Jeetu Patel

I wanted to thank Aaron Levie and my family at Box for a wonderful 5 years. It has been the best ride of my life. I will miss you all so much. Congratulations to Varun who will do great things at Box as their new Chief Product Officer.

I am deeply honored and humbled to be joining Cisco to run its security and applications business. Thank you for the opportunity Chuck Robbins to get a chance to work for and with you and the rest of the Cisco team.

Last week we hosted our fourth WebexOne conference. While there were amazing innovations, I feel it is worth taking stock of this business from what it used to be.

4 years ago, this business was in decline. We had terrible quality issues. There were uptime and reliability issues. The media quality in meetings was terrible. The list goes on and on. The NPS score for Webex was an embarrassing score that hovered around 20.

Today, this business is in growth mode. Reliability (knock on wood 🪵) is off the charts. Customers come up to me in virtually every business trip I take to thank Cisco for delivering a great experience and they take pride in showing me offices they have constructed with Webex equipping their offices and employee homes. The NPS score is close to 70.

Also, this is one of those few teams that turned around the business because of sheer force of will. They simply played to win. You throw a challenge at them and they take it on. The sales and marketing team worked hand in hand with the product team. There is never any finger pointing. They all formed a bond signaling that they are in it to win it and win it as a team. They don’t care about individual stats. They care about team victory. They are strategic but also an execution machine. They sweat the details on the product obsessively. But they aren’t dilusional about their market, not do they miss a megatrend. They work from the customer in rather than the product out. They are eager to innovate. Eager to improve. They are hard on themselves. They are almost never satisfied. They just got amazing accolades from virtually every independent analyst study including Gartner most recently (attached below)

And this past week, the team put on an event that reimagined everything with AI. I can keep going on and on. But I would not be exaggerating to say, I freaking love this team for their grit, persistence, tenacity, discipline, strategic acumen, desire to win and sense of purpose.

Congratulations to the Webex Team for holding yourselves to a high bar, and exceeding my high expectations every single time. Thanks to Anurag, Brian, Aruna, Snorre, Jay Patel, Travis, Gavin, Joel Bailon, Amit, Gaurav, Karlheinz, Ty, Peter, Sudarshan, Craig, Courtenay, Ashley, Koray, Caitlin, Padmini, Saleema,Josh, Andrew, Ian, Damien, Josh, Andrew and so many more that I am forgetting for your leadership and pursuit for excellence.

Many times teams are just not configured to win. They want to win but aren’t prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to win. This team does not have that problem. They are born to win. They are hungry to win. They put their own interests second to the company and the team’s interests.

Last but certainly not the least, our customers that are such amazing champions of Webex continue to push us to get better and we are grateful for all you do for us.

Congratulations to the Webex community and the Cisco team for creating such an epic event.

Ok. Here’s an interesting stat. Around 10.5% of the global adult population suffered from diabetes in 2021 - by the year 2045 this number is expected to rise to over 12%! 12% of the world’s population!!! (Fact sourced from the Statista)

My mother has been diabetic for over 30 years and she has dedicated her life to controlling this deadly disease. And it sure has taken a toll on her.

My father lost his life to kidney failure caused by diabetis.

People lose their eyesight, limbs, kidneys and so much more when they encounter this deadly disease that keeps chipping away at the human body.

The older I get, the more paranoid I am of getting this disease, because it is so highly correlated to genetics.

Pat Gelsinger and Charles Meyers (he/him) asked me to participate in Tour de Cure last year to help fight this disease and increase awareness for Diabetis. I signed up but realized that I need to be far more involved. Thanks for pushing me Pat and Charles to do this.

So this year, I am going to ride my bike as part of the Tour de Cure in Sanoma vs a virtual ride at home. I would love to raise as much money as possible for this cause.

So I am going to request each of you to consider donating even if it is a dollar to help fight this disease. I will personally donate a $1 for each “like” or “share” of this post up to $5,000.

I hope together we can raise a lot of money to make the world a healthier place.

P.S.

Often times people wonder what the connection is between people engaging with the post and my donation. In other words, why do I need someone to like my post in the first place for me to donate? Why don’t I just donate! The answer is that the more people like this message, the more LinkedIn amplifies the message and more people will hopefully tap into their generous hearts and fund to end this crisis.

If you follow me or are connected to me on LinkedIn, I hope you like or share this message so others are get motivated to donate towards this cause.

Lastly, I will post the link for Tour De Cure in a comment because I have noticed that posts get amplified less with a link in the post.

Thank you once again for thinking about this and affording your time. Donate and join the ride. Find the link in a comment for this post from me.

Was just on a check-in call with our India team @Cisco. To everyone in India, we love you all and know that things will get better. Your health and the health of your loved ones are the most important things right now. All of us at Cisco are here for you and we got your back. ❤️

I miss you mom. Sooooo much! Happy Mother’s Day. ❤️

Jan 15 is going to be a big day for AI safety and security. All I can say is that we've been working long and hard at this for a year, and I'm so excited to share it with everyone tomorrow. Stay tuned for more...