Mike Micucci: Tell the World Your Story

Speaker A: Foreign. What's up everyone?

Speaker B: And welcome to the Brakeline Arena. We are so grateful that you are here. The Brakeline arena is a space that, uh, welcomes change makers, hustlers and leaders in the tech industry to share their journeys and passions and insights. We are hosted by Brakeline Education, which serves to help top performers from under selected backgrounds land new and exciting roles in the tech industry. If you're a person of color or a veteran or a woman, there's info in the show notes about how to join our community. Now let's dive into the arena for today's special guest. Welcome everybody. This is Bethany Coates, CEO of Brakeline. I'm so delighted to be joined here today by Mike Micucci, Chief Operating Officer at Automation Anywhere. Mike, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker A: Uh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for the invite.

Speaker B: Delighted to have you. And I'm feeling very grateful because Dan Streetman, who has been a Brake Line champion for many years, was the one who introduced us. So I love these ripple effects and intersections with people in our networks and communities.

Speaker A: Yes, Dan's been a great friend, an inspiration.

Speaker B: And you and Dan met, I think at Salesforce. And I'd love to hear a little bit about that. But maybe you can actually start by walking us through your career to date. Tell us a little bit about your background.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'm feeling quite old, let's put it that way. I've been, uh, in the industry for many decades now and I'll kind of just get it, paint you a picture. I started my career pre Internet days, which is almost for your listeners. I don't know if that even exists. I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and I got an internship at, ah, Hewlett Packard. And that was way back in the day. And I was working on their internal enterprise applications. That was before SAP and all this stuff. And so my job was basically helping code in cobol and I helped build like accounting systems. And I worked there for many years. And that was when original founders of HP were still involved. Bill Hewlett. Dave Packard learned a ton at uh, that company. And then the Internet happened and I'm like, I gotta do this. And I went to a startup company and it was for E commerce. We got acquired By Netscape around 96, 97, I can't remember exactly when. And you know, it was just a rocket ship from there. Worked at Netscape for a while, joined another startup, also an e commerce, but B2B side. We took the company public, which is super fun Worked there for about four years and then went to a couple startups here and there. I, uh, thought, well, you know, if I can do it these last two. And off we go. And from the startups, I kind of took a step back, decided to, we can talk about it later. But decided to start my own company in 2005 with a couple of folks I met along the way. And around 2009 got acquired by Salesforce and super interesting, it was pretty funny. So my co founder and I, one of my co founders, Swedish, he's a cto. So our engineering team is based in Stockholm and everything else is based in San Francisco. Salesforce comes along, fit really well. They needed help building what they called the corporate social network csn. It's a skunk works project. It turned out to be coming called Salesforce Chatter. And that was along the lines of what we were doing. They had an office in Stockholm about a half mile from our office, and they had an office obviously in San Francisco about a half mile. We threw away all of our junk in our office, moved our laptops over and picked up and started working on Salesforce. And we're there about. I was there 11 years, did a ton of stuff. Most recently I was leading the E commerce line. So if you bought shoes and shirts online, you've used that product. Everybody from Adidas, uh, or Adidas, depending on where you're from, to Crocs, uses it. And then now I'm over at a company called Automation Anywhere, helping people build digital workers to automate away all the redundant stuff that we do and transform industries. So it's been a lot of fun, seen a lot of different things and it just, it's amazing the innovation that's happened over my career.

Speaker B: Anyway, thank you so much for that overview, Mike. And it is really cool to see all the twists and turns that your career has taken and the different choices that you've made. You mentioned starting your company. It was a company called Group Swim. And you had had a series of startup or growth company experiences before that. What was the opportunity that you saw and why did you feel like, I've got to do this myself versus teaming up again with something that was already up and running?

Speaker A: Well, this is probably not your typical reason why, so I was lucky. I had some great success early in my career. The first two companies, after my tenure at hp, my first two companies did really well. And it was like two tornadoes. One at Netscape, one at Commerce, one. And it was amazing when you're inside that you literally can do no Wrong. You always know when you got it, when you can feel the pull of the market and the industry and the customers. Like you just, it's like, it's just pulling you through and uh, that, that's something that's intoxicating when you are building products and, you know, driving markets. The next set of startups weren't pull, they were push. And they weren't great. They were actually terrible. You know, they just like, it was push, push, push. And you know, there was a lot of issues in tech and market leaders and so forth. And I took a step back and said, you know, it's time for me to do it myself. I've learned a lot. I learned a lot what good looks like. Also learned a lot what not so good looks like. And it was like, let's take that learning and give it a roll. And I happen to know people who were available that fit, you know, uh, my two co founders, one was really good on the biz side and one was really good on tech, said I think we can roll this ourselves. And that's what we did. So we didn't actually even have a particular idea when we started. We spent a fair bit of time brainstorming what we thought.

Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, so we literally just like, we're going to start our own company. We've seen good and bad and let's roll this way.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh, Mike, that is really interesting. One of my mentors is Andy Ratcliffe, who is the co founder of Benchmark Capital. And he always says the right time to start a business is when you have the insight. And the insight doesn't arrive on any particular timetable, but you all turn that on its head and just said, let's just start a company, we'll figure out what it is later.

Speaker A: Uh, basically that's what we did. We had a couple like loose ideas. We wrote like three or four down, we did some tests, threw two out and stuck on this one. And essentially the company we did, it was early social, pre Facebook, pre Instagram, pre Yammer, but it was four companies, so we were enterprise people. And our original idea is we wanted to use AI and machine learning to mine conversations, to drive insight. And partly because my co founder is a PhD in Math and AI World Institute of Sweden in Stockholm. So we had some deep expertise there. We hired four or five AIML people from that school through his connections and we turned it towards enterprises. And it was actually being used more to help sales teams collaborate and sell more effectively. But it turned out to be a pretty good tool and it was a good fit for what Salesforce was looking for. So yeah, it was, it was a journey. There was a period of investigation and kind of introspection and we tried a couple different things, just really fast fire tests to see what we thought might work. And this one fit. And the reason I think it also fits for when people are thinking about what they're trying to do is it also fit our expertise. We had three enterprise software people, one expert in AI and math. We had the ability to recruit engineers where others probably couldn't do it. And so we had a couple unique advantages there.

Speaker B: Mhm. One of the things that you said when we were prepping for this conversation, which I really loved, you said you have to make your opportunity no matter what role you're in. And I'm just thinking about you all making your opportunity at Group Swim. Um, then you get acquired by Salesforce and you go from running your own shop to being part of a much larger company and yet you still have to succeed. And you ended up staying at Salesforce for quite a while. 11 years as you said. Will you talk to us about that mentality, the sort of bloom where planted mentality and how that shows up in people that you work with and in yourself?

Speaker A: Yeah, here's how I look at it. I've been involved with a number of transactions over my career both on I've been acquired and I've acquired multiple companies. M and there's a big delta between what drives success in an acquired company and what does not. But it almost, it comes down to almost very one thing. That's the leadership and how they feel when they've been acquired and do they have a path. And this is what I would encourage everybody to think about. The first check is do your values align? Like what's the values of the company being acquired? What's the value of the company that you're going to. And if those align, that's the first big check mark in success. The second is going to be is there a structure in place where you have a path to drive a ah, vision that hopefully you've aligned on kind of full circle to your question. But when you get acquired you have been acquired for a reason and there's some gap in the other company uh, that they need. They might see something particularly in ip. Maybe you have a product that they can accelerate or maybe they just, there's some interesting product pieces they want to plug into their product and you have to be on board with that journey and realize that your old mission is probably no longer exists unless you're being acquired to just be a completely independent division and just continue to drive. But for the most part in tech companies, you're a puzzle piece that's fitting in and you have to recognize that you're on board to fill out that puzzle piece. And you as a leader have to reorient your entire team to why that you're fitting in. That puzzle piece is beneficial for you, your old company success, and obviously the new company. And if you can get on board with that, then you're gonna be successful. If you can't get on board with that, you're probably in the wrong place versus a uh, startup, uh, when you have your own company, like it's all on you. Right. You know, every opportunity is something else you didn't do. And it's great, it's super fun. But you're responsible for your, to your investor, to your customers, your employees. And you have to just change your thinking. And that's something you really have to go in with open eyes. And otherwise it will be a, probably a miserable experience.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: At best.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Frustrate. Let's put it this way. Frustrating.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And I'm just thinking about that day to day experience for you. Going from being a founder and an entrepreneur and then all of a sudden you're in this corporate environment and you actually of all your stages of your career, you were at Salesforce the longest. What was it about that experience at Salesforce that kept you interested, that kept you engaged? Because you could have jumped at any point to do something else. Why did you decide to dig in there?

Speaker A: Salesforce was going through an amazing growth curve when we joined. I think they were about a billion in two in change in revenue and now the company's north of 20 billion. And you just don't get an opportunity or career that often where you are shipping platforms M at global scale. So we did this at Netscape. When you deploy something, you're touching millions, M and maybe even beyond. So you just have this global footprint where you can impact change. The second is the values of Salesforce lined up well with mine. It was about customer trust and delivery. It was about growth, it was about innovation, it was about employees. And those values really aligned with my personal values which provided M a platform for me to grow. So you had a combination of global scale, shipping, enterprise platforms, touching customers everywhere and seeing the impact you were having. And then because of the growth, growth helps a lot new opportunities emerge. You know, we went from one product to another product. The last Product I was running was company called Demandware. We acquired them I think in 2016. They were a public company. It was one of our largest acquisitions at the time. I think it was the largest. And it was a, uh, global e commerce. It was super fun. We were doing, I think when we acquired them, about 26 billion in GMV. GMV is just think of it as gross merchandising values. The amount of revenue that goes through the collective stores. So if a store records a million dollars in sales, they count that towards gmv. When I left it was probably, you know, I worked on about three years, about 55 billion in GMV, maybe a little bit more. And that's fun, right? You get the uh, build products and you can literally see the impact and at a global scale.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But those are the things that you need to look for.

Speaker B: So that's your advice for people out there kind of, you know, in the earlier mid stages of building their careers.

Speaker A: Salesforce also is an amazing training ground. Their process for how they ship and build product, how they run a company is very impressive and a very well run company. So like back in the early days you probably looked to Microsoft or Oracle for that expertise. But um, Salesforce took it to a new level, but it was all cloud. Right. So how do you run a cloud business at scale? In fact, they have classes that they teach their employees about how to run a cloud business.

Speaker B: Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. It's so interesting, the diaspora from some of these huge brands. You talked about the early part of your career at ah, Hewlett Packard, which of course is, you know, one of the iconic brands from which many, many top executives have sprung. But from Salesforce we've already talked about Dan Streetman, who's now the CEO of tibco. George Matthew is coming also onto the Brake Line arena podcast. He's also a Salesforce alum and now uh, a venture capitalist. And it's just interesting to see the ripple effects from one company and how they extend throughout the sector.

Speaker A: Yeah. And typically when you see the changes go through, all companies go to the lifecycle. When their executives start to leave, many, many of their team follow them. And now I can probably name a half dozen companies from Solonus to and on and on that have Salesforce leaders and leadership. Um, and it's a great network to have because it's great to bounce ideas off people and get feedback. But you know, I think we're just the beginning to show the impact of the leadership that uh, helped build. Salesforce is now leading Dozens of companies across the world.

Speaker B: Yeah. Amazing. And so you had this sort of 12 year experience at Salesforce and then this company, Automation Anywhere, crosses your path. And will you talk to us about Automation Anywhere? The goals that you all have, the vision that you have for the company and what it was about this particular opportunity that you found so compelling.

Speaker A: I was familiar with the automation space because one of the products that I also built and ran at Salesforce was something called Lightning Flow. I still remember when I feel like I was just in the wrong meeting and I'm like, they looked around like, hey, we need somebody to take this project on. I'm um, like I just happened to walk in at the wrong time. So I don't know anything about Flow products and automation, but it turns out this was around 2016. It was incredibly interesting. It was how you use technology and AI to basically automate kind of mundane processes. And it didn't really click for me until I never forget this. I went out to a company called New York Life and I met with their cio and one of my co workers was friends with the CIO and he said we got to talk to them about automation. He was talking to me about handling claims processing and how hard and manual it was and how difficult it was and even the small amount of automation steps that you could take out of a manual process where if you always think about it, if you have to file a claim online, click giant forms and submit this and two days go by and then maybe somebody gets back to you and if you can eliminate steps there, the customer experience is superior and the savings on your company is just ginormous. It's just game changing. So we built this product called Lightning Flow. It was built, you know, there was other products there, but we took it to another level and it became a platform in itself. It started, it was embedded in all the other Salesforce products and just having profound impact. I had moved on to commerce, Automation Anywhere come through and the RPA stands right. Even know what it meant back uh, like 2017. I'm like, what is RPA? Robotics. We don't do robots, but robotic process automation, which is basically think of it as software that builds bots that does manual things. And Salesforce invested my team was part of the diligence. I became aware of it kind of kept an eye on the space. It really started to blow up in the last, you know, particularly with COVID Think about all these things that, you know, used to be you had to go in the office to do HR or it or uh, finance and suddenly everybody's working at home. Suddenly the need for automation just expl. And that was just things that you and I talk about. But then there's processes that can change, you know, where entire industries can be turned on their ear through automation. So it came along, I was finishing up at Salesforce, taking some time off and they reached out and said hey, would you be interested? And uh, I'll kind of go through my logic on joining. I obviously was a big fan of automation. I saw the impact in the industry, the fact that you could use particularly AI and software to just remove entire steps or just change entire way companies operate. This is big, it's a platform. So remember when I talked about having platforms that change industries? So it was a platform opportunity. It's about a 30 billion market TAM and it's one of the fastest growing, I think it is the fastest growing enterprise software market right now at about 18% year over year. So when you look at those three, you're now sitting with a platform that was built for the cloud. So modern that is literally transforming entire industries because they're you know, particularly in fintech or not fintech but to say in banking and insurance they're reorienting their entire process around automation and digital workers. So mhm, it's just the chance again to have global impact, change industries and build a platform. And it's doing something that frankly the industry doesn't have available today. So it's not like oh I built a better analytics tool, it's like, or m a better website builder. Those are always valuable and super cool. This is a category that really didn't exist at scale. So it's a big opportunity but a chance to do some really cool things.

Speaker B: And what does success look like for you all years from now? How will you know if you've hit it?

Speaker A: Well I have a couple measures for me and I think this is going to vary for everyone. I view success in building a company that's durable and is providing massive value to my customers and the team and obviously to our investors. That's like my number one criteria. The second one is are we building a platform? And the definition of a platform is interesting but you know you got it is when people come to you and show you what they've built on your platform and you're like man, I didn't even know we could do that. That's when you know you got it is you've built a platform that other companies and entrepreneurs and just you know, inventors are creating net new things off of it that you didn't even dream of. And that's when you just know. And those are the things that I look for. And you know, I've had the fortune to be able to do that a few times. And this is another opportunity.

Speaker B: Mm, mhm. Thank you, Mike. And as you were talking about that transition from Salesforce to automation anywhere, you mentioned you were sort of wrapping up at Salesforce, taking some time off. Our listeners can't see this, but you have a mountain bike behind you and another one. You have one kind of propped up and another one on the floor. What were you doing in that time off? Did it involve biking? How were you sort of resetting?

Speaker A: Well, you can probably tell from the bikes. I'm a huge cyclist. Pretty much anything outdoors, cycling, running, backcountry, uh, skiing and snowboarding. So I basically was like overindulging on those activities. Tons and tons of riding. Just actually why I know Dan. While Dan and I worked together at Salesforce, I didn't know him that well at Salesforce until we did a bike race and we just happened to both be there. And that's when I kind of actually met him. And then we got to know each other better. But biking and athletics, a big important aspect for me. And it, uh, actually was one of the drivers for me to start my own company I think in 2005. Besides, I was like, well, I think we can do this better. I had been car commuting pretty much my entire career and I just, in 2005, I'm like, I'm done. I'm never getting in the car again to go to work. And so I lived in San Francisco and that was one of my top criteria. I would be riding my bike to work in the last. Well, since 2005, I've never, I think I've driven to works maybe less than 10 times.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And so now I live in Marin. So I would ride my bike to San Francisco.

Speaker B: Wait, Mike, how many miles?

Speaker A: Uh, it's about 18 miles from my house. It's probably one of the best rides in the world. You get to go over the Golden Gate Bridge through the headlands, and then you can take the ferry home, or you can flip it around, take the ferry in and ride. Or if you really feel ambitious that day, you just ride both ways.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And there's a whole community of people who do it. It's pretty fun.

Speaker B: And your LinkedIn profile, if folks go and check you out on LinkedIn, there's a banner behind you. Is that Tahoe you're clearly in the mountains. There's snow. It's beautiful.

Speaker A: That picture I took, it's in Tahoe. It's very close to my house. It's on the west shore of Tahoe. It looks out over the lake towards Emerald Bay and Desolation Wilderness. It happened to be one of those beautiful days where the gotta maybe, you know, 10 inches of snow or something. So I do spend a lot of time in Tahoe. I think one of the side effects here is I always believed that you'd be able to work anywhere. And I think we're getting to that point. I know where you're sitting. Pretty awesome place. So I split my time as much as possible in Tahoe where can pursue some of these other activities. And um, this is important part of my career is balance, obviously balancing your family life, your work life. But for me, without being able to at least exercise almost pretty much daily, I don't think we could run at the speed that we're running on the work life. It's too much. You need that release, you need that clarity, your body needs it because it just needs that kind of step away. And having run a couple global businesses, automation anywhere being one, you need to plan it. I'm pretty careful planning my schedule that I leave time for these things. And when I travel, I also plan it into the travel schedule. Like a lot of times, like hotels, I pick to be very close to places I can go and exercise. So it's pretty carefully calculated out.

Speaker B: Yeah. Mike, you're clearly really committed to it and deliberate about it. And in another conversation you said some of your best ideas come from when you're on one of your rides or some of your other athletic pursuits. And yet the investment in ourselves can sometimes be the first thing that goes when we get busy. Yeah, but you found a way to make sure that you prioritize it.

Speaker A: Yeah, not only prioritize it, but I typically won't even bring my phone with me. Or if I do, it's like completely stashed away. You have to. You just have to. I mean, maybe cycling's not your thing or running on your thing, but, you know, whatever it is, you need to give your. Your mind the chance to absorb what you've been picking through the last. Whatever set of hundreds of meetings you probably just had. M. And often that idea won't just hit you in one of those pieces because you gave your mind some time to kind of wander and process. Yeah, but I've had a lot of my best product ideas and just whatever ideas from that, from doing that.

Speaker B: Mhm mhm. It reminds me we interviewed Sami Inkonen who was the founder of Trulia uh, which was acquired by Zillow and now he founded a new company called Virta Health. But he and his wife Mike rode across the Pacific from San Francisco to Hawaii San self powered Robo Mike with like shark circling stuff. I mean he's just crazy. So he, he was also like similar narrative around just athletics and the intersection of athletics, your professional life and well being. But the other element that he said was sleep. He's like no concessions whatsoever on my sleep.

Speaker A: Yeah I won't say I do as quite as well on the sleep. I'm m a um pretty consistent. Six and a half hour a nighter always can more. I have the rare ability to be able to sleep anywhere anytime. So yeah, pretty, pretty crush it. I can crush it on a plane. But sleep is also is a key element. If I'm under 6 it gets can get be a grumpy day. Yeah you know I think we all know the that ah aspect of it but a minimum for me is 6. But the more the merrier and I definitely agree 100%. It just clears out. I also get a lot of good ideas sleeping.

Speaker B: So wait, what do you mean? Like you'll dream something and remember or you just wake up with an idea.

Speaker A: I'm sure other people do it but I often will like I'll just when I go to bed I'll think I gotta figure out this one thing right. Whatever it is like a new feature, fundraising, whatever it is or just I'll lay down on it or market particularly marketing messaging and I'll just kind of think about it before I go to bed and often you know the next day when I wake up and I'm like off for a run or you know, on a bike ride, it pops back like oh why didn't I do it that way? So I've often find just putting it in your brain when you go to sleep, when you wake up I can A lot of times I'll be churning on it immediately. I'm like I didn't think of that way or what about this? Or maybe uh, I should call so and so and get therapy. You know I think planning those seeds and letting them kind of germinate for a while and then when you wake up, you know, get your body moving. A lot of times some good stuff pops out.

Speaker B: Wait Mike, I don't know if that'll work for me. I'm thinking about like the stress dream Phenomenon. Building the financial model that won't, you know, that's not adding up or whatever.

Speaker A: Well, it's one of the things for me, I don't know, I just, I do find it works. It's kind of funny as long as you're not stressing out about it. But yeah, for some of the bigger things, particularly for when we did, uh, big conferences and you're working on your keynote presentation and you're like, I just can't get this piece right. Like, how should I try it? Like, maybe there's a different idea. Uh, there's a different angle to it. Those are the type of where you really have to be creative. And I, and I talked a little bit about being creative, but.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: To kind of like sometimes step outside the box a few times.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And that's where the big ones come from.

Speaker B: Well, you know, you were just talking about giving talks, giving speeches, and an element of that is storytelling. And you've said to me several times already as we were preparing for this conversation that it drives you crazy when entrepreneurs in particular cannot tell their story in a way that's relevant and compelling. And you just think that this is such a crucial element to building a business, to being a leader. Will you talk to us a little bit more about that perspective and why it's so, why it's so key in your view?

Speaker A: Be a storyteller who wants to hear her be in an elevator and like, hey, you know, just, you have that one chance to tell like 30 seconds. If you're an elevator of Marc Benioff, you say, and he asks you, what's your company do? You know, and you want to bolt out like AI and digital robots. You want to tell a story of changing the world and why it's related. He'll remember that. AI and a bunch of gobbledygook technology. Everybody does that. So telling stories is a way for people to relate. I'm pretty simple in a lot of ways. If I don't understand it, typically it's because, uh, it was a bunch of jargon or just wasn't that interesting. But a story makes it relatable. It connects with people and it connects with your buyer. Maybe it's your, the person you're buying to. It connects with your team, connects with your investors. Work on your story. Build that story, make it interesting, Try it out on different people. Iterate on it. Go to sleep thinking about it and wake up the next day and try it out again. There's a story behind why you started your company or Built your idea, tell the world your story, it'll go much better. I can't tell you how many companies I've advised now you have to tell your story. If you don't tell your story, you're just one of everybody else.

Speaker B: Right? And in the way that you're framing this, it's almost like these folks that you have in your mind are stopping at the data or stopping at the, you know, the trendy word or phrase. My friend, Professor Jennifer Aker, she's a marketing, marketing professor at Stanford and she's a storytelling expert. She's advised lots and lots of world leading companies and she says it's the data plus the anecdote. You know, the data provides the credibility, but it's the anecdote that hits people where they can feel it and that's what they remember.

Speaker A: That's awesome. One of the best experiences I had to hone storytelling is the Salesforce Dreamforce where every product leader, you get essentially your time to stand on stage for 45, 50 minutes and tell the story. And the audience every year got bigger and bigger. The room could hold thousands of people and they were starting to broadcast them and you spent an enormous amount of time, but it was a story. And the best stories intersected something that the audience could relate to with the impact or the data. I did one with a company called Party City, which I think most your listeners may have seen them at least where you go to get party supplies, particularly helium balloons. Their target market is I think, families with kids from 5 to 12. And the story we told was about how most of their customers would particularly moms would shop through Instagram and they would look for ideas for parties for their kids, birthday parties, whatnot. Uh, and then they would try and take that picture they saw on Instagram and translate it into buying all the stuff for that party. So the tech part is we'll use AI to decompose the pictures and identify the streamers, the balloons, the party favors. But the data is the impact it has on their bottom line. Getting a shopper in a store just to pick up the parts or the party stuff increases the share of wallet by, uh, another 12%. So this whole trick, not trick, but story, it was about how moms are shopping on Instagram, couldn't figure out what to buy. By helping them on that journey and getting the store, we could increase that purchase by 12%. That's pretty cool. But I could have just said, hey, we did a checkout and we asked him to pick it up in the store and it got 12%, but there's a whole story.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, there's. And you know, the element of being audience focused and really having deep empathy for who's, who's in front of you rather than what you want to say. What is it that they are really looking or needing to hear and shaping your narrative that way.

Speaker A: Nailed it. Be the audience, test it out.

Speaker B: And so, Mike, now, in addition to your day job as a CEO, uh, you are also advising lots and lots of companies at this point. And so storytelling is one of your top pieces of advice for the entrepreneurs that you coach. But what else are you enjoying about that experience now? You know, you've been building companies for so long and now you're in this advisor role, which is really different but must be fulfilling as well.

Speaker A: It's fun. The thing about advising, I've had been fortunate, uh, probably thousands and thousands of meetings, customers, teams, product reviews, thousands on a global scale. And so I've. There's not that many situations you haven't seen because they kind of repeat. You know what I mean? It's like, okay, we'll put that into the customer trust problem. This is the product doesn't work problem. This is the growth problem. This is who's my customer problem. And been through it a lot. I can't say I always have the answers. So it's pretty clear when you meet with most, uh, of the companies, it's pretty like, okay, what's our challenge? Is it go to market? Is a product? Is it investment? Is it, you know, customer scale? And I can share my experiences and things I screwed up because I screw up tons of stuff. And you know, how to learn from those so they don't have to repeat that process. And that is a lot of fun. I mean, probably sometimes you have to repeat that conversation, like with your kids 20 times. But it is fun to see them be able to look through the lens of what you've done and say, well, okay, does that apply or not? How can we use this to maybe avoid that pitfall or go a little bit faster? That's why I do it. And I'll sometimes profess professional curiosity. Most of the companies I advise are in the ecommerce, uh, space. And so having a lot of background there, it's fun to help push kind of the next wave of innovation.

Speaker B: Mm mhm. And you know, you started this conversation by saying you've been in tech now for many decades. You've seen the sort of life cycle of companies from very, very early stages. You know, three people in A garage with group swim all the way up to Salesforce. And you're also advising. So you've just had this incredible breadth of experience. And as you look back, back on your career up until this point, what do you wish you knew earlier that you know now you know as you're thinking about advising those entrepreneurs that the hard fought, the hardest fought insights, you know, maybe the most painful or profound lessons. What do you wish that you had known earlier?

Speaker A: Well, a few years ago, uh, maybe six years ago now, we did a deal with a company in Germany, Coca Cola Germany. So we all have heard about Coca Cola. What turns out Coke is really a whole series of companies. And I met Ulrich, the CEO, happened uh, to do some meetings with him and then eventually he joined Salesforce. But in that period he did a, uh, kind of promotion for Salesforce. And he had this quote. He's like, the answer is not inside your company. The answer is outside your company with your customers and partners. The number one piece of advice is talk to your customers, particularly product people. You have a theory and sometimes the theory is correct. But when you actually sit down on the other side and put yourself in the customer shoes and try and implement it, is it practical? Will it work? Is it really going to resolve what they need and do a game changer? Talk to your customers. You'll be surprised. They will tell you so much. It will shape you, your product will be better, your company will be better. And that's my number one. The answer is typically not inside your company. The answer is outside.

Speaker B: I love that. Uh, the just ability to continue to see outside of what you're doing, the necessity of picking your head up and making sure that you're trying to tracking toward that north star. You've also thought about staying true to your values. That was a comment that you made to me earlier and I'd love to just hear more about that from your perspective.

Speaker A: My values when it comes to companies are customer trust. When I say customer trust, are you delivering to what your customers expect? They are paying you, they're taking a career risk by, particularly if you're a small company. So are you delivering what you promised and your customers trusting you? And then obviously, you know, I look at growth and innovation and when you mix these threes, this is a formula for driving your product, your company successful. And so I really think a lot about those three. And in there is your employee trust along with customer trust. So those are really important. But customer trust is just number one. And I was at one company where after I joined it became clear that my values weren't matching some of the leadership values. And I just struggled with it to the point where I finally had to leave the company because I just wasn't. It wasn't enjoyable. I wasn't getting what I felt was the best work and I wasn't producing a product that, uh, I felt was delivering on the values that I held. And it was a year where I learned the biggest thing I learned is as is your team share the same values. If they don't, you're going to have problems downstream. That's again why I stay at Salesforce for so long, is my values matched up with the values of the company.

Speaker B: That's just so important to keep in mind. And you and I talked about, I think it was Warren Buffett who said, establish your red line and take two steps back. And it's so important to do that before you find yourself in crisis. You know, that's the kind of thinking that you want to do when you've got some time and space and be really clear with yourself about what matters to you.

Speaker A: Uh, I like how I said that because yeah, you're gonna. When you get into these crisis, you have to kind of gut check yourself and say, all right, is this worth it? And believe me, I think of all of us, none of us like to give up on something, but try and, you know, understand before you get in there. Some of these are hard to kind of sort out.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But it will end up much better. And it's. If you look at the successful companies out there, I'm pretty sure you can see that they have a good value system and they're pretty good at communicating their value system well.

Speaker B: Mike Micucci, thank you so much for spending the last hour with us. Such a treat to hear more about your journey, hear more about automation anywhere and the work that you all are doing together. Really appreciate your time.

Speaker A: Thank you for the platform and all the great things you're doing and the opportunity to share. So you thank so much fun.

Speaker B: Thank you guys so much for joining us for another episode of the Brake Line Arena. We're hoping that you're walking away feeling a little moved, a little inspired. And if you really had a good time, feel free to head on over rate. Subscribe. Leave us a review. It does help us spread the good word. Keeps these good vibes rolling. Yes, we would love to hear from you. Thanks again and we will see you next time.