Diane Greene

“When we were small, the idea of VMware wasn't well defined, and convincing people to join was difficult. Each person we hired at that time was a big deal.”

“Building a company is so much like racing a sailboat.”

“I just do what I want to do. I look at what's interesting to me.”

“Everything is changing now that we are in the cloud in terms of sharing our data, understanding our data using new techniques like machine learning.”

“If you know where you are going, you have this sixth sense about if everything you do along the way is lined up with that.”

“I'm super partner-oriented. That's how I built VMware.”

“If I could inexpensively pick up a killer sales force without a lot of the other things that I don't necessarily need, yeah, I'd be all there.”

“This whole cloud phenomenon is gaining steam pretty rapidly, and it's really become a strategic imperative for people.”

“There's a lot that machine learning can't do that humans can do very, very well.”

“I have pretty set rules that I go home for dinner every night unless I am traveling.”

“One of the happiest times of my life, I lived in a tent on a porch on Hawaii.”

“Every customer wants to run on all the clouds.”

“Paul Otellini, the former CEO of Intel, I worked with while I was still with VMware. I knew Ram Shriram through the tech industry.”

“At VMware, the engineers worked very closely with our customers, closely with the field, and it was exciting for everyone. So, one of things I did here at Google when I arrived was to combine sales, marketing, engineering, and product.”

“I only use a Chromebook now. I never thought I could do that, but I love it.”

“When I first started VMware, I was very shy and self-conscious about speaking. I grew out of this by giving talks each week in front of the whole company; gradually, as we scaled, I had talked to more and more people, and this is how I conquered my fear of talking to people.”

“Kids are curious, and if you don't lose that, then everything is an adventure.”

“Google is committed to open source and open APIs, and part of that is creating a partner-friendly place.”

“Google went in a consumer direction, and VMware was system infrastructure. But there are a lot of parallels and similarities.”

“It's a good thing to remember that hiring will get easier as you scale - but you should also never drop your standards.”