Chet Kapoor is the chairman and CEO has more than 20 years of experience leading cutting-edge software and cloud businesses, including Google, IBM, BEA Systems, WebMethods, and NeXT.
He has spearheaded company-wide initiatives to transform Apigee into a top technology supplier for digital business as Chairman and CEO of Apigee. The cross-cloud API management platform that works in a multi- and hybrid-cloud environment is Google (Apigee). Achieved success.
As President and CEO, His job is to work at all levels, motivate groups, and touch people’s hearts.
What sets your DataStax apart from the competition?
DataStax provides real-time consumer experiences, and quick intelligence, and underpins machine learning by powering the data that matters most. We achieve this by offering a simple, open data stack.
Industry giants like Capital One, ESL Gaming, Verizon, and many more depend on the world’s most robust and scalable open-source database and streaming technologies to activate their data, and these technologies are the foundation of our open stack for real-time data applications.
His lessons from working as an intern at Steve Jobs’ company
While others were attending lavish events, Kapoor was managing his own consulting business, working at fast-food restaurants, and interning at Jobs’ NeXT while still balancing his studies. At the early age of just 22, Kapoor was able to pick up the ability to balance profit and loss.
Because I needed to earn money to pay for college, he says, it wasn’t just a “nice to have” for him. Therefore, I couldn’t attend school if I didn’t earn money.
Looking back on his past, Kapoor calls it a “hand-to-mouth existence,” but he adds that “nothing” prepares you for leadership like being your boss.
In less than 15 years after graduation, he rose swiftly through the ranks from Jobs’ intern to the CEO of Gluecode, an open-source program he sold to IBM in just six months.
“Everyone experiences three distinct stages in their career. They lead managers, manage people, and then are individual contributors, he shrugs. Therefore, in my opinion, everyone must have that adventure.
But given that the typical CEO is older than 50, it’s obvious that he went through that process rather quickly. He thinks it depends on how you conduct yourself in the first few years of your work. There is no silver bullet in this situation; first, you must lead yourself, then a small team, and finally leaders. And ultimately, in my opinion, it all comes down to how you view your leadership.
Kapoor claims that by putting the success of the team ahead of his contributions, he perfected the execution. “At the end of the day, self-confidence is a cheap commodity. You may read books on leadership and other things. However, you cannot lead if you do not first lead yourself in that direction.
According to the source, Kapoor became the CEO of the analytics software Apigee in 2007 after organizing the sale of Gluecode to IBM for an unknown sum.
The organization successfully underwent a rebranding under his direction. Before being bought by Google for $625 million in 2016, Kapoor gained notable clients including Netflix, Target, and Walgreens, and funded $87 million through a public IPO.
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Kapoor offers one piece of advice for preparing a company for sale: Don’t. According to him, one should first concentrate on starting a firm, finding excellent employees, and attracting excellent clients. After that, everything else would fall into place.
Even now, he claims that his credo is always: “We have an open-for-business sign, not a business-for-sale sign.” He is the CEO of the A.I. company DataStax.
