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Frank Slootman led Snowflake by way of its blockbuster IPO and oversaw fast progress. Kevin Dietsch—Getty Photos
Frank Slootman did it once more. Now it’s succession time.
Slootman is leaving his CEO role at Snowflake whereas remaining chairman, as shocked traders realized in an earnings name this week. Filling his footwear is Sridhar Ramaswamy, beforehand senior vice chairman of synthetic intelligence on the cloud knowledge analytics firm.
Slootman said of the management change, “We didn’t must. We did it as a result of we wished to…With the onslaught of generative AI, Snowflake wants hard-driving technologists to navigate the challenges the brand new world represents.”
Slootman, 65, joined Snowflake in 2019 and led it by way of its blockbuster IPO the next 12 months. That was hardly his first rodeo, nonetheless. He shepherded two different enterprise expertise firms by way of their IPOs: Knowledge Area in 2007 and ServiceNow in 2012.
However his hard-charging management type has garnered maybe as a lot consideration as his monitor report, with some likening him to his counterpart at Tesla.
“Frank Slootman is the Elon Musk of enterprise software program,” Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta posted in a since-deleted tweet just a few years in the past.
‘Search the confrontation’
Below Slootman’s management philosophy, chief executives want to spice up the depth amongst workers and get used to confrontation, as he wrote in his 2022 ebook Amp It Up. He’s famous that many younger CEOs really feel uncomfortable doing so.
“They only assume, ‘I rent a bunch of individuals, after which I sit again and watch for greatness.’ They do not know that they must relentlessly drive each second of the day, each interplay, and search the confrontation,” Slootman told the No Priors podcast final 12 months.
He added, “CEO jobs are insanely confrontational, which isn’t human nature. We don’t prefer it. We’re not naturally confrontational.”
Slootman, like Musk, has courted controversy. In 2021, he drew backlash after saying that, when hiring or selling workers, Snowflake ought to focus extra on benefit than variety targets—a view he stated different leaders shared however have been reluctant to precise publicly. (Later, he apologized to “anybody who might have been harm or offended by my feedback,” which “might have led some to deduce that I consider that variety and benefit are mutually unique.”)
The earlier 12 months, he said that he had little persistence for worker activism and “social justice points,” seeing them as distractions from the “single-minded focus” he favors.
Requested on No Priors whether or not he feared workers can be turned off by his method and go away the corporate, Slootman answered, “Properly, in the event that they go away, they need to go away. That is the nice factor…You entice the fitting ones, and also you begin dropping the flawed ones, so it’s truly fairly good.”
‘Not a private cult’
This week, he was requested a slightly completely different query: whether or not workers would flee as a result of he was now not operating the corporate. “This isn’t a private cult,” he replied, including that he didn’t concern an exodus.
Worker uneasiness might be forgiven given Snowflake’s income progress below Slootman: It hit $2.8 billion within the fiscal 12 months ending Jan. 31, up from the $265 million reported on the identical date in 2020.
Additionally below Slootman’s watch, Snowflake lured a extremely uncommon funding from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Whereas the legendary investor avoids new inventory choices, Buffett made a rare exception in 2020, shopping for $250 million value of Snowflake inventory on the IPO value. The share value then surged from $120 to over $250 on the day of the providing.
Snowflake shares at present stand at $188, after having dropped 18% on Thursday following the earnings name—its worst one-day fall ever. On the upside, new CEO Ramaswamy could have an easier starting point as he makes an attempt to fill Slootman’s footwear.
