Grit9 Jan 2023

#120 Chairman & CEO ServiceNow, Bill McDermott: Full Speed Ahead

“When you create something,” says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott, “that gives you the ability to help and do good and achieve for the most people possible.” Bill left his first corporate job at Xerox for a short stint at Gartner, then served as CEO of SAP for nearly a decade. He made one more transition three years ago because he saw a great opportunity to help make ServiceNow a defining enterprise software company. “I knew it could happen,” he says. “What I didn’t know is just how unbelievably right I was.”

In this episode, Bill and Joubin discuss fist-pumps, shoplifting teens, Bill’s superpowers, needing to be needed, marriage as a partnership, why every relationship matters, difficult relocations, breast cancer, the FDNY’s chaplain, and the Medal of Honor.

In this episode, we cover:

Why Bill bought a deli when he was in high school — and how he competed against 7-Eleven (04:00)
Interviewing at Xerox and wanting it more than anyone else (08:17)
Unwavering optimism and being a source of strength for others (12:34)
How a love of work has shaped Bill as a person (16:44)
Facing challenges and keeping a promise to his father (22:00)
Enjoying the present and keeping an eye on the future (30:01)
Leaving Xerox for Gartner and learning from a tough experience (33:29)
Sloan Kettering and Father Michael Judge (39:22)
Following the “original dream” vs. building something new at ServiceNow (44:59)
Losing an eye and getting a pep talk from two Medal of Honor winners (51:15)
Why Bill started and ended his book with quotes from two Kennedys (01:01:21)

Links:

Connect with Bill
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(295)

Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper

How do you keep up when you go from 50 to 500 employees in a year?Jesse Zhang shares how Decagon scaled that quickly, from hiring ahead of demand to keeping the company connected as the team grows.He ...

21 Sep 1h 6min

The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos

AI could be bigger than electricity.Anastasios Angelopoulos is seeing that shift firsthand, with Arena ranking 500+ models and tracking roughly 10 new releases every week.On Grit, he explains why ther...

7 Sep 1h

Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood

What kind of founder walks away from a multi-billion-dollar fintech company to start building rockets?Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, joins Joubin Mirzadegan to talk about life after one of the ...

24 Aug 1h 12min

Booking.com CEO on AI and the Future of Travel

"Our mission is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world."From the dot-com crash to AI, Glenn Fogel has spent nearly three decades helping Booking Holdings evolve through every major te...

10 Aug 50min

Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal

"The answer to every problem is a model."Parag Agrawal shares the ideas behind Parallel: products that continuously learn, and teams designed around versatile problem solvers.He also shares why he bui...

27 Jul 1h 1min

The Sales Framework Every Founder Needs | Mark Roberge

"There's 20 fires going on at every moment in the office and you have enough water to put out four."Mark Roberge shares what it takes to build and scale a company, from finding product-market fit to k...

13 Jul 1h 22min

Airwallex's Jack Zhang on Fintech, Failure, and Growth

In 2020, Airwallex lost nearly half its revenue overnight. Today it's worth $11 billion.Jack Zhang reflects on the decisions that kept the company alive, raising capital during uncertainty, and leadin...

29 Jun 1h 11min

Why 80% of the Fortune 100 Chose Qualtrics | Ryan Smith

AI may change software overnight, but company building still takes time.Ryan Smith explains why, despite the pace of AI, “the race is going to be way longer than anyone thinks.”He reflects on Qualtric...

15 Jun 1h 12min