While Nadella's magic turnaround of Microsoft is commendable

Shantanu Narayen, pulled off an equally ballsy transformation of a struggling Adobe

Quick

2) Like countless other global-tech CEOs, Shantanu has middle class Indian roots too

He was born and brought up in a Hyderabad based Telugu household

An avid reader growing up, for the longest time he dreamt of becoming a journalist

3) However, passion took a backseat and he ended up enrolling at Osmania University for Electronics Engineering

In 1984, Shantanu made a follow on leap to pursue masters at the Bowling Green University in the US

4) After a quick gig at a startup called Measurex Automation Systems, where he learnt how to wrestle early stage company building, Shantanu hopped on over to a gig at Apple in Cupertino

While at Apple for some 6 years, he also earned an MBA from UC Berkeley

5) In 1996, Shantanu floated his own startup Pictara, which was mostly a dud

However, at a trade conference pitching Pictara, he ended up meeting an Adobe employee. They vibed well

Stunned by Shantanu’s knowledge for the “digital photo” game, he was invited to work for Adobe

6) Adobe pulled in Shantanu as their Senior VP and general manager of worldwide product development

4 years later, the man he met at the conference, Bruce Chizen, would go on to become the CEO of Adobe

Shantanu got direct access to the top office, and his career a huge boost

7) Quickly climbing the ladder — with valuable contribution to the company's strategic direction, by 2006 he was right next to Bruce Chizen, serving as the President and COO of Adobe

8) Bruce stepped aside from the CEO role in 2007, surprising everyone

The board of Adobe turned to Shantanu's guidance to drive Adobe, as the rise of the Internet had begun weakening some of its business verticals

9) Just about then the financial crisis shocked global corporations

By mid-2009, the economy had turned sour and Adobe’s shares tumbled from $45 a year ago to $17 a pop — down nearly 60%

Shantanu Narayen had a tough gig at his disposal

10) From Day 1, Shantanu's focus for revival was set on one opportunity — Cloud

The old Adobe had grown into a giant selling design software & graphic tools, via licenses and CDs

Shantanu instead packaged flagship products in one bundled subscription service ‘Creative Cloud’

11) At that time, Adobe was making $2 billion a year on licenses. The self-cannibalization was widely criticized.

But the new CEO pressed on

He soon made a splashy $2 billion acquisition of Omniture, a web marketing analytics company, pushing further into internet services

12) Mobile revolution and the rise of HTML5 presented another obstacle — threatening the utility of Adobe's Flash Player product.

Even Steve Jobs went on a rant against Adobe's approach to the web-based media-tech

Shantanu persisted, focusing on design and productivity tools

13) Fast forward 10 yrs

Bets paid off and switching to a cloud-first model turned out a genius decision

From 2010 to 2020 Adobe crushed all projections-

- Revenues grew ~4x
- Profits grew ~8x
- Booked $100b in market cap in 2018
- 5th largest global tech company by 2020

14)

Those 10 years of surgical focus and execution put Shantanu Narayen on a different orbit altogether

- Awarded the Padma Shri in 2019
- ET Global Indian of the year in 2018
- 4+ times World’s best CEOs by Barron magazine
- Member of Obama’s Management Advisory Board

15)

Today Adobe trades at close over $220 billion in market cap

Shantanu himself is worth about $250 million

Fun fact

Surprisingly, Shantanu went to the same high school as Satya Nadella in Hyderabad, although they never knew each other back then

Compiled by @Ruchir_V26 at http://www.filtercoffee.co 

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