Sri Shivananda - CTO at PayPal

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Sri, the CTO at PayPal, and we discuss his accidental journey to becoming a CTO, the four phases of leadership, and how to approach building confidence. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Sri at 00:00:30) Hello, hello, hello, hello, Joel. How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:34) Sri, I'm doing fantastic. How are you?

(Sri at 00:00:37) Doing well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:38) Are you in San Francisco right now?

(Sri at 00:00:41) I am actually around San Francisco. I'm in Saratoga.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) Okay. How is it opening back up? What's life like there right now?

(Sri at 00:00:49) I would say if you go on the streets and on the highway, you definitely see more traffic than you did in March. But there is still definitely a lot of caution, no doubt. I think people are practicing wearing masks and social distancing to the best they can. But there are some times when you go out on a walk on a trail and you'll see people too close to each other, and you get a little nervous about that.

(Sri at 00:01:20) And the second wave has, I think, pulled people back into a bit of caution again. But the best description that I've seen of this is in March, the impact of coronavirus was so much, the fear was so much. And now the impact is that much, and the fear has reduced a little bit. And so people are adjusting to the new norm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:44) Yeah, I would agree with that assessment. I haven't articulated it like that, but that is exactly what's happening with the ratio of fear. Oh, man. Has it impacted PayPal's business a lot?

(Sri at 00:01:56) Look, I think there is probably nothing in the world that has not been impacted by COVID-19. And I would say, on the one hand, it just took the whole world by surprise. There was new ways of living, new ways of working, people that were impacted, and all of that. And of course, as a company, we had to make a quick choice in going all remote and having all 33,000 PayPal employees and contract workers all remote all at the same time. Fortunately, we are a digitally privileged company.

(Sri at 00:02:36) And that allowed us to continue to remain productive and run the business. But not just that, we've been fortunate with the trends that we are seeing. While overall household income has taken a hit and expenditure has taken a hit, the proportion that has gone online is much higher. So whether it is in terms of digital giving and kindness or in terms of shopping patterns online, and therefore the use of payment methods like PayPal and Venmo and remittances through Xoom, which is also one of our companies, we've seen that gone up. So I would say business-wise, it's been a great positive trend, but at the same time, there have been challenges that we have to work through in, one, coping with it, and number two, figuring out how to continue to thrive in it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:28) Yeah, it's just blindsided everybody, but I did see that a lot of the different executives I talked to that have online companies, basically everything, like activity is just going up, it looks like, across the board. And so that's an interesting thing. And then I saw on LinkedIn yesterday, there was a report that I haven't gotten to read, but I saw this summary that was showing how the act of everybody going inside is actually going to propel us further on our digitalization path because we're forced to improve those methods.

(Sri at 00:04:06) Yeah. So oftentimes you need some triggers that cause habit changes and behavioral changes. I don't know if you know the story about ATMs, but when Citibank first introduced the ATMs across all of New York, it was not like day one people started to show up at the ATM. In fact, in many cases, they didn't trust those machines.

(Sri at 00:04:30) And then there was this huge blizzard in the late eighties, and banks were not available anymore. People, of course, had to continue to live and spend. And that's when ATMs really took off. And it is similar to that, that when I look at everything that's going on in the world, particularly with COVID-19 and distancing norms and work-from-home norms and so on, there has been more acceptance of digitization, use of digital currencies, use of digital and online shopping, and so on. And even those that might have resisted it before now find it to be a need and are accepting and adopting that and getting familiar with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:15) Now I'm curious because you're talking about digitization. I did a lot of research on you. I was very excited to talk with you and hang out today, so thank you so much, man. But I was thinking, you know, because you've been in this space for so long, you were at eBay for several years and you're at PayPal and risen to the top. So you have this knowledge in payments, and in that time window is when things like Bitcoin and the digital currencies really came out. What were your thoughts? When did you first pick up on these tools?

(Sri at 00:05:48) In terms of Bitcoin itself, the first time was many years ago, not quite during the beginning, but it was definitely before Bitcoin was—I think at that time it was even less than a dollar at that point. And I was in a car ride with somebody, and we were going up to some company in San Francisco for an advisory conversation where that team needed some help with respect to scaling technology and so on. And I had this old colleague on the side who was sitting there going like, "I'm mining this thing called Bitcoin, and I have this rig running at home." And I was curious, but not curious enough to go and actually look at it at that point in time.

(Sri at 00:06:31) And then eventually I got around to reading the paper and the underlying technology. Got more excited about the technology because I didn't fully appreciate the mechanics of how something like Bitcoin would become ubiquitous. It'll be there, but will it become ubiquitous and so on? And the fact that in the long term there was a limited supply, that was also a curious factor on how eventually the supply-demand economics would work and such. But that got me curious enough to where, following that, I started to follow it and read more about it.

(Sri at 00:07:05) And eventually, with respect to blockchain, even started to experiment with it at work and so on. There is some great technology there that, of course, has to scale to the massive transactions that will eventually happen. And the important thing to pay attention to here is we know digital currency is only a matter of when, not if. And as that happens, what has to occur in terms of the shift is that the whole complex ecosystem of finance has to work together. And what is that complex ecosystem?

(Sri at 00:07:42) It includes consumers. It includes merchants. It includes platforms like us, for example. It includes governments. It includes regulators. And it includes all the underlying plumbing that already exists to move and manage money. And the shift of all of that to a new paradigm. But like any other trend, it'll start small, it'll get adopted a little bit, you'll have very passionate people who are pushing it forward, and then eventually, given that everybody's motives align in making this happen, at some point in time there'll be a step function growth and the conversion into this currency. Last thing I'll say on this is, it is important to understand that a lot of the current financial system and how currency works is already, to some extent, digitized.

(Sri at 00:08:39) Like, for example, if you were to say how much money exists in the United States and how much of that truly exists in the physical form, the physical form is actually a fraction of the total money that exists already. Right? So most of what happens between PayPal and providers and banks and merchants and so on, guess what? Is physical money being exchanged?

(Sri at 00:09:03) No. It's already somewhat digital. So the trends have existed to make digitization happen over time. It's just a matter of time before we get there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:15) I like that. And to make it more personal, I think about myself, like 99.99% of my money is digital. I don't have much cash, I mean like the physical paper cash, right? And so you just kind of have it for tips or whenever. I don't know. There's just so few—I have it when I travel. I carry cash when I travel. But there's just so few interactions where you need cash. And then the apps have gotten pretty cool with splitting bills at dinner and the technology, the point-of-sale system between friends. All of those things are just continually improving. Let's say 30 years out, right? What does payments look like then?

(Sri at 00:09:57) There are a lot of things that are happening in payments. One is the digitization of currencies itself is one trend. The digitization of experiences is another trend, right? And over time, what has occurred is if you look at the shopping funnel, at the beginning of the shopping funnel, the biggest part is the consideration that all of us want to go get something.

(Sri at 00:10:21) It's our intent to discover. It's not even intent to buy, it's intent to discover. And then we go from that idea of, "Okay, I want something like this," to you start to explore and you do searches and you get to something and you say, "You know what? That seems like the right soundbar I want to buy." And now you go from "This is the right soundbar I want to buy" to figuring out, "Okay, where do I buy it from? Who's got the best deal and the best guarantees and so on?" So you go from the "what" to the "which," right? And then at that point in time, all the way towards the end, you add it to a cart, you do the checkout, and in the final stage is when you pay.

(Sri at 00:11:02) Now let me back up. If I back up into the physical world, you walk into the store, grocery store, or something like that. You go around the store, put all the things in a physical cart. You come to a checkout counter. At the checkout counter, you are going through a somewhat frictional process of closing that purchase and making a payment.

(Sri at 00:11:23) Now what's happening with payment experiences is over time, it is beginning to become more and more ambient, right? How many times do you find a subscription that you didn't know of and you're not using and you want to cancel it? Why does that occur?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:40) Often.

(Sri at 00:11:41) Often, right? Because you subscribe to it when you need it and it goes into the background and it's happening. And so I always have a fall and spring cleaning cycle on my subscriptions. But I'll give you a more important trend that I see, which is particularly in terms of ambient payments. When you think of the last rideshare you took, say with Uber, when did you pay?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:07) It just happens.

(Sri at 00:12:09) Exactly. It just happens. And that is not accidental. That was very deliberate product design. Because all you need to do is express the intent of wanting to take a ride and have a great ride experience.

(Sri at 00:12:25) And that expression of intent and getting the ride and the closure of the ride is sufficient indicator that you want to pay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:33) Yeah.

(Sri at 00:12:33) Right? So when I look 30 years from now, there is digitization of payments, digitization of shopping, digitization of experiences, ambiance of payments. But payments becoming ambient will also mean that it'll move into many other contexts. And those contexts are, what is that journey? The journey was there was a store, then there was online, then there was mobile, then there was on the go, and now it will be across all your surroundings.

(Sri at 00:13:06) The smart speaker can actually conduct a transaction on your behalf and pay for it. Build the right security with the right privacy and so on. Don't get me wrong, that's very, very, very important, right? Your car is now a server on wheels. It is, right?

(Sri at 00:13:25) It is processing more data than your phone or your laptop because it's guiding you, it's navigating you, it's doing so many things. Now can the car actually become a device for commerce? I think it already is. Like, for example, your Spotify subscription is running in your Tesla at times.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:48) That's true.

(Sri at 00:13:50) So what will happen is commerce will become contextual. Commerce will surround you wherever you are. And instead of this historical context of you went to the store, the store starts to come to you. And the store is not just one store, it's an unlimited shelf of all things around the world that is now instantaneously accessible to you where you are without the need to go somewhere.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:22) Oh, man. I love it. You're making me think big. You're getting me excited about the future. You think back 110 years ago, we just started to get electricity, and now we're here, you know? And what's going to—I think Elon Musk, Neuralink, I think that's going to make it so we can save our state before I die. I'm 32, you know? I think in the next 30, 40 years, we're going to have something either early or there. What do you think? You think I'm wrong? You think I'm crazy?

(Sri at 00:14:53) The thing is, I think technology is a powerful construct. We've seen great positive outcomes come out of technology. But at the same time, technology, if not properly managed, can become an issue. So this is where the human paradigms of ethics and integrity and the right kind of approach for inclusivity and so on has to guide how the power of technology is harnessed for the greatness in terms of experiences and products and services for all of us. So it's always the human-machine combination.

(Sri at 00:15:38) It's not human by itself. It's not machine by itself. It's the combination of the two that can create a powerful future on top of the ones that we have already seen. We've seen some amazing things in our lifetime.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:51) I know.

(Sri at 00:15:51) And I would say I count on technology to continue that journey, and all of us to play a role in shaping that as we go forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:01) So we'll go ahead and say yes. We'll say yes. Oh, I'm excited. Do you like the future? What are you excited about? What sort of future are you very excited about? You like SpaceX?

(Sri at 00:16:13) I love SpaceX, and as you can see from my background here, I've got a little bit of Star Wars and a little bit of Star Trek going.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:22) Oh, nice. That's an old Apple computer, yes?

(Sri at 00:16:25) It's an old, old Apple Classic. And you probably see some candlestick phones too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:33) Oh, okay.

(Sri at 00:16:33) Yeah. I respect technology a lot, old and new. And I think when I think of the future, one of the best pieces of work that I've read is a book called Factfulness from Hans Rosling. And Hans Rosling talks about the optimism around all the things that have happened, whether it is in terms of poverty or education and things of that nature. When I look at the future, what I get most excited about is the concept of equal opportunity to everyone.

(Sri at 00:17:09) And we can already begin to see that. Like, if you were to look at education and what's happening there, for you to actually gain a level of medium proficiency on any topic today, you don't have to go and approach a class or a school or something of that nature. Don't get me wrong, I think education, the formal education part, is very important. But what formal education really teaches you is learning how to learn.

(Sri at 00:17:39) And you take the skill of learning, and now you apply it to all things you do in life. No matter what topic today, I can literally through a web search land on enough content on it, filter it based on reputation, and start learning about it almost right away. We know of experiments where there are organizations that have left a powered laptop or a powered tablet in the middle of a village with not too many means for education. And what they have found is people around there figure out how to start using that and start to get to the things that they need to get to very quickly. Now that equalization where knowledge and education and awareness becomes much more accessible, I think is the key to a more inclusive world in the future.

(Sri at 00:18:35) One where we start to bridge a little bit of the gap between the haves and have-nots. It'll take a long time. I completely get it. But I think meritocracy should be based on capability, but the access to education to get to that capability should become something that everyone has anywhere they are in the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:01) Yeah. Because then it's just up to drive and desire. You empower more people, becomes distributed. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:08) I love it. I like the way you think. Do you get to do a lot of interviews and go on a lot of shows and talk?

(Sri at 00:19:14) This is not my most comfortable thing. I'm a geek. I'm—

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:18) Dude, it's just me. It's just you and me hanging out.

(Sri at 00:19:20) It is you, Joel. I think it's you that's getting the best of me here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:25) No. I mean, before I started this podcast, I didn't listen to podcasts. And when we started it, I was just like, alright, let's talk about some things we're interested in. I was writing a book at the time, and I said, yeah, there's some topics in the book, you know, and I want to just hang out and talk with some people. We started recording them. Someone suggested that we actually turn the recordings into the podcast, and so it was pretty exciting. And then the first time I'd been on someone else's podcast, I was like, woah. It was such a strange experience. And because the whole format was different. They were, like, one version of themselves and, like, no disrespect to it. Like, it was great experience, but they were, like, one version before the interview. And then, like, they're, like, okay, we're gonna record now. And then they just, like, their voice kind of changed and the entire atmosphere was different. I was just like, oh, this is weird. And then I did more and more interviews and I found out that I'm the odd one. Like, most of the interviews are like that. And I said, no. I want it to be like we're hanging out because that's how I want to spend my time. You know, we do hundreds of these, and so I'm like, I just want to hang out. I want to get to know Sri, see what he's interested in, and geek out. Is that a 3D printer back there?

(Sri at 00:20:34) It is. There's a 3D printer back there and it's my third one. One that finally actually was productive for me. The first two didn't work out well. It's me and my 14-year-old son that use it. And on this side here, if you look at the shelves that's a bit colorful, those are all the 3D prints. And so far, we just play around with models. But, you know, if you're talking about projects, the one that I'm most excited about right now is this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:05) What is that?

(Sri at 00:21:06) This is a set of Raspberry Pis. There is four Raspberry Pi 4s and one Raspberry Pi 3. And this five is going to be my Kubernetes cluster. And it's a rack, as you can see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:23) Yeah. You built—like, you 3D printed a Raspberry Pi rack?

(Sri at 00:21:26) No. No. This is not 3D printed. This was a separate using parts that are available. But this is me trying to get very familiar with what's going on in the world of Kubernetes and how I can use that in small things that I do at home.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:41) Does your son get interested in that or is he just interested in the 3D models?

(Sri at 00:21:45) Over time, he has gone from a lot of interest in science to now a lot of interest in art. So he's taken on to piano and violin more. He is a runner. So he's figuring out how to reduce his mile time and things of that nature. So varied interests. But I'm a geek.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:05) Yeah. No. When you were a kid, did you think you would grow up to be a CTO or did you just know that you loved technology?

(Sri at 00:22:13) No, Joel. I often tell people that I'm here by accident. And what I'll also say to you is I'm here because of failures. And while that may feel surprising, let me walk you through it. My intent as a teenager was to become a pilot in the Indian Air Force. And I made a few attempts at it and it was a great process to go through. It made me a better individual. But I tried about three times. At the end of the third one, my dad told me, like, look, you've tried three times. Like, I mean, how long is this gonna go on? And he convinced me to go take the engineering entrance exam at that point in time. And by the way, this was one year after all my buddies were already in college. I took a break of one year trying to pursue that. And I wrote my engineering entrance exam and got into engineering school. And at the end of the first year of engineering, I was given the option of either buying a motorcycle or a computer. And keep in mind, this is the early nineties. It was 1992, if I remember right. And buying a computer and having a computer at home was like no one ever thought of that. And this was a PC with a 320 kilobyte floppy drive that I got with a CGA monitor, not a VGA monitor, but a CGA monitor. In fact, you put your boot disk in, got the computer up and running, put the programming disk in, you program. And if you messed around with memory and the whole thing came crashing, lose all your work, start all over again. Right? But, you know, what it teaches you is, you know, you train hard so you can fight easy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:04) Yes.

(Sri at 00:24:04) Right? Those experiences were formative for me and I fell in love with computing. And as I continued to program and learn new programming languages, I would also open up the desktop and look internally and pull out cards and put them back in. And within about a year of owning the computer, I was assembling and selling computers to other people who wanted computers and didn't want to pay retail. So that's how I got into computing. And that doesn't mean that set me up for a CTO. I've had various other things. And this is where it's easy for someone to think of a career as just a single path upward. It's not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:49) I know. Yes.

(Sri at 00:24:50) Yeah. There's a place where you move upward, sideward, downward. And I've had all of those transitions in the—in the two, a little over two decades so far. And when people ask me, like, hey, would you change anything about what you went through? I go, nothing. Nothing. Everything that happened, good and not so good, is actually all good when you look at it in retrospective. And I'm thankful for the opportunities. I'm thankful for the successes. I'm thankful for the failures. I'm thankful for the learnings, because I think—and that's a journey still. Learning every day is what I get excited about. That's what makes me spring out of bed to get to work. It's because there's going to be some new learning every single day. That's what I love.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:41) I like how you talk. And I read your content too. And I like, you know, you said, train hard, fight easy. Another one of your articles had some really good fire lines—I call them fire lines, like, internally over here on our production team. But you had "follow your curiosities, embrace every opportunity to lead." So when I see people that do this, I'm gonna share a little bit about, you know, my backstory, and then I'm curious to how, you know, that connects with you. So, you know, my parents, my dad was an engineer, mom, stay-at-home mom. So, you know, growing up, you know, dad worked a lot, you know, mom was really busy, like PTA stuff. I wouldn't say that I had, like, a lot of mindful influences, and I wouldn't even say that mindfulness was a real popular thing back then. But, you know, as I grew up and I started to do difficult things or difficult things happen to me and I had to make the choice whether I was going to let it hold me back or propel me forward, I developed this sort of conscious navigation system, and then I found that there were resources out there, personal development resources, people who think positively, different authors, different public speakers. And then I found out, you know, the importance of environment, and I'm like, okay. Now I can't make myself have exactly what I want in a snap, but I can create an environment that'll get me in the right direction. And so I sort of accumulated and learned all of these things through—and I'd say if I look back on it, all of those big movements usually was where something, like, really difficult happened, and I had to figure out how to get through it. So I'm curious for you. Did it follow that same trend, or did you grow up with mindful people and you just kind of mimic that behavior and that was useful for you? Like, how did you get involved with developing yourself?

(Sri at 00:27:26) You know, I was not always ambitious in terms of growth. And I think there were certain failures I had both in my career and in my life that caused, call it that propulsion to occur. But if I were to package that whole thing into one cohesive narrative, I would say that what I've noticed is four phases of leadership. And allow me to take the long path to answering your question.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:01) Please.

(Sri at 00:28:03) The first phase is a phase of effectiveness. This is where your skill—you're building skill a lot. You're figuring out ways of working with each other and on a team and so on. This is about outputs and finishing projects and managing well if you're managing people at that time and so on. And that quadrant is the first quadrant of leadership and I call it the quadrant of effectiveness. You have to be an effective manager as you start growing. Now what happens with effective managers is people notice that they're delivering and the ecosystem, whether it is the world as a whole or the company, starts to give them more opportunities. And now these folks find themselves, all of us, in a place where we need to scale. Right? Effectiveness got you opportunity, now opportunity makes you scale. Now what is scale? Scale is just like in technology. If PayPal received only a million payments, we'd be of a certain scale. When we receive 50 million payments a day, that's a different scale. Now can you run 50 million payments with the same infrastructure that you run 1 million with? No. So how about you as a person? You as a person, can you actually scale to the new opportunity with the same capabilities that you had with the previous one? No. And this is the—that whole concept that's made very popular by the book, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There." Right? And so it becomes a continuous learning journey in how do you get better. And in that quadrant of scalability, you're thinking about, okay, how do you manage crises and conflict, and how do you manage change? How do you lead through other leaders? And how do you put design patterns in place that allows you to be effective at a larger scale? That is what scalability is, that second quarter. Now keep in mind, I already talked about a fair amount of learning that you have to go through. Because if you're not learning continuously, you're not ready for the new game that you're in each day. The third phase is actually, in my mind, the most important phase and is relevant to the points that you brought up. And this, unlike the previous—the previous ones are all about demonstrating to the world what you can do. The third phase is where you have scaled enough and you have more opportunities to come, where you start to doubt yourself a little bit. You're saying like, really? Am I capable of doing this? Can I—will I learn? Like, why are these people being so critical about some of the choices I'm making? And the journey turns inward. Now, suddenly, you go from demonstrating to everybody else what you're capable of to creating a little bit of confidence for yourself to say you're capable of more. This is happening for a reason. It's a moment. It's actually a window of time in reflection. And I often talk about, you know, in the first two quadrants and continuing, there are—leadership is a lot about what you do. But in this phase, you start to realize leadership is a lot about what you become. And that's where mindfulness kicks in. How do you manage time? How do you delegate even better? Like, how do you manage the stresses of every day? Like, how do you deal with the expectations people have of you? How do you deliver to people who are expecting you to be more than you really are? And that starts to change you internally. First of all, your identity moves inside because you become your own self critic in a hard way. You're harsh with yourself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:59) I know. I had a talk with myself the other day about being too hard with myself. Exactly.

(Sri at 00:32:04) And that's a balance too. Right? You shouldn't—all do anything, including being critical of yourself. If you get past all of these things, so effectiveness, capability, resilience, now you get to be a transformational leader where you're inspiring. You have a followership of people long beyond you holding a title or a role at a company and so on. Even after you're done, people still reach out to you for advice and help and so on. And that journey—look, I am no master in this journey. But it's that journey that excites me. Not every day is gonna be great. In fact, now what happens is that the moment you hit a tough spot, you don't get scared and anxious. You get excited because you know on the other side, there'll be a better you and a better leader for your people. So I know that was a long-winded—

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:02) No. I feel like we're best friends. I feel like I've known you for a long time. No. You know what? So to get real, what you were touching on there at the end is, you know, what I'm going through right now, like, what I'm experiencing in my personal development is I think there's this bittersweet moment when you get what you want. Like, if you have this hard goal and you've been going after it and going after it, and you get what you want. But, you know, I kept setting bigger goals and bigger goals. And then, you know, couple weeks ago, I was talking to my wife, and she's like, yeah, you seem a little down lately. And I just said, like, my life is the most perfect version of it. And I don't know what to do now. And I was, like, a little sad. And so I was like, alright, hold on a second. When I'm doing the sub-goals, I always get in trouble because I see myself approaching it because it's a very tangible goal. It's like one specific thing. And so I see myself approaching it. I get like 80% there and, like, okay, let me make sure I have goals set up after that so I can, like, chain them together because I know what happens when you accomplish a goal. But when you accomplish, like, this collection of so many things and it's just like you're here, and it's like, alright. Well, now what? And to add to the complexity of that, you know, I've always known about myself that I'm very slow with confidence. But once I have it, it's cement, like it's there. It takes me so long to get it, especially with, like, with engineering. I mean, I wrote code every day of my life, like, seventeen years. I mean, it took me ten years to get, like, confident with it. Once I got it, I got it. And, you know, going through those growth stages is—I don't know. It's so interesting.

(Sri at 00:34:44) That's beautiful. Look, I think—I—you're right. It feels like we've known each other for a long time, even though, I think we only started talking about, like, forty minutes ago or something like that. Yeah. The reason is I've always struggled with confidence. Always. And I would say I still continue to in many cases. And at the same time, what I've discovered is confidence is actually a cumulative trait. And it comes from giving yourself permission to fail and therefore take risks. So if you give permission to yourself to fail, then you start to take one risk. And in most cases, it works because what you're gonna do—given being given yourself critical—is you'll bring the best. You will be buttoned up and you will overdo what is needed to succeed. Now, you took that risk, you succeeded. Your confidence is a little higher. And now you take a little bigger risk and a little bigger, little bigger.

(Sri at 00:35:49) By the way, you'll hit a point where you'll have a failure. But now you're on the sixth step of the ladder coming down to the fifth step. You're not dropping down to the bottom. And you will remember memories of each of the four steps where you made the move up. And that gives you the confidence to get back up again.

(Sri at 00:36:08) In fact, I talk about four ingredients for success. One is IQ. One is EQ, the third one is CQ, and the fourth one is grit. What's the CQ? You want to take a guess?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:26) Curiosity quotient?

(Sri at 00:36:27) Here you go. That's it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:29) Oh, nice.

(Sri at 00:36:30) Yeah. So, the emotional quotient is the biggest portion, and that's important to know. And the emotional quotient is actually more discovery of yourself than discovery of others. But curiosity is what continues to give you momentum and energy. Knowing more and more and more about technology, about people, about business, about work, and so on.

(Sri at 00:36:52) Two points I want to make that were triggered by, inspired by what you said, which I remember from before is, I used to think that potential is a fixed line and your performance moves up to meet potential. I have come to realize over the last five years that potential is changeable. And each time you reach that limit, your horizon is bigger. Your ability to visualize is bigger. Your realm of opportunity is bigger.

(Sri at 00:37:23) And you sometimes discover you have potential. It's a discovery journey. It's not when I was three years old, there was this potential and that's it. Right? So potential is also a changing thing. Second is, John Rainey, who is our CFO and a great colleague of mine. You know, in one of my first conversations with him, this is probably in 2015 or early 2016, he talked about this concept of legitimacy values and legacy values or eulogy values. And there's some time in life where it shifts. You go from, "I want this success, I want this compensation, I want this position," to you shift and go, "I want to make a difference in the world." And that is a never-ending goal.

(Sri at 00:38:11) Right? So, like I said, I mean, this conversation is fun because there is so much mirroring that is going on in the things that you're saying and the fact that I think of it the same way. So this is great. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:27) Yeah. I like how you describe potential. I haven't heard that before, but I feel it. So, you know, I like when I hear people articulate things that I know are true, and I'm like, ah, those are the words that I need to be using. And it's interesting too because I'm really interested in psychology and understanding myself. It's just, it's like a hobby of mine. And when I get to the moments, I found that I have, like, a cool feature, if you will, like an underlying core program feature. And that is when I get down, the moment I have awareness of, oh, I'm in a bad spot or I'm down or I'm not doing my best, instantly, it's like it's reflexive. I'm like, now I know what to do. It's that moment between being down and realizing you're down that's the difficult path. And then I realize it and I hit it. I'm like, I have a series of strategies to start executing. But then there's a new problem. And so I'm curious for you to counsel me on this new problem. So let's say that potentially you achieve something that you thought would take you thirty years, but then you achieved it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:36) And now you realize that you've done something impossibly difficult. So you know your limits, and you know how you can push yourself, and you know what you can achieve in what time span. And then you look ahead and you say, okay, I've got another thirty years and I know I could do virtually anything, like, the impossible. Well, that opens up this new problem of selection for me where I have so many available paths and it's almost like this is new for me. So the past couple weeks, I'm just like, I'm overstimulated by all the possibilities of all the things that could be done.

(Sri at 00:40:09) Yeah. No. You know, that is absolutely true. Look, the thing is, I don't think when I started as an engineer, I thought I'd be a CTO. In fact, I didn't even dream of it.

(Sri at 00:40:22) Leave alone aspire or have an ambition. I didn't even dream of it. I believe in this concept called micro ambitions. And micro ambitions is about at best planning one or two next steps, not creating this long-term destination that you're trying to get towards. But sometime in my career, I decided, you know, and this is probably less than a decade ago that I decided, you know, CTO would be a good destination to get to.

(Sri at 00:40:53) And you get to CTO and you're having fun with that. It's great. It's amazing. Right? And then you start to realize that the motivators are not any longer about the destination.

(Sri at 00:41:07) It becomes more about the journey. And what makes the journey great? And if you start to study that a little bit, you may be familiar with this concept, Japanese concept called Ikigai.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:19) No. I haven't heard of that one.

(Sri at 00:41:21) So let me walk you through it. There is a beautiful intersection of four things. One is, what are you good at? Second is, what you love? And keep in mind, those are not always the same.

(Sri at 00:41:37) Sometimes what you're good at is maybe not what you love, and what you love may not be what you're good at. But let's say, so what you're good at, what you love, what the world needs, and what can you get paid for. If something falls right in the intersection of those four things, that is what is called Ikigai. And I strongly have come to believe that what I do is right in that intersection. Which is why I use terms like literally springing out of bed to get to my daily work.

(Sri at 00:42:14) Because it's got passion, it's got purpose, it's got compensation, and it's got relevance. All of it. And, of course, there's competence that is involved. But competence can be built.

(Sri at 00:42:29) You can pick up more and more skill. And so, maybe a couple of things I can advise you on. One is, go on a discovery and figure out all the opportunity. First, increase the surface area of learning and figure out all the things that are possible. And then use Ikigai and drop it on that placemat to say, okay, where do these opportunities fall? And if it falls there in the center, then the chance that you'll succeed, be satisfied, be happy, and make an impact is probably the most maximized. I hope that makes sense.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:09) Yes. No. This is really good. If you hear me typing, I'm taking notes because you're absolutely brilliant. So thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:16) Yes. You know, I love that. I like that concept of increasing the surface area, running that exercise, and then tying it back strongly to purpose. So some of the things I'm exploring right now is I'm really excited about quantum computing. Right? I don't have a strong mathematical background from school because I am highly incentivized based on what I'm curious of. Like, I will go achieve, I don't, it doesn't matter how complicated it is. If I'm curious and I want to know, I just find a way to figure it out. And I've been very interested in quantum computing, and I started taking linear algebra classes online because that's like the basis of it. And so as I was watching that, I was just like, if I could go back to my past self in school, like, if you want to be interested in math, this is how you get yourself, this is how you can design a system so you're interested.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:09) But so I know I'm interested in there because I think it's the future. And one of the things that I think about a lot is, you know, where could I make the most impact. Right? And then I also pull, it's like I think about where I can make the most impact, what I'm excited about, but I also think about my twenty-four hours. It's something I think a lot about. It's like, what is the routine in which I'm the best version of myself? Not necessarily the happiest because to be the best version of yourself, you often have to do things that aren't, you know, exciting. But so I think about that, how I want to spend my twenty-four hours, and I think about what the world could use. And right now, I believe I'm just in a stage because I was talking to my wife last week, and I said, hey. I think I need to go, like, on a walkabout, and it's the worst time ever because of the coronavirus.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:58) I was like, I need to go, like, wander around in the mountains for a week because that is a tactic that I have that when I feel a sense of loss, I can go wander and then my brain does some background processes that need the mountain pack, you know. And then I just come out with something good.

(Sri at 00:45:18) Yeah. Look, I think there is a concept called deep work, which you may be familiar with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:26) Is that Cal Henderson, I think?

(Sri at 00:45:28) Yeah. Cal Newport.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:30) Cal Newport.

(Sri at 00:45:31) Yeah. Cal Newport. And Cal Newport talks about how the most creative of people practice deep work. And unfortunately, the race that all of us are in in life often takes away from the ability to do deep work. You do very shallow or very efficient work.

(Sri at 00:45:51) And the push for efficiency often causes us to not pursue deep work. And if you were to step back and create pockets of time dedicated to that. When you hear about Bill Gates taking a week off to go read all the papers that he needs to read, what is that? That's deep work. Right?

(Sri at 00:46:11) And many times deep work happens in isolation when you practice quietness. Right? But before you get into a deep work phase, my recommendation would be, if in the area of pursuit, like for example, quantum computing, very quick research will give you who the experts are in the world. And before you go into your thinking phase, if you can actually participate a little bit in the absorption phase and meet with all of them. And what I found in my professional networking is when you reach out to people, you know, seven out of ten will meet you.

(Sri at 00:46:56) They'll talk to you. They'll share. Right? Equip yourself with all of that and then go into travel, walk the mountains, think deeply, but with a subconscious context, including all that you have learned through those contacts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:18) Oh, I like that. I like that. I actually was thinking, we're on the same wavelength, my friend, because I just talked with the team and I said, you know, we're going to have a quantum computing topic, like a couple weeks of it. And so I got to speak with the head of quantum computing at Honeywell and Tony, and they just built, like, one of the world's fastest quantum computing systems. So I got to talk with him, and then I got to talk with a guy over at IBM that heads up the, I think Rob Sutor, Robert Sutor.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:48) And so those two people kind of, you know, got the spark going. And now I'm just, I feel like there's going to be so much promise in quantum computing, and it's so early that if I look at something like, okay, what would be around in my life and relevant that I would like to marinate on for ten or fifteen years, I'd see quantum computing as something that's actually pretty useful to know about.

(Sri at 00:48:16) Yeah. Look, I think quantum is one of the great trends and we have a little bit of research going on on that. Not quite as advanced as an IBM or something, but we subscribe to a lot that's going on in the industry. And the way I think of it is we often try to think of these as solutions in the context of problems we know today. And that is absolutely the incorrect way to think of it.

(Sri at 00:48:43) The correct way to think of it is these are solutions that will unlock the ability to solve problems we've not been able to solve before. So we need to go out of the context and the bubble of problems that we deal with today to think of problems that this can solve to achieve that mission that I was talking about before, which is get to doing great for humanity and the world and so on. So in quantum, most of us spend time in thinking about not just making today's world incrementally better, but about solving things that can actually be disruptive solutions for good in the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:27) Yeah. Oh, that's actually interesting because I was thinking the wrong way. So, yeah, that's, I love that perspective. I love when people open up my mind. It makes me feel so good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:38) That's a really unique perspective to have. You know, what solutions are this, like, future problems is this going to be able to solve? That's good. So another thing about the twenty-four hours that I'm curious to know for you. So when I was going through this, like, whiteboarding session of my life in the future and what I'm going to do and trying to create this, like, mind map of things that are important to me, I found that my work day is most enjoyable when I'm around talented expert people because I feel this, like, frictionless state of flow and everyone's, like, championing ideas. But they're also people that can not only ideate, like, think of ideas, but they can also execute flawlessly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:19) So I know that we're going to walk away from this meeting. We're all going to push it forward. And so for me being an entrepreneur, we've got a company, we've got about, you know, eight people now. And so I've been, like, carefully with every dollar I have, investing in bringing high-caliber people on as close as possible to me. And I realized that bringing those people in, that's, like, how I like to spend my time because, like, money will go away. Once you have, like, your base cost covered, it's like, okay, well, how can I spend my time? Because even if you have infinite money, you still have to do something.

(Sri at 00:50:53) Yeah. No, look, I agree with you that the best moments of any day are when I, I call the activity geeking out with people. And one of the things that I do in the way I work is, in any company, there's always a primary operating system based on the reporting relationship. There are people that report to me and the people that report to them, there's a bit of a hierarchy. That's the primary operating system.

(Sri at 00:51:21) I actually think about a second operating system where those reporting relationships don't matter. You actually pursue and build a network of people that are good at certain things and have a way of bringing in unique ideas. In fact, you're not even looking for people like you. You're looking for people unlike you, right, that you can spar with and you can have a conversation with. And those conversations are the ones where creativity happens.

(Sri at 00:51:53) Invention happens. Right? And that's the reason. Because you're in the act of creating is why you feel so satisfied about those conversations. And sometimes it's the insight that hits you. And you go, oh, yes. That is so right. And in fact, those kinds of insights last forever. You'll never forget those things. Right?

(Sri at 00:52:17) So the act of creation, particularly in engineering, is a communal activity. And creating that secondary operating system or the right kind of people to interact with, who will actually push you to the edge of thinking even. Right? And that whole act is very satisfying. The ones you look back at and smile and go like, yeah. That was awesome. I felt great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:47) Oh, this is exciting. Okay. So in a couple months, when this whole lockdown stuff is, or whenever we're back, I go out to San Francisco, like, three or four times a year. So I'm going to let you know when I'm out there, because it'd be great to say hello for a couple minutes, get a tour of the office, or have some lunch or something.

(Sri at 00:53:04) Absolutely. We can hang out over dinner, or I can host you on campus when the campus opens and show you various things that we do that'll be pretty interesting. Like we have an amazing PayPal command center, which is the front line for all of our reliability, right? Or we have a shopping showcase where we imagine new ways of shopping and create some prototypes of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:30) Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. So as we start to wrap up, I have a hypothetical fun question for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:38) So let's say you're out there driving in your Tesla, and you're at a stoplight, and up next to you pulls up Elon Musk. Okay? And so you guys start talking, hanging out. He's like, oh, you're the CTO at PayPal. I used to, you know, know a thing or two about the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:55) And you end up going back to his place, and he wants to show you something cool that he's working on. And it's not the Tesla 2020, unfortunately. Looks like it's gonna be like the 2023. But he opens up this curtain and he's got this time machine. Now here's the deal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:11) This time machine takes you exactly back to when you were failing trying to become the Air Force pilot. And you get about one minute to give yourself some advice. What would that be?

(Sri at 00:54:24) You know, I'll probably disappoint you with this response, but there is nothing about my life that I actually want to change.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:32) Nothing. What insight would you give? Let's say you don't change anything, what would you whisper? Even if it was just a word, what would you say to yourself?

(Sri at 00:54:40) I would say the advice I'd give myself is believe in yourself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:47) That's it. I love it. Yes. So some strange older version of me walks up and says, believe in yourself. Be like, oh, there's a future version. It must have worked out alright because they didn't want me to change anything.

(Sri at 00:55:00) Yeah, because as you and I discussed, both of us discussed this, confidence is often the barrier to the pursuit that we have. And removing those constraints can actually maximize us and let us drive in ways that we may not even be able to imagine now in spite of success that we might have had. And so it's about that belief in yourself, belief in your ability to learn, belief in your ability to build and be creative and be human and in collaborating. That belief is very important. Belief that you can do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:39) I think that's the mic drop moment. That's the best way to end it. You're amazing, Sri. Thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us.

(Sri at 00:55:47) Joel, I enjoyed this conversation thoroughly, and thank you for the opportunity. And I look forward to hanging out outside of this podcast sometime. I feel like I've known you for decades.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:59) That's my goal. When I find great people—hey, I did have one question though, because a couple people have been asking me about three-D printers and stuff. Do you know what type that you ended up with that you like?

(Sri at 00:56:10) This is a Dremel, but it's already four years old. I would probably go with something better at this point in time. I've not done that research yet, but there are some amazing three-D printers out there now. I would call this still a—given where things are now, this is a starter. But it's a Dremel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:31) A Dremel? Alright. Cool. Yeah. Because I was curious about that. And then some of my friends, they have—my kids are young. My kids are three and one, one and a half. And so some of my friends have kids that are 12, 15, 16. And we talk about the Raspberry Pi starter kits. And everyone just keeps saying, oh, you know, I got a cheap one. It was kind of a piece of junk when it comes to the three-D printers. And then there's different types, and so people always ask me, do you have a recommendation?

(Sri at 00:57:00) These are stable. They are great. I've never had a problem with the print. I've printed more things with this than the previous two. And I'm sure this is already an older version of Dremel. There's new versions of Dremel. But they're a good company and I've loved it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:16) Nice. Alright, buddy. Have a fantastic day. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.