If you don’t know about the podcast series, This Week in Startups (TWiST), hosted by my friend Jason Calacanis, it’s worth checking out. Jason is a legendary investor and media mogul who has his fingers in every part of the tech industry. Each week, he brings CEOs, business founders, venture capitalists, angel investors, and tech experts into his San Francisco studio to talk about the latest trends and happenings inside the world of Silicon Valley and beyond.
I first met Jason around 10 years ago in Los Angeles. We were playing poker at a friend’s game. His brash poker playing style matches his approach to investing: nothing ventured, nothing gained. But unlike his approach to prospective business ventures, in poker, Jason never met a hand he didn’t like.
Since I’m part of this little startup Cisco, I got to be a guest on the show last week, episode 552. Jason invited me on to talk about entrepreneurship and how it’s been finding its way into big companies. We covered it all – DIY video conferencing, our new business messaging app Cisco Spark (and how he thinks we can monetize it), why John Chambers gave me a job, our theories on mergers and acquisitions, how AirBnB is improving lives, Uber pooling, Luxe, and, actually, a lot more.
Jason’s interest in Cisco on This Week in Startups is a good omen for us. It means Cisco and our Collaboration group are thinking exponentially, moving fast, and creating a culture of innovation. Ironically, after working 30 years to build the gigantic brand that is Cisco, we’ve once again earned startup status.
If you like what you saw me demo on the show, download Cisco Spark from the app store or on your desktop: ciscospark.com. It’s a brand new cloud-based teamwork app with integrated video conferencing, calling, and content sharing. And it’s free.
Using this video to get people excited about collaboration. Collab and sexy and getting mindshare.
Awesome to see Cisco being relevant in the TWiST space! As a millennial it’s nice to see the company I work for showing up on kick a$$ blogs, vlogs, Twitter and more. Keep it up Rowan!
See how Cisco is being called out as the next #Slack. http://www.talkingpointz.com/why-the-slack-bubble-will-burst
Really Cool. Very impressive. I really feel the urge to create/innovate after watching the video. Work in a small team and create something BIG.
Rowan is a truly visionary leader at Cisco. It’s great to see this level of entrepreneurship breaking out and disrupting the market.
Very good interview. I look forward to the next disruption and how it’s used in the ever changing environment we work, live, play, and learn in today.