Jeetu Patel: Cisco’s AI-powered cybersecurity future

In this episode of Inside the Network, we sit down with Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. Jeetu previously led Cisco’s Security and Collaboration business units. Under his leadership, these divisions have become major growth engines fueled by AI-driven innovation, strategic acquisitions, and a renewed focus on user experience.

With a market cap of $250 billion and a security business generating $10 billion in revenue, Cisco is evolving into a different kind of startup, one that moves with speed and urgency. Jeetu shares why he joined Cisco to spearhead this transformation and how the company is positioning itself in the cybersecurity space, competing with incumbents like Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler, as well as disruptors like Wiz and Cato Networks. We explore how Cisco’s $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, along with key deals like Armorblox, Isovalent, and Robust Intelligence, is reshaping its security business. Jeetu also dives into the challenges CISOs face today - tool sprawl, talent shortages, and AI-driven threats - and how Cisco plans to simplify security at scale.

For founders, Jeetu breaks down his six-vector rubric for evaluating opportunities, the key factors Cisco considers in acquisitions, and what startup leaders need to do to get Cisco’s attention. He also provides an inside look at Cisco’s legendary distribution machine and how startups can leverage it for hypergrowth. Finally, we discuss Jeetu’s concept of a "personal board" and his views on navigating geopolitical challenges in the tech industry.

Episode Transcript

Sid Trivedi (00:07):
Welcome to Inside the Network. I'm Sid Trivedi.

Ross Haleliuk (00:11):
I am Ross Haleliuk.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (00:12):
And I am Mahendra Ramsinghani. We have
spent decades building,investing, and researching
cybersecurity companies.

Sid Trivedi (00:22):
On this podcast, we invite you to join us inside the
network, where we bring the bestfounders, operators, and
investors building the future ofcyber.

Ross Haleliuk (00:33):
We will talk about the hard part of the
founder journey. Launchingcompanies, getting to product
market fit, raising capital, andscaling to an exit.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (00:44):
And yes, we will also be talking about
epic failures.

Sid Trivedi (00:48):
But Mahendra, we're here to make the founder journey
easier.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (00:52):
That is correct, Sid. But we cannot make
it too much easier becausestartups are hard. And, of
course, you already knew that.Alright, you too. Enough.

Ross Haleliuk (01:02):
Let's get started with this week's episode.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (01:09):
Our guest today is Jeetu Patel, Cisco's
executive vice president andchief product officer. At Cisco,
he leads innovation andexecution across the company's
security and collaborationbusinesses. Under Jeetu's
leadership, these divisions havebecome major growth engines

(01:29):
driven by a focus on innovationand increasing emphasis on user
experience as well as AI driventransformations. Prior to
joining Cisco, Jeetu was a chiefproduct officer and strategy
officer at Box, where he scaledthe platform to 100,000
customers and over 700,000,000in revenues. His career also

(01:52):
includes leadership roles aschief strategy officer at EMC
and president of DocuLabs.
Today, Jeetu will share with uswhy he chose to join Cisco and
lead its transformation inembracing AI and growing
cybersecurity. For context,Cisco is a forty year old

(02:14):
networking giant with a$250,000,000,000 market cap. It
generates over 50,000,000,000 inannual revenues, and its
security business alone bringsin over $10,000,000,000 each
year, serving 300,000 customers.Its cybersecurity business grew
32% last year, driven by the$28,000,000,000 acquisition of

(02:37):
Splunk. Ranked number 74 on theFortune 100 list, Cisco is now
in its next act, evolving into adifferent kind of a startup.
For our audience today, Jeetuwill share Cisco's vision and
strategy in security, includingareas Cisco is doubling down on,

(03:01):
and most importantly, how itplans to compete with incumbents
like Palo Alto Networks,Zscaler, as well as new
disruptors like Wiz and CatoNetworks. Without further ado,
let us dive in. Welcome toInside the Network, Jeetu.

Jeetu Patel (03:18):
Thank you for having me, Mahendra. It's great
to be here.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (03:21):
Sid, Ross, and I are excited about this
episode where we can talk aboutthe journey that you're on. And
it's a fascinating journey. Youstarted at Cisco four years ago,
and rumor has it that you'reinfusing this very large
enterprise, almost hundredthousand people, to move at the
speed of a startup. We'd love tohear how you're doing that. But

(03:43):
before we go in that direction,four years ago when you joined
Cisco, you were assigned toresurrect Webex, and it would
have seemed like a careersuicide to do that.
Why did you even consider takingthat on?

Jeetu Patel (03:55):
It's great to be here with all of you. And I
think these are, you know, Ifrom what I understand, your
audience is entrepreneurs, and Ithink it's, I love speaking to
people that are startingcompanies because that's the
lifeblood of this country. And,we just need more and more
startups that are actuallygetting created because, they do
a very important job in society.So thank you for having me to

(04:17):
talk to them. Going back to yourquestion on why did I even
consider doing it, I was, infact, I had accepted a job at a
FAANG company when Chuck calledme, and I was gonna start there
in, like, nine days.
And it was a great company, andit was a great job. I'm a
product guy at heart, and so Ilove building products that
people love, that they can talkto their friends and family

(04:37):
about. Because I feel like in atech company, the heart and soul
of a company is the people andthe product. Right? So if you
don't have great people buildinggreat products, then everything
else is almost, like, academicin nature.
And in Webex, I always had thiskind of, you know, passion for
productivity. And we were inCOVID when I actually started at

(05:00):
Cisco, and so it was a very kindof relevant technology at the
time. But when I logged in tohave the meeting with Chuck the
first time, like, it didn't evenwork. And so, it was like there
was some glitch that was there,and I there was, like, 15,000
ideas coming saying, oh mygoodness. You can do so much
with this product.

(05:21):
And and so I, dropped in forpunishment. I decided that I'm
gonna kind of dive in, and therewere two big problems to solve.
One was Webex and one wascybersecurity. And and both
those franchises were prettydamaged and neglected at Cisco
for a long time. So what Ineeded was commitment from the
CEO saying, hey.
I'm gonna give you air cover,and we're gonna go out and make

(05:43):
sure that we double down onthis, and the product investment
and innovation is important. Andhe was very good about doing
that very early in theconversation. And what I can
tell you up until right now, Istill Chuck is my first guy that
I talk to every morning, andhe's the last person I talk to
when I go to bed at night. And,he is completely engaged. But
what what was interesting aboutit was there was so much

(06:05):
potential, and there was, if wedid it right as Cisco, we have
such massive distribution andsuch a huge global brand that
you could really shape the waythat the world operates.
And so I decided to do it, buthere was the thing that was
interesting. The exact same teamthat was there that I was
thinking, like, what are thesepeople doing? Why are they not

(06:27):
fixing the basic problems? Itwas that very team that got our
NPS score from 22 to 68. It wasthat very team that actually
added 1,800 features within amatter of, you know, like, about
nine months.
And it was that team thatrefactored the entire platform.
So what you see as Webex todayis a completely rebuilt platform

(06:50):
from the ground up compared towhat was with Webex four years
ago. But what they did that wasreally interesting was during
COVID, we were already in thatwe were starting to build this
new platform, but we had allthese features in the old
platform. Right? But what we haddone was we had said, let's stop
the old platform.
Let's start building the newplatform. But, unfortunately,
COVID happened, and everyonesaid, now I need all these

(07:12):
things that I need to have in mynew platform because we're all
working from home. And so whatthe team did was they actually,
in parallel, built 1,800features twice, and then they
merged it. And now we are on thenew platform, and no one even
knew that that change happened.And it was the same exact team
that I'd inherited.

(07:32):
Not one executive change. Theybuilt at the entire new
platform. And I think it wasbecause they were so hungry, and
they were so it was a personalthing for them. They're like,
you know, we cannot, on ourclock, let this franchise that
we care about so much die. Wehave to make sure that we
actually get it to be one of theworld's best products.
And the mission was whatactually drove them. And the

(07:54):
beauty was all I did was createda clear strategy and put the
right people in the jobs andthen got out of the way. And
then what we did was we werevery, very obsessed about
experience of the user, whichwas not quite the DNA of Cisco
at the time. You know, wewouldn't do design reviews at
Cisco. We wouldn't do demos.
And that cultural shift reallyenergized the team because they

(08:16):
were like, oh, why is, an EVPdoing a design review with an IC
and, you know, a 6,000 team org,which is how big Webex was. And,
you know, that's a big prettybig product because we've got
calling, messaging, meetings,polling, q and a, events,
whiteboarding, async video, allof those things. And, they just
man, the tempo with which theybuilt that stuff is probably one

(08:38):
of the proudest projects thatI've been a part of in my life
is Webex. Just because of thelevel of kind of, progress they
made within a very compressedamount of time without
complaining, while all beingremote in COVID. I mean, there
were times when the shortage ofservers were so high during
COVID that they were begging forservers and bringing those

(09:00):
servers back in and, staying upall night just so that they
could actually keep the site upand running.
And, look at it now. Like, we'vegot hundreds of millions of
users, and the the system isworking marvelously well. And
it's it's actually very, verygratifying to see. Long winded
answer, Mahendra, but it's, it'sone that deserves, a lot of
accolades for the team.

Sid Trivedi (09:21):
Jitra, maybe unpacking that a little bit more
and and advice maybe forfounders. What was the cultural
shift? It seems like this wasthe same team that had had a
difficult spot before, and theythey went into full gear to fix
things. Many founders and manyfounding teams go through that.
Right?
The first version of the productdoesn't work. You have to go and
flip things and try to reworkeverything on the second

(09:42):
version. How do you kind ofchange that team's viewpoint to
saying, look, we're at day zero?

Jeetu Patel (09:48):
I think you had to give them clarity, a sense of
urgency, and sweat the details.You know? And so the clarity was
in the strategy. We had to bevery clear on what strategy we
were gonna kinda pursue. We hadto sweat the details.
So we would sit down and debateevery pixel on the screen on how
it needed to be laid out, whichwould have the least amount of
friction for the user. And wereally had to galvanize the team

(10:12):
to say, you know, you know, justreally swept the details. And
and I think that's an importantdimension that sometimes gets
missed where you have to operatein founder mode. Right? And so,
like, you know, when you, like,I haven't run my own business
now for fifteen years.
But for the first twenty yearsof my career, I ran my own
business. And I'm just hardwiredto think in founder mode. I'm

(10:35):
just hardwired to think this ismy company. And so I just don't
think in terms of, like, I'm ina large company, and I have to
do all of these differentthings. Like, no.
This is my business, and how amI gonna run my business the way
that it would be if I wereowning a % of it? And I think
that really helps. And thepeople that we had, we have to
make sure that we switched theirperspective to, if we do this

(10:55):
right, we can change the waythat the world operates. And
only Cisco can do a certain setof things that no one else
actually will like, one of thethings that was really valuable
was if Cisco didn't do this,some of the things that we were
imagining would not happen inthe world. And that got them
very galvanized.
And, you know, there was aleader named Javed who actually

(11:19):
had run this thing for a longtime. There was a guy named
Anurag who actually did anamazing job. There was a guy
named Abhay who was anotherleader who had done a fantastic
job. And these people were justamazing leaders that that drove
the team. There was a lady namedLarissa who was amazing.
And they just drove the team tothis very, very good outcome.

(11:40):
And, I feel like if I were afounder thinking about what this
would be is any task when itseems completely impossible,
when you break it down intosmall elements, is very, very
achievable if you just stay withit, and persistence really
matters. And this is a lesson Ilearned from Aaron Levy. You
just never give up. You know?

(12:01):
You just keep going. And thedays which which are hard, where
someone's coming at you becauseit's not it's not the right, you
know, you feel like you're beingattacked either internally or
externally, you just keepfighting it, keep fighting and
keep moving forward. And, and Ithink that's what this team did.

Ross Haleliuk (12:17):
In your recent Mad Money interview with Jim
Cramer, you mentioned that therewill only be two types of
companies, those that use AI andthose that are held back. Can
you elaborate on this topic?

Jeetu Patel (12:28):
I was even stronger than that. I think those that
are gonna be really good with AIand those that are gonna be
really struggling for relevance.And, and I actually truly
believe that. Like, here's thething I've learned is when there
is a massive mega trend and atectonic shift that's occurring
in the market, you can't fightit. You have to use it as a
tailwind.
Now the difference is you haveto know the difference between a

(12:50):
megatrend and a hype cycle. Andthat's where the judgment comes
in. Right? Because you thinkabout some of the things that
were hype cycles that were thereon, you know, Web two and all
that, leaving aside the cryptopiece, but like a lot of the
other key you know, kind ofpieces. I think it was it was
hard to kind of put your armsaround what they meant because
it was very hard to say, what isthe use case actually?

(13:12):
What is the life of anindividual? How is it going to
be different? It was all verytheoretical kind of aspects that
were talked about. Whereas, whenyou think about AI, we were
we've been investing it now forabout my entire time that we've
actually just proposed. My firstinvestment I made before my
first day that I started, Iactually had not even started
and I was on a call negotiatingwith the CEO, was a company in

(13:34):
AI for sound and acousticsengineering called BabbleLabs
that we had acquired a team fromStanford.
There was, like, 40 PhDs onsound and acoustics engineering
to really remove noise from thebackground and amplify human
speech. And and it was one ofthe most successful app
acquisitions we've made to datebecause it it just got embedded
in the fabric within the firstthirty days of the acquisition.

(13:54):
But I think what you have tokeep in mind is when you have
these megatrends, you have to goall in because the shift that'll
be there will be so profoundthat if you don't commit to it,
there's no other way besidesyou'll be left behind. You know?
And AI is one of those where Ithink in the short term, people
might overestimate its impact.

(14:15):
But, boy, in the long term,every one of our lives is gonna
see change so profoundly. And, Imean, just look at what's
happening right now. It's, it'sit's crazy. What seemed like
magic two years ago is nowsomething that we have gotten so
used to. And then every singleday, there's new magic coming
out.
You know? Like, I I had a hearda great example. Someone said,
if you've taken a Waymo in SanFrancisco, the first time you

(14:37):
said no way more, it's like, ohmy god. This is amazing. The
second time you said, you'relike, wow.
Super convenient. I'm gonna domy email. The third time around,
you're complaining about theseats. You know? You've gotten
used to it.
Like, you've you've just itbecomes baseline. And so I think
humans have a remarkablecapability to actually get magic
to become baseline. And I thinkwe have to keep creating new

(14:57):
magic. And I think what AI isgonna do is just extend our
ability to create new magic overand over and over again. And I
think we're just gettingstarted.
We're probably in the firstinnings if you take any kind of
sports analogy, and there'sthere's so much to be had. But
companies that fight it, I justdon't think they'll be relevant.
You know, it'll be very hard forthem to actually participate in
the economy meaningfully. And,like, Cisco is all in. We are AI

(15:22):
first.
If there's anything that anyoneis confused with is if anyone
thinks AI is not somethingthat's worth doing, they should
not be at Cisco. They shouldleave Cisco because they'll be
disappointed, you know? And,that I think is a very important
thing to digest. And in my mind,if you do that right over and
over again, you become a greatcompany. If you do that wrong

(15:42):
even a couple times, you mightnot be a company at all.

Ross Haleliuk (15:45):
For founders who are just starting to explore AI,
how do you tell the difference?What is your framework for
telling the difference between ahype cycle and a mega trend that
is going to redefine everything?

Jeetu Patel (15:56):
You know, it's a really good question, Ross,
because the way I think about itis the easiest way to do it is,
are there extremely easy usecases that the technology solves
in such a way that the peoplethat are the benefactors of
those use cases, the users,cannot help but tell their
friends about that that product.Like, how many of us, after we

(16:20):
use chat g p t the first time,wanted to just tell someone
about it? Right? Like, I mygoodness. Did you just check
this out?
This is crazy. Like, have youseen what they've done? Like,
every one of us, I guaranteeyou, said that to someone in our
in our close circle. Right? Thatwas that in my mind is a
megatrend when there's a wavethat's happening.

(16:41):
By the way, I think operator isone of those other waves. I
don't know if you folks haveused operator yet from, OpenAI,
but it is unbelievable what itcan do. And it's you know it's
early days. Right? Becausethere's a lot of fit and finish
that has to get done.
But it is unbelievable on how itis gonna solve problems that we
had not even thought about thatcould be solvable. And in my

(17:04):
mind, if your explanation ofsomething gets to be overly
complicated, and if people stilldon't understand it after 30,
and then when you see when theysee your product, they still are
scratching their head on it,chances are you're not hitting a
mega trend. Chances are you'renot going out doing something.
You might be drinking your KoolAid way too much, but you're not

(17:24):
listening to the customerenough. And I think when the
customer sees something, theyshould feel magic happen.
And, you know, it it doesn'tthere is no concrete way to know
whether you have product marketfit, but you know when you don't
have it. Because that that'swhen you have to keep fighting
for press. That's when you haveto keep fighting for, you know,
explaining to people what it isand people still don't get it.

(17:45):
Whereas when something ismagical, a few sentences and
people like, I want that. Wherecan I go buy that?
Sign me up. You know? Cheetu, Iwanna dive in a little bit
deeper

Sid Trivedi (17:55):
on the cybersecurity business at Cisco,
which, you know, kind of wasrelatively when you look at the
grand arc of all the otherthings Cisco does, it used to be
relatively small. It was about10% of the total business. And,
obviously, you made this verylarge acquisition with Splunk,
and that has helped to changethe game. We've had Doug Merritt
on the show, and he talked a alittle bit about kind of the

(18:16):
early days of scaling Splunkpost IPO and what was learned
through that, what worked, whatdidn't work, the the insights
that were gleaned. I'm curiousnow that you have Splunk as part
of the core business andsecurity, how do you see the
next phase of growth of thecyber business at Cisco?

Jeetu Patel (18:32):
Well, you know, what most people don't realize
when you think about Splunk, youtake Splunk and our core
business. We are one of thelargest security companies in
the world, roughly about 8 and ahalf billion dollars if you
count services, and and it'sgrowing, you know, close to
double digits. In fact, Splunkis growing at double digits, and
our our security business isgrowing close to it. But if you
think about what we want to doover here, I think I would start

(18:54):
back from the core foundationalprinciple. We are at our core
networking company.
You can't be a great networkingcompany if you're not a great
security company becauseotherwise you're just selling
dumb pipes. You can't be a greatsecurity company if you're not a
great AI company, and you can'tbe a great AI company if you're
not a great data company. And Ithink Splunk brings us that

(19:15):
dimension of data in a prettybig way so that we can we can
correlate data in an effectivemanner to be able to detect
breaches faster, to be able tocompress the time to
investigation, and to be able toaccelerate the response and
remediation to a threat. And sofrom that perspective, I'd say
that we, it is so much part ofthe core. The way I think about

(19:37):
Cisco is we are the world's onlyAI first secure networking
company.
No one else can say that. Right?You go to Arista, they have to
partner with Palo Alto. You goto Palo Alto, they have to
partner with Arista. You go to,you know, like, none of them
have networking and securitycombined with AI as a core
obsession.

(19:57):
That's what we do. Now why isthat important? Why is that
combination important? Because,you know, if you assume that the
attacker is already in yourenvironment, assume that the
attacker has already infiltratedyour environment, the name of
the game is preventing lateralmovement. Right?
Where does lateral movementhappen? On the network. Who

(20:18):
knows most about the network inthe world? Cisco. Because we've
got the most amount of telemetryon the network.
And I think if you think aboutsecurity being a data game, the
correlation of that telemetry sothat you can better detect,
compress investigation, andbetter remediate is all gonna be
a core part or parcel of it. Andin my mind, the more the

(20:42):
datasets that you have that youcan more effectively correlate
together, the better a securitycompany you're gonna be. And so
I think there's a compoundingeffect to scale that we can
bring to the table. And thestructural advantage that we
have of networking and securityis very hard to replicate
because someone has to get intoan entirely different business,

(21:02):
whereas we are already in boththose businesses, and we can tie
those together. And so what wewanna do is take security and
bake it into the fabric of thenetwork and make security hyper
distributed so that no matterwhere in the network you wanna
enforce security, you you shouldbe able to do it.
Whether it be on a top rackswitch, whether it be on a
server, whether it be next to,next to the kernel in the user

(21:25):
space using an eBPF agent, weshould be able to make sure that
we actually embed security inthe fabric of the network. And
that is a foundationally newarchitecture than the way that
security has been, which is veryperimeter focused.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (21:37):
In fact, Jeetu, you did, at one of your
RSA talks, touch upon some ofthese, seismic shifts, as well
as architectural changes thatCisco is building in the product
lines. And, we'll go a littledeeper into that in the later
part of the program. I wannastart with the big picture view.
You know, Cisco has, what,almost 300,000 customers

(22:00):
worldwide.

Jeetu Patel (22:01):
Cisco has about close to a million. Security has
close to 300,000.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (22:05):
Well, that's that's even better. A
million customers, up to300,000, are feeding into your
security business. You have agreat porch, a great vantage
point where you can sit, look atthe forest, you can talk to some
of the largest customers in theworld. Help us help our audience
understand what are some of thepain points you consistently
hear in the market from CISOs,from your customers? What do

(22:28):
they talk about when it comes totalent shortage in cybersecurity
or budget constraints or evenintegrating 50 different
products.
There are some numbers out therethat are average CISO is
struggling with integrating alarge number of security
products. So give us some coloron what is the pulse of the
customer out there in this dayand age?

Jeetu Patel (22:49):
Yeah. I think, you know, this it's a very good
question, and you hit the nailon the head. The way that
security innovation has happenedover the past three decades is
its innovation by patchwork. Andwhat do I mean? A new threat
emerges.
Ross, you know this really well.There's a new company that comes
to go out and solve that threat.Consequently, we've got 3,500

(23:09):
security vendors in the market.Right? Not a single one of them
owns more than 10% a share.
And on average, most companieshave about 50 to 70 companies
and products within thecybersecurity stack. That is 50
to 70 different policy engines.That's 50 to 70 different
management interfaces. That's 50to 70 different vendor

(23:31):
management things that they haveto worry about. It the
complexity is untenable.
So and ransomware, despite usspending more in security today
than ever before in the historyof humanity, ransomware is at
the highest point that it's everbeen. So clearly, something is
not working. Right? And so in mymind, there is this kind of move
towards more integratedplatforms rather than just a

(23:56):
bunch of point solutions. Nowthat doesn't mean that the point
solutions go away.
That means that the platformswill be able to go out and
integrate other point solutionsas well so that organizations
have an easy way to manage thesestates. And at Cisco, we have
one of the broadest portfoliosin the market. And so we are
able to go out, make sure thatthis integrated platform or we

(24:16):
used to be like a holdingcompany. We had bought a bunch
of companies, and every singlecompany was a different brand,
different logo, different designlanguage, different so it it was
madness. Like, you couldn't makeany heads or tails out of it.
And the thing that was sad aboutthat is we were not getting the
advantage of being a startup norof a big company because we were
too big for being a startup, andwe were too disorganized because
they were everything was beingrun-in individually to benefit

(24:38):
from the scale of a largecompany. So it was the worst of
both worlds. What we've done iswe flipped that equation
completely. Right now, what youhave is a completely integrated
platform. We're not a holdingcompany.
We are an integrated platformthat is loosely coupled tightly
integrated, which means thatcustomers don't have to buy the
full stack from us. But, boy,when they do buy a few
components from us, they worklike magic together. And and

(25:01):
that's actually a very importantkind of dimension. So what
customers are saying isdecomplexify things to me.
Simplify it.
Increase the efficacy. Right?And make sure that you can
actually create a level ofresponsiveness for the things
that are happening in myenvironment so I can move fast
towards addressing the breachesthat are happening in my

(25:23):
organization. And do that in away that is an open ecosystem
rather than a closed walledgarden. So I actually think
that's a pretty importantdimension, which is we don't
wanna just be completely tied toa closed wall garden where, you
know, only things at Cisco worksfor the Cisco.
No. I will work with mycompetitors. I will integrate
with Palo Alto. I will integratewith CrowdStrike. I will

(25:45):
integrate with SentinelOne.
I will integrate with Zscaler.That's great because the true
enemy is not the competitor.It's the adversary. And so we
gotta make sure that we all cometogether and share data in real
time. Because if we share datain real time, what'll end up
happening is we have a chance ofbeating the adversary.
Because right now, the adversaryis, we've made it very easy for

(26:06):
the adversary to infiltrate ourenvironment, and we've made it
very difficult for the defenderto be able to defend the
environment. It should be theother way around. Right? We
should have it difficult for theadversary to penetrate, and we
should make it easy for thedefender to go out and protect.
And and if there is a breachthat has happened, you should be
able to do detection andresponse and remediation as fast
as possible.

(26:27):
So I feel like both on theprotection side as well as the
detection response side of thehouse, I feel like there's a,
there's an opportunity for themarket to just get a better a
better, faster, cheaper kind ofapproach. Highly performant,
fully integrated platform, highefficacy, responsiveness in real
time or near real time. If wecould do that with a high amount

(26:48):
of data that gets correlated, soyou're, you know, in the age of
AI, you cannot have human scaledefenses for machine scale
attacks. You have to havemachine scale defenses. And so
that's the way, at least, thatwe think about it at Cisco.
And and by the way, it's workingbecause now what you're starting
to see is a tremendous amount ofuptake. Now we built, like,

(27:09):
seven products from the groundup at this point. From the
ground up. Right? This is notlike it's like a startup.
It's a startup within a companylike Cisco. And our goal is, in
four years, we should get themto anywhere between 3 quarters
of a billion to a billiondollars in top line. And in year
one, we try to see if many ofthem that are monetizable
products get to a hundredbillion dollars of top line. If

(27:32):
you can get to that momentum,then I you could start to see
some really meaningful thingshappen. You know?
And by the way, you have to knowthat we are we were late to the
industry in a lot of thesethings. Right? Like, if you
think about SASE and SSE and,you know, Zscaler was the first
one. But the beauty about thisis sometimes when you're late,
it actually helps becausethey're a 13 old stack, and we

(27:54):
built a modern stack. And nowwe're starting to replace these
companies and customers.
And when you replace thesecompanies and customers, like,
we recently had a company, acompetitor we replaced in the
customer, which was a very wellknown competitor. 78,000 seats
that were deployed in, like,about 79 or something. Yeah. 78,
70 nine days, something likethat. And it was 100% deployed

(28:18):
within seventy nine days.
It would have taken ourcompetitors six to nine months
to go out and deploy. So notonly are we operating at scale,
but we are upper also operatingwith agility, which is the whole
point of this operating as aworld's largest startup. You
have to operate, you know, atspeed with scale.

Ross Haleliuk (28:34):
Jitu, the last year's RSA conference, you
talked about how securingapplications is becoming harder
and harder and how securityneeds to be reimagined with with
AI at the kernel level. How doyou see various products lines
and their adoption in themarket? What what is moving the
fastest? What kind of solutions?What type what kinds of
categories?

Jeetu Patel (28:54):
So we launched a product called HyperShield.
Right? And, it's in it's youknow, this is the first year
that it's been that we just hadit available, you know, not too
long ago. And we've got the waythat we're doing it is we're
getting the first batch ofcustomers up and running in it
because it's a product that isgonna have a tremendous amount
of long term impact on thearchitecture of security.

(29:17):
Because it's not the nextversion of something that
already exists.
It's the first version ofsomething completely new. And so
what we've done with HyperShieldbasically is think about taking
a security stack, breaking it upinto thousands of piece parts,
hundreds of thousands of pieceparts, millions of piece parts.
And in front of everymicroservice, in front of every
Kubernetes container, in frontof every virtual machine, in

(29:39):
front of every Kubernetescluster, you will have a mini
security stack. Right? And thatmini security stack will be able
to know exactly in this end toend encrypted world what traffic
is originating from where andwhere does it terminate.
And you you get full visibilityof that front. But then you
solve some big problems. Wesolve the problem of

(30:00):
segmentation is hard, so weactually do autonomous
segmentation. Patching is hard,so we actually provide
instantaneous compensatingcontrols when there's something
that needs to get patchedbecause it usually takes about
forty five to forty nine days topatch a vulnerability from the
time it's announced. And, Ross,you know this better than I do.
Right? But it takes only aboutthree days and soon will be

(30:24):
hours from the time that youannounce a vulnerability to when
it gets exploited. So you've gotthis window where the market is
very exposed, and what we neededto do was make sure that you
actually solved that problem. Sowe can immediately, within a
matter of minutes, have acompensating control put in
front of something that's avulnerability. And once you
actually apply your patch, thevulnerability the compensating

(30:46):
control is smart enough to betaken off automatically.
But if you don't apply that,then it'll just keep stacking
the compensating controls on topof each other. So that's the
second thing. And the thirdthing is we never have to do an
update again. Because right now,if you think about what happens
with firewalls, updates happentwice a year. Once in the fourth
of the fourth of July, onceduring the holidays.
Right? And why is that? Becauseyou have to bring the whole

(31:07):
system down. Well, you neverhave to do an upgrade because
what we have done is we'vecreated a mechanism to do
dynamic dual pathing. So versionone and version two can run-in
parallel.
You see that version two isworking exactly the way that you
want it to work. Nothing isbreaking. And then you make the
version two, which is in theshadow path become the primary
and make the primary the shadowpath. And before you know it,

(31:28):
what you've done is createdsomething completely magical
where the infrastructure isconstantly updated, and you
don't have to do anything aboutit. The infrastructure is
constantly patched, and theinterest infrastructure is
autonomously segmented.
And if you can do this, itsolves massive challenges

(31:49):
because what we've done is gonefrom a monolithic architecture
to a hyper distributedarchitecture where we baked
security into the fabric of thenetwork. And this is what, you
know, like, the I mean, we're aninfrastructure company. Look.
What we do is we do the plumbingso well so the customers don't
have to think about it, andthat's what we've done here.

Sid Trivedi (32:07):
I wanna talk about the broader competitive
landscape in cyber. And maybe,you know, let me let me
highlight at least how I thinkof the landscape and you feel
free to correct me or or debatewith me. I think there's one
group, which are the more kindof multi subsector enterprise
software companies. And thereyou would put Microsoft or
Google or Cisco who are doing awhole bunch of things. Security

(32:28):
is one of them.
Then you kind of have theincumbent public exactly. Pure
play public cybersecuritycompanies, the Palo Alto
Networks, the Zscalers of theworld. Then you have kind of the
high growth privatecybersecurity companies. Here, I
would put Wiz or Cato Networksin that bucket. And then the
last is obviously the pure playcybersecurity startups, the very

(32:49):
early stage folks who are kindof breaking out of the ball.
When you look at that broadermarket, I'm curious, Jitu, how
do you think of those differentplayers? Even if we zoom out of
just Cisco, what do you thinkeach of these groups is is the
best at doing in theirsubsegments?

Jeetu Patel (33:04):
Yeah. I think so. Like, I think, by the way, all
these companies that you talkedabout, we've got some very, very
big brains working on security.Like, I personally, you know, a
lot of these people are friendsof mine who are CEOs of these
companies. And they're very,very smart people.
You know? And so I have a lot ofrespect for Nikesh. I have a lot
of respect for George Kurtz. Ihave a lot of respect for Tomer.

(33:26):
I have a lot of respect for, youknow, of course, Satya, who
doesn't, with what he's donewith Microsoft.
Like, all these people have donea phenomenal job of building
amazing franchises. And I thinkwhat's happening is there's
gonna be a few companies, ahandful of companies that'll be
platform companies in security.I think Microsoft will be one of

(33:46):
them. I think Cisco will be oneof them. I think Palo Alto will
be one of them.
Each one of us will have a verydifferent vantage point and a
unique proposition that we canbring to the table. And then
there's gonna be some thingswhere all of us kinda say the
same thing, but the proof's inthe pudding and who does a
better job. You know? So I thinkeveryone will say, we're really
good at AI. I think you have tokinda take a look at what we're

(34:08):
doing, each one of us are doingin there, and make the decision
yourself.
And that doesn't mean that it'sa zero sum game either. I feel
like what's gonna happen is mostorganizations want to have a
multi vendor strategy becausethey don't wanna have just one
vendor in security, but they'llat least have a couple. But you
need to make sure that you havea platform play. I think gone
are the days where you're gonnahave 50 to 70 vendors. I think

(34:31):
that just simply does not work.
And then what you have is thestartups that I believe are
gonna work very closely with theplatform players and integrate
with the platform players overtime. So what I would assume, if
we execute what we say we'regonna do, over time, our
platform, our management plane,our data plane, which are the

(34:52):
two big elements of theplatform, will be ones that
third parties will be able tointegrate into. Right? And so if
you're building a cybersecuritystartup, maybe you don't need to
build a management plan. Maybeyou can actually just plug into
Cisco's management plan.
That would be great. Maybe youdon't need to build a data plan.
We could actually make sure thatwe provide you with a mechanism
to go use Splunk, and you canactually use that that data

(35:13):
plane as effectively as youneed. And so those are the kind
of things that I think willevolve in the market. But I
personally don't see any ofthese companies that you
highlighted, Microsoft, Google,Amazon, Cisco, Palo Alto,
CrowdStrike.
None of these are gonna go away.They're all gonna do well, but I
think the composition of thekind of role they'll play will
change where there's gonna be ahandful of platforms. I know for

(35:36):
a fact Cisco will be one ofthose, and then there'll be a
couple others, but it's notgonna be a dozen. It's not gonna
be 50. It just is not tenable tohave that many.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (35:45):
Jeetu, switching gears a little bit
towards, I know, how founderscan benefit from some of your
insights. You have a veryinteresting rubric of six
different parameters that youhave talked about, you know,
timing, market, and so on. Nowthe most fascinating part that I
got out of, that rubric when Ifirst heard it was how you help

(36:09):
prioritize those six in acertain order. Because, look,
everybody's talked about thosepieces, but the way you set it
up and prioritize them is a veryunique way. Can you share with
our audience first the priorityof those?
And then the second question is,how did he even come up with
that logic?

Jeetu Patel (36:26):
Way too much time on my hands sometimes in the
evenings. So but no. It's, I'veactually studied this one, and
it originated from a post thatMark and Rayston had written a
while ago. And, but I didn'tfeel like it was fully complete.
And so then I kept iterating onit because I wanted to make sure
that my team understood this aswe're going through it.
So let me give you the sixthings that I think are

(36:48):
important. So I think that theseare six things that a company
must do to be a great company.They're in descending order of
importance. But if you don'thave all six, you don't mind.
Right?
And so the first one is, likeyou said, Mahindra, it's timing.
And, a lot of great productswere built at the wrong time,
never saw light of the day.Right? Apple was not the first
company that built the tablet,but they're the ones that

(37:10):
actually hit the timing right.The technology was right.
That's why they were able to besuccessful. So timing is number
one. You don't control timing.Number two is market. And what I
mean by market is you have to beable to address.
You have to be able to have avery large market available to
you that you can actually biteoff one bite at a time. You

(37:31):
don't have to go attack the fullmarket all at once. Right? So
number two is market. Numberthree is team.
Oftentimes, people will debateme saying, team is more
important than market, Jason. Isay absolutely not because you
have a great market with amediocre team, the market pulls
you up. You have a shitty marketwith a great team, the market
drags you down. Market alwayswins. You know?

(37:53):
So I think team is number three.And what I mean by team is you
have to have a team that cancomplement each other. Everyone
being a Michael Jordan in abasketball team would not create
a great team. You need to have arounded team so that they can
complement each other. Numberfour then is product, which I
always think is the soul of thecompany, is product.
Right? Number five is brand. Oneof my mentors had told me one

(38:17):
time, g two, don't ever go to acompany where you've they've
lost the brand mojo because it'svery hard to resurrect back. You
know, it's do you think Sybaseis ever coming back? Zero
chance.
Right? But but it's okay if theproduct is broken because you
can go fix that. But don't go toa company where the brand is is
completely dead. And number sixis distribution. Just because

(38:38):
you build it doesn't mean theycome.
You have to build it and get itthrough your distribution
channel to the right buyers ifyou're selling into the
enterprise because that distrois really important. So timing
trumps market. Market trumpsteam. Team trumps product.
Product trumps brand.
Brand trumps distribution. Youdon't have all six seed on
written. And it's a good way fora company to keep themselves in

(39:01):
check. How many of these are wegood at? How many of these are
we great at?
And how many of these are weexceptional at? And what would
it take for us to be exceptionalat all six? Because that's when
greatness starts to happen. Andby the way, it's not easy.

Ross Haleliuk (39:18):
So talking about distribution, it's well known in
the industry that Cisco's truesuperpower is precisely its
distribution channel. And,obviously, every founder wants
to get access to this advantage.What do founders need to do to
win your attention?

Jeetu Patel (39:32):
So I actually don't think I mean, Cisco has a great
distribution, but I think ourtrue superpower is we actually
take very deep, hardinfrastructure problems, and
we're able to solve them veryelegantly. And that is the true
superpower. You know? For awhile there, we had lost and
forgotten that that was our truesuperpower. And I think we are

(39:54):
kind of we are right back wherewe need to be on that front.
But I think buildingtechnologies that are really
hard with true kind oftechnology differentiation is
one of the things that we dowell. But what we do as very
well as well is distribution.You know, we've got a lot of
great salespeople that can goout and take a product to the
market in a very rapid, andthey're competitive, and they're

(40:14):
great, and they're they're verythoughtful. And and in my mind,
how you have to think aboutthis, if you're a founder.
Right?
Let's say that you're a founderwho's cup doing a single product
company. In a single productcompany, what you have to worry
about is, did you get to productmarket fit before you ran out of
money? Phase one. Phase two, didyou get to go to market fit

(40:37):
where you can now, in arepeatable way, sell the same
product over and over again tothe same title? And have you
created a repeatable opportunitycreation motion?
It's very important to create arepeatable opportunity creation
motion. What I mean by that is Iwanna be able to create an
opportunity after opportunityafter opportunity in Salesforce

(40:57):
that I'm logging in over andover again with the same titles.
Because what that does, it showsrepeatability. And the name of
the game in sales isrepeatability. You wanna be
creative on the product front.
You don't wanna be creative inin sales, it's repeatability.
Just keep getting the enginecranking over and over again.
Can you go to the same person,the same value prop, and get the

(41:17):
same level of seductiveness fora very large group of people?
You would. Right?
So that's phase number two.Phase number three is only after
you've had phase one and two, doyou invest in scale. If you
prematurely invest in scale,you're just throwing money down
a drain. There's no point doingit. Lot of times, founders will
think they have product marketfit when they don't.

(41:38):
And product market fit basicallytells you that, is the user
coming back to my product overand over again? And when they
come back, are they gettingtheir problem solved over and
over again? And do they love theproduct every single time they
use it? That's product marketfit. Right?
It becomes a habit over time.Then you get to go to market fit
where are we able to sell to thesame titles over and over again

(42:01):
and create opportunity? And thenthree, now once you've got the
first two, you invest in scale.So that's the first let's say
that I'm a I'm a start up. Ibuilt the first product.
Those are the three phases I gothrough. Great. Everything
worked out well in those threephases. I got to a hundred
million dollars in ARR. Awesome.
What do I do next? The boardsays, hey. You know what? You
need to become a multi productcompany. You can't be a single

(42:21):
product company anymore.
You know? Lightspeed Ventureswill come in and say, I need to
make sure that we're doing somesome more multiproduct kind of
work. And so what do you donext? You start building a
second product. What's thebiggest mistake people make when
they build a second product?
They don't keep in mind theroute to market that they had
available that they haveperfected with the first

(42:42):
product. So if I've got a routeto market to selling to a
certain persona in a certainband of a company for a certain
economic buyer, And then I builda second product, which has
nothing to do with the firstproduct. That's completely
different because I've read toomany TechCrunch articles. And
all of a sudden, I'm findingthat, you know what? This is the
big trend, so I'm gonna go overhere.
And you don't pay attention toyour distribution available. You

(43:04):
don't pay attention to yourroute to market. You will build
a product which requires anentirely different Salesforce,
which means it should have beena start up by itself. It should
have not been part of thecompany being a second product
because there's only so manyroutes to market that any
company can actually go out andcapitalize and be really, really
good at. You cannot be good at15 different routes to market.

(43:26):
You would fail. Right? And sothe second product and the third
product and the fourth product,why is Workday so successful?
Because every single one oftheir products takes advantage
of their existing route tomarket that they have. You know?
They don't just go out after theshiny toy because they heard
about something that was greatthat's, you know, growing really
fast. It's okay to go aftermarkets that are growing fast as

(43:47):
long as you have permission toplay in that market. And I think
the thing that gets most ignoredby startup founders is they
forget where they havepermission to play and where
they don't have permission toplay. The other thing that
actually gets forgottensometimes is a startup founder
will this is where startups arebetter than large companies.
Large companies suck at this.
The startups are much better atit. A startup I was I was

(44:08):
having, you know, dinner withJyoti Bansal last night. He's a
great friend of mine. He runsharness. He actually founded
AppTee.
You know, he has multipledifferent teams building
products. Right? And that'sgreat. But you know the beauty
about this is the start ups thatare really good is when
something works, you double downon that. What large companies
are good at is not placing thebets and taking risk.

(44:31):
What they're not good at is whensomething works, they don't
double down on it. They keephedging. And hedging is not
always good. And so in my mind,what you have to think about
when you're building a companyfor durability is you have to
first make sure that yourproduct is saturating all
markets, all segments in theright way, and you built the
right market right product forthe right market, right segment

(44:51):
that you and you're very clearabout where you're gonna be good
and where you're not gonna begood. Right?
And when you get your secondproduct and third product and
fourth product, like what we haddone at Box, we had to be very
clear about which route tomarket do I have available. And
am I selling my products intothat route to market? And am I
leveraging the platform that mycompany has rather than me going

(45:13):
up and building a bunch ofindependently standing products
for different markets indifferent areas? Because then
you would rather be a startuprather than being part of that
company. And that is somethingthat founders have to really
internalize as they go throughit.

Sid Trivedi (45:29):
Cheetu, you know, I've been investing and building
start ups on the security and ITside for the last twelve years.
And every single time, there's aconversation about acquisition.
Cisco guaranteed will either bethe first company that's
mentioned or the second company.Just guaranteed. Whether that's
by the founder, a board member,an operator, an adviser.

(45:49):
So I think probably the thequestion that most of our
listeners will be mostinterested in hearing is this
one, which is just how does thisacquisition machine work? Are
you proactive? Are you reactive?What are the criteria you're
thinking about? How shouldfounders even be engaging with
Cisco's acquisition teams?
So what's the inner workings?Give us some insight there.

Jeetu Patel (46:08):
It's actually not as complicated as people might
think. We used to be in themental model where all we would
think about when we went to thenew market was buying something.
I hope I have actually played apart in killing that notion. We
are builders, not buyers. Okay?
So I wanna build great products.However, we have a great balance
sheet. Every once in a while, ifwe find someone else who can

(46:32):
accelerate where we wanna getto, and it's a great team with a
great culture fit, with a greateither product or tech talent,
with a strategic fit in thecompany and our strategy, and it
is something that is reasonableprice wise, where we can
actually feel like it's areasonable price for us to pay
for that asset, then we willactually not be shy in going out

(46:54):
and deploying our balance sheet.But our strategy is not to go
out and buy companies. Ourstrategy is to build a very
deliberate set of capabilitiesand products and platforms.
And if that can be acceleratedby someone else, then we do it.
For example, we just launched aproduct in AI, safety and
security called AI defense.Hopefully, many of you saw the

(47:14):
event that we we had hosted. AIdefense is a product. It was
something that we were underwayon.
About a year ago, the team hadcome over to my home. We sat
down and stayed up until, like,late at night, and we decided
that this is what we're gonnado. That night, they went home
by 1AM. I think they left myplace at, like, nine, nine
thirty. By 1AM, they actuallyhad a presentation for me that

(47:35):
said, this is what we talkedabout.
Here's what we're gonna build.By 6AM, I ratified that
presentation, and then we builtbuilt the thing in nine months.
In between there, though, weacquired a company called Robust
Intelligence. RobustIntelligence gave us things that
we would have actually takenmuch longer to build, and it
gave us an accelerant so that wecould get that thing built. And
we were completely okay withgoing out and buying it, and the

(47:57):
cofounder, your own, is great.
In fact, the guy that's runningAI defense was a guy named DJ
Sampath, who actually wasanother company that we acquired
from a company called Armorblox.And these CEOs, what we what I
look for is, are the CEOs goodculture fits? And is the team a
good culture fit for Cisco?Because I don't want them to
just sell the company and moveon. I want them to actually be

(48:19):
part of the Cisco mission, and Idon't want them to feel like I
need to protect my thing that Isold to you.
I want them to take on a largermission to make Cisco a very
meaningful entity in the future.So DJ's mission is not to go out
and make armor blocks great atCisco. DJ's mission is to make

(48:40):
Cisco great at AI. Right? Andand that's what he does.
And he then advocated foracquiring robust intelligence.
And Yaron, who's the CEO overthere, his mission is to help DJ
making sure that we make Ciscothe best AI company that there
is in cybersecurity. And that,in my mind, is the way that it

(49:01):
it works is the secret sauce is,is there a culture fit? Do you
have grit? And by the way, it'svery hard to fake this thing.
Right? Like, when you come in,don't fake it. It's not good for
you. It's not good for usbecause we are sophisticated
enough to go out and give you apackage where you're not gonna
be able to just leave. You won'tmake money if you don't stay for
a while because we're buyingpeople.

(49:22):
We're not buying bits and bytes.Software is a bunch bunch of
people. Right? We're buyingpeople. So what we wanna do is
make sure that when people comein, that they actually have a
commitment to stay for a while.
And when they stay for a while,they're what they want out of
this is to become a veryseasoned executive. So the next
time they become a CEO, theycould be a CEO of a larger,

(49:43):
bigger, better company. Andthat's what I think I can offer
them. Right? And I have doneabout 15 acquisitions so far.
Majority of the CEOs, I had onethat I actually had a really
sour taste in my mouth that Iwill never hire again, and I
will never invest in again. Butother than that, most of them,
class act people. Right? Andthey worked with us for a while.

(50:05):
Some of them retired over here.
What our CTO right now was anacquisition. When he sold the
company, he thought he was gonnastay for a year. Twenty two
years later, he's still here.Right? And so those are the kind
of things that we wanna do is wewanna bring people in and then
make sure that they can flourishat Cisco so that, ideally, they
could do their life's best workover here.
Now, by the way, it's not allthe better roses. Cisco does a

(50:28):
lot of stupid shit, and wesometimes can suck the energy
out of someone because of someof those things that we do. And
we have to make sure that theway in which we structure that
deal is that we we insulate thefounders from that. Because if
you take 90% of the time thatthe founder has to deal with
that, they will leave. Right?
So we have to insulate thefounders from that madness. But

(50:51):
we have to make sure that thefounder also knows that 10 to
20% of the time, you're gonnahave to deal with some of that
stuff because it's a largecompany. There'll be some of
that tax that you have to pay.And so it's just a different
mental model and a mindset. Thething that you have to think
about is one of my good friendshad told me one time, working at
a start up is like working in ain a treadmill.
You're moving really, really,really fast, but there might be

(51:11):
a lot of motion, but there mightnot be as much, you know, kind
of distance that you cover withthat motion. In a large company,
it feels like you're moving alittle slower. But, man, when
something moves, the entireworld starts noticing and
everything changes. But you haveto be patient, so it's a
different muscle you have toexercise. Now what I'm trying to
do is we're trying to make surethat we operate at speed with

(51:33):
scale.
So don't make it feel like it'sgoing so slow. Move faster, but
make sure that you also keep inmind the scale dimension of it.
Because there is an impact ofscale. Like, if you have a fun
team of seven people, you justhuddle all of them together. If
you have a team of 30,000people, you can't just huddle
them together.
You know, it takes a little bitmore production. It takes a

(51:55):
little bit more thinking on howyou're gonna convey something to
them. But that's a good skill tolearn on how to operate at
scale. And what I would tellfounders is if there's a match
between Cisco and you and youcome here, come here wanting to
learn that because you willbecome a better leader. You will
become a better executive whenyou go leave Cisco and go
someplace else.
The people that have come toCisco, having sold a company,

(52:18):
work here for a while and thenhave left. I've built very, very
successful businesses that theywould have not been able to
build had they not had the Ciscoexperience.

Sid Trivedi (52:25):
We're coming towards the end of our
conversation, so we're gonnaclose it out with a few closing
questions. And maybe the firstone is you mentioned a whole
bunch of folks that that you'veinteracted with, that you worked
for, that you worked with. Folkslike Chuck Robbins, the CEO of
Cisco, and Aaron Levy, the CEOand cofounder of Box, Jyoti
Bansal, who you had dinner withyesterday. There's this Wall

(52:47):
Street Journal article thatdescribes your personal board of
directors. Could you talk alittle bit about what is a
personal board and why shouldpeople create one?
Is it important for founders tohave something like this?

Jeetu Patel (52:58):
So this idea of a person board is a very important
idea. What ends up happening asyou get more and more what the
world deems as success is youget a lot of people around you
that start telling you what youwanna hear. And that's the
beginning of the end if youstart believing that stuff. You
know? And so what you need to dois you need to surround yourself

(53:18):
with people that know you wellenough, that really care about
your success, but that willnever bullshit you.
And, I have a person in my life,Jesse, who is, who is my SVP of
operations. I literally nevertake a job without her. Don't
take a job. It's a it's a rule.Because I would be not even half

(53:41):
as successful if she wasn't bymy side.
She is so good at what she does,and it is so different from what
I am good at that thecombination of the two of us
makes for a very, very goodoutcome. Right? And the beauty
about it is even though sheworks for me, I think of her as
one of my mentors. And so shewill coach me on things. She

(54:01):
will tell me, Jeetu, you suck tobe here.
This was not your best work. Youneeded to do better here. You
need to make sure that this isan area that you never make this
mistake again. That is notacceptable. You did a really
good job over here, so don't betoo hard on yourself.
So she'll tell you that. Youknow, Aaron is another one that
I actually talked about in theWall Street Journal article. I I

(54:22):
left Box four and a half yearsago. We have dinner every six
weeks. Aaron, there's thisanother guy, Jeff Kweiser, who
was a cofounder of Box and me.
Every six weeks at Nobu, we sitdown, we have dinner. Right? And
we you know what we talk about?Just what's happening in the
market. We'll catch up for tenminutes on family, personal life
for everyone, and then remainderof the time is what is happening

(54:44):
in the market.
And it just energizes me. Like,he he is one of those guys
that's such a positive influencein my life because I laugh with
him. I think with him. I havesuch a great time with him. Thor
is the head of marketing atApple.
He's one of my very dearfriends. Anytime I have
something that needs radicalsimplification, he will just do
it. He's not a tech guy. He'sthe only guy I know in tech that

(55:06):
doesn't have a LinkedIn account.It's wild.
And I first time I told him,like, do you have a LinkedIn
account? He's like, what's that?He's head of marketing at Apple.
Right? But he is he is so goodat what he does.
All the commercials you see atApple and all the corporate
marketing you see, that comesfrom his team. And he is very,
very good at simplifying thingsand distilling it down. Jeremy
Burton was one of my formerbosses. You know, Rick Devinuti,

(55:28):
who was one of my prior coaches.Chuck, who I actually look to
for advice all the time, andhe's got so much wisdom in so
many areas.
I think all of these are kind ofgood people to surround yourself
with, and it's up to you to notkeep seeking compliments. It's
up to you to say, what am I notdoing well, and what would you
like me to see up my game in?And when you ask the question

(55:49):
that way, they will tell youwhat that is. And when they tell
you what that is, you have totake that seriously, and you
have to make sure that youactually, you know, do a much
better job at that. There werefew things in my first couple
years that I had made somemistakes with at at Cisco, and
Chuck had just told me one ortwo sentences.
You know, he's a man of fewwords. But, I think this one,
you could have done a little bitbetter. I took that. I

(56:10):
completely changed my approachbecause he was right. That was
not an area that I did as well.
And so I think you have tosurround yourself, and
especially if you're a CEO orsomeone in a senior level rank,
it gets lonely at the top. Yougot to have a group of people
that are just constantly rootingfor you, but are not gonna just
give you false flattery, whichis one of the most dangerous

(56:32):
things that you can actuallystart you you can get. And the
more successful you get, themore of those people there will
be around you. They might noteven consciously know they're
doing it. They're just enamoredwith you in the wrong way, and
you cannot take that seriouslybecause they might have seen
your public persona.
They might have not seen yourprivate persona. Like, I'm a
human being like everyone else.You know? I get sad. I get

(56:55):
happy.
I get anxious. I get I mean, youknow, if something happens to my
daughter, I'm a nervous wreck.And they know that about you,
and then they can make sure thatthey could so I think it's
important to make sure thatpeople around you keep you human
and remind you that you'rehuman, but you can do superhuman
takes. That's the personal boardof directors. You know, you
should have at least a half adozen of those in your life for

(57:16):
different things that you canreach out to whose only vested
interest is seeing you succeed.
And they don't have any jealousystreak with you. They don't
wanna compete with you. Theyjust wanna see you win. By the
way, it's hard to find that manypeople that actually genuinely
wanna see you win. Right?
And so find those people andcherish them and nurture them.

Ross Haleliuk (57:35):
Jitu, with my roots in Europe, I'm curious
about how Cisco is navigatingthe geopolitical situations. We
live in an interesting times andbusiness is under pressure, be
it with Russia, Ukraine, China,Taiwan, Israel, Gaza, or here at
home. How do you think the worldevents could impact technology
companies both this year andgoing into the future?

Jeetu Patel (57:57):
Look, I think, the political and geo strategic
landscape is no longer somethingthat is divorced from business.
It is actually something thatyou have to factor in into the
business decisions you make allthe time. And I do feel like,
you know, having a very strongpublic private partnership is
extremely important. You're notgonna always agree with every

(58:18):
policy of every government, butI think it's important to
actually initiate the dialogue.Because if you don't, because
you say I disagree with this,therefore, I'm not gonna
initiate the dialogue, there isno chance that's gonna get
better.
If you believe that's not good,particularly in the areas that
you don't agree with, if youdon't engage in a dialogue,
there's no good coming out ofit. You know? And, in my mind,

(58:40):
like, our business is so globalat this point. We do business in
so many countries that we haveto engage with government
leaders across in all thesecountries, whether it be India,
The Middle East, or Europe, orThe US, or South America,
anywhere. And I think the waythat I at least approach it is
it is a a deep curiosity tolearn their perspective and a

(59:04):
deep desire to expose to themyour perspective in an even
exchange so that you can bothwalk out of that that dialogue
smaller than what you had walkedin.
And then there are gonna becertain things that you just,
you know, kind of, you have to,you know, make a choice on at

(59:25):
some point because you're tryingI mean, we are working
eventually for our shareholders,and we wanna make sure that we
can actually have a we need tobuild great products that get to
massive adoption that attaincommercial relevance. That's the
goal. Right? And I feel likeit's not as complicated as I
thought it would be looking fromthe outside. Because you know
what?

(59:45):
Every person you talk to iseventually a human being. And
the moment you you respect theirculture and you respect the way
that they're operating, butunderstand that they're human
beings, and they will haveincentives, and you will have
incentives. And sometimes thoseincentives are different, but if
you can actually figure out away to converge the incentives
and find common ground and startfrom where the common ground is,

(01:00:06):
you will be better off. I thinkthat's just a good way to live
life. And that works in apersonal life.
That also works really well in,you know, kind of engaging with
people on, in the public sector.And I actually find that the
importance of public privatepartnership today is more
important than ever before.Regardless of whether you think
that more regulation is good orless regulation is good, there

(01:00:29):
should be more collaborationbetween public private
enterprises. Like, you shouldnot have less of that. You
should have more regardless ofwhat your perspective is.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (01:00:36):
On behalf of our audience, we wanna
sincerely thank you, Jeetu, fortaking the time to share the
inside the network view atCisco. You joined this company
amidst COVID and have infectedit with a startup like
entrepreneurial energy,Rebuilding Webex with over 1,500
features in nine months is a nontrivial example that shows how

(01:00:59):
you can, in record time,galvanize the troops at this 40
year old giant. Our audiencewill have a much better
understanding of partnering withCisco. Then as you reminded
them, founders shouldn't sell toCisco to rest while staring at
their golden handcuffs, butrather come and build new global
scale businesses that can servea million customers worldwide.

(01:01:24):
Thank you, Jeetu.
On behalf of our founderscommunity, we wish you the very
best for the road ahead.

Jeetu Patel (01:01:30):
Thank you for having me on the show, and, you
know, I think the founders aredoing a very important job. So
engage with me on LinkedIn andTwitter, and, there's any way
that I can help? I wanna see avibrant startup ecosystem that's
good for our country. It's goodfor the world.

Sid Trivedi (01:01:44):
Thank you for joining us Inside the Network.

Ross Haleliuk (01:01:47):
If you like this episode, please leave us a
review and share it with others.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (01:01:52):
If you really, really liked it and you
have some feedback for us, wrapit on a bottle of Yamazaki and
send it to me first.

Sid Trivedi (01:02:02):
No. Don't do that. Mahendra gets too many gifts
already. Please reach out byemail or LinkedIn.