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• Collaborative approach to solving global challenges through software and hardware combinations |
• Ecosystem-driven development where value is created by solving problems together |
• Examples of successful projects such as Tinkerbell OSS, otel-cli, and Equinix labs |
• Emphasis on "doing well by doing good" and creating a bigger opportunity tent |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Well, hi, Zac. I've been looking forward to this for a really long time... Summer of 2019, specifically. Welcome, and thank you for making this happen. |
**Zac Smith:** Well, Gerhard, it only took us a year and a half, but we're ready now. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. The last year didn't count. It was a crazy one, right? |
**Zac Smith:** Exactly. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I have many questions, but I'll start with this one... Were you at KubeCon, by any chance? |
**Zac Smith:** This past -- in October was it? |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah, the North America one. |
**Zac Smith:** No, I wasn't there. We have a great team there, and we were doing our cloud-native cookbook. I'm not sure if you've got a copy. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I didn't, no. |
**Zac Smith:** Yeah, we decided to organize an open source cookbook that we all did during the pandemic, which was - you know, we were all stuck at home, doing something, and so we got, you know, I'm gonna call it cloud-native luminaries to give us their favorite recipe, and we made a physical cookbook. It's available ... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay... |
**Zac Smith:** So that was the big giveaway. I couldn't go, I was unfortunately busy with something else... But we did have a pretty good team there; it was a great turnout. Really nice to see people come together. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Right. Okay... So that cookbook sounds great. The fact that you weren't there - it's okay; I missed things, but I didn't miss you, so I'm feeling better not being there in person... That would have been a disappointment. |
Do you typically go to KubeCons, by the way? Do you have time for KubeCons? |
**Zac Smith:** I mean, I used to in the past. Now it's a little bit different. I've gone from being -- let's call it a CEO of a startup, a company called Packet, which I ran for many years... To now being a busy executive at a Fortune 500 company, which - you know, I have a little bit different set of responsibilities,... |
\[04:02\] So I haven't been to any conferences over the past few years, but I used to go regularly. I was on the road 2-3 weeks a month, including conferences. To me, conferences have always been -- especially things like KubeCon, and earlier I remember being at DockerCon in Barcelona in 2015... And so the best part ab... |
What was my other favorite one...? CoreOS Summit, Monitorama, that was a good one... KubeCon, yes... You know, I didn't ever go to like the Gartner IT Summits those things weren't my gig. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay. So you're right, that's one of the things which I missed the most about being there in person... So even though I did attend this KubeCon, it was a virtual attendance... But I know what you mean; your responsibilities change, and things are a bit different. You're trying to be there as much as y... |
**Zac Smith:** Oh, we had all of our spies. I think about maybe 15 people from the Equinix team went to KubeCon... So it was good. And you know, my favorite conference ever - I don't know if you have a favorite... My favorite was always the ARM Tech Conference. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Interesting. |
**Zac Smith:** The reason why I love the ARM Tech Conference - because it was 100% hallway track. So they would do one kick-off meeting in the beginning, some kind of keynote thing, and then they make you all go away, and they would take over Clare College in Cambridge, and they would take over the professors' rooms, a... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That's amazing. I think that sounds a little bit like Priyanka's happy hour at KubeCon... But yeah, I really enjoy that format. I know what you mean. |
Okay, so I have been a fan of Equinix Metal for a really long time... And actually, it's been so long that it was called Packet. So it's been many, many years. And I've already shared my perspective why in episode 18, with Marques Johansson and David Flanagan, Rawkode... So there's nothing else to add from my side. But... |
**Zac Smith:** Without having to change my T-shirts? |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yes, that as well. \[laughs\] |
**Zac Smith:** Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot of emotion built into that for me. As a founder, you spend years kind of thinking of something, dreaming/working on it, putting your soul into it, and then in my case - we were acquired by a great company, Equinix, and your role changes. It's no longer this th... |
So for me, that was one of the bigger shifts, was just going from -- I mean, Packet was 150 people at its biggest, and we were very much focused and built around speed... How do we find product fit, how do we service our customers, how do we listen...? Because we weren't market-leading anything; we were just trying to ... |
\[08:11\] And Equinix is a much different business; we're well over 10,000 people, we have 23 years in business, 10,000 customers... It is big, and it has a robust and strong culture of its own. So that was a big shift, just moving from kind of -- I'm gonna call it the upstart, forward-thinking, future-driven startup, ... |
And then of course there was -- I'm gonna call it personal/emotional ties. I've mentioned to with a few other people recently, but this is a second business that I had sold. The first business of mine - I joined a gentleman by the name of Raj Dutt in the early 2000's, a company he has started called Voxel, which we the... |
Raj went off and founded a company called Grafana. I started Packet... And what I did is during this transaction, when we knew we were gonna sell the business, the first thing I did - I talked to my brother Jacob and I said "Man, we're gonna have to get ourselves a therapist." Because a lot of this is just dealing with... |
So I think my experience, the first kind of go-around helped me to, in one way, be a little prepared for it, and in the other way just know that I was gonna go through it. So last year, when we changed from Packet and rebranded the business as Equinix Metal, it was still a journey, and I kind of take a little bit of pr... |
That's the other thing... So one, your role changes dramatically from what you're doing and where you're at, and two, you've gotta deal with some stuff as the founder, around maybe the mission that you're on, or the reflection of that for yourself, and help channel that energy in a positive way. So those were, I would ... |
Of course, there have been other things, which are both opportunities and not related to our product and our capabilities, and our scale, and all kinds of other things... But those are the ones that are most personal to me. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay. So there's a follow-up question, but first I have to ask another question, which is linked to what you said. It was very comprehensive. Thank you very much. The precursor is "Why do you do what you do?" |
**Zac Smith:** Like the big Why, or the little Why? |
**Gerhard Lazu:** The big Why. |
**Zac Smith:** Yeah, I mean - my wife asks that to me pretty often... So a few things. I can't give you one answer, but I would say that I love creating things, for sure. I love being involved in that, I love leading it, I love tackling unsolved problems... Just building. So I am a native builder, and you can kind of t... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** "Just listen to me, damn it!" \[laughs\] |
**Zac Smith:** Yeah, she's like, "No, I just wanna --" |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I know how it goes, yeah. I know. I can relate to that. |
**Zac Smith:** So that would be, I think, why I'm an entrepreneur, and why I have that spirit to create things... And it involves -- I invested in some companies, I like to help other founders... You know, I always am interested in that creation aspect, and that really kind of -- I'm gonna call it "satiates" a need wit... |
\[12:05\] And then the other one, which is like "Why this?" After Internap, I kind of vowed not to play in the world of internet infrastructure. I was like, "I'm gonna go get myself a real job, something that isn't 24/7, with all the challenges of our plumbing world of the internet..." And of course, two years later I ... |
And then the other big Why is that I really firmly believe in -- basically, you could kind of say, with all the challenges we have, and I think this week is a big climate change summit going on in Europe, and you can kind of say that some of our biggest challenges today can be looked at as something where we could go b... |
Or we could think of a forward way, where we figure out how to use technology in better ways, more sustainable manners, and use that as kind of lean in to the technology side, versus lean out... And I've always been of the latter, how to lean in. That was one of my -- I believed it from just a pure resources perspectiv... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Oh, yes... |
**Zac Smith:** ...it's the only way that happens... And I'm sure we'll get to the chips and the things at some point, but-- |
**Gerhard Lazu:** We will. |
**Zac Smith:** ...to me, that was really one of the imperatives. And the other imperative which is why I'm so excited to be where I am here at Equinix is to change the business model that we fundamentally have around the distribution of technology. When you look at a computer, like a server, 70% of the Carbon impact of... |
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