Baani, Saumya, Nikitha, Sriparna, Susan, Rohan, Felix(me), Deepak
I got to meet Youtube CEO; Susan Wojcicki in person and spend about 45 minutes with her at Youtube HQ. I thought to narrate the incident, what was going through my head and things she said that inspired me.
Friday, 3 November 2017
Time 12:00PM
The session with Susan( Youtube CEO) was scheduled at 1:10PM at Youtube HQ. We were just out for our lunch here in the HQ and enjoying the Free meal that’s provided to people who work at Youtube.
I was excited and having read lot of her online, this was one of the most awaited moment that I been waiting for.
Time 1:10PM
After the lunch, we went to meet her at her office. After seeing 6 of us( We are Venkat Scholars, Read about how I won #Google Scholarship) She greeted us and given shake of hands. The lady who runs Youtube! The company that have 1.5Billion+ video views every day!
Susan was quite warming and bold women. We sat in meeting room close to her office. 6 of us introduced ourselves; who we are, where we study and what we mention in application.
Susan was pleased to hear that I got the previous year scholars(blog here) to have hangout sessions, wrote blog on how I won this Scholarship and story on how it was gone viral by the tweet by Shashi Tharoor. She thanked me on playing a pivotal role in spreading awareness about this Scholarship. She also goes on to mention to provide more students this opportunity next year.
We had informal conversation. It was super exciting for me to meet CEO of billion dollar company and impact they have made , and been making every day. She was super humble and made with flesh & bones like any other human being.
She had a quite a good journey for herself;
From providing Sergey and Larry (Google Founders) Office space in her rented house.
From Marketing manager to Product Manager then to Youtube CEO.
From hiring now Google CEO: Sundar Pichai and working closer with him.
We kept on asking questions one by one.
Some of her challenges as CEO is :
Aligning Product and Engineering Team to right direction where company is headed towards.
Talking with Government and Policy makers.
I asked her: “What are the Top 3 advices to Young entrepreneurs who are starting up while in their college?”
To which she answered-
Choose any idea that would make difference and good world. What is the Future gonna look like in 5 years?
Have a Good team, take advice, have good advisers who have real life experience in entrepreneurship. And Listen(PS: If it make sense)
Never give up on your dreams.
She quoted her sister Anne’s experience. She is Founder & CEO of personal genomics company 23andMe. She had a bad running and was banned by FDA one point of time. She didn’t give up. She tried whatever she could to lift the ban and was successful in doing so after multiple efforts. Company is running spectacularly now!
Susan on making Good Decisions-
do {
Get all informations and facts as possible;
Read them as unbiased;
Ask yourself “Does it make sense?”;
Be in perspective of different stake holders;
Collect more data;
} while(Decision);
Susan on Failures
Susan the CEO of the giant company has even had tough days and failures. She has failed a lot and still do. The point is not be emotional for long, remind yourself in a distance and look at it objectively. “What could have done better”
We had a great time with Susan. A moment to be cherished life long.
The only regret I had was not meeting Sundar Pichai. I expressed my interest to meet Sundar to Susan at end of meeting. She promised to convey note/messages if we had to him as he have a tight schedule.
Here is a snap with Susan;
I have documented further journey on my Facebook and on Instagram
You can connect with me on Twitter as well