In the early '90s, a small company licensed the Windows NT source code from Microsoft and used it to reinvent how we work, building the foundation for everything that we now call end-user computing. That company was Citrix, and one of the CEOs who led Citrix shortly after its creation is here today to talk about the past and future of EUC in the age of AI and Windows cloud. Welcome, Mark, to "The Shiproom." Let's get started.
Hi, folks. Welcome at "The Shiproom," the show for people who build, manage, and rethink modern computing. I'm Christiaan Brinkhoff, your host today. And if you're watching this on YouTube, hit "Subscribe" now as we have a serious episode lined up for you. My guest today spent two decades at Citrix as president and CEO, the company that redefined how enterprises think about virtual apps and desktops, so I cannot be more excited. He stepped away from the helm 10 years ago, and now he's in the space to reshape it with AI. I'm today joined by Mark Templeton to find out how he or what he saw coming, what surprised him, and what he thinks EUC is going on from here. So hi, Mark. Welcome--finally--on the show.
Hi, Christiaan. Just really great to be here with you. Thanks for the privilege of doing this.
For the folks that watch this episode and don't know you or haven't seen you, can you introduce yourself to the audience?
Sure. Yeah, I was part of the Citrix team for about 20 years. When I joined the company, there were 51 employees. I was employee 52. When I joined, you know, I had been kind of a software migrant worker, moving from one startup to the next to the next until something got traction. By training, I'm a product designer. By accident, I'm a software executive. But I've been a lifelong student of how technology works and how it changes work. When I joined Citrix, I think our trailing revenues were--12 months--were $15 million. And when I left the company 20 years later, 16 years as CEO, we reported $3.3 billion in revenue, so there was a lot of growth there and a lot of experiences, some of which we're going to talk about today. And then today, I'm a board member. I'm an investor. I'm a mentor. I'm still very much hands-on with technology, especially AI. I consider myself to be, well, forever a student. I think that's an important part of being in our industry is having the sort of a childlike mind, the curiosity of a child and also the interest in getting your hands dirty, so to speak. So I'm still interested in the same questions: How does technology work, and how can it change the way we work and expand human capability?
Yeah, getting your hands dirty is the attitude for getting through this age of AI. And that alludes a little bit to the things we were going to talk about, like, you always have to reinvent yourself. And prior to hitting "Record" on this podcast, we talked about it that right now it's even more and more important that you reinvent and leave the learnings you gained in the last one, two decades or so to reinvent yourself with knowledge of AI. But I also learned that you, and I think you alluded to that a little bit, that you were a design major, in college, you did designing kind of, was it kind of a preamble to getting into the product building kind of sausage making kind of exercise, as well?
Absolutely. Yes, the study of product design, the way I like to explain it in simple terms, it's sort of one-half engineering and one-half arts and crafts. Okay? It teaches the discipline and the practices of design thinking, how to reframe problems and questions and really sort of change your perspective on a problem in so many ways so that you can see it through a lot of different lenses and come up with creative solutions.
When I approached you, I think a couple weeks or a month ago, about the new book I'm writing about you becoming a forward writer, you said immediately, "I'm in, I'm going to help you," because you felt that the community needs to keep going, and you're still a member of that community. I love that. I want to thank you personally for that again, for saying yes. The book will be amazing. And maybe that's a good moment to switch gears a little bit to when you joined Citrix and that story you told me about first, you were considered being the CEO, but then all of a sudden later you came in. What's that all about?
Okay, yeah. Well, these stories can be long, so we'll try to keep them as simple as possible. So, I told you during our preparation that I'm probably the only one that successfully interviewed for the Citrix CEO role, I think, three times, it might be four. Okay? So the first time was when our first CEO, Roger Roberts, decided to retire. I was head of marketing. I had been with the company 2 years, and he told the board he wanted to retire. Long story short, he suggested to the board that I was the internal candidate to consider. And the board said, "Well, let's see how he looks as president first, and then we'll decide whether he should be CEO." And Roger was one of my most important mentors. Before I put my name in the hat, I went to him for advice, you know? Should I do this? I've never been CEO before. And Roger said, "Well, you have to talk to your family. You have to think about this and that. You have to think about the responsibilities, the travel. There are a lot of things to think about." He said, "I'll put your name in the hat, but there's one condition." And I said, "What's that?" He said, "That if you don't get the job, you won't leave the company." And I said, "That's easy to say yes to because I don't really want the job to start with." But I'm being encouraged by the leadership team to put my name in the hat, so I'm going to do it. Then, fast-forward 6 quarters--by the way, after I became CEO in January of 1999, in the June quarter of 2000, obviously, we were a public company. We missed the quarter very, very seriously by a mere 15%. So that was very serious. And it was a surprise to the board. And one rule of thumb is you never surprise your board. And so in July of 2000, the board asked me to step down from CEO to SEO, senior executive officer, while they did a search for a new CEO. And I told them that I was accountable, I was responsible, I did a number of things wrong and that I supported their decision, but I was going to get us out of this ditch because I drove us into it. And in 10 months, we saw some good candidates, et cetera. I got a phone call asking me if I was interested in having my epaulets back as CEO, and I said yes. So that was the second time I was named CEO. And then in 2013, I had a tragedy in my family, and that led to a medical problem. And I had to take medical leave. And I really was convinced that I was not going to be able to come back. And so I encouraged the board to get out and do another search, which they did. And so in, I think it was June of 2014, they asked me if I was interested in having my job back that time. And I said, "Well, on one condition." And they said, "Well, what's that?" And I said, "Only under the condition that I interview with the whole board for as many hours as you want to interview me." And so the interview was 5 hours long. And at the end of the interview, they thanked me, et cetera. I thanked them. And they said they would consider it, and they would let me know in due course. In several weeks, I think it was, they called me and they asked me if I was still interested, and I said yes. So there was yet another time that I was appointed CEO. So, how do you like that? It's quite a strange story, but as we all know, true stories are usually the strangest.
Yeah, I love that. And of course, it's a very heartwarming and sensitive kind of story, as well, and some elements of that, too. But I think it really illustrates how you lead with your heart, with your soul and your passion, and that comes through every angle of when you're leading the company. And I think recently we had Sam Altman got pushed out almost, as well, and then he came back. I think...I think this is a perfect example of people who believe in a mission. They belong to a company and they should not, with a number going down for a quarter or two or three, be influenced or going out or consider going out.
Yeah. You know, along the way, so many people though I was founder of the company, which I was not. And, you know, I would always tell them that, no, I was not founder of the company, but I loved the company like a founder loves their company. And because that love comes from belief, and that belief comes from a place where you think you're doing, really doing the right things. And I did a podcast not too long ago, and I got asked one of the hardest questions I think of the podcast. And the question was, "In one word, how would you describe the Citrix culture?" And I thought for a second, and I said, "Caring." And cultures tend to flow from the top. And caring is probably how I would describe myself in terms of how I cared about our team. I cared about our customers. I cared about our beliefs and what we were trying to do. And when that care is that deep, it's very easy to do whatever it takes, the hard things that it takes to do those things and the fun things, as well. You know, there's way more fun than hard things. People like to dwell on the hard parts, but I tend not to. I tend to be an optimist and like to see the joyful parts.
I think the other next wave of innovation is to have what you said, an agentic task kind of taking over, and then doing that workflow for you. And I think that's just like that adapter that you as a company fulfill as that enterprise utility facilitator kind of solution. And it can change in the course of new innovation, but the way you treat a company of service, like an SLA-based service or cloud service, is kind of the same. You just go with the needs of the company that just change in the innovation layer that comes in, whether it's AI or cloud SaaS or all the other innovations--mobile phones that we had like in 2008, 2010 kind of coming in. And this is not different. The difference here is that it's more foundational. It's more from within. And I think that's the impactful, powerful force. I think you always use the inertia kind of analogy. Is that a picture in your background, as well, or is that not the inertia?
Yeah, it's about...well, frankly, it's about something that's very personal, but it's a Dr. Seuss lithograph. And it's called "Prayer for a Child." But as I said earlier, having a childlike mind, this expresses it. It's boundless, it's upward and outward looking, and it's curious about what's out there. And, you know, being curious about what's new in technology, it used to be optional. It's now mandatory, you know? All caps "MANDATORY." And I think the thing that...I mean, from a personal perspective, I've gone through the journey. Chat, then using GPTs. Then I started doing a little vibe coding with a tool called Lovable. Then I moved on to Claude Code. All right? Now I've got, if I could pan this camera around, you'd find four NVIDIA DGX Spark supercomputers. Over the weekend I just got my AMD Halo developer machine. And what these machines can do is just amazing. And it used to be, we said along the way, oh, these old legacy apps, no one's going to rebuild them. That's wrong now. All of a sudden, it's wrong. They can be rebuilt using AI, things like Claude Code. As long as you understand what intent you have and the clarity of intent, the better those tools will help you. And I think all these rules, all of these assumptions we've made in the past are getting blown up.
And I think when you talked about inertia, my definition of inertia...well, first of all, it's the most powerful force in the universe because the way I define inertia is, it's about doing today what we did yesterday. And so it's a self-reinforcing thing that really encourages us to not change. We don't have an incentive to change, and I think especially in business, but it's beyond business. When it comes to leadership, your job is to show people the future and give them a reason to change, to violate this whole force of inertia in order to keep moving forward and up.
I think before we jump into some of the AI and how AI is going to reshape the EUC space, I think one thing I think is important to share, it also kind of reflects the change to the space, the age of AI, is when you were CEO at Citrix, you were presenting a town hall kind of to the whole group your vision and what the company direction was, and the word "belief" had a very prominent story to it. Can you share more there?
