbreaking Cloud data warehouse product that revolutionized how companies could manage their data. And rightfully so, by the way, because they have created something, right?. When a company is buying a million dollars from you in the course of a year, what are they getting? Property details for 3001 W Ruby Hill Dr, located in Pleasanton, California. The IPO was the third for Dutch-born Slootman, who moved to California for a job at Compuware in the dotcom boom, then worked at Borland Software. Don't typecast yourself." It takes a ton of work to maintain intense focus on the mission, so that's the weaponizing. 2023 Forbes Media LLC. And that's all coming up right after this. No, we're talking about stuff that's not working well. He spends more time than is perhaps wise with his eyes fixed on a screen either reading history books, keeping up with international news, or playing the latest releases on the Steam platform, which serve as the subject matter for much of his writing output. And that's our conversation for this week. Because he was still smarting from the fact that I left ServiceNow and he felt I left him stranded. Different technologies, different markets, different competitors, different eras, different cultural times that we live in, you need to become, what that situation requires off you. I really had to be shamed into writing this book, considering the amount of work that it is, but got a lot of help from the company. Snowflakes debut on the New York Stock Exchange on September 16 under the ticker SNOW delivered the much anticipated blockbuster opening. It was doubling. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. So, what are things that we should absolutely not ask you to do ever? Our headquarters is in Atlanta, Georgia. But one of those issues was that taken over from a founder CEO was really, really hard. I use that expression a lot to say, "Look, data operations is going to become your core." At some point, we were going to get stunted in our growth. I mean, if you look historically at what platforms like ours have done, there is no relationship to the past with what Snowflake is doing now. Are you just going to look the other way or are you going to call it out? I mean, truly retire. The eight blocks of the street run from Broadway in the west to the East River in the east. The nascent liquidity of spot LNG freight markets, and the volatility of time charter rates has boosted demand for risk management tools. He was pretty smart to use nautical expressions in that conversation, take the helm at Snowflake. I'm a proud US citizen, but at the same time, there's no negating my Dutch roots. Well, they knew now. You want to be the playmaker and the people that they're going to pass the ball to when we have two seconds left in the quarter, that kind of thing. It takes nothing. You could eject the tape from a tape drive and you could ship it off site. They're very far removed from the drive train. Our first thought was "not again" - he co-wrote Rise of The Data Cloud last year. Instead, hes got something equally as coola sailing boat named The Invisible Hand. ICE is the first exchange to list LNG freight futures contracts underpinned by the price assessments of spark commodities. And for our audience who may not remember the days of tape backups, can you explain the underlying concept that you grew from two men and a dog into a multibillion dollar business? In 2003, he became CEO of storage startup Data Domain, taking it public in 2007 and selling it to EMC in 2009 for $1.8 billion. Right? And that's the American flavor and flare that has built up over three, almost four decades. I'm a miserable golfer, but somewhere along, the 18 holes, he's like, "I'll do it, but don't leave me again." And then obviously, a business that was at a sense of itself, of its product lifecycle, which has its own unique set of challenges. Learn how your comment data is processed. And we introduced a centrally cleared model with ICE as the central counterparty, because that makes it much easier for new firms to join. But this whole Snowflake exercise could have turned out dramatically different, the CEO says, if the founders had pursued their original premise for what the company should be. The post 'Summer House' star Danielle Olivera gets emotional talking about Robert . So, this is not data warehousing, it's just one use case. That's really what you want to preserve rather than layers and layers and layers and channels of communication. We now use consumption models instead of subscription models. Tell me about sailing, first of all. How does having who's worked closely with you for years help you accomplish your goals of hyper growth without losing focus? Everything in our world starts with technology, starts with architecture, okay? Growth opportunities abound, but what many owners of startups may not realize is that choosing a bank with sector expertise to complement your business needs is more important than ever. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace. And that's exactly what we did. It's a transformation that is still going on. Why did you give up the helm of the invisible hand for this new role with Snowflake? Obviously all the financial reporting, all the systems. Right. I can't do every speaking engagement," et cetera. I mean, that's how I felt at that time, like I had no more to give. Volumes have increased and they've pretty much more than doubled, and we've actually nearly tripled the number of participants that we have as well. Everyone's watching. Because they can't understand how spending categories can just explode overnight like that. Reflects change since 5 pm ET of prior trading day. Well, that's because historically all we did was we did analytics in silo. We tried to, we wanted to get into primary storage. Cloud-data warehouse Snowflake has been the talk of the town since it announced its intention of going public. And you had literally physical media that could logistically manage. In other words, you got to really mean it, okay? Investors know this about us. Here's why this makes sense while looking at some options. But the issue with the acquisition, by the way, I've never sold a company in my life other than that one, so I'm not prone to selling at all. It will be fine. We had no experience. Now, what that does the weaponizing, what that does is we block everything else out. [22] In September 2019, it was ranked first on LinkedIn 's 2019 U.S. list of Top Startups. And fortunately, the temperament that is in you, it's going to re-manifest itself sooner or later. Slootman knows exactly what hes doing. And Americans always think that there's an easy answer to these questions. One of the reasons I made it a very transparent discussion is that most people think that when you have these highly successful company, it just happens like poof, beautifully. Correct, correct. But with three IPOs in your rear view mirror and one attempt at retirement already failing to stick, what do you see as the next chapter in Frank Slootman's journey? This is very much a country that believes things that other countries don't believe. Technology executive Frank Slootman took software company Snowflake public in one of the biggest tech IPOs of 2020, raising $ 3.4 billion at a $33.3 billion valuation. Frank Slootman, Chairman and CEO of Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), presided over the largest software IPO in the NYSE's history, but it wasn't his first rodeo. I speak with a fat accent and like, "What are we going to do with you, pal?" Before accepting the Snowflake CEO job, Slootman was retired and racing sailboats competitively in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, we were just picking over use cases here and there to sort of stay alive in the early days. I mean, without the foresight of having read Amp It Up, our listeners might assume that a jump from into software would take you really the rest of the way in your career from your start in Europe, to Indiana, the Midwest, all the way to California. Our guest today, Frank Slootman is chairman and CEO of Snowflake. They did not try to carry technology or ways of thinking forward. But yeah, where the inspiration comes from, we've had three very successful companies in a row, so you get barraged by requests for, "Hey, can you explain to us what the secret sauce is? And that's a whole different deal. Frank Slootman (born 1958) is a billionaire businessman, and the chairman and CEO at Snowflake Inc., a cloud data-warehousing company. And now, welcome inside the ICE House. It's just, it's hard not to be acquainted at some level with that culture. On stacking, all of a sudden, your boat left behind and you go like, "Oh, my God," so because it's very hard to get ahead on an upwind leg, right? Hes quite knowledgeable in the market industry, and he doesnt confuse with unnecessary jargon. Look, I'm not a certain type of CEO. And the whole point of the book is I try to contrast these experiences, like look, they're not the same. I mean, it gets rid of you. And in other words, I was already negotiating Mike's package before I had joined ServiceNow. And after a while it's like, "Look, I can't do one-on-one meetings with a million people. When we first came in there, it was a very, very anxiety-ridden ride in the early days. I'm buying aptitude and then I'm going to develop that with experience, right? Not all people are created equal in terms of their roles and their contributions in companies. They were all special purpose for this thing and that thing and that has really created a lot of problems for data center operations, because they just had a Frankenstein architecture out there and people are sick of that. So I've been very different from early days of Data Domain, later days of Data Domain, early days of ServiceNow. And it's very rare to create that kind of value. How does that work at Snowflake? It pays a lot to be in the business of knowing what you do, and Slootman knows more than the rest of us when it comes to money, the market, and the software industry. It is a future state that we're all working on right now. This is probably the biggest understatement of the year. Snowflake CEO Slootman Scores IPO Hat Trick With Big Bet on Data Software company aims to benefit from companies increasingly storing information in multiple clouds Big tech firms are investing. It's hard to get off of that. Let me bring you back 10 years to 2012, Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, and Marcin ukowski started Snowflake as the secret name of the startup they were working on during that particularly hot summer. Engineers should have a very easy time discerning the talent, so. And then Snowflake is again, a totally different. I mean, it's a hell of a cash burner as well. The Dutch have all always been enterprising. Quick digression. In the book, I go on and on about what some of those issues are. You need to be invested in the moment, in the present, rather than I'm thinking about my next move. You got to catch people doing things the right way and then amplify that and praise it and reward it and so on because people are like pets and children. Not much is known about Slootmans personal life, but we do know that hes fairly young for the success hes achieved in his lifetime. And people are, are mesmerized by Snowflake results because they don't quite understand, where is this coming from? So, they looked around and they found the guy with a passport to Dutch language proficiency like. Yeah, yeah. I just have been in the line of fire too long. CEO Frank Slootman told CNBC in January that after the Covid-19 outbreak forced people to work from home, it became clear that the old way of working wasn't going to return. Slootman has become somewhat of a business hero for many people, myself included. And for example, when I joined Unysis, I ended up in a corporate planning role. But in the end, it's like we have to get into backup software in which we tried. Much like how he runs his companies, Slootman is always direct in his speeches. Read More 10 Things You Didnt Know About Paul StovellContinue. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://xconomy.com/san-diego/2011/04/26/service-now-names-software-industry-veteran-frank-slootman-as-ceo/, https://www.businessinsider.com/servicenow-frank-slootman-interview-2012-8, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2019/06/05/snowflake-the-ai-force-multiplier/amp/, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/snowflake-snow-opening-trading-on-the-nyse.html, article "Frank Slootman" is from Wikipedia, https://wikitia.com/index.php?title=Frank_Slootman&oldid=81954. I was just shot. I mean, we lived in absolute terror. In 2011, after the founder of ServiceNow Fred Luddy stepped down, ServiceNow announced appointment of Frank Slootman as CEO. There are many questions left unanswered about the months leading up to Snowflake going public. And that is a common thread through all our companies. Thanks for listening. What did that initial scaling up to that point and then the public exit experience teach you about why being acquired was the right choice for Data Domain? That's not a healthy dynamic. Right? Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Our guest was Frank Slootman, the Chairman and CEO of Snowflake. You come with aptitude. When I was interviewing with ServiceNow, I said to the board, "I want to bring Mike along." And of course, people chuckled because they recognized it. I'm curious, how that opportunity at Data Domain came to you? And by the way, data platforms have been extremely fragmented historically. They're very lonely in their jobs. I'm like, "We're not trying to indict what you've done. I mean, people go from spending $50,000 a year to a million dollars a year in one year and they're like, and the CFOs go, "What the hell is this all about?" He was saying during the pandemic, he's like demand was up 60% over here, down 100% over there. That is how you energize companies. And opinions, everybody's got one, but data doesn't lie. Because if I sailed before, I always felt guilty because I was doing something that wasn't the company and now, I was completely free of guilt because it was my own time, my own money, et cetera and it was great. I need to know what that is. Make it as easy as I could make it. Mike is a really good example of that because what he's really good at, I'm not, and I always use the, the analogy of he plays defense, I play offense. The liberalization of LNG is creating a global natural gas market, with freight acting as a virtual pipeline between continents. It was very formative. There's no doubt that the successes that we have had, our function of the combination of our respective orientations in how we come at the world. I hate that. The IPO was the third for Dutch-born Slootman,. Mar 11, 2021, 11:30 ET. And eventually, we totally crushed that market because we could address any and all use cases that were out there. That takes very different approaches, orientation, skill sets, and so on what you do. That is the most, that is so unproductive. So now, we're having business conversations about data. Slootman said he understands people might be eager to more freely leave their homes once long-standing public health restrictions are eased, potentially wanting to return to pre-pandemic routines . Welcome, Frank, inside the Ice House. Buyers and sellers can come together. Take our own company, Intercontinental Exchange, for example. By the close of. And then my career thrived as each sort of, it veered just taking on jobs that nobody else would take, in other words. The book accounts his time in Data Domain and so much more. Closed: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year's Day. I'm in New York. Slootman received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Erasmus University Rotterdam School of Economics. It's not just a scale. Before the break, Snowflake's CEO, Frank Slootman and I were discussing his career. I mean, that's how aligned this is, okay? Over the past 20 years, as CEO of Data Domain and then ServiceNow and now Snowflake, Frank Slootman has generated extraordinary growth and success for each company and established himself as one of the world's top CEOs. And I've never been able to equal that level of success with a marketing slogan. Right? Africas largest economy is in the early stages of a monetary experiment that could be coming to the U.S. sooner than you think. But the thing that I like so much about yacht racing that I like better than being in business is when you make a mistake on the race course, it's almost immediately obvious that you did. And now, I feel like I'm being haunted, by this Dutch thing, this cloud that's hanging over me." Having run a number of global software companies, I appreciate the scope of resources that Blackstone can bring to high-growth . So not only is this CEO a winner on land; he also dominates the sea with his sailboatpretty impressive on any measure. At the same time, I ended up in conversations with the lead director and investor at Snowflake. The ecommerce industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors, and at the moment, it features several players. We're not trying to find fault with people or who did what to whom. Right? I mean, Dutch people are incredibly hard driving, no nonsense, can't suffer bullshit type of people. In other words, as a leadership team, it's not just the CEO. Those are really good conversation, good questions to have because each organization is different. Bachelor of Science, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Master of Science, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. And you can't play chess pieces in a million different ways, right? Right? BUILDINGS. And that went on literally for years, okay? It was the lowest ranking job in the entire world of IT, if you were involved with tape automation. So, after six years of success, by any metric, by playing the king on that ServiceNow chess board, why was it time to step down? Who can solve what set of issues, right? Theres no surprise here. So, it sort of lit a fire under me, just the prospect of doing that, it just kind of brought me back from my burned out state in 2017 to two years, feeling incredibly challenged, energized, and sort of having a new leash on life, if you will take on something like that. In other words, they kind of let it happen. And Mike was still the CEO at ServiceNow at that time. I mean, the results speak for themselves. Whatever he learned from school is probably what we should all learn. In May 2019, Frank Slootman, the retired former CEO of ServiceNow, joined Snowflake as its CEO and Michael Scarpelli, the former CFO of ServiceNow joined the company as CFO. I mean, the only thing that energizes people and teams and organizations and companies as a whole is the mission. This page was last edited on 12 March 2021, at 18:12. SAN MATEO, CA - May 1, 2019 - Snowflake Inc., the only data warehouse built for the cloud, today appointed Frank Slootman as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.Former CEO, Bob Muglia, has left the company after leading Snowflake through five years of unprecedented growth. Prior to joining Snowflake, Frank served as the CEO of ServiceNow and that's NYSE ticker symbol, NOW and Data Domain, leading both of those firms successfully through their IPOs. The. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity. Steve Jobs didnt even own 1% of Appleeven though he had millions worth in shares. But then, you go like, "Oh, this is the rest of my life." Never seen the inside of an office or anything. And today, there's an endless bank of software company elevators, but when you joined Comshare, it was in the nascent days of the tech world. So, the earlier you show up, the better off you are. And it was difficult for him to sort of hand over the reins, but the investors in the company convinced him that, "Look, we think that this is needed," because the company was growing well. welcome back! That was career death for people, so it was just the least flattering place in the entire IT operation was backup and recovery based on tape, very logistically, intense. And when you let it happen, you get feed-ups. Because of his much sought-after expertise, Slootman gets paid a decent sum of money. Because now, now you're going to look people in the eye, and say, "Look, this is the way we're going to be. You have served, as I intimated in the introduction, as the CEO of companies in Silicon Valley and now, Montana, but your story really begins 5,500 miles away from the West Coast. All these things eventually came together. Its none other than CEO Frank Slootman, and here are 10 things about the guy behind the current Snowflake craze. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. That is the X factor in companies, but it starts with weaponizing the mission. Every week there was a new bid. It's like, "That's not exciting." Tej, Read More 10 Things You Didnt Know about Tej VirkContinue. [23] And he always talked about Snowflake because it was a very exciting company to him and I didn't know that much about it, but enough to have a conversation. And by the way, data is going to, some people have referred to it as a new currency to new oil, whatever you want to call it, but. In Amp It Up, you're pretty open about the struggles the company faced in its business and leadership. I mean, you brought in some reinforcements when you started at Snowflake, including Michael Scarpelli, who was your CFO at Data Domain and ServiceNow. Obviously, that required even more resources, so we really had the strategic dilemma that we couldn't grow beyond our core market. IBA took over the auction in 2015 and we moved it to an electronic auction and on the web ICE platform, so it's fully audited to proper electronic liquidity window of market. The improvement in technology is one of the main reasons that this commercial scene is flourishing by the, Read More 10 Things You Didnt Know about Loggi CEO Fabien MendezContinue, Tableau Softwares President and CEO Mark Nelson defines Tableaus vision and supervises the companys business operations and procedures. And there is a following for this and the reason that we know that is because we wrote a book back in 2009, 2010, that sort of became a combat manual for entrepreneurs over the years where, because this is really for people that have nowhere else to turn. The New York stock exchange sits at the Southern tip of Manhattan on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets. That's a running joke that we always have. I can just blow a year on doing some other stuff that's interesting." It's really every leader in the organization needs to internalize and then, want to act on it. It's just that there is a spirit here that always believes that it can do things that other countries don't believe about themselves. The Frank Lloyd Wright (R) Suite will be accepting bookings from January 24, 2023, through March 31, 2024. . So, I ended up going back to, I really didn't want to. Most people just preside over culture. And I'm like, "You know what? And essentially, he defends. And I look at what the situation requires of me, not what I want to bring to it per se, based on my own background. Early days of ServiceNow was just jungle fighting. He cancelled the luxurious annual employee ski trip to Tahoe. [1] In June 2012, ServiceNow became a publicly-traded company as Frank Slootman led the company through a $210 million IPO. Back then, there were hardly any software companies around. Many in the emerging tech sector would name Frank Slootman easily because of the kind of substance he gives when he speaks. [+] NYSE When Snowflake went public in the largest software IPO of the year on Wednesday,. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman made headlines with controversial comments about diversity in the workplace. Frank Slootman is the CEO of Snowflake, a cloud-based database firm he joined in 2019 and took public in September 2020 in a blockbuster IPO. But the problem with tape was, I mean, tape got lost, tape became unreadable. Welcome back. And you need to have the flexibility of mind to really deploy yourself. But what is so great about it is, I mean, the starts are incredibly exciting and that takes enormous amount of drilling to become really good at starts because it's a tightly, tightly coordinated process and you have to become good at it.