John Colgrove

Founder, Chief Visionary Officer & Director, Everpure

Search every verified John Colgrove interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. John Colgrove, co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Pure Storage, has continued to advocate for the complete replacement of spinning hard disk drives with flash storage. In a July 2025 keynote, he stated, "My mission won't be complete until we've eliminated every single hard drive, and the whole world is running on flash." He described the low-performance, ultra-high-capacity segment of the disk market as the "final bastion" and said Pure Storage is targeting hyperscale customers with new hardware, including a 300-terabyte direct flash module. Colgrove also promoted the company's "Enterprise Data Cloud" concept, which he said is designed to let customers plan their entire storage environment in a unified way, helping with compliance, control, and agility. In other appearances, Colgrove discussed Pure Storage's work with government customers, noting challenges such as support calls needing to be handled by U.S. citizens and the difficulty of managing spare parts in classified environments. He also addressed the rapid pace of change in AI, stating that "the biggest thing that everybody needs is the ability to adapt." Colgrove emphasized the importance of long-term thinking, saying that when a long-term trend is in a company's favor, leaders should "have a ton of conviction even when everybody says that you're nuts." He contrasted the current AI revolution with the internet revolution, describing it as moving "10 times faster."