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**Adam Stacoviak:** Not to go too deep into this scenario for you, but when you gave this speech, and you said you were "trying to hold it together", you must have been terrified in that moment, to give that speech. Were you trying to -- I mean, without giving away what the details specifically were, were you trying to... |
**Adam Jacob:** No... I was trying to remind them who they were. Like, we had built this incredible company, we'd built this incredible community... We were having an incredible impact on those enterprises. And I would -- look, for as much impact as Docker has had, and it has had an incredible impact, I know what Chef ... |
\[01:28:03.27\] When we sold Chef -- we had tried to sell it years before... There was a moment where nobody would buy it for a dollar. And this is a company with tens of millions of dollars in revenue, recurring, growing 20% year over year... Like, it's great. Not one f\*\*\*ing dollar, because the market had just tur... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I guess in a way you're probably giving this speech to yourself too, which is why you went away and did what you did, because it landed on your own -- like, sometimes you come up with the idea, and then you say it out loud, and then it becomes... Like, it was real beforehand, and it was still true b... |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah, yeah. And thinking about it now, and talking to you about it - like, I'm welling up now just thinking about it. I don't think I'm going to cry, but I might. If I do, great podcast material. But yeah, of course I was giving it to myself. |
Of course I was. And look, in the years since, I've been in therapy, and learned a lot, and I'm improving... But it's not easy for me to talk about, like most people... There's some people for whom they can talk about how they're feeling, and it's like very difficult for me to talk about how I feel. If you ask me what'... |
And yeah, so there was a lot of internal pressure that had sort of built up there that needed release. I think part of why the speech was good was because that same energy came out in the speech. I used that as fuel. And because I had allowed that to happen when I gave the speech, suddenly all these emotions I had not ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. I know that's vulnerable to put that kind of stuff out there, and to share that... But I think that's -- it's a beautiful thing, because we live in this world where it's a one or a zero. It's on or it's off. And especially in the developer world, things are ve... |
**Adam Jacob:** Well, thank you. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And just telling of your willingness to share the journey. |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah. I mean, because of that experience in open source and all the people who have helped me -- you know, if I hadn't met Jesse Robbins and he hadn't believed in Chef, and hadn't believed in me, and hadn't believed in those things, there wouldn't have been an Ops Code. And if there hadn't been an Ops C... |
\[01:32:09.13\] And I think you have a responsibility at some point, when you reach a certain level of professionalism, to help other people climb that same pyramid. If it wasn't for Ezra, where would I be, you know? And Ezra was higher on that pyramid than I was. And in that moment, he didn't have to help me, but he c... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What's the tattoo say? |
**Adam Jacob:** It's just three lines that reminds me that I have things that matter in my life, and that they're not all equal. There's some things I care about more than others, and I should focus on the things that matter the most. So like my family. And it's like in the shape of -- it's kind of a rounded off, sort ... |
But it's there to remind me that I have things I value, and that I need to keep those things in my mind while I live my life. And I think that when you think about your life, and you think about the work that you do, or you think about all the things that you've done, there's things that I'll do that will matter when I... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Dang, man... |
**Adam Jacob:** I don't want that to be now, thank you... But I care more about that than I do about winning. I care about how I win, because I really believe that you can win better by doing it that way. You can win by being good, and by being a person who cares, and being a person who helps other people. |
There's a company that I talked to not that long ago, just getting started, absolutely gonna wind up competitive to System Initiative; started by a bunch of very credible people, who I helped them get funded because I introduced another person who should fund them. I was like "Here's the person that should fund you." A... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, for sure. As I'm hearing your story, obviously a lot of tech founders run parallel to some degree to the storyline of Silicon Valley, the TV show. Did you watch that? |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah, I watched most of it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** End to end? |
**Adam Jacob:** I don't think I watched it all the way to the end. Same thing, a little too close to home. I can't watch the... I really struggled to watch all the dramatizations of crazy founders who do fraud. I can't watch the Elizabeth Holmes documentaries. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:35:52.19\] Well, there's no fraud in this one. Well, there's a little bit of blurred lines, but no fraud. |
**Adam Jacob:** I know. But I have this deep part of me... I was playing Mass Effect last night, the first one, and I decided I was gonna try and be a mean person. And I literally couldn't make mean person choices. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I feel ya. That's how I am. |
**Adam Jacob:** I just couldn't do it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I can't make mean person choices either. I really can't. |
**Adam Jacob:** So when I watch those things, and I think about myself and the part of my job that requires me to go out and sell, I'm like "Ooh, am I a fraud? Did I lie?" And it keeps me up at night. And I didn't, and I'm not. And also, it gives me anxiety. So I stopped watching Silicon Valley, because it was too much... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, the reason why I ask is because there was a scene where Richard Hendricks - which was the main character you're familiar with, because you watched season one at least - was juxtaposed against Gavin Bellson, pretty much the entire thing. Gavin Bellson was the villain... He was the one that was ... |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah. If you're winning, you're gonna have better competition. A sign of winning is competition. Puppet was winning, therefore Chef existed. Yeah? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Adam Jacob:** And one way to look at it was I was taking away from the potential of Puppet. Another way to look at it was I validated Puppet. I validated that market. We grew together. We did that together. And yeah, all the competitive juices - I really think that's how you need to look at it, if you're a profession... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Literally training hard. |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah. So let's figure it out. Let's go. I want that. I want there to be competition, I want it to be difficult in that way. I wanna win, but not because -- I don't wanna win because I murdered everyone I see. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's no fun. |
**Adam Jacob:** \[01:39:47.07\] I mean, there's certainly no one left to hang out with at the end... And certainly they're the people who are most likely to be able to talk to you about how it is. Like, they're the ones you can most talk to about "Oh, that's awful. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I know what that fe... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Don't punch people. |
**Adam Jacob:** Not if you can help it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Unless you're in a mosh pit. |
**Adam Jacob:** Sometimes you've gotta. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Fair game. |
**Adam Jacob:** Yeah, I mean, probably not, right? You're kind of a jerk then too, but... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, I suppose... Well, it's at least accepted if you get it. |
**Adam Jacob:** I explained to my daughter that every now and again, sometimes you have to punch someone. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay. |
**Adam Jacob:** And you want it to be rare, you know? Like, you want it to not be a thing you do regularly or easily. But if you're gonna have to punch someone, you'd prefer to be the one who punches first, than second. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What is it that matters to you, Adam? I know what you're doing now. Let's fast-forward a little tiny bit, and I'll do the job for you. Eventually, you sell Chef. I'd love to get into the details of that. I know you kind of stepped away in a way, I don't know the full story; I'd love it from the hors... |
**Adam Jacob:** The people that I love, and the life that we can create together. I care about my family, and I care about how my family goes forward in the world, and what their lives are like. That's the thing that matters to me. I know that's cliché, but it's true. |
And then I care about how I spend my time. You have a limited amount of it, and so I need work that is compelling, I need to care, I need to believe that the art of it is worth doing, because I want to play that game, because it's the funnest game I've ever played. It's the game I've been playing since I was eight, and... |
And so yeah, we sold Chef, I had stepped away very slowly... I basically left -- I knew I was leaving, and had told Barry Crist, who's fantastic, the CEO of Chef, that I was going to leave. And then I basically took a year to do it, by just sort of-- |
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