Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE covering People First Network. Brought to you by Mayfield. >> Hello, I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto for an exclusive conversation, CUBE conversation, part of the People First Network with theCUBE and Mayfield fund. I'm here with John Chambers at his house in Palo Alto. John Chambers is the former CEO/Chairman of Cisco Systems, now running J2C, JC2 Ventures. Great to see you, thanks for spending time! >> It's a pleasure to be together again. >> I'm here for two reasons. One, I wanted a conversation about People First and technology waves, but also, I want to talk about your new book, which is exciting, called Connecting the Dots. And it's not your standard business book, where, you know, hey, rah-rah, you know, like a media post these days on the internet; it's some personal stories weaved in with the lessons you've learned through the interactions you've had with many people over the years, so exciting book and I'm looking forward to talking about that. >> Thank you! >> Again, John Chambers, legend, Cisco, 1991 when you joined the company from Wang before that. 400 employees, one product, 70 million in revenue. And when you retired in 2015, not so much retired, 'cos you've got some--. >> I'm working on my next chapter! >> You've got your next chapter (laughs)! 180 acquisitions, 447 billion in revenue, you made 10,000 people millionaires, you created a lot of value, probably one of the biggest inflection points in computer history, the evolution of inter-networking and tying systems together, it was probably one of the biggest waves somewhat before the wave we're on now. So an amazing journey, now you're running JC2 Ventures and investing in game-changing start-ups. So you're not retired? >> No. It was only my next chapter. I made my decision almost 10 years before I left Cisco first, to make for a very smooth transition because it's my family, and out of the 75,000 people, I hired all but 23 of them! And in terms of what I wanted to do next, I really wanted to both give back, create more jobs, get our start-up engine going again in this country, and it's currently broken, and I want to do that on a global basis, in places like France and India as well. So I'm on to my next chapter, but the fun part in this chapter is that I do the things that I love. >> And you've got a great team behind you, but also, you have a great personal network. And I want to get into that, of your personal stories as well as your social network in business and in the community; but one of the things I want to get up front, because I think this is important for this conversation is, you've been very strong. I've seen you present many times over the years, going way back into the 90's. You're eloquent, you're people-oriented, but you have a knack for finding the waves, seeing transitions, you've been through many waves. >> Yes I have, good and bad. >> Good and bad. But one of the big ones, how do you spot those transitions? And what wave are we in now? I mean, talk about the wave that's happening now, it's unprecedented on many levels, but, different, but it's still a wave. >> It is, and outgoing market transitions and often combined with either economic changes or business model changes with technology. And part of the reason that I've been fortunate to be able to identify many of them is I listen to customers very carefully, but also, you're often a product of your prior experiences. Having experienced West Virginia, one of the top states in the US in terms of the chemical industry, uh, during the 40's and 50's and 60's when I was growing up there, and literally more millionaires in West Virginia than there were in the entire Great Britain. We were on top of the world in the chemical industry, and the coal industry, and yet, because we missed transitions, and we should've seen them coming, the state fell a long way, so now we're trying to correct that with some of the start-up activity we'll talk about later. As you see this, and then I went to Boston, 128, we were talking earlier, Wang Laboratories, the mini-computer era, but I was in IBM first out of the central part of the nation, so I watched IBM and Mainframes, and then I watched them miss on going to the mini-computer, and then miss in terms of the internet. So I was able to see the transitions that occurred in Boston, Route 128, where we were the Silicon Valley of the world, and we knew it, and this unusual area out in California called Silicon Valley, we paid almost no attention to, and we didn't realize we failed to make a transition from the mini-computer era to the pc and the internet era. Then I joined Cisco, and saw the internet era. So part of it is, you're a product of your experiences, and know the tremendous pain that occurs, because Boston 128 is nowhere near what it used to be, so there's no entitlement in this new world out of the thousand high-tech companies that I was associated with, including four or five giants in mini-computers, none of them are really in existence today, so it shows you, if you don't identify the transitions, number one, you're going to have an opportunity to benefit by them, but number two, you sure have an opportunity to get hurt by them. >> And you know, these waves also create a lot of wealth and value; not just personal wealth, but community wealth, and Cisco in particular had a good thing going for them, you know, TCP-IP was a defact-- not even a standard, it was a defacto standard at that time, IBM and these kinds of digital equipment corporations dominated the network protocol. Even today, people are still trying to take out Cisco competitively, and they can't because they connected the world. Now the world's connected with digital, it's connected with mobile, so we're kind of seeing this connected wave globally. How do you think about that, now that you've seen the movie at the plumbing levels at Cisco, you now have been traveling the world, we're all connected. >> We are. And it's important to understand that I'm completely arms-length with Cisco, it's their company to run now, and I'm excited about their future. But I'm focused on the next chapter in my life, and while I think about the people at Cisco everyday, I'm into the start-up world now, so how do I think about it now? I think most of the innovation over the next decade will come from start-ups. The majority of the top engineering students, for example, at a Stanford or an MIT or a Polytechnique in France, which is the top engineering school, I think, in Europe, or at the ITs in India, they are all thinking about going to start-ups, which means this is where innovations going to come from. And if you think about a digital world going from the time you and I, we almost recruited you to Cisco, and then we finally did; there's only a thousand devices connected then when Cisco was founded. Today there are about 20 billion devices connected to the internet; in the future, it's going to be 500 billion in a decade, and so this concept of digitalization combined with artificial intelligence, all of a sudden we'll get the right information at the right time to the right person or machine to make the right decision, sounds complex, and it is. And it's ability to do that, I think start-ups are well-positioned to play a key role in, especially in innovation. So while the first stage of the internet, and before that were all dominated by the very large companies, I think you're going to see, in this next phase of digitalization, you're going to see a number of start-ups really emerge, in terms of the innovation leaders, and that's what I'm trying to do with my 16 investments I've made, but also coaching probably another 50 uh, start-ups around the world on a regular basis. >> And the impact of outside Silicon Valley, globally, how do you see that ecosystem developing with the entrepreneurship models that are now globally connected in with these connection points like Silicon Valley? >> It will partially in parallel, partially, it's a new phenomenon. I sold the movie of Boston 128, as I said earlier, and on top of the world, and there is no entitlement. The same thing's true with Cisco, um, sorry, of Silicon Valley today; there's no entitlement for the future, and just because we've led up until this point in time, doesn't mean we will in 10 years, so you can't take anything for granted. What you are seeing, since almost all job creation will be from start-ups, and small companies getting bigger, the large companies in total will probably not add any head count over this next decade because of artificial intelligence and digitization, and so you're now going to see job growth coming from those smaller companies, if these small companies don't get a forum to all 50 states, if they don't get a chance to grow their head count there, and the economic benefits of that, then we're going to leave whole states behind. So I think it's very important that we look at the next wave of innovation, I think there's a very good probability that it will be more inclusive, both by geography, by gender, and all diversity measures, and I'm optimistic about the future, but there are no guarantees, and we'll see how it plays out. >> Let's talk about your next chapter. I was going to wait, but I want to jump while we're on the topic. JC2 is a global start-up, game-changing start-up focus that you have. What is the thesis? What are you looking for, and talk about your mission? >> Well, our mission is very simple. I had a chance to change the world one time with Cisco, and many people, when I said Cisco's going to change the way the world works, lives, learns, and plays by enabling the internet, everybody said nice marketing, but you're a router company. And yet, I think most people would agree, probably more than any other company, we had the leadership role in changing the internet and the direction going on, and now, a chance to do it again, because I think the next wave of innovation will come from the start-ups, and it doesn't come easy. They need coaches, they need strategic partners, they need mentors as much as they need the venture capitalists, so I would think of as this focusing on disruptive start-ups that get very excited in these new areas of technology, ranging from physical and virtual worlds coming together, to artificial intelligence and automation everywhere, to the major capabilities on cyber security across that to the internet of things, so we're trying to say, how do we help these companies grow in skill? But if I was just after financial returns, I'd stay right here in the Valley. I can channel anybody, VC's here that I trust and they trust me, and it would be a better financial return. But I'm after, how do you do this across a number of states, already in seven states, and how do you do it in France and India as role models? >> It's got a lot of purpose. It's not just a financial purpose. I mean, entrepreneurs want to make money, too, but you've made some good money over the years, but this is a mission for you, this is a purpose. >> It is, but you referred to it in your opening comments. When we were at Cisco, I've always believed that the most successful owe an obligation to give back, and we did. We won almost every corporate social responsibility award there was. We won it from the Democrats and the Republicans, from Condie Rice and George Bush and from Hillary Clinton and President Obama. We also, as you said, made 10,000 Cisco employees millionaires just in the first decade. And we tried to give back to society with training programs like Network Academies and trained seven million students. And I think it's very important for the next generation of leaders here in the Valley to be good at giving back. And it's something that I think they owe an obligation to do, and I think we're in danger now of not doing it as well as we should, and for my start-ups, I try to pick young CEOs that understand, they want to make a financial return, and they want to get a great product out of this, but they also want to be fair and giving back to society and make it a win-win, if you will. >> And I think that's key. Mission-driven companies are attracting the best talent, too, these days, because people are more cognizant of that. I want to get into some of your personal stories. You mentioned giving back. And reading your book, your parents have had a big role in your life--. >> Yes, they have. >> And being in West Virginia has had a big role in your life. You mentioned it having a prosperity environment, and then missing that transition. Talk about the story of West Virginia and the role your parents played, because, they were doctors, so they were in the medical field. The combination of those two things, the culture where you were brought up, and your family impacted your career. >> I'm very proud of being from West Virginia, and very proud of the people in West Virginia, and you see it as you travel around the world. All of us who, whether we're in West Virginia, or came out of it, care about the state a great deal. The people are just plain good people, and I think they care about treating people with respect. If I were ever run off a road at night in the middle of the night, I'd want to be in West Virginia, (both laugh) when I go up to knock on that door. And I think it carries through. And also, the image of our state is one that people tend to identify in terms of a area that you like the people. Now what I'm trying to do in West Virginia, and what we just announced since last week, was to take the same model we did on doing acquisitions, 180 of them, and say here's the playbook, the innovation playbook for doing acquisitions better than anyone else, and take the model that we did on country digitization, which we did in Israel and France and India with the very top leaders, with Netanyahu and Shimon Peres in Israel, with Macron in France and with Modi in India, and drove it through, and then do the same thing in terms of how we take the tremendous prosperity and growth that you see in Silicon Valley, and make it more uniform across the country, especially as traditional business won't be adding head count. And while I'd like to tell you the chemical industry will come back to West Virginia and mining industry will come back in terms of job creation, they probably won't, a lot of that will be automated in the future. And so it is the ability to get a generation of start-ups, and do it in a unique way! And the hub of this has to be the university. They have to set the pace. Gordon Gee, the President there, gets this. He's created a start-up mentality across the university. The Dean of the business school, Javier Reyes is going across all of the university, in terms of how you do start-ups together with business school, with engineering, with computer science, with med school, et cetera. And then how do you attract students who will want to really be a part of this, how do you bring in venture capital, how do you get the Governor and the President and the Senate and the Speaker of the House on board? How do you get our two national senators, Shelly Moore Capito and also Joe Manchin, a Democrat and a Republican working together on common goals? And then how do you say here's what's possible, write the press release, be the model for how a country, or a state, comes from behind and that at one time, then a slow faller, how do we leap frog? And before you say it can't be done, that was exactly what people said first about India, when I said India would be the strongest growing economy in the world, and it is today, probably going to grow another seven to 10%. That means you double the per capita of everyone in India, done right, every seven to 10 years. And France being the innovation engine in Europe to place your new business, you and I would have said John, no way, just five years ago, yet it has become the start-up engine for Europe. >> It's interesting, you mentioned playbook, and I always see people try to replicate Silicon Valley. I moved out here from the East Coast in 1999, and it's almost magical here, it's hard to replicate, but you can reproduce some things. One of the common threads, though, is education. The role of education in the ecosystem of these new environments seems to be a key ingredient. Your thoughts about how education's going to play a role in these ecosystems, because education and grit, and entrepreneurial zeal, are kind of the magic formula. >> Well they are in many ways. It's about leadership, it's about the education foundation, it's about getting the best and brightest into your companies, and then having the ability to dream, and role models you can learn from. We were talking about Hewlett-Packard earlier, a great role model of a company that did the original start-up and Lou Platt, who was the President of HP when I came out here, I called him up and said, you don't know me, Lou, I'm with a company you've probably never heard of, and we have 400 people, but I don't know the Valley, can you teach me? And he did, and he met with me every quarter for three years, and then when I said what can I do to repay you back, because at that time, Cisco was on a roll, he said John, do it for the next generation. And so, that's what I'm trying to do, in terms of, you've got to have role models that you can learn from and can help you through this. The education's a huge part. At the core of almost all great start-up engines is a really world-class university. Not just with really smart students, but also with an entrepreneur skill and the ability to really create start-ups. John Hennessey, Stanford did an amazing thing over the last 17 years on how to create that here at Stanford, the best in the world, probably 40% of the companies, when I was with Cisco, we bought were direct or indirect outgrowth of Stanford. Draw a parallel. Mercury just across the way, and this isn't a Stanford/CAL issue, (both laugh) equally great students, very good focus on interdisciplinary activities, but I didn't buy a single company out of there. You did not see the start-ups grow with anywhere near the speed, and that was four times the number of students. This goes back to the educational institution, it has to have a focus on start-ups, it has to say how they drive it through, this is what MIT did in Boston, and then lost it when 128 lost it's opportunity, and this is what we're trying to do at West Virginia. Make a start-up engine where you've got a President, Gordon Gee, who really wants to drive this through, bring the political leaders in the state, and bring the Mountaineers, the global Mountaineers to bare, and then bring financial resources, and then do it differently. So to your point, people try to mimic Silicon Valley, but they do it in silos. What made Silicon Valley go was an ecosystem, an education system, a environment for risk-taking, role models that you could steal people from--. >> And unwritten rules, too. They had these unwritten rules like pay it forward, your experience with Lou Platt, Steve Jobs talks about his relationship with David Packard, and this goes on and on and on. This is an important part. Because I want to just--. >> Debt for good is a big, big issue. Last comment on education, it's important for this country to know, our K through 12 system is broken. We're non-competitive. People talk about STEM, and that's important, but if I were only educating people in three things, entrepreneurship, how to use technology, and artificial intelligence; I would build that into the curriculum where we lose a lot of our diversity, especially among females in the third, fourth, fifth grade, so you haveta really, I think, get people excited about this at a much earlier age. If we can become an innovation engine again, in this country, we are not today. We're not number one in innovation, we're number 11! Imagine that for America? >> I totally agree with ya! And I don't want to rant and waste a lot of time, but my rants are all on Facebook and Twitter. (both laugh) Education's a problem. It's like linear, it's like a slow linear train wreck, in my opinion, but now you have that skills gaps, you mentioned AI. So AI and community are two hot trends right now. I'm going to stay with community for a minute. You mentioned paying it forward. Open source software, these new forms of operational scale, cloud computing, open source software, that all have this ethos of pay it forward; community. And now, community is more important than ever. Not just from the tech world, but you're talking about in West Virginia, now on a global scale. How does the tech industry, how can the tech industry, in your opinion, nurture community at local, regional, global scale? >> This is a tough one John, and I'd probably answer it more carefully if I was still involved directly with Cisco. But the fun thing is, now I represent myself. >> In your own opinion, not Cisco. There's a cultural thing. This is, Silicon Valley has magic here, and community is part of it. >> Yes, well it's more basic than that. I think, basically, we were known for two decades, not just Cisco, but all of the Valley as tech for good, and we gave back to the communities, and we paid it forward all the time, and I use the example of Cisco winning the awards, but so do many of our peers. We're going to Palestine and helping to rebuild Palestine in terms of creating jobs, et cetera. We went in with the Intels of the world, and the Oracles and the other players and HP together, even though at times we might compete. I think today, it's not a given. I think there is a tug of war going on here, in terms of what is the underlying purpose of the Valley. Is it primarily to have major economic benefits, and a little bit of arm's length from the average citizen from government, or is it do well financially, but also do very well in giving back and making it inclusive. That tug of war is not a given. When you travel throughout the US, today, or around the world, there are almost as many people that view tech for bad as they do tech for good, so I think it's going to be interesting to watch how this plays out. And I do think there are almost competing forces here in the Valley about which way should that go and why. The good news is, I think we'll eventually get it right. The bad news is, it's 50/50 right now. >> Let's talk about the skill gap. A lot of leaders in companies right now are looking at a work force that needs to be leveled up, and as new jobs are coming online that haven't been trained for, these openings they don't have skills for because they haven't been taught. AI is one example, IOT you mentioned a few of those. How do great leaders, proactively and reactively, too, get the skills gaps closed? What strategies can you do, what's the playbook there? >> Well two separate issues. How do they get it closed, in terms of their employees, and second issue, how do we train dramatically better than we've done before? Let's go to the first one. In terms of the companies, I think that your ability to track the millennials, the young people, is based upon your vision of doing more than quote just making a profit, and you want to be an exciting place to work with a great culture, and part of that culture should be giving back. Having said that, however, the majority of the young people today, and I'm talking about the tops out of the key engineering schools, et cetera, they want to go to start-ups. So what you're going to see is, how well established companies work with start-ups, in a unique partnership, is going to be one of the textbook opportunities for the future, because most companies, just like they didn't know how to acquire tech companies and most of all tech acquisitions failed, even through today. We wrote the textbook on how to do it differently. I think how these companies work with start-ups and how they create a strategic relationship with a company they know has at least a 50/50 probability of going out of business. And how do you create that working relationship so that you can tap into these young innovative ideas and partnerships, and so, what you see with the Spark Cognition, 200 people out of Texas, brilliant, brilliant CEO there in terms of what he is focused on, partnering with Boeing in that 50/50 joint venture, 50/50 joint venture to do the next FAA architecture for unmanned aircraft in this country. So you're going to see these companies relate to these start-ups in ways they haven't done before. >> Partnership and collaboration and acquisitions are still rampant on the horizon, certainly as a success for you. Recently in the tech industry we're seeing big acquisitions, Dell, EMC, IBM bought Red Hat, and there's some software ones out there. One was just going public and got bought, just recently, by SAP, how do you do the acqui-- you've done 180 of them? How do you do them successfully without losing the innovation and losing the people before they invest and leave; and this is a key dynamic, how do companies maintain innovation in an era of collaboration, partnerships, and enmity? >> I had that discussion this morning at Techonomy with David Kirkpatrick, and David said how do you do this. And then as I walked out of the room, I had a chance to talk with other people and one of them from one of the very largest technology companies said, John, we've watched you do this again and again; we assumed that when we acquired a company, we'd get them to adjust to our culture and it almost never worked, and we lost the people at a tremendously fast pace, especially after their lock-in of 18 to 24 months came up. We did the reverse. What we did was develop a replicatible innovation playbook, and I talk about it in that book, but we did this for almost everything we did at Cisco, and I would've originally called that, bureaucracy, John. (both laugh) I would've said that's what slow companies do. And actually, if done right, allows you to move with tremendous speed and agility, and so we'd outline what we'd look for in terms of strategy and vision; if our cultures weren't the same, we didn't acquire them. And if we couldn't keep the people, to generate the next generation of product, that was a bad financial decision for us, as well. So our attrition rate averaged probably about 5% or over while I was at Cisco for 20 years. Our voluntary attrition rate of our acquired companies, which normally runs 20% in these companies, we had about four. So we kept the people, we got the next generation product out, and we went in with that attitude in terms of you're acquiring to be able to keep the people and make them a part of your family and culture. And I realize that that might sound corny today, but I disagree. I think to attract people, to get them to stay at your company, it is like a family, it is like how you succeed and occasionally lose together, and how you build that family attitude under every employee, spouse, or their children that was life-threatening, and we were there for them in the ways that others were not. So you're there when your employees have a crisis, or your customer does, and that's how you form trust in relationships. >> And here's the question, what does People First mean to you? >> Well people first is our customer first. It means your action and everything you do puts your customers and your people first, that's what we did at Cisco. Any customer you would talk to, almost every customer I've ever met in my life would do business with us again, or with me again, because your currency in today's world is trust, track record, and relationships, and we built that very deep. Same thing with the employees. I still get many, many notes from people we helped 10 or 15 years ago; here's the picture of my child that you all helped make a difference in, Cisco and John, and you were there for us when we needed you most. And then in customers. It surprises you, when you help them through a crisis, they remember that more than when you helped them be successful, and they're there for you. >> Talk about failure and successes. You talk about this in the book. This is part of entrepreneurship, you can't succeed without failures. Handling failures is just as important as handling successes, your thoughts on people should think about that from a mindset standpoint? >> Well, you know, what's fun is those of you who are parents, or who will be parents in the future, when your child scores a goal in soccer or makes a good grade on a test, you're proud for them, but that isn't what worries you. What worries you is when they have their inevitable setbacks, everybody has that in life. How do you learn to deal with them? How do you understand how much were self-inflicted and how much of it was done by other causes, and how they navigate through that determines who they are. Point back to the West Virginia roots, I'm dyslexic, which means that I read backwards. Some people in early grade school thought I might not even graduate from high school much less go to college. My parents were doctors, they got it, but how I handled that was key. And while I write in the book about our successes, I spend as much time on when disaster strikes, how you handle that determines who you are in the future. Jack Welch told me in the 90's, he said John, you have a very good company, and I said Jack, you're good at teaching me something there, we're about to become the most valuable company in the world, we've won all of the leadership awards and everything else, what does it take to have a great company? He said a near-death experience. At the time I didn't understand it. At the end of 2001 after the dot com bubble, he called me up, he said, you now have a great company, I said Jack, it doesn't feel like it. Our stock price is down dramatically, people are questioning can I even run the company now, many of the people who were so positive turned very tough and--. >> How did you handle that? How did you personally handle that, 'cos--. >> It's a part of leadership. It's easy to be a leader when everything goes well, it's how you handle when things are tough, and leadership is lonely, you're by yourself. No matter how many friends you have around you, it's about leadership, and so you'd lead it through it. So 2001, took a real hard look, we made the mistake of focusing, me, on the numbers, and my numbers in the first week of December were growing at 70% year over year. We'd never had anything negative to speak of, much less below even 30% growth, and by the middle of January, we were -30%. And so you have to be realistic, how much was self-inflicted, how much the market, I felt the majority of it was market-inflicted, I said at the time it's a hundred year flood. I said to the employees, here's how we're going to go forward, we need to bring our head count back in line to a new reality, and we did it in 51 days. And then you paint the picture from the very beginning of what you look like as you recover and in the future and why your employees want to stay here, your customers stay with you and your shareholders. It wiped out most of our competitors. Jack Welch said, John, this is probably your best leadership year ever, and I said Jack, you're the only one that's going to say that. He said probably, and he has been. >> And you've got the scar tissue to prove it. And I love this story. >> But you're a product of your scars. And do you learn how to deal with them? >> Yeah, and how you-- and be proud of them, it's what, who you are. >> I don't know if proud's the right word. >> Well, badge of honor. (both laugh) >> Red badge of honor, they're painful! >> Just don't do it again twice, right? >> We still make the same mistake twice, but at the same time when I teach all these start-ups, I expect you to make mistakes. If you don't make mistakes, you're not taking enough risk. And while people might've, might say John, one of your criticisms is that you spread yourself a little bit too thin in the company at times, and you were too aggressive. After thinking about it, I respectfully disagree. If I had to do it over, I'd be even bolder, and more aggressive, and take more risks, and I would dream bigger dreams. With these start-ups, that's what I'm teaching them, that's what I'm doing myself. >> And you know, this is such a big point, because the risk is key. Managing risk is actually, you want to be as risky as possible, just don't cut an artery, you know, do the right things. But in your book, you mention this about how you identify transitions, but also you made the reference to your parents again. This is, I think, important to bring up, because we have an expression in our company: let's put the patient on the table and let's look at the problem. Solving the problems and not going out of business at that time, but your competitors did, you had to look at this holistically, and in the book, you mentioned that experience your parents taught you, being from West Virginia, that it changed how you do problem solving. Can you share what that, with that in conscience? >> Well, both parents were doctors, and the good news is, you got a lot of help, the bad news is, you didn't get a lot of self 'cos they'd fix you. But they always taught me to focus on the real, underlying issue, to your point. What is the real issue, not what the symptom is, the temperature, or something else. And then you want to determine how much of that was self-inflicted, and how much of it was market, and if your strategy's working before, continue, if your strategy was starting to get long in the tooth, how do you change it, and then you got to have the courage to reinvent yourself again and again. And so they taught me how to deal with that. I start off the book by talking about how I almost drowned at six years of age, and as I got pulled down through the rapids, I could still see my dad in my mind today running down the side of the river yelling hold on to the fishing pole. It was an ugly fishing pole. Might've cost $5. But he was concerned about the fishing pole, so therefore I obviously couldn't be drowning so I focused both hands on the fishing pole and as I poked my head above water, I could still see him running down. He got way down river, swam out, pulled me in, set me on the side, and taught me about how you deal when you find yourself with major setbacks. How do you not panic, how do you not try to swim against the tide or the current, how you be realistic of the situation that you're in, work your way to the side, and then you know what he did? He put me right back in the rapids and let me do it myself. And taught me how to deal with it. Dad taught me the business picture and how you deal with challenges, Mom, uh, who was internal medicine, psychiatry, taught me the emotional IQ side of the house, in terms of how you connect with people, and I believe, this whole chapter, I build relationships for life. And I really mean it. I think your currency is trust, relationships, and track record. >> And having that holistic picture to pull back and understand what to focus on, and this is a challenge for entrepreneurs. You're now dealing with a lot of entrepreneurs and coaching them; a lot of times they get caught in the forest and miss the trees, right? Or have board meetings or have, worry about the wrong metrics, or hey, I got to get financing. How should an entrepreneur, or even a business leader, let's talk about entrepreneur first and then business leader, handle their advisors, their investors, how do they manage that, how do they tap into that? A lot of people say, ah, they don't add much value, I just need money. This is important, because this could save them, this could be the pole for them. >> It could, or it could also be the pole that causes the tent to collapse (both laugh). So I think the first thing when you advise young entrepreneurs, is realize you're an advisor, not a part of management. And I only take young entrepreneurs who want to be coached. And as I advise them, I say all I'm asking is that you listen to my thoughts and then you make the decision, and I'll support you either way you go, once you've listened to the trade-offs. And I think you want to very quickly realize where they are in vision and strategy, and where they are on building the right team and evolving the team and changing the team, where they are in culture, and where they are on their communication skills because communication skills were important to me, they might not have been to Jack Welch, the generation in front of me, but they were extremely important to ours. And today, your communication mismatch on social media could cost your company a billion dollars. If you're not good at listening, if you're not good at communicating with people and painting the picture, you've got a problem. So how do you teach that to the young players? Then most importantly, regardless of whether you're in a big company or a small company, public or private sector, you know what you know and know what you don't. Many people who, especially if they're really good in one area, assume that carries over to others, and assume they'll be equally as good in the others, that's huge mistake; it's like an engineer hiring a good sales lead, very rarely does it happen. They recruit business development people who appeals to an engineer, not the customer. (both laugh) So, know what you know, know what you don't. For those things you don't know, surround yourself with those people in your leadership team and with your advisors to help you navigate through that. And I had, during my career, through three companies, I always had a number of advisors, formal and informal, that I went to and still go to today. Some of them were very notable players, like our President Clinton or President Bush, Shimon Peres, Henry Kissinger, or names that were just really technical leads within companies, or people that really understood PR like Thomas Freedman out of the New York Times, or things of that. >> You always love being in the trenches. I noticed that in Cisco as an observer. But now that you're in start-ups, it's even more trenches deeper (laughs) and you've got to be seeing the playing field, so I got to ask ya a personal question. How do you look back at the tech trends that's happening right now, globally, both political, regulatory technology, what advice would you give your 23-year-old self if you were breaking into the business, you were at Wang and you were going to make your move; in this world today, what's going on, what would you be doing? >> Well the first thing on the tech trend is, don't get too short-term focused. Picture the ones that are longer term, what we refer to as digitization, artificial intelligence, et cetera. If I were 23 years old, or better yet, 19 years old, and were two years through college and thinking what did I want to do in college and then on to MBA school and perhaps beyond that, legal degree if I'd followed the prior path. I would focus on entrepreneurship and really understand it in a lot more detail. I learned it over 40 years in the business. And I learned it from my dad and my mom, but also from the companies I went into before. I would focus on entrepreneurship, I'd focus on technology that enables entrepreneurship, I would probably focus on what artificial intelligence can do for that and that's what we're doing at West Virginia, to your point earlier. And then I would think about security across that. If you want really uh, job security and creativity for the future, if you're a really good entrepreneur, with artificial intelligence capability, and security capability, you're going to be a very desired resource. >> So, we saw you, obviously networking is a big part of it. You got to be networking with other people and in the industry, would you be hosting meet ups? Young John Chambers right now, tech meet ups, would you be at conferences, would you be writing code, would you be doing a start-up? >> Well, if we were talking about me advising them? >> No, you're 23-years-old right now. >> No, I'd just be fooling around. No, I'd be in MBA school and I'd be forming my own company. (both laugh) And I would be listening to customers. I think it's important to meet with your peers, but while I developed strong relationships in the high-tech industry, I spent the majority of time with my customers and with our employees. And so, I think at that age, my advice to people is there was only one Steve Jobs. He just somehow knew what to build and how to build it. And when you think about where they were, it still took him seven years (laughs). I would say, really get close to your customers, don't get too far away; if there's one golden rule that a start-up ought to think about, it's learning and staying close to your customers. There too, understand your differentiation and your strategy. Well John, thanks so much. And the book, Connecting the Dots, great read, it's again, not a business book in the sense of boring, a lot of personal stories, a lot of great lessons and thanks so much for giving the time for our conversation. >> John, it was my pleasure. Great to see you again. >> I'm John Furrier here with the People First interview on theCUBE, co-created content with Mayfield. Thanks for watching! (upbeat electronic music)