#109 Co-founder & CEO, Databricks Ali Ghodsi: The Difference Between Truth and Data

Guest: Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks In this episode, we cover: What Ali remembers from before his family left Iran (01:00); Moving to Sweden and Ali’s first jobs (04:00); What if your wealth and privilege suddenly disappeared? (10:01); Finding time for family and oneself while working insane hours (14:04); Over-working, panic attacks, and PTSD (18:08); Researching cloud computing at UC Berkeley, and the start of Databricks (26:06); What Databricks does for companies with lots of data (31:22); The anxiety of competing against an incumbent as a 10-person team (36:03); The concerns of the Databricks board — and Ali himself — about him becoming the CEO (42:42); Learning from more experienced CEOs and other executives (48:27); Approving new hires and what Ali looks for when grilling job candidates (52:02); Deposits, withdrawals and how much time he spends on hiring (56:08); What it means to have a culture of “truth-seeking” (01:00:03)