A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did IBM figure out, given that you have a strange background from their perspective, that you would be good at this stuff?

Peter Gassner: My first internship was at IBM.

Sramana Mitra: They noted you then.

Peter Gassner: Yes, “That’s a kid that can work hard. He gets work done. He’s got work ethic.” That doesn’t go unnoticed. By hiring me, they knew I was able to work hard.

Sramana Mitra: That makes sense. They had some validity with your work and then you come back after graduation. Five years later, the Internet is now coming to the marketplace. What happens next?

Peter Gassner: Getting to that stage, I started getting restless again. I’m in the database business. There’s a limited number of companies in that business. I’m doing well in it but it seems confining and perhaps not adventurous enough. Most of the people I work around have Ph.D.’s. I just thought it was narrow. Maybe I get this from my mother and father. They both left home at an early age and immigrated to countries that they knew nothing about. I thought application software instead of system software would have more variety. It seems infinite. I went to Peoplesoft. One of the great people that worked at IBM when I was younger was now at Peoplesoft.

Sramana Mitra: You followed him to Peoplesoft.

Peter Gassner: I started there in the first part of 1995. I’ve seen web browsers in 1994, but I don’t think I made any connection about what I can do with it from a business perspective. The client-server wave was in its young area. This is back in the days of Windows 3.0.

Sramana Mitra: I remember that.

Peter Gassner: I was at IBM when I first saw the first graphic terminal. It was not just a character terminal. This was before the Internet. One of the engineers pulled me over and showed me this graphic terminal. I thought, “Wow! That’s amazing.” You could show the graphic image up on there. I went to Peoplesoft and did well there. My manager there, within nine months, thought I had leadership potential. I didn’t really want to do that. I don’t know what it was. I wanted to stay technical.

He said, “I think you’ve got leadership ability. Just try it. If you don’t like it, don’t keep doing it for three of four years because then you’ll be stuck.” I tried it. About three months in, I realized that I liked it. I didn’t think I would because this is the guy who wanted things logical. I thought I wouldn’t like it. I had evolved and found that it’s a more complex puzzle. You’re trying to get people to work together. I found that I really enjoyed it. It, inadvertently, led me to where I am today. Have I given the longest answer you’ve ever gotten?

Sramana Mitra: No, this is exactly what I’d like to do. For the precise reason that everybody starts somewhere and people who have built significant things, it’s always useful for younger people or people who are still on that path of trying to find out what they want to do. It’s helpful to see a journey, which is why we call this the entrepreneur journeys.

This segment is part 3 in the series : A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner
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