Data Domain was really an interesting company. And that's, I had a question the other day from somebody that hit me on LinkedIn and he was putting all kinds of labels on himself. It is a future state that we're all working on right now. He's like, "How do we run a supply chain?" I can't do every speaking engagement," et cetera. Learned an awful lot in that period of time. And when you let it happen, you get feed-ups. The ecommerce industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors, and at the moment, it features several players. He knows what problems exist in his field today, and he knows how to address them as well. 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. And the term BI had not even been invented back then. And we publish the data transparently on our site, so anyone can come and see what actually happened in the auction. Much like how he runs his companies, Slootman is always direct in his speeches. This is a country that's very aspirational. What is the core of your being, right? Whatever he learned from school is probably what we should all learn. Instead, hes got something equally as coola sailing boat named The Invisible Hand. Mar 11, 2021, 11:30 ET. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on moving the needle, win-first culture & managing burnout | E1689. They also appreciate it. Its a positive outlook for Snowflake, and its a bright signal for investors to really pay attention to this company now before its too late. What took you back to the Netherlands at one point? At the same time, that was enormous anxiety about how the company was unfolding. Tej, Read More 10 Things You Didnt Know about Tej VirkContinue. People were looking at my credentials. And companies that have been around a long time, it's near to impossible to undo the culture. I mean, the problem with backup and recovery is, yeah, you can do backups, but the point of backup is recovery because if I can't find or read tapes, I'm still up the creek without a paddle. We're driving change. Our show is produced by Pete Asch, with assistance from Stephan Capriles, Ian Wolf, and Ken Abel. Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones recorded his first sacks of his postseason career in a redemptive victory, and his linemate Frank Clark stepped up in the playoffs once again. Take our own company, Intercontinental Exchange, for example. And over time, we overcame that because we were laser focused on making the product bigger and faster every year. And how that allowed him to grow Snowflake into the biggest software IPO ever, and how. Because, and this is another important observation, I think. Including his options, Slootman owns about 10% of Snowflake. Now, you can manage LNG freight risk with ICE LNG freight futures contracts, which join our global natural gas complex. The IPO was the third for Dutch-born Slootman, who moved to California for a job at Compuware in the dotcom boom, then worked at Borland Software. Our guest today, Frank Slootman is chairman and CEO of Snowflake. Frank Slootman (born 1958) is a billionaire businessman, and the chairman and CEO at Snowflake Inc., a cloud data-warehousing company. 10 Things You Didnt Know about Loggi CEO Fabien Mendez, 10 Things You Didnt Know about Mark Nelson, 10 Things You Did Not Know About Thoughtspot CEO Sudheesh Nair, 10 Things You Didnt Know About Guy Nirpaz, 10 Things You Didnt Know About Paul Stovell, How Ali Wong Achieved a Net Worth of $3 Million, Eight Reasons to go to French Polynesias Marquesas Islands, How Lisa Rinna Achieved a Net Worth of $10 Million, 20 Cities with The Worst Weather in Europe. And did you have a sense that the sector was really about to explode? You've said that you were really born in the wrong country. 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. It was sort of an adjunct to what they called the computer industry back then. Not all people are created equal in terms of their roles and their contributions in companies. That's why they're big in banking and insurance and distribution and logistics. Most people just preside over culture. Can you explain how you overcame both to lead the company through its 2012 IPO? But in the end, it's like we have to get into backup software in which we tried. We don't preside, okay? How does having who's worked closely with you for years help you accomplish your goals of hyper growth without losing focus? The ambitions that happen, the boldness that happens as a result of that, that becomes the magic. The book accounts his time in Data Domain and so much more. Frank shares the secrets of his success, the leadership principles that guide him, and what hes learned along the way. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman made headlines with controversial comments about diversity in the workplace. Back then, there were hardly any software companies around. But what is so great about it is, I mean, the starts are incredibly exciting and that takes enormous amount of drilling to become really good at starts because it's a tightly, tightly coordinated process and you have to become good at it. 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. So, getting an internship in the US in those days was a really big deal and it really didn't matter to me, where it was, what company it was, I just wanted to have the exposure to what is that like. I talk to more people than most people in the company do, and that makes me dangerous because I hear directly what is going on - good, bad, and somewhere in between. [3] On September 16, 2020, Snowflake made an IPO, selling 28 million shares and raising $3.4 billion, making it the largest software IPO in history.[4]. It pays a lot to be in the business of knowing what you do, and Slootman knows more than the rest of us when it comes to money, the market, and the software industry. I mean, what drove you to move on? Slootman said diversity comes second when making . Americans are, it doesn't matter what profession they're in, they always believe they can do better. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. Those are just markets, but culture is how you get up in the morning and how you prosecute your day, so it is a huge deal. Why did you give up the helm of the invisible hand for this new role with Snowflake? They just said, "Look, let's re-envision, re-imagine based on the platform realities that we now have, which was the Public Cloud. And today, there's an endless bank of software company elevators, but when you joined Comshare, it was in the nascent days of the tech world. Slootmans style of leadership is not gentle at all. They just have such a hard time doing it because that's who they are, that's what they live for. Right? Yeah, that goes back about mission posture. The interesting thing about data domain was it was very, very slow going. Those are all disciplines that leverage where they are, right at the headwaters off the entire European continent. At 61 years old, Slootman has created quite the reputation for himself. Snowflake, while not yet generating $1 billion in annual revenue, leaped into the Cloud Wars Top 10 several months ago and . They want to know what bad behavior is. And I was like completely taken aback because there not a single thread thinking about that, considering that, considering any role of any sorts. We wanted to buy technology from, what at that time was Veritas, Convo, companies that are still around, because then we could really address the, the functional scale and scope off our platform. And people are, are mesmerized by Snowflake results because they don't quite understand, where is this coming from? In other words, they kind of let it happen. Never heard of that company." They knew exactly what we meant. [1] Yeah, it was a good problem. How does that work at Snowflake? So it's a very important question because if I hire you, I can get you experience every day at the week. And our conversation with Frank Slootman on how he amped up his career scaled three companies and the lessons he wants to now share with the world is coming up right after this. Welcome back. And people really want to be led in that manner. So in hindsight, I understood that I was just burned out, classic burned out. And essentially, he defends. One company that embodies this vision is ThoughtSpot, an analytics company. And when you're burned out, you don't regenerate anymore. Give me that train wreck. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. 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. And by the way, data platforms have been extremely fragmented historically. I can't get you aptitude. 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. No. It was super interesting to me, sort of my first encounter with American management. I use that expression a lot to say, "Look, data operations is going to become your core." Scale is definitely a problem because you get layers and layers and you got the problem of having tons of passengers on the boat, all these types of issues. Insurance companies historically have not been because they are data companies by their essence, right? Sometimes that is hard for American audiences. And the other thing I'll say is we maintain a very, what we call a malcontent attitude. 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. I don't care for any of that. Where does a CEO Frank find time to write two books back-to-back and what was the inspiration for Amp It Up? It wasn't long before top VCs weighed in. And we introduced a centrally cleared model with ICE as the central counterparty, because that makes it much easier for new firms to join. It's really every leader in the organization needs to internalize and then, want to act on it. A lot of people think that that's possible, but there's a real limit to what salespeople can and can't do. I always talk about mission posture, which really means having a very, very intense visceral sense of what the company is trying to achieve. And Mike was still the CEO at ServiceNow at that time. We are people that basically see everything that's wrong all day, and we always see a room up from where things are. They're very far removed from the drive train. He cancelled the luxurious annual employee ski trip to Tahoe. They've never really been asked that before. Given his accolades, Slootman gets invited to speak at many events. So, I ended up going back to, I really didn't want to. You guys are a data company, you know as well, right? Frank Slootman added: " I'm excited to advise Blackstone. Another Dutch trend setter with the Winfrey title is Frank Slootman, the chairman and CEO of Snowflake. He's a pretty good golfer. In any successful company just ask them, they will attribute success to their culture. Tell me about sailing, first of all. Frank Slootman - Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality - [In Now, I might be a big piece on the chessboard as the CEO of the company, but that's really how you want to think about it. 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. BUILDINGS. You just get into this cycle where all you want to do is leave. Then, they discuss Frank's hiring philosophy and how to create a winning relationship between an executive and their direct reports . And now, I feel like I'm being haunted, by this Dutch thing, this cloud that's hanging over me." We now use consumption models instead of subscription models. The improvement in technology is one of the main reasons that this commercial scene is flourishing by the, Read More 10 Things You Didnt Know about Loggi CEO Fabien MendezContinue, Tableau Softwares President and CEO Mark Nelson defines Tableaus vision and supervises the companys business operations and procedures. Correct, correct. I'm the opposite. And historically, people have tried to answer these questions anecdotally. By the close of. We were entertainment for Wall Street for a six-week period. The. But for many, many other enterprises, including a lot of banks actually in the world of financial services, because they operate through branches and very conventional brick and mortar ways of interacting with customers, all of a sudden, it has to change rapidly. You can't help but run into Dutch people everywhere because they have such a small country. And people that know the Dutch, and you seem to know to Dutch people, it's, fairly recognizable what the Dutch attributes are that are at play here. I'm on the phone with customers every day. I mean, to this day, with all the other things that we've done, I still treasured that experience greatly and it's still a very large business to this day. You have served, as I intimated in the introduction, as the CEO of companies in Silicon Valley and now, Montana, but your story really begins 5,500 miles away from the West Coast. I was like, "Jesus, I spent my whole life trying to get here. 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. Frank Slootman currently serves as Chairman and CEO at Snowflake. Check out the subtleties of his Wikipedia below. 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. But you mentioned this earlier, it isn't really what happened. The company, which prides itself as the leading customer success, Read More 10 Things You Didnt Know About Guy NirpazContinue, Medical marijuana is increasingly becoming a popular trend in the treatment and management of different diseases including chronic and fatal ones such as Alzheimers disease, brain tumors, cancer, HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, and multiple sclerosis. CEO Frank Slootman (second row, fourth from left) and the Snowflake team virtually rang the opening . Its none other than CEO Frank Slootman, and here are 10 things about the guy behind the current Snowflake craze. The nascent liquidity of spot LNG freight markets, and the volatility of time charter rates has boosted demand for risk management tools. No databases of scale and no file systems with scale. A compensation package he received upon joining Snowflake in April 2019 awards him a. That takes very different approaches, orientation, skill sets, and so on what you do. 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. But with three IPOs in your rear view mirror and one attempt at retirement already failing to stick, what do you see as the next chapter in Frank Slootman's journey? Collaboration between companies also offers significant opportunities to create value, and Frank Slootman - Chairman and CEO of data cloud pioneer Snowflake - believes it has never been more important for organizations to be able to mobilize their data and share it with ecosystem partners. 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. For example, he made a few changes at Snowflake when he became CEO. So, we came up with this war cry that said, "Tape sucks, move on." At 61 years old, Slootman has created quite the reputation for himself. That's when you're at risk. These days, a lot of folks take it for granted, but Wall Street has a fascinating history. Not much is known about Slootmans personal life, but we do know that hes fairly young for the success hes achieved in his lifetime. We tried to, we wanted to get into primary storage. And the EMC came in and within a quarter, it was up to a $100 million because they had channels and customers and everything primed and ready, right? Property details for 3001 W Ruby Hill Dr, located in Pleasanton, California. And that's the American flavor and flare that has built up over three, almost four decades. 5. And a lot of people shy away from that because it's incredibly high anxiety to live in that world, but you want to suppress that reflex. I mean, Dutch people are incredibly hard driving, no nonsense, can't suffer bullshit type of people. That's actually another important bit of learning with a lot of people take on CEO roles and they keep doing their last job because that's familiar to them and they love it and they keep doing it. I mean, we lived in absolute terror. And the product was insanely fast, completely automated. In 2011, after the founder of ServiceNow Fred Luddy stepped down, ServiceNow announced appointment of Frank Slootman as CEO. It's not that easy. It became very meaningful to them. This is probably the biggest understatement of the year. The former Frank CEO said JP Morgan had full knowledge of Franks customer data before the acquisitionand Chairman Jamie Dimon personally pushed for it to happen. In the book, I go on and on about what some of those issues are. Yacht Racing is incredibly exciting and then it has a lot of corollaries to business because it's this multidimensional game of weather and competition, and what happens on the race course and reacting to it. After joining almost at the start in 2003, Slootman helped. Others might say that hes completely brash. It's a small country, obviously, which is why they sort of veer far and wide. None of that stuff is material to your mission. You're finding the best sailors in the world and all of that. So, I just had some peripheral view of the company, as well as its strategic challenges, by the way. When a company is buying a million dollars from you in the course of a year, what are they getting? Now, as the story goes, England followed the Netherlands in control of Manhattan. I'm just, I'm fighting that tide. Because you're like, "Oh, this is great. He's a Dutchman Slootman moved to Silicon Valley in 1997. 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. But EMC prevailed. He said, "Because you guys are indicting everything I've done." It's very hard. Wikitia is not affiliated to Wikimedia Foundation. Make the connection to a global natural gas market at ICE, get started with ICE LNG freight futures today. It's not just a scale. Hes quite knowledgeable in the market industry, and he doesnt confuse with unnecessary jargon. And it's like, "Well, why does that matter?" Did you find it difficult to change Snowflake's established culture? When I in Ohio, I joined copy ware in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and I had not even been there a few month and they acquired a sizable company in Holland, a company called Uniface. This boat actually won Slootman the 2017 Transpac Honolulu Race in 2017. You want to be the playmaker and the people that they're going to pass the ball to when we have two seconds left in the quarter, that kind of thing. People that the company really, really runs on. Snowflake chairman and CEO Frank Slootman on leadership and the war against mediocrity February 23, 2022 "Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity, breaking the status quo, and making conflicted choices daily, all with a relentless focus on the mission," says Frank Slootman , chairman and CEO of Snowflake, one of . In May 2019, Frank Slootman, the retired former CEO of ServiceNow, joined Snowflake as its CEO and Michael Scarpelli, the former CFO of ServiceNow joined the company as CFO. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources, and not independently verified. It was the lowest ranking job in the entire world of IT, if you were involved with tape automation. Now, you can be very obstinate about it and say, "Well, I'll eventually cross that bridge when I come to it," or you can try to anticipate it and say, "Okay, I'm going to find somebody who has the resources that I do not possess." We call it a turn on the crank and we came out with a product that was at least twice as big, twice as fast, so the market kind of opened up gradually for us. As cool as it may sound, Slootman doesnt actually have a literal invisible hand. And obviously that is not the best way to go about things because that's just one man's opinion against another, right? And that is a common thread through all our companies. 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. This is very much a country that believes things that other countries don't believe. And people would eyeball those reports in those dashboards, and that was sort of the extent of it. Windows 3.1 didn't even exist. And that is our culture. But you dont achieve a $1.8 billion net worth by being a spendthrift. The good thing is you dont have to actually sit in with Slootman to get his lessons. I mean, I still remember that we were in countries like France, where we had like a $10-million business, which was very small. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace. So, we're going to be in the middle of that. 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 I'm like, "You know what? Strong personalities will just dictate culture in certain business units, in certain geographies and so on. [23] I don't know if you've watched any of the first couple seasons of Ted Lasso, but on a team of great characters, the Dutchman is the one guy, straight faced, no bullshit throughout the whole game. When we first came in there, it was a very, very anxiety-ridden ride in the early days. That is the most, that is so unproductive. It's just our nature to talk about problems." It was just a beautiful thing when a company has massive scale and distribution, what a good product that gets entered into that context can do in a short period of time was mesmerizing. The New York stock exchange sits at the Southern tip of Manhattan on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets. Frank Slootman, Chairman and CEO of Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), presided over the largest software IPO in the NYSEs history, but it wasnt his first rodeo. And that's a whole different deal. It was great and it lasted the entire duration. 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. 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. No, I didn't. It could address very few use cases. And like, "How fast does this guy type?" As the gold auction and also, the LBMA gold price is the world's price for gold, particularly gold, which is delivered in London. And it's very much a talent game just like business is. 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. 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. I mean, that's how I felt at that time, like I had no more to give. By the way, everything he did had to be insanely great because he just couldn't get out of bed if it wasn't insanely great. I mean, you brought in some reinforcements when you started at Snowflake, including Michael Scarpelli, who was your CFO at Data Domain and ServiceNow. What kind of people fail here and why?" But the problem with tape was, I mean, tape got lost, tape became unreadable. Get the world to sort of move onto a different technology platforms, et cetera. 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. I hate to break it to the audience, but that is the way that it is. Having run a number of global software companies, I appreciate the scope of resources that Blackstone can bring to high-growth . We just never backed off of it. Everybody has access to capital. Good sales people have a track record. And Brett Favre was that way. And eventually, we totally crushed that market because we could address any and all use cases that were out there. Frank Slootman (born 1958) is a billionaire businessman, and the chairman and CEO at Snowflake Inc., a cloud data-warehousing company. In Amp It Up, you're pretty open about the struggles the company faced in its business and leadership. When I was at Data Domain, hell, we were 15 people when I joined there. But it's not what it really is, so it wasn't an enormous surprise to me to come here. And you mentioned several times in the book that you look for aptitude over experience, does that focus help snowflake identify young talent and how do you measure aptitude? It becomes the beating heart of a modern enterprise. I mean, people go from spending $50,000 a year to a million dollars a year in one year and they're like, and the CFOs go, "What the hell is this all about?" Closed: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year's Day. New competitors, new partner ecosystems, so it was like, "Wow, this is the future." That's not a healthy dynamic. 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. Everybody has ideas. Snowflakes debut on the New York Stock Exchange on September 16 under the ticker SNOW delivered the much anticipated blockbuster opening. It's up to 79% of the volume has gone cleared. But it's a very, it's a country that has really no natural resources other than the natural gas that you mentioned, which they're pretty much run out of by now, so they've really leveraged their geographic location over the years. I'm like, "We're not trying to indict what you've done. It takes a ton of work to maintain intense focus on the mission, so that's the weaponizing. It was just like Formula 1 of sailboat racing. It's you're in this job for a reason. While that is probably not, my temperament is not terribly well-suited for those types of jobs. At some point, we were going to get stunted in our growth. And that really allowed me to do this at 6:00 AM on weekdays and weekends and the holidays. 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. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. I look at the situation, "What does this require?" 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. It takes nothing. Who can solve what set of issues, right? Well, building culture is a very forceful thing. Data has no opinion. They're kind of like-. We will talk to you next week. Obviously, I was a young man and not even in my mid-30s and I'm taking over a whole business, a whole organization, global, all this kind of stuff, so, it was a hell of. Now, most organizations are incredibly in up still in terms of their data promise.