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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I examine Snowflake’s announcement about Frank Slootman stepping aside as CEO and its appointment of Sridhar Ramaswamy to the role.
Highlights
00:21 — After reporting a strong fiscal Q4 and also full year, Snowflake disclosed that longtime CEO and chairman Frank Slootman was giving up his CEO role and bringing in a new CEO. Now, for a relatively young company, even one that has had all the success that Snowflake has, a CEO switch is always tricky.
01:11 — The company’s market cap took a $20 billion haircut. Slootman is bullish on the new CEO at Snowflake, Sridhar Ramaswamy. Slootman said, “We didn’t circle a date on the calendar and say, by this date, we have to have somebody.” He said, “Instead, our sole focus was on who is the right person to lead us into this future . . .”
02:28 — When you look at Ramaswamys’ past, he was at Google, running its ad business and AdWords; he helped take that from $1.5 billion in annual revenue to over $100 billion. He knows technology, data, and scale. He started an AI-based search company called Neeva. Slootman said it was clear Ramaswamy was the guy to lead all of Snowflake’s AI strategy and the business.
03:32 — The fact that Slootman and the board have unconditionally said this is the guy, pulls this all together. Not only does Slootman have a fiduciary responsibility as the ongoing chairman of Snowflake to ensure that they get a world-class CEO, but also, on a personal side, he is quite a vested stakeholder in Snowflake.
04:35 — The six to nine months in which Ramaswamy was leading the AI strategy for the company at a time when AI is more important than anything else in determining future success is a huge accomplishment. Coming up in a week or so, I’ll take a look at some of the statements Ramaswamy made on the earnings call.
05:08 — Slootman will be missed terribly. His wisdom, insights, philosophy, vision, leadership, and personality were unlike any others, and the industry is going to be a little bit poorer for the absence of Slootman as a CEO. But he’ll still be around as chairman, which is fantastic.
