Heather Brunner, CEO of WP Engine: Career Paths, Leadership, and Austin’s Momentum

Thank you so much, Tom. What a nice introduction and we're very blessed to have you at the helm of ATC. You've done great work and it was awesome to get to see you in action at the Hall of Fame week before last.

Yeah. Well, it was. Somebody said it's the only gathering they'd ever been to last year and this year where you had leaders from the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s all in one room and all intermingling. And I said that was what it was. That was the purpose of the show.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Tom. And it's been quite a journey, 30 years plus in technology and so much of it here in Austin, which has been just such a privilege to see the growth of everything and to grow alongside Austin. It's been an immense joy. So I grew up in Houston. I'm a fifth generation Texan, so that's something I have a lot of pride about. I went to Trinity and graduated with an international economics degree. And I thought originally my whole plan was I'm going to work for the World Bank. I'm going to do economic development, that kind of thing. And I wind up doing a study abroad program that put me on the path into technology where I met a partner at an event when I was studying abroad that was an Anderson Consulting partner and I heard all about what they did and everything. I was just kind of fascinated and I went up to him and asked him if I could know more about the work. He said why don't you come and see a project with us at Lloyds of London and send a letter or call my secretary, back in the old day. And so I did both, called and did a letter and I wound up going to this project at Lloyds of London and it just blew me away. I was just like this is so cool and it kind of set me on that path. So I started my career, fast forward I wind up going to work at Anderson Consulting based in Houston and then I was able to work and do all different types of consulting companies like FedEx, USAA, NationsBank if you remember that one, Georgia Pacific. And so got to do those kinds of projects and what brought me here to Austin is I was basically homesick. I wanted to get back to Texas and I was dating my then boyfriend, now husband of over 30 years. And I wanted to get back to Texas. And so I talked to one of the partners at Anderson saying, how can I get back to Texas and what kinds of projects are there? And they said, well, there's a state of Texas project that's gearing up. And so I wound up coming here to be part of that management team as a newly minted young manager. And came here to help build the first automated case management system for the state of Texas for child protective services and adult protective services.

So it was an amazing project and so many of my core longtime life friends all came from that project. People who are my dearest friends in the world and so many leaders. I kind of think about companies like Anderson Consulting, Deloitte, Oracle, IBM, a lot of those early leaders attracted so many different people and then of course there was the Trilogy phase which I'll get to that in a minute. But I think that so many people came to Austin in the early 90s and so I came here in '94, did my time at Anderson Consulting and then wound up having a path of being able to go and be one of the first practice directors at Oracle and helping to build that office here for Oracle and then going back and working at a company that was kind of an Austin known company called PSW Technologies, which was going through a reframing of its services into becoming Conser. And so was part of that whole, Conser was basically helping companies with their web strategy. So back in the early days of the web, what do I put on the web? And so that was Conser's job is going and actually helping develop a first generation web strategy and then actually helping our customers build that, recruit the teams to then launch those websites, manage those websites. So literally I've been doing the web. Fast forward to WP Engine. Going from the very beginnings of what do I put on the web to now helping companies with millions of their websites powered on our platform. So lots of stops in between, but I think the one that I would say that's most notable on my path to WP Engine was Trilogy. And I think that Trilogy was a place again where I've met lifelong friends. I was able to do incredible, interesting projects, feel challenged, and it was really great to see Joe Lamont getting a Hall of Fame recognition for his impact in the community and the technology industry at large. And so, Trilogy was a jumping point for me that kind of got me on the path to actually meeting the investors in WP Engine, which was Silverton Partners and Bill Wood. And again, Bill Wood is an amazing leader, having been one of the primary leaders and venture partners at Austin Ventures and then having gone and created Silverton Partners. I had through my experience at Trilogy, I was asked one of those times where I had kind of grown up as a sales and services leader and that's kind of how I had grown up. But I was asked at Trilogy to take on product and engineering and I was like, I've never done this before. So I actually went to the leader of the engineering practice at Trilogy, Chris, now CEO of Indeed. And went to Chris and said, 'Hey, can you mentor me? Can you help me?' And we had already kind of struck up a friendship. He said, 'Absolutely.' So I leaned in to ask for help with him and that kind of led us on a path to when we both left Trilogy and he started his own startup B-side which was trying to be the Netflix of independent film. And I joined him to help him with that for a period of time. That's where I met Bill Wood. And then that kind of failed startup experience took me on the path to then meeting Bill when they made the investment in WP Engine and they saw that Jason Cohen, our founder, had a tiger by the tail. He's like, 'You really need some gray hair operators in here and people who can help you.' And so he goes, 'Do you mind if I introduce you to Heather?' And so, it was really that experience, those relationships, all those different things kind of led me to this point, to get introduced to Jason in November of 2012.

Absolutely.

Well, they should, if they're interested, they should again take action, be visible. And also I would say tell that person why you're interested, connect, create that credibility and that moment, that interaction. So what I always am impressed with is when someone comes to me and says, 'Hey, I just heard you speak, I'm really more curious about this, could you tell me more?' and ask me questions or, 'Would you be willing to, I have a business plan or I have something, would you be willing to review it?' and just having a very clear ask or action or a clear question. And I think people respond to that versus a generic, the worst, the thing that I think everyone's like the WW is, 'Can I buy you coffee and pick your brain?' Immediately I'm like, 'No.'

Right. I totally agree. Totally agree. And again, people, like you said, not enough people are proactive and like you said, do the follow-up. Hey, I heard you speak and I'm connecting with you. I have an ask. And it stands out from the conversation. Absolutely. I've hired so many people because they've done that or had the opportunity to meet so many people because they've done that. And then also just like the thank you after the interaction, just good manners differentiate you. Grandma said send the thank you note. My grandmother had a thing, she had 26 grandchildren and she didn't have a lot of money but she'd send everybody a couple of dollars at their birthday, a dollar or $5 I don't remember but if you didn't send a thank you note you didn't get your $5 the next year and it was like, by the way, there was no statute of limitations on gratitude.

Yeah. Well, I totally agree. I think that one of the most powerful sentences that you can say at work is I need your help. Whether that's to a team member, to a mentor, a boss, and people, like you said, people want to help. And then you're like, here's why. Here's why I need help. Here's my situation. And being humble, being real, and then also just saying why you think they can help you. Again, being as specific and as actionable as you can to make it easy for them to say yes. And this is such good advice because so many people think, 'Oh, I have to prove I'm Superman or Superwoman that I have to be perfect.' And so they BS their way through a project where in reality your boss, your co-worker, even your direct report sometimes, I mean, sometimes the leader can go down and say, 'I need your help.' People want to see that you're a human. We all need help.

Well, it's changed my life. I mean, it's been, to me, people that I've worked with, you have that shared experience. You're in the trenches together. You spend so much of your life at work. And I'm always like, make it count. Make it be with the people that you want to spend time with and learn from, cultivate relationships with. At the same time there's also I can understand why there needs to be some boundaries or whatever and I always tell people first is earn respect from your colleagues and then you need to earn trust from your colleagues and then maybe over time you're going to earn advocacy from your colleagues and that's what I would consider where I would put friendship. And so advocacy is when you're willing to associate your brand with their brand or do work on their behalf or say hey I want to be your friend kind of thing. So I think but that takes time and I can also understand what people are like everyone's got different things but for me having worked in environments where I felt like I was aligned with my leaders I was aligned with the culture where I had great friendships and cultivated that I was the happiest and I did my best work and I think places like that that happened for me were at Anderson Consulting now Accenture when I was at Trilogy when I was at Bazaarvoice and now at WP Engine.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I can't think of the number of doors that have been opened because of networks and people. And I think that's one of the things that makes Austin really special is the fact that people are willing to open doors for you to help you. I know that I'm like, literally a speed dial away from many of my CEO peers and I've used that and they've used that with me to help that whether it be on back channeling a potential critical hire, getting feedback on something. And I think that building and cultivating a network, you've got to give to get, right? You've got to give and contribute and then you're able to reap that. And I think that's what Austin is full of people who are willing to give and help each other. And I think that goes to the highest level, the most prestigious successful people in Austin are also still very accessible.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think like so think of some of the early and you've recognized some of these people, but like when I first came to Austin, I started getting involved in the United Way and I also got involved in Tech Exchange. If you remember Tech Exchange, I was one of the, well Tech Exchange was, there was the Sonia St. James group and then there was Tech Exchange the dinner group. There was two different groups. Yeah. I was on the original board of the original Tech Exchange. I was the third president of Tech Exchange that dinner group when we started it and the original local board meeting was in my boardroom where I worked at the time and that group became this network of C-suite and aspiring C-suite and again, that's I'm trying to bring that level of thing back into ATC but I think that that was so it was invaluable to me to have places like meeting people like Sonia St. James who was a connector. She was a huge connector. Huge connector. And then Tech Exchange where you just met. You had like everyone was there. And what I liked about also is all levels. You had senior people and you had the aspiring leaders like myself who were in the room all learning and having lots of practicums and case studies and discussions and then people were open to shake your hand talk to you etc. And again back to that whole thing around like I would encourage other people as you have this opportunity like be visible go there help volunteer do things like that and then I would say Carol Thompson is an amazing champion and networker who definitely opened doors for me. Eugene Sepulveda amazing connector in the community even though he's not a technologist very active in the technology ecosystem and the intersection between community and the city and philanthropy. I mean the Entrepreneurs Foundation, it's not active now, but it was a major piece that brought the community together through this idea of giving back to our community. So I totally agree. I think that's something that we need to bring back.

Sure. So, let me just give you the, yeah. So first off, I think right now as we've seen, it used to be that what is your e-com strategy or what is your web strategy used to be something that you did on the side now it's at the heart of everything. So, for all of us, your website, your application, how people find you digitally becomes the front door to your business. No matter if it's a nonprofit, a publisher, somebody who's a retailer selling, your website is like a hub of activity. And so that's what really inspires us at WP Engine is that we have been on a journey really following the, like I was saying my career has been following the growth of Austin and I've been kind of doing that like WP Engine has been following the growth of a phenomenal open-source project which is called WordPress which is a content management software system that makes it easy and that's basically free for anyone to use and adopt. And what we have done is built a set of tools for designing, building, managing and then optimizing your website using WordPress on top of our software and technology platform. So we work, so a great example would be someone like here in Austin like GSD&M or one of our top agency partners is based in Dallas is called American Eagle or in Chicago is called American Eagle and they build, they will work with large brands and help them build their websites, build a plan for a product activation or perhaps a repositioning or rebranding or they're just trying to modernize their web technology for their business and so we'll work with agency teams who will then select WordPress and select WP Engine to partner with to then use our tools and technologies to again to design, build, manage and power those websites on our platform. So we act as both the infrastructure and also the software on top that enables web teams to do their work. We work with large brands like Uber, Marriott, Kerry Foods, Ryanair, Land Rover all the way to individual bloggers, early stage venture capital startups. So we kind of run the gamit over our course of our 15-year, we just are celebrating our 15 year anniversary actually this month.

Thank you. Thank you. And it's been an amazing journey. And so at WP Engine, we've been over the last particularly last eight years since we got our major investment from Silver Lake in 2018, they invested $250 million into our business and allowed us not only to accelerate our innovation plan, but also to we've been doing a lot of acquisitions. So we've done over nine acquisitions tucking in or doing some major acquisitions mostly to advance our technology. So to add technologies that are well known in the WordPress ecosystem or the web ecosystem. And so we have really been trying to work hard to move from being what's kind of a managed WordPress host to being a multi-product technology company. And so that's the path we're on. We've been on a path where we have about 250,000 customers globally from 140 countries on our core managed WordPress offerings and plans and then we have developer tools that again help you to design and build that we have millions of customers. So it's really, we've really become, here from Austin, a global technology leader in our ecosystem.

There you go. Good. Awesome. Well, you're going to love spending time in London and we have about 150 team members in Ireland and so I get to go there quite a bit. We love Ireland. And also another just shout out is to the IDA, the Irish economic development group who has been another instrumental partner in helping Austin based companies expand not only into Ireland but into Europe. So again, I've had the opportunity to partner with IDA both at Bazaarvoice and at WP Engine very successfully. But back to, is Austin Tech dead? Hell no. Hell no. We're just getting started. I mean the fact that where we are and where we have come is there is a slight shift in terms of instead of 200 people a day moving here we're down to 11, okay, that may be the case but we have technology, I mean look at what's happening with consumer goods and the intersection between consumer goods, what just happened with Poppi, what's happening with all of our AI companies, what's happening with military technology we have, with army commands, army futures here in Austin and all the different things like everywhere you look, biotech, the investments, the university. I have the privilege of serving on the president's innovation advisory board at the University of Texas and it's a collection of CEOs across venture capital, private equity, Austin-based technology companies and also basically biotech investments, etc., AI companies and the level of discussion and planning that the university is doing around continuing to invest in our ecosystem here and to make sure that we have the talent that we have the pipeline that we're investing in diversifying into energy technology as well as into bioscience and medical technology. I mean there are billions of dollars that are going to be invested over the next decade in continuing to advance just from the university alone beyond just what's planned from our early stage, mid-stage and private equity firms that are all here in Austin.

But yeah, and I think there's also just structurally there's just more things happening for leaders no matter where you're based is that you're becoming more distributed. It is undeniable that the number of headquarters in Austin has grown exponentially in the last decade. That is a fact. But also at the same time doesn't mean that just because you're headquartered here and you're building a strong base here this becomes a center of gravity that you aren't also hiring in a more distributed more global way and that's a, WP Engine is a great example of that we've gone from a mostly Austin-based company to now having teams across the whole world, Asia, Europe, and North America and looking at how we might expand in the future. So I think that that's just a dynamic, but having the center of gravity around where the leadership is, leadership is centered, investments here in Austin and diversifying across all those spectrums of technology. Again, Austin is just getting started.

That's right. Absolutely. And I think back to you said like we're semiconductor like we're all on the shoulders of giants and so the future Zuckerberg, the future Jeff Bezos whatever you want to say those kinds of leaders absolutely that talent is here in Austin and so right now so we're on the shoulders of those things and so hopefully the successes of companies that are in those midsize and creating a set of unicorns so to speak in Austin will create the experience and the foundation for those people to learn, to grow, to build their wealth and then they have then that opportunity to go and innovate. So again, it's like we're just building a strong and more diverse base that allows for more of our future entrepreneurs to launch and we will have mega unicorns in the future coming from Austin. It's not a matter of if, it's just when.

Absolutely. And again, I have nothing but great things to say about Silicon Valley. And the way that community, the higher ed, state and local government as well as the tech community have all invested and it's been decades in the making. And again, Austin is decades in the making, right? And so like you said we're just at different stages. And so we should celebrate Silicon Valley success. We should celebrate LA's success. We should celebrate New York success. And we should celebrate our success.

Absolutely. They're not trying to be the same thing. And it's good for our nation. It's good for American companies are creating a level of breadth of innovation that allows also other countries or others to be inspired by to build off of, collaborate with, etc. So, you know, I'm pro Austin. I'm pro America, but I'm also a global citizen, right? And we just, technology helps advance humanity. And less competition, more collaboration, and more conversation is going to solve all the problems in the world.

Right. And AI can't replace that human relationship that you have with the people you worked with at Anderson or Trilogy or for anybody else wherever it was. That is the human experience is the people. It's a tool just like the iPhone's a tool. The web's a tool. The website's a tool. AI is a tool. And we just need to harness it. But also at the same time, it's kind of like AI is a real thing. It is moving faster. As somebody who's been in technology for a long time, it's moving so fast.

Well, I would just say is find those opportunities to pay it forward and you won't regret it. It'll fill your bucket. And again, so many people, we've all are very fortunate. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably, a lot of people have helped you to get to where you are. And so, just keep paying it forward for the next generation.