Sheryl Sandberg: Chief operator
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Kun toimistosi käyttöaste keikkuu, haluatko, että vuokranantajasi on epävarma, vai varma? Vuokraa toimitilat varmalta.
It's early 2008 and we're inside a gated mansion in Averton, California, a small town that would soon be dubbed the most expensive zip code in America.
A 38-year-old woman is having dinner with a 23-year-old man. This is not their first date, but the pair are still checking each other out and eyeing each other up. They're both wondering if things might work out between them. He's a curly-haired tech nerd who never finished college. She's an experienced operator who's worked at the highest levels of government and has just made one of the world's biggest companies profitable.
But then again, he's also the world's youngest self-made billionaire, and she wouldn't mind joining him.
The wine flows and an offer is forthcoming. Just then, her husband walks into the room. What is she getting them into? Welcome
to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.
We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion.
I'm Simon Jack, I'm the BBC's business editor.
And I'm Zing Singh, and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.
And today's billionaire is Sheryl Sandberg, best known as Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. And then when it was renamed Meta, that's a job she had from 2008 to 2022. And
it's that fact that she had a job, that she was an employee of a company and not the owner or employer, that makes her quite unusual among the people that we cover on Good Bad Billionaire. She's not a founder, she's not a CEO, but she is a billionaire and she's currently worth around 2.4 billion dollars.
Yeah, we've often said that it's very hard to become a billionaire simply by getting a paycheck alone. But she earned that cash by becoming one of the most influential operators in Silicon Valley history. Her major contribution was figuring out how to monetize Facebook, how to get Facebook making the billions that it did.
The year that she joined the company took in $272 million in revenue. The year of her departure, turnover had reached $118 billion. Wow. Simon, you've met her. What is she like? She
is a quiet, petite woman. woman who projects an enormous and intimidating presence. How does she do that? She's got a kind of authority and gravitas to her. And she is fiercely punctual. She comes in, sits down, there's very little small talk, and she's out exactly when she says she's going to be out, ushered out by her people. And she talks very softly, but firmly. And So softly that you literally have to lean in to hear what she's having to say, which, of course, was the name of a book that she wrote. So a woman of massive authority and a little bit scary, actually. I mean, for
someone who's
quietly spoken, but, you know, you know, you're in the presence of someone who's, I would say, fearsomely competent.
Right. And given that you've met CEOs and politicians, the fact that you were slightly intimidated gives me room for
pause. Yes. No, I think she would be one of the most, you know, not intimidating in the fact you're actually scared, but in the sense that don't say something dumb, Simon. Do you know what I mean? That's that kind of thing, because, you know, she comes with such a reputation and she's, yeah, the real deal.
But what does a COO or chief operating officer actually do? Because you've covered a lot of CEOs, but I think this is the first COO we've ever talked about on the show.
Yeah, and has an unusual role here. So CEO sets the direction, the vision for the company.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–7:25
2
What is the premise of the Good Bad Billionaire episode on Sheryl Sandberg?
7:25–24:00
3
How did Sheryl Sandberg’s early life and education shape her career?
24:00–34:35
4
What roles did Sandberg hold in government and the World Bank before entering tech?
34:35–41:38