CMO Samsara, Sarah Patterson: What You Do vs. Why It Matters
Grit28 Feb 2022

CMO Samsara, Sarah Patterson: What You Do vs. Why It Matters

Sarah Patterson, CMO of Samsara, doesn’t believe in keeping your armor up around your coworkers: “You’ve got something else on your mind, it’s going to come through,” she says. While working at Salesforce, she worked with a career coach and discovered that opening up about her personal and professional struggles brought her team closer. And that has also held true in her current role at Samsara, a fast-growing fleet management company that went public in December.


In this episode, Sarah and Joubin discuss the silver lining of the pandemic for her family’s cohesion; why catching up on work is a form of recharging; the benefits of journaling, even if it’s in an email thread; what Samsara does for a vital but un-digitized sector of the economy; the scary experience of living in the era of “smoke days”; hiring for sustainable rapid growth; Samsara’s IPO and earning the trust of the whole team; and how Sarah prepared to interview star skiier Lindsey Vonn.


In this episode, we cover:

  • Making deliberate choices about how you spend your time (06:36)
  • Accepting imperfection and being vulnerable with your colleagues (11:18)
  • The practice that goes into looking polished onstage (17:17)
  • The year Sarah left Salesforce for BranchOut, and why she went back (23:15)
  • The rapid growth of Samsara, and what it does (27:35)
  • How a mandate for truckers in North America laid the groundwork for Samsara’s business (33:39)
  • How Sarah thinks about the challenge of hiring, and why “what you do” is not the most important thing (39:32)
  • “Trial by fire” - earning the trust of workers who were at Samsara before her (42:43)
  • Is it easier to be an interviewer or an interviewee? (52:55)

Links:

Avsnitt(284)

From Airbnb to Linear: How Karri Saarinen Redefined Product Design

From Airbnb to Linear: How Karri Saarinen Redefined Product Design

In a market that hadn’t changed in decades, Linear didn’t win by being faster. They won by being more thoughtful.Karri Saarinen helped shape design at Airbnb and Coinbase before building Linear around...

20 Apr 1h 17min

How Kevin Mandia Built the Most Trusted Name in Cybersecurity

How Kevin Mandia Built the Most Trusted Name in Cybersecurity

What does security look like when attackers use AI better than you do?Armadin recently raised $200M to build for the “attacker of the future,” where attacks are autonomous and harder to contain.On the...

6 Apr 1h 2min

The Silicon Valley Insider In The Pentagon | DoW Emil Michael

The Silicon Valley Insider In The Pentagon | DoW Emil Michael

Emil Michael went from scaling Uber across 600 cities to rewiring the world's largest military.In the midst of the Pentagon-Silicon Valley debate, the now U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research ...

23 Mars 40min

How Sierra Is Pulling Ahead in the AI Race | Co-founder Bret Taylor

How Sierra Is Pulling Ahead in the AI Race | Co-founder Bret Taylor

Few founders have seen Silicon Valley from every seat at the table.After co-creating Google Maps at Google, serving as CTO at Facebook, and later as co-CEO of Salesforce, Bret Taylor is now building A...

9 Mars 1h 12min

The AI Era of Cybercrime: How Malwarebytes Is Evolving Its Security Stack | Marcin Kleczynski

The AI Era of Cybercrime: How Malwarebytes Is Evolving Its Security Stack | Marcin Kleczynski

What began as a 14 year old fixing infected computers became Malwarebytes, an 800 person cybersecurity company trusted by millions of customers.On Grit, Marcin Kleczynski joins Joubin Mirzadegan to ex...

23 Feb 1h 3min

The Truth Behind Automation Claims in Customer Support | Cresta CEO Ping Wu

The Truth Behind Automation Claims in Customer Support | Cresta CEO Ping Wu

Can you scale customer support without burning out agents or frustrating customers?Ping Wu shares how Cresta combines AI and human intelligence into a single system that scales sustainably for compani...

9 Feb 43min

The Safest Dollar on the Internet | Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire

The Safest Dollar on the Internet | Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire

USDC closed the gap between software and law in modern finance.On Grit, Jeremy Allaire discusses how fully reserved, dollar backed digital currency became part of the financial system after more than ...

26 Jan 1h 5min

Why We’re Only Using 1% of AI | Glean CEO Arvind Jain

Why We’re Only Using 1% of AI | Glean CEO Arvind Jain

Glean has grown into a $7.2B company by giving employees AI assistants and agents that extend their capabilities.CEO Arvind Jain is back on Grit alongside Joubin Mirzadegan. Here’s what stood out:“My ...

12 Jan 58min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

framgangspodden
varvet
rss-jossan-nina
rss-svart-marknad
badfluence
svd-tech-brief
uppgang-och-fall
avanzapodden
bathina-en-podcast
rss-borsens-finest
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
rss-dagen-med-di
tabberaset
24fragor
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
dynastin
kvalitetsaktiepodden
rikatillsammans-om-privatekonomi-rikedom-i-livet
lastbilspodden