YouSaid · the spoken record

Hanneke Faber

lines on the record: 78
first: 2024-07-29
most recent: 2024-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's important that we make sure that also 97% of our resources are focused on that brand and that we don't get too scattered around the company. So that's one of the other strategic choices that we've made. We will build one fantastic iconic Logitech brand and that's our focus.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and again, I don't want to blame previous setups because they were working for their time. The track record of value creation or Logitech is fantastic. But I think now what I'm hearing from our people and what we're seeing in some of the results over the past few years is that we do need to simplify because things have gotten a little bit too complicated. Part of that, by the way, is the brand story. So Logitech tried to become a multi-brand company, but today 97% of our sales are in the Logitech brand, Logitech and Logitech G, and I consider those one brand really.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To some of the more legacy players in B2B, we're just newer. So that's a place where we will be investing and that's been an obstacle”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While we're in the process, some of those are, again, they may be results of that sugar high. We got a little complicated in our organization because we had a lot of people and that usually makes things a little more complicated. So we're about to do some simplifications and also to invest some more money in areas where we're maybe not quite as good as we need to be. Historically, we're fantastic B2C company, right? We sell our stuff to Amazon to Best Buy, to MediaMarked. That's who we are. B2B is much newer. And again, Bracken and the team did a great job building a B2B business from scratch with a really disruptive video conferencing product. We're like teenagers in that space. I wouldn't call us babies, but we're like teenagers. So if you compare our capabilities across, especially on the kind of go-to-market side,”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gaming, we're mostly focused on PC gaming today. There's a lot more play out there than just PC gaming. So that broadens or TAM, our total addressable market for the future, which is an opportunity to deliver that growth. So that's a long-winded say of what were we doing. I think that is our framework for decision making. We've done some pretty clear where to play and how to win choices below that. And now that that is in place as a leader, I can kind of circle back and say, okay, I listened, we co-create it, and we set the bar high. Now I circle back and I listen again. I go back and I listen to people and see, what do they need? What obstacles do I need to take away so that they can deliver on doubling the business and reducing the carbon footprint by half?”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. But we extend human potential in this age of AI, this age of Eric's saying there's digital twins of all of us coming to meetings is really important that we extend human potential because we can make humans better. We can help you win that game. We can help you be more productive. We can help you connect better when you're in that conference room by yourself. And if we can do that in ways that are also healthier for people on planet, then extending human potential is really worth waking up for every morning. And we do that in work and play. And what else is there in life but work and play? We do that in work and play today, but I believe with my leadership team that those areas are actually much bigger than where Logitech plays today. So today we're mostly on work. We focus on office workers, basically. Most people in the world don't work in an office, right? They work in retail, healthcare, education, construction, you name it. And we can play there too.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those words are carefully chosen. So extending is obviously a riff on the mouth, right? The mouse built this house, extends your arm. So we want to extend.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think company strategy is a great way to set that decision framework. So I've spent a lot of time in the last six months first listening, then co-creating that strategy, and then setting the strategy and setting the bar high. And if I unpack that a little bit listening is obviously, you know, there's lots of stuff I don't know and that we all don't know. So listening was first. Then we sat down with the leadership team first to really make the choices. What's our goal, set a goal for 2031? Because that's when Logitech will be 50 years old. A goal of doubling the business and reducing our carbon footprint by 50% while retaining really attractive margins. So that's our business goal. We set a mission, which we set as extending human potential in work and in play. We had a good mission, but it was like three pages long, so I really wanted to simplify that. And extending human potential.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Brings us very neatly to what I think of as the decoder questions. I was listening to the first fireside chat you had for your investors like five days into the job. And I heard you say that your style is to be as close to the customer and as close to the people doing the work as possible because they know best. That's you on planes. But ultimately, you have to make a lot of decisions. What kind of decisions do you want to be making? What's your framework for making them?”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And part of that is because I'm new, right? And I'm not just new to the company. I'm new to the industry. So I need to meet people, our own people, but very much also suppliers, customers, consumers, investors. So there's just a lot of people to meet and certainly a first meeting, I think, is still best done in person.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Depends on the teams. So my Gravity Day here is Tuesday and Wednesday. So I'll see most of the leadership team here, but different teams have different gravity days that they pick themselves.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Absolutely. Well, we have this concept of gravity days at Logitech. So on the gravity days, everyone's there. So you don't find yourself alone.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sadly, I live on an airplane, it feels like. But I think in this job, Logitech is very special as a super global company, right? We're on the ground in more than 100 countries. And we have great capabilities around the world. So I spent probably 60% of my time in offices that are not my own. So when I'm in California or I spent the first seven months in our Swiss office, I try to be in the office. But we'll also, if I start early, like today, I started at 6 a.m. I might go back at home at 1 a.m. and like get some exercise and work somewhere later on. So that flexibility I don't think we necessarily had pre-COVID, which is great.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You mentioned that you are in the California office today, first day there You move to Switzerland when he got this job. How are you structuring your time remote, hybrid in person? How is that working for you?”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not back to where we were in 2019. Again, we're 50% bigger as a company. And the way people work is so different today versus 2019, right? Virtually every company that I speak to, you know, I speak to many of them because they're all our customers. Virtually every company wants to be hybrid, so they want their people to come into the office two or three days a week, but they also want to offer the flexibility of working from home or working from anywhere. And that is obviously very different than in 2019. We pride ourselves on being a model for ways of working because we sell this stuff. So I think we're very well positioned to help our corporate customers give people a great experience both in the office and at home.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Product innovation and markets that are stabilizing a little bit post COVID. So I have to say this company should be very proud of what it did during COVID. Under Bracken did a really great job. But obviously it was a bit of a sugar hide. That said, companies 50% bigger today than it was pre-COVID. So it hasn't all come crashing down back to Earth. We've really been focusing on great execution and on things that we can control. So there's something that we cannot control. Inflation, consumer confidence, corporate IT budgets for a video conferencing business. But within those constraints, we've been growing share. That was one of the drivers of us getting back to growth in Q4. We've been delivering, I think, really exciting innovation and we'll continue to do those things.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I want to come back to the AI question because I think there's lots to unpack there, and there's a lot of obvious opportunities, like you said, in audio and video. And then some that I think we deserve a little more time around AI prompt building and all that sort of thing. But I want to say focus for a second on you. You're the new CEO and where Logitech is right now. So COVID work from home created a massive opportunity for Logitech. I bought a black market webcam at the end of 2020. It was Chinese. I love it. The previous administration really ramped production. They saw huge growth. Then there was an enterprise push as more and more companies.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is big on AI, which is in audio and video. So we have a big video conferencing business, a headphones business. That's really machine learning and large data models. And we've been at those, the company's been at those for a number of years. But we're seeing the quality of things like two-way noise cancellation or of video conferencing equipment that actually knows when to zoom in on you when you're speaking and not when you're opening a packet of crisps. Those kinds of things are really important, and I foresee massive quality improvements thanks to machine learning in the years ahead.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Three ways first, internal productivity, like for any other company, we're seeing it on the software. We're clearly coding and testing has become more efficient. But we're also seeing it on the creative and brand building side. Again, where things are getting more efficient, but also sometimes more creative. So I love seeing that. So that's on the internal side. More importantly on the product side, two ways in which AI will be a tailwind. First of all, we've always been a human to technology interface company, right? And we're starting to be an interface to the large language models. So we launched a couple months ago the Logi AI prompt builder, which is basically a shortcut in our software to ChatGPT. That's millions of unique users already. And it's just a simpler way for people, when they use their medicine, all of our mice in English-speaking countries and keyboards. Just a simpler way to use ChatGPT and not get out of your flow. There will be much more to follow in terms of being that human technology interface. There's one third area.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, well, the third thing, of course, you can't do an interview for three minutes and not say AI, but AI is a real tailwind for us as well, we believe.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we're seeing a little bit of both, although it's probably the first trend is the biggest one. So the teenage boys of 15 years ago are now in their 30s and 40s. That just extends the demographic and new teenage boys are still definitely coming in and girls. So that's good. But we're also seeing older cohorts coming in mostly through mobile, you know, through Candy Crush, but also through Wordle and through connections. Those are kind of entry points into gaming that make them more comfortable.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, there's some tailwinds on our core business. So I actually really like our core business. When you look at three main tailwinds, the first one is new ways of working, hybrid working. That's good for our personal workspace business, the traditional mice and keyboards because everyone needs multiple setups. And obviously it's good for our video conferencing business. So the new ways of working post-COVID are real tailwind for us. Second, gaming just as a space continues to grow, especially with new demographics. So almost half of gamers are now women, which is amazing. And older people, game, no longer just teenage boys. So this is great. We see the market continue to grow so that's a tailwind.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the things that's really interesting to me about logic in particular is that its core products people tend to think of them as commodities. Spice keyboards, headset, webcams, but they are still technology products. There's a lot of innovation left in those spaces. Logitech has driven some of that innovation. But then you see other weird things kind of blossom into cultures unto themselves, mechanical keyboards, for example. There are webcam startups again, which is really interesting. That was not a thing that was happening pre-COVID. Do you view the opportunity here as an operational opportunity, as an innovation opportunity, as a fine new categories and make them grow opportunity? How is your macro view of the situation?”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A new company for me, but it's great to bring a whole bunch of things that I have experience with. And of course, learn a few new things as well.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, Bracken came from PNG as well, so that's not so different. But I've been really fortunate throughout my career of working in different industries. So I work mostly in beauty at P&G. I worked in tech actually for four years at Owl Delays. I ran our e-commerce business when it was almost non-existent. We built a really... Online grocery business, especially. And then the last six years I ran Unilever's global food business. So different businesses, but I think there are some themes that apply to Logitech as well. Those would be a focus on the user and the consumer. Really critical. Focus on innovation and product. This is absolutely a product company. And then finally, really global footprints in every job I've worked in and a mix of B2B and B2C. So all of those things do translate. Of course, this is a new industry.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for sure. Although today's my first day actually in the office in California. So I've been in Switzerland so far. So you catch me on day one.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the future. It sounds like some Logitech products like smart home doorbells and cameras are not too long for this world. In fact, Hanukkah says that inside Logitech, people often say the mouse built this house, which is a frankly delightful catchphrase that I'd never heard before. But we also talked about how new interface paradigms like voice and AI and touchscreens might one day upend mice and keyboards entirely, and how she's thinking about the long-term future in a world where traditional PC sales might go down permanently. And of course, we talked about AI. Logitech is adding AI features and even AI buttons to some of its products, and I wanted to know if that's actually working. Whether anyone wants their mouse to be anything more than just a mouse. You'll hear Hanukkah talk about a concept called the forever mouse, a mouse you buy once and upgrade over time with new software features, features that, of course, might carry a subscription fee. Subscription mice, it's a lot, including Logitech's ambitious carbon footprint reduction.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Patel, editor in chief of the Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Hanukkah Faber, the new ish CEO of Logitech. Hanukkah has only been in that job since last October, after former CEO Brackendary left. You might remember Bracken, he was on Dakota back in 2021, basically at the height of the pandemic-era boom in home office sales, when Logitech was Sally Mice and keyboards and webcams just as fast as it could make them. Obviously, things have changed since then. And Logitech, like so many companies that saw a huge pandemic boom in sales, very abruptly saw that growth slow down when the world began to normalize. Bracken left last June to head up the company that owns Vance and Supreme and Logitech brought on Hanukkah, a longtime executive with an extensive background in consumer goods at Big Conglomerates like Unilever and Procter& Gamble. Its decoder, so Hanukkah and I talked a lot about the structural changes she's already making at Logitech and the changes she intends to make.”
2024-07-29 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber wants your next mouse to last forever · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT