Craig McLuckie - Founder of Heptio

"The only reason to launch a start-up is because you have to!"

In this episode, we talk to cloud entrepreneur and innovator Craig McLuckie. He talks about the time to launch a startup when you see 2 things: a total addressable market, and a moment of disruption.

Listen to this and all of The Founder Formula episodes through your favorite podcast platform or Trace3.com.

Transcript

Craig McLuckie: 0:00

I was not seeking the next promotion. I didn't care if I was never promoted again. I wasn't seeking wealth. What I was seeking was change, positive change in the world.

Todd Gallina: 0:13

Founder Formula brings you in behind the curtains and inside the minds of today's brave executives at the most future-leaning startups. Each interview will feature a transformative leader who's behind the wheel at a fast-paced and innovative tech firm. They'll give you an insider's look at how companies are envisioned, created and scaled. We hope you're ready. Let's get into the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back for another episode of The Founder Formula. I'm Todd Galena, and with me is Trace3's Chief Innovation Officer, Mark Campbell. What's up, Mark? Hey, hey, hey. How you doing? Doing okay. Getting a little bit of cabin fever. I cannot lie. Yeah.

Mark Campbell: 1:00

Yeah. I tell you what, I think my family's getting sick of me walking around the house with curlers in my hair, singing Patsy Cline songs and smoking, you know, unfiltered camels. They're getting sick of it.

Todd Gallina: 1:11

Just no one likes the smell of cigarettes, Mark, but everybody loves somebody's head and curlers. That's a.

Mark Campbell: 1:18

Oh, yeah. No. You know, they're the only thing that goes with a pink bathroom. I mean, it's all about coordination and fashion sense.

Todd Gallina: 1:26

Are you trying to as it would appear that there are going to be some. restrictions lifted. Are you trying to get out? Are you trying to plan anything? Because I sure as heck know that I am.

Mark Campbell: 1:36

Yeah, I wouldn't mind getting out, heading in the mountains and doing some camping. It's a little problematic. It's kind of hard to find what campgrounds are open, what are closed. I'm hearing that they're open, except you got to keep that social distancing, which I think is a little ironic. I mean, that's why I'm going camping, right? I don't want to be closer than six feet from someone else. I think for the campground, they need to extend it to like 100 feet.

Todd Gallina: 2:02

For sure. And wouldn't it be weird if just somebody else from a different campground just kind of stumbled into your area and started hanging around next to your tent? That not only breaks social norms, it breaks camping norms.

Mark Campbell: 2:14

Except in the Netherlands. When I lived in the Netherlands, and for those of you who maybe live in the Netherlands or have in the past, you'll know what I'm saying is not just an anecdotal story. It is totally true. I was told about a campground they had there out on the coast of the North Sea. And one of the advantages of the campground there is it was so popular you could set your tent up using only half the pegs because you could share with the tent next to you. No way. Yeah. And they're like, go online, look up Dutch camping. Okay, make sure you got an adult filter on when you do that. But if you go take a look, these things are like, you know, you've got like one labradoodle distance in between each of these tents. It's scary. I looked at that. I was like, okay. One thing I'm not doing in the Netherlands is going camping. But I guess the folks in the Netherlands, they really enjoy it. I get a little sense of community. Wow. A little different than what I experienced growing up in Northern Canada. No, I'm a big, big fan of the Netherlands. Get over there whenever I can.

Todd Gallina: 3:20

Yeah, except for camping. You definitely, that would

Mark Campbell: 3:22

be... No, no,

Todd Gallina: 3:24

no. Hey, so Mark, we have an amazing guest today because he's done something that I haven't quite heard before. done by any of the folks that we've had on the podcast so far. He pretty much was involved in inventing something that's open source, which for those of you who might not know, basically means this is available to anyone. It includes permission to use any type of source code or design documents. It's pretty much free and available to anyone. He was involved in developing some open source. And then later, after sending that out into the world, he basically started a company called to take advantage of some of that open source that he helped develop. So can you tell the listeners a little bit about that open source that he was part of?

Mark Campbell: 4:03

Yeah, for any tech geeks out there, you're going to know what Kubernetes is. And our guest today was on the ground floor of that at Google, helping develop that, helping to get it introduced into the community, and making it basically a household name around just about every IT shop in the world right now. Everyone uses Kubernetes for the most part. Kubernetes is a container orchestration tool, which if you know what a container orchestration tool is, there's no need for me to explain it. Who wouldn't? What? Who wouldn't? I know. I know. No, it's people talking about it on the streets constantly. But it is pretty popular. It's one of the hottest techs out there. And basically, containers are taking over the world, as probably everyone in IT knows. Containers are basically like a, think of it as like saran wrap that you can put around one specific service. So you can kind of shrink wrap that. And then Kubernetes will let you replicate that as many times you want. You can give it rules to say, hey, spin one of these up at seven o'clock at night, or if the virtual CPU gets above a certain amount, let's scale it up. By the way, if we run out of compute here, why don't you jump out the public cloud, run some instances up there. Kubernetes is kind of the traffic cop for all of that. And there's some other solutions out there, but over the past couple of years, Kubernetes has kind of emerged as the de facto standard. Very, very useful and is kind of certainly every cloud native company out there is built on Kubernetes for the most part. So being involved in something like that is, yeah, I'll tell you what, his resume looks pretty sparkly.

Todd Gallina: 5:49

No, exactly. I can't wait to get into it with him. And with that, are you ready to kick it off, my man? Let's jump in with both feet. Okay, as promised, with us today is a cloud entrepreneur and innovator. He was the original product lead for the Google Compute Engine. He created and shared the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and co-founded the Kubernetes project. He was the founder and CEO of Seattle-based Heptio, which was recently acquired by VMware. Let me welcome to the show, Craig McLuckie. Hey, Craig. Hey, thanks for having me

Mark Campbell: 6:25

on. Well, this is going to be a fun one, Todd. This is a foundational technology of today's enterprise IT landscape. And we've got one of the guys that created the Witch's Brew. So this is going to be fun.

Todd Gallina: 6:40

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Mark Campbell: 6:42

So, Craig, from your recent past, you were kind of focused on the open source industry. side of life, container orchestration. So coming into the entrepreneurial world via that open source route and getting Kubernetes out there and watching it blossom into kind of the de facto standard. Can you kind of give us a rundown of what that is? I'm not sure that we've had a guest on that kind of has taken that path into entrepreneurship.

Craig McLuckie: 7:10

Yeah, so the easiest way to describe it is to kind of look at what we were trying to accomplish with the project. So my friend Joe and I were working at Google and we started Google Compute Engine. Well, Joe started and I was responsible for productizing it. And we got to a point where we recognized that we really needed to shift the narrative. We needed to shake up the landscape a little bit to reposition the place where we were competing with the other cloud providers. And we met another friend of ours, Brennan Burns, and started playing with ideas of doing almost exactly the opposite of what we've done with Compute Engine, which was taking a relatively traditional way of running IT workloads and bringing it into the Google data center. Let's instead take a lot of the patterns and practices of the Google data center and take it out into the broader world. And so we came up with this, which admittedly, I think it was the time, a bit of a head-burning scheme to... create an open source project that was really inspired by the way that the cloud providers were building and running their underlying infrastructure. So looking at what made hyperscalers great and taking that technology and bringing it back into IT organizations in a way that it could solve the problems that they were dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Now, the audience is probably asking themselves, well, I'm not a hyperscaler, do I really need this technology? But the truth is the patterns and practices that the cloud providers have established were equally relevant to the problems that IT had. Being able to start looking at a broad collection of undifferentiated computers as a combined resource, being able to start having a way to take your workloads and package them up and deploy them into that environment was incredibly powerful. And at the same time, there was another open source technology called Docker that we took a lot of inspiration from. And we asked that question, like, what would this look like if we were building it from the ground up, knowing what we know now, having been this close to the inner operations of a mega-scale cloud provider. And so we created the Kubernetes project. And obviously, it worked out pretty well. We've been thrilled by the community engagement and success of the project. And I think that was in part really driven by two things. One was, it was an opportunity to open up some of what Google offered. But more importantly, it was a way to engage this vibrant, open community that had real-world problems that could work hand-in-glove with us to produce something really powerful. And so over the next couple of years, we worked very hard on the project and created a community that supported it. We worked with a lot of other enterprise software companies to make it a staple in their portfolio. And at the end of the day, I think it was an opportunity for us to look for creating effectively a ubiquitous substrate. So thinking about something that's Low enough level you could run pretty much anything. High enough level that it hid away the specifics of the workload. And as a result, it became really popular. And it became more than just open source technology. It became the promise of being able to develop and deliver applications and solve real-world business problems in a way that was decoupled from the ookiness of running your own infrastructure.

Mark Campbell: 10:14

Well, and certainly from our side of things, we watch the meteoric adoption rate of Kubernetes just go from kind of, what is Kubernetes? Is that like a Greek wrestler or someone I don't know about? All the way to it being literally at every one of our customers. And that didn't happen over a decade. That happened over a handful of quarters. And so that was super interesting to watch. And obviously, I'm assuming that... your position and job and team at Google didn't suck. You were kind of one of the apex organizations in our industry. But yet in the middle of all that decided, hey, you know what? I think I'm going to go start my own company. What in your background made you believe that, yep, now's the right time. I'm the right person. This is the right thing. How did that all come together?

Craig McLuckie: 11:06

It's really interesting. And it's funny because I've taken a lot of inspiration with other startup founders that I've worked with. And You know, the one startup founder I worked with said, like, the only reason to do a startup is because you have to do a startup. You know, it's not the type of thing that, you know, it's not easy. It takes a lot of pluck to kind of work through the challenges associated with it. It's not even necessarily the best path to wealth. You know, like often it's not just, you know, grinding every day inside a traditional company and making your way forward. It will produce better kind of lifetime outcomes for you. But at the same time, you know, I've interacted with other folks and I actually stand by what he said. You know, like you just start up because you kind of have to do a startup. You do it because you need to experience it at some point in your career. But at the same time, you know, I was speaking to another founder who was part of a company that we'd recently acquired. And I looked at him as something of a mentor. You know, he had grown this organization significantly and he had created a lot of success. And his perspective was, you know, The time when you start a startup is when you see two things. You see a total addressable market that's significant. So you know there's money there. You know there's something there. And you see a moment of disruption that is rolling through that addressable market. And when the timing is right, you have an opportunity to create something quite unique and quite special. And so for me, it's always been a question of timing rather than just a question of having a great idea. It's about having a great idea at the right time. And I remember very clearly, you know, walking down the stairs one day and thinking, like, it's never going to be a better time. There's never going to be situationally a better opportunity than now. And I kind of need to do this at some point in my career. Like, I really need to do this. And when I was looking at Kubernetes itself, I felt there was this critical need for an organization that could emerge that would meet enterprise customers where they were. Because if you're from a cloud provider's perspective, you're writing letters from the future. Hey, come join us in the future. It's great. We have flying cars. You want to be here. But as an enterprise company, you're living in the present. And it's just like, I don't want a flying car. I just want my car to start in the morning every day so I can drive to work. Maybe I'll get a flying car sometime once I've got the finances for it. And so I was really inspired by that opportunity to meet the enterprise organization where it was and walk the journey with them, bring as much as I could from my experiences with the open source community, with my experiences from inside the cloud providers. And that's what really motivated or galvanized me to start Heptio with my friend, Joe.

Todd Gallina: 13:32

So I love what you said. You only launched a startup because you have to. And you mentioned the addressable market and a clear moment of disruption. And you obviously were very familiar with the space. Tell us a little bit about the pitch when you went to get funding. Was it a no-brainer because you had those two things pretty much solidified? Or was there some difficulty there?

Craig McLuckie: 13:52

No, it was just a phone call, really. And look, this is sort of one of the unfair advantages that I think folks have if you've if you've created a sufficient positive outcomes and if your timing is perfect, the situation is obvious. So, you know, securing funding initially was pretty easy. You know, I'd worked with this guy, Ping Lee from Excel, who I held in the very highest regard. You know, he'd always, you know, when he met me the first time, he was like, you know, you should do a company sometime. I was like, yeah, yeah, one day, Ping, when I'm ready. And then when the timing was right, he was just incredibly supportive. So it worked out relatively well. So it's a pretty easy story from my perspective. But, you know, obviously the, The challenge was getting the Kubernetes thing going in the first place. This was a pretty obvious next step in that journey.

Mark Campbell: 14:36

Well, when you left, of course, you didn't go solo. You took Joe along with you. How did you come up with it? Was that just kind of alchemy and you guys just knew that, oh yeah, we've got the pieces of the puzzle? Or did you say, hey, look, the two of us, let's go out. By the way, we're going to have to find about four or five other people to round out the band. How did that founding team come together?

Craig McLuckie: 14:58

I don't think I took Joe with me. I think Joe Moore pulled me out of Google. So Joe decided he wanted to step out of the rat race and take some time to be with his family. And it was funny because I've known Joe, I've worked with him for quite some time and he's a worker. He likes to work, he likes to get things done. So I figured it was only a matter of time before we'd work together again. I think through your career, and this is advice to prospective founders, there's two really important relationships that matter. There's the relationship with the other founders and operating from a base of trust. I see so many folks coming up with a great idea or having done something and going through the sort of founder dating process and One of the most surefire ways to kill a startup is found in drama. And with Joe, we had a very good positive chemistry. We built Compute Engine together, and that was a trial. I mean, it was hard to get over the cognitive hurdle of getting that out there. We'd work with our friend Brendan to build Kubernetes, and that was a hurdle. So we'd been to Hellenbach a couple of times. And I think once you've got enough bake on a relationship, it's comfortable, it's familiar. There was no air gap between us. When we saw the same data, we had formed the same conclusion. We knew each other well. We knew what we were good at, what we were bad at. He knew when to trust me. I knew when to trust him. We never argued. And so that chemistry was just critical to getting things going. And then the second relationship you really care about is with your board and making sure that you have the right folks that also gel with you. So when I look at our original investors, Ping and Tim from Axel and Madrona, they were just class acts. very well aligned with our aspirations, incredibly supportive at every step of the game, from founding to ultimately making the hard call to sell the company, they were there with us. And that, I think, set us up for success in a way that is really important. One of our

Todd Gallina: 16:54

previous guests had always said, you definitely want to found a company with somebody that you could sit next to on a plane for a very long flight. Sounds like you definitely had that with Joe.

Craig McLuckie: 17:06

Yes.

Todd Gallina: 17:06

On

Craig McLuckie: 17:08

very long flights, we deliberately not sit next to each other because we spend so much time together in the office all the time. We sometimes have a little space. But yeah, I mean, it's entirely true. That chemistry matters. It's not about necessarily being the same person or being friends and going drinking after work. It's about trust, like a deep, intrinsic trust. And being in a situation like that with someone you just intrinsically trust reduces the strain. to a level that you can't believe, right? Because as a startup founder, you're always going to be dealing with existential situations. There's always going to be something that's challenging. And the last thing you want to do is to be second-guessing your founder or being second-guessed by your co-founder. It would add too much kind of cognitive strain. So that trust is critical.

Mark Campbell: 17:55

Well, and I suppose, you know, Much like in dancing, if there's two of you, that trust and coordination is tricky enough. But as you start to scale your company and you start adding more people to the mix, and I don't want to say... diluting that relationship, but certainly making it more complex and dispersed. How do you scale up a company, especially one that grew as dramatically as Heptio, and kind of keep that distinctive culture intact? Or is it something that kind of changes and as you grow the company, you kind of move towards the center of cultural gravity? How did you guys deal with that? I think that is

Craig McLuckie: 18:34

probably one of the biggest lessons I took from from Peptio. And one of the things that I'm proud about was when I think about culture in a company, a lot of folks are like, oh, we have a startup culture. So we get to the office early, we work late, we pay food, and we hang out together and drink beers after work, right? That's not culture. That's just your choices around the work environment that you're in. Culture is effectively the operating system of your company. So when you think about how an organization makes sense of information, how they make decisions, how they approach adversity, how you evaluate someone, whether they're someone you want to hire or not, right? If you have a very clear articulation of your culture, and if you're very deliberate about your culture, you will stand in good stead. So the first thing Joe and I did is we sat down and wrote down the culture. And we identified the problem at hand, and we tried to think through and sort of think ahead to like, what were the essential attributes we wanted to manifest that would enable us the organization to scale, to address the problem, to meet customers where they were. So we started with this almost cultural manifesto, if you will, that laid that out. Now, of course, if your culture is an operating system, operating systems have bugs. So your culture also has to have the ability to evolve and to be tuned over time. You'll start off with something that you can make a statement around like, we were very passionate about disruption, so carry the fire was one of our cultural elements. but how that manifests can be positive or negative. You can have it overweighted and it creates chaos, or you can have it sort of dialed in at the right level. So a lot of it's how it expresses itself. So I think there's putting a lot of emphasis on culture and then tying a lot of our decisions and explaining them through the culture. As we approach some of the hardest existential issues that we face, being able to kind of anchor that and explain our position through the lens of our culture was important. And then as we hired on new people, the first thing we'd do is talk about the culture and make sure that there was a very clear and explicit understanding of what they were getting into and expectations around that as they progressed through the process. So I think that enables you to achieve coherency. And the best companies today, I think, have very precise and explicit cultures that they manifest. It's either explicitly or implicitly handled. So in the case of an organization like Amazon, Their operating system is written down in a very specific way and enables them to scale effortlessly and approach new businesses. It's a very powerful thing. But that culture may not work in a different context. So it is situational and it needs to be intelligently designed. And frankly, you'll make mistakes. You'll have culture manifesting in pathological ways and you need to have the acumen and willingness to address that and you can't approach it with dogma.

Mark Campbell: 21:23

Yeah. Well, and I suppose as not only your company evolves and grows and scales and so forth, your culture, as long as that true north doesn't really shift. You mentioned about Amazon having it kind of written in stone and it being effortless. But what happens when you go through an acquisition? So you got picked up by VMware. By the way, congratulations. You get to pay off your Honda Accord now.

Todd Gallina: 21:51

Okay.

Mark Campbell: 21:51

So now you're in another large company, but you've been in several large companies your career before. Does that culture morph? Is it additive? Is it kind of Venn diagram, the intersection of the two cultures? I mean, how has that transition gone?

Craig McLuckie: 22:09

Yeah, I think it's one of those sort of decisions that every startup founder, there's the joy of running your own company. And it is the most amazing job in the world. There's nothing quite as amazing as participating in the growth and nurturing something that you build. But you also have to look at what you're ultimately building the company for. So for me, my goal was never to build a company for the sake of building a company. My goal was to build a company because I want to create an outcome in the world. And so... When you're faced with a situation like this that we were faced with, there was a question of are we selling out or are we buying in? Are we in a situation where our macro goals are going to be better met and we believe the thing that we work with this team to build is going to be better met by joining forces with this bigger company? Or are we simply just wringing the cash register handle? And for me, it was pretty clear. There was no particular impetus to sell. We were doing really well. I think we were on a trajectory to create something quite special in the world. But at the same time, it comes back to timing. Everything in this world is a question of timing. And while we could have created something that was significant, I think we would have lost the opportunity to create something that was industry-shaping. And for me and for the culture we created, the appetite and the opportunity to engage in something industry-shaping was far more motivating than any specific financial outcome. For me, the preservation of that culture was really grounded in what was... the intent behind VMware and joining forces with us. And, you know, when I met with Pat and I asked, you know, Pat Gelsinger, what, you know, like what he wanted to do with this. And I listened and I was like, and I was like, and he was like, what do you want to do? And I was like, well, pretty much that. It became clear that there was an opportunity to join forces and, you know, use what VMware had already created, use the culture, which was in many ways, not that dissimilar to the Heptio culture. When I did my research on the company and I interviewed people that had worked there, you know, some of them worked at Heptio and, I spent a lot of time thinking about it and it really got me to the conclusion that the cultures were not that essentially different, but what we could potentially create was an alloy that was stronger than some of its parts. We could bring in and preserve some of that entrepreneurial spirit, some of that authentic hunger to change the way that IT operated. It was something that VMware was certainly looking to bring, not just to the existing business, but to bring to the world writ large. And so for me, it wasn't a question of like, how do you preserve your culture? It was How do you infuse your culture into the broader apparatus? And how do you infuse the culture of the broader apparatus back into yours and create this alloy that's just stronger than any of the materials that went into it? So we were very deliberate. And, you know, I remember kind of going through this process quite deliberately of deconstructing this thing that I created into constituent pieces, blending them with the pieces that existed and working to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts. And like, I've been very pleased with results. It's been quite a positive journey. It's really nice to have access to those resources. It's really nice to have access to that sales organization. It's a pleasure to work with like-minded executives above you and in adjacent BU's that want the same things you want. So I feel we were very privileged to be in a situation where the cultural distinctions were not that different. The folks that joined are still by and large there. We just haven't seen that many people drift away because we're doing more or less what we were always doing, just doing it with more resources and better support. And maybe

Todd Gallina: 25:45

a lot of the people that were with you kind of knew this was always a possibility. And when you had the opportunity to be welcomed with open arms by VMware and get access to all those resources, I'm sure that even in the back of their heads, they knew that was all kind of part of the long-term plan. Yeah, and I think it's

Craig McLuckie: 26:02

part of the deal of joining a startup. I don't think anyone anticipated us leaving the market quite as quickly as we did. Certainly, it was interesting. A lot of the folks that worked at Hedgy fell in love with the company. They felt a very deep attachment to it. So there was definitely a period of uncertainty and mourning that we were becoming something else. But then once you really feel what you're becoming, it became very natural. So it's just a process. And I keep describing this to I'd encourage any startup founder to think about this, but it's kind of like if you're a systems engineer or you're building a system, the assumptions you make at one order of scale do not apply to the next two orders of magnitude larger, one or two orders of magnitude. The same applies to teams. The way that you operate, the way that you interact, the way that things are structured, for you to be able to address a bigger market and to be able to scale, you have to change a lot of those operating practices. When you're a 20-person company, you have unfettered access to the CEO. When you're a 100-person company, you kind of have to get in line for a one-on-one. When you're a 1,000-person company, there's no way they even know who you are in the general case because they just can't keep that many people in their head. Though I have met some rare founders who have been able to, which has always impressed me. And so I also look at it as just this natural journey where as you get bigger, things change. And change is necessary for growth. And one of those changes is, are you an independent entity or are you part of a bigger organization?

Todd Gallina: 27:26

Craig, I just want to roll the clock back a little bit because we do have some listeners that might be starting their tech journey, working at a few different companies before they kind of formulate that plan. Early on, you also were at Microsoft and Google, and it looks like you kind of bounced back between the two companies for a little while. Can you share your story about some of the stops at Microsoft?

Craig McLuckie: 27:46

Yeah, it's interesting. And this is kind of like, I'm a little bit shy and a little bit ashamed, but also not sorry about the Microsoft situation. I learned pretty early in my career there that mobility was good. I joined Microsoft in the early days, and then I made two questionable choices. I joined a dot-com just before the dot-com bust, and then I joined a hedge fund just before the hedge fund bust. Well,

Todd Gallina: 28:13

you ended up having great timing at the end, but those first two were a little bit of bad timing.

Craig McLuckie: 28:17

Yeah, so third time's the charm. But one of the things that I'd learned was that And I say it facetiously, like the only way to get promoted is to leave and come back. But the truth is that I discovered that I got so much out of mobility. I got fundamentally changed as a professional. I was actually qualified to do a job at a higher level because I was able to bring back skills that I've not had previously. So as an individual, I got a lot of value out of mobility, like doing different things, trying something different, like going from... Microsoft to a .com and learning what, you know, like one year out of school, you know, getting to a point where I was managing people and changing up my focus and engaging with customers that would never have happened at Microsoft. And because I'd gained those capabilities, I could bring them back. And so, you know, I kind of, I did bounce back and forth, you know, as a way to accrue additional skills, you know, sort of pursue upward mobility. And I'm not particularly ashamed about it. I actually think I got a lot out of it. But it was interesting because I think the thing that most profoundly changed me in the end, and it took me a while to synthesize this, was the time I spent at a hedge fund gave me purpose. Because I'd been spending, you know, like, but for my little sort of stint at a dot-com, I'd spent my time building enterprise software technology. But I'd never really been on the hook for deploying it and building the line of business applications that run real-world enterprise systems that make the world go round. And I discovered it was unbelievably painful and unbelievably stressful compared to the process of buying the tech, of building the tech that actually powered it. And what I realized was that the complexities of dealing with that tension between what the business needs, what the tools can support, what skills you have, the rest of it, it was like, oh my God, this is really hard. And it shouldn't be this hard. We have an opportunity to make this easier for people if... People that were working in enterprise just realized how hard it was on the trenches. They just spent enough time doing the tour of duty. And it took me a while to kind of bake that idea that my sort of purpose, the reason that I wanted to go to work every day was grounded in this idea that it's just too hard to get code into production. It's as simple as that. Just too hard to get code into production. We have to make it easier for everyone. We have to build the systems that make it easier for everyone. And I found that I have a knack for building scalable enterprise systems. I found that I did not have a knack for running IT teams, much to my chagrin. There's people out there that are infinitely more qualified to do that to me. None of the things I've done in enterprise software in any way qualified me for that job. But it certainly gave me a perspective on that. And And that really became an anchor for me. It really grounded a lot of the decisions that I made subsequently in terms of what I was going to do next. I consistently sought out what can I do with my career to make it easier for people, like for that person that was me running a little IT team in a hedge fund, to be more successful in their job. And that realization kind of powered my career because... Once I'd reached that point of conclusion, I consistently made decisions that steered me towards that, where I was able to pursue that next thing that was going to change the outcome. My first project with Joe, Compute Engine, I felt like working to open up the Google Data Center to that person would be good. There was so much power locked up there that they could benefit from. Then going the other way and bringing a lot of the patterns and practices that the cloud providers had offered, and then thinking through some of the interstitial projects that I worked on at Google and sponsored to make it easier to stitch these things together and consume them. And then Heptio was really going back and meeting that customer where they were and showing a strong sign of commitment that I was willing to stand with one foot in their world and one foot in the enterprise software world and walk the journey with them, make sure that it all came together. So I think you're formed by your experiences and Your success ultimately emerges from what you're passionate about, what motivates you as a human being. If you can find a mission, something that you would do for free, even if you weren't... I'll be honest, even if I wasn't paid, don't tell my bosses, I would still do my job. I'd still show up for work tomorrow because I'm doing precisely what I want to do. And once you've found that, it's like having a license to steal. It's just a joy. And that really powered my decisions. I became... I lost fear. I didn't... I was not seeking the next promotion. I didn't care if I was never promoted again. I wasn't seeking wealth. What I was seeking was change, positive change in the world. And that, you know, being a little unfettered like that allows you to do disruptive things. You can challenge the systems. I mean, I remember some of the conversations I had when I was trying to do Kubernetes and people like, this is a really bad idea. You have no idea what you're doing. And I was like, I'll take it on the chin. Just let me do it. Like, I feel this is right. And that is not so much confidence as just, That sense of purpose is what creates opportunities to disrupt.

Mark Campbell: 33:30

Well, you mentioned kind of that sense of purpose. So it's hard enough, I think, to start up a startup in the best of times. And if you take a look at some of the changes going through our industry right now, given all sorts of economic and political and clinical challenges that the world is facing right now, and you're someone out there that has that burning sense of purpose, hey, look, I think I need to get out there and make the next XYZ. This is a slightly different world today, I think, than, well, shoot, just even three months ago. What sort of advice would you give to someone either to tell them, nope, give up on your dreams, swallow it down, and just develop bad habits and ruin your family, or go for it because here's the silver lining? Between those two extremes, what would be the advice you would give to someone contemplating a startup in today's wacky world?

Craig McLuckie: 34:25

Yeah, I mean, it is a challenging environment. And there's a lot of questions like, is this the right time to start a startup? Is it the wrong time? Only an individual can kind of make that decision. There's a few things that I would suggest. One is, there's this essential proof of life that exists in the startup ecosystem. I think it's a harder proof of life to achieve today than it was three months ago. But one of the pieces of advice I always gave folks was that the VCs, the venture firms... are incredibly good at identifying talent. A lot of people think, oh, it's all about the idea. It's all about the, you know, like I have to have this great idea. And then if I have this great idea and I can just pitch it well enough, you know, like great things will happen. The truth is what the VCs are looking at is they're assessing you, right? And they're looking for that, you know, whatever the unique set of chemistry or acumen or mastery of the domain or whatever the case it is, that they're looking for in a founder. So they're great patent matches. They talk to hundreds of people. Everyone pitches to everyone. And they're able to patent match the attributes that make a successful founder and don't make a successful founder. And so one of the things I always have advocated for and continue to advocate for is that it's always a good idea to have a line of sight on funding in your pocket before you make the leap. I'm not saying go pitch to VCs. You know, like you obviously have to operate within the parameters and the integrity of whatever your current job is. And you can't be doing this job while you're doing another job. Like, trust me, like you have to focus. But, you know, getting to a point where you've talked to enough, you have a sense of what they're looking for. They have a sense of you. You're starting to get positive signals. I definitely wouldn't necessarily advocate for just, you know, taking a leap of faith and hoping the funding's there to catch you. Like, this is a tough, it is a tough journey. And it does help to have, you know, some venture partners not just capital, but the rest of it, that support apparatus in your corner. So work to secure funding before you make an insane leap. I have friends that have successfully bootstrapped companies and sold them. And I hold them in the highest regard. It's a harrowing journey. Being able to make payroll every month, etc. is a harrowing journey. Some people, they can grind it out and they enjoy the flexibility and control it offers. And They own 100% of whatever they've created or shared it with employees. And that's a fantastic outcome. But I do tend to advise prospective founders to have that VC in your corner because it's not just about the money. It's also about the support system and access to customers and advice and having a high-quality board and backstopping you and being willing to tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, it's time for you to find someone who's actually going to be able to take the company to its full potential. you know, keeping you sharp. That is a powerful thing and it's worth having. So that would be my one piece of advice. And then the other thing I would say is when you look back on, and this is more, not so much for folks that are looking to start up, but, you know, folks that are out there in the wild and have a bit of fear in their eye with what's happening. When you look at what happened and, you know, some of the great companies that have emerged, a lot of them emerged from moments like this. If you look at the Amazons and PayPals and Ebays that came out of the dot-com They were well-capitalized. They were well-run. They had a line of sight on a real business problem. They profited from that crucible of that dot-com bust. And what emerged was literally changed the industry. It changed the shape of the technology. And so these periods are also a period of opportunity because if you do have the operating posture, if you are well-capitalized, if you have line of sight on real value, These are also periods of incredible disruption. And if you can navigate to that, again, it's TAM and disruption. That's what you're looking for. Trust me, there's plenty of disruption out there, plenty. And if you can tap into some of those disruptive forces in a fast-moving space where the incumbents can't keep up, there's huge opportunity.

Mark Campbell: 38:34

Well, I think that's very well said. And Todd and I, when we were pitching the idea of this podcast, our CEO said, you know, it makes me a little bit uncomfortable that you guys might accidentally lay out a playbook that teaches our best customers how to leave their day job. So thanks a ton, Craig, for laying out a playbook on how to have our best customers leave their day job. That's very well done. Very well done.

Todd Gallina: 38:57

No, you mentioned a big moment of disruption, and there's plenty of disruption to be had if you are ready to start something. to follow up on your point.

Craig McLuckie: 39:06

Yeah. And look, I mean, it's not all disruption is good. That's clear. And I don't want to in any way make light of this appalling situation that we're living in, right? Living through right now. I mean, it's causing just abject misery for so many people. But I think it's also worth recognizing that it is changing the way we work. It is changing the emphasis. It's causing us to learn new skills and how we work from home. It's causing us to entertain ourselves in new ways. It's changing our spending habits and what we value in some ways. So I don't want to in any way make light of what's happening right now, but I think it is worth thinking through what it means to society. And this is both for folks that are in the IT space that are living with this every day and are looking down the barrel of this incredibly disruptive moment. And it's also an opportunity for folks to institute a lot of the changes that they've never looked for. I've worked with some of our customers. They were never into remote work, but all of a sudden they're 100% remote. And you know what? They made it work. They figured it out. They got the systems in place. They pulled it together. And I think for everyone, there's an opportunity to make sure that whatever happens is going to happen. But we do have an opportunity to... come out of this stronger, you know, as organizations, as people, as society, as whatever. And so change doesn't have to be bad as long as it can be shaped.

Todd Gallina: 40:38

I totally agree with you on the changes and especially the work from home. I think a lot of people were resistant to it. And Mark and I had the privilege of speaking with the CIO earlier today, and he used the term, it's flattening. The curve is flattened on the workday, meaning we've all figured out how to kind of do it from home. And no doubt that's going to change a lot of things. Hey, Craig, this has been great. And I know we've taken a ton of your time. Before we wrap, I just wanted to check with you to see if there's anything we didn't cover or anything else you'd like to share with some potential founders.

Craig McLuckie: 41:07

No, I'll just say like, you know, respect. It's a fantastic, invigorating, utterly terrifying journey. You know, it can take you through the highest highs and the lowest lows. It's something that's in your blood or it's not. You know, it's not always the best way to wealth. You know, I'll be honest, like, There's other things I could have done that were, you know, good. I'd like this worked out well for me, but you do it because you got to do it. And, you know, like I respect everyone who's who's walked the journey and, you know, intrepid forwards to future entrepreneurs.

Todd Gallina: 41:38

Greg, this has been great, man. Thank you so much. Thank you for bumping around with Mark and I. All right. Thanks a ton. Thanks a ton. Cheers.

Outro: 41:49

Trace3 is hyper-focused on helping IT leaders deliver business outcomes by providing a wide variety of data center solutions and consulting services. If you're looking for emerging technology to solve tried and true business problems, Trace3 is here to help. We believe all possibilities live in technology. You can learn more at trace3.com slash podcast. That's trace3.com slash podcast. you've

Todd Gallina: 42:22

been listening to the founder formula the podcast for all things startup from silicon valley to innovators across the country if you want to know what it takes to lead tomorrow's tech companies subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts until next time