While everything about Snowflake is hot in the market, were left asking who is at the helm of it all. And I've never been able to equal that level of success with a marketing slogan. 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? You're finding the best sailors in the world and all of that. You ever noticed that NFL quarterbacks just can't leave the stage. 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? This boat actually won Slootman the 2017 Transpac Honolulu Race in 2017. I don't care for any of that. There are many questions left unanswered about the months leading up to Snowflake going public. Right? As Snowflake got bigger in 2019, the company knew it was time for leadership to take it to the next level and brought in today's guest, Frank Slootman, as CEO. But your culture is the only thing that's really unique to you and everything else is up for grab for anybody else. And all of a sudden, everybody is just high-fiving and doing victory laps and everything is beautiful versus reality is completely different. Because when all the energy and all the quality of resources is fully concentrated on the mission, that's pure magic, okay? Frank Slootman, Chairman and CEO of Snowflake, recently launched a new book called Amp it Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Before that, he spent his life in Netherlands, where he was also born. The perception in Holland of United States is very, and I don't want to use the word biased, that might be too strong. Currently, Lee is practicing the smidgen of Chinese that he picked up while visiting the Chinese mainland in hopes of someday being able to read certain historical texts in their original language. Mr. Slootman served as CEO and President of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from around $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. How Much Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman Made in 2019 - Business Insider BUILDINGS. They're very safe. Amp It Up: Snowflake boss pens hands-on CEO toolkit Theres no surprise here. And that's a whole different deal. And if I can't predict it, I can't change my policy, I can't change my pricing." In any successful company just ask them, they will attribute success to their culture. Frank Horvat helped elevate fashion photography into high art, and with his thoughtful photographs, changed how we look at fashion altogether. Sometimes that is hard for American audiences. They sold the living hell out of that product. I mean, the only thing that energizes people and teams and organizations and companies as a whole is the mission. When some of these firms moved out to Canary Wharf, they decided that actually, it was too much to be sending people to the room, so they moved it to a phone call to buy and sell and establishing a price. From the library of the New York Stock Exchange, at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision in global business. Take our own company, Intercontinental Exchange, for example. But in the end, it's like we have to get into backup software in which we tried. Perhaps thats exactly the kind of leadership that gets a million-dollar business into the realm of billions. Snowflake, while not yet generating $1 billion in annual revenue, leaped into the Cloud Wars Top 10 several months ago and . Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Snowflakes debut on the New York Stock Exchange on September 16 under the ticker SNOW delivered the much anticipated blockbuster opening. Blackstone Announces Appointment of Frank Slootman, Chairman and CEO of I mean, one of my favorite, interview questions has always been, "What kind of people succeed here? Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources, and not independently verified. The question is, what are you going to do? The founder brings you in to scale up the company, but finds it difficult to step aside. And you got to go back to the early days of Steve Jobs, who always had this glimmer of, "I'm going to do something insanely great." We were entertainment for Wall Street for a six-week period. When you get that sensation, you do need to leave because you're no longer the right person for that situation. Over his distinguished career, Frank has mastered the process of fundraising scaling and building young companies into unicorns with the run ending eventually way back here at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets with an initial public offering. The information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified, neither ICE nor is affiliates, make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein. What is the core of your being, right? This property is owned by Frank & Brenda Slootman. Right, you got a good point. And of course, the appetite is insatiable for both technology and people that know how to make this future happen. 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. At 61 years old, Slootman has created quite the reputation for himself. Those are all disciplines that leverage where they are, right at the headwaters off the entire European continent. The good thing is you dont have to actually sit in with Slootman to get his lessons. 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. The ambitions that happen, the boldness that happens as a result of that, that becomes the magic. I mean, you can take somebody out of their country, but you can't take the country out of the person, as the old saying goes. And, likewise, when I go to Holland and I meet Dutch customers there, they kind of look at me with a smirk, like, "Yeah, I can tell you're Dutch. They all do and for a good reason. 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. And I had already made a little bit of a name for myself in the company. 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. It's always hard when you come in as a CEO and you have to follow a founder because the founder almost has mythical status in the organization. A lot of people think that that's possible, but there's a real limit to what salespeople can and can't do. Obviously all the financial reporting, all the systems. Leone took Luddy on a host of interviews. CEO Outlook | Frank Slootman - KPMG Global I mean, it's like when people start to roll their eyes. 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. You hit a mark, you have to do two 360s. So, what are things that we should absolutely not ask you to do ever? 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. 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. It is data operations from the most transactional to the most analytical and everything in between, so. Yeah, yeah. 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. The interesting thing about data domain was it was very, very slow going. You just get into this cycle where all you want to do is leave. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on moving the needle, win-first culture & managing burnout | E1689. In Amp It Up, Frank, you say that a company's mission really has to be weaponized. And then I change myself to become that flavor of CEO. But if you're performing at Tom Brady's level, you have no reason to step aside. It's like it's full of feedback. We're going to nuke an entire industry out of existence. And historically, people have tried to answer these questions anecdotally. Yeah. 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. Here's why this makes sense while looking at some options. Allen Lee is a Toronto-based freelance writer who studied business in school but has since turned to other pursuits. Frank, how did those early experiences rising through the ranks and being sent from problem to problem help you establish the principles for success that your career would see? 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 he and I were serving on another board together and every time we we'd go to our quarterly board meetings, we'd have lunch and discuss the state of a affairs in the world and blah, blah, blah, sort of thing people do in Silicon Valley. Our European futures operation is based in London, England, and a big part of that operation is futures trading for Dutch Natural Gas at the Title Transfer Facility or TTF, virtual trading point in Amsterdam. And then Snowflake is again, a totally different. And when the whole world goes direct to consumer and it becomes disintermediated and goes wholly digital, the role of data obviously becomes insanely important. Snowflake is Slootmans third IPO. But the essence of what I'm getting when I hire you is what you're innately good at. Slootman knows exactly what hes doing. I just have been in the line of fire too long. I mean, it's hard to believe at this day and age that things were that way back then, but they were. Our first thought was "not again" - he co-wrote Rise of The Data Cloud last year. Presiding is the worst word. And that's the American flavor and flare that has built up over three, almost four decades. They're high anxiety, they're entrepreneurs, they're CEO, and sort of getting a very unvarnished view, inside view from a fellow traveler. I was a huge fan coming here. And people are, are mesmerized by Snowflake results because they don't quite understand, where is this coming from? I'm trying to get into markets, not get out of them, but strategically we had a dilemma and others that we were, what I would call landlocked, maybe another nautical Dutch type of term, because we couldn't get beyond our core business of backup and recovery. Because, if I can't explain it, then I can't predict it. Thanks so much for joining us inside the Ice House. You come with aptitude. Its none other than CEO Frank Slootman, and here are 10 things about the guy behind the current Snowflake craze. Slootman applies this philosophy in the workplace as well. You're no longer using data to basically please a bunch of eyeballs, like, "Hope you like it. Are you just going to look the other way or are you going to call it out? And that went on literally for years, okay? [1] Instacart Appoints Frank Slootman, Chairman And CEO Of - Insider But then, there's new platforms in terms of the Public Clouds, right? It's like, "That's not exciting." This is very much a country that believes things that other countries don't believe. Because you're like, "Oh, this is great. Frank & Brenda Slootman - 3001 W Ruby Hill Dr, Pleasanton, Ca 94566 Property data website for assessments, data, and owners. Steve Jobs didnt even own 1% of Appleeven though he had millions worth in shares. And I was like completely taken aback because there not a single thread thinking about that, considering that, considering any role of any sorts. In other words, as a leadership team, it's not just the CEO. Slootman previously served as CEO for Data Domain and for ServiceNow, which he both took public. And everybody was like, "Who's Data Domain? At the same time, that was enormous anxiety about how the company was unfolding. This is a very buoyant country. I mean, that's how I felt at that time, like I had no more to give. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman made headlines with controversial comments about diversity in the workplace. The San Francsico 49ers admitted that they might be forced to go quarterback hunting this offseason. CEO of year's hottest IPO focuses on one 'incredibly hard' question - CNBC Anybody who's tried to run HP can talk about that because you have companies that have existed for whatever, 50, 100 years, you don't get rid of culture. 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. And eventually, we totally crushed that market because we could address any and all use cases that were out there. I'm in New York. The Frank Lloyd Wright Suite at This Tokyo Hotel Is a Midcentury Modern But they do because the world is changing to digital and this is the essence of digital transformation. You relate well to that way of thinking. They've never really been asked that before. Snowflake CEO Slootman Scores IPO Hat Trick With Big Bet on Data The scramble isnt over, and many who missed the opening also missed on the double growth just off the gate. So as leaders, you very much, I try, no matter how big this company gets, I try to run it like a popsicle stand where we're driving a race boat around the race course, okay. I don't know what, if you go back to those days. Before accepting the Snowflake CEO job, Slootman was retired and racing sailboats competitively in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is a country that's very aspirational. You guys are a data company, you know as well, right? [2], In May 2019, Frank Slootman joined Snowflake Inc. as its CEO. There's new business models. You've said that you were really born in the wrong country. He's a pretty good golfer. After the break Snowflake's CEO Frank Slootman and I are going to preview and review some of the other lessons in his new book, Amp It Up. Four banks would travel to a room next to the Bank of England twice a day in order to run an auction verbally. And I talk about that in the book, because again, there's observations, maybe even lessons that can be extracted from what happens when you're in a crowded field and you're trying to separate yourself from the pack. And when you're burned out, you don't regenerate anymore. Yeah, it was a good problem. In other words, "How fast does this might work?" I always talk about mission posture, which really means having a very, very intense visceral sense of what the company is trying to achieve. Others might say that hes completely brash. Right? I mean, I was just in my way of life and I was going to stay there till the end of time. Episode 280: Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman Wrote the Playbook - the ICE I mean, all these greats, right? This is really think about it as a database in the Cloud. We will talk to you next week. 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. 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. And are there any particular secrets to building a consensus around the idea of change? And when you let it happen, you get feed-ups. Good sales people have a track record. Frank Slootman is the CEO of Snowflake, a cloud-based dataset organization he helped build in 2019. Our show is produced by Pete Asch, with assistance from Stephan Capriles, Ian Wolf, and Ken Abel. And also in sailing, you're always looking for new adventures, different platforms and things of that sort to sort of keep it interesting, continual learning experience and so on, rather than rinse and repeat. Frank's new book, Amp It Up: Leading For Hyper Growth By Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency and Elevating Intensity, still is the leadership principles he's developed over his long career. Everybody has access to talent. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes, so other folks know where to find us. New competitors, new partner ecosystems, so it was like, "Wow, this is the future." 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. In 2011, after the founder of ServiceNow Fred Luddy stepped down, ServiceNow announced appointment of Frank Slootman as CEO. They want to know what good behavior is. That is by then, we often refer to this as data enrichment because you can take incredibly mundane data and when you enrich it with data attributes from other sources, like for example, you guys did with ADP, all of a sudden data goes from mundane to high octane. One company that embodies this vision is ThoughtSpot, an analytics company. [23] As I said, what comes around, goes around. In other words, swarm to it instead of distance yourself from it. It is a future state that we're all working on right now. Your mission is you're pursuing an end state or at least the closest thing to what you can envision, to what you want to realize as a couple. It became very meaningful to them. I mean, 16 months after you and Mike came to Snowflake, you raised $3.4 billion as part of its IPO, instantly establishing Snowflake as one of the NYC's marquee companies. They knew exactly what we meant. He published a book in 2011 called Tape Sucks. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Slootmans style of leadership is not gentle at all. And in other words, what problems can I solve very quickly versus what is going to take longer to solve. 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. 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? It's lights out, light speed and then fully disintermediated and it's fully programmatic. It's really a company production, by the way. It's very hard. Yeah, that goes back about mission posture. I remember having a conversation with the CEO of a very large healthcare company. And of course, people chuckled because they recognized it. And how that allowed him to grow Snowflake into the biggest software IPO ever, and how. Frank has been involved in the business programming market for over 25 years as a business visionary and chief. Snowflake CEO collects a $95 million payout every month This is kind of the pattern that ICE has seen through how different markets have developed, but normally that takes 10 years, whereas actually, it's taken 10 weeks in the auction. Slootman is going to take Snowflake for quite the ride, and you have to decide whether youre getting in his car or not. We played a round of golf. And I have to, the moment I start sitting in my ivory tower and rely on reporting from people all over the place, we're in a world of hurt. So like, "Look, I'm not going to be doing the same races over and over again." At the same time, we've never had a data Cloud in the history of computing because data was just fragmented and proliferated into silos and what we call bunkers. And that is our culture. Given his accolades, Slootman gets invited to speak at many events. Our headquarters is in Atlanta, Georgia. He cuts back where he sees fit. Listen to this episode from This Week in Startups on Spotify. Login - Ashima But this was quickly set aside because Frank appears to walk the walk. Africas largest economy is in the early stages of a monetary experiment that could be coming to the U.S. sooner than you think. And it wasn't until the consent degree with IBM that really unbundled the software from hardware because software industry couldn't even happen because software was bundled. For example, he made a few changes at Snowflake when he became CEO. Everything in our world starts with technology, starts with architecture, okay? 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. That's awesome. 2023 Forbes Media LLC. So, Frank, as we wrap up final question, and if it's a spoiler alert for Mike Scarpelli, if he's listening, Mike, you can turn off the podcast now. Give me that train wreck. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. When I was considering Snowflake, I told Snowflake, "I will not do this if Mike doesn't come along." That culture really keeps you safe from being indulgent or just, you're sort of presiding. And people really want to be led in that manner. The eight blocks of the street run from Broadway in the west to the East River in the east. We are people that basically see everything that's wrong all day, and we always see a room up from where things are. I mean, it's a hell of a cash burner as well. A term that gets used a little bit too much in too many places. And it's very much a talent game just like business is. So, they looked around and they found the guy with a passport to Dutch language proficiency like. The ecommerce industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors, and at the moment, it features several players. But backup recovery still largely dependent on tape and tape automation technology, so we created a tape. 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. Frank Slootman added: " I'm excited to advise Blackstone. It's just our nature to talk about problems." They want to know what bad behavior is. But EMC prevailed. JP Morgan paid $175 million for a startup it believes it was conned into buying. Fred Luddy, the founder of ServiceNow, I mean, super talented guy, obviously. Hes quite knowledgeable in the market industry, and he doesnt confuse with unnecessary jargon. It's not that easy. 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. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Who can solve what set of issues, right? Because that's what it is. Frank shares the secrets of his success, the leadership principles that guide him, and what hes learned along the way. By the way, our two largest competitors were both bidding for the company at the same time. And we introduced a centrally cleared model with ICE as the central counterparty, because that makes it much easier for new firms to join. He said, "Because you guys are indicting everything I've done." Not all CEOs have this, but a lot of CEOs do. We're not trying to find fault with people or who did what to whom. Let's go." So, one of the things that, that our founders did really, really well and it's a very important lesson here for anybody that's watching Snowflake and trying to understand is that they took a clean sheet of paper. What goes around, comes around and the Dutch get around the world. Architecturally, just damn near perfect, so. The. We actually won everything that we wanted to win. But you mentioned this earlier, it isn't really what happened. Between 2011 and 2017, Slootman was Chairman and CEO of ServiceNow - one of the world's leading SaaS . Software was barely an industry. I'm a proud US citizen, but at the same time, there's no negating my Dutch roots. Most people just preside over culture. Those are really good conversation, good questions to have because each organization is different. And by the way, data platforms have been extremely fragmented historically. Obviously, that industry had moved on to all kinds of different disk space technologies. 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. You need to sort your issues into, "What am I going to focus on?" It still runs as an auction in rounds of 30 seconds and final price were used as the benchmark for the entire gold market. That's NYSE ticker symbol, S-N-O-W. His book from John Wiley and Sons, Amp It Up: Leading For Hypergrowth By Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity is in bookstores and online now.