One of the most successful business executives in the world over the past ten years has been Bill McDermott. He took SAP to record heights and now is doing the same with Service. Now had a chance to sit down with Bill McDermott and his offices in New York and had him described to me how he came from very modest roots to the top of the corporate world, and how he inspires his troops, inspires his customers, and loves
his job. So in October of twenty nineteen, you surprised the business world by stepping down as the CEO of SAP, a very very large company whose value had more than double during your co CEO position and CEO position, and you took a position with a much smaller or less known company Service Now. Usually people when they leave a job, they go to a bigger company. Why did you go to a smaller company?
Well, I saw the future and where it was going. First of all, I want to say I had a great run at SAP, and it was a pleasure taking him from thirty nine billion to one hundred and sixty three, really inspiring lots of people in customers, and it was a wonderful experience. But after seventeen years nearly ten as CEO,
I was already to do something different. And when I saw a service now in the marketplace, I knew what it was, and I knew what it could do, and I knew with my background, I was a pretty good cultural fit for what Service now needed to scale it.
So let me ask you what does service now really do? Tell me, in simple English language, everybody can understand what do they actually do?
Yeah, it's a very good question, David. It basically drives productivity in work. So think about tech today. Every CEO you talk to is going to tell you I have to digitize to survive. Forty percent of the CEOs say today, if I don't digitize my operations, my company will no longer be viable in less than a decade. So we were the it backbone for companies all over the world. How do they manage their assets, run their operations, secure their operations, all things digital having to do with it.
That's what we started. But then, as you know, the employee experience, hybrid work, all of these concepts became so important. How do I hire people, how do I onboard them, train them, provide them all their services? On a mobile device. We do it.
Now about two years and two and a half years ago when you took over your position now as the
CEO and you're the CEO Chairman of Service Now. During that period of time, the technology world has had some challenges for sure, and there's been layoffs and other things, but you have more than doubled the value of service Now during this period of time, the revenues are more than doubled, operating earnings are up about eight times, and you've doubled the number of employee based So what was your secret sauce When everybody else was going this way, you were going this way.
Well, I give all the credit to the original founder, Fred Luddy, because he had the idea and he built the platform, and lots of people came into the company and expanded on that platform. But the original idea was to give people technology that truly enabled them to do things they could never have done before. So it's really
a product centric engineering company at its soul. What I tried to bring to the company is continue to expand that, continue to build innovation into that platform, but at the same time, build a truly global software market leader where everybody understood the brand, the hungry and humble nature of how we focus on the customer at customers everything here, and ultimately the value that we deliver.
Somebody watching this should they say that should buy this guy's stock because he can do another next couple of years as well. Or is it you kind of plateaued, you can't keep going at the rate you've been going.
I assume I think we're just getting warmed up. You know, it's really interesting. Very few software companies ever make it to billion, even less make it to five billion, even less than that make it to ten. Will be the fastest enterprise software company to have ever gotten to a billion five and ten organically. In fact, it's never been done before. The world we see is so bright because we're like five percent penetrated in the enterprises even that
use our service now, so there's many that don't. And I believe like NET New Brands, NET New logos that are not doing business with us should see a show and say, I got to get in touch with that guy. And the ones that are already doing business with us need to say he's talking about a completely different approach to digitizing my company. Are we looking at them closely enough? If I've achieved that, then we'll go in places. Now.
Sometimes people who run technology companies have a technology background. They're engineers. Yeah you have an MBA from Northway, but you're not an engineer. So does the technology jargon go past you? Or you can understand all what the engineers are saying when they come up with some new product.
I've been around it for a while now, so while it's true that I'm not a coder, it's also true that I understand where the idea can fit into a customer's world. I'll give you an example with AI. The expectation of AI is going to be the iPhone moment. When the consumer begins using AI in the consumer world, they're going to expect that the business leaders to bring an AI in to make their world better in the office environment. That is why this is the iPhone moment
for the enterprise. There's no doubt about that. So I know that we have to be the market leader in AI, which is why we started working on it. And the first acquisition I did was LMNAI, which was an AI company in Montreal, Canada, and we did that in two thousand and twenty. We're working on it all twenty nineteen as soon as I came in, But then twenty twenty
we actually executed that. And the reason for that was they had a gigantic group of researchers, data scientists, and engineers exclusively working on next gen AAI in large language models. And that's how Calm we teamed up with Jensen and in Video and we started building them on the now
platform and we saw what it could be. And now that it's in the platform, we see the commercial sensation it'll be for us, but more importantly, we see the productivity and the cost savings and revenue growth that our customers will get from it.
Is AI going to reduce the amount of jobs that people have now?
I don't believe so. I think if you look at the market today, we have a seventeen year situation where it was seventeen years ago when the job market was this type where the openings outpaced the opportunity for candidates to jump in those jobs. Because the candidates aren't there, so we rarely are capitalizing on technology to fill that void. For example, I talked to a CEO just yesterday of a major financial services company was interested in AI, but he said, I just can't get enough people to do
what I need to have done. I said, well, how many engineers do you have? He said, I have seven thousand. What you need to do is AI enable them, because now you can text to code, text to workflow automation, or even text to new application development. So we can make your engineers fifty percent more productive than they are today.
Look, you've done a great job, but why don't you do something more important like running a private equity firm in digital transformation? You could do very well financially. You ever thought about that? And if not think about it, I'm happy to figure out a way to get you in the private equity world to.
Work with you. It'd truly be an honest So we must think about different ways that I can help you.
So let's talk about your past. It wasn't preordained that you'd be the CEO of SAP or the CEO of Service now and at the top of the technology world. Where did you grow up?
I grew up in a place called Amnyville, Long Island. I was born in Flushing, New York. Grew up in Amneyville, Long Island, and you know it's that long island grip.
Now, when you were growing up. Were your parents' professional workers or were they blue collar workers?
What did they do? I come from a working class family. My dad worked for con Edison. He was a troubleshooter for con Edison, meaning that you called him the Spider. He went into the manholes and basically worked on those high voltage lines to keep the electric on in New York City, and a very dangerous job, and he was great at it.
Was that a safe job?
No, it was not a safe job, very dangerous job. In fact, I always admired my father and the image that stayed in my mind. He worked the midnight shift most of the time, midnight to eight. I could just see him in the driveway chiseling the ice off of his windshield, knowing that he was going into New York to get into those manholes like the Spider and sod of those cables. And that was to put food on the table and give us a very nice life.
And I had a great life. But you always did some working. From what time did you begin working for some money?
I think the first time was around ten or eleven, when I was delivering papers door to door in Long Island. As a matter of fact, I remember the paper was Long Island Press. I don't even think they're in business anymore. But my mom, you know, co signed for me because you had to buy the papers and you got the money back when you collected it. So she put up the money for me, got me started. And I'll never forget what it took to be successful as a paper boy.
Are the same things it takes to be successful today. I had to know my customer. I had to know how you wanted it. Is it in your door? Do you want it wrapped in plastic? Do you get upset if I throw it? You know, they were all kinds of techniques. But why did I do it? Because I wanted them to be happy and I wanted them to give me a good tip.
Well, you wrote a book about your life, and in the book you talk about the fact that sometimes people didn't pay you and you had to go and kind of ask them to pay for two or three weeks. Was that hard to do?
It was because you know when I went there and I asked them for ten bucks, and you know that's a lot of money for paper. But I'm like, yeah, but you know you three weeks in the arrears and the technique there was not only to get to ten, but hopefully get twelve so I would get a nice tip as well. And you know, I kept very good records. Wasn't too automated. It was a little book with check marks,
and I was just showing them the facts. And if I show them the facts, and you just you know, hard to heart with people theyn't respect you.
Later, as a teenager, you bought a delicatessen. Yes, how old were you when you bought a delicatest?
I think we're about sixteen and that sixteen turning seventeen something like that.
Where did you get the money to buy a delicatessen?
I didn't have any I was working three jobs. I was working at an Italian restaurant VIP type of ten iron restaurant, find a supermarket town of Amnueville. Always three jobs, whatever I could fit in, and it was kind of chaotic. And one day so I helped want It sign in this deli and I traded in all those hours to go to the Delhi because the owner said, I can
give you all the hours you need. But I took my bow tie from the restaurant, my white shirt, my tuxedo pants and upgraded the delicatessen to how we would serve customers as a kid. Because I knew it worked at the restaurant. I'm like, well, I wouldn't no work here. And that led to very good relationship because when he wanted to sell, he couldn't have any buyers because nobody wanted to buy it because it was sun Mark Industries, the Sunoco gas station actually owned the land. They'd only
give you a one year lease. He wanted twenty five thousand. Everyone was like, why would I give you twenty five thousand. They could take this lease away from me in an instant, I said, look, after no one else came to him, I'll give you five thousand. He said seven thousand with interest. You pay me back in a year. If you don't make your payment, I automatically repossessed a business. I said, great, so I still had the machine at that money. No, I didn't. It was a loan from him, only alone.
It was only alone. It was only alone, and I if I didn't pay him, I wouldn't have had the business. But all of the people that brought the beer, bought the cigarettes, brought the potato chips. All the vendors basically said, we'll front you the first delivery on the arm, I said, I don't want anything for free. I'll always owe you that money. So the day I sell a clothes, you get your money back. Meanwhile, you know how I got
done money back. That was early days of video games, and I put asteroids in pac Man and some dinosaur game. My brother built the wall and I learned this at the mall. I saw the kids plucking quarters Antiti's machines one after another. I said, Wow, I'll build a game room on the side of the store. We did that. I made more money split the quarters with the guy that actually owned the machines than I did slicing meat and making sandwiches.
What did your parents say, you're supposed to be going to high school? Did they say, how about going to high school?
I'm so blessed because my mom, who's the best, and people that I knew that were great friends of mine. They actually worked in this store when I was at school, holding the place up. And then when I came out of school, I got right behind that counter and worked till midnight.
All right, So you graduated from high school and did you go to college?
I did. I went to Dowling College. In Oakdale, Long Island, because I could do all my classes on Tuesday and Thursday and then be in the store all the other days.
So when you graduate from college, were you're still owning the delicatessen.
Yes, I was, and at that time I made a decision. I got a job at Xerox, which was a dream job, and at that time I sold it and then we invested that money in a great beach house with my parents down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
So your job at Xerox was to be a salesman. Yes, you're selling what was a complicated the time.
But at that time it was copiers, and it was electronic typewriters and printers and fax machines and all that.
So you did that for seventeen years.
I was at Xerox for seventeen years. I sold door to door for a couple of years and then got promoted and ultimately became a division president and corporate officer like my mid thirties at Xerox.
So one time you thought, maybe at the beginning, you could aspire to be the CEO of Xerox. But you had an offer to leave, and why did you take the offer?
I did it because I stopped learning. You know, at that time, it was like, what else am I going to do? All I really want is the CEO job, and this steps left before I'll get it, and I started think that's not the right reason to stay. So Gardner Group offered me a job to be the president there. I was very excited about that, and I felt that it advice and really meeting all the technology leaders of the world and advising them would really get me sharpened up for anything.
All Right, you took that job, but you didn't stay there that long, right.
I didn't know I missed the big technology stage. That's kind of what I really wanted to do. So I went to CBL Systems to run worldwide sales and operations for SEBEL in California, and I learned the software industry at CEBYL.
So after that, you then took a position as the head of SAP's America. Is correct now SAP was a software company. Well, what was its innovation that made SAP such a strong company even at the beginning?
Yeah, they call it ERP. Just to break down ERP running financial systems for the biggest companies in the world. Connecting that based on the industry, to supply chains, managing human resources. Put that into one bucket. You call it ERP. And when I got hired by SAP, they were a very fine company. But in the Americas they had missed twenty four were out of twenty five quarters. So it was really the operation that was bringing down the whole company.
So they had to fix that because they had five CEOs in six years of SAP America.
You became the co CEO of the entire company at one point, and then after five years of that you became the sole CEO.
Yeah, I became the co CEO in twenty ten and the sole CEO in twenty fourteen. And what I can tell you is it's actually a very nice design. A lot of people knock the co CEO model, don't think it can ever work. But in our case, I had a great partner, Jim Hagemann Snaba, who's a great friend of mine still to this day, and we had a
great orientation around our partnership. We talked every day. Jim was kind of like missed inside in terms of representing development, especially in Germany where we had very large engineering and I was the guy on the front lines. You know, moving the number and working with the worldwide operations.
As you were working at SAP or the CEO. Things are going well, the company's in good shape. What motivated you really to do something else? I mean, most people at the top when things are going well, they kind of stay at the top.
Yeah, you know, I think I get like the seventeen year itch. You know, I love.
Seventeen years at Zerox, seventeen years at the SUP right at exactly.
I think after about seventeen years, you know, I kind of like feel like I need to do something else. So those were two of my greatest experiences, and I need to change, you know. And I really did want to take service now because I saw what it could be, and I really did want to make it the best. And I felt like my skill set and where they were and what they needed was a good match.
So you'll be here until twenty thirty six. In other words, said, I don't know.
About twenty thirty six, especially with you and private equity in my future.
Why has technology been so big as a part of the US economy and the global economy. Is it low interest rates? Is that going to change? Or is it just that we're really good at inventing new kind of the technology.
Well, low interest rates helped every industry flourish, and it definitely helped tech because our customers had more capital to invest in information technology, no doubt. But for our company and for technology companies, it's all about innovation and what we're bringing to the world is an end to end platform for digital transformation. If you look at the twentieth century, everything was top down, vertically integrated companies, where one function
drove functional behavior. Now everything is cross functional. Companies were horizontal, and we brought a platform for end to end digital transformation, so companies can collaborate, work in teams and get stuff done.
So for those who aren't experts in digital transformation, what actually is digital transformation?
Think of it this way. For a half century, companies have been buying technology to digitize their businesses. But all these companies are locked down in silos now, so they optimize for functions, but they never understood that the world would go for complete teamwork, a team orientation. Everything has to come together in a horizontal stream of innovations.
So you're obviously a very good salesman. What is the secret to be a good salesman?
You can get anything in this life you want if you help enough other people get what they want. I care about what you want. I care about what you need, and when I understand that, I can compose solutions thanks to the great team that I'm fortunate to work with, that matter. And if I say something to you, if I make a promise to you, no matter what, you will get that promise kept. I'd never break my word. And I think that's what it's all about.
So in your business career, what's been the best advice you've ever received.
I think the best advice I've ever received is just in the long run, play the long game. You know, people grossly overestimate what they can do in the short run and grossly underestimate what they can do in the long run. So I've always tried to take a long view and not be so focused on just here and now. So today I'll have a very complete day in New York City. I'll meet some of the biggest CEO business
cards in the world. But as I make those trips, I'm constantly thinking, what do we got to look like five years from now or maybe even ten years from now to keep up with having ideas that they don't even know they need to know about, but we need to know where we need to take them. We have to invent the future we want. We can't wait for somebody else to do it and try to copy them. It's already too late. So constantly trying to see around those corners.
Long view, what's the worst business advice you ever got?
Go for the money, don't go for the money. And I would just say, like any career choice you make, any deal that you do, it's not about the money. The money is nice to have, but it's much better to do things that are sustainable. So when you take a job, do it because you love and on that culture and you believe it's a match with your personal
DNA and who you really are. When you're doing a commercial agreement, yeah, the transaction's nice and you want to win it and you want to accomplish things, but that relationship is so much more important because that is sustainable and it's long term.
So your ambitions is to grow the company and maybe do something else later on after you're happy with what you've done here. Any aspiration to ever go in government or public service.
You know, I would love to. I do think that there's a place to give back and to serve, And I think public service needs executives that have experience, especially global experience, where they've actually physic been to all these places around the world and have a sense of culture and the dynamism of humans no matter where they are located, and how to really do the right thing, not just the convenient thing. So it would be an honor to
someday do that up the road. It's way up the road, but I wouldn't rule it out.
Now. In twenty fifteen, you were walking down the steps of your brother's house and you fell down and glass fell into your eye or went into your eye. Yeah, can you ebscribe what happened and how you dealt with that pass.
Of your eye. It was a rough night because I had a giant water glass, very thick, slipped on the stairs and met a concrete foundation and glass and my face and the glass actually went through my eye and cut it in half. And you know, dealing with that was a pretty traumatic experience, to say the least. But so blessed to be here, and I think I have
a greater appreciation for everything. And I've also learned that vision is not just about what you see but it's how you make other people feel, and how you feel by making other people feel good.
So you had us. I read about eleven surgeries to kind of save your eye or yeah, and ultimately they could not save your eye.
That's correct. I lost that battle, but I think I want a bigger war.
Looka, it's an incredible story, and congratulations. You started with virtuy nothing and built up a great reputation in so many different industries.
So thank you.
I wish I had bought your stock when you came here, but I can still buy the stock in the future.
I guess right, not too late, David.
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.