Nabil Bukhari - CTO at Extreme Networks

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Nabil, the CTO at Extreme Networks, and we discuss the intricacies of building an A team, how to scale results throughout an organization, and how to create an environment where diversity of thought and experience can thrive. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Nabil at 00:00:34) Hey, Joel. How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) Fantastic, my friend. How are you doing today?

(Nabil at 00:00:37) Very well. Very well. Good to see you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) You ready to rock and roll?

(Nabil at 00:00:41) Yeah. Let's do this thing, man. Why not?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:43) We're just gonna hang out and talk. And, yeah, just you and me, as if we were going to hang out at lunch, so we can edit it. We're gonna make us all sound really smart and good and awesome.

(Nabil at 00:00:54) Love it. Love it. If there's a magic formula that make me sound smart, you gotta give it to us too, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:59) We're doing it. It's called having a Jake. Could you imagine what life would be like if you could record it ahead of time and then just release the most perfect moments? That'd be unbelievable.

(Nabil at 00:01:13) I know. Don't you think that's what social media is these days? People just curate their lives and kind of pick the best pictures and the moments and stuff. I don't know, man. I actually think that that might make people sadder in reality, but then I'm not the social media generation. So what do I know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:33) Well, you're human. So it is an interesting topic because it forces individuals to develop new skills like discipline. Right? You would have to understand that this is how the tool is being used. I think a lot of the trouble is when you get the 12-year-olds or the less mature people mentally. When they start consuming this content and thinking that that's reality. Having enough life experience to know, you go like, people go on there and they happen to post the best versions of themselves and it's like, you know, controlling your food intake. Right? It's a skill you have to learn.

(Nabil at 00:02:11) Absolutely. And I think, and I know this is probably off topic, but this is an interesting topic to me because it kind of boils down to what is the impact of technology on society. Because, you know, the social media, internet, and stuff, this is what we do. We kind of have a hand in this networking thing and making this possible. And I just feel that there are some great, amazing things that technology does, but then at the same time, technology, like any other tool, could be misused as well. And I think this is perhaps the first time in our history where technology is moving way faster than our ability to adapt the social norms around it. So it's a really interesting experiment. Hasn't really happened yet to this extent in the history of mankind, so we'll see how it goes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:03) I like to think about it because I like the way you think. I can already tell you think about life itself. I feel like our civilization is almost going through a puberty. We're going through this adolescent phase, and we're gonna have the teenage angst, and then we're gonna get into maturity, and then we're gonna get some smooth sailing.

(Nabil at 00:03:21) I think I agree with you. I think we're like 13 years old right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:26) Yep.

(Nabil at 00:03:27) And then hopefully we'll be past 18. Once we're past 21 and we can drink, we'll be golden. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:34) Or once we get to the point where drinking causes the hangover, so we're smart enough to not do it as much.

(Nabil at 00:03:42) Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:44) Oh, I wanted to give a shout out to your designers. When I was going through your website and your content and doing all my research and learning about you, I just consistently, you guys have fantastic design. I'm personally a design geek, and so I always like to give a shout out.

(Nabil at 00:04:02) That's awesome. That's great to hear. I mean, Carla and Christy are kind of representing that, but we have some really phenomenal people. And that obviously reflects in anything marketing-related that we do. But if you ever get a chance to kind of go on our technology and product side, you will see a similar kind of vibe there. Because, look, in the end, what you see is a huge part of how you experience a thing. And just because we are technology people, that doesn't negate that basic principle. Our vision is one of the most important ways in which we interact, not just with our environment, but also with technology as well. So design is one of the key elements of technology in today's world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:45) And then what's your core business model?

(Nabil at 00:04:48) So we are in the networking industry. Right? We have tons and tons of technology. Some of the stuff that stays behind the scenes. You can think of, when you think of data centers and networks, there's these massive racks full of hardware and switches and routers and stuff. So that's one portion of our business. The other portion of our business is more experiential in the sense that, look, all technology have different people who experience it. There are users who experience it, and there are multiple classes of users. So there are the users who are actually running these networks. So that's obviously a user, but then there are their users. So say, for example, if in a retail store our technology is deployed, sure, the IT of the retail store is the user, but so are the customers that are walking around in the store, and they experience the technology. So the second part of our entire business model is around that experience for the user, for the buyer, for the seller, for the user's users, and so on and so forth. And that is pretty much centered around cloud. And cloud, I mean, cloud is kind of an interesting word because different people kind of think of it differently. But to me, cloud is a culture. Cloud is a way of doing things, starting from experience, starting from being omnichannel, starting from instant gratification, if you would, instant feedback where all of a sudden distances don't really matter and stuff like that. So if you combine all of that and call that cloud, then the rest of our business is centered around cloud.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:26) I like that explanation because I've been talking to a lot of different cloud experts trying to wrap my mind around it. And one of the things that really helped my education, someone was explaining it to me about, if you take groups of developers at a company that didn't have cloud, they just had an on-prem solution, and then you can't, if you just switch them to cloud, the actual workflows of the developers are different. The culture is different. You have to have different talent. You'll have to bring in other engineers to help work next to them, and then you have different processes within the organization about how you actually would get an instance booted up. And so this concept of cloud just being servers not at your location has kind of gone away, and it's shifting to this, cloud is a culture. I love that.

(Nabil at 00:07:16) Absolutely. And think about this way. Right? Because it's not just the developers that are part, and I have lots and lots of them, some of the most brilliant ones out there. But that's not the only part. The other part is, well, what are you going to do with the cloud? So that's the product definition part or, you know, traditionally you call it product management. That's also part of my organization, and they have to shift as well. Because when you are developing a product, you are developing a set of features, functionality that you're gonna package together either in a hardware or even in the software, and you're going to deliver that. When you are envisioning cloud, you are designing an experience. And that experience, the funny part is, or the interesting part is that as you're designing it, the expectations of that experience from the users is always evolving. It's also changing. So you really have to immerse yourself into that experience and think of it from the human point of view rather than just the technology point of view, and then you get it. And then you say, okay, this is what cloud means. Yeah. My developer is part of it. My product definition person is part of it. My professional services person is part of it. My salesperson is part of it. And most importantly, my user is an active participant into this. My user is gonna help me develop this, help me evolve this. So I know I get very passionate about it, but for me, cloud is not a technology. Cloud is a culture. And a company that really wants to transition to cloud has to start that at a cultural level.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:54) So your path here to where you are today, did you start out doing a bunch of the wrong things, or did you get in a position where your first projects, you were just surrounded by amazing people and just soaked it all up?

(Nabil at 00:09:10) So it's interesting. I'm gonna answer it slightly differently. Yes, absolutely surrounded by amazing people. No doubt about that. But, no, nobody gets to it right away that, look, bang, first try, it's awesome. But I don't really think that on the cloud journey, there's any rights and wrongs. There's just, the key is to move. The only wrong part is if you sit and wait. That's the only wrong part. So what you do is I always tell my teams, look, move fast and experiment. And one of the mantras that I have for my team is fearless innovation. Because one of the biggest things that stops innovation is the fear that, oh shit, this is not gonna work. Right? And so you gotta just keep moving. You'll keep doing things, but just know that those things you might think that they're the best thing in the world, your user might or might not agree with you. And if they don't agree with you, get the feedback, move on. Right? And so I think our journey started from kind of getting a team together and having this vision, a general vision that this is the direction in which we're moving. And then, again, as I said, I'm a big culture fan where we started with developing that culture. Do not be afraid and do not stop. Just keep moving. You will do right things. You'll do wrong things. You'll do things people like. You'll do things people don't like. As long as you're doing one more thing right than wrong, you're moving forward. Just keep doing it. And it's a muscle. Right? So if you develop a team that is exercising that muscle, then they keep getting better and better just like an athlete. Right? The more they practice, the better they get. Yes, there is a certain amount of innate talent, if you would. But that innate talent does not determine whether you're gonna be on that podium or not. It's your nonstop effort towards that. That's really what makes you successful, and it's no different with teams. You just keep doing it, keep moving fast, and more importantly, just making sure that the culture of the team is solid, is rich, and is consistent.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:22) Yeah. When you talk about the sports analogy. Right? I was looking at, you know, a few years ago, I was doing some research. I was reading all the biographies of billionaires that are currently alive that I enjoy, like Musk, Bezos, Branson. And then I was looking at pro athletes, and I was trying to, in an informal way, educate myself on how these people think. Because I found that if you can emulate how someone thinks in their decision-making process, that's like a superpower and it wasn't being taught anywhere. There's no course on it. So I was just putting it together myself. And what I found is that a couple things that I didn't hear talked about much at all. And I think the biggest one was that they drill, they find this way to drill and practice the fundamentals. But the magic is really, because I started drilling the fundamentals and I found out the hardest part about that is consistency. And the thing that allows you to win there is your ability to make it new again. How do you make the fundamentals interesting and new again for yourself? And if you can figure out how to play that game, then you're just gonna go straight to the top.

(Nabil at 00:12:30) Absolutely. And I mean, you said that you are really into design, which is awesome because I love design as well. But that is the design theory. Right? It's just you take the familiar from one context and apply it to solve another problem in another context, and that's what brings that intuitiveness to your solution. Now the way I think about it is, and that applies to your product, that applies to your team. Because, look, you know, there's so much amazing stuff that people in the sports have done. People in other areas, anywhere where there's a concept of team. You know, starting from the first responders. You know, that's a team. Right? So all of those things, when you bring them together and you apply them in a technology space, people might be like, oh, this analogy doesn't really make sense, but it's familiar to people. And when you bring it into a different context, they just lock on to that. And then to our mutual point, you've got to stay consistent with it. No matter the world's best strategy, best tactic, the first time something doesn't go right and you get scared and you change it, you just lost it. You gotta have the courage to say that, look, some things are gonna go right. Some things are not going to go right. But I have a vision. Yes, I will course correct, but I will not abandon it within reason, of course. But I think that in the technology space, people sometimes leave things too quickly rather than adjusting it, course correcting it. Courage plays a big role, and I'm not talking about individual courage of a leader or anything, but the courage of the team. And, again, boils down back to the culture. If you develop that culture of strength, a culture of courage, and a culture of, look, change is constant. Either we can initiate that change or the change will force us. Either way, you know, we're ready to go. I mean, once you develop that, it just really all comes together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:34) So you have a large organization. You have more than 200 people in technology, right, just for conversation purposes?

(Nabil at 00:14:41) Yeah. I have more than 1,200 people in my team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:45) Perfect. Good. You get over that hump of, you have to deal with mass communication. And so which is the root of my interest right now. So we talk a lot about culture. Very important. Is that the strategy for how to scale the results that you want? Like, how do you, you have 1,200 people and you can't go sit down with every single one of them, so you have to find a way to scale yourself across this organization. So how do you think about that?

(Nabil at 00:15:19) Yeah. That's a brilliant question. And it's something that we spend a lot of time thinking about and doing. Because, you know, a lot of times when you're doing something with three people, it works out beautifully, and you're like, oh, this is amazing, and you throw it to 3,000 people, and you're like, oh, this thing does not work at all. So scale brings its own challenges, and team and culture are no different. But I think there is a methodical way to go about this.

(Nabil at 00:15:46) The first one is your immediate core, if you would. So as a leader, when you go out, it's not very dissimilar to when a painter sits down and they're staring at a blank canvas and they're like, "Alright, you know, what is it that I am going to do?" And typically, different artists have different views, but some of them will just kind of quickly draw a sketch, and then they'll pick one element. Most of the time, those are eyes, just being the most important, and they will really, really focus on it. And then that evolves into the rest of the features. So teams are not dissimilar to that. As a leader, when you are developing a team or even you're envisioning a team, you really think of it like, "What is it that you want to do?"

(Nabil at 00:16:30) I'm not talking about skill sets. Don't start with titles. Not like, "Oh, I want a senior director of this and a VP of that." No. That's the wrong way.

(Nabil at 00:16:37) Don't even start with the skills. Like, "Hey, I need a developer, and I need a product manager." No. You start with what you want your team to be.

(Nabil at 00:16:47) What's the culture that you want to have? What's the vibe, as some people say? And that comes from your gut, from your experience, who you are. Fortunately or unfortunately, most teams end up reflecting their leaders. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes not so much. But you start with that. Then you start your core team.

(Nabil at 00:17:06) Like, think of it, in my case, my direct reports. Right? So there's not that many of them. There are like six or seven of them, but they really truly are what allow you to scale. They are never going to be an exact replica of you. You don't want that. If everybody is like you, then you've just killed diversity right then and there. So you start by building what we call an A team. Well, what is an A team? An A team is a set of individuals who are brilliant in their own right. They are strong. They're opinionated. They're strong-willed. Most people might think of them as troublesome, if you would, but they're really good at what they do. You go, you find them. Don't be scared.

(Nabil at 00:17:45) They're gonna be smarter than you are, and hopefully they are. Otherwise, it's no point building a team. So find people who are brighter than you, smarter than you, maybe very different than you, and very different from each other as well. Then you collect them together. Well, now you have a bunch of A players. How do you convert that into a team?

(Nabil at 00:18:05) And that's where it comes in, the culture. A culture built on mutual respect, a culture built on, "Look, this is my vision." They buy into the vision. Don't tell them how to actually do it. That's why you hired them. They're really good at executing, so don't get in their way. But at the same time, have a collective vision.

(Nabil at 00:18:26) And then don't be a hands-off manager. A lot of times, leaders come in and they say, "Look, I don't wanna be too involved because that's micromanagement." I call BS on that. And conversely, people say that, "Look, if I don't really interfere, I'm a very hands-off manager." Don't be a hands-off manager, especially if you're a leader. Don't tell them how to do their job, but be engaged with them. How are they feeling?

(Nabil at 00:18:50) Stimulate them intellectually, emotionally. They have to be vested into the vision. Because a lot of this thing, "Oh, this is just work." Well, work is more than half of our life, so you have to be emotionally vested in it. You need to get something out of it. So it is personal. And then, most importantly, focus on how do they develop. The thing about A players is they're excellent in one or two things, but there might be areas where they're not so much.

(Nabil at 00:19:20) But that excellence on one side pretty much overshadows everything else. But eke out those other areas with them and help them evolve. Have them develop. And that's what really creates this culture of this core team. And then what happens is that now you're not replicating one individual. Now you are replicating the culture of this team, and that scales.

(Nabil at 00:19:44) Because as more teams develop, those teams will then kind of fashion themselves on the culture of this core team, and they'll add their own diversity to it. And now you have these groups of teams that are all across, and when they come together, that creates the culture of an organization. So in a nutshell, I know I went pretty long on this, but summarizing this, as a leader, you do not scale by replicating yourself. You create the culture of your team, and through that example, everybody else creates their team, and that is how you scale.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:18) Ah, so succinct. I love it. Now I wanna dive into this because I've got some questions. So the first question I have is, have you ever seen it inside or outside of your organization with this? So you've got—let's say, I'm gonna build like a hypothetical scenario. So you've got a good culture, right? And it's scaling, but then some bad culture pockets pop up. Right? Because let's say it's not perfect. It's not a hundred percent. Let's say you're getting 80%. What do you do with those? Like, how do you deal with that?

(Nabil at 00:20:52) Yeah. So this is bound to happen. Right? Because a company is kind of like a society. A society can never stay ideal. That's just how it goes. Right? We have seen it over and over and over again in the history of mankind. These cultures and these societies kinda going up and then eventually coming down. So nothing is permanent.

(Nabil at 00:21:11) But in the case of a company, when you develop a culture and you see somebody or a pocket developing that is different. So I'm gonna start with different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:19) Okay.

(Nabil at 00:21:20) Why? Because when it's different, it could be different two ways. One way—remember, it's again about diversity. Right? So just because they are different, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's bad for the company. So you have two options. Engage. Do not just kind of stamp it out. "That's bad. Bad. Bad." Right? So engage with that and learn and understand. And maybe there's something in there that you can incorporate into the broader culture, and the net result is going to be even better. That's one option.

(Nabil at 00:21:52) The other option is that, no, it really is disruptive, and it's really not in a good way. And it's just simply not gonna work. And at that time, the decisiveness of leadership comes into play. Do not sit and wait. Act. Either embrace it, or look, they might be great people. They might have a place in a different portion of the company, in a different organization, or outside of the organization. But the key thing about the leader, as I said, speed. Right?

(Nabil at 00:22:21) So sitting around waiting helps nobody. Engage directly, either learn from it or still learn from it and decide that this is not going to be part of our company. To me, these are decisions that as a leader, you have to take every single day. And that's what makes you a leader, not just doing all the good things and standing up and giving good news, but a leader is really truly made when things are not going well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:49) Yes. A hundred percent. I mean, I was like a fan of founders and things like that before I was one. And it just looks so cool. And then I realized, okay, the reason that there's a lot of benefit for being at the top is because it's the most difficult position to be in. I mean, it's just the hardest thing to do. And for me as an individual, I typically seek out the hardest things to do because I've just found I'm addicted to growth. Like, I like to grow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:22) And the way I can do that is by putting myself in bigger, newer, scarier positions. Right? And so, yeah, I just really like the way your mind processes data.

(Nabil at 00:23:35) Yeah. That's what Extreme is good about. Right? This is where we excel. We take tons of data, and we make something out of it. So I think it kind of figures why I work here and why I'm so invested in Extreme, because my individual thought process, the way I think or the way I am, is now reflected in what we build and how we are transforming the entire networking industry. Anyways, it's kind of interesting how companies and leaders kind of select each other. It's kind of one of those things. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:10) Well, that's why I like getting to talk to you and understand who you are as a person, because I have found, like you said earlier, organizations tend to reflect their leaders, their mindsets, and their cultures. And so I think that's useful for me. I've had people come up to me, like when I was doing the in-person speaking circuit last year. I did like over 50 different locations, and people would come up to me and they'd say, "Hey, I heard this person on your podcast. I like the way they think. I ended up using them as a vendor." Or some people said I got one individual who said that they ended up moving halfway across the world and working for that leader, and just all sorts of cool stories from getting to know who the people are. And how did you meet the other executives? Like, how'd you get involved in Extreme?

(Nabil at 00:24:57) Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Right? So, being in the tech industry—and right now I'm in Toronto, but I'm a San Franciscan. That's my hometown. So being in the Silicon Valley, these things happen all the time. The company that I was working for, the unit that I ran, that actually got acquired by Extreme. And that's kinda how I met Ed, who's our CEO, my boss. And it was just as a part of that acquisition. We just started chatting, and we realized that, look, we're very different people, but we have that passion for what we do.

(Nabil at 00:25:35) And we're really both very heavily invested in this culture thing, and we have very clear, strong ideas of what we wanna do. And from there, it just kind of started. And just like you mentioned, you work for leaders, you work for culture. And I just came into the company, and I was like, "Oh my God, I just love it. And there's so much potential. There's so much more that we can do." And then to me, it was like, "Look, we have this something amazing within Extreme, but why only within Extreme? Let's go change the whole networking industry."

(Nabil at 00:26:09) And why only networking industry? Technology is at the core of every experience in today's society, one way or another. Whether it is kids talking to their grandparents on video chat, or students e-learning or talking to each other, all the way to the way we meet new people—that's online as well. The way we communicate, the way we work. Pretty much networking anchors today's society, so why stay at that?

(Nabil at 00:26:37) Let's just figure out how we can take technology and really make it work for the society, democratize it. So far, networking technology is kinda like haves and have-nots. Some people get it, some people don't get it. You gotta be a big company to be able to buy all of these. I think those are old ways of thinking about it.

(Nabil at 00:26:59) Let's democratize it. Let's make sure that the best and the brightest of the networking industry or the networking technology is available to everybody. From that mom-and-pop shop at the corner to the largest chains in the world, they should both have access to that technology regardless of their constraints around money and skill set and stuff. So simplify it, and then sit and watch what they do with this technology. So I think that's kind of what was a passion that we had, and we kind of connected. And then, now two and a half years later, here we are.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:34) And so what was that M&A process like? Were you—did you have the opportunity to be like involved in that initial acquisition, or did you— Okay. So you were. So did you decide that, like, what your role would be at Extreme Networks, or did you just kinda come in, handle the acquisition, and then go up? Like, how did that work?

(Nabil at 00:27:53) So it starts a little bit earlier because once you're one of the main players in an acquisition on the part of the unit or the company or the asset that is being sold, you obviously have multiple different options, suitors, if you would. And you do have a—yes, being public companies, there's the shareholder value, and there's all sorts of governance around it. But you do have a sort of a say. You do have your team that you love and you have built over years, and you want to find the right home for that team.

(Nabil at 00:28:24) You want to find the right home for the technology that you've built. So there is a little bit of that influence as well. So, of course, being part of that process, when I really got to know Extreme and Ed and the team here, I really felt that this is the right place for the team that I've built, for the technology that I've built. And at that point, it wasn't really necessarily thinking about, like, "Look, whether I'm gonna be at Extreme or not." It was more about finding a home for the team.

(Nabil at 00:28:49) But in that process—because, you know, these processes are pretty long, drawn out on both sides of the closing—but then it kind of just really truly evolved from, like, "Hey, I'm finding a home for my team here. I wanna make sure that it settles there," to "Let's go do this, and let's change Extreme and let's transform Extreme." And yeah, so it's kind of worked that way. It wasn't really like, "Look, this is the company that is buying. I want to play this role now," but it just organically evolves from there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:20) Yeah. And the culture was a match because they had leaders at Extreme that saw the passion and then empowered the individuals to do that. And so that's a good fit then.

(Nabil at 00:29:33) Yeah. It's like, at Extreme for us, we have multiple different values. I'm gonna be—five or six different values. The two that I love the most, one is candor, which is let's just not beat about the bush. Let's just have a real conversation. Right? It's not about being just blunt or stuff like that. It is about having a real conversation. Right? Let's just sit down. Let's just really engage on that. So that's one value that I love. And the second one is inclusion. And that is something that is very near and dear to my heart because inclusion is something that is so broad. It is about diversity, but not just about gender diversity or racial diversity, but experiential diversity. People from different experiences, people with different paths, people with different circumstances, and then just bring all of them together.

(Nabil at 00:30:24) And just bringing them together is not good enough, by the way. In my world, inclusion means that bring them together and then create an environment where they can be their best alongside people who are different than them. And that, I think, is something very unique to Extreme because when you look at CSR and other kind of stuff on a lot of companies, they put it there. But being in the tech industry all my career, I just feel that there are very few companies that really, really internalize it and build everything around it, and Extreme is one of them. So, yeah, great fit. I love being here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:08) I love when I get questions from people about culture things, and I'd say 90% of the questions I get, or 80% of the questions I get are—well, it's like the culture there. And then now that you are aware of this point, you get to choose. Are you going to attempt to change the culture? Because that's one possibility. You could attempt to change the entire company. Or you can attempt to find a place that has similar, you know, values to your complementary values.

(Nabil at 00:31:38) Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is the whole point of being your best. Some people are change agents. Right?

(Nabil at 00:31:45) So they are their best to your point, as you were mentioning earlier, that some people are best when they're really right there at the edge in the hardest problem or situation. Some people thrive in an area which kind of meets their personality, and they like to be in the middle of something and then just make it execute and roll along with it. So it just depends upon who you are. To me, black and white is not really fun in the sense that if you already know the answers, then it's okay, well, that's fine.

(Nabil at 00:32:21) But the magic really happens in the gray areas where you don't know the answer. You might not ever know the answer, but yet you need to move forward and you need to take your team forward and your company forward. And that to me is exciting. That's where magic happens, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:37) Yeah. What you're saying right now kind of reminds me, I was talking with Sri, who's the CTO over at PayPal. And we were talking about potential because during that conversation that week, I was struggling with the fact that I had achieved some goals I had thought would take me fifteen years, but I achieved them in three. And I had the realization, and then I felt lost because I didn't have other goals set up. And so I was talking with him about that, and he was sharing with me this concept of your potential is dynamic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:08) Your potential changes. And so that really helped me. Just hearing that simple phrase really helped me have words to articulate how I feel inside chasing this thing that you never feel like you get to. And then that gives me some comfort in the process and understanding the core principles of how things work. And my other favorite thing he shared with me, I think you would like, is he was talking about how confidence is cumulative.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:39) So it builds up slowly over time in specific areas because I feel that that's true inside too, because I am not easily confident. But I didn't know how to say that before because I wouldn't say I'm not a confident person because there are some areas where I'm very confident.

(Nabil at 00:33:56) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:57) And that's simply because of software. I mean, I've been writing code for seventeen years.

(Nabil at 00:34:02) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:03) But there's other areas where I have less experience and less confidence. And so that concept of cumulative confidence, those two things were big takeaways. I think you would really like him as a person. I'd be more than happy to introduce you if you'd like.

(Nabil at 00:34:22) No, that would be awesome. And just, you know, the things that he mentioned and the way you repeated it, it's just so true because when you're doing something and you do it well and you get to a really good state, you have learned some skills out of it, right? So you've learned some, and it's not skills in terms of, like, look, I can code or I can make a PowerPoint and stuff. Not just that, but it's just some innate gut feels that you have developed, right? You can take those into a different area and apply them. So this is the part of it being cumulative.

(Nabil at 00:34:59) And then in the second area, you will kind of acquire some other gems, if you would. So think about it this way, that every journey that you take, you acquire some gems, some artifacts. And the more journeys you take, the more you acquire and the richer you are as a person, and not richer in terms of money—hopefully that as well—but richer in terms of your experience and the depth of your personality and the depth of the culture that you can develop around you. So, no, I love what he said. It just resonates really well with me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:34) Yeah. And I think you point out a good point too. You can gain a lot of experience and learn a lot and get a lot of these gems and go over a long period of time without getting money. Like, musicians. I mean, some musicians. But what I've noticed too is that if you can, like, I started to look at it like a video game and myself being a character and me being the player of the game.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:47) And money is an important part because it enables you to do more. You can scale yourself. It's a tool. So it's definitely not everything, but it is part of the mix. And if you can grow yourself and have awareness and make sure that you have your money component taken care of, then you can just go a lot farther. And it takes a long time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:08) But I don't know, whoever designed this game, whatever's going on with life, great job, because you love it, you hate it, it's great, it sucks. But patience is my thing that I'm learning, and I'm finding, and tell me if this is true as well. So I'm 32, just for some context. And I have found that patience becomes significantly easier as you get older.

(Nabil at 00:36:51) Yeah, it does. I do believe so, because the idea with patience, and I know it will take us into a different direction, but the idea there is that why people have patience or not patience has a lot to do, in addition to a lot of other things, with what have they experienced so far.

(Nabil at 00:37:17) Because if they've experienced enough, then sometimes they're willing to wait and see which direction does it go. But at early age, you just want to quickly see where this goes. You are in accumulation phase. But as you get older, you're still accumulating, but now you're more intrigued by the opportunities of it going one way or another or yet completely a different way. So I do agree with you that patience does show up in some cases with age.

(Nabil at 00:37:49) But it's not just age. It's also with experience. Because if somebody is 89 years old and they haven't really done anything, I mean, that age might not translate into patience. But to me, patience comes with accumulation of experiences.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:06) Oh, that's a good one. That is true because you can have the same experience every day for eighty-nine years and not grow. And then you can have someone else who's had thirty years of constant growth and they could be farther ahead. Because it's like a balance. You're mentioning patience, but then you're also mentioning discipline, because it's one thing to know it. It's another thing to allow the actions to take place and allow the time to pass.

(Nabil at 00:38:31) Yep. Absolutely. It's a fascinating topic. I mean, we can sit here and talk about it for days, but I'm sure you have some other ideas in your mind for the chat as well. But it is a fascinating topic, though.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:46) The last piece on that is a few years ago, I think five years ago, I made a perception calculator because I started to notice this. And so what I found out mathematically is, I don't know if I'm stating it right because I haven't said the words in a long time, but when you're one day old and you go from day one to day two, that is 100% of your life, right?

(Nabil at 00:39:09) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:09) But then as it goes forward, it splits farther and divides up more. And if you think about that formula, about how long one day is for an eight-year-old versus perceptively how long one day is for someone who's 32, there's a big mathematical difference. And that was one of the things I was really interested in, and I built that calculator before I had kids. Now that I have kids, I'm like, oh, yeah.

(Nabil at 00:39:34) Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I can really relate to that. I have two little ones. My daughter is almost three years old, and my little guy, he's six months old. So I totally understand what you're talking about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:47) Yeah. My daughter, she'll be three in September, and then my son is one in a couple months. So just a little bit older than yours. Just very similar there.

(Nabil at 00:40:01) Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And just, you know, before we move off this topic, because obviously we all love talking about our kids—they are kind of the joy of our life—but even on an intellectual level, it is so interesting to watch the world happen from their point of view. Exactly as you said, for them, one day could be a huge, massive change. And for you, it's just like another day. And I think that brings in that difference of perception that you're talking about.

(Nabil at 00:40:33) And it's really interesting because no matter where you are, if you understand this perceptive context of other people when you're really in a situation and you have to make a decision, you could essentially be 18 different people in your head and really have 18 different perspectives before you make a call. And that is a quality. I actually think that since having kids, I have become a better decision maker. And it's just such a powerful thing. It's just amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:03) Yeah. I actually, I've thought about that too. I called it iterating through perspectives because I was reading this psychology author, and he had said there were eight core mindsets and then a 16 split, variations of those eight cores. And it was just this psychologist I was reading. It was his concept of how mind works.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:26) And he said different people have these different perspective sets. And after reading that, I was like, wow. That's brilliant. But the way my, I happen to know that my mind works a little bit differently, and the thing that I observe my mind doing is iterating through different perspectives to figure out which one that I find is the one I want. And that one was not accounted for, which is actually why I named my company, like, ten years ago. I named it Logic Seventeen because it was only logical that there would be a seventeenth perspective, an abstract one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:54) It was just a design agency, app agency that I had for about ten years. But yeah. Dude, you're awesome. Let's do some business stuff so we can understand your products.

(Nabil at 00:42:04) Yeah. All right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:06) I have some confusion. I'll explain. You were describing earlier networks, democratization, empowering people all the way from mom and pop to enterprise. So I'm assuming that you have products that both the mom and pop can use and the enterprise. Can you talk to me about what these products are and who uses them?

(Nabil at 00:42:23) Yeah. No, absolutely, I can. So, you know, networking as a technology is an interesting area because a lot of people directly do not kind of relate to it, although they use it on a daily basis. So think about pretty much anything. Your cell phone runs on a network. Your WiFi, your internet runs on a network. We are talking to each other on this video conferencing through a network, right?

(Nabil at 00:42:49) When you go into a store and in some of the stores, these are electronic shelf labels and the labels change and stuff. Actually, a lot of them are our customers, but that happens on the network. When you get, you know, you've been searching for this, would you like this offer and blah blah blah, coupons or electronic coupons, that happens on network.

(Nabil at 00:43:08) Now that's on the consumer side. On the other side, pick up anything. For example, NFL is a huge part of ours. We are the official partners with NFL. When you go into that stadium and you're enjoying the football game and you love it, and you have your wireless, you can text it, you can Facebook it or Instagram it or whatever else people do these days. All of that thing is possible by the power of the networks. You go to a hospital, people are talking to their, and now more so than ever, people are talking to their doctors through video conferencing.

(Nabil at 00:43:44) You instantly go and get your prescription. Hospitals are able to go and bring up complete units within days. I mean, with COVID, you heard it in various different countries where they set up an entire hospital in five days. It's not just the construction part, but making all of those machines, those fancy machines, work with each other. That's network, right?

(Nabil at 00:44:08) I mean, I can give you a thousand examples. Now behind this all, which I call experience, is a set of technologies, and some of them are kind of rather boring. There's switches, and there's routers, and there's wireless APs, and there's 5G and LTE and stuff like that. So that's the core technologies. Now core technologies by itself, yes, we develop them. We have hardware. We have software. We have management. We have orchestration.

(Nabil at 00:44:33) But the real value that Extreme brings is to bring all of these components together in a, call it a package, which anybody can go adopt and deploy to get to whatever they are doing. We have large hospitals which are our customers. They are able to do this telemedicine. They are able to bring up a new doctor's office in an instant and stuff. Our set of technologies are behind that. Similarly, I talked about NFL. There's a lot of other stadiums. They do the same thing.

(Nabil at 00:45:02) Now you go to education where, simple examples, you know, schools can actually set some security around perimeter security, who's in there, who's not. They can do automatic attendance without really doing yes, ma'am, present kind of a thing these days. Recently, we had a school system, very large school system. They actually came to us and they said, look, this vaping thing is getting a bit of an issue. Is there a way where we can detect that? And we're like, yes, we can. So our set of technologies kind of help them do that.

(Nabil at 00:45:37) Esports. We are big, big, big supporters of Esports. So there are so many. In manufacturing. I mean, the whole Industry 4.0 is based on the networking technology. All these sensors kind of coming together. So if you look at it, so to us, there are products, there are services, because of course, you know, when you're deploying them, a lot of our customers, technology is not their business.

(Nabil at 00:46:05) They're just using technology to advance their business goals, so they need help in that. So that's where services come in. Products are the elements of that, and then cloud, which essentially brings all of this together. So in a way to think about it, it is that we have cloud technologies, we have product elements, and we have services. You wrap them together, and this turns into a package that a mom and pop shop to the largest enterprises and service providers in the world, they can just then go and deploy them.

(Nabil at 00:46:34) So hopefully that makes a little bit more sense than what is it that we do. We really are the facilitators of what your business goal is to what your capabilities are. We bridge the gap between the two with products, with technologies, with services, with packages. That's who we are. And we work with everybody on that spectrum from people who have no technical skill, I mean, companies who have no technical skills, to companies that are super advanced and everybody in the middle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:07) That's amazing. So you guys do everything network?

(Nabil at 00:47:10) We do everything network. We are one of the very few companies. I would even venture to say that at this point in time, we are the only networking technology provider that goes end to end in a cohesive fashion. Now what do I mean by cohesive fashion? Coming full circle back to the M&A part, right? So a lot of companies, as they grow, what they do is they say, like, look, I've acquired this technology or this company. They create different business units.

(Nabil at 00:47:38) And what happens arguably, I mean, whether people accept it or not, in business units, you know, business units develop their strategies, and then GMs kind of fight with GMs, and there's a little bit of an internal competition, some more, some less. But in our company, that goes back to the culture. We believe in All Extreme as One Team. We have no business units. We have this entire end-to-end technology portfolio that goes all the way from your branches, your wireless, to your IT, to your 5G, all the way into some of the largest service providers and data centers in the world, and that all belongs into one team.

(Nabil at 00:48:17) So that's my team, right? So when we develop them, we think of them as a single thread. So when you work with Extreme, whether you're buying the tiniest, smallest thing from us or the largest of our products for as a telco, you get the same exact experience. And that is unique to us.

(Nabil at 00:48:39) There is no other networking technology vendor that can claim that. And that's really truly why, you know, we are not just transforming ourselves, but we are really transforming this for our customers and our partners and our users as well. Because as you and I agreed earlier, consistency is important. When you apply that principle to the networking technology, then the consistency of experience from one end to another end, that is the key, and Extreme excels on that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:11) I like how you talked about the teams and the GMs because that's true, right? At companies that have that culture, and what I noticed is that some people will compete against others, and then some people compete against themselves. And I found that I'm way more interested in competing against myself because it allows me to sort of isolate. And I can control that, like, I can control the speed at which I move. I can't control the speed at which I'm getting information about how others have moved, right? So I like that concept of competing against yourself. Have you ever heard of the company, I think, Ciena? They build the underwater cables. So I got to talk with Steve over there, and one of the conversation topics that came up, he has like 25 patents, awesome nerd guy. We were talking optical to digital conversion and how stuff gets transferred across continents and all of that great stuff. But one of the things that he said that you also mentioned is that a huge driver of this increased need for decreased latency is the esports world. He said that he's hearing a lot from there. You said that in the conversation too. Tell me more about this growth or what your thoughts are on the esports world.

(Nabil at 00:50:28) I think esports are going to rule the world. They are just, you know, different generations have different kinds of ways to engage with sports. The newer generation, for them, esports is bigger than perhaps the football and the baseball and the soccer and the cricket of the world, right? So they really engage towards that.

(Nabil at 00:50:52) Now, if you look at it, there's a whole ecosystem that is building around that. Now the thing about esports is that it is not confined to a physical space like any of the other sports, you know, be it a football stadium or a park or a pitch or whatever the case might be. Esports could be across the continents or around the globe, people interacting with each other. And because it's sports, it's in real time. So now what that does is that puts a very different level of expectation on the networking technology because, I mean, I don't know if you're a video game person. I'm not really that much. I see my nephews and stuff play that. But the thing is that they are sitting there talking to somebody on the other side of the planet, and they're playing in real time and talking and stuff. Look, that is an experience, right? And this experience, as we move forward in time and the newer generations, their expectation of the experience is entirely different than perhaps it was for me. For me, I send somebody an email and then they respond in three hours, I was like, whoa, that was really fast. I'm talking about when, in the early nineties, when Internet really truly started happening. Here today, they're instantly talking to 450 people, right? And it's just instant feedback.

(Nabil at 00:52:08) So that expectation of the user is morphing so rapidly, and esports is just kind of a perfect example of that. The people who are engaging into that, and more importantly, the people who are spectators, because I think there is no other sport in which the spectator is actually part of the sport in a certain way, right? They're not just the spectators. So that new experience puts such a huge amount of requirement on networks, and then you actually go and you build for it. Because sometimes you build technology that changes the experience, and sometimes the experience changes and you build the technology to actually accommodate that. And that's kind of, you know, a lot of people ask me, look, you are now the CTO. What do you really think about that? Are you really about technology and stuff? And I was like, no, I'm not. I have people who work for me who are amazing in technology. No, my goal is very, very simple. How do you take your technology and change the experience for the users and the society as a whole? And flip it around, how the changing experience or expectations of the society transforms the technology that you have. And I think esports is a perfect example of that. We are very big in that. You know, the SUNY school systems, we do a lot of stuff with them on esports. We have sponsored some of them. A lot of it runs on our technology. I'm a big fan. I'm not even a video game player, but I'm a big fan of what esports is doing, you know, not just to the experience of the kids who are playing that or adults who are playing that, but also to the networking industry, right? So it's just a fascinating topic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:00) Yeah, reminds me of the legitimate business reason, right, that will help get us to the point where we can all go inside the computers, right? I'm always forecasting. I'm always saying, okay, I've just become fascinated recently with my life expectancy and then where technology will be near then. Because I, without hyperbole, I actually believe that we will be close or there by the time my life expectancy ends. Like, I think we will be close enough or there. I mean, because I've, you know, ideally, I'd probably have like fifty, sixty years left, and I think that, I think what can happen, see, the thing was is, I mean, when I was in middle school, I can remember that. And I remember what technology in the world was like, and it was just so different. So different.

(Nabil at 00:54:59) Yeah, and I mean, so you said you're 32. I'm 43. So we have around ten, eleven years between us, but my experience with technology going up was probably fundamentally different than yours. Although there's ten, eleven years in the middle. And now as you move forward, even in five years, technology pretty much transforms itself. Coming back to your point of when does technology and humanity kind of combine into one, the singularity point, it's an interesting topic. I actually believe that it'll happen. But the way I have a slightly different opinion on this, I don't think it would be technology that would drive it. I think it would be the need that will drive it. I'm a big fan of expressed needs, latent needs, and then incipient needs. And what happens is that sooner or later, this need, somebody is going to pick it up and will believe that a business can be made out of it, and then it'll happen. It's just really fascinating how business and technology kind of is a one-two punch, and when they come together, things just happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:01) Can you repeat that again? You said expressed needs, latent need. What were the three needs?

(Nabil at 00:56:07) Yeah, so expressed need, latent need, and then incipient needs. So expressed need, I want this cup of coffee. I'm expressing it. You are a coffee shop, and you're giving me that. So that's an expressed need. The user has it, and somebody provides it. Latent need is something like that the customer doesn't really know that they need it yet, but you come up with the idea. For example, esports. Who knew, like, six years ago that people are going to want to compete against each other playing video games across the continent, right? But somebody came up with the idea. So that was a latent need that was there, but not really understood. And then incipient need is something that is simply not possible. Like, for example, you just expressed a desire or a need, either way, whatever you want to call it, but the way I translate it as a business person is that, look, there's a person out there who believes that why do we have to end this experiment or this human experiment? Why can't it just change form from this physical world to perhaps a virtual world? That, to me, is an incipient need. And at some point, somebody is going to go after that, and then technology will catch up. That's how I believe that it's a cyclic nature of the experiential need and the technology available. They both spur each other on. And it's only when they come together, that's when magic happens, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:31) Yes. When they come together, that is when the magic happens. But I think you also alluded to a minute ago, and or my brain just did this, we recorded it, I can find out later. But core human needs expressing themselves. So, for example, I believe we'll become interplanetary because we have such a core human desire for freedom and exploration. I believe that we'll drive video games farther, do the upload concept, because we have strong desires for not only escapism on recreational aspects of it, but on non-recreational aspects of it, we have a strong desire for persistence. I mean, need for human persistence has got to be the highest need. I mean, it gets dark when you start talking about situations where you would have to choose between things, but that is in our code. Like, deep, deep, deep down is the code to persist, to keep going.

(Nabil at 00:58:30) Absolutely, 100%. And I'm going to get that exploration part. Look, this is how our forefathers discovered the rest of the world and all the continents. What makes us believe that we or our kids or their kids will not go exploring the rest of the planets or the entire galaxies? It is going to happen. It is bound to happen. It is in our nature. It's in our DNA. It is going to happen. And then what happens is because it is going to happen, because it is in our need, knowingly or unknowingly, we are developing technologies that will get us there. Now you can take the same thing and apply it to all different, I love the part about the persistence of humans. I call it the human spirit or humanity, human experience, whatever you want to call it. I think that is something that will absolutely happen because, you know what, we are humans, and we like to thrive. We like to explore, and we like to strive to get to what we want. And that is the biggest saving grace for this species. That's why we are so resilient. That is why we are who we are, and this will continue driving us. You know, yes, lots of dark clouds around if you look, but I believe in the human spirit to endure, to persist, and to progress. And technology is something that is an instrument that we have created to help us do that faster, better, more efficiently. So in the end, it's all about human experience. Technology helps.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:04) You're giving me goosebumps, man. I love it. You're motivating me. You're getting me all pumped up. And yeah, this is awesome. I really appreciate you taking time there.

(Nabil at 01:00:13) Man, it was fun. It was great chatting with you, and you were absolutely right. It was just a conversation. We could have been having this on a cup of coffee, you know, just randomly without even knowing each other. It's just awesome. Loved it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:26) Awesome. Thank you so much, Nabil. You have a wonderful day.

(Nabil at 01:00:29) Take care. Bye-bye.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:31) Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or a 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.