#157 CEO Udemy, Greg Brown: The Plunge

Guest: Greg Brown, CEO of Udemy

Every night before he goes to bed, Greg Brown makes a to-do list. He has to because, as the CEO of the online learning platform Udemy, setting his priorities helps ensure that he makes the most of the scarce time on his calendar. “If I’m meeting with employees, what’s the message I want them to walk away with?” he asks. He also wants to make sure his team isn’t getting distracted by Udemy’s stock price. “Where it be sports, or life, or in business, you’ve got to be able to block out the noise,” Greg says. “Focus on what you can control and maniacally execute against those objectives.”

In this episode, Greg and Joubin discuss fitness routines, VO₂ max, multi-athletes, Webex, the dotcom bust, Gregg Coccari, streamlining, setting priorities, listening to analysts, and being intentional with family.

In this episode, we cover:

• Cold plunges and healthspan (00:42)
• Finding time for fitness (07:48)
• Greg’s father (10:04)
• From sports to business (15:55)
• Two-year investments in companies (18:15)
• Achievers and motivation data (22:57)
• Becoming CEO of Reflektive (26:07)
• Why Greg joined Udemy and what it does (28:40)
• The distraction of a stock price (34:54)
• Daily to-do lists (39:20)
• Back to growth (41:45)
• Go to market CEOs (48:25)
• Coachability (50:49)
• Applying AI to customer solutions (52:16)
• At-home office hours (56:09)
• Who Udemy is hiring and what “grit” means to Greg (58:12)

Links:

• Connect with Greg
  • 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