George Hu on Problem Solving
When the intern rises to lead the company
I will admit it: George Hu scared the hell out of me. There I said it but I know I'm not alone. George was seriously intimidating. An intern who rose to the #2 position in one of the most iconic companies in SaaS. Harvard undergrad. Stanford mba. 30 Under 30.
I learned a ton from George. Mostly about data, insights, how to analyze a problem, how to present the data.
To illustrate this story, let me take you back to some pivotal years in Dreamforce, probably 2007 or 2008 as I recall. The conference was already getting big, our program spend was enormous compared to the overall marketing budget, we had probably outgrown our events agency, our data was less than perfect.
George I think had just gotten promoted to CMO and while he knew very little about event logistics, he was a master at analyzing data and problems. He had a way of looking at budgets that was still foreign to the above average event expert. Amongst other things, he had us break down items through multiple lenses including fixed and variable costs. He could analyze quickly; I remember one meeting where frustrated by what we had brought back to him, he said something like: "I don't have a problem explaining things to you. Just don't make me repeat things." (He lacked some empathy at the time, but boy, he made us all better and raise our game.)
It was worth it. He made me better. Thanks GHu.
