AI is critical for humanity’s survival: Cisco president on the AI revolution | Jeetu Patel

Jeetu Patel is the president and chief product officer at Cisco, where he leads a team of 30,000 people and is playing a central role in the massive AI infrastructure buildout happening right now. Previously, he spent five years as CPO at Box and 17 years running his own startup. Recently Jeetu organized an AI summit featuring industry leaders like Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, and Fei-Fei Li.

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We discuss:

1. How Cisco went AI-first across 90,000 employees

2. His six-part framework for building great companies: timing, market, team, product, brand, distribution

3. Why he says he couldn’t have done this job without AI

4. His “right to win” strategic framework

5. His communication framework for preventing “packet loss” across an organization

6. Why he flips “praise in public, criticize in private” and does the exact opposite

7. The important communication lesson his mother taught him

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Where to find Jeetu Patel:

• X: https://x.com/jpatel41

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeetupatel

• Website: https://blogs.cisco.com/author/jeetupatel

Referenced:

• Jensen Huang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenhsunhuang

• Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama

• Marc Andreessen: The real AI boom hasn’t even started yet: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/marc-andreessen-the-real-ai-boom

• Fei-Fei Li on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fei-fei-li-4541247

• Lip-Bu Tan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lip-bu-tan-284a7846

• Matt Garman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgarman

• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next

• OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai

• Kevin Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkevinscott

• Cisco: https://www.cisco.com

• Elon Musk on X: https://x.com/elonmusk

• Ray Kurzweil’s website: https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com

• $46B of hard truths from Ben Horowitz: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear (a16z co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/46b-of-hard-truths-from-ben-horowitz

• Aaron Levie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron

• Box: https://www.box.com

• Chuck Robbins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-robbins

• Jeffrey Queisser on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/queisser

• Rick Devenuti on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-devenuti-ba55432

• Jeremy Burton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jburton0

• Wes Bush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_G._Bush

• Michael Capellas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-capellas-36104887

• 10 contrarian leadership truths every leader needs to hear | Matt MacInnis (Rippling): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/10-contrarian-leadership-truths

• Dunbar’s number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

• Pat Gelsinger on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patgelsinger

• Bernie Madoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff

• Taj Mahal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal

• Six Things a Company Needs to Be Successful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnlTsEsm6qM

• Mark Lewis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mlewis62

• Web3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3

• F1: The Movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16311594

• Zak Brown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zak_Brown

• McLaren Racing: https://www.mclaren.com

• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com

• Grok: https://grok.com

• Sizzler: https://sizzler.com

Recommended books:

• Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Useful-Seven-Tools-Life/dp/0593655958

• The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

• The Innovator’s Solution: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-n/dp/B001HYXNKW

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation: