A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you came back, how did you re-engage with the working life?

Peter Gassner: It was just a matter of deciding. That was the first decision. I also wanted to do something I was good at. I didn’t want to open a coffee shop and compete with a 23-year-old who knew as much about coffee as I did, but had five times the energy. It’s not that I was motivated by winning, but I didn’t like losing.

Sramana Mitra: Later on in life, you want to do stuff that you have some mastery over. You don’t want to start from scratch and learn everything and operate at baby level.

Peter Gassner: You want to have a flow.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, and for that you need real grasp of what you’re doing. That’s when you started Veeva.

Peter Gassner: Yes. First, I decided I wanted to go back to work. I wanted to do technology stuff. The plan was to find a small technology company and run products for it. I thought I was very good at products. Not to have a lot of hubris but I thought, “If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s running product and engineering for technology companies.” I set out to do that.

I didn’t want to travel a long way from the East Bay. I didn’t want to go to San Francisco every day. I wanted to stay relatively local. The choice was limited. I looked around and I didn’t quite find the exact fit. I found one company but they didn’t want me. They thought I was not business-minded enough. I ran into some people. I think it was a connection through Marc Benioff. He said, “Craig Ramsey wants to invest in a startup. You guys should get together.” I certainly didn’t want to be a CEO because I thought that was not very creative. I did have that mindset at that age that it never hurts to talk. You might learn something.

I talked with Craig. One thing led to another. I knew I wanted to do cloud stuff. By this time, I thought, “I want to do something specific to an industry because that would be the next wave after the horizontal things like Accounting and Payroll.” You get to know your customers deeply. I had that in mind. Craig knew some people who were in the pharmaceutical industry. I thought that was good. On a good day, you’re getting people out of a wheelchair. I don’t have anything against the gambling industry, but it’s not the gambling industry. At the end of the day, you can prevent the death of a young mother. Some of the things that used to be death sentences are not anymore. It’s a growing industry.

I just thought, “When you start a startup, the most likely outcome is it’ll fail. That’s the math.” If you don’t believe in that, you don’t understand math. Everybody thinks that their startup can’t fail but that’s illogical. I thought that was the most likely outcome. But if it didn’t fail, I thought, “Being the CEO is like being the Head of Products. If it succeeds, we can get a CEO and I can be a Head of Products.” Unexpected things happen and it didn’t fail. I liked being the CEO.

This segment is part 4 in the series : A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner
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