If you know where you are going, you have this sixth sense about if everything you do along the way is lined up with that.
— Diane Greene
Kids are curious, and if you don't lose that, then everything is an adventure.
More than anything, I think my connection to the sea has really helped me develop my independence and a sense of the importance and value of my own vision.
I have a lot of help to do chores so I can be with my family, and I never have any help over the weekends.
Almost every customer that I talk to is talking about how they're using APIs, and what a step function they are for their business.
Every customer wants to run on all the clouds.
If you had a hobby, family, or wanted to do things besides work - you should join VMware. We didn't have nearly as long hours as Google given our customers worked normal business hours.
There's a lot that machine learning can't do that humans can do very, very well.
Google went in a consumer direction, and VMware was system infrastructure. But there are a lot of parallels and similarities.
At VMware, we did the virtualization, which is now used extensively across the cloud. Virtualization layers - and containers - are what facilitated the cloud originally.
Everything is changing now that we are in the cloud in terms of sharing our data, understanding our data using new techniques like machine learning.
I just do what I want to do. I look at what's interesting to me.
When you race a sailboat, the selection of your crew is just completely paramount. It's impossible to be an effective skipper if you don't have the right people working harmoniously in the right roles.
Building a company is so much like racing a sailboat.
I have pretty set rules that I go home for dinner every night unless I am traveling.
I'm super partner-oriented. That's how I built VMware.
Google is committed to open source and open APIs, and part of that is creating a partner-friendly place.
It's a good thing to remember that hiring will get easier as you scale - but you should also never drop your standards.
If I could inexpensively pick up a killer sales force without a lot of the other things that I don't necessarily need, yeah, I'd be all there.
At VMware, the engineers worked very closely with our customers, closely with the field, and it was exciting for everyone. So, one of things I did here at Google when I arrived was to combine sales, marketing, engineering, and product.
This whole cloud phenomenon is gaining steam pretty rapidly, and it's really become a strategic imperative for people.
I've never been in the enterprise where your customers are your partners. It was always, you had customers, and you had partners.
One of the happiest times of my life, I lived in a tent on a porch on Hawaii.
To sail successfully, you need to observe with great care. You need to identify what the wind and the water are telling you and then find a way to execute, to reach whatever goal you've set, be that simply making it home or winning a race.
I'm pretty transparent and clear about things. The things I do and the way I act are no different than I would expect of others. Mostly it's about being very clear about what we are trying to do and communicating a lot and showing absolute consistency and integrity about what I say and do.
Now we're in an environment where women are increasingly having a huge impact and adding a lot of value to our industry. And women are celebrated if they raise their hand and say, 'Hey, you're missing my value. You're not recognizing what I'm doing.'
We believe that cloud will be based on significant open-source components that are offered as services. People don't want to be locked into a single provider.
When I first started VMware, I was very shy and self-conscious about speaking. I grew out of this by giving talks each week in front of the whole company; gradually, as we scaled, I had talked to more and more people, and this is how I conquered my fear of talking to people.
When we were small, the idea of VMware wasn't well defined, and convincing people to join was difficult. Each person we hired at that time was a big deal.
If I had to have my druthers - the best technology, the best cloud... if I had to choose between that and building out a sales force and building out customer support... I would pick the latter.
Paul Otellini, the former CEO of Intel, I worked with while I was still with VMware. I knew Ram Shriram through the tech industry.
I only use a Chromebook now. I never thought I could do that, but I love it.
