Who Got Me Here

Jeff Epstein: The Trillion Dollar Connector

Episode Summary

Jeff Epstein is an Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a global firm with $4 billion under management that invests in early-stage and hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses including innovative companies like Pinterest, Twilio, Box, LinkedIn, Shopify, Yelp, and Skype. Formerly, Jeff was the executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle, one of the world’s largest and most profitable technology companies, with a market value of over $200 billion. Prior to joining Oracle, Jeff served as the CFO at several public and private companies, including DoubleClick (acquired by Google), King World Productions (acquired by CBS), and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Jeff co-teaches the Lean Launchpad class at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Engineering and the CFO Leadership class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a BA from Yale College. In this conversation with Annie Riley, Jeff talks about how he was able to make over 10,000 introductions throughout his career, his experience co-teaching the Lean Launchpad at Stanford, and the path he took to become CFO, leaving us with advice for those aspiring to do the same.

Episode Notes

Jeff Epstein is an Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a global firm with $4 billion under management that invests in early-stage and hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses including innovative companies like Pinterest, Twilio, Box, LinkedIn, Shopify, Yelp, and Skype. Formerly, Jeff was the executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle, one of the world’s largest and most profitable technology companies, with a market value of over $200 billion. Prior to joining Oracle, Jeff served as the CFO at several public and private companies, including DoubleClick (acquired by Google), King World Productions (acquired by CBS), and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Jeff co-teaches the Lean Launchpad class at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Engineering and the CFO Leadership class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a BA from Yale College. In this conversation with Annie Riley, Jeff talks about how he was able to make over 10,000 introductions throughout his career, his experience co-teaching the Lean Launchpad at Stanford, and the path he took to become CFO, leaving us with advice for those aspiring to do the same.

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"The great thing about this whole idea of relationships and introductions is, it's not all or nothing, it's easy to start in a small way. No matter how much experience you have or whatever you're doing when you meet with someone, you say, just ask how can I be helpful? And if they say, 'gee, I would love to meet this person', or 'I'd love to look, do this, or learn about that', think about is there someone you know who would make an introduction, would be helpful, and then double opt-in. So, don't immediately introduce them, just email your friend and say, 'I've met person X, Y, Z, I think they're really interesting, here's why I think you might want to meet them'. Do that five or ten times, and see what happens. And if you end up with 10 no's then, you know, maybe you're not thinking about it right, or maybe you don't have the right relationships. But it wouldn't surprise me if you have five or six 'yeses' and one or two people say, 'wow, thank you so much for making that connection'." - Jeff Epstein

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Episode Timestamps:

*(02:42) - Jeff’s expansive network of 10,000+ connections

*(09:03) - Exploring his background in relationship building

*(15:56) - Co-teaching Lean Launchpad at Stanford School of Engineering

*(22:47) - The biggest networking mistakes to avoid

*(27:58) - Jeff’s path to CFO and advice for those aspiring

*(34:40) - Idols throughout his career

*(39:12) - Final thoughts

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Sponsor:

Who Got Me Here is brought to you by Connect The Dots, mapping professional relationships so you can find the strongest connections to the people and companies you want to reach. Visit ctd.ai to learn more.

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Episode Transcription

[00:00:00] Narrator: We all have that person in our lives who seems to be connected to everyone. You can be intentional about your network while still being human. In order to build strong connections with others, you really have to be strongly connected with yourself. I believe that meaningful networking has been the single greatest contributor to my good luck. You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. 

[00:00:31] Annie Riley: Welcome to Who Got Me Here, a podcast about making connections matter. I'm your host, Annie Riley, and today I'm so thrilled to have Jeff Epstein on the podcast. Jeff has many titles, but my personal favorite is Professor of Lean Launchpad at Stanford Engineering School, because I had the pleasure of taking that class with Jeff a couple of years ago, which was super fun.

But you know, many other esteemed roles that Jeff holds include. an operating partner at Bessemer, a board member of many, many different, very cool and impressive companies, including Booking Holdings, Twilio, Okta, Kaiser Permanente, and is a four time CFO in his career, including having served as the CFO for Oracle, which we've all heard of, for many years. And we all have so much that we can learn from Jeff. So Jeff, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. 

[00:01:26] Jeff Epstein: Annie, thank you very much for inviting me. And it's a pleasure to see you. And I, I remember fondly team Doki Doki from when we launched. 

[00:01:35] Annie Riley: That was so much fun. We had, we had an unusual name, but it was very, very fun. And, you know, still carry many of the lessons from that class with me today. Um, Jeff, you publish a lot online. You know, you participate in many different shows and podcasts where you share a lot of the knowledge that you've gained throughout your career. And yet, it's hard to learn about Jeff, you know, and so really today what I would love to do is focus a lot on your personal story, how you got where you are today, the tactics that you used to build Genuine relationships that clearly carried you far and you know, how others can learn from that playbook.

So that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping we can get into some, some new stuff together. Okay. So you have been called the trillion dollar connector. And I have heard a rumor that you have made It's something like 9, 000 intros or something in your, and that was even, this is probably even old at this point.

Could you tell us a little bit about this part of your identity, the connecting that you do, what the numbers are up to now, and the role that this plays in your life today? 

[00:02:55] Jeff Epstein: Yes, the answer is it's about 10, 000 instructions over 10 years, so about 1, 000 a year of attempted instructions. And I'll tell you the story.

I was, I worked as a chief financial officer for 25 years, and 10 years ago, I retired and started working part time with Bessemer Venture Partners, serving on boards of directors and teaching at Stanford. I was very active in business, but not with one company all the time. And people started asking me for favors.

They said, can you introduce me to this company because I want a job, or can you introduce me to this chief financial officer because we'd like to sell them a product. The first few weeks I made happy to make introductions. They're always double opt in introductions where I'll, I will only introduce someone if I think they're likely to be interested.

And I'll say, this is an interesting idea for you. Would you like to meet this person or meet, learn about this product? And if they say no, it's fine. If they say yes, I'm doing a favor for both sides. So it's my way of being helpful. So after a few weeks or a month, maybe I said, you know, I probably should keep track of this to figure out if I'm wasting my time because I'm making these introductions and no one cares and it doesn't work, then I'll stop doing it.

So I started with a Google sheet and I still have it on a Google sheet. And I just, every time I make an introduction, I add a line to the Google sheet and I'm up to it. Up to 10, 000 now. 

[00:04:12] Annie Riley: Jeff, can I just ask you, what do you track specifically? Like what does, can you walk us through what the Google sheet looks like?

[00:04:20] Jeff Epstein: It's very simple. It's simply the name of the person in the company who asked for the introduction, the name of the person in the company I'm introducing, the date. And. Then I would occasionally keep notes, but it was very, it wasn't at all consistent, and then about six months ago, I went back and I categorized everything from, was I introducing someone as a candidate because they wanted a job, or as an employer because they wanted to hire someone?

Was I introducing a customer or a vendor? These are the main, the main categories. Sometimes it's philanthropy, sometimes it's relationships. Sometimes it's, uh, expertise or asking for advice, sometimes a board candidate, as opposed to a CFO candidate, as opposed to another executive candidate. And so I've gone back to all of them and I've recreated them.

And then also I've tried to keep track of Whenever I hear whether or not it was successful, and often people will let me know, Hey, I got that customer. I got that job. And sometimes they, often they don't tell me. So I, I don't really know. After probably 2000 introductions, I went back and I measured how successful it was.

And it's been pretty consistent that about, I would say 80 percent of the time, the person I Ask if they're interested. They say, yes, I am interested. 10 percent of the time they don't reply at all. And 10 percent of the time they say, I'm not interested. Of the original a hundred percent, I have about a two and a half percent close rate.

So there's about 250 out of the 10, 000 either. Sales of products or people who've been hired or things like that, where something happened because of an introduction I made. And I think that's a pretty good close rate and I'm pretty happy with it. Usually the people who, even if they don't buy the product or don't hire the candidate, the person who asked for the introduction is always grateful.

And the person who's getting the introduction often writes me back and says, I didn't hire that person, but they were a great candidate. Thanks very much for introducing me. 

[00:06:13] Annie Riley: Yeah, and then that's a relationship. You know, you never know where that's going to go. We've heard several people have come on this show and said, you know, I applied for a job, I didn't get it.

Five years later, I ended up working for the person that I interviewed with for that job I didn't get. So you kind of never know. And one of the questions I have about doing that. Level of volume of intros is how you balance being generous, which you clearly are, with the element of curation. Because it's also every time you do this, You are putting your reputation out there, right?

To say, Hey, this is a good customer. This is a good candidate. How do you balance that volume with also the curation aspect? 

[00:06:57] Jeff Epstein: Well, if you were going to ask me for an introduction for a job that I thought you're qualified for, I would absolutely love to do it because I think you'd be very qualified and whoever I'm introducing to is going to be better off.

And it's the benefit to me is I'm doing a favor for two friends and it's terrific. But if you want to be the CFO. of Google, because the report is retiring, I'd say, well, look, that's probably not the best fit. So not going to do that. So there are occasions where I just, people ask for it and I say, it's just not appropriate, or I don't know the person well enough, or I'm not going to do it.

But I'll give you an example. There's a company called Vender, V E N D R. It's software in a service to help companies save money when they buy software. And now software is one of the biggest expenses of any company. So it's a pretty important thing, especially When the economy is tough the way it is now.

A partner at Bessemer introduced me. I met the company, I was pretty impressed by their pitch. And we have 200 portfolio companies at Bessemer. So, I posted to our CFOs information about Vendor and within 2 months, 8 of them became customers of Vendor. And I went, wow, this, I've never seen this kind of product market fit.

Normally I've done that for other companies and sometimes it's one, sometimes it's zero companies become customers. So then I call up the CEO vendor and I say, wow, you got a great product. There are companies love you. They probably, probably other companies like that. And he said, well, thank you very much for those eight new customers.

Can you do it more, more of that? So I said, sure. And he hired me as an advisor. And then I did more introductions. And ultimately he recruited me to join the board of directors. And now I'm on the board of vendor. There are 40 customers at vendor who they got because of my introduction, which I'm really happy about.

[00:08:38] Annie Riley: And I think that's a good point because you're an independent board director there, right? And a lot of folks aspire at some point in their career to join a board. And when you become an independent board director, so much of that is based on I would imagine the relationship, right? Cause that's about you.

It's not a position that you hold at an investor or something like that. It's about you and your experience. And so what have been some of the key relationships like that, that have enabled you to take on these board roles, because you have done this time and time again at some fascinating companies through very aggressive periods of growth.

[00:09:22] Jeff Epstein: I have two answers to that. First of all, it usually doesn't start out as a board relationship. It starts out as I ask, how can I be helpful? And they say, could you introduce me to this potential customer? Could you introduce me to this candidate? I'm thinking of getting venture debt. What do you think about the terms of the venture debt?

We're thinking of raising. Equity, should I raise now, should I raise later? And it starts off just as a conversation to see if I can be helpful. And if they're asking me somewhere in my area of expertise, often I can be helpful because I've been around a long time and I know a lot of people and have a lot of experience.

And then they sometimes say, well, instead of just these informal conversations as Vendor did, they said, we'd like to actually Sign an agreement with you and bring you on as an advisor and give you equity for to have a talk to you once a month or once a quarter. And then sometimes that leads to a board relationship as well.

So it's sort of crawl, walk, run relationship where at every step it's just organically going to the next step. The other thing is I focus on areas where I have expertise and I love to read about Warren Buffett and he talks about Investing within your circle of competence. And that requires two things.

One, it requires having a circle of competence, and then it requires knowing where the boundaries are. And I've always thought about that, investing my time the same way he's talking about investing his money. within my circle of competence. And it turns out I've been working now for 45 years. And if you work for a long time, you can get multiple circles of competence.

So I started out right at a business school, knowing not much. And actually my first job was in the consulting business at Boston Consulting Group. And there we worked in a lot of different industries. So I learned a little bit about many different industries. And one of the industries was the media industry, television, radio, newspapers, magazines.

And then I joined the Washington Post company In strategy role and acquisition role there. So I learned a lot about the media. So I, I developed my first area of expertise was the media industry. And then I joined an investment bank, First Boston, doing media mergers and acquisitions. So I deepened my media industry expertise, and then I developed my financial expertise running investment banking and finance.

And then I joined one of my clients, a television programming company called King World, which had Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and Oprah Winfrey as their chief financial officer. So at that point, I was 10 years out of business school, I was 32 years old, and I had the media industry expertise I had.

The finance expertise, and now I was developing the CFO skill expertise. And then, over time, I just kept on adding other areas, but, you know, if you add one area every five years, and you have a long career, it's, it adds up. So, I became the CFO of DoubleClick later on. DoubleClick was half media, half technology.

And that gave me technology experience, and then, of course, Oracle deepened that technology experience. I was invited to join the board of Kaiser Permanente, which is a very large non profit healthcare company. 100 billion in revenue, 25 percent of all Californians get their healthcare from Kaiser. And so over the last 11 years being on the board, I now have deep healthcare expertise.

So each step has, has added another layer for me. Who 

[00:12:31] Annie Riley: has been some of those key relationships that have kind of opened those doors for you to develop those areas of expertise, those different circles? 

[00:12:44] Jeff Epstein: Well, at each step of the way, it's been the people I've worked with. So it was a partner at BCG who went to the Washington Post company who hired me there, gave me a chance to work.

at the Washington Post company. When I was an investment banker, King World was my client. My job was to bring in clients and I brought in King World and then they hired me as a CFO and I had never been a CFO. They would not have hired me from a resume because I didn't have the experience, but because they had known me for over a year and worked closely with me.

We're like to give me the chance and many of those, the opportunities came about from relationships, which started with one company and led to another. Since I've been, I'm at Bessemer Venture Partners, I've been here for over 10 years. Uh, we have, as I said, 200 portfolio companies, so I get to meet the CFOs and often the CEOs of our portfolio companies and some of the board advisory work I get through these relationships and some of it is.

Where I can be helpful to a company like Vendor is because I have all these relationships at Bessemer. And then I look at all, there's probably hundreds of companies Bessemer looks at investing in that we pass on, but we get to know them. Being at a firm like Bessemer is a terrific platform for me to have a very broad network of relationships of companies that.

I could piggyback on Bessemer's relationships in a way. 

[00:14:01] Annie Riley: You're highlighting that there are certain roles that you can take in your career that give you a lot of exposure. And also, you know, when you're doing client services, financial services, exactly like you described, you're developing that client relationship that if it works out, you're kind of able to Leap ahead and get certain roles that maybe you otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

I heard a story about your first CFO role that you got not only never having been a CFO before, but also my understanding is that you actually. Either replace someone or someone was layered under you who actually had a lot more experience, but the relationship thrived. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about that because I, I think from the outside, you might think that that would be, you know, something where there would be conflict and it sounds like you were able to navigate that.

Really 

[00:14:52] Jeff Epstein: successfully. Yes. King world was already a public company, very successful, profitable. The CFO was a man named Len Spilka, who had been an accountant. He was a CPA and experienced accountant and very capable internal CFO, but didn't have wall street experience. Didn't have merchant acquisition experience.

Didn't have investing experience. And that's what the CEO of the company wanted. They wanted a wall street CFO. So when they hired me, the first thing I did was I met with Len and I said, I'm not an accountant. I'm not a CPA. I never close the books. I need you to stay here and help me be successful, and together I think we can be more successful than either of us can be separately.

And I made sure he was paid well, and even though he didn't have the title of CFO, I included him in everything that was relevant. And we worked very closely together for six years, he stayed the entire time, he has continued to have a successful career, and we're friends today. So sometimes when you're, when you're young, you learn from your...

superiors and you get trained by your superiors and sometimes you're in a situation the way I was where I was learning from my subordinates. And those relationships were important as well. 

[00:15:57] Annie Riley: I've heard you talk about Lean Launchpad, the class that you teach at Stanford School of Engineering, as a learning experience for you as well.

You know, but I actually don't know the origin story of how, You got involved in Lean Launchpad, becoming a teacher at Stanford. Again, this is something that many people dream of. What was the path that you took to that 

[00:16:20] Jeff Epstein: role? Well, it's a great example of one thing leading to another. Since I had been the CFO of DoubleClick, I knew a lot about the advertising technology business.

And I moved from New York, California, 15 years ago, and I was introduced to George John, who was the CEO and founder of Rocket Fuel, which is another advertising technology business. We, we got to talking and he ended up bringing me on as an advisor. And he said, by the way, there's this guy, I think you'd be interested in meeting Steve Blank, who's an old friend of mine, George had met with.

I'd worked with Steve years ago, so I had lunch with Steve Blank and Steve said, look, I have this interesting course, Lean Launchpad, and we have eight teams, and each team needs a mentor. Would you like to be a mentor for one of my teams? And I said, sure, I'd be happy to. So I, I was a mentor for a team, and he had a co teacher at the time.

And then the next year, his co teacher I went on to create a new course and was no longer co teaching with Steve and Steve said, now I need a new co teacher. Would you be interested? And I said, yes. And that was 10 years ago. And now I've been co teaching that course all along. And now we've recruited people like Mar Hershenson and others to be co teachers with us.

And Steve is now teaching the spring version of the class and I'm teaching along with Mar and others, the winter version of the class. So I guess it led from. Meeting George John to meeting Steve Blank to being lucky that there was an opening and he invited me and I said yes. 

[00:17:43] Annie Riley: That's amazing and I love that you also were a mentor first.

You got to know the class, they got to know you, and then when the opening happened you were kind of in position ready to 

[00:17:53] Jeff Epstein: go. That's another example of the crawl, walk, run strategy. And the first year, what Steve told me is, you know, when you're an official faculty member, at the end of the year, the students grade you.

They grade the faculty, and if you get low grades, they don't invite you back. So the first year I was the full time co teacher with Steve, I actually was not an official faculty member. I said, why don't I just do this? Informally, I'll do all the work, but I won't be official. And then let's see what the students say.

And, and the students gave me reasonable grades. So, uh, I said, okay, now I can be official. 

[00:18:24] Annie Riley: Okay. Then you doubled down once. Once you knew that, uh, that it was gonna be a positive outcome. That's, that's hilarious. So can you tell us a little bit more about. What keeps you involved in that class? And I guess specifically, I think there's so much to learn from the relationships that emerge, right?

Because again, you talked about at King World, learning so much from someone who was on your team. And in Lean Launchpad, you're teaching these teams of students. And what I remember from Lean Launchpad is you have everybody from across the university. You have We had undergrads, we had graduate students, you know, a wide range of ages and levels of experience.

So how do you think about that side of the relationship building where you're the professor and, and, you know, you're teaching all of these students? And I guess, what have you seen students do well and badly in order to build and maintain relationships with you? Like if you have an example of someone you remember for the right reasons.

I'm curious about that, but also if there are any mistakes that were made that we can learn from. I'm also interested in that. 

[00:19:29] Jeff Epstein: The structure of the class, as you know, is there are eight teams that are in the class of four or five students each. They start off with an idea and in 10 weeks they build multiple versions of their product.

They do over a hundred customer interviews. They try to actually launch their company and if they can generate revenue by the 10th week. And it's typically requires 20 hours of work per student while they're a full time student at Stanford. So it's a lot of work. What I love about the structure of the class is each of these eight teams are in eight different topics.

Some are B2B, some are consumer, some are healthcare. You were travel and I was on the board of booking holdings, Priceline for many years. So I was very interested in travel. So, I get to work with these incredibly talented students, get to give them some ideas and advice, but then they all go off and do the work, and I'm learning all the time.

I'm learning about the process of starting a company, and I'm learning about the challenges of that particular industry. And it changes from year to year. So a couple of years ago, we ended up with two of the class teams in the class were crypto teams, because crypto was really hot. And I'm sure this coming year, we're going to have AI teams in the class.

So it's a great way for the faculty and for me to keep on top of what's going on in the Silicon Valley and in the tech ecosystem. The question of what students have done well after the class in terms of keeping in touch, the reason I teach is Because I love working with students and seeing what they're up to.

And many students have reached out over the years and have said, I'd love to tell you what I'm up to. And either once in a while or at a monthly meeting or quarterly meeting, just tell me what I'm doing and love to get your input. So today, literally this morning, I had a call with a Stanford student who's a rising senior who I've known for several years now who is thinking about her career and trying to, basically, it was a career advice call.

And this afternoon I have a meeting with a former Lean Launchpad student who's continuing to work on the company that he worked on in Lean Launchpad and went through an incubator and he's The business is operating and he's trying to get his first revenue and we're meeting monthly. So the key thing is simply ask and then when you have that meeting with someone who's, whose time is precious and you're taking their time, just make sure it's interesting for them that they're getting something out of it too.

It's always interesting for me if I'm hearing about these challenges people are having and what they're trying to accomplish. It's a pleasure for me. 

[00:21:48] Annie Riley: Yeah, I feel so curious about that because I think something that gets in people's way, and I will say myself included sometimes, is this feeling of, well, Jeff is so busy, I don't really have a big update, you know, I don't really want to take the time.

What are your thoughts on those concerns? 

[00:22:07] Jeff Epstein: Well, I'm retired, so if I was the CFO of Oracle, I wouldn't be having these meetings. So the person has to be at the right time in their life. That they have the time and the interest and I'm a terrible golfer. So if I could meet with a Stanford alumnus, talk about their career or about their startup or play golf, I'd rather talk to the Stanford alumnus, talk about what they're doing.

I think, I just think it's more fun. Some people like that and some people don't and just have to find the right person. If you don't have an update, then don't waste my time. But if, for instance, if you have a startup, you definitely have an update. I mean, if things change every month in a startup, so there's always something to talk about.

If you're. Literally talking about the company you're running, and that's what many of these conversations are. Yeah, 

[00:22:48] Annie Riley: that makes a ton of sense. And how about mistakes that you've seen over the years? Are there any, are there any patterns or behaviors that you've seen where you think, oh, I wish people would stop doing this thing when they're trying to network or build a relationship with me or things you've even seen with other teaching team members?

And I feel so curious about that. The 

[00:23:09] Jeff Epstein: biggest problem is when people are looking for a job. And they're just not qualified for the job that they are interested in, or they're not putting in the effort. My favorite story of that is a friend of mine, social friend of mine said that their son had graduated college and was unemployed about six months after college and was.

needed help thinking about his career or what I'd be with him. So I did. And I said, you know, what's going on? You know, what, how can I be helpful? And why are you here? And he said, well, I was sitting at home watching TV and my mother said, I should talk to you.

And that really wasn't the right thing for him to say. That was someone who I was not going to introduce to anybody. But there are plenty of people who have tremendous talents and interests. And it's just a question of one way to think about it is. Pretty much everyone gets a job, and hopefully people who've been well educated coming out of Stanford get.

Great jobs. And so there are companies who are as eager to meet you, the candidate, as you are to meet them. And so the question is, who are those companies and, and how do you narrow that down? 

[00:24:12] Annie Riley: And kind of what I'm hearing is actually coming into the conversation, maybe aiming too high is even better than aiming too low, because it sounds like you're willing to say, well, you know, Annie, I'm not going to introduce you to the recruiter for the CFO role at Google because you're not qualified.

But if I'm open to coaching and advice, you could potentially redirect me to roles that would be more appropriate. 

[00:24:39] Jeff Epstein: Well, I don't think it's aiming too high. I think you want to aim in the center of the bullseye. So if you think about your career, when you're young, if you're coming right out of college or business school, people want to hire talented, smart, capable McKinsey.

The big four accounting firms, where their job is to hire thousands of people and train many other companies don't really have good training programs and don't want to hire inexperienced people. They want to hire experienced people. And then once by the time you're 30 or older, typically someone has a need, either someone left a job.

So they had a CFO and CFO left or they fired the CFO, whatever they need to hire a CFO. So they want to hire an experienced CFO. So the question is, based on your experience, if you're mid career. What is the ideal job for you that you would love where the, uh, where your boss thinks you are the ideal candidate for that, that you've already done what it is that they want you to do.

So that's the easiest thing to do. Now the question, let's say that you wanted to be a CFO, but you've never been a CFO before. So the problem now is, well, you're not the ideal candidate. So how do you get there? And so often it's, you get there in two steps. You say, well, I would love to be the CFO for company XYZ, but I'm really good at financial planning and analysis and budgeting.

I've done that for many years. So you try to join as key FP& A role, and then once you're there, then you're eligible to be promoted to CFO. And the question is, how can you do that in two steps? 

[00:26:09] Annie Riley: Back to the walk, crawl, run. And a lot of times, I think people are impatient about these things. They want to get to that target, and they want to do it in the shortest, fastest way possible, because they look around, and it appears like other people did it, you know, so quickly.

And in reality, sometimes these things do take two steps, but... In hindsight, it might not seem that long. Well, 

[00:26:31] Jeff Epstein: you know, it's human nature that when you're young, you, you want to get everything done immediately. And now looking back at my career, since I got out of business school in 1979, it's a long time ago.

And if I had gotten a promotion or a particular job a year later or two years later, instead of it, it wouldn't be that the race. It wasn't really a race. It was, can I get the training and experience that I need? Can I develop my circle of competence? And then can I work for a successful organization?

Because if you work for Oracle or Google or a very successful company, doors will open. If you work for a company that's not well respected or well known, the doors won't open. And then can I work for people who I can learn from and who will help me in my career? And so I think the key is working in a sector and industry that you like.

In a sector of the industry and a company that's growing, a company that's successful, if it's well known, that's better for a boss, your direct boss, who you admire and you can learn from. And if you can check a lot of those boxes, those are terrific things to do. 

[00:27:32] Annie Riley: I think you're the first person we've had on the show.

I'm trying to think back to our guests, but who has taken the CFO path through their career. And when I think of the CFO role. Just stereotyping, broad stereotypes. I don't necessarily think of it as the most like relationship oriented, right? We've had salespeople come on and people who started in venture and worked their way up and those feel very connecty and relationship driven.

Could you talk a little bit about the CFO path as the one that, you know, you chose and that. You know, obviously took you to great heights and what advice you would give to people who are thinking about that route for building their own 

[00:28:15] Jeff Epstein: careers. I teach a course now along with some friends at the Stanford Business Graduate School of Business on Chief Financial Officer Leadership.

There's 70 students in the class and my guess is, you know, five or six will become CFOs the next few years and the rest will go on to be either investors in private equity or venture capital or business people and ultimately become general managers and CEOs. But they're all interested in what the CFO role is.

And what we teach in that class is that there's Typically three profiles of CFOs, that before they became a CFO, they were one of three functions. They were either an accountant, internal cost control type of background, a financial planning, budgeting, analytical background. Or a Wall Street Capital Markets background, so either Accounting, Planning, Analytics, or Wall Street.

And the Wall Street background, which is my background, is in fact a relationship background. It's people on Wall Street or salespeople. So, a third of the CFOs are probably relationship people because a third came from Wall Street is one way to think about it. And, you know, typically the people who become CPAs...

Are the people who like their, their numbers organized and they're less social. And so that would be typically people who are sort of less relationship oriented. Yeah. I 

[00:29:29] Annie Riley: hadn't thought about that profile as much, but that's obviously your background. And I remember I had a finance professor actually at Stanford who told us, I don't know how true this is.

We'd have to fact check it, that the CFO track was actually the number one role that then was promoted internally to CEO. And I thought that was very interesting because I didn't, I wouldn't necessarily have expected that. And I thought that that was very 

[00:29:55] Jeff Epstein: cool. That's very different by industry. So what I learned in the television industry is the CEOs of the television business were the programmers, the people who created the show, the creative people.

And if it wasn't that they were the ads, the salespeople, either the people who sold the shows or sold the ads on the show. So number one priority was. The producer, number two, was sales and CFOs were way down the list. And then I joined technology and I found out the number one CEO profile was an engineer, product and engineering, and number two was sales, and CFO was way down the list.

So I spent my career in two industries, media and technology, where the CFO was actually not very important, relative to the other functions. Now, if you went into banking or insurance or real estate. That, of course, the CFO is the key role. And there are exceptions. You know, Safra Katz, the CEO of Oracle, was the CFO of Oracle.

So there certainly are exceptions. 

[00:30:50] Annie Riley: Yeah, it's interesting to see how that shakes out across different industries. And that makes sense based on what is most important to their business. I've heard you talk about orgs that you joined as you were building your career. For example, I think you were part of YPO at some point.

How do you recommend people think about Joining those types of organizations, potentially even when they're more junior, what are things that, you know, might be like the mini YPO before you're eligible for that type of thing? How should people be thinking about those as avenues for building connections and getting where they want to go?

[00:31:24] Jeff Epstein: Well, I, I've always thought that having peers who you learn from and you share ideas with has been very helpful. You know, even when you're a student, you probably have student groups where you're study groups or things like that. YPO, which is Young Presidents Organization, is an extraordinary group. And if anyone is ever the president of a company, I think under the age of 40 is the criteria.

And if you have a chance to join, I'd highly recommend it. At Bessemer, I've created the peer group that I wanted to join, a CFO peer group with 200 members. There's a group called the Operators Guild, which friend of mine Casey Wu runs, which is operators, not just CFOs, but chief operating officers and people like that as well.

If you don't have a peer group that's easy for you to find or join, you can create your own. Just call up four or five people who have your title at comparable companies where you're not direct competitors and say, let's go out to lunch and let's talk about what's going on. And my guess is 80 percent of the people you ask will say, that's a great idea.

I'd love to do that. And I just read the biography of Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson, and he was doing that his whole life. He created a group called the Junto in Philadelphia when he was in his 20s. He was a printer, he got 12 friends together, and they met every month, and it lasted for 45 years.

These are his lifelong friends. 

[00:32:38] Annie Riley: That's amazing! Yeah, I love that idea of build your own. You know, if you can't find what's out there or maybe if there's something where there's some astronomical fee to join that doesn't make sense for you, you can create your own network. And it sounds like you've done a great job of that with the CFO.

Is it the CFO council that you have at best? I don't know the 

[00:32:57] Jeff Epstein: name of it. Even on a social basis, when we moved to Darien, Connecticut years ago and we had young children, The YMCA had something called the newcomers club, which was, they would assign you to 12 people, 12 couples to a group who all had moved to town that year, who all typically would have, you know, one year old babies and every month you'd have dinner at a different person's house.

And so, of course, over the course of a year, you had dinner 12 times with these other couples at everybody's house. And it ended up some people would move and came in and out, but there were four couples who had dinner every year for 10 years. These are people who have been lifelong friends now. If you have a young family and you don't have a newcomers club, I highly recommend just creating it.

Just get other people who moved to town and, and do that. It's phenomenal. Yeah, 

[00:33:44] Annie Riley: that's super cool. And have any of those connections, those social connections, have any of them yielded interesting professional opportunities for you over the years? Or have they been, I mean, social connections are important too, but I am curious if any of those have opened any 

[00:34:00] Jeff Epstein: doors.

Well, out of that group, they were all terrific people. It was one, uh, opportunity. One of them is a guy named Steve Mandel, who created Lone Pine Capital, which is enormously successful hedge fund. He's now a billionaire. And when he started his hedge fund, I personally invested and family that I was working with who was helping them manage their money invested as well.

And we had very attractive returns. 

[00:34:23] Annie Riley: That's great. Yeah, I love stories like that because you don't go in. I think people often think about relationship building and networking and they get stuck in this transactional place. Every relationship, you just don't know what's going to come out of it, whether they're a social friend or a student or a direct report of yours.

I wanted to ask you, Jeff, so again, you've been called the trillion dollar connector and I'm curious, who inspires you with the way that they. Network, build relationships, keep in touch with people. You're kind of, you know, at the pinnacle, it seems, of relationship building. Who do you look up to as they do this?

[00:35:03] Jeff Epstein: You know, I don't really have an example of someone who I've talked to personally about it, but I've read about it. And one way to think about it is people may know the word Rolodex, that before there was computers, there was, people kept their... Contacts on pieces of paper in a roll, which was called a Rolodex.

And people like Henry Kissinger had a Rolodex with 5, 000 names on it. And it was presidents and Kings and secretaries of state all around the world. And he was a professor at Harvard. And, you know, if you had Henry Kissinger on your board, he, he could call anyone in the world and get them on the phone.

And, you know, that's one reason why he was on Elizabeth Holmes board at Theranos, because he had phenomenal connections. And in fact, One way she got Rupert Murdoch and the DeVos family to invest in Theranos was through Henry Kissinger. So there's a level of politicians and the very senior people, the entrepreneurs, who all know each other and they can reach out to each other.

And so I've heard about that and I have a sense that that happens and I'm doing it in a. Much different level. 

[00:36:05] Annie Riley: Yeah. You've talked elsewhere about how Silicon Valley is a very close knit place, to your point. Like there's this group of investors, entrepreneurs, people call each other, and how someone one day could be your competitor, your arch enemy at a company, and then a few years down the line, they're your co worker, they're your customer, and you know, you keep kind of encountering the same people.

I'm curious if you have an example of that in your own career. 

[00:36:31] Jeff Epstein: I can't think of a specific example of that, but what it reminds me of is every once in a while, a friend of yours is going to get fired. And sometimes they get fired publicly and it's sort of embarrassing. And then no one calls them because they're awkward.

They don't want to that guy's probably feeling man or woman is feeling bad about their career. That is exactly the time to call them. So literally the day after the news comes out, they've been fired. You should call them up and say, let's go out to lunch. It has to go. I guarantee you'll be the only one who did it.

And that's a hell of a way of helping people who are either friends of yours or business acquaintances of yours. And the chances are, you know, I'm saying these are people who haven't committed crimes and haven't committed fraud. They just, you know, people, it happens all the time that people are in the wrong place at the wrong time and it doesn't work out.

But to me, that's, the question is, how can you be helpful? And that's an important, especially when people need help. 

[00:37:24] Annie Riley: I think that's super timely because this year we've seen a lot of layoffs and we actually did an episode for job seekers because, you know, it just feels like there's a ton of people who are on the market, you know, having been laid off from these companies that were growing, growing, growing, and then many of them came to a screeching halt this year.

And so I think, you know, a lot of us. Can take that advice because we have a lot of friends who, even if it happened earlier this year, right? It's not too late to make that call. 

[00:37:53] Jeff Epstein: Assuming there are people who you admire and you think they're capable, you probably could be helpful to them. And if not, by making introduction, just by talking to them and hearing what they're, the process they're going through and, and being a sounding board.

Has there 

[00:38:06] Annie Riley: been anybody in your experience who's been there for you when you've been going through maybe a hard time in your career, not necessarily a layoff or a firing, but you know, we all have low moments. Who's been that support for you or who's helped you in that way? 

[00:38:23] Jeff Epstein: Well, my wife has been, I mean, we've been married for 40 plus years and she's always been there for me.

Professionally. The people who have often been helpful are people who are professional advisors. So for a CFO, it would be an investment banker, a corporate lawyer, people who have relationships with recruiters, people who have relationships with lots of companies. I would say the bank, several, I could think of, uh, people who've become personal friends over the years who are bankers, who, who were very helpful to me when I, there were times where I would be between jobs and think about what I'm going to do next.

And they were eager to help. And of course, they had a self interest because they wanted me for, to be a future client. 

[00:39:01] Annie Riley: Back to those jobs, academy jobs. I think, you know, those folks have a ton of exposure and, and those sound like very great long term relationships. Jeff, do you have anything else that you were hoping to cover today?

We've covered a lot of ground, but if there's anything else, any story you wanted to share, any topic you wanted to cover, I just wanted to open it up to you in the last few minutes that 

[00:39:26] Jeff Epstein: we have here. Well, the great thing about this whole idea of relationships and introductions is It's not all or nothing.

It's easy to start in a small way. And so, you know, no matter how much experience you have or whatever you're doing, you meet with someone, you say, just ask, how can I be helpful? And if they say, gee, I would love to meet this person, or I'd love to do this or learn about that, think about as if someone you know who would make an introduction would be helpful and then make double opt in.

So don't immediately introduce them. Just email your friend and say, I've met person X, Y, Z. I think they're really interesting. Here's why I think you might want her. Want to meet them, do that five or 10 times and see what happens. And if you end up with 10 no's, then, you know, maybe you're just, don't, you're not thinking about it, right.

Or maybe you don't have the right relationships, but wouldn't surprise me if you have. Five or six yeses and one or two people say, wow, thank you so much for making that connection because I wouldn't have heard about that person. I wouldn't have known about that before. I think it's a very easy thing to start and as an experiment, I'd highly recommend trying.

[00:40:27] Annie Riley: Yeah, absolutely. I heard you on another show talk about asking a question. Someone asked you, what's an earned secret that you have? And you talked about a very powerful question that you can ask others in conversation to say, well, what is... The single most important thing here, like when you're starting a job, when you're hiring someone, focusing in on that one most important thing.

And I'm curious, you know, our audience are folks who want to become better at building relationships. They want to be masterful networkers. They want to have great long term relationships that are meaningful, but also yield results the way yours have. What would you say is the single most important thing?

That you would leave our listeners with. 

[00:41:12] Jeff Epstein: If your goal is to build these relationships, the question that you should ask yourself is, how could I be helpful to that person? So what do I know that that person might wanna know about? So let's say you wanna get to know a venture capital partner. What do venture capital partners want?

They want deal flow. So gi, you just met this interesting company vendor. I talked to three CFOs who just bought the vendor product. It's terrific. I know they're gonna, they're not raising venture capital now, but they're gonna need to raise venture capital at some point in the future. I wanted to meet this.

VC, I, I reach out to them, maybe they're a Stanford alum, so I connect them on LinkedIn and I say, Hey, I just ran into this really interesting company. They're probably going to want venture capital next year. They're growing a hundred percent a year. Uh, would you like to learn more about it? You know, 90 percent of venture capitalists you, you send that note to are going to say, yes, I'd like to learn more because you're helping them.

And so the question is when you, when you think about these people you'd like to have relationships with, the question is, how can you be helpful? And you don't want to be overly aspirational. You don't want to cold call Henry Kissinger because he's not going to want to talk to you. So the question is, who do I know who's sort of at my level or my age or went to my school or there's some reasonable connection with where I can make that connection.

[00:42:22] Annie Riley: Yep. Back to the walk, crawl, run. You know, sometimes things take one, two, three steps. And so I think that's great advice. And, uh, you know, folks now have that single most important thing they can walk away with. So Jeff, if folks want to learn more from you, uh, where can they find 

[00:42:38] Jeff Epstein: you? My email is jeff, J E F F at bvp.

com, best of our venture partners. com. Uh, you could try on LinkedIn, but sometimes I don't see all the LinkedIn things, but so just email me as fine. 

[00:42:49] Annie Riley: Okay, amazing. Well, Jeff, I had already learned so much from you in Lean Launchpad, and, you know, it was such a joy to get to learn even more about your story and, you know, the way you've handled relationship building in your career. So, thank you so much for joining us. It's just been such a pleasure chatting with you today. 

[00:43:08] Jeff Epstein: Annie, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure for me as well. When you have a warm connection, everything is easier. Making a sale, finding a hire, landing a job. But keeping track of who you know and understanding the full scope of your network is really hard.

Connect the Dots makes it simple and automatic to keep a complete record of your professional relationships in one place, then share your network with friends and coworkers in a much more effective way. Get on the waitlist at ctd.ai.