In this episode of The Anycast, Matt interviews Avi Freedman, the co-founder and CEO of Kentik. Avi has decades of experience as a technologist and networking executive, and he is also a professional poker player.
They talk about the future of cloud networking, how to uncover what your customers really want, and the one skill every leader should have.
Matt and Avi start the conversation by discussing Avi's networking career and how he plans to shake things up in the network monitoring space.
What is networking? According to Avi, networking is lots of little simple things that converge in complex ways mixed with vendor bugs.
Avi's advice for people early in their tech careers: document your learning process. It will not make you look stupid, it will make you look curious.
Avi shares his journey to becoming the CEO of a multi-million dollar company.
How Matt and Avi approach learning and teaching - as soon as you have to teach something, it helps solidify your ideas.
Avi talks about recognition and praise. He reveals the importance of recognizing and praising employees' efforts as well as the best way to find a balance between acknowledging achievements and avoiding unnecessary praise.
If you listen, the customers will guide you to what they want.
For Avi, you don't have to be 95th percentile at everything. If you're 80th percentile at ten different things, you're pretty super-powered.
Matt talks about the value of diversity in problem-solving and decision-making.
Leaders today believe telling people what to do is easier than asking questions. However, Avi and Matt believe being skillful at asking great questions can unlock opportunities you didn't even realize existed.
Avi shares how Kentik delivers reliable, cost-effective network infrastructure at scale.
You need to figure out what's interesting and make that a career versus learning all skills hoping that someone will give you a job.
Avi and Matt break down the art of reading people and negotiating.
Avi talks about his love for poker and the powerful strategic tools that business leaders can use to build efficient company cultures and strong corporate strategies.
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