- It's lunchtime, and this is
Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the
smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day.
Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch.
(bright upbeat music)
This week, I meet up with my new boss, the one and only
Terry Myerson, the Executive Vice President
of the Windows and Devices Group.
So, Terry, you've had an incredibly long and storied
career at Microsoft, like a real long.
- Well, long is probably a good adjective, sure.
- And so I think all of that leads to this question.
What's it like to be my new boss?
- Well, so far I'm impressed by the cars you rent.
You know, we've always been partners, but actually
just even just the last few days,
to have these rich dialogues
about whether it be specific customers,
or what is our vision for what we want
to bring to people in three years.
- [Brad] So let's talk about your start of your career,
and how you came to Microsoft.
- How I got to Microsoft?
- Yeah, so you graduated Duke.
- From there, I went from the US EPA to the North Carolina
Supercomputing Center, but I was basically doing
scientific visualization data models.
And then from there I was recruited
to go be a sales engineer
in the Washington, DC area for a startup
selling computer graphics workstations.
- I did not know that.
- Yeah, from there I was actually so excited
about what I saw.
I was selling to NASA Ames, NASA Langley,
Naval Research Lab, National Institute of Health,
all these high-end government labs.
They really got excited about the internet.
They were excited about this NCSA Mosaic,
and I went to my bosses and said, "We need a website."
And they were like, "Nope. We don't know what that is."
So we started a company, and two and half years later
at the Gartner Symposium, I met Bill Gates.
Next thing I know, Microsoft bought us,
and we were in Seattle.
- So, what's that like, to go from college,
startup, bought by Bill?
- I joined Microsoft thinking I was not
going to be here very long, just to be honest.
I think that was the--
- My wife and I had a deal.
It was come up for a year and see how it goes.
- I just somehow moved to Seattle, and just fell in love
with the people I was working with, the area of Seattle,
and then in fact, then I did meet my wife.
I did--
- Yeah, takes local.
- You marry a local girl, and then over the course
of 20 years you have some kids, buy a house,
and you make friends, and it's just been a great experience.
- So you built and sold your startup in the 1990's,
which is like the golden era of rock bands.
It's also the golden age of interesting
software company names, so I'm going to give you a name.
- All right.
- I want to see if you can guess.
Is it a rock band from the '90's, or the name of a startup?
How about Dr. Koop?
- [Terry] Dr. Ku?
- Right. K-O-O-P. Dr. Koop.
- Oh, Koop.
I was going to say, Dr. Ku I think works at Microsoft.
But Dr. Koop, I'm going to have to say a rock band.
(bell rings)
- Okay, how about Dr. Madd Vibe?
- Dr. Madd Vibe sounds like a bad company name.
(bell rings)
- [Brad] How about Pixelon?
- Pixelon, I'm going to guess that's a tech startup, too.
(bell rings) But I don't know.
I'm waiting for Rush, or Metallica, or--
- No, no, these are like offbeat names.
- Oh, okay.
- I'm not going to give you any easy ones.
- Okay.
- [Brad] Prodigy.
- Prodigy was, of course, the,
I remember, back when I was trying to get a website
built by my company, they were like, "You can do a
Prodigy or a CompuServe forum, or a Prodigy site."
- Boy, those were the days.
- I'm like, "No, no, it's the internet," and
my VP of Marketing had no interest in this internet thing.
And I'm like, okay, I'm going to go
start my own company and go after this.
- But Prodigy was actually both, believe it or not.
(two bells ring)
[Brad] A startup and a band.
You talk about why we exist,
and why we do what we do at Microsoft.
I don't know about you, but one of the most common questions
I get right now is I meet with
senior leaders across synergies.
They all want to know, what has Microsoft done
to change the way that we have?
People say, this is not the company
that I knew three or four years ago.
So as you think about that, what has happened,
and what have you as a part of the senior leadership team,
how have we driven this kind of change?
- I think, like all teams, it starts with the leader.
I think Satya is a, you know I once heard Steve
describe Satya as a beautiful person.
It's one of those comments I heard years ago, and it was
registered away as my peer is a beautiful person, cool.
But then actually seeing him work, and seeing him work
with communities, employees, all the stakeholders,
it just resonated me.
He really is just a beautiful person.
It's someone who I've learned from
in that regard quite a bit,
and I think it's reflected in our approach
to so many things.
- As I come in and get a chance to interact with you
and all the members of the senior leadership team,
it's unbelievable to see how that team works together.
- (laughs) Like all teams, I'm not going to describe it
as a marriage, but I'll certainly describe it as
we're a team, and teams, you're in the,
I think Satya described writing his book
during the fog of war.
It's a very complex, very interesting but very complex,
unclear environment when you consider all of the
stakeholders that we're trying to direct.
- Live for.
- Yeah.
- Next time, on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
You saw this opportunity and this vision to take Exchange
to the cloud, and that's actually kind of the
foundation of what became Office 365.
What were you seeing then, that led you to say,
hey, we need to look at this as a cloud service?
- We look back in Windows history.
Windows 7 was a fantastic release that built on
some great work in Windows Vista that didn't land very well.