Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
00:33:14 · Cameron Herold, Gaurav Agarwal
[00:33:14] S2: Mhmm. [00:33:15] S0: When you jump... When you run into someone doing something and you have an idea, you share it you share it, and they will add to it. So there's a lot of serendipitous outcomes that get generated when you are in person. We are big on trying to create a lot more opportunities for people to get together. So we haven't... I've been testing this with my teams, but we'll have cross functional teams get together, once a quarter. Some some teams get together once a month. And the whole idea is to have fun and also humanize work, but then also do some work. But the goal is to understand each other as people and not just as stakeholders who who cooperate or who work on Zoom. So we're trying to figure out alternate modalities where teams still get together in hackathons and conferences and leadership summits and build that ball. [00:34:00] S2: Yeah. It's kind of the the the whole saying that happened during COVID, which is the off-site is the new on-site. Right? [00:34:05] S0: The off-site is the new on-site. Exactly. Alright. [00:34:07] S2: Let's talk about your growth. I mean, you've... Have clearly grown in your career. What are you growing on, or what are you focusing on growing today as a leader?
00:34:18 · Gaurav Agarwal
[00:34:18] S0: So you might have seen the recent, post by Paul Graham around the founder mode that went viral. That was about Brian Chesky. Brian Chesky has been... Our culture is very similar at ClickUp where leaders are in huge details. I've heard Steve Jobs Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky. They come from that school of leadership where you don't just hire smart people, but you go into the details with them. You align thinking so the word product is really good. ClickUp works in the same way. What that often means is we are all in details a lot. And one thing that I'm trying to work on myself is two things actually that I'm thinking. How do I be less reactive to things? Because... Just because I'm in details on everything doesn't mean I need to react on everything. So that's one thing that I'm constantly trying to improve. And the second thing that I'm trying to improve is more empathy. So everyone at ClickUp is at a different place. We we don't get to work together as much in in in in the same office. That's what I meant by humanizing work because I see you just as an interviewer and I don't know much about you. There's very little humanization that's going on here. So I'm trying to build a ton of empathy because, again, I'm that... I'm I'm very data driven, very numbers driven. When you work on the Wall Street, then then empathy takes a back seat because There's no empathy. There's no empathy. Like, you have to be a shark if you work in the wall, So I'm very much like that. Mhmm. Good in a way because it allows my teams to be successful. And, ultimately, when they're successful, everyone is happy. But I'm trying to also work on how do I humanize myself and humanize the work that I do with my people. So so it's not just about the numbers and willing anymore. It's also about working together.
00:35:59 · Cameron Herold
[00:35:59] S2: Do you remember... Oh, I wanna say this was 2011 or 2012, and it was when the Taj and the Oberoi hotels had all the shooting and bombs going off over in India in, Mumbai. They interviewed the CEO of the Taj Hotel Group afterwards, and they said, you know, your your employees, the staff didn't leave the hotel. When everybody was running and there were guns and bombs going off, your staff stayed in the hotel to take care of the guests. How did you get them to stay? And they said, we didn't get them to stay. It was like our it was our our op... Not our obligation. It was like our opportunity. It was our... We wanted to show our core values. We wanted to care about people. And we're like, well, how did you train them to have that kind of core values? He said, oh, we don't train them. We hire people who have those core values. And they said, well, where did you find them? And he said, we don't find them in the big city. He said, we only hire people from the smaller towns and the villages because they haven't lost their core values. They haven't lost their humanity. They haven't lost that kind of that human connection. I thought it was a really beautiful lesson from, the CEO of the Taj Group.
00:37:05 · Gaurav Agarwal
[00:37:05] S0: Yeah. I mean, I I think it ties down to privilege in some sense. So when you ask me about my career journey, right, I feel incredibly grateful to be where I am. Mhmm. I know that because I know that there are, for every Gaurav, there's perhaps 100 more people in India who are as smart as me who would have been here. When I've been given this opportunity, I I I take it very religiously that I need to do my best job. And because I know that there are other people more deserving than me who don't have this opportunity. Maybe that's not true, but I think that is majorly true. And I think it allows me to respect the opportunity I have really, really well. And in ClickUp, we see the same thing. Our biggest value is... Comes down to that entrepreneurial spirit. Right? So we care a lot about growth mindset. We care a lot about being the underdog. We care about working really hard. Those are the ideal employees that work for us. Our best employees are actually not the people who come with big pedigree. We have so many people who have joined ClickUp as a support rep. But in three, four years, one of one of my best, mid market sellers was actually a support rep. One of our best program managers who can... Who... Technical program managers was a support rep. We find over and over that hiring for drive and ambition and betting on that underdog is what has carried us through. And that is that is one of the biggest things. So I see a parallel here that it... For us, it's not so much about the small tier cities, but it's about finding people who really want to make a point and work really hard and are not afraid of ambition and then giving them a chance. And in some way, I ended up here because ZEP gave me a chance.
00:38:43 · Cameron Herold
[00:38:43] S2: Well, I wanna ask you a question about about you as a 21 year old, you know, getting ready to go off to Singapore. My my 21 year old son is going off to Singapore in January to do an exchange at, management management university in Singapore, probably a very similar age to when you went off to Singapore. What advice would you give the younger you, the younger Gaurav who's off to Singapore, you know, 21, 22 years old? What advice would you give yourself back then that you know to be true today but you wish you'd known when you were younger?
00:39:14 · Gaurav Agarwal
[00:39:14] S0: I'll take bigger risks. This is interesting. At that point, I was actually working on a startup idea that I had very good traction. But then because I had this amazing opportunity to go to Singapore and being paid a fair amount of money, I said, let me go do that. But in hindsight, I wish I had surrounded myself with mentors and other people who would tell me that. And I also come from a very middle class background. Right? So that allure for fixed money was way better than that startup risk. But I wish someone would have told me that what you have at hand is really good, and here, take a small check. So I I grew up in an ecosystem where the startup community wasn't as robust as it is right now. So I wish if I could do that again, would certainly take on that bet and take on that risk because the amount of learning I would have had is so huge. So I was I was in Singapore, then I moved to Tokyo, and I'll see a lot of similar startups come out and raise money and do really well. And I was like, shit. I should have just done that. So I was bitter for a couple of years. Hindsight, if I would not have gone to Singapore, I would not have been here because everything that I used to run my business, I learned portfolio theory, data driven decision making, how do you react quickly to things. There's a lot of things that I do right now, leverage, that I I I didn't just learn them, I experienced them in my job. So I think two things. Take more risks. But you know what? If you don't, like, let the dots connect. Dots will always connect. You need to... But at each point, try your best. Like, for each opportunity that has been given to you, this may not be the opportunity you wanted. My first mentor in Singapore, he said, and he was a banker, of course, like he was an MD, trading the entire emerging markets desk. And he said, my first job was a toilet cleaner as a kid. But I was the best toilet cleaner there was. Take more risks, but then if you're stuck in a situation, if you're not happy, change it, but make the most out of the situation you have been given because that's how you create future opportunity.