Harry Moseley - CIO at Zoom

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Harry, the CIO at Zoom, and we discussed their explosive growth in 2020, how the virtual work environment puts everyone on an equal playing field, and why accuracy and urgency are the keys for solving any problem. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:34) Hello, Joel. Hey, buddy. How are you? Terrific. How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Good. I was just thinking about you and I was looking through different topics and stuff that I wanted to cover. And then I was like, I wonder how, like, just right before I came on the call, I was like, I wonder how Harry's doing as a person. Like, are you getting enough sleep?

(Harry Moseley at 00:00:58) I sleep like a baby. The last twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight weeks have been terrific because I haven't had to get up at 4 a.m. in the morning to catch a 6 a.m. flight to somewhere or not coming in the house at like 11:00 or sometimes coming back from the East Coast on the red-eye. I'm not doing any of that. So life is pretty good. It's, you know, I have dinner almost every night with my wife, so that's been a real pleasure. We got a puppy, so that's been great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:36) What type of puppy?

(Harry Moseley at 00:01:37) He's a goldendoodle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:40) What's its name?

(Harry Moseley at 00:01:42) Hershey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:42) Hershey. Very fitting. Beautiful looking dog. It's a really nice one. He's a puppy.

(Harry Moseley at 00:01:52) He's beautiful and soft and very friendly, and he loves his daddy. So that's a good thing. He's like giving me this bear hug.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:02) You've got the hugs. You've got the treats. You've got the food. You're the man.

(Harry Moseley at 00:02:07) Let me put him down. Okay. There you go. Back to sleep. Come on. He loves coming to work with me every day. We're not going back to the offices until maybe the middle of next year, which is great. Because I think if I were to start going to work every day and going to the, traveling to the city or traveling again, my wife thinks we'll need to get him a dog therapist because it could be pretty bad.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:36) Does your wife do pretty well with the dog? Does she love it?

(Harry Moseley at 00:02:39) Yeah. Yeah. No. He's, you know, it's good. In fact, we've always had dogs in our family, but my wife and I have always been working and always went to the office. But I was always the person who was in charge of the dog, so taking the dog to the vet, walking the dog, grooming the dog, feeding the dog, training the dog. And so we got him, I think it was like early April, and my wife didn't start going back to our office until July. So she was here for April, May, June. So he bonded with both of us really well for like twelve weeks. And so this is the first, my wife says this is the first time he is as much her dog as he is mine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:23) That's good. Yeah. I have two dogs. I have a Bernese mountain dog and a, yeah, yep, we got dog.

(Harry Moseley at 00:03:31) Our previous puppy was a Berner, and he was a Swiss Berner. He was 130 pounds. Yeah. Big puppy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:40) Yeah. It's a big puppy. And then to contrast that, we have like a Pomeranian.

(Harry Moseley at 00:03:45) Uh-huh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:46) And yeah. And then I had a Wheaten terrier, but when I brought my second child home from the hospital, it was just too much to have three dogs and two kids. So I found this lady who, she was retired, and she has a farm, and she rescues Wheatens. And she does like two at a time, and she was very interested. And so I had Ted for like eight years and then gave him to her. And so she sends us pictures all the time, and it's really great. But, you know, kids are a lot of work, so you kind of have to manage the time.

(Harry Moseley at 00:04:18) Yeah. Absolutely. How old are your kids?

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:21) Well, Aria actually turns three today. So this morning, there were balloons and all sorts of excitement for her. And then my son is about 1.5, I think.

(Harry Moseley at 00:04:33) Very good. Excellent. Congratulations on both, and you certainly got your hands full.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:39) Yeah. It's a crazy year, especially when I started the whole business, I started the business like when my wife was eight months pregnant. And so talk about, like, you know, staring into the abyss and eating glass like Elon Musk says. Right? It's just multiple difficult things, but overall, I think it shaped me pretty well as a person.

(Harry Moseley at 00:05:00) Terrific. Terrific.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:02) Yeah. So I'm curious to know, like, what the past, I think you gave a number, like thirty-six weeks. What's the past year look like for you?

(Harry Moseley at 00:05:11) Yeah. So it's been a really interesting year. You know, I've been at Zoom now two and a half years, and it sort of seems like every few months, everything changes at Zoom because this is a rocket ship. It's like one of Elon Musk's rocket ships. It's like, you know, just straight up. And so, you know, I joined the company when we were a little north of 800 employees. Now we're 3,400. So, you know, it's been phenomenal growth. You know, last year in April, we went public, and that was a whole new experience for us as a company. And then in January, you know, late January, COVID started coming around the world and hit here in the US and Europe in the February, March time frame. And then we saw this monumental growth. Right? We went from 10 million daily participants in December to 300 million daily participants in April. We went from processing 100 billion annualized meeting minutes in January to 2 trillion in April. You know? And we're this nine-year-old startup that went public a year ago. Most companies would love to go through that sort of trajectory and that sort of growth path over the course of a couple of years. We did in twelve weeks. So it's been really interesting to see how the company has changed, how the company has morphed, how we had to bring in different leaders, we brought in, you know, established different processes in the company, different organizations, et cetera. Because now we've got to scale to be this new company, and, you know, this is, we're four times bigger than what we were with 3,400 plus employees. You know, our numbers are, you know, 357%, I think it was, year-on-year growth. So it's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:10) It's useful. It's a valuable tool. It's incredibly important. And I was just like, you describe those numbers, and it just, it's phenomenal. Like, it's huge. They're just huge growth numbers. But I don't really know how to ask the question, but I guess, like, what is it like on a day-to-day basis when you're going through that?

(Harry Moseley at 00:07:37) Yeah. It's, um, sorry. The year-on-year revenue growth, 355% year-on-year. Sorry. Had to get that right. I was once told, you know, there can never be an error with numbers. Numbers are very exact. So what's it been like? It's been a humbling experience, quite honestly. You know, we're supporting a myriad of different industries around the globe. We're supporting government organizations around the globe. We're helping countries operate, and, you know, we're educating children and young adults all over the planet. We have over 100,000 schools in 25 countries on the platform. And so it's, and then, you know, supporting the healthcare industry has been, so it's all very humbling to be keeping the global economy working, keeping people, and in addition to that, Joe, also keeping people connected. It's like yesterday, I was talking to a colleague of mine. She works in Cork, Southern Ireland, and she was telling me how she was in a store, and this man was standing there looking at her T-shirt that she was wearing, like a Zoom shirt. Sorry. I messed with my microphone. She was wearing a Zoom shirt, and he came over to her and said, "Sorry to interrupt your shopping experience, but do you work for Zoom?" And she goes, "I do." And he said, "Well, I'd like to thank you because I've been using Zoom to connect with my friends and my family and my grandchildren in England over the last several months, and I don't know what I would have done without Zoom because it kept me sane." You know? And then those birthdays and weddings and yoga classes and church events and bar mitzvahs and all sorts of different activities being conducted over Zoom. And so I kind of feel like we're helping the world connect in a seamless and frictionless fashion and helping people to get through what is a very difficult time for an awful lot of people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:50) Do you guys have like an online store so I can buy a Zoom shirt?

(Harry Moseley at 00:09:54) Email me your size and Jake's and send me your addresses, and we will take care of making sure you guys get Zoom shirts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:03) Amazing. I love them. I got this shirt. So I had this guest on, Ryan. He's the CEO of like X-Team. They're like a development agency. And he had the shirt, and I was like, "What is that? Explain this shirt to me" because I just like different types of shirts. I didn't know it was branded to his company or anything, because it's really not at all. But what they do is they've got these like different tribes within the organization, different, they call them like houses, and like, this is like Wolf House or something. I'm forgetting, but it was something like that and like Ravenclaw. But what they do is they have these contests, and then people can like win the internal swag, and they have just like this whole culture system set up. And I just said, "Hey. I really like that shirt. Can I buy it?" And he's like, "No. You can only win it," but he managed to sneak me one from his personal collection. But yeah, I just, I love it, and I like the shirts because they have little stories with them too rather than just being my normal like plain T-shirt.

(Harry Moseley at 00:11:05) Okay. So absolutely. So send me the names, addresses, and sizes, male, female, and we will make sure everybody gets jerseys.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:14) You're the man. I really appreciate it. And we'll wear them too. And then you'll have to come on next year so I can wear the Zoom shirt.

(Harry Moseley at 00:11:21) Of course. Delighted to. Anytime.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:25) We love Zoom. I was actually looking at how we could customize it for the podcast. So we've, since we last talked, we actually have a studio now. So this is like—

(Harry Moseley at 00:11:34) I was thinking it's like, you know, you're looking very sophisticated there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:38) Thank you. Thank you. So we have a studio, and then all of our sales team has like these custom Zoom backgrounds we made, and we ship them all like lights and cameras and everything so that our salespeople look as good as possible on the video chats. But we are looking to see like on the show if we could have it so we could have like a browser that comes up, you know, when our producer, like if you and I were talking about SpaceX rocket launch or something, he could pull it up and like do an overlay on the screen, and we were trying to figure out how to do a little bit of that. And they said, "Well, let's ask Harry." And I was like, "Well, no. Let's not. Let's go look at their developer documentation and see what's possible." And so I was blown away by how customizable, by how large your development SDK, you can do like virtually anything you want customized with Zoom. I did not know this.

(Harry Moseley at 00:12:29) Yeah. So the SDK is quite rich. And, you know, every time we add features, the SDK gets enhanced further. So yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:41) Yeah. I'm a fan. I'm also a fan of what you guys did with the International Space Station where they rang the Nasdaq bell. Do you get to be a part of that?

(Harry Moseley at 00:12:52) Wasn't that cool? That was so cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:54) Did you get to have like involvement with setting that up, or was that something that like the comms, you know?

(Harry Moseley at 00:13:01) No. No. We have an excellent marketing team and excellent customer success team and support teams, and they get involved in doing a lot of these different events. I mean, like, we hosted Oprah Winfrey's World of Wellness program. I don't know if you saw that with, you know, I think there was like 40,000 participants around the world, and she had like 200 streams coming in, and then she was able to promote people to be like speakers and so on and so forth. That was pretty cool. The NFL draft was also conducted over Zoom and Saturday Night Live. You know, Hamilton has been, opera singers on, actually, check out on Zoom.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:45) On Zoom.com?

(Harry Moseley at 00:13:46) Yeah. So, yeah, let me show you. So these are—

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:50) On Zoom. I'm sorry. I thought you were saying "on Zoom."

(Harry Moseley at 00:13:54) Yeah. So these are all different examples, you know, weddings and dancing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:59) And elephant dancing. That's wonderful.

(Harry Moseley at 00:14:02) Where is that? Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:03) Oh, I really like the music collaboration things that I've seen where like all the musicians will play together, and those videos are pretty cool.

(Harry Moseley at 00:14:11) Yeah. So, yeah, so pretty good stuff. So yeah, the Nasdaq, Zoom opera for preschoolers. Look at that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:19) Zoom opera for preschoolers. Now are these like public things you can join, or are they recordings?

(Harry Moseley at 00:14:26) I know some of them are recordings. Some of them are just articles. You know, hairstyles that will become work-from-home staples.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:33) Now did you guys do this, or has just the world, just somebody—

(Harry Moseley at 00:14:37) The world has done this, and we just put them all together on Zoom.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:42) Oh, nice. Nice.

(Harry Moseley at 00:14:43) Yeah. So, so pretty cool. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:46) So if you were to look at, like, I know you've had growth, lots of growth year over year, but if you were to just contrast like the way you spent your time, you know, last year versus the craziness of this year, like, were there, were there like huge, obviously, there's excitement like in the meetings and what's going on, but like, were there like really big changes in the way you spend your time throughout these past six months?

(Harry Moseley at 00:15:17) Yeah. So I spend my time primarily in sort of three circles, if you will, sort of like internal discussions, external meetings with clients, and doing events. And what's been quite fascinating is the internal has stayed very much the same. Events has taken significantly more time. There's been a lot more events and a lot more client meetings. And when I sit here and think about it, like, going back to your question before, it's like, you know, I'm sleeping better. I'm healthier. I've lost 19 pounds.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:54) Nice.

(Harry Moseley at 00:15:55) I'm eating better, and I feel happier. And but I think that I'm actually doing more, and I think the reason is because I'm just not traveling.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:05) Did you get into any of like the sleep optimization stuff, like taking melatonin for bed or wearing a sleep mask or anything like that?

(Harry Moseley at 00:16:12) No. Absolutely not. No. My wife says I'm like a horse. I can sleep standing up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:22) Oh, man. That's awesome though. That's good though, because sleep is one of the most important things for, you know, our bodies and restoring it.

(Harry Moseley at 00:16:30) I agree. I agree. I practice it frequently.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:34) Daily, actually. Daily. Absolutely.

(Harry Moseley at 00:16:37) Yeah. That was like when—Rachel's my wife—and when we travel on vacation together, it's like I'm the first person on the plane. Why? Because when I get into my seat, lights out. So by the time she's sitting next to me because she doesn't like to be on first.

(Harry Moseley at 00:16:54) So by the time she gets on the plane, I'm already asleep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:58) That's unbelievable. Was this always the way it was for you, or did you build this up?

(Harry Moseley at 00:17:03) No. It's like, you know, when you travel a lot, you learn how to control these types of things in your body. It's like I mean, there was a period of my life where I used to work in London but live in New York. And so every Monday, I would fly to London and fly back on Friday and back again on Monday, and I would do like three weeks in London and then one week home. And so if you haven't got good control over your body clock, you become wrecked.

(Harry Moseley at 00:17:33) So I learned how to sort of sleep when I wanted to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:38) Where did you learn—

(Harry Moseley at 00:17:39) You missed that. I don't know where—

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:41) You missed discipline.

(Harry Moseley at 00:17:41) You missed that, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:43) I did.

(Harry Moseley at 00:17:46) Sorry.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:49) Oh, man. This is good. I really like you, Harry. After I became such a big fan of you after our first conversation. I think I've brought you up on like half of all the episodes we've done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:59) I'm just like, you gotta know Harry. Harry's a cool guy. Go listen. When I do my public talks, I'm like, go listen to that episode. I don't know what it was.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:06) It was just the stories that you told, and you gave some really good leadership insight. And I don't know. Sometimes you just become fans of people, and I was just like, that's a person to aspire to be.

(Harry Moseley at 00:18:17) The feelings are mutual. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:19) When everybody started working from home, that probably wasn't much of an interruption for you, was it? Because you guys are already pretty remote. Right?

(Harry Moseley at 00:18:28) Yeah. So no. So, you know, I remember that very well. It's like, you know, on Sunday, March 1st, I was due to fly to San Francisco for an event there on Monday and Tuesday, and 3:00, I got a message from the event organizer. Unfortunately, they were canceling the event because of COVID-19.

(Harry Moseley at 00:18:45) So I said, do I go, don't I go? I mean, I was gonna go to San Francisco, then I was gonna go to San Jose, see some people. I thought, I'll just Zoom in. So I canceled the flight, canceled the hotel. And on Tuesday morning, we had our management meeting.

(Harry Moseley at 00:19:03) And then at the management meeting, we came to the conclusion that we would send out a notice to our people saying if they're uncomfortable coming to the office, they can work from home. By the end of that day, we had closed San Jose. By the end of that week, we had closed, I think, San Jose and Amsterdam and Sydney. And by the end of the following week, we had closed all our offices everywhere. So, yeah, so it was, you know, a bit of an adjustment for a lot of people, quite honestly.

(Harry Moseley at 00:19:31) I mean, you know, on a personal level, you know, I've always worked from home, so I have a very nice home work setup. But, you know, not everybody has that. Not everybody has the space. Not everybody has the equipment at home. Not everybody has the monitors and the lighting and, you know, the furniture.

(Harry Moseley at 00:19:47) And so, you know, a lot of people had to adjust. And then it can also become lonely. It's like, you know, Joel, you know, people live alone. Right? So, you know, going to the office is a social experience as well as a work experience.

(Harry Moseley at 00:20:02) But now being stuck at home, you can't have a social life and you don't see anybody physically. It can become a little difficult. But, you know, a lot of people adjusted. Some people went to, you know, it's not really quote "working from home." It's actually working from anywhere because, you know, people went to stay with sisters or brothers or parents or, you know, other family members because they knew they were gonna be in this for—you know, this is not gonna be days. This is not gonna be weeks, man. It's gonna be months.

(Harry Moseley at 00:20:34) But we, you know, as a company, we adapted pretty easily.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:38) Well, you're a great company, and I was reading some, like, I think an interview you did, like, a podcast with Peter High. Yep. And then they had turned it into an article, and it was talking about how you came in to, like, lay a solid foundation for scaling, and this is all in 2019. And I was like, that's why they're doing so well with this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:57) I mean, I can't think of another time in history where one company has become so important so quickly, like, overnight. And that's, you know, it's a compliment to, like, Zoom and your processes, and—we can cut this part out. But if you want later, we can talk after the show, but I was pushing around emails and asking the audience what they wanted me to ask you. Right? And I got back so much love about security because it—and it was just an interesting thing because, you know, usually, email people aren't that nice sometimes. Right? We do broad messages like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:42) But people were saying that they loved how you guys responded. Like, you just responded quickly. They were—actually the recurring conversation was how surprised on how quickly you guys took ownership and deployed a fix. Like, it was just rapid response in a crunch time. And so, you know, I know it's a sensitive topic in general for any company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:07) Security is an important and sensitive topic, but I just wanted to say that, you know, from my experience and the executives I'm interacting with, we are all pretty much impressed with the response.

(Harry Moseley at 00:22:18) Yeah. It's like, you know, Zoom—I think a lot of credit goes to Eric Yuan, our CEO and founder. I mean, he is both, you know, a brilliant technologist and a terrific human being. We have an amazing team of professionals at Zoom. So a lot of credit, you know, goes to this team of people who quite honestly could leave their egos on the street every morning, and they come in with only one objective.

(Harry Moseley at 00:22:48) How can we make Zoom a better company? How can we help our people be successful? How can we partner better with our clients? How do we move the needle forward? It's not about me.

(Harry Moseley at 00:22:59) It's about us all the time. And I think that makes a—and it's like we all share that one mission, and I think that's a big part of why this company has been so incredibly successful. We have a—part of our culture is when there's an issue, we always say, well, what's the problem? You gotta define that problem, and then once you've defined the problem, then the next thing is, well, what's the root cause of the problem? And once you understand what the root cause is causing the problem, then you can go about identifying what's the solution.

(Harry Moseley at 00:23:37) Many too many times, Joel, people are rushing off to, you know, create the solution, and they haven't even fully defined the problem yet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:45) It's like why the contractors, you know, they say measure twice, cut once.

(Harry Moseley at 00:23:50) Yeah. Right? Exactly. Yeah. So sometimes being a little patient and then acting with precision, acting with accuracy, and of course act, you know, I'm gonna say urgency, and that is contradictory to what I initially said, but it's once you—you need to move fast, but you need to be patient to move fast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:12) I get what you're saying because as I'm thinking about myself and decisions I make, there's this—if you look at it like a process or a cycle, there's like this beginning moment where it's like, okay, there is some sort of problem, and then you have to go through this discovery and information gathering, and then you build the certainty as to the root of it. But the moment you have that certainty is like you've gotta switch gears because it's a different mental—it's like a different feeling in your head when you're exploring the problem and thinking about it. Then you have to go put it into action. And sometimes you can get stuck there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:46) Like, I, you know, take notes, and I noticed sometimes I get stuck in between ideation and execution. And my goal is always, like, how do I reduce that gap?

(Harry Moseley at 00:24:55) Yeah. It's, uh, you know, it's the notion of slowing down to speed up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:59) Yes. My favorite thing is the—I think it's the SEALs, the—slow is steady, steady is smooth, and smooth is fast.

(Harry Moseley at 00:25:08) Very good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:09) Right? Because they're going into foreign territories and executing missions, and, you know, it's high stakes.

(Harry Moseley at 00:25:18) Absolutely. Absolutely. Very high. Yeah. Life threatening.

(Harry Moseley at 00:25:22) Yes. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:24) So right now, like, where you're at in your career professionally, like, how do you—you obviously, you know, got here through discipline and understanding comfort zones and pushing yourself out of them. You can't achieve as much as you have without doing that. But how are you doing that today? Like, how are you pushing your comfort zones, or how are you thinking about that today?

(Harry Moseley at 00:25:47) You know, we did a podcast twelve months ago. Right? Mhmm. I'm a lot more comfortable doing a podcast today than I was twelve months ago, so I think I pushed myself to that. You know, it's, uh, I did a presentation recently.

(Harry Moseley at 00:26:02) I think there was like 50,000 people, and I was, you know, extremely comfortable. So it's like I have, you know, operating out of my comfort zone. I try to do it as frequently as I can because I think it makes you a better person. I remember many, many months ago, it's like, you know, one of my members of my team complained that I was always pushing the team to work out of their comfort zone and stretching them. And it was a very unpleasant conversation because it was critical that I was pushing people to be out of their comfort zone.

(Harry Moseley at 00:26:40) And then the meeting broke for lunch, and we came back after lunch. And I remember picking up the conversation. Most people wouldn't pick up an uncomfortable conversation like that. Let it go. But I decided to pick it up, and I said, you know, it's an interesting discussion we were having before lunch about comfort zones.

(Harry Moseley at 00:26:58) And it's like—and this is exactly what I said. I said, I think it's incumbent upon a leader to have their team work out of their comfort zones because that's how you grow and that's how you learn. And, no, it's not for everybody. Some people don't want to grow. Some people don't want to learn.

(Harry Moseley at 00:27:21) Some people are very happy being where they are, and that's completely fine. But then share that and let me know if you don't want to grow and you don't want to learn. And it's sort of—and then I shared a story when I was much earlier in my career working—I was the Chief Technology Officer for UBS, the Americas, and UBS has a training facility for management in a place called Wolfsberg up near Lake Constance in Switzerland. And you go there—in this particular case, I was there for four weeks of training, which was quite extensive—quite an extensive program. Every Monday morning at 8 a.m., they would start a class, and the class would have 40 members of leadership in the room.

(Harry Moseley at 00:28:14) And from everybody from all around the country, a real diverse group of people, different nationalities, different backgrounds, different roles—not, you know, technologists, traders, bankers, back office finance people, HR people, marketing people. And on this particular Monday morning—and there was always an assignment given to the class, and there was always a leader given to the class, and there was always an end to the program for that week. And this is what happened on this Monday morning. So the guy was introducing, you know, the program for the week. So, okay.

(Harry Moseley at 00:28:51) So the—today, this week's exercise for this group is to build a revised foreign exchange trading strategy, which will be presented to members of the executive committee and members of the board on Friday evening over dinner. And the leader for this session is gonna be Harry Moseley. So I'm looking around. It's like everybody's looking at me, and I put my hand up. And Peter, who was initiating this class, said, what's up, Harry?

(Harry Moseley at 00:29:24) And I said, I think you might have got that name wrong. It must be somebody else here called Harry Moseley. Because, you know, I understand foreign exchange, and I understand what it is to be strategic, but I'm not the right person to be leading an effort with 40 of my colleagues here about foreign exchange strategy. And, certainly, I'm not the right person to present that to the members of the executive committee and the board on Friday over dinner. And he goes, well, others disagree with you, and it's not a topic for debate.

(Harry Moseley at 00:29:58) With that, guys, good luck, and I'll see you on Friday. And he, like, leaves. Everybody's looking at me. But we pulled it off. But, you know, at the dinner on Friday, it wasn't just this class.

(Harry Moseley at 00:30:12) There was eight other classes, and so there was like over 300 people. And, man, I tell you, I still remember this. This was circa, uh, 1990—probably like '95, '96. So what's that? Like, call it twenty-three, twenty-four years ago?

(Harry Moseley at 00:30:30) I remember this like yesterday. I remember the perspiration running down the back of my neck. My shirt was—and, you know, you had to wear a tie and a jacket and everything. We weren't dressed like this. I remember that, like, yesterday, that dinner and that presentation.

(Harry Moseley at 00:30:47) And, but the things like that, I'd, you know, pushing people out of their comfort zones—I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today if people hadn't pulled me out of my comfort zone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:00) How did that actual event go? Like, how did that transpire? Like, or what happened? It went great?

(Harry Moseley at 00:31:07) That went great. It's like, made the presentation and then things—and then life just continued to move on, and so here we are. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:16) What a direct line too that guy gave. This is just not up for debate, and he just walks out. Like, what a way to end it.

(Harry Moseley at 00:31:23) Yeah. Uh, yeah. The Swiss can be a little direct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:28) I like that. Yeah. We were talking about that the other day, uh, on the podcast, the different types of cultures. Like, I prefer—I like the Israeli people because they tend to be very direct.

(Harry Moseley at 00:31:37) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:37) Talking to some Dutch people who are direct as well, and I like that.

(Harry Moseley at 00:31:41) I like that too. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:43) Yeah. I'm curious. Maybe I'll do some culture studies figuring out, like, the root of that, like, why some cultures are more direct than others. My best guess with the Israeli culture is that they all have to go through the military. Yes.

(Harry Moseley at 00:31:59) Yeah. So I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:00) was like, that could be one of the reasons why. But I'm always interested in human performance and things like that.

(Harry Moseley at 00:32:07) Yeah. It's, uh, a lot of great friends who are, you know, from India and, um, again, that's another culture and, uh, really lovely people, and I love their food. So, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:22) Yeah. I like all different types of food. I'm like, I'm a big fan of traveling around and different unique dishes and, yeah. So I'm—I'll change the topic a little bit because I was curious because I don't really know where to go with the food topic. Other than just listing off countries and restaurants, I don't know how interesting that would be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:47) But I am curious to know, what type of leaders are inspiring you? Because I look up to people, different people, you know, Elon Musk, Bezos, Branson. I like to understand how they think and just great people in general. But I'm always consuming. I consider myself like an algorithm, and I'm always attempting to put the best quality content into my processor, right, to sound like a nerd. But what type of content do you consume, or what type of people are you fans of, authors, or just in the leadership category in general?

(Harry Moseley at 00:33:26) Yeah, it's probably the same set of characters that you just mentioned. I'm a big fan of Elon. I think Eric is just brilliant. Sometimes he'll say something, and I'll talk to my wife about it, and she said, "Jeez, he sounds just like you." Steve Schwarzman from the Blackstone Group, a wonderful man, very humble. I gravitate towards people who are smart and direct and humble and kind. So, yeah, I'm not much into the politics at all, so nothing there has ever sort of struck a chord with me. I tend to stay away from that. My father always told me, "Harry, there's two things you should never talk about." "What's that, Dad?" He says, "Politics and religion." Okay, got it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:25) That's what I was taught growing up too, because it's the two things that will just instantly divide.

(Harry Moseley at 00:34:31) Yeah. Well, people gravitate towards, you know, if they gravitate towards something that you don't condone or support, then that's a problem. So it's very binary.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:44) We got an office politics question from the audience, and they wanted to know, how do you approach dealing with office politics in your organization? What do they look like?

(Harry Moseley at 00:34:56) We don't have a lot of politics at Zoom, to be honest. Might be a little bit more eking into the organization these days than before, but we don't actually have a lot. And, you know, Eric, I remember one day talking to Eric, and we talked about a particular topic, and I was very animated about it. It was just him and me. I was very animated and very direct, and he said, "Well, are you doing something about it?" And I was like, "Yeah, I tried three times, and I sort of knock on the door three times. If there's no answer, I go away." And he said, "Why do you go away?" And I said, "Because I don't want to upset people. I need to work with people." He said, "Look, there are companies that are run by CEOs, and there are companies that are founder-led. In a founder-led company, you never need to worry about the politics. Because as a founder, I know that you would never do anything or have any intention or even think of doing anything that could be negative against the company. You wake up every day with the right intentions, with the right objectives, and that's the only thing you're interested in doing." So, a CEO thinks the same way, but it's a different mentality with a founder-led company than it is with a non-founder-led organization. So we actually don't have a lot of politics. We just like to get stuff done and move on.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:20) I actually consider that in my investment strategy for my portfolio. 80% of my portfolio is invested in companies where the founder is still there. Because, you know, even though I have a small company, I've just seen companies where their board runs CEO cycles in and out, and there's just no soul. There's, it feels like there's just something missing. They might be big and have revenue, but they just don't have that edge. And I noticed that that exists most often when the founder is leading the company. And so I think those companies have the greatest chance of success and growth long term.

(Harry Moseley at 00:37:01) Yep. I tend to agree with you on that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:04) Another question we got: with a mix of remote and on-prem employees, what steps can we take to make sure we're promoting people fairly?

(Harry Moseley at 00:37:16) Oh, I think that, you know, as somebody said to me recently, this virtual world that we're living in has actually normalized the people. Everybody's head is the same size. There is no hierarchy anymore. You can't tell who's a senior versus who's a junior. The introverts and the extroverts get equal time. They have an equal playing field. So it's a dramatically easier world to operate in this virtual world than it is in the in-person world where there is a hierarchy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:55) That's right. Because you're not going into someone's office, you know, on a certain floor, or the size of their office. You're just face-to-face.

(Harry Moseley at 00:38:03) I'm here. We want to talk about everything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:10) Oh, man. So, okay, when you're going from 800 to 3,400 and you're doing that, what are you thinking about? Are you trying to find, what, how does that fall into your lap? Let's back up and say, how did you decide to grow from 800 to 3,400?

(Harry Moseley at 00:38:35) As a company, we have different sets of needs in different parts of the organization, whether it's sales or business development or customer success, support, finance, marketing, et cetera. So it's based upon different guidance for different areas. So in sales, one of the board members once told me, in sales, if a salesperson's area of responsibility is not shrinking, then they're working for a company that's stagnant or worse, has no growth potential. And the explanation behind that was, you know, if I was a salesperson and I had responsibility for, I'm making the numbers up now, 100 accounts, and then three months later I have responsibility for 50 accounts, and I have responsibility then for 25 accounts because we're bringing in other salespeople to handle these accounts, that's an indication of a company where the sales force is growing and you want to have better and deeper penetration with more customers. And, you know, at the end of the day, there are only 24 hours and there are only seven days in the week, so there's only so much that a person can cover.

And then you have other areas like marketing, as an example. If you have marketing campaigns, how many different types of marketing campaigns can you do in how many different parts of the world and different mediums that you want to have? And all that can't be done by a set of people. If you're going to have more programs and you're going to have more mediums in more countries, then you have to have more people to support that. And it's the same with HR for recruiting in the US and in Europe and in Asia, and we're building out the sales team, and we're building out the engineering team, and you're building out the marketing team, and you need to have more recruiters to support that growth. So it's all these things work together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:51) Have you ever dealt with a situation where you're having trouble keeping the engineering team excited just because they're doing the same things over and over? I mean, obviously not right now, but I try to, you know, when we do the guest questions, I try to understand their perspective and find a, you know, extract something useful, some insight from you. But it looks like the root of this question is, how to keep your team excited when you're doing the same thing repetitively?

(Harry Moseley at 00:41:25) You know, I don't think they are doing the same thing repetitively because you're always innovating with speed and scale. New features, new capabilities, delighting our customers, making them happy, creating new features. So, yeah. And we have to plan for the future because otherwise we'll just get depressed about the current state.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:50) That's exactly it. When the pandemic hit, I said, I'm going to spend this time working out more, eating healthier, and I'm out there running. Five in the morning, I see all the alcohol outside my neighbor's house because they're all depressed drinking 10 times more. But I have. And so I've been pretty excited about fitness and health, and I always just try to take something and flip it around. Like, how is this an opportunity? How can we prepare for when things get better? You know, when everyone was pulling money out of the stock market and I saw it crack, I had savings that wasn't invested, and I just started investing because I said all of this stuff is on sale, essentially. And I just, I've heard the story too many times about fear and everybody pulls their money out, and then it comes back. And so I've just, I heard that my entire life growing up. That's just a cycle that happened. So when it happened, I was like, alright, you know, this is the time to buy stock and stuff like that.

(Harry Moseley at 00:42:54) Where do you live?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:55) I live in Florida, so I live about an hour south of Tampa in a town called Sarasota, Bradenton.

(Harry Moseley at 00:43:02) Yeah. Yeah. I know where it is. Yeah. You're on the West Coast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:07) Yeah. We're most popular for the beach. Siesta Key is always rated in the top two or three beaches in the United States.

(Harry Moseley at 00:43:15) Very cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:16) Yeah. Because of the sand. It's weird because growing up, it's just the beach. And then you go on vacation and you go to the beach, and you're like, this beach is horrible. I was like, what is this? This sand hurts. It's not nice at all. And then you realize that, oh, okay, we're in one of the best beaches. So that was pretty exciting.

(Harry Moseley at 00:43:37) Good. Do you have any alligators close to you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:39) Oh, yeah, man. Alligators are super common. I had one of our employees had moved over here from Russia, and he was freaking out with the alligators. And I was like, well, if there's a lake, there's probably an alligator in it. And if you have a swimming pool, you definitely want to check in the pool before you jump in. That's why they don't paint them green anymore. They don't paint them dark in Florida anymore because alligators would get into the pool, and they'd be on the bottom of the pool. You know?

(Harry Moseley at 00:44:06) Are you serious?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:08) I'm not kidding at all. Yeah. They'll eat little dogs, so when you're, you have to walk them with a leash and don't walk them next to the lake because, you know, it's mostly just, to be as direct as possible, it's mostly four or five foot alligators, and they never have once messed with me. I've never seen them harm any person that wasn't sitting on top of them trying to get a picture or something. But, yeah, that's not a bright idea. But, yeah, they're just everywhere. Like, for example, last year, my brother's wife heard a knock at the door. And so she went to open up the door, and it was a baby alligator hitting its nose against the door. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

(Harry Moseley at 00:44:54) So you just call animal control?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:55) Yeah. What we do as, you know, natives—I'm actually, I was born in the town I'm in right now. But, so what you do is if they get to a certain size, if they're getting bigger than three or four feet, you just call, and you see them in your lake every night in the back of your house. You just call up animal control, and they come and they take them out of the lake when they get big enough. And you can even do it if it's small, but usually, the small ones, their mouths really can't get anything except for mice. You know? So yeah.

(Harry Moseley at 00:45:22) But the small ones get bigger.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:24) Yeah. Well, that's when you call animal control. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad too when people, you see the posters up of the dogs. Like, "We let it out last night at 7:00, and it usually just comes right back." It's like, well, you live on a lake in Florida. You know?

(Harry Moseley at 00:45:40) Bye-bye dog.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:41) Bye-bye puppy. So we've actually seen birds grab, very large birds grab very small dogs. That's a pretty crazy thing. But I think I'm over-exaggerating Florida a little bit right now.

(Harry Moseley at 00:45:56) Okay. Very good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:59) Have you ever seen an alligator up close?

(Harry Moseley at 00:46:02) I was playing golf. I don't play golf, but I was playing golf once outside of Charlotte. And there was an alligator in the lake on the golf course. And that put a quick end to my game of golf.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:20) Yeah.

(Harry Moseley at 00:46:23) Yeah. They can move relatively fast, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:26) Oh, yeah. Yeah. If they want to move, they can move. Yeah. You're taught as a kid. I remember being taught in school, alligator evasion techniques. You're supposed to run in zigzags, go climb up a tree. At least that's what they were teaching us then. But, yeah, they're just giant, you know, lizard things, and they're pretty norm—I mean, you know, you go to Colorado, you've got, what, mountain lions? Those things are scary because you don't see them and you die. Yeah. Exactly. Like, they're so fast.

(Harry Moseley at 00:46:53) Yeah. Oh, bears.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:55) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bears, monsters. They're just, I've seen bears and moose up close. They're just unbelievable. It shows us how important the brain is for us surviving as a species.

(Harry Moseley at 00:47:12) Yeah. It's like right now, it's kind of like because the air is so clean and, you know, people aren't, not as many cars on the road, less planes. The animals have been sort of venturing further afield. So, yeah, a bear was wandering around the neighborhood looking for food.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:34) How are you staying active with, you know, the lockdown and the gym's closed? Are you going on walks, runs?

(Harry Moseley at 00:47:41) Playing tennis, bike riding, swimming. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:46) Nice.

(Harry Moseley at 00:47:47) Yeah. No alligators, so I'm fine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:50) No alligators. We'll make sure if you come down and visit that we put you in an alligator-free zone.

(Harry Moseley at 00:47:56) That would be good. I'd like that very much. Yeah. But listen, I do need to pop. So I don't know if you have one more question you want to throw at me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:06) Yeah. Just, are there any topics that you wanted to discuss and get out there that we weren't able to cover so far? Anything that's really on your mind?

(Harry Moseley at 00:48:14) No. Nothing special. Appreciate the opportunity to connect with you today, and thank you for hosting me, and look forward to getting the podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:24) You're the man. Thank you so much, Harry. It was great talking with you.

(Harry Moseley at 00:48:27) Take care, Joel. Bye. Got it. Cheers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:30) 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.