Latest / Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
Databricks’ Ali Ghodsi Never Wanted to Be CEO. Now He’s Among the Best
Ali Ghodsi never wanted the CEO job. In 2015, Databricks had a wildly successful open source project, $1.5 million in revenue, and a board quietly interviewing other candidates behind his back. He got the seat as a trial run. They didn't even give him a CEO salary. When I had Ben Horowitz on this podcast and asked him who the best CEO in Silicon Valley is outside his own portfolio, he didn't hesitate. He said Ali.
We get into how he actually runs the place: find the single biggest bottleneck in the company, then put an absurd, disproportionate amount of attention on it for two or three years…
The skinny
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