Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight. Today, Sean and I talk through the acquisition of Slack by Marc Benioff and Salesforce, and more.
Episode 26
The Big Themes:
- You’ve got great leaders at the top of the house: In both those companies you really understand innovation.
- One of our venture companies: We sold a company to a publicly traded company that when that transaction happened, I got a lot of congratulations.
- That ship has sailed: I also think though that speaks to another thing that we expected to happen when you plug into an organization – like in this case of Salesforce or Oracle.
- Very fast moving dynamic: So we need to keep in mind not to get locked into an idea that will surely be obsolete in a matter of weeks or months.
The Big Quotes:
- “But that doesn’t mean that the $27 billion was a fair price. I think it probably was not unfortunately for the shareholders.”
- “The game was how many times could you say synergy in a windowless conference room for 30 minutes?”
- “I think in enterprise tech you’re really seeing something of this happening now in Slack.”
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Cloud Wars Live Digital All-Stars
Sean Ammirati is one of our regular Digital All-Stars. The All-Stars are experts whose video podcasts will focus on the critical themes shaping (and re-shaping!) the business world here in the digital age of 2021. Our intention is to provide regular chunks of timely ideas and insights about high-priority subjects from industry veterans with diverse backgrounds.
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