No offense to G2, he was great. We have saved the best inspiration for last. Yam is going to come up now. You know you're in Silicon Valley when even when you come to a charity event, the inspiration is full stack. You had inspiration at the infrastructure level at Cisco and G2. Now we got inspiration at the application level with Yamini. So now you know you're in the Valley.
But you know, I can give a two-minute introduction of Yamini and say a lot of good things, but I would be then wasting two minutes of you hearing from her on what a great inspiration she is and the story that she has. So rather than telling you all the things about her, except I will say that she's a great leader who runs a $25 billion market cap company, one of the coolest companies in the world from my opinion. I've respected it a lot and more importantly, she's a terrific person. So let's hear from Yamini talking about her. Let's invite Yamini Rangan on stage.
Great to have you. Please have a seat.
We just have dinner coming, so we're stopping the dinner from coming, so we have to like go fast.
There's a lot of good food for thought from you. We're going to digest a lot from you before we get to dinner. Now, how many of you have heard of Udallpet? Okay, there's about seven people in the room.
I want to meet, I want to meet you all.
Yeah, I want to meet all the people. Let's take a picture of all the people who raise their hands, right? I want to start the story today in Udallpet. That's where Yamini is from. I want to know, how was it growing up in Udallpet, which is near Coimbatore by the way if you do ChatGPT on it. How was it growing up in Udallpet in kind of an environment like that, and how did it shape you? What did you learn? How did it shape you?
Yeah, it is not on the map. So don't even go look for Udallpet on the map. It is not on a map. It's a small rural town. It's about like 60 kilometers from Coimbatore, which is the nearest larger city, and I grew up in Udallpet in the '70s and the '80s, giving away my age. And it was an agricultural town and pretty much everybody was either in cotton — growing cotton and sending it to Tiruppur, which has become a world famous place for fabrics — and then it was rice and sugar cane. And I grew up in this super small town, and it was my sister who is like two years older. She lives here now in Mandal Park, and myself.
And it was very stereotypical, you know, 1970s–80s India. The only thing is, the school that I was going to, it was growing with us. So when we started, you know, it had like up to fifth grade, and then by the time we kind of moved into middle school it grew to eighth grade, and then it decided to stop. And so they decided that they were not going to have anything over 10th grade. And so the whole conversation in our family was, how are you going to finish your high school? And my sister said, okay, I'm just going to go off to Chennai because I want to go to a big city. And I told my mom that I'm not going to go to anybody's house. I won't go to boarding school. So the conversation in the house was a lot about where we would finish school.
And my dad, you know, and I used to hear this conversation between my mom and dad, and my dad would be like, it's okay if she doesn't go to a great school, and my mom is like, absolutely not, she needs to get a great education, she needs to get out of this place, she needs to be independent, and we've got to find a way. And so these conversations would happen a lot, and finally my mom decided that she was going to move to Coimbatore. You know, your roots are from there, and so she moved to Coimbatore so that I could finish my high school education there.
Wonderful, wonderful. Let's talk about your mom. You know, I've heard you talk about it, I had the pleasure of meeting her also. And you've said this, that your mom was such an inspiration that we talk about empowering dreams as the theme, empowering your dream. And you've said that your mom used to bring clippings of, you know, the first woman who climbed Everest or the first woman who was a pilot, just to inspire you guys. Tell us the story of your mom.
Yeah, look, the story is that my mom actually grew up in Mumbai and she grew up in a big city. She worked for the Reserve Bank of India, had an arranged marriage to my dad and moved to this deep south little place. And so she had this whole dream for herself and she couldn't fulfill that. And therefore she looked at the two of us and she said, yes, I have two daughters, but I want both of them to be exceptionally well educated, economically independent, and always stand up for themselves. So her dream was for us to get an incredible education.
And so I know that she's an incredible cook. She lives with us, she still cooks for us, she's an incredible cook. But she fed us ambition. And anytime there was any news clipping about the first woman who was a lawyer that won a case, the first doctor who did something impressive, the first person who climbed Mount Everest — every one of these things would become dinner table fodder for us. And she fed us this ambition and she believed in our ability. We had no right — I was in a small rural town that is still not on the map in India. We had no right to dream big, but she believed in our ability to dream big, and I think it's her belief that has been a source of inspiration for my whole life.
That's awesome, awesome, awesome. 'Feeding us ambition' — that is such a great line. That's such an awesome line. That's something I remember. Now, while you were growing up, just going back to education — anybody else influenced you in your life apart from your mom in your early life? Yeah?
Look, I think lots of inspiration. My grandfather was an inspiration. You know, before we had organic farming, he was an organic farmer. This was the 1950s and the 1960s. He'd gotten a small plot of land and he went into agriculture and he was an organic farmer. And he also became vertically integrated. You talk about full stack — he was a full-stack organic farmer because he started with sugar cane and rice and then decided that in order to do organic farming you couldn't use any of the chemical fertilizers. So he actually used farm products and animal products to build natural fertilizers. And he did that, and he was so successful, and he found that he didn't have any place to welcome visitors into this little town. So he actually built a lodge and a restaurant. So he was exceptionally entrepreneurial.
And one of the things that brings us back to OSAT, that I'll tie back, is that he had an exceptionally successful career in this very small town being an agriculturalist and an innovator in that. And by the time he was 50, he was done.
He was done. At 50 he said, I'm done, and then he proceeded to give away everything that he had built.
And by the time he passed away, you know, he was riding a cycle, and when he was at his peak he had like four cars waiting for him. He was so happy giving away every bit of the wealth that he had created to improve the lives of others.
That's awesome. Inspiration. That's inspiration. That's awesome.
You know, we talk about go-getters and go-givers and how you transform in life. That's a great story of that, right. Speaking of story, I read that when you were young you read a lot of Nancy Drew and all that pattern matching. Tell us more.
You know, I was really into reading and I would look at every single book that was available, and one of my favorite genres was mystery reading. And my whole thing was trying to trick myself into figuring out the answer before the book actually gave away the answer. And so the genre was, you know, anything and everything to do with detective work — Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys. It just continued to the point where I was in this small town and there was one library and I wouldn't even leave the house. I would ask my mom to go and bring books, and she would go to the market to buy something and then she would pick like five books and she'd bring them. To the point where I read every single book in the library — everything had my name in the back cover, and they basically said, your daughter has read everything.
So sorry, there is no more book in this little town. And so, you know, one of the reasons why we had to get out was because I lived and tried to expand my horizon by reading and learning and trying to figure patterns that were much beyond what was available in my town.
I love reading. I still do. I think I always have a stack of books everywhere. You know, I have books in my office, I have books near my bed, and I probably buy like five books a month from Amazon. So I continue to be a voracious reader.
That's awesome. Let's then expand the story, move it forward. Okay. Coimbatore education, mom is feeding you ambitions. You get through college, you come to the US with $150. What happened?
Yeah, there's a little story before that. Here's the thing, and this will resonate with a lot of women here and those that are listening. My mom feeds me a lot of ambition. I get super into having an education and being economically independent, and I go to college in Coimbatore and I go to an engineering school in Coimbatore. There were about 20 of us in a college of about 350 students, and literally the first year of my college, every day I got questions about why I was there.
And just, there's no reason for a woman to actually study engineering. You're just not going to be good at it anyway. You're actually going to get married and have kids and you're going to give up your career anyway. Literally, this was the stereotype in India back in the '80s and the '90s. And I tolerated it for about six months of the year as the first year I was there. Okay, this is part of my first year process, I'll take all of this. And then, on a whim, month six of my engineering, there was this other guy who was also kind of competing for the number one spot. I was kind of behind him, and he said, 'But you're never going to catch up to me.' And I looked at him and I said, 'I'm going to be the best engineer in this college.' And it was just this whim.
Because we were getting, as women, stereotyped about the expectations society had on what we would do with our education. And on a whim I said to him, I'm going to be the best engineer in this college. And I think at that point I started taking myself seriously. I don't think I had grand ambitions to do something. I went to college because that is what is expected. And when I had all of these very different expectations of society compared to the expectations of my mom and my parents, then I said, I'm going to do something with it. And I did graduate at the top of the class. And then, like you said, I just moved here.
That's great. I can't say that about myself for sure, graduating at the top of the class, but that's a different story. But I'll ask you this — doing engineering gives a set of thinking, teaches you thinking, whatever engineering is, whatever is mechanical. So tell me, how did engineering help you, that degree, into how you operate later in life?
I think, you know, it's really first-principles thinking, and that's a big jargon-filled word, but it really is about how do you break down problems and how do you solve problems in a somewhat structured way that can then scale. And honestly, I think I've moved on in my life from engineering into sales, into marketing, into customer success and my current role, and in every one of those places it has been about how to solve problems and how to scale once you know how to solve problems. So it's been super helpful throughout.
Oh, it's great. But one of the toughest things you did — like, you went from a profession like engineering, for example, where there's very few women in it. In India obviously there was the whole stereotype around not being engineers. When you come to America there are very few engineers, and then you move into sales where there are very few women — there are even fewer women in sales. So what was the catalyst to pivot from, as Larry Ellison would say, building to selling, as Larry Ellison would say, right? So you only have to do two things: build stuff or sell stuff. Sell stuff, right.
Yeah. So I did move to the US, and it was like many of us here, one way to get lots of ambition and drive. And I came here and I did a master's in computer engineering, worked in coding for a few years, and then I wanted to go to business school, because mostly if you don't know what to do in life you go to business school. And so I went to business school at Berkeley here. And when I got out of business school it was right after 9/11, nobody was hiring, and it was a fairly bleak economic picture. And so the first job I got was at the time Siebel Systems, which, you know, is the original CRM company. And I joined their product marketing organization. And the first day that I joined, they laid off half the class.
So literally laid off half the class. This was 2001 or 2002?
This was 2002.
They laid off half the class. And then they basically said, well, you still have a job, but it's in sales. And the first thing that went through me is like, what am I going to tell my mom? First of all, she's disappointed that I'm not a doctor, and then she thought that I would somehow survive being an engineer, and now I have to tell her that I'm going to sell software. I was like, that was literally the first. And then I was like, okay, I still have a job, I need to figure this out. And I'm absolutely an introverted engineer. And part of it was now I had a sales quota and I had an overlay sales role, and they said, here's your team, go figure out how to sell. And I'll tell you, I did everything wrong in the first year. I tried to learn golf.
Disaster. I tried to watch Sunday night football.
Not really. I didn't even understand cricket. So this was a whole new sport. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was the very awkward first five minutes of every sales call that I would just watch and see if someone was going to speak, and I had like no idea what I was doing. And then I said, you know what, I am an engineer. I know how to solve problems.
And so I'd prepare for every sales call like an engineer would. I read 10-Ks, I read 10-Qs, I would listen to anything and everything about the company that I was meeting, and I'd prepare with 20 different questions that were mostly insightful. And so the first five minutes were awkward, the next 25 minutes were really good.
The early mentoring that I got was that in sales your job is to earn the next meeting, and that's it.
That's it. And so the 25 minutes, my goal was to earn the next meeting, and I did everything possible using everything that was not salesy. And so I think part of it is like you have to learn what your strength is. You don't have to follow what someone else's strength is, and you just have to learn that in my case being an introverted engineer that could read 10-Ks and 10-Qs was my only strength, and so I started with that.
Focus on that. That's great, that's great. I want to go back to this introverted engineer. Now, it's hard for me to believe that you're an introvert, but you say that. But you have a job that requires a lot of engagement as the CEO of a very high-profile company. So there's always this balance between the depth of relationship — I've heard you talk about, you like one-on-one discussions and relations. There's a balance between the depth of relationships you want and the breadth of expectations of the people you have to meet, like this occasion and others. So how do you balance the relationship between the depth and the breadth?
I think by being present. I don't think it's, you know, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that I have to go back and recharge myself after this. I have to go back and tomorrow I have a quiet day in order to re-engage and get the energy. That's the difference. But I think in any case you have to be present. And I do like one-on-ones. I do like smaller group meetings because you can go deeper. You can get to know whether it's a partner or a customer or an employee. You can get to know that person at a level of depth, and you can do it at a certain scale. I just don't get energy from 200 people all at the same time.
But there's part of the job where you really do need to understand the constituents that you have to serve, and you have to do it really well by being present.
It's great, it's great. Now the one thing you said, I read something very profound that you said, and I just want to bring it out here for all of us. You said that every aspiring leader has two paths in front of them: a visible one and an invisible one.
That's a sage line. So unpack it for us. What does it mean?
Yeah, it's a sage line. Thank you for saying that. So, you know, we all in our lives are trying to figure out what is our career path, where do we go next, and what do we accomplish, and what does that bring in terms of fulfillment. And the visible path is, you know, like me, if you start in sales and you become a VP of sales and you become an SVP of sales and you hopefully at some point become a chief revenue officer, and that's the visible path. And I think you could do that in marketing — you've done an exceptional job in marketing — you can do it in product, and there is a very hierarchical approach in terms of roles that you can have within the organization that you serve.
Then there is an invisible path of leadership. And that invisible path of leadership, you just don't know where your next break or your next job is actually going to come from, and it comes from really connecting the dots across the business. So I'll give you an example. I joined Dropbox leading their business operations, and one of the things that I took upon myself when I joined Dropbox was to understand our product organization really well, understand our growth function within marketing really well, understand customer support function. It was not in my job description to do that. But the only way I was going to add value to folks was trying to connect the insights across multiple functions.
And I did that, and when I did that, when a job opened up — you know, because there's always someone leaving at the higher levels of the company — I didn't even know that I was in the succession for a much bigger opportunity and a role, and that's an invisible role. A lot of folks within organizations forget that the more you do for the customer and the more you do for the company, the better your career is going to look like. And most of the time you just have to interview for your first role.
After that, it's all about how you serve others so that roles come to you, and that is the invisible path in leadership.
That's great. Love it, love it, love it. Now, let's have some fun. Okay, we're going to do a sharp-shooting round. Let's do it. Okay, so we know the real Yam here, the person. Yeah, I'm going to have 10 questions. I'm going to sharpshoot these. Let's go. It's a quick round. Full speed.
Favorite movie.
Tool. How many of us know Tool? All the Tamil people. Okay. For all of those, it is Gol Maal in Tamil. For all the folks in Hindi who know, in Tamil, a remake that was made in Tamil. All right. Some guy likes it there. Okay. Favorite book?
Oh, yes. Mindset. Calbots. Okay. Anything in fiction? Sorry, fiction. Anything in fiction?
