YouSaid · the spoken record

Rob Salvagno

lines on the record: 33
first: 2019-12-30
most recent: 2019-12-30
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

“Also, in the collaboration space, and this one brings AI and machine learning on top of the Cisco portfolio. So if we were doing this podcast over WebEx, what Voicea would be able to do is it would actually transcribe in real time our entire conversation. It would send out meeting notes. It would flag action items that any of us agreed to, and it would integrate that into any workflow systems that you or I may be involved with. So it's designed to make these interactions, make these meanings, make these conference calls much more productive. And I think that's something that we're all.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the two most recent deals on our side have been on the acquisition front, and they're both in collaboration. So there's a bit of a corollary there. The collaboration space, it's going through so much change, and that's both how we deal with customers. The whole customer journey, but also what you and I experience in the workplace and what the future of work looks like. So the two latest acquisitions we made, one was a company called CloudCherry. They provide predictive analytics on top of the traditional contact center. So what you used to view as sort of a customer support experience that is moved to really the key touch point how you deal with customers, not only from a support perspective, but how you may be able to sell to them, what journey brought them to that point to call the contact center. And CloudCherry provides all of those analytics. The second company we acquired was called Voicea.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, you know, I think when it comes down to is having conviction and confidence at an earlier point in my career. And so when I think about most hard things, it requires you to be able to break some glass. It requires you to overcome a lot of objections. And what I found over the years is it's not about necessarily having the knowledge because I think from what you learn, I think from the people around you, you can get that knowledge pretty quickly, but actually having the confidence to stand up, to push for something that is maybe controversial, that's hard. And I think I'm still learning, but I think I'm only getting it through experience. And so if I found a way to rewind 20 years ago and had the experience that I have today, that's what I wish I would be able to do more so.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outcome today versus see how things play out three, four, five years down the road. And so I'm not suggesting that they're getting bad advice. I'm just suggesting that I think it's important to again have that perspective from all constituents, from your investors, from your independent board members, from perhaps other entrepreneurs that have been through that journey. And the decision of what you do needs to be a very personal one. And that is where only your perspective is going to actually determine what course you take.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I think about changing the world of tech investing, I would probably say I would love to see entrepreneurs get the best advice when it matters. And I think the way that boards are structured today, entrepreneurs are often surrounded by venture investors, perhaps very successful venture investors that may have motivations that somewhat differ from that of the entrepreneur. But the entrepreneur may be going through it for the first time. The VC may have done this 10, 20, 30 times before. And so while a venture capitalist may say, look, it's worth pushing all boundaries in order to get that billion dollar outcome at some point down the road, maybe for the entrepreneur, it's his or her first company. And maybe that person owns 30, 40, 50 percent of that business today. And maybe it can be a life-changing experience for that entrepreneur to have a hundred million dollars.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the most challenging role is really what Cisco is in the middle of a transformation on itself, which is we're moving from an on-premise hardware company to one that's about embracing the cloud and embracing software. And if you look at companies that have been able to make that transition, most people have failed. However, we believe and we're confident that Cisco is actually going to make that transition. And I think M&A is going to be a big part of it because when you think of acquisitions like an app dynamics, it really helps bring that capability, bring and accelerate that software, that subscription, that cloud focus. It allows us to go to our customer and be even more relevant as they think about this journey to the cloud. And so I'm proud to be part of that journey. And I think M&A is going to continue to be a big role relative to helping.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see which is this idea of having conviction, entrepreneur having conviction, but also having perspective around different opportunities. And this all played out in a very fascinating story in the Belgian Congo.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite book, I think everybody throws out business books, so I'm not going to do that. I've got two kids, two years old and nine weeks old. So my pastime is usually sleep versus reading, but I have managed to read a few things. The book I've enjoyed most this year called The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. And what I love about it, it's about a minister that relocates his family from the US into the Belgian Congo in the 1960s. So completely crazy. What it reminds me of is first to do that, you have to have a ton of conviction. And you see that conviction through the minister and his dedication to what he's trying to achieve. But what's interesting is let's go back to the perspective comment. The perspective of how things played out were different and the story is told through the lens of his wife and his four daughters. And each of them view the challenge that they went through in a different way. And I think that that brings together what”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David was handed the reins from Cisco's overall security business. And I think that's just a great example of how we embrace that entrepreneur and founder mindset, not only for the acquisition, but also to steer bigger parts of Cisco's strategy overall Let's do it”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seen as a platform to accelerate an entrepreneur's vision. We also look to embrace the entrepreneur themselves once inside Cisco. And you mentioned David Ulovich at the beginning of our session here. For those that don't know about David, David Ulovich was the founder of OpenDNS. It was a cloud security company. Cisco had a partnership and an investment in the company very early on. That led to Cisco acquiring OpenDNS a few years later. And OpenDNS was a relatively small company. It was less than a hundred million dollars when it came inside Cisco. But we wanted to embrace that philosophy that David had for security. And so shortly thereafter, David Ulovich actually became the GM of Cisco's overall security business, which is a multi-billion dollar business. And so in addition to accelerating the Open DNS platform,”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think going back to the idea of having flexibility, I do think the reason that a number of acquisitions fail with other acquirers is taking a one-size-fits-all type of approach. And we've had the benefit of just learning from our mistakes. You know, Cisco's done over 200 acquisitions. And we haven't done all those correctly. But I believe that we've learned from those mistakes so that we don't do it on the next one. So one of the things that I think also makes us unique is we've had so many at-bats. We've had so many attempts to do things. And so if we're off doing our 211th acquisition, we probably bring a level of knowledge and experience into that that may be different from another acquirer that's doing its second or third acquisition. So learning from your mistakes is a big one. You know, the last thing I would call out, and we mentioned this earlier, is in addition to us being”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we want to do Meraki, we have to commit to San Francisco for the long term. Within a few quarters of us completely getting out of San Francisco, but people recognized that that was required in order to enter this part of the market. People recognized that cloud talent was really centered around San Francisco. And so we made that commitment. And so if you fast forward to today, what was a few hundred people that came in as a result of Meraki has now grown to several thousand people in San Francisco, from Meraki, from Cisco's other acquisitions, and Cisco's own internal development efforts. So it's really become a talent hub for us around software, around cloud. So that's one instance around how Meraki changed Cisco. And I think that's pretty powerful.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the MA side, I think it's constantly reevaluating how you do things. And the Meraki example is a great one. So if you double click on that, when we approached Meraki, what we found very quickly is they had a very unique culture. And part of that culture was having a significant talent and recruiting base in San Francisco. And to put that into perspective, Meraki had several years before that actually relocated. They were based in the South Bay of the Bay Area and they moved their entire headquarters up to San Francisco. So they felt it was important. Now, let me paint the other picture, which is what was happening from a Cisco point of view at the time that we were looking to acquire Meraki. Cisco had just removed itself out of the consumer business. And as a result, we had actually shut down most of our San Francisco sites. So you can imagine the conversations we were having internally when we said,”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. When we look at what has made our acquisition successful, I think the first part has been, did we pick the right company? But the second half of that is, did we do the right thing for the business once it was in Cisco? And so that's so critical to acquisition success. And there's a couple different elements on it. First, I would say it starts with the people. When we think about acquisitions, it's all about the people. And people can walk in and out of the door at any point in time. And so how do you create an environment that people are motivated, excited to actually push everything to the next level and to stay with Cisco in order to do that? That discussion really starts at the founder, the CEO, the entrepreneur level. And this idea of having a shared vision. So if a founder sees Cisco as a platform to accelerate their vision, we can actually take what they're trying to do and turbocharge it.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perspective to continue to engage entrepreneurs and founders because I do think we have a trusted view in that community and that's something that we want to maintain.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question. I think this all comes down to how you handle things. People realize that things change. Strategies change. Startups have to pivot. Markets change. How you show up, how you handle the relationship when those occur is what is key. And I think it's one of the things that's been one of Cisco's biggest strengths is, you know, we've been out there doing investments in acquisitions for three decades now. And so people have got to see us in every type of situation, in negotiations, in acquisitions that haven't worked, in investments that have done well, in handling situations like the one with VeloCloud. And so how you handle things is really important. And I think if you treat people fairly, then that is really the reputation that you live off of. And I believe that's what has made Orb Dev successful within Cisco is that we've been able to rely on that reputation from a very positive.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But when we made the decision on who we were going to make part of Cisco, we acquired a company that was not a Cisco investment. We acquired a company called Vivetela. And since that time, Viptela has come onto Cisco. It has become our lead SD-WAN offering. And if you look at third-party research reports today, it would say that Cisco is the early leader in the SDWAN market. And so you can see how all these things come together. We were building our own product. We invested in one company and we ended up in a path that was completely different from those first two. And so you never know how things are going to turn out. You know, the PELA people put themselves into position to open a door because though we hadn't had an investment in the company, we had an ongoing dialogue with them and everyone else in the space because it was strategically interesting to us. You don't know how things are going to play out, but it's important, I think, to leave those.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The investment in Bellow Cloud. My team was involved directly in that investment, in that ongoing relationship. And through that lens, over the preceding years, we got to see how the market was evolving. Now, we have the view from the Cisco perspective of how the market's evolving. The investment in VelocCloud allowed us to see how the market was evolving through a different lens. And that was very critical. So fast forward a couple years later, the market's taken off. And Cisco realized that we needed to accelerate our position in the market. And we wanted to get there faster than we were on a path to with our own internal development. So we said, this is the right time to actually look at M&A. And you would think that you would go and acquire the company that you invested in. But that was actually not the case. So when we did our scan of the industry, we looked at all the different players and obviously knew BellowCloud very well already because of our investment.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For this market transition. But the venture community also saw it as a big opportunity as well. And you saw probably 10, 12 startups get funded to go after the space because it was such a big market and the transition that was happening was perceived to be very disruptive to the current players. Well, Cisco, going back to this idea that it's not just about what we can do internally, Cisco saw that we also should be willing to invest in one of those startups, despite the fact that we were also trying to build something ourselves. And so in addition to our internal program, we went out and invested in one of those startups. That company was called Velocoud. And we were very transparent with them. They knew that we were building our own SDWAN product. They had a different approach. And in general, we felt that we could be complements to what we were trying to achieve together.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great story and one of many that we can talk about. So, you know, it goes back to this idea that when you start this relationship with a Cisco or you start this relationship with Corp Dev, you may not know what door you're opening. And I think the message that I want to give is be open to opening that door because it could lead to a lot of different things. And I think that the Tella example shows how all these things can come together in very different ways. So if we rewind almost 10 years ago, there was a transition that was starting in the market that was called SD-WAN, so software-defined WAN. And it was the evolution of what you were seeing in the branch routing business, which was a business that Cisco's been in for a long time. It's a business that Cisco is a leader in. It's a multi-billion dollar market out. Well, we had plans to build our own next generation product called that iWAN. So we had plans to say, well, we also believe that there needs to be a new architecture.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often one of the avenues into the broader organization, going back to our motivation for calling on these companies, I'm not necessarily calling because there's an investment opportunity or I think I want to drive an acquisition. I'm calling because we find the company interesting. We want to start a dialogue.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or potentially a future acquirer. What you're doing is you're really prematurely closing the door on what may be the biggest potential accelerator for your business. And I've seen it on many occasions. So when I look at just the partnerships or investments or acquisitions that I've been involved with, Meraki, OpenDNS, App Dynamics, investments like Cohesity, Turbonomic, all of those relationships, they actually began with corporate development. And when those relationships began, those companies often were doing tens of millions of business on their own. And today, if you looked at those same companies, they're doing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars with Cisco. So it makes a big difference. So that's why I don't think you can ignore what a partner like Cisco can represent. And the way that Corp Diff fits in there is Corp Dev is often”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting. Paul has been wildly successful over at YC and certainly, you know, I can't read a lot behind his statement and a lot of what he's done has been focused on some of these wildly successful consumer startups. What I can offer is a perspective in being in the business really from an enterprise point of view. And in all the years I've spent here at Cisco working with startups, investing in startups, making them successful with Penn Cisco, I think what you find is what is often key, it has to start with a great product. So if you don't have a great product, you don't have a great technology, it doesn't matter. But one of the hardest things to do is to get scale distribution or scale go-to-market. So that really becomes a key driver. And so if you ignore that because you don't see a Cisco as a potential partner or investor.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Cisco, that may play out over the next two quarters. That may play out over the next three years. I think going in with the right set of shared expectations between us and our founders and entrepreneurs is where it starts. And recognizing that those relationships and those partnerships can take a lot of different directions over the course of that time.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we get involved in a particular situation, our initial motivation is really about the relationship. When we are calling on a company, our motivation, if it's an investment, is not driven by our desire to eventually acquire the company. And I know that's often a fear of corporate development. In general, I would say our team, we're very intellectually curious. We want to stay on top of the market. We want to make our portfolio companies successful and find ways that that can help accelerate the businesses that Cisco's in. And what you realize is that those goals are actually not mutually exclusive. It can certainly play out on different levels. So when we invest in a company, we do that because we believe we have an opportunity to invest in a best-in-class company, in a market that we find interesting. And perhaps there's an opportunity for a tight partnership.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“May want to go. And then, of course, you've got these very strong tools with acquisitions in order to get us there. Now, the last piece I would land on is where the magic happens is how does that push and pull go with the business units inside Cisco? Because on one hand, if we're just doing deals that a business unit wants to do, then we're probably not stretching into new opportunities. We're probably not challenging the status quo. And that's not a good place to be. On the other hand, if my group's just a total renegade and out there doing deals that we think are exciting, but that don't fit our existing business model, well, then they're going to completely break when we bring them inside of Cisco. And that's not going to work either. So it's a balance. It's about having both a collaborative relationship with the business and what they can do, but also a view informed by the outside world and bringing those.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so our choice has been let's not hide from it, let's not pretend that we can do everything ourselves. Let's figure out how we can leverage what's happening on the outside to actually accelerate our business. And the first step towards that is by investing in that ecosystem because that's really the first way that we show up in the outside market. The second piece I would call out is when we think about corporate development, it's a strategy first mindset and deal second. So a lot of Corp dev groups, I think they're all about the transaction. They get a call. I want to buy this company and that's what they do. For Cisco, it really starts with the strategy. So we're working hand in hand with the business unit, bringing that perspective that we get from being outside investors with a close collaboration with the teams inside Cisco and with that different perspective help try to shift their points of view in terms of where we”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you look at Cisco, and it really starts with the motto that I talk to my team about and really the bar that we set relative to our ultimate impact. And that comes down to the question, which is, I think the best measure for success or corp dev is, have we been able to get the company to accomplish something that left to its own wouldn't have been possible? So that's a high-level mission statement. But how does that actually break down? And I think there are probably three components of that to speak about. You know, first, one of the things that I think makes Cisco unique, it starts with a cultural mindset. You find a lot of companies are very insular, which is they think they can do everything themselves. And one of the things that I think has made Cisco so different, and this goes back 30 years ago, is that we recognized that the broader market, the VC ecosystem, it's really a great source of it.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But when we think of capital efficiency, I think that just points to the attractiveness of a particular business model and it plays into one of our key tenets, which is one, on one side, we are going to look at valuations. And as we mentioned, valuations are very high today, but the real question that Cisco asks itself is, can we actually create additional value in the business? And so what are those levers? That could be being a great distribution channel, that could be making the product much more attractive by making it part of our architecture. That essentially takes whatever existing model a company may have and say we can improve the operating model in these ways.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“PE multiples in our business. So I think you have to have the perspective, which is, you know, I think a great company today may still be a great company over the long term. But if it requires a quick payback, if it's something that you just don't have the runway to get to during the tough times, then things can get ugly pretty fast. And I think we're seeing headlines today in the markets of some big companies, some big unicorns that are facing those challenges right now.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, whether it's about investments or M&A, it's really about bringing, I think that perspective to bear. So today, everybody assumes the world is what we've seen for the past decade. And it's been a boom over the past decade. You know, what investor really hasn't done well over this time. But we lived through the 2000-2001 period. We've gone through the 2008 period. And so when I tend to think about an opportunity, whether it's an investment, whether it's an acquisition, I ask myself the types of questions of how's this business model going to stand up when capital perhaps doesn't flow so freely? How is a CEO who maybe great in rah-rah times going to perform during really challenging times? And look, if you look at the multiples that are going on today, these growth companies are trading at 20, 30 times sales. And those used to be.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The DLJ. I was actually Safra Katz's first analyst. She is now the president over at Oracle. And what I saw from banking was it really cemented my love for technology. But at the same time, bankers, they're very transactional and you don't really play any role in the strategy of the company. You don't share any ownership in terms of the results. And that left me wanting. That left me sort of unstable. So I figured the best thing to do was let's go find a technology company that is very acquisitive and perhaps I can marry those two things up. So I actually ended up sending my resume into resumes at cisco.com. And what's that?”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question. You know, my story goes back to my undergrad days at Stanford. You know, I came out of a small town and the community I grew up with, the medical profession was very well respected. So when I went to Stanford, I actually thought I wanted to be a doctor. Now, what happened is early in my days at Stanford, the internet boom happened and Netscape actually went public when I was in my early years at the school. And so what I realized is technology is really where I wanted to be. And I was at the heart of it being in Silicon Valley. So I wanted to figure out my way into technology. I knew I wanted to do that from a business perspective, not an engineering one. So the path at that time, that kind of leads you down to either investment banking or consulting. I chose to go into investment banking. So that was my entry into the tech world. I was in investment banking in the Bay Area, first in San Francisco, then at Sandhill. I was working as an analyst.”
2019-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source