>> Announcer: From Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering the Churchills 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Santa Clara, California at the ninth annual Churchills. It's an awards banquet put on by the Churchill Club and this year's theme is all about leadership and we're excited to have with us today the MC, he's Rich Karlgaard, the co-founder of the Churchill Club and also a publisher at Forbes. Rich, thanks for stopping by. >> Oh, it's an honor to be here, Jeff. >> So, busy night tonight. The theme is leadership, but we've been suffering a little bit of a black eye on leadership lately in the tech scene in Silicon Valley. >> Well, I really think we have. I travel the world a lot and around the United States and I have to say that large parts of the world and the United States are falling out of love with Silicon Valley. And I think that's directly attributable to some of the companies and some of the leaders who are maybe moving so fast that they're forgetting to do the right things for customers, for employees, and for their community at large. >> Yeah, I'm wondering, get your take, a lot of these guys and gals become successful for a whole bunch of reasons, right? and they happen to be at the top of a company. I'll just pick on Zuckerberg 'cause he's easy to pick on. But you know, he had an application, it was about getting people together, and suddenly these platforms get so big and so ubiquitous, you know, is he the right guy? He never signed up to be the leader of the platform world, and yet he's kind of put in that position. We see that kind of with YouTube, because again, the platform is so big and I think it almost feels like it grows beyond the tentacles of the control. >> Well, it remains to be seen if Mark Zuckerberg is the right guy. I think of somebody from more my era, Bill Gates. And Bill Gates was a fabulous leader of Microsoft, but they ran too fast, they ran too hard, they got in trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice, and Bill Gates ended up resigning from Microsoft. And he served as a great board member of Microsoft ever since, was instrumental, along with John Thompson, the board chairman who will be honored tonight, in bringing in the person I think is the best CEO in the world today, Satya Nadella of Microsoft. Sometimes you have to hand the baton. >> Right, right. But are there some lessons that people should be thinking about when they're maybe thrust into this position that they weren't necessarily ready for? I mean, one thing about Gates is he gave up his CEO job pretty early to Ballmer, arguably whether that was super successful or not. But some of them kind of get out of the way and some of them don't. And they don't necessarily have the skills to take on some of these huge kind of geopolitical, socioeconomic issues. >> Well I think that's right. Another example, Larry Ellison led the brilliant early days of Oracle but when he got in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he had to really make way for a strong number two, Ray Lane, and that turned out to be the perfect complement, you see. You had Ellison's vision and drive but you had Lane's ability to run really good operations. Steve Jobs never got into trouble but having a really solid number two like Tim Cook was very valuable. So some of these brilliant entrepreneurs need solid number two's, so I think they have lieutenants but I don't think they have really solid number two's. >> So what are you excited about tonight? We got some really great people, you already mentioned John W. Thompson, we've had him on a ton of times, great leader. Who are some of the people you're excited to see tonight? >> Well, we have three great companies, we have Slack, Zoom, and my personal favorite, Peloton. I'm kind of lusting for a Peloton bike in my garage. I hope it arrives under the Christmas tree this year. >> (laughs) All right, Rich. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes and good luck tonight on the MC duties. >> Yeah, well, thank you Jeff. >> All right, he's Rich, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at the Churchills, the ninth annual awards banquet here with the Churchill Club. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat electronic music)