Grit

When Confluent’s President of Field Ops Erica Schultz was 23, she was working at Oracle and cold-emailed the manager of the Argentina office, asking to work for him. This experience would open the do…

Ryan Azus, CRO of Zoom, has been selling all his life, from baseball cards as a kid to ads in the school newspaper to — crucially — books every summer in college. Every year, he and and thousands of …

Instabase’s Ozge Ozcan believes that many women have been fed a false story about motherhood: That it can be seen as a “decelerator” to one’s career. Instead, she’s found that raising two daughters h…

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 Sales…

Kate Ahlering might be the perfect guest for this podcast. She eventually worked her way up to Chief Sales Officer of Glassdoor, but when she joined in 2013, she helped define the company’s leadershi…

When Rippling CEO Parker Conrad was raising a massive $250 million round last year, he didn’t start by presenting his deck to venture capitalists in person. Instead, he sent a 39-minute demo of his p…

When Andy Kofoid was growing up in the working-class town of Joliet, Illinois, he dreamed of getting to college and — like a lot of his relatives — worked in construction. Today, Andy is laying digit…

Doug Merritt joins this episode on the tail end of his impressive run as Splunk’s CEO. With decades of leadership in what can be described as an “exploratory career,” Doug breaks down his professiona…

Stord, a Kleiner portfolio company, and its co-founder/CEO, Sean Henry, are defying a multitude of limits. While Sean is ranked as the youngest unicorn founder, he refuses to let his age define him. …

Tom Mendoza, former President at NetApp, knows that there is a way to do business while bringing out the good in it. Tom has embedded this throughout his career and continues to make it a philosophic…

Jim Steele, President of Global Strategic Customers at Salesforce, is the man, the myth, and the legend who helped increase Salesforce’s revenue from $22 million to over $5 billion. Working since he …

B2B marketing powerhouse, Sara Varni joins this episode on her final day at Twilio to discuss her journey and what lies ahead as she steps into her new role as Chief Marketing Officer at Attentive. S…

Many people run from uncomfortable situations. Heidi Andersen, CRO at Nextdoor, isn’t like most, as she embraces new challenges and makes mental toughness a centrality to her approach. From the very …

Sometimes social media works and sometimes it doesn’t. For Matt Epstein, Chief Marketing Officer at Rippling, it is a little bit of both. In 2011, Matt went viral after uploading a Youtube video deta…

There is a litany of analogies for marketing. An art, a technique, a skill. Yet few strive to combine a multitude of approaches. For Meagen Eisenberg, Chief Marketing Officer at TripActions, she synt…

For some, expanding their horizons is something that they, as individuals, strive to do. Fortunately, Philip Lacor, CRO at Unqork, takes those expansions to another level. Philip thrives as a cross-f…

Language is without doubt the single most valuable tool we use, and in its use, it ironically builds barriers. Fortunately in recent years with the rise of companies like Duolingo, those barriers are…

To make the leap from HR to sales may seem like a significant obstacle to surmount. For Jennifer Brannigan, CRO at Pendo, it was an easy choice to make. Her decision to pursue her own interests and p…

Integrity and humility barely begin to describe Brian McCarthy, CRO at Rubrik. Brian’s story is one of hard-won progress that is bound to inspire anyone who listens. Coming from a blue-collar househo…

"Crypto" is a term that has recently re-shaped the way the world thinks about money. For Emilie Choi, President and COO at Coinbase, it has been at the forefront of her work and mind for quite some t…