Is Silicon Valley still a promised land for Indian immigrants?
Technology shifts so fast. There's always new ideas and new opportunities.
Why do you have president, CPO and CEO in the same title?
There's this whole view that AI is the answer to everything you want to do, and that's where the problem happens.
The honeymoon phase of AI is over.
So when you're hiring, what's the one green flag that you notice?
Hi everyone, welcome to Shortcast. Today I have with me Amit Zavery, and probably someone who has the most loaded title in enterprise tech: President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow, a $107 billion company doing $13.3 billion in revenue, leading their entire AI platform, product engineering and cloud infrastructure. Welcome, Amit.
Let me just start from your journey of coming to the US. So you came to America from India pre-internet.
What scared you the most about that moment?
Biggest scare, I mean, thing is when you're 18, you just don't know what you're getting into, so it's much easier that way. But the biggest thing was always like, can I be able to pay for my education and will I be able to sustain my four years in undergrad?
So you were nervous about coming to study here.
Yeah, the cost structure was definitely daunting, and my parents couldn't afford everything, so we didn't make sure that I can manage that.
There's an interesting angle that your mom pushed STEM because she never got her shot. What was her role in your journey?
No, she was very clear about making sure I study hard and learn, and focus on especially science because I was starting out to be a good student in that area, and she really liked that part. And she was very encouraging and tutored me a lot for math and science before I got through high school. So a big, big part of my learning was her.
And there's a story where a random relative visited India that changed your life. Do you believe in luck?
That's a good question. I mean, I do believe in things which are unpredictable.
And that could be luck or things which you don't plan, and things happen.
Yeah. So you were 25 years at one company, Oracle. Why did you stay that long? What were you doing?
No. First, Oracle was an amazing company when I joined. It was when we talk about a lot of this next generation company nowadays. You think about that 30 plus years ago, Oracle was in the pinnacle of evolution of technology and an amazing company there. So when I joined as a software engineer, I got a chance to do many things. And over the 24 years I was there, one, I had probably like seven different jobs. So it always felt like a new company, and the company also were growing very fast. So we went through multiple transitions. So that's why I stayed around. I learned a lot, made a lot of good friends, learned from different product areas, and got to do a lot of things. And eventually I left as an EVP. So I got to grow through the ranks and really be part of a big change.
Absolutely. And you built their middleware from zero to $5 billion. What was that breakthrough moment?
Yeah, I think for the breakthrough moment was when we got our first 100 customers. We knew that we were on the right track. Once we get to right success, it helps.
And then of course you moved to Google, Google Cloud, and then you grew that from $7 billion to $41 billion. What was the biggest growth lever in that journey?
Yeah, we had a great team. Surround yourself with people who knew enterprise software and be able to now go and sell into enterprises very differently than Google was used to. So that was, I think, a big game changer, winning those new logos in the enterprise side and having a great team around us to make that happen.
And now at ServiceNow, let's dive deep into those three titles. So why do you have president, CPO and CEO in the same title? Like, what does that mean?
Yeah, president is a level basically. So the biggest, the way to think about my role is multiple things, right? So one, I run product engineering, operations and product strategy. And the big value of having these roles combined is being able to decide on what to build, how to build it, but also make it successfully delivered to customers. I think the world of software and enterprise software is changing a lot. To be able to combine that end to end versus doing one part of it is a big difference, and it really helps a customer, and it also helps my team see a little more better from a customer angle as well as what we need to deliver, and then making sure we're making the technology leap in each of these areas. So that's how these roles are combined together, so that I have the ability to not just do strategy and deliver all these things, but also execute against it.
Absolutely. So just in one sentence, if you were to describe what ServiceNow is doing today.
ServiceNow is the AI platform for business transformation. What we're doing is this AI control tower to make sure businesses can run effectively and adopt AI in their business processes.
And then there was this deal, like you acquired Armis for $7.7 billion. So is that ServiceNow's bet on cybersecurity?
Yeah. So we have been expanding our security business quite aggressively. We have been already a billion dollar plus business in cybersecurity before the Armis acquisition. So we've been doing very well organically, and a lot of the CISOs have been asking us to do more, and that's our big bet as well to continue that path and journey.
Yeah, I read one article where you mentioned 42% of companies have scrapped their AI initiatives. So whose fault is that?
I think it's all of us. I mean, it's vendors' fault. The technology not being clear and easy to use. So all of us are to blame, but also a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of hype without understanding of what the value is and where you should invest in. And there's a lot of other things like security risk not being clear. So tons of things need to be cleaned up to really make that thing successful.
Do you think we are in an AI hype cycle today?
I think there's a lot of good value with AI. There's hype cycle in terms of not putting AI everywhere. There's this whole view that AI is the answer to everything you want to do, and that's where the problem happens. People are building, taking spare parts and trying to create an outcome. Yeah, it's going to fail because you cannot just cobble up things. You have to be really thoughtful. That's why a lot of these things are failing. We have to clean that up, and then AI would be really successful.
How do you see AI, like the agentic AI which people are talking about, fit into ServiceNow's broader goals?
We've been in this automation and business process business for 20 plus years. That's why we started. So agentic is a tailwind and a good technology enabler to rethink how a business process will work, combining human with agents, AI agents, to really get a much more effective, much more efficient and a better outcome for our customers. So it is really a big part of our story.
Another thing you once said was that AI will control you if you deploy it without control. Can you explain that fear?
Yeah, I mean, AI can be everywhere, right? I mean, you know, the AI systems are very powerful and can be part of very different systems which you don't even know about. So if you don't have any visibility, you don't have management, you don't have control, you might be left blinded and not knowing what has changed inside your business, and could be bad outcomes.
