YouTube's Susan Wojcicki: How to find – and keep – true north
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you scale at warp speed, it’s easy to lose your bearings. You have to establish your company’s true north, or the dizzying pace of growth will push you off course. No one knows this better than Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube. Under her leadership, YouTube has grown to be the world’s largest video platform. And in her previous role at Google, she was a chief architect of its advertising and analytics model. In both roles, she achieved massive scale – and grappled with massive challenges. Susan shares the guiding principles that help them stay the course – as well as stories from Google’s early years that you’ll hear first here. Cameo appearances: Dr. Becky Smethurst (astrophysicist, Oxford), Shishir Mehrotra (Coda, Google, YouTube).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:33.0 | Hi listeners, Reed here. |
| 0:36.0 | We're going to start today's episode with a visualization exercise. So sit back, relax and open your mind to the sound I'm about to play for you. |
| 0:45.0 | So sit back, relax, and open your mind to the sound I'm about to play for you. |
| 0:55.0 | Ready? |
| 0:57.0 | If those three notes made you picture the grainy image of a prairie dog turning suddenly |
| 1:07.4 | to eyeball the camera, then you were probably one of the millions of people to have seen the |
| 1:11.8 | video Dramatic TripMunk. |
| 1:14.0 | That video was first uploaded to YouTube in 2007. |
| 1:27.0 | YouTube was only two years old at the time, but it was already averaging over 100 million views a day. |
| 1:30.0 | It gave us new celebrities. |
| 1:33.0 | What's up guys, this is Justin Peber, |
| 1:37.0 | to Justin Peber, |
| 1:38.0 | new catch phrases. |
| 1:40.0 | Hard it be Ninja is a DVD for you. |
| 1:42.6 | I feel funny. |
| 1:45.6 | Why is this happening to? |
| 1:48.6 | Had your kids, had your wife. |
... |
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