Jeetu Patel × Lenny Rachitsky Full Transcript — AI Is Critical for Humanity's Survival

This is the full English transcript of the YouTube video AI is critical for humanity’s survival.

Interview participants:

Jeetu Patel — Cisco Chief Product Officer and President, managing 30,000 people, driving Cisco’s AI transformation
Lenny Rachitsky — Lenny’s Podcast host, former Airbnb Product Manager

Duration: 87 minutes

Deep analysis: link

Opening Highlights 00:00:00
Lenny Introduces Guest Jeetu Patel 00:01:15
Key Takeaways from Cisco’s AI Summit 00:04:20
How Cisco Transformed from Traditional Enterprise to AI Pioneer 00:08:47
Cisco Is a Critical Infrastructure Company for the AI Era 00:15:34
Underestimated Trends in the AI Investment Wave 00:19:11
Raising the Next Generation in the AI Era 00:24:37
Aaron Levy’s ‘Right to Win’ Philosophy 00:29:47
Permission to Win Becomes Increasingly Important in the AI Era 00:33:33
Leadership Wisdom from Great CEOs 00:36:52
Managing 30,000 People: Secrets of Scaling Leadership 00:42:04
How to Execute Strategy Without Being Overwhelmed 00:48:46
Infrastructure Lesson: Credit Goes to Others, Blame Falls on You 00:53:08
Tell People How You Really Feel 00:58:46
The Quality of Problems and Platforms You Choose Determines Success 01:03:25
Six-Part Framework for Building Great Companies 01:10:24
Megatrend vs. Hype Cycle 01:13:59
Lightning Round: Without AI, I Could Not Have Done This Job 01:19:09
Stamina Trumps Intellect 01:22:27
From Sizzler Waiter to Cisco President 01:23:30
Closing Message: Pay It Forward 01:25:03

1. Opening Highlights

Time: 00:00:00 - 00:01:13

This section is a highlight montage from the beginning of the video, featuring key insights from the interview.

Jeetu Patel: Survival of humanity depends on a successful AI. Birth rates are going down. If you have 60% of your population where you don’t have enough people to take care of them, that could cause a lot of human suffering. When I got this new job, there is zero chance I would have been able to do it if AI wasn’t there because I didn’t know anything about so many domains that we were in.

Lenny Rachitsky: A lot of companies are trying to adjust to this new world.

Jeetu Patel: You have to know the difference between a megatrend and a hype cycle. When there’s a megatrend, don’t fight it. AI is a megatrend, one of the most foundational movements that we have seen in human history.

Lenny Rachitsky: To turn Cisco from an older, slower, more traditional enterprise to a very AI-forward company. This is very difficult to do.

Jeetu Patel: AI is moving so fast. One of the things I tell my team is fast forward 6 months from now, get prepared for that world.

Lenny Rachitsky: You manage 30,000 people.

Jeetu Patel: Every management book that you read will tell you praise in public, criticize in private. I fundamentally disagree with that notion. What you have to do is establish enough trust among the team so that you are comfortable critiquing and debating in public.

Lenny Rachitsky: What’s something that you wish you’d known before taking on this role?

Jeetu Patel: Stamina trumps collect. It’s very important to have smart people, but you can become smart if you have curiosity and hunger and staying power and persistence. You can’t teach hunger.

2. Lenny Introduces Guest Jeetu Patel

Time: 00:01:15 - 00:04:20

Lenny introduces guest Jeetu Patel’s background and Cisco’s key role in AI infrastructure buildout, as well as the AI transformation Jeetu has driven internally.

Lenny Rachitsky: Today my guest is Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer and President at Cisco. Cisco is not a brand that most laypeople think about when they think about AI, but not only are they a massive part of the AI infrastructure buildout that is happening right now all over the world, what Jeetu has achieved internally at Cisco in terms of transforming their culture and ways of working to be AI-first is something that most big company leaders only dream about.

In this conversation, Jeetu shares exactly what he’s done to drive this transformation — how he used AI to teach himself an entirely new domain, what he learned from Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Satya Nadella and others at Cisco’s AI Summit, why he believes AI is critical to the survival of humanity, and his six-part framework for building great companies.

This is also one of my favorite conversations I’ve ever had. Jeetu is full of wisdom, tells incredible stories, and the things he’s doing — managing 30,000 people, driving Cisco’s AI transformation — are just remarkable. I think you’ll learn a lot from this.

Jeetu, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

3. Key Takeaways from Cisco’s AI Summit

Time: 00:04:20 - 00:08:47

Jeetu shares the behind-the-scenes story of Cisco’s AI Summit and key insights from AI leaders like Jensen Huang and Sam Altman: AI capabilities far exceed current adoption, and the “capability overhang” is real.

Jeetu Patel: Lenny, I’m excited. Good to see you.

Lenny Rachitsky: The timing of this conversation is so amazing. You’re just coming off running the most insane assembling of AI thought leaders and tech leaders I’ve ever seen. Let me just read a few of the names that you guys had at the summit that just happened a couple of days ago. Uh, you had Jensen, you had Sam Altman, you had Marc Andreessen, you had Fei-Fei Li, you had the CEO of Intel, AWS, uh, Mike Krieger, Kevin Wheel. Like, that’s just like a third of the guests you guys had. I don’t, I don’t know how you did this. Um, but it feels like you had this firehose of information coming at you. You interviewed a lot of these people on stage. And so while it’s fresh in your mind, I want to ask you, after doing this summit, after hearing from these folks, What’s something that you’ve changed your mind about, or what’s just like an insight that has been lodged in your head ever since doing the summit?

Jeetu Patel: It was an amazing thing to pull off because I, I, we never thought we’d be able to do it. And we were really worried going into it thinking, well, we’re trying to do fireside chats for 12 hours. And there’s a capacity of human absorption that we’re trying to challenge. And so we tried to put a lot of breaks in there and we started at 9:00 AM and we ended at 9:00 PM and we had a couple-hour break in the middle, but everyone stayed and everyone was engaged and we could have gone until 11 and it would’ve been fine. And it’s because the quality of the conversations and the caliber of the guests that were there made a world of a difference. What was the takeaway from it? I’d say a few things. One is, you know, the capabilities overhang is real. I think there’s more functionality. We, on one end, there’s kind of this paradox of progress. On one end, we are like, you know, we’re solving all these amazing problems with science. On the other end, you talk to the enterprises, they’re like, we’re struggling with adoption. And I feel like there’s a, there’s help that’s going to be needed within organizations. And the reason I, we pulled this thing together, the goal was What is happening in the industry and how can we help customers make sure that they can make the most of it? Because we are in one of the most foundational movements that we have seen in human history. And it’s, we gotta make sure that we make the most of it. So that was one is the capabilities overhang is real. The second area is I’d say that it’s harder when you go beyond some of the most more obvious use cases. Like for example, coding is a very, very good use case that, you know, you’re starting to get a lot of success in. I mean, we just had our first product that we think will be in the next 2 weeks, 100% written with AI, right? I don’t think that’s as easy when you go into every other function of the business. And that was actually very apparent that, hey, this is, this is going to require some nuance and understanding of how every business works. And then the third one, which is the, a really interesting takeaway and Marc Andreessen talked about this in your podcast. A few days ago. In fact, when I talked to him, I actually started with your podcast because it was so interesting. And then we dug into it a little bit more. But like, and then, you know, Kevin Scott was also talking about this, but this notion of the fact that birth rates are going down and we have a demographic shift that’s happening in the world and there’s gonna be more people that are in the older age bracket than the younger age bracket. And those older people are gonna need folks to take care of them. And historically in society, that’s actually always been the case, but we might be at a point where that might not be the case. When that’s not the case. You know, we worry about AI taking our jobs. I think that survival of humanity depends on a successful AI because at some point, if you have, you know, 60% of your population that’s in a demographic where you don’t have enough people to take care of them, that could cause a lot of human suffering. So I don’t think people talk about this enough. And that’s something that we have to take a moment and digest that this is so important for our collective success.

Lenny Rachitsky: Moving forward. Something I was going to say during that, my chat with Mark, when he talked about that AI is basically coming just in time to save us because there aren’t going to be enough people to do the jobs. I was, in my head, I was thinking this is like another signal that we are in a simulation. Things are working out just right for us. What are the chances?

Jeetu Patel: The older I get, the more I believe that we are actually in a simulation. You know, the first time I heard that concept,, I thought it was such an absurd concept. Now I’m like, you know, this is, might actually be happening.

Lenny Rachitsky: You never know. Following this thread, a lot of companies are trying to adjust to this new world. You are doing an incredible job at actually doing this. We got connected through Kevin Weil, who is former CPO at OpenAI, now head of science at OpenAI. And the way he described it is the work that you have done to turn Cisco, the way he described it, from an older, slower, more traditional, uh, enterprise to a very AI-forward company. Uh, how many employees do you guys have? You said 45,000?

4. How Cisco Transformed from Traditional Enterprise to AI Pioneer

Time: 00:08:47 - 00:15:34

Jeetu details Cisco’s AI transformation methodology: innovation is a choice, embedding AI in every product, “eating your own dog food,” and his pioneering 10/10/10 internal innovation framework.

Jeetu Patel: We have 90,000 employees.

Lenny Rachitsky: 43,000 watch the stream. So the big question for you is that like, this is, it feels like it’s really working and this is very difficult to do at a company of that scale. A lot of leaders are trying to make it work. What are 2 or 3 things that you’ve done that you think have been most impactful and, uh, effective? In helping Cisco lean into AI, not be scared of it, not, and actually, you know, embrace the future?

Jeetu Patel: You know, innovation in my mind is a choice. So like, you know, I always find it interesting when people say, well, you know, you’re a large company, you can’t innovate. You’re a small company, you can innovate. It’s like, no, it’s just a choice. Every day you come into work and you can choose to be thinking about being creative or you can choose to not be creative. It’s like a little binary. It’s a binary choice you can make every hour. Right? Every minute of every day. And so we made that choice that says Cisco is gonna be not just an iconic company and not, you know, Chuck Robbins, our CEO says this very eloquently. He’s like, I want Cisco not just to be an iconic company. I want Cisco to also be an iconic and innovative company. And so we gotta make sure that we are actually innovating with the set of constraints that we are dealt with. You know, like every company has their own set of constraints and we have our own set of constraints and we have to make sure that given those constraints, we have to actually innovate really well. Now, what has, what are the 2 or 3 things that have happened that have really helped us out? One was being very clear on what is up for debate and what is not up for debate. Because what can end up happening is you can always have a pocket veto in a large company. Where if you ask enough number of people, people say no. If you’re a large company, you ask enough number of people, someone’s going to say no, right? And so when you have conviction about something that’s happening, that is going to be a bet that you need to place. Like, you know, what most people think in large companies is large companies don’t experiment. That is in fact not true. Large companies experiment a lot. What large companies don’t do is when an experiment works, they don’t go all in and double down. They try to keep hedging. We didn’t hedge on AI. We, we’re, we said we’re gonna go all in. That was number one. What that meant was we had to get people to understand that their personal success and the success of the company are very aligned in us getting dexterous with the use of AI. That means that if they feel like for some reason AI is gonna take their job or AI is gonna be negative for them. We had to reassure them that that was not the case, but the reverse was guaranteed to be the case. That if you didn’t use AI, if you weren’t gonna be dexterous in whatever job function you’re doing, then your job is probably not gonna be that relevant over here in the long run. So that was the first thing that we did was that, that was a, I’m not a big fan of top-down hierarchy of going out and doing things. In fact, I, deep down inside, I don’t respect hierarchy as much. I feel like it can constrain you at times, but I wanted to make sure on this one, we were very, very deliberate. The entire company is on the same page. We are an AI-first company, right? And this happened, we were kind of working towards it even prior to ChatGPT, but ChatGPT became that seminal moment. In November of ‘22 that we actually did that. So that was one. Number two was we had to make sure that we defined what success looked like. The way that individual success was defined was everyone wanted to be a GM at Cisco. They wanted to own their own fiefdom, be a general manager, because they felt like in order for me to move up the ranks, I need to be a general manager, which means I need to have my own sales team. I need to have my own marketing team. I need to have my own product team. I need to have my own engineering team. I’m going to make sure I run my own silo. And if you’re a $40 billion business in product revenues, $45 billion, whatever, um, um, we were at the time, um, and, and then all of a sudden your goal is that you’re going to just run a bunch of $40 million businesses and break it up into a series of $40 million businesses. That’s actually not a good thing for the company. So, so the thing we did was we said we have to become not a holding company of 251 acquisitions and thousands of different products. We have to become a platform company. And the characteristic of the platform is you have to be tightly integrated where the customer feels the same emotion, no matter what product of ours they use, right? There’s the same set of expectations that can be served. Reliability, trust, elegance and design, solving a problem in the most efficient way. Those are the things we want to strive to do. But you don’t have to buy everything all at once because we also want to be realistic about the fact that not every customer only uses Cisco top to bottom. There’s a, there’s an ecosystem. So loosely coupled, but tightly integrated. You don’t have to buy everything all at once, but boy, when you do buy two things together, they work like magic. So that was the second big thing we did. And then the third one we did was we said, let’s make sure that we have a mental model shift. In the company, and we did this about 5, 5 and a half years ago, which when I first joined, this was a very deliberate decision, which was we cannot operate in a walled garden. We have to make sure that we operate in an open ecosystem, which means we have to be completely comfortable with having a competitor that we are gonna partner with. And that’s okay. You know, we don’t have to think about this in a zero-sum manner where in order for me to win, someone has to lose. We can partner because if we, if a customer has made a choice of going with company A and company B, and we happen to be one of those two companies, we owe it to the customer to invest in their success in that other company. Because if the customer succeeds, that success has a flow-through rate to you that’s gonna be pretty high. And so that’s what we did. And that, I think that’s been those principles of building great products, but making sure that it operates like a platform. And having an open ecosystem, I think has been kind of central. And then not being confused about the fact that we’ll be AI-first from the top down.

5. Cisco Is a Critical Infrastructure Company for the AI Era

Time: 00:15:34 - 00:19:11

Lenny guides Jeetu to explain Cisco’s role in the AI ecosystem — networking GPU clusters, security trust, data infrastructure, and why there is no AI without networking.

Lenny Rachitsky: I want to take a tangent and make sure people understand what Cisco even does these days. I think as a layperson, you’ll think about Cisco and you’re like, okay, they, uh, Webex, yes, they make maybe some routers. You guys are key to this massive AI infrastructure buildout that’s happening right now. You’re a major player in this. I don’t think people realize this, people listening to this podcast. Give us just like a quick glimpse into how Cisco fits into this massive buildout and just like what is Cisco these days?

Jeetu Patel: Cisco is a critical infrastructure company for the AI era. What does that mean? If you think about where the constraints are right now, if you think that AI is going to be one of the biggest movements and then you ask yourself the question, what could hold AI back? There’s 3 things where we feel like we can have a direct impact that can hold AI back. Number 1 is there’s an infrastructure constraint. Constraint. There’s just not enough power, compute, and network bandwidth in the world to go out and satiate the needs of AI. Number 2 is there’s a trust deficit. If people don’t trust these systems, they’re not going to use them. And right now there’s a lot of mistrust in these systems. Hallucination is a feature when you’re writing poetry, but when you’re trying to go out and run predictable systems, hallucination can be a bad thing. And these models are unpredictable. They’re non-deterministic.. And so they have to make sure that they have safety and security kind of factored into them. And then the third area is a data gap. Like so far we’ve trained these models with, you know, human-generated data publicly available on the internet, but we are running out of human-generated data publicly available on the internet to train the models. And every company is going to differentiate based on their own proprietary enterprise data being used to train the models, synthetic data and machine data, which is where the most amount of growth is. And the third category of machine data we can play a massive role in at Cisco. So what does Cisco do then? If you think about a GPU, which is what everyone now has, is very clear because of the great job that Jensen has done, that here’s what a GPU’s core contribution is to AI. If these GPUs aren’t networked together, you don’t have AI. Because it used to be that you could train a model on a single GPU. But then what happened was the model got too big to be put on a single GPU. So then you had a server with 8 GPUs that got connected together so you could train a model with 8 GPUs. But then that wasn’t good enough. So then what happened was you said, I’m gonna have a rack of servers that I’m gonna network together. That at some point wasn’t big enough. And so then they said, I’m gonna have a cluster of racks that are connected together. And those that connected together is the operative word. That’s what we end up doing is NVIDIA makes the GPUs and we connect those GPUs together. AMD makes the GPUs, we connect them together. And now what’s happened, Lanny, is you have these data centers that might be hundreds of kilometers apart that need to operate like one coherent cluster, which means that they’re completely in sync. Every GPU is in sync with each other. When you’re doing a training run. And that requires a very sophisticated set of technologies that we build to make sure that you could have two data centers 800 kilometers apart, but boy, they run like completely in sync with each other. And that’s what Cisco does. We provide the networking, we provide the optics technology, we provide the safety and security technology, we provide the observability, we provide, you know, the, The data platform, all of those things together for making sure that we provide critical infrastructure for the AI era.

6. Underestimated Trends in the AI Investment Wave

Time: 00:19:11 - 00:24:37

Starting from a meeting with Ray Kurzweil, Jeetu analyzes how the global birth rate crisis makes AI critical to human survival, and why current investment levels may still be far from enough.

Lenny Rachitsky: So being on the inside of this massive investment that is happening across the world, what do you think isn’t being priced in into where things are heading into how much life will change or just like the scale of this, of this build-out?

Jeetu Patel: Years ago, I’d had a chance to meet with Ray Kurzweil. You know, he’s the chief scientist at Google for a while, and I think he still is. And he had talked about— he was writing this book called Live Long Enough to Live Forever. And so I was talking to him, I’m like, what is the impact to human population if all of a sudden you can have 15 generations living simultaneously because we have an indefinite span of life? Because now all of a sudden, you know, everything has to change. Like, how does housing work? Housing work? How does agriculture work? How does transportation work? How does Like everything changes. And he looked at me and he had the most profound answer. And he said, you know, most people can’t think exponentially because they always think exponentially, maybe on a single dimension. But what ends up happening in these things is you can sometimes, you have to keep in mind that exponentiality happens across multiple dimensions all at once. So if you do have an indefinite span of life, you have to assume that humans are creative enough that they’re going to find a way to have a 3-day crop cycle. And they probably will have 5,000-story, you know, skyscrapers. And there will be a bunch of things in society that we have assumed are not solvable that’ll now be solvable. So when you go back to your question and say, what changes in this entire equation that has not been factored in well? I think today AI is looked at largely as a productivity tool and an aggregation mechanism. I have data all over and I’m going to be able to make sure that language can be used to compose the data in a way that I can give you, Lenny, the answer to the question that you’re looking for. That I think is like the 0.00001% of the tip of the iceberg, right? The reality is, is we will have original insights generated that don’t exist in the human corpus of knowledge. And we will have the physical world get augmented to language where capacity is augmented to humans. And what we have to be careful of is that that capacity is working on behalf of humans. But if that capacity is augmented to humans, you can now do things that you really care to do and not do things that you don’t care to do. And so like our biggest realization that we had when we were using Codex, for example, when we were writing, you know, code with OpenAI’s, you know, kind of model and development tool was the first 3 months we were screwing around with this. And then there was this light bulb that went off. In fact, it was a forward deployed engineer from OpenAI that told us about this. She’s like, hey, stop trying to think of this as a tool. Think of this as a teammate that got added to your team and your framing will change. And the way in which you actually use the technology will change. And that essentially, if you compound that to how society operates, That’s going to be pretty profound as an implication, while keeping in mind that these safety and security risks are non-trivial and they’re real. And you can’t be, you know, completely flippant about them because how an AI identifies its own success and its own ambition will really matter. And we have to make sure that we actually keep guardrails around that. Because it is in service of humans. It is not to go out and build a society by itself. And I do think that, that those are important kind of checks that you have, checks and balances you have to keep in mind. But the thing that people sometimes miss out in this very polarized narrative, which is we are either gonna have nothing to do in society or this is gonna be completely useless as a piece of technology. I think that’s not a helpful narrative. In fact, what is helpful is saying, as we reconstruct society for the next phase, how can we make sure that life gets infinitely better? How can we make sure that diseases get solved? How can we make sure that poverty gets eradicated? How can we make sure that how people learn and find excitement and joy out of life gets compounded meaningfully? If that happens, I think there’s goodness that comes out of this.

Lenny Rachitsky: A line that I often think about is Elon has had this thought that the best case scenario with AI, because he was a very like AI doomer for a long time. And I think the reason he leaned into AI is like, I need to help steer this in a direction that isn’t going to harm the world. The way he described it is the best case scenario for humanity is where the house cat, where AI is just like, okay, nice. Just keep sitting here with me and I’ll take care of you.

Jeetu Patel: But by the way, the things that he is doing right now are nothing short of extraordinary. And, you know, for all the critique that one can have, like the level of kind of deep thinking that’s going on with his company.

Lenny Rachitsky: It’s just crazy. So as you’ve been thinking about where things are heading, I’ve been liking to ask this question with people with kids. Is there anything you’re kind of shifting in how you raise your daughter, keeping in mind where things are heading? And like, are there skills you’re trying to instill in her, values you’re trying to instill in her that help her, will help her thrive in this future?

7. Raising the Next Generation in the AI Era

Time: 00:24:37 - 00:29:47

Jeetu shares his philosophy on raising his daughter — not restricting AI use, not imposing ideology, letting her form her own judgment, and the educational belief that “values outlast tools.”

Jeetu Patel: We made a choice and I didn’t know how that choice was gonna go. That was actually not even an active choice. It was a passive choice. Frankly, even might have been slightly intellectually lazy in the way that we did it, but it actually worked out pretty well in the sense that we didn’t really deprive her of the use of technology. Like, there’s a school of thought that says keep technology away from the kids for a while. We didn’t do that. And frankly, I didn’t know how it was going to work out because there are things about the way that the generation is. And by the way, all of us, not just a new generation, but this kind of constantly being glued to your phone all the time and not being able to actually put that down and have a conversation, you know, is, I think it’s an important skill in humans to have and preserve over time. And in fact, as AI does more for us, We should be able to have more of this time where I don’t have to worry about every notification that’s coming on my phone at every minute of the day because maybe I can be more present in the moment that I’m in. She just turned 15, and the night before she was turning 15, what I realized is she is so emotionally mature. We were sitting down one night and she’s like, hey, Dad, just so you know, I feel really good right now about having a very strong value system. I’m like, oh, okay, what does that mean? And say more. And she’s like, well, can you name 5 things that you feel so convicted about that if the entire world disagreed with you— this is the day before she’s turning 15, okay— the entire world disagreed with you, you would still feel like you were right on that and that would not waver you? She’s like, I have a certain core set of things that I believe in where I am completely confident that if everyone disagreed with me, I’m still good. Now, by the way, I have to kind of coach her on the, hey, when you get new data, be open-minded to changing your mind. But it was actually a very interesting dynamic, which is She, you know, if we can have them be exposed to technology but have the right value system, you might actually have the best of both worlds. And, and you know, it’s the day ain’t over yet. She’s 15. There’s a lot of, you know, chances for her getting influenced by external factors and all of that. But what you have to do is make sure that you instill the right values, but then also expose them to the reality of what the world is today. And not completely insulate them from that. And so I, the way that it worked out, it did end up and end up working well. And we were lucky for no credit to us. She was, she was able to use technology to get her EQ higher and higher. And we were lucky on that front. And we know it can go sideways the other way too. But I do feel like right now, at least for my one daughter, what we try to do is get her exposed to the technology, but make sure that we focus a lot more on the values that we need to have that govern us on a day-to-day basis. You know, kindness, you know, not being arrogant, hard work, work ethic, those things matter. And I don’t think those are timeless in my mind. I don’t think those change because, you know, take risks, be creative, that kind of stuff.

Lenny Rachitsky: GT, these are parenting goals as I hear this. I have a 2.5-year-old. Sounds like you’ve done an amazing job raising your daughter.

Jeetu Patel: I would take zero credit for it. I think she deserves a lot of credit for growing up to be who she’s become, you know, and her mother.

Lenny Rachitsky: Got to shout out mom. What’s interesting is that I know Anthropic is really big, like this idea of values and just like how you operate. Anthropic has this constitution they released of how the values essentially of Claude and it’s so interesting how much similarity there is to how to raise a great person and to how to steer an AI correctly.

Jeetu Patel: That’s right. And by the way, it’s some of your beliefs and your system around you might change, but values tend to be pretty long-lasting and culture in a company tends to be pretty long-lasting. Like, you know, when we, Ben Horowitz talks about this very eloquently, the culture is just a set of norms that a company actually, it’s not, It’s not a set of beliefs, it’s a set of behaviors that you exude within the company. And it’s, it’s, it’s actually very, very true because when things aren’t going right, how do people behave to go solve problems and come together? And that actually forms your cultural norms. And I think those cultural norms are, it’s very important to be intentional about it. And as you have more automation in the world, being intentional, not just with humans, but also with machines and what you want to do to create the guardrails, I think is pretty important.

8. Aaron Levy’s ‘Right to Win’ Philosophy

Time: 00:29:47 - 00:33:33

Jeetu shares the core concept he learned while working with Box CEO Aaron Levy — the “Right to Win” — and why stamina matters more than talent.

Lenny Rachitsky: I’m going to take this in a different direction. I talked to Aaron Levy, your former boss at Vox. Dear, dear friend. Yeah. And friend. Uh, so I asked him just what should I ask you about? What’s something that, uh, he learned from you that has stuck with him ever since working with you? And he, uh, shared this concept of the right to win, which he says has informed the way he thinks about strategy ever since. Talk about what this is and how folks might use this when they’re thinking about product strategy, company strategy?

Jeetu Patel: One of the things that we would always talk about is in the areas that we are gonna participate, do we have permission to play? Every company, you know, has to make sure that the way in which they provide points of insertion and logical entry into a market is a lot of times dependent on, do you have the permission to play in that market? Do you have an avenue to get to your, to have a route to market to be able to take that product? Just by building a product that is amazing in, in some area, you, you don’t end up actually getting it to mass scale distribution. And so one of the things that we would always do is ask ourselves a question. We’re building this new category or we’re building this new capability. Is it going to be logical for people that Box built it versus another company building it? You know, is it going to be logical for people that Cisco built it versus another company building it? So that’s this notion of permission to play, the right to win. Do we have a right to win in that area because we have permission to play? And do we have the route to market to be able to take that product and get it to mass-scale distribution? And if you can do those things,, right, then actually your dollars that you expend on building product actually have an outsized return. If not, then you can actually spend up, spend, end up spending a lot of money on product where the product people think, ah, these sales guys don’t get it. They don’t know how to sell it, especially in enterprise software. And the salespeople think these product guys don’t get it. They don’t know how to build it. And so I think in order to stop that, what you have to do is you have to actually use your scale as an advantage and you have to use the areas where you’ve got the ability to have permission to play where people feel like this is very logical for a company like Cisco. Like when we say we are going to network the GPUs and make sure that we actually have a trusted system in AI, that is not far-fetched for someone to go out and think about because it’s a very natural thing for us to do because for the past 40 years, We’ve been doing it for the rest of the infrastructure that was not AI. And so that’s not a far cry to say, okay, we’ll now do it for AI. You know, and I think that was an area that Aaron and I spent a fair amount, and by the way, you know, I’m glad that he took that out of me. There’s so much I’ve learned from him. The biggest area I’ve learned from him is you never give up and persistence beats intellect and stamina beats intellect any day of the week, twice on Sunday. And that That guy is as smart as they come, but that is not the why. That’s not the biggest reason he’s successful. He’s the biggest reason he’s successful is he has an enormous amount of staying power in the game. You know, going back to my daughter’s comment of no matter what everyone else says, his convictions and belief, he will actually stick by them and actually get through the hardest times.

Lenny Rachitsky: I totally believe that. I feel like I’m not the smartest person in the room. Usually, and I succeed in large part because I just work really hard.

Jeetu Patel: You’re pretty smart though. Like I’ve been watching your podcast for a while. Like you’ve done a pretty amazing job.

Lenny Rachitsky: I appreciate it. So in this permission to win concept, the reason I think it’s so important is it’s so easy to build stuff now. Everyone’s just building, building, building, building, launching, launching, launching, launching. It feels like this is an increasingly important lever is why will we win in this space? I’m curious if there’s an example you can share either from Box or Cisco where it’s just like, okay, this is like, we’re going to do this because we, because we have the permission to play here.

9. Permission to Win Becomes Increasingly Important in the AI Era

Time: 00:33:33 - 00:36:52

A deep dive into why the “right to win” concept becomes even more important in an era where AI makes code generation easy — technology is no longer a moat, judgment is.

Jeetu Patel: I agree with you in the sense that if, if generating code is something that becomes abundant, that doesn’t mean you’re going to have better technology just because you can generate a lot of code. You still need human judgment. You still need a level of intuition on what problems are the right ones to solve. You still— and yes, AI can help you with all of that, but it’s not something that— like, that’s where humans have a superpower. They have instinct, and they can actually make sure that they can, you know, fulfill out a vision that says, this is what I think this could be in the fullness of time. And so that, that I think is pretty important. So the more, the easier it gets for us to get the bottlenecks out to generate code, the harder it gets for us to make sure that there’s not AI slop in the market and that we actually are very selective on what are the things that are going to be the most important things that solve the most important problems moving forward. Example of permission to play. Is, I mean, there’s so many ideas that a company the size of Cisco, we have constantly new ideas that keep coming up, you know, and then in those new ideas that keep coming up, people will always say, oh my goodness, this company is doing so well. We should just go into that market or we should just go into this market. And 90% of the times, 99% of the times I find myself saying no. And the reason for that is you have to be extremely selective of where you expend your calories. And that caloric expenditure is, is where, you know, if you expend your calories in a very focused way, the results you’ll get from that focus area tend to be outsized and disproportionate. If you dissipate that caloric burn across multitude of different areas, nothing gets enough girth. To be able to go out and drive it all the way through. And, and so like, you know, why are we not in business-to-consumer tech at Cisco, right? Like why, why are we not going out and building things that are very, very B2C? Because I don’t think we have a distribution channel that actually is within our DNA. I don’t think that we’ve got permission to play there. That’s an area where it would be extremely hard for people to grok that Cisco should be the one who’s participating in that. Now, can we do it? Of course we can do it. Is that where we want to go? Or do we want to go where there’s so much opportunity in the areas where we can actually prosecute with the ability to have, you know, operate from a position of strength that you’ll just get a much better return for the dollar that you invest.

10. Leadership Wisdom from Great CEOs

Time: 00:36:52 - 00:40:55

Jeetu shares key lessons from Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and other leaders — don’t let media narratives define you, build authentic relationships, and “the quality of people around you determines your quality.”

Lenny Rachitsky: You mentioned Aaron as a CEO that you learned a lot from. I’m curious what other CEOs you’ve learned a lot from and what’s something you learned from them.

Jeetu Patel: Chuck Robbins is one of my favorite humans, and not just because I work for him. I work for him because he’s one of my favorite humans. And what I’ve learned from him, he had this kind of great line. There was this piece of press that our media is very sensationalist by definition. They will try to create a very polarized view about the world when there actually isn’t one. And most things in my life, things are not as extreme as you hear of the headlines of the media. It’s somewhere in the middle. And there was one time that there was this article that ran and it was about like, you know, giving me an unnecessary amount of credit and frankly not giving Chuck as much credit about something that he has actually done. Like a lot of the movements that we’ve had internally wouldn’t have happened if he had not hired me and given me agency to go do the things that I needed to get done. And he was very much completely in sync with me on what needed to happen. And so, you know, I— when I saw this article, I had no idea the report— I reached out. I’m like, hey, I just want to let you know this was not me saying it. Someone— I said, geez, don’t worry about it, man. What I’ve learned in life is if you don’t care about who gets the credit, you just go a lot farther in life. And it’s so profound. Right. In so many ways that he’s just way too confident to let anything. And so the thing I’ve learned from Chuck is the importance of confidence and the importance of knowing what you’re good at and where you’re not good at. And when you’re not good, you’re going to assemble a team of people around you. He’s just, he’s just masterful at that.

Lenny Rachitsky: And it happens. By the way, he’s the, he’s the CEO of Cisco in case people.

Jeetu Patel: People have. That’s right. He’s the CEO of Cisco. He’s the chair of the Business Roundtable. He’s a very dear friend of mine. And I feel like there’s a lot to learn from that kind of mental model and mindset. And I’ve been lucky enough, Lenny, that, and this is just dumb luck, the people that I’ve worked with and for are all very, very close to me. And I just don’t let them go from my life. And so one of the things, for example, is I worked with Aaron, and then when I was leaving, it was very emotional, but I wanted to do something different. But we committed to each other that we’re going to have dinner every 6 weeks. And Aaron, and there’s another co-founder, Jeff Kwiser, and I, 3 of us, every 6 weeks in Palo Alto, we have dinner, you know, and it’s one of the most special things that I still do. And it’s a tradition now. It’s been going on for 6 years. And I love it. You know, you look at someone like Chuck, we have, I start with my day with talking to him in the morning. We text each other. And then I end the day talking to him in the evening. And we probably touch base at least 4 or 5 times a day. They’re not long conversations at all points in time, but we’re constantly in contact with each other. And I feel like that only happens when you’ve established enough trust. There’s my, one of my first boss when I moved to California is this guy named Rick D’Avanuti. And then, and then another guy named Jeremy Burton. You know, Rick D’Avanuti is still my coach. I see him every 2 weeks. Jeremy is someone that’s a very dear friend of mine and we’re neighbors and we moved and bought a place next to his. Um, just so that we could be close to him. And these are like special people in your life that have enriched your life in very different ways that I, I think you just have to make sure that you treasure.

11. Managing 30,000 People: Secrets of Scaling Leadership

Time: 00:42:04 - 00:48:46

Jeetu shares key insights on managing large organizations — why scale is an advantage rather than a burden, the culture of transparent debate, and the networking metaphor of “packet loss” in organizational communication.

Jeetu Patel: Is that the right number?

Lenny Rachitsky: About 30,000, but, um, 30,000 people. Okay. Yeah. What’s, what’s something that you wish you’d known before taking on this role?

Jeetu Patel: I don’t know if it was, I mean, I instinctively kind of knew it, but it was very, very, uh, accentuated at Cisco because when you like, you know, when people say, oh, is scale hard? And my perspective has always been that the absence of scale is way harder than scale. What do I mean by that? Like if I have a startup with 3 people and we need to prosecute another idea and that idea requires, you know, 5 people working on it, I have to go raise money. Right? Like it’s, it’s an inter— or I have to pivot my entire business. If you have 30,000 people and you have an idea that requires 5 people, you just figure out a way that you allocate the dollars internally and say, let’s go prosecute this idea. So in my mind, I always felt like absence of scale was way harder than the presence of scale and operating within scale. Seemed like it was like, yeah, you have more opportunity to do it. What I found over the years, not just at Cisco, but even when I, because I ran a small startup in Chicago for like 17 years before I moved over to the Valley. What I found in the large companies is communication framework and the lossiness of communication, the telephone game, so to say. Has a profoundly negative effect if you’re not intentional about it and if you’re not careful of it. And there was this board member that we had, there’s a couple board members, you know, our lead director Michael Capellas is amazing. There’s this other board member, you know, Kevin is amazing. And then there’s this one board member, Wes Bush, who we recently, you know, rolled off, but he used to be on our board. And when I got this job, he pulled me aside, he’s like, Jitu, I’m gonna tell you something. I’m gonna give you some advice and take it or leave it, but I think it’s gonna be important for you to keep it in mind. I’m like, what’s that? And he goes, whatever you do, don’t think about your story of the company as a marketing exercise. Think about it as the most intrinsic foundational exercise of the company and always be the custodian of the message. Don’t delegate that to someone else to give it because if you have 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 layers between you and the person who’s actually doing the job in the frontline, what you don’t wanna do is play the telephone game and assume that people will just cascade it when you go to your team and then say, okay, that team will cascade to the next team, cascade to the next team, cascade to the next team. Every one of them will add a flavor with well-intentioned, and then by the time it gets to the end, people won’t know what it is. So always own telling the story. And I’m like, that seems like it’s a lot because we have a very broad portfolio. We do all of these events. It’s, you know, like I’m going to have to stand on stage for 90 minutes and just talk about it. He’s like, please do that. Make sure you don’t. And I initially, the hidden benefit that came out of it that I did not realize is it massively, Lenny, simplified our business. And you know why? Because we have such a broad business with so many different industries, it’s impossible for someone to be a deep expert in every single one of them across the board. Like there’s just way too much surface area. But the things that we want to convey to the market that the market should take away from us, if that story is not something that I understand well enough to be able to convey it, how do I first expect 20,000 of my sellers to be able to go tell it to the market? And how do I expect my customers to be able to digest that story? There’s zero chance that would happen, right? And so that was my, my kind of big takeaway from this, which is don’t delegate the storytelling. And the storytelling is not a marketing exercise after you built the product. The story is why you build the product to make the story come real. And so make sure that the story is there first, and then that story has evidence and proof based on the products that you’re building.

Lenny Rachitsky: I had a conversation with Matt McGinnis, who’s COO and now CPO at Rippling, and He had a similar piece of advice, which I think is also, it’s like adjacent advice, which is the intensity of an idea or a plan drops at every level that it goes from CEO to the next layer and layer. And your job as a leader is to maintain that intensity, not to buffer it from the employees, but to maintain exactly the same intensity. And it feels like that’s in addition to also just keep the story the same, like don’t filter it, don’t change it. Although your advice is even different, just like you actually go to the team working on it and tell the story yourself.

Jeetu Patel: Don’t even let— I want to make sure that they hear it from me directly so that there’s no lossiness. You know, like we have this concept in networking called packet loss when you actually send packets over a wire and then you have a loss of packet, then actually there’s loss of data. Like you don’t want to have packet loss in your storytelling. From you to the person on the front line because the direct Ethernet Cat5 connection, this is just a direct connection and you know, there’s no packet loss on this one. Like you, you gotta make sure it gets to the intended audience. And I think the reason for that is as companies get large, they can lose touch with the front lines. Like everyone gets really good with the math of the business, but they don’t really always preserve the soul of the business. And there’s a lossiness that happens because if you have 7, 8 layers between you and the frontline, even the message that’s coming back to you from them is actually getting lossy. And so what you have to do is just preserve. And I think what was said earlier about the intensity is the same way, which is you gotta preserve the intensity, you gotta preserve the sanctity of the message, and you gotta preserve the clarity of the message so that everyone is clear on the direction we are going down. And if you can stay clear, and stay motivated about that direction and make sure that everyone’s on the same page of what needs to be done to execute, you will have success. If not, you will actually have guaranteed failure.

12. How to Execute Strategy Without Being Overwhelmed

Time: 00:48:46 - 00:53:08

Jeetu shares his execution methodology — clarity of thought leads to clarity of communication, “why” matters more than “what,” and how he ensures strategy lands through repeated communication.

Lenny Rachitsky: How do you actually operationalize this without just being overloaded with work and constantly having to, you know, meet with every team and remind them of the story?

Jeetu Patel: The first thing I feel is you have to have very clear thinking because the clarity of thought is what brings clarity of Communication. So you have to spend the time with your team in sweating the details on what, what it is that you want to do and why you want to do it. The context of why is so lost and constantly reminding people why it’s important and having the least amount of asymmetry between the topmost layer and the organization and the bottommost layer is super. Now, by the way, you know, I’m a, section 16 officer, there are certain things that, for example, you’re in a quiet period, you can’t go talk about to someone else during that time period. Like, you know, that’s not allowed. However, the most amount of context that you can provide them in the way that you can because you’re allowed to, the better off you are. And always treat people like adults. You know, like what I found is oftentimes when you go into corporate environments, like people start becoming very sterile in the facts that they provide. And sometimes it’s okay to just say, hey, we screwed up here. This was really bad. That’s not meant to, you know, like one of the things that I found to be very counterintuitive because every management book that you read will tell you otherwise. What do they say? Praise in public and criticize in private. I fundamentally disagree with that notion. I think what you have to do is establish enough trust among the team so that you are comfortable critiquing and debating in public. But when you’re in private, take that moment to build the trust. Because if you build that trust and you tell them that you’ve got their back and you create a level of safety there in public, you don’t want to be in a mode of posturing. You want to be in a mode of problem solving. When you’re just giving people perfunctory compliments all the time and everything’s just hunky-dory, rose-colored glasses, great. All your dashboards look green, but you’re growing the business at like 1.5%. Like there’s, there’s an asymmetry there. Something’s broken. You know, it’s like, what do we need to do over here? And so what I tend to do is use the exact opposite approach. I tend to be very, very direct in public, you know, be respectful, but be direct in public. This is not working. Let me tell you why it’s not working. We got to face the facts and then be very, very kind of clear with people that you got their back in private. And don’t be stingy with words on that front, you know, because I feel like there are times when people are very stingy with words with people in private. You can’t be stingy with words over there. And don’t be stingy with critique in public, because I think people need to make sure that we’re solving problems together. And if we don’t know the play that we’re executing, if we don’t know the things that we’re going to need to do, then I’m not really certain if you’re making collective progress. And I think it’s not going to be fulfilling to either you or the recipient at some point. And those, those compliments will feel hollow because you didn’t mean them, because you, you were trying to put it in between, you know, like Ben Horowitz says in Hard Things About Hard Things, that you have a shit sandwich. You say something really nice to someone, then you say something that’s not really nice, and then you put— no, just treat people like adults. Tell them the facts. Watch your tone. I still have to work on that. There are times when I get very passionate. People think like, you know, but watch your tone and make sure that you debate. Conflict is a necessary condition of business, but the only way that you can have productive conflict is if you’ve established trust. And the only way that you can establish trust is by making sure that you spend the time to establish the trust. So spend the time to establish the trust., but then focus on the best idea winning and actually having the debate.

13. Infrastructure Lesson: Credit Goes to Others, Blame Falls on You

Time: 00:53:08 - 00:58:46

Jeetu shares a profound lesson from transitioning from the application layer to infrastructure — when infrastructure works well, nobody thanks you; when it breaks, everyone blames you. And the metaphorical connections between networking and leadership.

Lenny Rachitsky: Is there maybe one more lesson that you learned from this? Or I guess it’s something you wish you’d known before getting into this role.

Jeetu Patel: Is there anything else that comes to mind? I was an apps guy. You know, I’ve, I operated in the apps layer. I worked at Box. And even when I was at EMC, I, I was building apps that, you know, you built for the end user. Infrastructure is a different game. And the thing that I learned about infrastructure is you don’t always get the glory, but you always get the blame. Perfect. And, and you have to be comfortable with the fact that you are working in a way that other people get the glory. Great infrastructure companies, the application companies get the glory when they’re running on that infrastructure. You know, and so you, you have to be hardwired in infrastructure to orient on your ecosystem’s success, not just your own success. And that is probably one of the lessons that I learned at Cisco in a very stark way, which I, I didn’t fully appreciate it until I got into the details of the infrastructure going, wow, if this thing doesn’t work, you know, like we were, Well, every single time our infrastructure doesn’t work. This morning I was with a medical institution and I was with a healthcare company this morning and they were telling me that they were very complimentary. They were thanking us on the partnership. I asked them, why do you, why are you doubling down with us? And they’re like, because When the infrastructure doesn’t work, people die. Someone doesn’t get dialysis, someone doesn’t get a surgery done. And we need to make sure that we are working with someone with the infrastructure is working. And so I feel like at that point in time, you can’t be navel-gazing too much about look how cool you are because you did something. You have to just make sure that you’re really immediately shifting your focus to What does the customer do and what does the ecosystem do with your infrastructure so that the outcome is achieved? And you have to get very outcome-oriented. And I feel like that was something that I always intellectually knew, but I didn’t fully realize it until I came here on how important of a mindset shift that is. You are not talking about yourself, you’re talking about the system just working. No one will come and tell you, hey, Jitu, thank you so much, my network worked today, right? But the moment it doesn’t work, they’re going to call you and say, you know what, my network’s not working and my people can’t work and patients are dying in the hospital. And I think you just have to be comfortable with that.

Lenny Rachitsky: It’s so interesting how this lesson connects so directly to the lesson you learned from Chuck. The CEO of Cisco, which is don’t expect the praise and the credit. You need to be comfortable with other people getting credit for your work.

Jeetu Patel: That’s right. And by the way, it’s not surprising given that he spent like, I don’t know, 26, 28 years over here. Like, you know why that, you know, he’s conditioned with the fact that he’s focused on other people succeeding from it.

Lenny Rachitsky: From his point of view of work, you know. It feels like there’s so many metaphors and corollaries to networking as a way to think about leadership and living life. It really is. Oh man, I bet you guys have all kinds of examples.

Jeetu Patel: It’s a good exercise to actually go through and create the corollary of parallelism between life and networks.

Lenny Rachitsky: I’m thinking about just like how many friends, like Dunbar’s number, like how many nodes can you have in a network before it starts to slow down? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe 150. Oh man.

Jeetu Patel: Okay.

Lenny Rachitsky: Anyway, I like that your mind’s spinning.

Jeetu Patel: I’m thinking like, how many can you have?

Lenny Rachitsky: I think more than 150 for sure. I hope so. I hope so. I also was thinking about Intel, the whole Intel Inside move was such a clever way to break through that where, you know, no one had no Intel. And so they’re just like, slap a sticker, Intel inside.

Jeetu Patel: And by the way, they are, you know, Lip-Bu is a very dear friend. Pat Gelsinger used to be my mentor at EMC. And so both those people that have had such a profound contribution to that industry in general, like when you start thinking about them, they’re very, very much on that mode.

Lenny Rachitsky: I could see how you pulled together this insane collection of humans, if you’re just—

Jeetu Patel: feels like you’re just friends with everybody. I feel like it’s— life’s too short not to be. And I’m only friends with people that I feel are good human beings. Like, what I try not to do is I try to minimize my time, no matter how successful they are, with people whose energy I don’t vibe with, because I think life’s too short, you know. And, um, in my mind, one of the most off-putting things is— look, all of us have a healthy ego. There are times when ego gets manifested with insecurity and you have to make sure that you’re at least self-aware enough to know when your ego is starting to take over your behavior in a way that’s counterproductive. And all of those things are super important. But what I think is extremely important is that you, like, life is just fun to live when when you love the people you are around. Can I digress for a second in this one story that I’ll tell you? The story that was— so my mother was, um, you know, she passed away 2 and a half years ago, but she was extremely sick in the hospital for like, um, 8 weeks before she passed away. And I was very close to my mom, like, that she was my my everything, you know, and we were only child. I grew up with a rough childhood. I had to, you know, my dad was a high-stakes kind of con man like Bernie Madoff. I didn’t want to be any part of that. So I’d actually left India, come over here, hadn’t gone, I hadn’t seen him. And so he was very abusive to my mom. So like there was a bunch of that that had happened. And so we had had a very, you know, kind of difficult early childhood life. For me, and her and I had bonded during that time very, very, you know, at a very deep level. And so when she came to America, you know, we kind of, she always wanted to have her own place, but she kind of lived very close by and she was very dependent on me, on, you know, emotionally and in every way. And so I had almost become a parent to her. And at the last 8 weeks, things flipped and she was, she became a parent again. And so we were, you know, kind of, we were getting to the point where she was ending her journey and I was sitting like 1 in the morning at the bedside by her in the hospital. I was living in the hospital at the time and she was sleeping and I was just crying. I’m crying profusely and she wakes up and she knows why I’m crying because she’s gonna be gone soon. And she looks at me, Lenny, and she’s like all perplexed and she’s like, I had no idea that you loved me so much. Now, by the way, this is like the most abnormal thing for me to hear because I’m like, what are you talking about, mom? Like, you’re one of the most important people in my life. And I was like, everything that I did was to make sure that my mom was okay. Why did I— why did it feel that way to her? Because she didn’t know how I was thinking. And that kind of notion of people don’t know what’s going on in your mind is so important that my biggest lesson from that was don’t be stingy with words. ‘Cause even my mother that knows me inside and out didn’t know how much I loved her. That there’s no chance that people in the business world are gonna know how you feel if you’re not explicit with them. And so I’m actually very clear with people when I find them and when I find them rewarding, I let them know how much they mean because I genuinely find a lot of energy coming out of that. And B, the circle of friends just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.. And I’ve found that to be like a super rewarding thing in life. And you’re right, most of the people that were at the AI summit are our dear friends, you know, and isn’t that just a better way to live life?

14. Tell People How You Really Feel

Time: 00:58:46 - 01:03:25

Jeetu and Lenny explore a simple but powerful leadership secret — directly telling people how you truly feel about them, whether it’s appreciation or care.

Lenny Rachitsky: I think we’ve uncovered one of the secrets of your success, which is just tell people how you feel and help them see that you appreciate them, make it clear that you appreciate them, that you value them. Which is a lot of people don’t do. They just kind of assume they know that, you know, that they like you. And don’t make it fake.

Jeetu Patel: And don’t make it fake. Don’t make it fake. You know, if you don’t love someone, don’t tell them you love them.

Lenny Rachitsky: It’s like, that’s the other thing that I have. Like, you know, it’s so interesting. I just, um, we just did a little interview kind of thing with my mother-in-law meant for our, our son, just like for him to have when he’s older. They just like interviewed her about her story and stuff. And they asked her at the end of it, what’s something you want Jude, which is his name, to know, a lesson to learn from you. And it’s to just, if you love someone, tell them you love them as much as you can.

Jeetu Patel: Yeah. That’s so true. You’re so intentional about the way in which you do these things. I wish I’d done like a, I should do that now. Now I think about it, like do a podcast for my daughter.

Lenny Rachitsky: That’s only for her when she gets older. I’ll send you these, this group, they do this. I think they’re in the Bay Area, but it’s incredible. It’s like a whole documentary thing where they interview you, film all your life for a little bit, and then make a whole documentary. Oh, really? Oh, wow. I’d love that actually.

Jeetu Patel: Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky: Oh man. They’re going to get a lot of business right now. There you go. Let me end with a question around just your journey. So today you lead product at a 90,000 person company. You manage 30,000 people. Like you said, you, you grew up in, in India and Bombay, uh, very far outside Silicon Valley. A lot of people hearing this today are kind of in a similar boat. They’re way outside of the Valley. They’re, they’re maybe don’t have a lot of obvious way to break in to ha— they don’t have a lot of opportunity and they see someone like you and that’s their dream. What would your advice be to someone in, in that place right now?

15. The Quality of Problems and Platforms You Choose Determines Success

Time: 01:03:25 - 01:10:24

Jeetu shares his deepest career insight — choosing the right platform and the right problems matters more than personal ability, and difficult problems actually attract the best talent.

Jeetu Patel: The platform that you choose and the quality of problems that you pick to solve actually determine a lot of the path of success for you. And typically like harder problems have a higher likelihood of success because the harder problems are the ones that attract better people to that problem. And business is a team sport. And if you attract people to the the problems that are hard and important enough to solve, then, then you get the best team and make it the best team. Your odds of winning just go up exponentially. So most people think I’m going to go out and pick an easy enough problem to solve. And it’s like, you don’t get the best team attracted to you to start up a lemonade stand. Very important job, but that might not be the thing that actually gets the best team to come to you. But if you actually pick a hard enough problem to solve, you’ll get the best team to come. So that’s one. Number two, I’d say that you can teach and learn a lot of things in life. I don’t think you can learn hunger or you can’t teach hunger. So find what you’re intrinsically hungry about and make sure that you try to pursue that area. And that’s different from passion about something. It’s like in everything that you do in work, you have to just understand the formula that there’s going to be 30% of the stuff that you do at work that you’re just going to hate. And you have to get used to things that you hate that you have to do, you know, but further, but find something that you’re really hungry about that makes you want to come in to work every day because the mission is worth the expenditure of energy that you’re you’re putting into it. And I’ll leave you with a story, which was like, I hadn’t gone to India in a long time. When I left India, I didn’t go back. I left in ‘91 and I hadn’t gone back in any kind of meaningful way until 2017. You know, because of all the trauma in childhood, I was like, you know, I was, for whatever reason, I hadn’t gone back. I took my daughter and we went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and we went there and there was this tour guide. His name was Raj. And the store guide was like, he understood so much about the product that he was selling, which was the tour of the Taj Mahal. I don’t know if he was making this shit up or not, but it sounded really good. And he seemed like he was kind of really on it. But when we were walking back, there’s all these people and he would just start talking to them and he’d bust out in different languages. He’d talk to someone in German, talk to someone in French, someone in Spanish, someone in Hindi, someone in You know, and at some point in time in Mandarin. And so at some point in time, I kind of stopped. Dude, how many languages do you speak? He’s like, oh, I speak like, I don’t know, 12 or 14 or some ridiculous number. But I try to learn a new language every year. I’m like, oh, why is that? And he goes, well, I just want to honor the people that come here and not be presumptuous that they will speak the language that I know. I want to speak in their language. And I’m thinking to myself, I was a boxer at the time. I’m like, this guy is smarter than every person on the executive team and probably just as smart as every salesperson we have, but he’s making $10 a day and all of us are enjoying this amazing life and it’s because we have access to a platform and he doesn’t. So when people start confusing life, thinking that everything that I’ve earned is because of my amazing abilities. I always kind of question that because there’s a lot of luck in this thing. But when luck does present itself, be extremely prepared to capitalize on it and make sure that you picked the platform that can actually give you that springboard because platforms really matter. And if we, like, I had the platform and benefit of America, of education, of being in in tech, of having great friends and mentors, that all of those things created compounding value, right? But you, we, I intentionally sought out those platforms. Seek out the platform, be obsessed about being extremely prepared, and don’t be intellectually lazy. Laziness is not a good trait. So do the preparation that’s needed. And then, you know, just make sure that during that time period that you’re doing, if you build a community around you of people that are vested in your success, I think it’s just because life is just a more fun way to live it rather than being the lone wolf that’s going at it by themselves. And that’s why I always feel like making sure that you are expressive and communicative and don’t try to carry the entire world’s burden on your shoulders, but actually share it with people with you, the people that you share it with actually appreciate that you’re sharing it with them. And most people in the world love to help. So ask for the help, but make sure that that help is not transactional and don’t just go to them when you need something. Actually try to add value first for a long enough amount of time. Not because at some point you might need something from them, just hardwire yourself into adding value to others. And then eventually that value starts showing up and life’s just a better— it’s just a better way to live life. And I do feel like right now it’s hard for kids getting into the workforce and all of that. So don’t lose hope and stay persistent and have stamina because these things go up and down. But if you kind of stick with it, the people that have the most amount of persistence, it’s very seldom that they don’t end up winning.

Lenny Rachitsky: Something that comes to me as you share this advice, Arnold Schwarzenegger has this book that he put out, and I feel like the title of the book is the best piece of advice and the simplest way to describe how to be successful in life, which is Be Useful. Hmm. Mm, mm, mm, mm. That is so good. Gigi, this was incredible. Is there anything that we didn’t cover that you wanted to share?

16. Six-Part Framework for Building Great Companies

Time: 01:10:24 - 01:13:59

Jeetu shares his six-part framework for building great companies — timing, market, product, business model, team, and financing — and why timing is the most important factor.

Lenny Rachitsky: Anything you want to leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

Jeetu Patel: I think there’s a framework that I use for great companies that might be worth sharing with people.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yes.

Jeetu Patel: There’s a 6-part framework, um, that I have, which is like, you know, um, in descending order of importance. And on how to build great companies. This is amazing. You get it for free. You get what you pay for it. So like take it with a grain of salt, but here’s the way I think about it. The most important thing is timing. The 6 things you need in a company, if you don’t have all these 6, you don’t win, but they’re stack ranked in descending order of importance., but you have to have all 6. Number 1 is timing. It’s the most important. It’s the thing that you control the least. And there’s a lot of companies that have built amazing products, amazing services at the wrong time in the right market and not won, right? And so timing really matters. You don’t control timing, but if you don’t have timing, you don’t win. Number 2 is the market. You have to be able to go after a large enough market, a chunk at a time. And if you don’t, if you’re not able to go out and prosecute a market a chunk at a time, but make sure that that keeps getting bigger and bigger, it’s very hard to win. So market tends to be the second most important thing in my mind after timing. The third one then is team. You know, you have to have the right team and the team does not mean just people liking each other. Team means that it is actually well-rounded. That means the things that you suck at, someone else is really good at. And you’ve both accepted that of each other. Like, for example, I have a person that I never go to another job without, and she is my partner in crime. And the reason I have her is because she is so good at things that I’m not good at, you know? And so she’s able to— so any job I’ve taken since I’ve been working with her, it’s always— it’s a combined deal. Like, if we don’t have two offers, we don’t go., right? And so team is really important, a well-rounded team where people understand how to, how to complement each other. And by the way, in the team, sometimes people say, well, isn’t team more important than market? No. If you have a great market, mediocre team, the market pulls you up. If you have a shitty market and a great team, the market drags you down. The market always wins. So no, timing, market, team. Number 4 is product. I think product is the soul of a company. That’s the, that’s the place where people seek value is what are you delivering to me? What problem are you solving to me gets manifested through the delivery of a product. So you have to make sure that you build a great product. I actually think it’s unethical to have a mediocre product sold in the market. So timing, market, team, product. Number 5 is brand. I had a mentor one time that told me, Mark Lewis, he said, Jitu, don’t ever go to a company., who’s lost their brand mojo because it’s very hard to resurrect it back. If they have lost their product and you can fix the product, but do you think Sybase is coming back? No. Like, you know, once you lose your brand, once you lose the trust, people don’t come back to you that much. It’s very hard to do. And then number 6 is distribution. Just because you build it, they will not come. You have to make sure that you figure out a scaled mechanism of getting that, that offering to, to many, many people. And so timing trumps market, market trumps team, team trumps product, product trumps brand, brand trumps distribution.

Lenny Rachitsky: You don’t have all 6, you don’t win. What an amazing nugget to have at the end here. Um, just so I understand how you think about this, is do you, do you have like a template that you work through when you’re thinking about a new business unit or a new product to launch? Is it like, what’s, is timing right?

17. Megatrend vs. Hype Cycle

Time: 01:13:59 - 01:19:09

Jeetu shares how to distinguish between a megatrend and a hype cycle, using Web3 and AI as examples, and why you should prepare for the world 6 months from now.

Jeetu Patel: Is market, what market do we start with? How do you actually operationalize? It’s actually exactly like that. Like I, I will ask myself the question on, is this the right time for us to go out and double, triple, quadruple down? We might still be in experimentation mode, but do I need to double down on this right now? Because this might not manifest for another 7 years and then we’re going to be too early. And by the way, you have to know the difference between a megatrend and hype cycle. When there’s a megatrend, don’t fight it. And don’t succumb to the temptation of trying to go out and do vanity work for a hype cycle. And there’s a big difference between the two. And, and I think having that judgment, the older you get, the better that judgment gets. It’s just miles. But having that judgment is really important because you see a pattern recognition at some point. I imagine AI megatrend. AI is a megatrend in my mind. And, you know, there’s a bunch of hype cycles we’ve had where I don’t, but I never particularly subscribe to them. And the easiest way for me to tell is the way it’s described. Is it easy to understand what this could do in its ultimate form for most people? Or do you need to have a PhD to understand what someone’s saying? When you feel like you need a PhD to understand what someone’s saying, chances are it ain’t gonna be a megatrend because by definition a megatrend is it’s gonna impact a large population of the world.

Lenny Rachitsky: And if the, if the thing is too complicated, chances are it’s not gonna have that level of effect, outsized effect. That’s an awesome heuristic.

Jeetu Patel: I imagine you’re thinking Web3 as a classic example. Yes. Web3 was the one that I actually cite all the time. Like, this is like, I, I couldn’t understand what, what it did. And like, all of these people were kind of like, oh, Web3, Web3. I’m like, I couldn’t make a heads or tails out of a use case, but With AI, it’s like you go to ChatGPT, you ask it a question, you get an answer.

Lenny Rachitsky: Like, I get this. This is easy, you know? So going back to your framework, just to kind of close the loop there, it’s really interesting that timing is the first variable you look at. This could be an amazing idea. You got the right team, amazing product that works really well, but the timing may just not be right.

Jeetu Patel: And no matter how awesome it is, it’s not, it’s not going to work. Steve Jobs put away the iPad because he thought that the iPhone was a better idea. And timing-wise, he actually made exactly the right call. You know, the iPad became successful because of the iPhone success. The reverse order might have not had the same effect, but he had to make sure that he focused on one thing and he actually puts the other, he said the timing’s not right, but I’m gonna get back to it. So by the way, when timing is wrong, doesn’t mean that you scrap the idea.

Lenny Rachitsky: It just means that you might put it on ice for a bit. There’s a lot of that happening right now where people try to do a thing and now AI actually makes it possible and now they’re like, oh shit.

Jeetu Patel: Yeah, it was way too early. And the other thing you have to keep in mind is you have to also be good enough to know that when something is going to be ready in 6 months, you can’t think about where it’s going, what it’s doing today. Like AI is moving so fast right now. Like one of the things I tell my team is fast forward 6 months from now and anticipate what that’s going to do and get prepared for that world. Don’t get prepared for the world of today thinking that you’re not going to be able to get there because in 6 months, your assumption sets are gonna be different. And please don’t actually then bias yourself with the assumption sets you have right now to not move forward. Like one of the worst things I think companies do sometimes is they put too much emphasis only on solely on experience. And I think experience is good, but experience can actually be meaningfully bad in some areas where you get too biased. And so you almost have to say that I have to, have the ability to unlearn. And combination of experience with complete inexperience is what creates the magic, because the inexperience allows you to ask questions that you might have never had with experience. And the combo of those two gives you the best of the pattern recognition plus the charting new territory that’s never been kind of walked on before.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, this is a trend I’ve been hearing on this podcast that people worry about. Young people and people graduating out of college right now and jobs and AI, but they’re the people that are most open-minded about what AI can do for them and how to harness AI and not code in the way people have always coded.

Jeetu Patel: It’s just like, okay, this is the way it works now. Experience, Lenny, can jade us, right? And I always say when people say, oh, entry-level people will never be hired again, I’m like, that’s the stupidest thing a company can do because now what you’ve done is you have completely shut the door to new fresh ideas. Like I cannot think today the way I thought when I was 19. There is just no way that I can do that. But what I can try to do is I could try to make sure I surround myself for enough amount of my time to get exposed to that thinking and then couple it with what I know and maybe have something better than what either of those two could have had by themselves.

Lenny Rachitsky: Yes. Well, with that, G2, we have reached our very exciting lightning round. I’ve got 5 questions for you. Are you ready? All right.

18. Lightning Round: Without AI, I Could Not Have Done This Job

Time: 01:19:09 - 01:22:27

Lightning round — Jeetu recommends The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Hard Thing About Hard Things, shares his deep dependence on AI tools, and makes a stunning declaration: “There is zero chance I would have been able to do this job without AI.”

Lenny Rachitsky: First question — what are 2 or 3 books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

Jeetu Patel: The Bible in tech in my mind is Innovator’s Dilemma and Innovator’s Solution from Clayton Christensen. I think you have to read that book and I’d say I’d recommend to people that read it every few years. And then the other one that I love is Ben Horowitz’s book, Hard Thing About Hard Things, really talks about how you manage your psychology when things get hard. I think those are the ones. I’m not a big believer that you keep reading like thousands of books all the time because I think like to me retention really matters and my brain’s just not that big that I can retain that much. So I tend to distill the essence of a few things quite a bit more and at least the older I’ve gotten, I’ve actually used that pattern more.

Lenny Rachitsky: Favorite recent movie or TV show that you’ve really enjoyed?

Jeetu Patel: I don’t remember the name of it, but the Brad Pitt F1 movie that I saw, that was pretty cool.

Lenny Rachitsky: Was it F1? I think it was called F1.

Jeetu Patel: I think it was F1. Yeah. I think it got nominated for Best Picture. Zac Brown is a good friend of mine and we’re big supporters of McLaren. And so it was actually pretty cool to watch that movie.

Lenny Rachitsky: Oh man, I bet so many stories I haven’t tapped into. Okay — favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?

Jeetu Patel: I mean, it’s cliche, but I feel like what ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have done, it’s changed lives. It’s changed my life and the way that I learn in some ridiculous ways. So I actually feel like when I got this new job to run all product for Cisco, there is zero chance I would have been able to do it if AI wasn’t there because I didn’t know anything about so many domains that we were in. And I had to get an accelerated training course within a matter of 3 months. And I mean, I worked around the clock during that time, but I could have worked around the clock without the tooling and I would’ve been nowhere near as effective. So I feel like those three have done an amazing thing.

Lenny Rachitsky: And Groq even, like, you know, and what you’re seeing with Groq tied to Twitter is pretty amazing. Wow. That’s a profound statement. I’ve never heard that before from someone at your level that you feel like you wouldn’t be able to have done this job without AI. Zero chance. Especially for someone without the background in networking and hardware. It’s amazing how at every level AI is helping, like at the most bottom end and also at your level.

Jeetu Patel: Most people don’t realize — I fundamentally believe this is the reason that I’m able to enjoy some of the experiences I have. I was lucky enough that I’d made enough money before this job that money was not the thing holding us back, but the reason I’m able to experience some of the things that this job afforded me to experience would have not even been remotely possible without AI.

Lenny Rachitsky: No chance that would have happened. Unreal. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life?

19. Stamina Trumps Intellect

Time: 01:22:27 - 01:23:30

Jeetu shares his life motto — stamina trumps intellect, and hunger cannot be taught.

Jeetu Patel: Stamina trumps intellect. I feel like it’s very important to have smart people, but you can become smart if you have curiosity and hunger and staying power and persistence. And so I think that trait of learning to learn and constantly being hungry and having the stamina and persistence is far more important than the absolute measure of intellect that you might have because that is very, very trainable and learnable over time and improvable over time. But hunger is very — it’s not teachable is what I’ve found.

Lenny Rachitsky: I 100% agree with that. Interestingly, when you watch AI work, it’s partly the reason it’s so good — it just keeps trying. It’s just like, okay, this didn’t work. Let’s keep going. What else? I’ll just give me half an hour. I’ll figure this out. Okay. Last question. So when you were younger, you worked at Sizzler Steakhouse making $4 an hour.

20. From Sizzler Waiter to Cisco President

Time: 01:23:30 - 01:25:03

Jeetu tells the story of working at Sizzler steakhouse in his youth — earning $2.25 per hour and overcoming his stutter through working as a waiter.

Jeetu Patel: Is what I read. $2.25, not $4. It was below minimum wage. $2.25.

Lenny Rachitsky: But we got tips. We got tips though. So that was nice. Okay. I see.

Jeetu Patel: Did you have a favorite dish at Sizzler is my question. Yes. They used to have this Malibu chicken dish. It was like magic. But, and then it was, it was probably, I don’t know if people know this and I know this is rapid fire, but I used to stutter. When I started working at Sizzler. And Sizzler is what allowed me to break out of my shell and not stutter because, you know, something changed in my brain where I’m like, I have to entertain people. And if I don’t, then they’re not gonna give me a good tip. And so you, the stuttering went away at Sizzler. And so I have an immense debt of gratitude and I think everyone should work in hospitality for a while. In the younger years. And I’m kind of sad that my daughter has no interest in doing that because I’m like, I wish she just worked as a waitress somewhere for a bit. And it’s just so important to just— there’s so many lessons on, you know, I cleaned toilets at the restaurant. I actually washed dishes. I actually waited on tables. And it was it was the best experience I had. Like it shaped me for what was to come in the most profound way.

Lenny Rachitsky: You too, you’re just endlessly full of wisdom. Two final questions. Where can folks find you? Where do you want to point people to, to learn more about you, what you’re up to, and how can listeners be useful to you?

21. Closing Message: Pay It Forward

Time: 01:25:03 - 01:27:20

Final two questions — where to find Jeetu, and his message to listeners: pay forward what you’ve learned to the next person.

Jeetu Patel: Where you can find me is I tend to, a lot of people will ask, you know, the more, um, success you encounter, the more people want to get mentored by you and learn from the experiences you’ve had. And I, I have run out of cycles to be able to do that on a one-on-one basis. So what I try to do is do a lot of that on LinkedIn and Twitter, but largely I do a lot of that on LinkedIn. And so find me on LinkedIn. I tend to be very open about not just the work stuff, but the non-work stuff. So do that. How can people be useful to me?

Lenny Rachitsky: Was that the question?

Jeetu Patel: What was the last question? That is, how can listeners be useful to you? How can listeners be useful to me? If there is— I would say that if you got something out of this session and if you get something out of whatever you learn from social media, just pay it forward and help the next person out a little bit more. Yesterday I was at a at a talk and someone pulled me aside and said, hey, I saw your LinkedIn post about this. Don’t be stingy with words. And Jeetu, since then I’ve been going to see my parents once every 2 months or so in India. And when I see them, I tell them that I love them all the time. I literally, What, what could be more rewarding to me than that? Like, you know, it was amazing that they were able to go out and have joy brought to their lives as a result of something they got inspired by, something that I, I learned in my life.

Lenny Rachitsky: That’s like paid forward. I’m excited to hear the stories that come out of this conversation. Jeetu, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It was great. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at LennysPodcast.com.

Jeetu Patel: See you in the next episode.

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