CLIP: Working With Bill Gates
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What was Janice Kapner's role when she first interviewed Bill Gates?
you had the pleasure of working on a team under Bill Gates. We even actually saw an interview that you did with him Oh, I was nervous that day. That was, I hadn't been there very long. And I can't remember how it came to pass, but it was, you know, we wanted to pre-record something in a friendly capacity with an employee. And somewhere somebody said, you know, you should do it. And I was like, that's fine. And I'll never forget.
How did Janice prepare (or not prepare) for interviewing Bill Gates?
You don't think about it a whole lot. I don't know about you and your process, but it's not my process. And so I didn't really think about it too much because I knew I'd get too nervous in advance. But then we got there and that man is just so impressive in his, Sheer ability to process, right, has just the intellectual capacity, the breadth of knowledge. I felt like and this may or may not be true, but I felt like even in the conversation, I could imagine him having six or seven different conversations going while he's talking to me and not missing a beat. Right. Like over here, he's thinking about what they need to do on this product and this, you know, because he just he presents that sort of calmly and smartly.
He didn't love press and PR. It was never – I think he was pretty transparent about that. It was not his favorite thing to do. So this, because it was an in-house thing to be used externally, he was very kind and patient.
What impressions did Janice have of Bill Gates’ conversational and intellectual style?
But I had this moment. I sat down. We were waiting for him to come in, and I just had this biggest exhale, and I realized I was really – Because all that's going through your head is, can I please just not look like an idiot? This guy is ridiculously smart. He's built this company from the ground up. He's wicked fast. I just don't, like, I don't expect to be memorable, but I just don't want to look like an idiot, you know? And he was very kind. And I just, you felt like it was a professional moment of, okay, I did that, you know? You have those few moments when you're a company that size where you get the exposure to people Bill, we got to leverage Bill for a launch event. And, you know, same thing. It was very, you need to be efficient and be on your game and have your answers because he's not loving that he's devoting time to a stage event for press and that kind of thing.
But he knows it's a bit of a necessary thing for the product. But like, don't be known because you didn't have your act together. You know, with Bill, it was this calm demeanor. I mean, I saw him lose his patience at events. It's not like he wasn't, you know, human, but calm. There was this sort of settled, thoughtful, intellectual processing of everything, you know. And I always felt like he would process it all and he would look for the edge cases, you know, where other people may make kind of a linear or even two or three linear paths. I always felt like he was also then going to look way out here at the fringe of what about and what about and have we contemplated or. And I'm sure that that's how you come up with the genesis for the ideas that created the company is to be that kind of a thinker.
So with him, you sort of always felt like you were in the presence of just a sheer intellectual calm is the only word. And even though I again, I saw him when he would get impatient there. He just he likes to problem solve my interpretation. I don't know him that well, but my interpretation was he felt like I want I'm going to problem solve and I'm going to stress test everything. And I'm going to look around all the corners and look at all the chess moves.
How did Bill Gates behave during press events and launches, according to Janice?
And that's how it felt to me. That would be my read from my, you know, what time I did get to spend in the room with him. You had I think it was like over 70 percent of employees at the time were developers. And and so the worship that they have for a bill, you can't replicate that, you know.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What was Janice Kapner's role when she first interviewed Bill Gates?
0:00–0:22
2
How did Janice prepare (or not prepare) for interviewing Bill Gates?
0:22–1:09
3
What impressions did Janice have of Bill Gates’ conversational and intellectual style?
1:09–2:56
4
How did Bill Gates behave during press events and launches, according to Janice?
2:56–3:13
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Action Catalyst
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