← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 432 - Pinecone COO, Lauren Nemeth
00:47:27
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- [00:00]
Cameron Harold
I'm Cameron Harold, the founder of the Second In Command podcast. Really quick. Before we jump into today's episode, you need to know about two important ways that we can help you and your company grow. Number one, check out the COO Alliance. It's for COOs, presidents, VP ops or whoever is your company's second in command to the CEO. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command and it gives coos the tools and connections to grow themselves and the company. Head over to coolalliance.com to learn more about our members and the results, the program and our 10x guarantee. If you qualify for membership, you can set up a complimentary call with our team to discuss if it's right for you. I'll tell you about number two in a bit, but first, let's start this.
- [00:42]
Lauren Nemeth
Week'S episode my background. It's funny I would say this. Twilio is the largest company I ever willingly went to work for. Every large company I worked with prior like including Google and others were always through acquisitions. And I love startups. Like I really, I like the hands on fast growth, unafraid to break things, anything is possible. Like I charge the hill underdog kind of mentality. Like that's kind of my happy place so to speak. So I was excited to get back to my happy place but I think with it bring a lot of the maturity that I saw at TWIO in terms of like how do you operate things really, really well at scale, how do you hire really high caliber individuals who cannot just build the one to a hundred million company but the, you know, one to $1 billion company, et cetera. And so anyway I brought a lot of I think the great people, management and operations from Twilio but it was nice to kind of get back to my roots of like startup agility, innovation that I kind of missed actually from my four years at Twilio. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Kamron harold. In the second in command podcast we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the Chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Herald.
- [02:11]
Cameron Harold
All right, our guest today is Pine Cones COO Lauren Nemeth. This is an amazing podcast, one of the smartest coos I've had on in a long time. You're going to love the energy, love the insights she brings over 20 years of experience building world class developer and enterprise led sales motions from Pre revenue to $4 billion for companies such as Twilio, AppNexus and Google. She's gone through a number of different acquisitions in her time. She actually stepped from a 2,000 person company back down to the 200 person company at Pinecone to really start to accelerate their growth as an AI company. In her role as a Chief Operating Officer for Pinecone, she leads sales field, engineering, marketing growth and partnership functions globally. And she was also previously the Chief Revenue Officer at Twilio, where she led all the GTM functions globally, directly managing a team of 2,000 employees and generating over $4 billion in revenue. She's her bachelor's degree from the University of California in Los Angeles. She's a proud San Francisco native, the mother of two girls, and she started her career working at MySpace way back in the day. You'll love the episode. You can also watch all of our Second Command podcast episodes on our Second Command podcast YouTube channel. You definitely want to like and subscribe and then share this with other executives. This is a strong one. So, Lauren, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.
- [03:30]
Lauren Nemeth
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
- [03:32]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, looking forward to this. And you and I were just chatting briefly before I came on. Your background is kind of unique. I want to find out a little bit more from you into how you got into this role with Pinecone. But I guess before we do, why don't you tell us kind of what Pinecone is, what your company kind of focuses on. But then I want to go back and talk about some of your experience and how you got here through some of the companies that you worked with, with Twilio and Appnexus and Google. Google.
- [03:56]
Lauren Nemeth
You got it. It's my pleasure. So Pinecone is most famously known for being the leading vector database. Vector databases commonly can be used for search applications, but really since ChatGPT, where they've really taken off, is really more around AI applications. So powering rag workloads, agentic workloads, any sort of generative AI workload that you can think of today. We've since matured that business into a lot of other AI infrastructure components that basically power knowledge in AI. So think of inference and assistant and re rankers. The business kind of continues to mature that way.
- [04:31]
Cameron Harold
Okay, so tech is always fast, right? I mean the. It's kind of like dog ears, right? We talk about that. But now with AI coming in, it feels like the tech space is going even faster. I was speaking with somebody this morning and I said if the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business. You're out of business.
- [04:49]
Lauren Nemeth
Correct.
- [04:50]
Cameron Harold
But like business is different today than it was yesterday. Is AI, Is it scaring you? Is it you? Is it driving you? Is it like walk us through where your mindset is as a leader and where your company's mindset is around it.
- [05:04]
Lauren Nemeth
Happy to. So I've been in tech broadly for well over 20 years now. I have learned more in the last six months that I've been working in AI than I probably learned in the last 10 years. And the reason why is one, not only is the technology rapidly evolving, but the art of the possible is rapidly evolving in terms of what AI can do. And when you think about it, AI is not like a thing, right? It's not like OpenAI as much as maybe it might be one day. The be all, end all, solve for all problems. There's a lot of different components that go into that from the infrastructure side of things, which is obviously where Pine cone plays, to the large language models, to sort of chunking and parsing strategies, data pipelines, data lake houses. I mean, there's so many aspects that go into it. All of the innovation is moving really, really quickly. More and more money is obviously getting pumped into it. More and more businesses are sort of evolving and quite frankly, we're sort of all playing in each other's wheelhouses. Right. So what might be a partner today actually becomes a competitor tomorrow. And how do you sort of play in that ever evolving landscape is something that, you know, if you're deeply curious, ambitious, technically minded, like, this is probably one of the most exciting spaces to be in, I think, certainly times, at least in my career.
- [06:16]
Cameron Harold
So it feels like strategy and adaptability are going to be more important than ever. And then just also like keeping staying heads up, which I guess is kind of strategy in a way. But one of my favorite dashboards recently is called there's an AI for that. And if you've seen it, but it shows something like 15,000 different AI tasks that exist. There's something 30,000 like. So you know, OpenAI is one, right. And there's 15,000 of these other tools on that dashboard. How do you not get distracted by AI and how do you stay focused with it? And can you walk us through what your thoughts are around that?
- [06:47]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean, I stay customer obsessed is probably my best answer to that. So one of the benefits of Pinecone is We do have 5,000 net new developers sign up for the platform every single week. So that's 20,000 net new developers every single month. And if you think about it, when they come to Pinecone, they're all building really, really different things, right? So there's search products they're building, there's rag applications there's building, there's different agentic workloads that they're powering. And we have a very unique vantage point to actually see which of those are actually taking off and scaling in what sectors, what problems are they inherently solving. And it spans everything from regulated verticals like financial services, healthcare, life sciences, et cetera, into generic consumer applications. And so I think that vantage point of really seeing how people are building an AI today is probably what's giving me the most focus lens of what's actually working. And then I think taking a lot of that and educating more broadly our customer base about what is the art of the possible. A lot of people looked at AI as like, this is great for productivity or efficiency, which it certainly is, but I think now it's sort of evolving into hey, I can actually make money in AI. Like here's actually new revenue streams that I can stand up that are actually durable, or here are knowledge workers that I can inherently replace. That wasn't possible probably six months ago, that is now becoming possible today. And I think showing that art of the possible more broadly to a large customer base is sort of where I'm focusing a lot of my time question.
- [08:13]
Cameron Harold
About that in terms of AI replacing knowledge workers, then also enhancing knowledge workers. I think the only employees that should be worried about being replaced by AI are fundamentally the ones who don't embrace AI and use it in their day to day. Right. If you're an employee who learns different AI tools and how to use some of those tools, you're going to make yourself a little bit less replaceable than somebody who is just going to continue doing it the way they've always done it. So how do you talk to employees about that? How do you encourage them to learn it? How do you. Google is famous for having kind of, I think, what was it, one day a week that you were allowed to just work on these cool projects? Do you allow people to have some time in their week and day to just work with AI tools to play around to see what possible?
- [08:55]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean as an AI company that's like almost all we do all day, every day. We have entire teams of like our developer relations teams, our solutions engineering teams, et cetera, who are full time building out net new demos, finding different ways to use the AI applications etc. So we do that pretty broadly within the company. I think my, my counsel to companies broadly is sort of like a crawl walk run, right? I think starting with just enhancing your existing employee base with productivity and efficiency tools is an obvious place to start. So I think if you think of better search applications. So a lot of what we focus on today is as opposed to querying a corpus of information on just kind of keyword or lexical based responses, give it all the unstructured data, right? Give it the images and the videos and the PDF files and all that instruction information to even give like a richer piece of feedback. Then you can build sort of Q and A capabilities, which is typically in some form of a rag application to ask questions that you can interact with in terms of that corpus of information. And then I think once you start to get that knowledge or responses of like, what's actually going on in all this information, then you can start to pick off like, here are the agentic workloads or sort of aspects of what my employees are doing today that I would like to replace. In a lot of ways, it's kind of additive, right? So you might think, you know, if you're a doctor, for example, you know, you don't want to necessarily be taking all the notes of everything that happened and transcribing that and putting into some software corpus of information. Like if the AI can automatically do that for you, great, you've got more time to save lives, be with patients, et cetera. And so I do think, like, people kind of like over inflate, oh, it's going to take over all of our jobs. Humans are going to be obsolete. Like, that's certainly not going to be the case. But I think starting with like, where can it be additive so that your knowledge workers are actually focusing on what they could do best and all of sort of the rudimentary tasks AI can basically take off when they're played.
- [10:47]
Cameron Harold
I played with1 just 2 days ago just for fun. I asked open AI to go through or chatgpt to go through my newest book, which is called the Second in Command. And I said to summarize my latest book for me into the top 20 takeaways. And a minute later it had it. And I'm like, holy shit. So today I just recorded a podcast episode. Reading out and talking. That would have taken a human forever. And it would have taken me, like, even though I wrote the darn book, like, to summarize 220 pages into 20. It was pretty good. Like it actually did A really pretty good job. But anyway, I know that's like super. Like, that's awesome. Entry level as to what it's working on, where. How many employees have you got a Pinecone right now?
- [11:27]
Lauren Nemeth
Just under 200.
- [11:29]
Cameron Harold
So in your day to day, you could get pulled into everything. How do you kind of orbit that? How do you stay away from getting involved in everything? How do you decide where to allocate your time?
- [11:39]
Lauren Nemeth
And I famously had a boss who's actually the CFO now of OpenAI. Sarah Fryer, who actually was the one who taught me this principle of the three P's and she's like, you should structure your day around the three Ps. First and foremost is people, right? Making sure that your people are the best people. You're filling the right roles, they're amply motivated, rewarded, recognized, but then also sort of performance managed where needed. Like, focus on the people stuff first. Second thing, focus on the performance of the business. Like really getting into the nuts and bolts of the data. And you know, for our business, we have so many employees, we have so many customers that we're working with today to really stay abreast of, like, where is their growth, where is their churn, where is their opportunity, like, what's working, what's not. Constantly focusing and refining that. To really figure out here are the key performance areas, no more than three for the week that we're really going to rally around and kind of stand up working groups and motions to make sure that we're putting points on the board week over week. And the third piece is process. I think for a lot of coos CROs in particular, you kind of get so heads down in like the day to day that you sometimes forget, like, hey, I got a plan for six months or 12 months from now as well. Like, what are the things that I need to plan for then and how do I start laying some of that foundation today? Because those things do take time. Um, so usually people performance process is where I focus.
- [12:56]
Cameron Harold
I love that. If you were to split your time, is there a percentage for any of those?
- [13:01]
Lauren Nemeth
It kind of depends on what's on fire that week. Like for me right now, when I actually, when I started at Pinecone, people was probably 60% of my week. Today, it's probably closer to 20, 25% of my week to start with. Much more of it now is on the performance of the business and the process for basically 2025 also as we kind of go into next year. But it sort of, you know, moves around depending on what's urgent at that point in time.
- [13:25]
Cameron Harold
What was your first 90 days like coming in?
- [13:28]
Lauren Nemeth
It was a lot. I mean, you got to think of I was coming out of Twilio, right, which is a publicly traded $4.5 billion company. I was managing a 2,000 person organization at that time. Clearly a market leader in terms of communications. But that business is growing between 7 and 10% year over year in a very kind of mature landscape of telecommunications. Coming into Pinecone, which is way more technical, right, you're talking about databases and infrastructure and AI, which is a completely new industry, like just purely coming up to speed on the technology. And the industry at large was like a 24, 7 full time job, but then also with that is you're inheriting a completely new team. And the team I inherited basically didn't have a manager for like the first seven months prior. So they were kind of rudderless. Where are we going? What are we focused on? Who is our core ICP that we're selling into? Do we have the right pricing and packaging strategy? There was kind of a series of hairs on fire that, you know, in those first 90 days you want to start to tackle and get some points on the board, make sure you've got the right people on the right seats. But it was definitely a fire hose.
- [14:38]
Cameron Harold
How do. Yeah, no kidding. How do you figure out the industry and have to deal with some of the fires and the people stuff, like how do you, like technically, how do you figure out the industry and deal with people stuff? And then I guess second part is how do you gain the trust of the people when they know you don't know the industry and you know, you don't know the industry and yet you're still having to lead them. Can you speak to both of those?
- [14:57]
Lauren Nemeth
Yeah, absolutely. So I think on the how to come up to speed on the industry, like one thing that's great is at least at Pinecone, like we have real industry expertise, like even IDO and our CEO and founder, I mean he was the first to really pioneer the first vector database technology and he's been building vector databases for like well over 20 years at AWS and Yahoo and a lot of other places. So I think in terms of technical subject matter expertise, like it's kind of harder, hard to get better than that. Our board also just has such an amazing vantage point on all things AI and they have amazing resources in terms of both connecting across partnerships and the ecosystem and key customers, but also just sort of where they see growth and opportunity. And where they don't. And so I think gathering a lot of that feedback also from obviously our employee base. So a lot of it was just spending time with as many smart people as I possibly could, spending a lot of time with our customers. And you start to pattern recognize like what's working, what's not working. And you can kind of come up to speed relatively quickly that way. I think in terms of the people assessment and sort of earning their trust, there's sort of two parts of that, right? Like I think in any great go to market organization there's inherent truths of like what makes great salespeople, what makes great marketers, what makes great partnerships, people, et cetera. And I think keeping that lens of sort of a very high bar of like what your expectations are, how decisions should be made, the caliber of individuals that you want in that role, sharing with that with the team is really important, but I think also clearly hearing where they're struggling. So when I walked into this role, pricing and packaging was completely on fire. The company did not have a clear ICP in terms of this is the core customer that we're going to sell against. Here's how we're going to go be inherently successful. And they didn't really have any sort of like structured sales motion in terms of either how they were doing, forecasting, how they were thinking about growing existing customers with like upsell and cross sell. The role of the solutions engineer, a lot of that stuff was just kind of like muddy. So putting in some structure to begin with where people got to see like wow, I've been sitting struggling for six months. I'm now starting to see an organizational design that makes sense, the compensation plan that makes sense. An ICP that we can actually rally around and be successful with. Like those were kind of the key areas that you earn their trust really through actions, not words. Start to show that like I am listening to you and I'm also, you know, addressing your core issues. That is I think what sort of kicked that off. But you know, trust and respect is something that's not earned in 90 days, right? It takes due time from there. But at least it starts to show that like this is a leader who cares about me, can actually solve problems effectively and quickly and can actually get the company sort of heading in the right direction.
- [17:32]
Cameron Harold
What had to change with your leadership style and your kind of day to day in going from Twilio down to a 200 person company, like what changed? Because it is completely different.
- [17:41]
Lauren Nemeth
It's completely different. So my background, it's funny I would say this Twilio is the largest company I ever willingly went to work for. Every large company I worked with prior like including Google and others were always through acquisitions. And I love startups. I like the hands on fast growth, unafraid to break things, anything is possible. Like I charge the hill underdog kind of mentality. Like that's kind of my happy place, so to speak. So I was excited to get back to my happy place. But I think with it bring a lot of the maturity that I saw at Twilio in terms of like how do you operate things really, really well at scale? How do you hire really high caliber individuals who can not just build the one to a hundred million dollar company but the, you know, $1 to $1 billion company, et cetera. And so anyway, I brought a lot of, I think the great people, management and operations from Twilio but it was nice to kind of get back to my roots of like startup agility, innovation that I kind of missed actually from my four years at Twilio.
- [18:40]
Cameron Harold
How about in getting to, you know, understand the CEO and building that CEO, CEO relationship, what did you do to kind of get up to speed and to get to know him?
- [18:50]
Lauren Nemeth
Yeah, I mean I think every relationship, and this is personal and professional, I truly believe starts with trust and respect. Like that's like the cornerstone of all of it. And I think to have a sense of, I really have tremendous respect for Ido in terms of his subject matter expertise, his technical expertise, his knowledge of this landscape, which is far, far better than mine. But I think he also has a lot of respect for like, you know, Lauren, you're really good at operating businesses at scale. You're a great salesperson, you're a great marketer, you're a great people manager. Right. A lot of the things that maybe aren't his natural skill sets or where he spent a lot of his career, like having that mutual respect of like, you're great at this, I'm great at this and here's how we can be better together. That's kind of a lot of it. And like I mentioned with trust, like trust isn't something that happens overnight. Right. That's something that's certainly earned over time. But a lot of trust for me is established in effective decision making. And I think that's also where a great CEO COO relationship can transpire, where the CEO can't and should not be making all decisions for the company. And sort of where does that line draw where hey, I'm going to empower My coo to really make all business making decisions. But, you know, when it comes to strategy, Lauren, or key things like pricing and packaging, like, I want to have a voice in that, et cetera, you know, figuring out where those lines are, and I think then building a lot of trust that way in terms of, like, hey, you're making sound decisions, you're improving the company. We're effectively working together. That's kind of like where we've spent a lot of our six months now that we've been working together.
- [20:17]
Cameron Harold
How long do you think it takes a senior executive to get up to speed where they're no longer trying to figure out the people in the market? And, I mean, we're always growing. But at what point do you kind of get up to speed where you're running at the same pace as everybody else? Is it six months?
- [20:32]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean, I have a sort of impossible bar. I really think it should be in your first three to four months. Like those three to four months. I don't really believe that executives should be making big, sweeping decisions. Right. I think a lot of it could just be sponge, infinite knowledge transfer. But it's got to be back and forth. You got to make sure that they're, like, registering all the information that they're getting and you're fine tuning that. But I'd say in three to four months, like, you should start to be dangerous enough that you can effectively make decisions for the company. And I'd say in six months, you should be as much of an expert as the rest of the executive team.
- [21:07]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, that feels about right. I've always said the first month is really getting to know the people in the landscape. Second month is kind of coming up with a list of all the things you'd like to change or do, or people fire people to bring in. And then month three is kind of testing your hypotheses on each of those, like, oh, I think I should fire Kelly, meet with everybody. Oh, no, I got a handcuff. Kelly got to fire Bob. But then by month four, month five, then you know enough, you know the people, you've tested things out, and you can start going after some of the easy wins to kind of gain their trust, but I can't. Yeah, you do have an impossible task because the business and the landscape is changing so fast. You said earlier that you stay very customer centric. How do you kind of synthesize or decipher what to listen to with the customers and what is just an opinion that maybe you don't run with, like, how do you not let the tail wag the dog?
- [21:53]
Lauren Nemeth
Great question. So two things. One, I probably spend at least 15% of my week with customers directly, which is kind of a lot for a COO. Like I wouldn't say most COOs are spending that much time hour by hour, pound by pound, like that much with customers. But spending as much time with customers as possible is an imperative. And when I say customers, I mean both prospects. So not existing customers as well as existing customers. And hearing very clearly like what their needs are, what their wants are, what they're trying to build, et cetera, particularly from prospects. I get a lot of intelligence on the competitive landscape on just different perspectives of where they see the industry evolving, different problems are solving. I inherently try to look at different geos and different verticals in terms of who those customers and prospects are. So I see sort of a varying set of like opportunities or problems that they're looking to solve. I look at a ton of data. We're very data focused company at Pinecone. So everything from support, like what are customers, you know, chiming in, saying they're struggling with or having problems on to where customers getting stuck in pipeline, where are we disqualifying customers? What are the key product features that we're inherently missing? But I think as long as you're looking at vast arrays of data so that you have a broader view of the market, not like a selective one set of customers, I think that's very important. But in the same sense, I think when you're a startup company, landing a 10 million, $15 million logo, like it can make or break your company for that point for sure. And I think building some custom things for really, really, really big opportunities, so long as they stay with your core vision mission as a company, you know, you probably get one shot at those, maybe two shots at those a year. But making sure that you stay abreast of what those could be, I think is also very important.
- [23:35]
Cameron Harold
Can you speak to how are you funded?
- [23:39]
Lauren Nemeth
We, I mean, who are our VCs today?
- [23:41]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, how much, how much is the company raised and it is VC funded, right? How many rounds have they done? Or Series B, Series C, where are they?
- [23:48]
Lauren Nemeth
Series B and just under 200 million from Andreessen, from Wang, from Menlo, I mean from kind of like a lot of the who's who, iconic, et cetera, of investors. And our last round was probably about a year and a half ago. I believe I have to add you.
- [24:05]
Cameron Harold
To my angel list watch list. And on the next round, when the company is funded. I mean, you've always worked with VC funded companies. What value do the VCs bring to the business and what challenges do they bring? The challenges in a good way, not in a negative way.
- [24:21]
Lauren Nemeth
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I wouldn't say all VCs are one size fits all. Even if I look at our board today, like I'll give you an example. Tim Tully, who's our board member from Menlo, he is a technical expert, I would say, on vector databases, building an AI today. Like he's a very technology focused investor. So I think he can really go toe to toe with Rom, our CTO or ido, our founder, in a way that's kind of hard for the other VCs maybe to do just because he is so technical. And he's been a CTO before. Like he's been there, he's done that. He understands the intricacies. You've got Peter Levine from Andreessen, who not only has done a lot of great PLG businesses like GitHub and others in his career, but he's been sitting at the forefront of AI for quite some time. And Andreessen, just broadly, I think as a, as a venture capital firm, has unparalleled resources. I mean, they have resources for every single one of my direct reports. Like an expert on partnerships, an expert on marketing, an expert on, you know, cloud marketplaces, anything that you can think of. Like they are basically as helpful as you want them to be because resources kind of not, not, not of concern there. We've got, you know, Bob Muglia, who is the CEO of Snowflake, who's obviously been there, done that. You've got Peter Wagner from Wing, who's done, I think, every major database investment you can kind of think of out there. So they have a lot of expertise, I'd say, on our industry and how to scale businesses from this stage to sort of market leaders. And they each bring very different types of resources and kind of maturity. So to be honest, I lean on each of them for different needs and wants and they've been incredibly additive to our growth.
- [25:57]
Cameron Harold
It's almost an unfair advantage. It's incredible. How much time do you think you spend working with the advisors? And it's interesting because really this is the whole like, if you're, if you're so in the business, you're missing the opportunity to work with them, that is truly working on the business, the time with them. How much of your time would be spent if you're 15% with customers? What, what Percentage of your time. Do you think you're talking to advisors?
- [26:19]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean, it's funny because like going back to Twilio, we had like quarterly board meetings, which is, you know, probably standard for every major publicly traded company. Yeah, we have board meetings here like every six weeks. And part of that is just not because like, I mean, obviously our business is evolving really quickly, but it's also we want their feedback and the industry evolving very quickly. And so we have very structured settings like that where we're constantly getting feedback from them. We're giving them feedback in terms of what we see that's evolving in the business. But then I sort of ping each of them one off depending on sort of bespoke needs and wants that they're experts on.
- [26:51]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, it's interesting how many people on the leadership team would have access to the advisors and to the board.
- [26:57]
Lauren Nemeth
Definitely the executive team. Right. So Ido, our CEO, myself, Lior, who's our cfo, and Rom, who's our cto. So the four of us, and then for my direct reports across sales, partnerships, solutions, engineering, marketing, they each have access to sort of, I would say more of the resources. Not so much the board members directly, but the resources behind those VC firms.
- [27:19]
Cameron Harold
Interesting. I like this. So you talked about the people side of the business I want to speak to or just have you speak to some of the stuff around recruiting right now. How hard is it to find talent in the Bay Area? Or has it gotten easier in the last 18 months with all the layoffs that have happened? Has anything changed there?
- [27:36]
Lauren Nemeth
I don't know what is going on right now, but there are so many people in market. It is wild to me at all levels, like whether junior, senior, coming from pedigree, big companies, pedigree, startup companies, you name it. But everyone sort of has like their ears and eyes open to new opportunities just because once again, I like there's so much innovation, the landscape is evolving so quickly that I think anyone with their wits about them is, is in market right now. So that part is great. So in terms of like this high pool of who you can pull from, there isn't anyone that I think is like rock solid in their seat is probably the first thing I would say. The second piece is kind of like why do people want to get into AI? This is like my big question. I ask basically everybody. People I talk to, they're like, oh well, you know, it's innovative and it's fast paced and it's the future and all those kind of like obvious points. But a Lot of them kind of look at AI as this, like, easy gravy train, right? Like, I'm going to jump into one of these pedigree AI companies, ride the wave, make a bunch of money. Like I was, you know, employee number 200 at Facebook or Google, et cetera. That is not AI just to, like, really be as bluntly clear as I can. It is a ton of hard work. It is a super crowded space today where people are constantly confused as to who's best of breed, who's building for what. Like, so you have to be ready to work, roll your sleeves up, and quite frankly, be aggressive. Like, this landscape is going to evolve and it's on our sort of shoulders to make sure that we're evolving effectively with it and also kind of determining how it should be evolved. Not everyone has that sort of cut out for them, to be honest. I think a lot of people think this is an easy gravy train and finding people who are technical, curious, ambitious, motivated, but really want to roll up their sleeves and put points on the board, like, those are inherently the people I'm looking for. And those are definitely diamonds in the rough.
- [29:28]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, totally. Well, then it's also, as you said, if everybody's in market, everybody's in play. That means that everybody at every company, including yours, is potentially in market and play as well. And it's. So how do you keep the good people? How do you. I guess that's part of the people side, is knowing who the. God forbid they ever quit and who do we have to handcuff. But even the workhorses. I always say that, A, players are racehorses, B, players are workhorses, C, players can go to the glue factory. How do you make sure that you've handcuffed your A's and B's, like, so they don't go anywhere.
- [29:56]
Lauren Nemeth
What do you.
- [29:56]
Cameron Harold
What do you do culturally to make sure that they don't leave?
- [29:59]
Lauren Nemeth
So my CEO would probably disagree with this, but this is why we're a great yin and yang. I believe people work for people, not companies. And so, sure, it's definitely on our CEO in terms of motivating them, motivating them for the company. Of, like, here's why this is an amazing technology and amazing space. Here's where we see things evolving for the next three to five years. You know, you'll be at sort of the ground floor of that and architecting that future. I think that that vision is very, very important. But inherently why people come to work every day is the people that they're working for. And they want to make sure that they're working for people who are really industry leading, like best in breed at what they do. Really care about them as human beings are investing in their careers, care about who they are in their personal lives. Like, I spent a ton of time, it's like a joke now that anytime people come into San Francisco, they come over to my house for a drink, they meet my family, they meet my dog. Like, you know, they're awesome. They, they know who I am as a human being, not just like some robot on a zoom call, you know what I mean? And I think that time to build those connections and relationships where you also hear them authentically. Like, I deeply believe in authenticity. I don't purport to be anyone that I'm not. And hence I'm not everybody's cup of tea, I guess you could say in that, in that regard too. But I want people to be vulnerable. I want them to tell me where they're struggling, what's working, what's not working.
- [31:14]
Cameron Harold
Totally.
- [31:15]
Lauren Nemeth
I want them to be in a safe space where we can talk through that. I'm not going to like punish them for it. I want to help them through that. And I think that's very rare for people to find in a great leader. And I think that actually inherently creates a lot of loyalty. So even today at Pinecone, our head of sales has worked for me for three companies. Our head of partnerships has worked for me for three companies. You know what I mean? Like, you find people who are not only great, but then also loyal.
- [31:42]
Cameron Harold
Hey there, Cameron here. Are you enjoying the show thus far? We're going to get right back to it in a sec, but just let me ask you a quick question. Are you a COO or a second in command tasked with helping the company hit and exceed its growth goals? Having spent many decades of my life dedicated to this role, I know one of the secrets of growth is to surround yourself with like minded people also pushing and striving to go where you want to go. It's why, as a listener to this podcast, I want to officially invite you to the CEO Alliance. It's for COOs, presidents, VPOps, or whoever is your company's second in command to the CEO. We're the world's leading community for the second in command and it gives coos the tools and connections to grow themselves and the company. When you're a part of this peer group, you'll get access to unprecedented support, guidance and resources to grow your company's bottom line, improve your ability to streamline processes, connect with other top seconds in command to assist you and bring out your greatest potential and so much more. Go to www.cooalliance.com to see if you qualify. It's where you can also see other members and the results of the program, as well as our 10x guarantee. If you qualify for membership, you can set up a complimentary call with our team to discuss if the group can be the right fit for you. Once again, it's www.cooalliance.com use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month for 10% off. That is P, O, D, C, A, S T. 10 before the end of the month for ten percent off. Now back to the show.
- [33:22]
Lauren Nemeth
Because they're like, look, I can continue to learn from Lauren. I know she's going to get my back. We're going to bet on winning companies. We're going to go build something magical together. We make effective decisions together. I think that's kind of the magic sauce.
- [33:33]
Cameron Harold
That's actually a true, in my mind, a true C level leader. I've talked about this a lot. I actually talked about it in my book the Second in Command that a true C level leader, when they come to a new organization, actually bring not only strategy and autonomy and P and L responsibility, they bring people and partners with them. Like people follow good people. Yeah. When I was the CEO at 1-800-GOT junk. That was 17 years ago. But I was so obsessed with people and so cared about people and I knew so much about, like I actually gave a shit about their insecurities and their fears and their vulnerabilities and wanted them to know mine, that if I then they went through brick walls to build the business because they just knew that we were in this. Right. We're in this life together. In fact, I got a tattoo recently that says walking each other home and it kind of signifies that. That none of this shit actually matters. Right. It's just what we're doing to make money. But if I care about the humanity of the people I'm working with, they're going to care about me. Net net. We get to build a cool company together and yes, drive to that vision and core values, et cetera. But you and I are lined up. It's funny, you said the yin and yang. That's the logo of my new book. The second in command is the yin and yang. Yeah. Home office. And working from an office. Where do you line up with that? Where's pine cone line up with that? Working Remote or coming into an office, it's hybrid.
- [34:42]
Lauren Nemeth
And honestly it's sort of like, look, we have a bunch of employee. We have an office in Tel Aviv, New York and San Francisco, but we also have employees who are in Austin and Virginia and Chicago, like all over the country. So they obviously can't come to an office every day. But we want to make sure that we're bringing them together, I would say probably monthly, if not every two months, to come into one of the headquarters and have sort of a more structured setting where they can spend time with people. If you're based like here, obviously, where there is an office, I try and go in at least two to three days a week. And then on those other kind of two days that I end up working from home, it's just like hyper productivity days where I'm doing a lot of sort of calls with people that are not physically near me.
- [35:21]
Cameron Harold
So. So it is hybrid. I think that's kind of where we're going to net out at the end of the day is if companies can't figure out hybrid, they're kind of not going to make it. Have you spent much time over in Tel Aviv?
- [35:30]
Lauren Nemeth
I have. I love Tel Aviv. A lot of my career in marketing and advertising technology. So it's pretty hard to work in those sectors and not go to tele.
- [35:39]
Cameron Harold
I love Tel Aviv. I could spend a lot of time in Tel Aviv. That's, that's a place that I could actually put very high on my map of, like I could live here. It's a pretty, pretty great city. Food is fantastic, people are fantastic. Yeah, Tel Aviv a lot.
- [35:52]
Lauren Nemeth
Beach weather.
- [35:53]
Cameron Harold
The beach is great. Everybody's active. It's, it's. I told someone this week that Tel Aviv reminds me of what California probably was in the 50s. You know, with everybody at the beach and everybody active and everybody having fun and cool restaurants and it's beautiful and all just works and yeah, it's like, it just, it's freaking great, man. And then, you know, Jerusalem just go for three days, see the history and then get the hell out. Yeah, Tel Aviv is great. So in terms of the time that you spend with people and what you're working with people on, do you have a core set of things that you're constantly developing people or is it very situational?
- [36:31]
Lauren Nemeth
100% situational? Yeah, yeah, I would say. And also depending on like their time and career, the seniority of their role, how well they're doing in their role, etc. I have, I have my star performers right now. That I just want to make sure they are recognized and rewarded. I want to make sure that they are stretched as comfortably as we can stretch them so that we're maximizing, you know, what their output can obviously be. And I want to make sure that we're planting the seeds for where they're going in the future of their career. And some of that, I have some star, like I have a star performer solutions engineer right now who really wants to go into partnerships. Like that's where he wants to evolve his career, which is kind of non traditional. But like, how are we starting to kind of give him an opportunity to flex that way and get exposed more to that and sort of like see what that opportunity could be. Obviously, the classical one is a lot of individual IC salespeople want to go into management. How do you structure some sort of incubated team lead structure where they can kind of like taste what it's like to do some of the management work and actually see, like, is that inherently what you want to do next in your career? So we do a lot to really make sure, like for those top performers, they are rock solid, happy, stretched, recognized, rewarded, you know, doing all the things that they want to advance their careers, you know. And I think for low performers, like, you have to have a very empathetic and honest conversation of, you know, your expectations, what's working, what's not working. And I think what's the most empathetic thing to do is put that on, like a very short time schedule. Things that we need to see improved. And it's not personal. We're here to help you through this process, but we have to see the points on the board. That's what go to market is all about. If we're not driving the business, there's no real point for us coming to work every day. And so I think making sure that we see that and I think for kind of middle of the tier performers, it's really about what it takes to be great. And we want everybody to be great. We want everybody to be a star performer. And I think being candid about the difference between maybe where they are and maybe, you know, the people who are the star performers above them and what we're going to do to support them to get there. And I think, quite frankly, I'd love to say I spend the majority of my time on my top performers, even though I do spend a lot of my time there, but probably that middle tier of like, can we get them to star? And if so, like really get them over that Line, that's probably the biggest bang for my buck.
- [38:44]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, as long as we're not spending time on the bottom performers, that's. That's where the real time stock comes. How about your growth? What have you focused on over your career? Where have you, other than tech, what have you worked at in terms of your skill set? Where have you kind of worked on your capacity?
- [38:59]
Lauren Nemeth
I feel like I've done it all in a lot, in a lot of ways, but there's obviously so much I want to do. I mean, like I mentioned, I started my career in marketing and advertising technology, which was super hot. When it was hot. I tried my hand at a turnaround company. I tried my hand at consumer. I tried my hand. I mean, I tried my hand at deep linking architecture. Like I did so many different types of businesses pre revenue, you know, 4 billion in revenue, different growth stages and sizes. Like for me it's more about. I want to be as well rounded as possible as a go to market leader. I want to see as many different types of technology, businesses, growth curves, competitive landscapes, et cetera, to continue to sort of fine tune my own perspective. And so I think with that I bring a very diverse background. I'd say for a lot of COOs, you know, they've probably stayed in software their whole career. They've stayed in like, you know, selling into a CMO their whole career, which is great. There's nothing to knock that, but it's a very specific lens then of how to grow businesses. And I just like a more diverse, worldly, you know, lots of different ways to kind of get their lens and I want to hone that as I go.
- [40:08]
Cameron Harold
You got a bunch of lenses for sure. Have you struggled with anything?
- [40:12]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean, a lot of things.
- [40:13]
Cameron Harold
What's a good one? Yeah, what's a good one that you've struggled with you've had to kind of overcome? I mean, I remember this again, going back to my time at 1-800-got junk. I read the book Leadership and Self Deception and I was like, holy shit. Like the stuff. My blind spots were big. I didn't realize. Yeah. What were some that you struggled with that you've had to work through?
- [40:30]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean there's a lot. I'd say, number one, I've never gotten lucky. You know what I mean? Like you look around sometimes a lot of other COOs and CROs and they're just like, they're at the right place at the right time and they made a ton of money and it was, you know, moderately easy. Like I have yet to find my right place, right time and sort of easy job. Maybe Pinecone will be that. I really hope that that's the case. And I've honestly picked some duds. Like, there's some companies I've worked at that, you know, you go in and it's like, this seems like a great technology, this seems like great people. These are great venture capital backers. This is a great market and opportunity. And things go sideways for a lot of different reasons that they go sideways. I see a lot that are people based, right? Like you hire bad people into companies and it could tank a company like so fast. It's not funny. I've seen people be inherently dishonest upfront when you take a job that like, hey, our cash and bank is here, our product maturity is here, and you walk in the door and it's a tenth of what they said it was going to be. And so I think, you know, just not always, but that's kind of the nature of it, right? Like that's just. And you gotta roll with the punches, you gotta endure it and you gotta learn from it and you gotta continue to evolve with it. But I have not always picked winners. And I feel like I've worked super, super hard, especially as like a female COO CRO back when like women in sales and particularly in software was like, thing, you know, it was hard in a lot of ways, but I think then when you kind of get to the top of it, you're like, God, shouldn't it be like easy now? And it never gets easy, you know what I mean? And you gotta keep grinding your teeth and moving forward.
- [42:06]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, never. I was coaching Marcelo Claret, who's the CEO of Sprint, and I was in his office in Kansas City and we were doing some one on one coaching. And he said, cameron, when are people no longer going to be the issue? And I started laughing. I'm like, you're the 82nd largest company in the United States. You're on the board of SoftBank. Like, people are always the issue. What do you mean? When are they always the issue? Can you give us a lesson from acquisitions? You said that you've kind of been in some companies that were acquired. What's a big lesson that you learned in kind of navigating or getting through that acquisition period?
- [42:33]
Lauren Nemeth
You know, I think each of them were kind of great and not great in different ways. So I think of like Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. God, those companies are really different. DoubleClick in a lot of ways was like, A sales led, go to market led business which is kind of unique, I would say, in terms of software broadly. And Google is, you know, famously a very product R and D led company. So I think there was some sort of culture shock of going into that company that way. And when you're sitting on the go to market side of the house, you're not sort of like the big man or woman on campus anymore. But Google actually did a very good job of keeping that business separate in a lot of ways, where it still had its own culture in some ways and it had its own management team and leadership, et cetera. So it wasn't just kind of like slammed into Google broadly. So we were able to sort of keep some of those cultural norms. But it was really, really, really hard, I think of other companies like, you know, Singtel acquired a company turn that I worked at and it was really complicated because Singtel obviously like major, you know, telco based out of Asia Pacific, tons of money, but like not necessarily like technology experts. Yeah, they put together a myriad of different tech companies at once. And that's hard, right? It's like hard to kind of make that work. And you know, subsequently that business has kind of dissolved I think as a result. But even like News Corp, when they bought MySpace, that was like my first job ever that I worked at and ign, you know, it was just old print kind of publication leaders coming in to like be digital executives. And it just doesn't work like that. And so I think finding a way to really respect the asset that you're acquiring and what it, what you're buying it for. And I think if you can really understand what that is and the critical people that you need to retain to keep that culture, performance ability and you have to be fluid with it. You can't be sort of this like overbearing, like, all right, I bought you so you're mine and you're going to do what I say now almost inherently that doesn't work for people, for innovation, for any of it. So I think having some fluidity of like what does better together look like, how do we assess that upfront, how do we communicate that to the employee base so that they're really bought into it and then also your customers in the market, like that's the part I think people don't do a great job upfront before actually finalizing an acquisition.
- [44:50]
Cameron Harold
I love that. Can you go Back to the 21 year old Lauren Nemeth and give her some advice? What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today.
- [44:58]
Lauren Nemeth
I mean, I was. I mean, I still am impatient, probably. I mean, when I was 21, I was particularly impatient. I know I thought it was right. I got more right over time. I was definitely less right at 21. I mean, I was really impatient. I think, you know, going back to being a female coo, you know, I went through this period of time where I thought I had to kind of like, emulate men or male behavior to be successful, and I had to be more aggressive and I had to be more decided. And I wasn't inherently who I was. Like, I was not authentic in those first early years of my career because I thought I had to be someone that I wasn't. But, like, you know, that's confidence and maturity that you gain over time. And I would just tell my younger self that, like, this is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. And what you need to focus on right now is surrounding yourself with the smartest, most talented people in the entire world. I wouldn't even worry about making money in your 20s. Like, I really wouldn't. I would focus on working with the smartest people on the biggest, most complex problems and having a manager that really, really cares about you that's going to give you a ton of rope and as long. And I had a manager, that's probably one of the best things I did. Michael Rubenstein, I worked for for seven and a half years specifically because of that. He gave me endless rope. Now, I earned that rope. But very clear, like, as long as you keep putting these points on the board, like, I will expand your career way faster than any other manager would allow you to. And I was like, great, I'm hyper ambitious. Like, that's what I want to do. And we built a lot of great things together for seven and a half years. So just, yeah, finding great managers, be a little patient. Focus on solving big problems with smart people. The money will get there. The titles will get there. Like, all that stuff will come over time is probably what I would say.
- [46:37]
Cameron Harold
I love it. Well, Lauren Nemeth, I think you found your winner. I think Pine Cone's found there is the CEO of Pine Cone. Thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast.
- [46:45]
Lauren Nemeth
It's my pleasure, Cameron. Thanks for having me.
- [46:47]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, I really appreciate it.
- [46:51]
Lauren Nemeth
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Harold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to, like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms for more best practices from industry leading COOs. Visit coolalliance.com.