20VC: Evernote CEO on Why You Play For The Front of Your Jersey Not The Back, Why Success Is A Team Sport & Why Leadership Should Accept The Negative Consequences In All Situations
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2017
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Chris O'Neill is the CEO @ Evernote, the productivity powerhouse allowing millions of users around the world to remember everything. They have raised over $160m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Sequoia Capital. As for Chris, prior to Evernote, he spent over 10 years at Google including roles as Managing Director of Google Canada and global business operations at Google X. Whilst at Google Chris saw the hyper growth of the company from startup t a global behemoth.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Chris made his way into startups and came to be CEO @ Evernote?
2.) Chris has previously said 'the team you build is the culture you build'. How does Chris look to build high-performance teams that can scale differing stages of company growth? Are individuals destined to fit one stage of company growth?
3.) How does Chris look to balance the immediacy of short terms actions and events with the grander vision and longer term in mind? What are the challenges? What strategies can be done to ensure both short and long term goals are addressed?
4.) How does Chris approach product line expansion? When is the right time and reason to expand the product line? How can this be communicated and executed across the broader team?
5.) Chris has previously said he 'learned more from sport than he did from school'. What were Chris major takeaways from sport? How can they be applied to business and his role @ Evernote today?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Chris’ Fave Book: A Prayer For Owen Meaney, Zone to Win
Chris’ Fave Blog: Benedict Evans
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Chris on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VC in this very special episode of Founders Friday with me, |
| 0:04.1 | your host, Harry Stebbings, found on the old Snapchat at H. Debbings with two bees. It would be |
| 0:08.6 | fantastic to see you there. But to the show today, and I'm thrilled to welcome Chris O'Neill to |
| 0:12.4 | the hot seat. Now, Chris is the CEO at Evernote, the productivity powerhouse, allowing |
| 0:17.1 | millions of users around the world to remember everything, and they've raised over $160 million in VC funding from some of the very best in the business, including the |
| 0:25.1 | lights of Sequoia Capital. As for Chris, prior to Evernote, he spent over 10 years at Google, |
| 0:29.6 | including roles as managing director of Google Canada and global business operations at Google X. |
| 0:34.5 | Whilst at Google, Chris saw the hypergrowth of the company, from startup to a global |
| 0:38.3 | behemoth. I do also want to say a massive thank you to the wonderful Jason Lankin for the kind intro to |
| 0:42.9 | Chris today, without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we head into the |
| 0:46.9 | episode today, a lot of people ask me, Harry, you do so many calls and interviews, but what do you use? |
| 0:52.2 | My response? Zoom. The number one video and web |
| 0:55.2 | conferencing service providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to an array of |
| 1:00.0 | activities, including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration enabled conference rooms, |
| 1:05.3 | and business I am, just to name a few. And it's the easiest solution to use, buy and |
| 1:09.7 | scale, and for sure the most |
| 1:11.1 | straightforward pricing. But hey, don't take my word for it. Their partnership with Sequoy |
| 1:15.3 | and their latest 100 million funding around says it all. Zoom really is a must check out for |
| 1:19.4 | your business. I cannot emphasize that enough. And you can find them at zoom.us. Speaking of video, |
| 1:24.3 | though, to power your company there with Zoom, you must check out VoodDit. |
| 1:28.1 | Vood It is a free video recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power |
| 1:32.7 | of video for personalized communications. |
... |
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