- [Brad] It's lunchtime,
and this is Brad Anderson's lunch break.
Two of my favorite things about Microsoft
are the smart people that constantly visit campus,
and the great fleet of shuttles.
Wherever I can, I try to take advantage
of both of these things,
and grab lunch with some of the tech industry's
best and brightest.
Today I'm eating out with my good friend, Jeff Teper,
the father of SharePoint, and an expert guitarist.
(lighthearted music)
(piano music)
- What, do you have to supplement your income?
You're driving the company shuttle now, dude?
Did you have to take a test to know how to get
from building, one building to the next on campus
before they...
- I think about,
the person I have probably spent the most time with
in my 14 years from office, and honestly it's you.
- I'm sorry
- I can remember back in 2003 when I joined,
one of the first things that I did was
reach out to you because
here, SharePoint was the fastest growing product
in the history of Microsoft.
So I wanted to reach out to you and yell,
"Hey, tell me about Microsoft, how does this all work?"
- Yeah I remember that.
- I read this article and it talked about Jeff Teper,
the father of SharePoint.
- Oh god.
- What is it like to be the father of SharePoint,
and tell me about the frame that you bought
to put that article in.
- Obviously it's a little bit weird 'cause
a ton of people work on the product
and I don't know if you know the origin story.
There was this product we worked on called Site Server
where the product unit managers were me
and a couple other guys you might know of,
Terry Myerson and Satya Nadella.
Well, out of the ashes of that thing
it all sort of worked out.
And so we took a team and wanted to focus on the intranet,
and then there were some existing teams in office
you know, the front page team, couple other teams,
we sort of eventually brought them all together,
re-wrote them in the second version on .net,
and that's really when it took off.
- [Brad] And I think the one time
you actually described this as this great success
was born from this great failure.
- Yeah, I had the luxury of making quite a few mistakes
on that first project, on the Site Server error
and that the company was very forgiving.
- Hey, so I heard an interesting story about when you went
and pitched, was it Bill and Steve
on the idea of SharePoint? - Yeah
- Tell us about that meeting,
did you sleep the night before that?
- I sort of really obsessed about
can you make the message really simple.
And so I had this four box diagram,
folks got the strategy.
Bill had all sorts of feedback on the technical details.
Steve wanted to make sure
he got the messaging was super simple.
Both of their respective feedback and
demanding tone and delivery
helped us all along. - Inspiring.
- I wouldn't say it's fun,
that I would love to relive that meeting,
but it was actually good to be pressed
on the technical rigger
and the simplicity of the Goda Market.
- So SharePoint is this incredible way for people
to collaborate and share data right?
But how good are you at sharing?
Tell me about some of these things
you'd be able to share on.
First one, a water bottle.
- With people that I trusted I'd be fine with that.
If you're out on a hike with your buddies
and they offer you a water bottle
you don't rub that off with your sleeve.
(laughter)
- Okay, next thing.
Would you share ear buds?
- Yeah, oh absolutely.
- Alright, chapstick?
- That one is a little tougher.
That, I would probably, without the other person looking
scrape the top off.
(laughter)
- I've done that before.
How about pants?
- If they fit, I wouldn't have a problem with that.
- Alright, how about a pizza?
Ian and I do this all the time.
- Oh yeah, absolutely.
- How about a slice of pizza?
- With my wife.
- [Brad] I defile your feelings.
- It would depend on the feelings, and the person.
- When you went to name SharePoint
what were the other names you considered?
- Oh god, we hired a naming firm.
We threw, like 20 names on the wall, and
some of them were very literal,
like Microsoft Content Server.
- That sounds like a Microsoft name.
- I don't even remember the fanciful names
that were sort of made up, fake words.
I knew then knowledge management, internet,
category was gonna evolve, and if we were too literal
like Document Server, it would be too constraining.
And when they shared up SharePoint there
I thought, "Oh, well that's great!"
We're a point where people share information
and because we had that whole
PowerPoint was one of our best known assets,
people would look at that name and say
"Oh, of course that's important in Microsoft's product line.
"They've named it in a consistent way
that one of their core apps"
- So was tee-per-nan on that list?
Or tee-fer-twank?
- Uh no, 'Jeff's Bucket of Docs' was the one that we
you know, talked about.
(laughter)
- [Brad] Next time, on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
There's a ton of upper level math involved
with all that movement.
- Yes! Matrix Algebra.
I didn't really understand it.
I got it correct, my dad fixed a couple of bugs.
Our teams fight sometimes, so our users in IT Departments
don't have to because we will push each other.
- Correct
(lighthearted music)