Nike CEO John Donahoe | The Next Play

Hi everyone. Welcome to Gray Matter, the podcast from Greylock, where we share stories from company builders and business leaders. I'm Heather Mack, Head of Editorial at Greylock. On today's episode, Greylock General Partner Reid Hoffman interviews John Donahoe, who is the President and CEO of Nike. John leads the iconic Nike brand as well as the company's global business portfolio. Since Joining Nike in 2020, one of John's major initiatives has been the digital transformation of the historically in person retailer. This discussion is part of Greylock's iconversation Speaker series. You can watch the video from this interview on our YouTube channel and you can read a transcript on the content section of our website@greylock.com greymatter if you aren't already a subscriber, you can sign up for Gray Matter podcasts on Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi everyone, welcome to By Conversations. I'm Reid Hoffman, General Partner here at Greylock. Joining us today is John Donahoe, the President and CEO of Nike. As a four time CEO, John is well known for leading organizations in the wave after wave of innovation and his time at Nike is no different. Since joining Nike in 2020, John has pushed for digital transformation across every aspect of the company's business. The historically in person retailer has embraced numerous new technologies to better understand its massive and growing consum base in the digital realm. This includes the increasing use of data science and digital tools to push the boundaries of product design and adding increasingly sophisticated features to its popular apps. Last year, Nike entered into the next level of the digital world with the launch of Nike Land on Roblox, the acquisition of RTF KT and the creation of Nike Virtual Studios. As of March, nearly 7 million people had visited Nike Land on Roblox, and Nike also expects to reach a 50% digital mix of its business by 2025. Prior to Nike, John was President and CEO for ServiceNow and eBay and he continues to serve as Chairman of the board at PayPal. Early in his career, he worked for Bain & Co. For almost 20 years, becoming the firm's CEO in 1999. I've also had the extreme pleasure of working with John in various capacities and have been consistently impressed with his keen ability to both foresee and lead tech transformations. Thanks as always John for joining us. Welcome.

Thanks Reed. Great to see you.

So let's start off by putting your role as CEO of Nike in context. Nike is one of the most recognized businesses in the entire world. It's been true for decades. Companies maintain that stature through Numerous social, cultural, economic, political shifts, market shifts, globalization, the whole thing. That was especially true when you joined the company in January 2020. What did you come into the role thinking? And where does that stand today? A little more than two years later.

When Phil Knight and Mark Parker called me, I'd been on the board for six years and called me and asked if I'd consider being CEO, I had to kind of reflect on why would I want to do this. And what became really clear to me, and you'll relate to this, you and I have talked about this so many times, is that the world is more polarized than any time in my adult life. Right. Polarization is in. Politically, I hate it. It's antithetical to everything I believe in. And if you think about it, sport is one of the few things that still brings people together. Sport brings people together within countries. Sport brings people together across nations. Think the Olympics or the World Cup. Sport is the ultimate diversity and inclusion playing field, right? If you can play, you can play. It doesn't matter the color of your skin, your background, your height, your weight, whatever. And perhaps most importantly, in this day and age, in sport, you have a civil set of rules that you play by. You can hate your arch rival, you can hate your opponent, but you play by a civil set of rules. And at the end of the game, you. You shake hands. And so as I reflected on it, Reid, I feel like the world needs sport more than ever before. In many ways, Nike is sport. Nike is synonymous with sport. You know, our purpose as a company is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete. An athlete asterisk. And the asterisk is if you have a body, you are an athlete in the world. And so over the last couple years, throughout all the. All the chaos and upheaval, that's what we've tried to do. So during the dark moments of COVID you remember, our brand campaigns were all bringing hope and inspiration to people. Whether it was sharing people working out in their homes on Nike Train club, or that you can't stop us, you can't stop sport campaign or even the Drake, the Drake ad when Drake was out in our campus, or through racial justice and mental health, we've tried to be a voice that brings hope and inspiration through a lens of sport. I'm so impressed by how much Nike takes that purpose seriously, takes that responsibility seriously. And it's sort of what gets me out of bed every morning.

You know, if you were to draw some kind of straight lines from sport into like a hope for a kind of cultural refresh, whether it's in some more unity, whether it's the US or whether it's globally. Obviously, we're living these. Not just pandemic, but we've got such massive tragedies as the Ukraine. What would be some of the things that you would think sport could help there? And then part of that, the Nike as it were, jumping ahead, running ahead. I'm deliberately punning, what would that lens be?

First of all, it brings people together. Although they're rivals on the court, they get to know each other as humans. The labels create a certain sense of polarization and difference. And when we understand we're all humans first, and then we have our different experiences, backgrounds. And so sport forces people to come together, whether it's at the Olympics, whether it's in a global football match, or whether it's a tennis match. And so I think it's a really important platform. There are very few platforms that are bringing people together anymore. And so. And we. We feel that strongly now. There's a variety of other things around. Sport does youth movement, youth activity, it makes healthier lifestyles. There's all sorts of things. But on this. On this global geopolitical lens, in a. In a bizarre way, I think sport is one of the few institutions that has. Has hope of making people remember they've got that commonality called humanity and a love for the sport.

Absolutely. Well, we'll come back to much more about Nike, all kinds of interesting things. But let's start with the background that got you there in the first place. What were your earliest career interests?

Well, you know, I can think about early influences in my life that had an impact on my career, although I didn't know it at the time. You know, and the first is my father. You know, our parents mean so much to us. Right. And my father had a much bigger impact on me than I knew at the time. And there were two things about my father that I remember so clearly. One was, my father never had the word I in his vocabulary. It was always about we. It was always about asking questions about others. He always kept the attention of other people. You know, hey, Reid, how you doing? What's going on? Tell me more about. And I used to. I used to watch people respond to him by that interest. It was never about him. And, you know, I later learned the term servant leadership, which is sort of what's been a real organizing principle and aspiration of my life. And I didn't think of my dad as a leader or as a role model, but he Had a profound impact on those things. And then a second person was my high school basketball coach. I went to a big high school outside Chicago called Nutrier. Real powerhouse basketball program, great head coach. And I learned so much from him by the impact he had on me because he got so much out of me. He communicated really high expectations. And at the same time, he believed in me almost more than I believed in myself. He saw things in me that I didn't even see in myself, and that motivated me. And then he had this amazing ability to get our team to come together and buy into being a team, by the way, including being really honest with each other, including having the tough conversation like, hey, you just got beat baseline. I covered for you this time. Next time, don't let your man beat your baseline. And so at that stage, I said, I want to be a coach. I want to be a head coach. And so early in my career, the notion of servant leader. You serve your purpose, you serve the consumer, you serve your employees. You serve the communities in which you operate. And then, ironically, my early role models were all head coaches. Phil Jackson in the 80s and 90s, Coach K. Coach Thompson, who was on the Nike board with me. Tara, I got to know when I was at Stanford. And so I've always understood what I like to do is be the head coach. I like getting players who are far better than I am, getting to buy into a direction and a goal, and then coaching, encouraging and helping them be better. I didn't even think of it as, oh, I want to be a leader. I want to be a coach.

Given that we've worked together in a variety of contexts, I've gotten to see that bring out the best in people, aspire to, you know, kind of amazing performance as part of, you know, kind of as part of how you interface with people. I mean, young entrepreneurs, you know, stuff that you were setting up. Let's go on that context to the basis of some of the most important lessons that you've learned from mentors, coaches, and then which of those do you kind of pass along? Which of those do you develop? What are like, the kind of, as it were, the high lines of the coaching mentoring playbook, both in your experience of interfacing with people and then also.

How you're playing well, you know, Rita, I've been.

I feel like I've been blessed because.

I've had so many mentors, so many lessons I've learned. My dad was a mentor. My high school basketball coach was a mentor. In a funny way, it never ends. I'LL just pick an example with Coach K, who I've gotten to know and is one of my real heroes. First time I met Coach K was about five years ago as a servicenow. He was coming to give a talk at our customer event and he and I were gonna do a fireside and he said, I want to meet you ahead of time. So I get to know the audience. And so I'm in a conference room and he walks in and he's texting on his phone. He looks up and he says, go figure. He said, think about my life. I spend my time, I spend my life recruiting 16 and 17 year old boys to come to Duke increasingly for one year, then they leave. So I have to understand how that 15 year old boy thinks, what music they like, how they communicate. He said, I've had to reinvent myself 10 times in the last 20 years. He said I'm texting right now at the number one sophomore high school in the country. And the kid doesn't use words, he only uses emojis. He said, I didn't even know what an emoji was two weeks ago, but my granddaughter taught me, look at this. We're just doing emojis. And I'm sitting here thinking here this guy is five time NCAA champion, four time Olympic gold medal winner, three time USA basketball champion, the greatest college basketball coach in history. And here he's talking about himself, reinventing himself and staying vibrant, staying vital. He said to me, you know, when I sit down with the recruit, they don't care that I've won five NCAA titles, four Olympic gold medals and three USA championship. They only care about one thing, the next one we're going to win together. So I never talk about the past. I always look forward. A common friend of ours, Satya talks about growth, mindset and coach K, that sort of vitality that look forward continuous learning and growing. So that's one big lesson.

What are some of the key things that you think are about keeping that transformative of reinventing? Because that going to the future or the Wayne Gretzky since we're doing sport skating to where the puck is going to right? What are some of the key mental mindsets for that?

I think curiosity has to be at the top of the list. The biggest danger of success is you stop being curious and success the biggest risk is rapid success. I think that's true for any organization, any leader. It's human nature. And one of the things I learned early in my career, Reid at Bain always be outside in because I was never Part of a client organization. I had to understand things through the eyes of the customer, through the eyes of competitors, through the eyes of other stakeholders. And those are the cues of where the puck's going. The puck isn't made up inside a company. The puck is defined by where the consumer's going and wants to go. Where competitors or disruptors are coming up and giving different offerings, what's happening in the overall. So staying keeping a real outside in mindset is, I think, essential. It's also, to be honest, it's what allowed me to come into four different companies, or I guess I grew up in one and then have come into three different companies and I was not. I've never been an expert in what on day one that's forced me to have a rich and sharp understanding of how's the consumer thinking about us.

Yep, 100%. And you know, obviously part of the whole Bain and consulting background is it's a way of getting into the servant leadership. And I think it's one of the things that has made you so repetitively successful at being tapped as the next great leader to help bring this firm, you know, into the future and in, you know, taking what's great in it, but then continuing to amplify and adjust to what's new. So describe a little bit about that leadership in as much as it started with Bain and then kind of a little bit through you're jumping into these new organizations to help with the next leap forward, as it were.

I think again, some of the principles I learned that you have to learn in consulting, which is being outside in having a bias for change. You know, you aren't being hired, did not change. And so change is not threatening. It's what you do. And no one likes to change. Right. You know, change is just one a wonderful concept. Change is great for someone else or from a distance, I think change is great. But don't ask me to change my daily habits. Don't ask me to change me. None of us like change ourselves and then working through others. So I'll give you an example of how I've sort of tried to do it. So I've done the same thing at Nike. I did, frankly, when I joined ebay and joined ServiceNow, I stood actually in this very room and did a video for the entire company my first day and said I have one and only one priority. My first hundred days. I'm going to do 100 day listening and learning tour because I want so much that I need to learn. So I want to listen to you and I want to learn. I have three questions. One, what are two or three things we need to get right in the next 12 to 24 months? Two, what are a couple things that are our secret sauce and we need to preserve and maintain to be who we are? And three, what are two or three things we need to change so we can achieve what we need to get done? And please send me your thoughts on that. And then I had one on ones with 150 of our top leaders. I asked those three questions. I probably had 30 or 40 group, small group with high potential talent, small group sessions. So during COVID even it was I, I joined in January 2020. So the first seven weeks were non co the next second. And then on my 100th day I had, I had a thousand data points. At the end my 100th day, which was in April, I did a zoom and I said, let me just play back to you what you told me. You said these were the most important things we need to get right as a company over the next couple of years. In fact, I've listed five here. I had a one page word doc. You know what, I agree. Let's call those our priorities. Then you said, here's a few things that we need to preserve and maintain because they're the secret sauce of who we are. You have my commitment. And by the way, I could then describe those things because I've heard a thousand different people describe them. I could describe them with a vocabulary that was inside the culture because I'd heard the culture describe it. I said, you have my commitment to preserve those things and by that adds credibility. That's what we're going to try to change together. And so it was kind of outside in. It was their agenda, our agenda, not my agenda. It acknowledged what was unique about the culture, but it was all about the change we were going to try to drive forward together. That's sort of what we've been trying to do. I bring that one page word doc up quite frequently.

I think that's an awesome process. That's part of what makes you such a great leader and a coach of other leaders is that, you know, you're not saying, hey, the new sheriff's in town. This is the, this is the new thing. It's like, no, no, the amazing things are already within you. Let's discover them together and then recommit to them together. And it's that path forward. And I think that's a super important lesson. Where does that mix into sometimes? What are the hard choices? Like a little bit of the. With change, even though you want change for other people, not yourself, you know, when you get to the kind of friction points, what are the lenses, the ways of approaching some of the more gritty parts of it?

I think at the end of the day, that's the other part about leadership. The easy decisions are the decisions that are 80, 20, right? Yeah. The hard ones are 51, 49. There's a small number of those things. But. But at the end of the day, that's sort of. You don't get to be the head coach if you can't make a few of those key decisions. Lonely decisions on your own. Yep.

The 51, 49. And then, as you were saying, bring the team along. Explain it. They sometimes disagree, but commit and play as a team going forward.

It's a lesson I learned from a mentor of mine, Tom Tierney, and I try to emulate it, particularly in hard decisions. So on a hard decision, I get my team around the room. So we got to make this decision. Right. And there are arguments for it and there are arguments against it, or in some decisions, there's path A and there's path B. So let's talk about path A and path B. We have a conversation, and then I always try to end by saying I want to go around and ask each one of you for your thoughts or your input. And if you have a conversation where you legitimized, it's not an easy decision. You legitimized both sides of the argument. Go around the room and allow people to have different opinions, different perspectives, but everyone gets to be heard. And then say, do we agree we're better off going one way or another? All right, Having heard everyone, we're going to go path A. I want you to know path B, people, I heard you. And my job is to hear you and hear both sides. Now it's our job to get behind the decision. And so that going around the. You know, allowing both sides of the equation, not trying to sell it, allowing them to voice their points of view, but then say, we're going to move forward. And there's a difference between having input in a decision and the authority to make the decision. And being really clear about that. I learned that from Tom quite well. Yep.

Super important. And, you know, too often young, inexperienced, or misframed leaders just think, oh, we don't. Even though I've made a decision. So we don't need the communication. No, no. Communication is part of the. Is part of the trust and the connection of it, because it's like, look, you heard me, Great. Now let's do the play that you're calling, right, to elaborate. You know, one of the things that I also think is interesting is you've kind of worked at all scales of teams, right? It's not just like, you know, consulting practice at Bain, but also, you know, working with young startups, acquiring small startups and then integrating them in to huge like companies that are themselves like towns or cities. What are the principles of team building that apply regardless of company size or stage? And then how do the kind of the smaller tech companies also give some lens into interesting things at Nike?

Again, I think of the team building, I think of these coaches behind me. I think what coaches do. And I always try to ask myself, there's kind of why, what and how. Why questions are, why are we here? Why are we on this team? That's like purpose. And I think it's always important to get a team to get aligned around why are we here? And there's usually some pretty strong commonality around that, right? Different, even if you have different personalities, backgrounds, different beliefs of what should happen, get commonality on the why we're here to win a championship or we're here to make our purpose come to life, we're here and share that. And then that's again, that human connection I talked about earlier. The what is our strategy, right? What's our goal and what are our plays or strategies to get it done? And you can have debates around those. And by the way, strategies change based on the circumstance, right? Based on the time horizon, the competition, the whatever. And you can have different points of view on the what. But once we agree to the play we're going to run, we run it. The how is culture? That's the hardest part. It's how are we going to behave with one another? We may be aligned on why we're here, our purpose. We may more or less agree on our strategy or our direction, but how are we going to make that strategy come to life? How are we going to behave with one another? And that's culture. And you know, that's the hardest part. And that requires and great teams, great sports teams, great business teams, you've done this throughout your career. Establish a culture. And I talk about, for instance, one of the things I'm talking a lot about at Nike right now is what are the conversations great teams have in the locker room before the game and at halftime? Because we have a culture of consensus here. Everyone's polite with one another and I'm like, actually no, we're in the locker room right now. It's before the game. We gotta be in each other's face if that's needed. We gotta be saying what we think. We gotta be getting to the heart of the issue. What are the adjustments we need to make? Then when we go back out on the court, we're one team, we're highly aligned. And when we come back in at halftime, we're going to assess how we doing really honestly and directly with one another, even if that's a little messy. And then we're going to go back on the court and play as one team. You know, I'm sure many people in the audience saw the Last Dance. I thought the Last Dance, Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson was one of the greatest lessons in leadership and. And in the importance of teamwork ever. Because you remember the beginning of Last Dance, right? Pippin's feeling underappreciated. Rodman's just going spinning sideways, going crazy. Steve Kerr's just punched MJ in the mouth. MJ's pissed at all of them. And they're losing. Even though they'd won five rings already, they're losing. And that whole series about that season of how they had Storm Norman form their culture that year and what that took and how messy that was, you remember that my favorite scene was Phil Jackson coming in to a practice one day and saying to Rodman, damn it, Dennis, you're late for practice. This team, we have standards. You're late for practice. I'm finding you. By the way, I talked to MJ and Scotty, and we all agreed you can miss practice on Saturday and go to Vegas this weekend. And what that was saying is, you know what, Dennis? We know who you are, what's going to. How it's going to allow you to play the best. We're going to have standards, but also understand you. And you remember, Rodman went to Vegas that weekend. He came back, the team started gelling, the culture came together, and then the Bulls started winning because they were able to be together, and they won their sixth ring. And so, you know, this culture piece is messy. It's always messy. It's human, it's engaging. And you got to understand that is. That's part of the fun part. Someone said to me once, you know, business would be easy if they weren't for consumers and employees. Well, you got to flip that and say, the reason we get to do this is because we've got consumers and employees. And that's a messy process. Yep.

Another lens onto that question. I Think will be super interesting to the group is talk a little bit about Nike as a tech company. You know, you know, all companies either our tech companies are becoming tech companies and there's a whole bunch of stuff that Nike does. I've learned this from you, I think from, you know, kind of your lens of teaching me about like, you know, the way of as a tech person of looking at these other things. So say something about Nike as a tech company.

You know, when I was at ServiceNow or at PayPal or an eBay, you could talk about digital transformation. And it's a big word and sounds so great. I have a newfound respect about how hard it is trying to actually do one in a physical product in a footwear and apparel company. You know, Reid, I'd say a couple things. I think one thing's true is you need great tech talent. We need great engineers, we need great digital product people, we need great digital designers. Right. And that's a different skill set and a different talent pool than a place like a Nike has historically had. And initially we tried to make them all move to Portland to be in headquarters. Like you're not going to get. Some are love to do that. Some have to be here, but an awful lot don't. So you have to run a little. We have to run a little more of a distributed labor model and have different centers of excellence and things that a tech company does in its sleep. So that's a talent piece. And so we're continuously investing in that. We're blessed because it's the kind of company that that's where being cool helps. People want to work for Nike and they can relate to the product. So we've been reasonably fortunate in attracting good talent. That said, the key to becoming a digital company is not having to be the tech and non tech people. It's understanding that digital is wound through everything we do. And you don't have to learn how to code, you don't have to know how to code to understand it. And that's where seeing it through the eyes of the consumer, the consumer doesn't really care. The consumer didn't say, oh, that was a great tech transaction with Nike. In fact, when we talk to our consumers and say, tell us the last five things you bought from Nike. They'll say, you know, I think I got that in the mobile app. No, no, I remember I did. I was doing research on the mobile app and I wanted to try them on. So I went into a physical store and then I got that running top when I was in the physical store, I saw it, but they didn't have the size or color I wanted, so I ordered the store and it got shipped home. Point being, they don't remember it was a digital transaction, a physical transaction. They just knew it was an interaction with the company. And technology was one piece of a blended equation. And so part of our message here is that we're all part of this digital economy. We're all part of this digital world. And it's not physical or digital. It's digitally enabled to provide a better consumer experience and allow us to serve that consumer in a more effective and efficient way and not have it's the engineers over there and the shoe designers over there and the marketeers over there, or in a marketing, the big brand people that do the iconic Nike campaigns over here and then the digital marketing people over there. Actually, no, we all have to work together and understand each other and respect, appreciate and almost value and worship what each other can do. So the engineer has to worship the shoe designer, who's very artistic. The shoe designer has to worship the engineer. Yep.

And it's part of, like. Because you have to stay one team. So the technology now becomes part of the entire team, even when you have a diversity of skills and people who are playing in this team together. And just like, you know, like the earlier last dance, you got to bring the team together. Exactly. And then another lens is in addition to being the coach for the team, being the coach for leaders, getting the team play together, another one that's specific that I've seen you do great work in is boards. So how do you take the servant leadership approach, the coaching approach, and the lens to what good play on a board is?

The person I've learned the most about boards from was Meg Whitman. It was before I actually had served on a board. It was when Meg was CEO. I was running a marketplace business, and she'd allow me to come into the board. And I watched how Meg used her board, the ebay board. Right. She'd start the meeting and she'd say, you know, we got a bunch of stuff in the agenda, but here's what's keeping me up at night, and here's where I'm going to want your input at the end of this meeting. So we'll talk about A, B and C, and there'll be teams coming and presenting about it. But I want you to be thinking about these two issues as you listen to that. And at the end, I'm going to come back and ask you. And so she would start that way. And then the different presentations and the teams. It may have had nothing to do with those two issues directly, but gave the board pattern recognition, gave the board. And then at the end of the board meeting, Meg would do that same thing I described that Tom Tierney would do. And Meg was always great because she always took notes which connoted I'm listening and I'm being respectful. That's, by the way, different than holding your phone up when someone thinks you're texting. Meg and I use this to this day. Meg would say, okay. She'd go around and ask each board member, she said, I'm not sure we are being bold enough in this area. Having heard what you have, what thoughts do you have? And what was just stunning is you'd go around the room and you'd say, how do these diverse eight or ten people that come from different places who listen to the same set of stuff the last two days have such a rich complementary and additive perspective on it? And so I do the same thing. I do the same thing at eBay ServiceNow. I do it at Nike, starting every board member board meeting, saying, here's what's keeping me up at night. Here's where I want you focusing your attention and I want to hear from you. I'll go around and hear from you at the end. And. And you know, when you listen to it, half the stuff you already know, a third of it doesn't apply to you, but there's always some nuggets and it's often from the pattern recognition. So that I think to the CEOs in the audience, to the founders in the audience, use your board. Boards want to help. If you don't guide them where you need the help, they're going to help in areas you don't want. And so part of it, it's got to be authentic, but part of it is to sort of focus them on the hard, focus them on where you want the help. Being a board member. Then it's like, don't get on a board where the CEO doesn't want help. You can spend your time better elsewhere. I'm not talking down boards, but just be really selective before you go on a board.

Well, a board is a team, right? Just like we've been talking as a straight line through this and like make sure the team is a well composed team that wants to play together and that you add a valuable team member element to it. Right. As part of what you're doing and.

Appreciate each other's differences. Draw each other out. Yes, very Much.

Yeah. And play to it. Like, how do you harness the strengths of each other versus the weaknesses? This is one of the classic oh people. Whenever someone says best of both worlds, I also think, well, by the way, whenever the best of both worlds is possible, the worst of both worlds is possible. So you're always part of that leadership and team play is to make sure it's best of like playing off each other's strengths, not off each other's weaknesses. Well, we're almost out of time. We only have a few minutes left. And as I think everyone in the audience could die, I could talk to you forever. So I'm going to do one last quickish question and then we'll wrap up. One of the other things I think is really great that adds to the kind of the picture of your leadership beyond, you know, kind of servant leadership and coaching and so forth is being very intensely purposeful. Right. Like part of that service is like being of service to the mission. We are all here together. Of service to the world, of service to our customers, of service to each other as part of doing that. And part of that's because we share a mission and purposefulness. So talk a little bit about that in your leadership style in Nike and then I know I can speak to the audience. We'll all be very sad that this ended too early.

Well, you know, Reid, here's where I'm going to go on that. It's something which may be, it's the inner journey of leadership, the inner journey of being a founder, that it's got to start with our own personal sense of purpose. So I've been blessed to do some meditation retreats at the house you're sitting in right now. And, and I actually think so much is written about being the public facing. You know, I'm watching Recrashed right now and there are all these TV shows right now about the famous companies and, and there's so much written about the external part of being a CEO, a founder. The inner journey is a really important part. And the inner journey is all about under, you know, answering, why am I here? What animates me inside? How am I in service to others? Right? This, this dilemma of ego and service. And when you're in, when your ego is controlling it almost never do you make good, wise, long term decisions. And yet service we know is one of the most enduring and powerful sources of motivation, inspiration and resilience possible. And so creating room. And you and I have spent a fair amount of time sharing our experiences on this, having some shared experiences and that our inner sense of purpose that then allows a connection to the purpose of an organization. The purpose of I actually think the purpose of the organization is easier than doing the inner purpose because the inner purpose is a moving target. Right? It's as we grow and evolve at different stages of our lives, our careers. You know, your inner purpose at PayPal and then evolved into LinkedIn and now evolving into what you're doing and the political world and in the with founders and entrepreneurs and the scaling and blitzscaling and making that legitimate and okay to have that inner purpose journey be part of who we are and doesn't get talked about as much, but I think it's as or more important than the organizational purpose stuff 100%.

And I think it's pretty clear why. Treasure every hour every that I spend with you. We've sadly come to the end of our time. John, you know, thank you so much for joining us today and you know, thank you to our audience.

Great. Thank you. And thank you, everyone.

That concludes this episode of Gray Matter. You can find the video from that interview on our YouTube channel and you can read a transcript on our website@greylock.com greymatter and you can subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Heather Mack and thanks for listening.