Unapologetically Ambitious

Congratulations on your new book, Unapologetically Ambitious. The foreword is written by well-known venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, who also wrote the New York Times bestseller The Hard Things about Hard Things. He talks about how he advised you to not take the CEO role at a company called Zaplet because the company was on its death bed, and it would have been impossible to turn it around. And yet you decided to take that job anyway, even though it was a very risky move. Why?

Well, between I had spent my entire career working towards the objective of becoming a CEO and I put a plan in place and built some experience, background, all those things. And here it was now 2002, which was a terrible time for the market and I had done what I set out to do. LoudCloud, which is where I was working, it's now going through a transformation from LoudCloud to Opsware basically turning into a software company, much smaller. They really didn't need me anymore. And it was the perfect time therefore to go after my CEO job. And when I asked people, do I have the skills? Do I have experience? The answers? Yes, yes, yes, yes. But they would say, but the environment's terrible. And I said, all right, got it. But I'm ready. And so I'm going to go find the right opportunity. And I knew I wouldn't get an A play, you know A play is a company that the investors believe is going to be successful. That's going to go to people they know, right. But I'd spent my whole career building things and turning things around and all of that. So I said, fine, I'm going to take a problem child, and I'll take a problem child at a company or with investors that are top tier investors. So that, that way I have the chance of bringing their credibility capability, et cetera, and support to help mitigate the odds to being successful. And I needed to find one with what I call good bones, which means at least it had something I could work with. So, even though yes, Ben was not for it at all and there were other people that are absolutely telling you not to do it, I was just ready. I didn't want to go off and like take a holding job for several years until the economy got better. I'm like, hmm, that doesn't make any sense to me.