Lenny: Today my guest is Sam Schillace. Sam has an incredible resume that is very hard to summarize succinctly. I'll give it a shot. Currently, he is corporate vice president and deputy chief technology officer at Microsoft, where he leads efforts in the consumer product space, infrastructure, and AI. Sam is most known for basically inventing Google Docs with his company Writely, which was acquired by Google, and became the foundation for what is now Google Workspace, which currently has over one billion active users a month. After joining Google, Sam ended up responsible for many of Google's consumer applications, including parts of Gmail, Maps, Automotive, Groups, Reader, and more. He's also founded six startups, was senior vice president of engineering at Box through their IPO. He's also worked at Intuit, Macromedia. He was even a VC at Google Ventures for a time. As you'd suspect, we had a fairly wide-ranging conversation, but the core focus was around innovation, how to think big, how to come up with original ideas, why optimism is so important and powerful, and also a ton of career advice. Sam is hilarious and not what I imagined a corporate vice president at Microsoft would be like, which gives me even more respect for Microsoft. A big thank you to Brett Berson for making this introduction. With that, I bring you Sam Schillace, after a short word from our sponsors.
Currently, he is corporate vice president and deputy chief technology officer at Microsoft, where he leads efforts in the consumer product space, infrastructure, and AI.