How to find a Killer Idea worth $40B

In this interview, Benoit Dageville explains how he and Thierry Cruanes left Oracle without a finished startup idea and spent months thinking from first principles about what the cloud could make possible. He describes the insight that became Snowflake's foundation, why simplicity matters more as technology becomes more powerful, and why revolutionary products still need to feel familiar enough for customers to adopt them. He also explains how direct disagreement, narrow product focus, and full trust in new hires helped Snowflake scale.

I'm Benoit Dageville. I'm one of the co-founders at Snowflake. Snowflake is a company whose mission is to revolutionize access to data and AI in the cloud. Myself and Thierry Cruanes, who is the other co-founder of Snowflake, the funny thing is that we never wanted to do a company.

We never wanted to do a startup, really. We wanted to build an amazing product. We spent months in my apartment, and we were dreaming. You have to dream to find the big idea.

You have not to be scared, too. Dream about what it would mean if only that was possible. What would be the impact? And then you work back from that if statement, and you see, maybe we can make it happen.

The number one quality of an amazing product is simplicity. If you can use a product without knowing a lot about this product, this product is going to be amazing. It's always tempting to say, "Oh, I'm going to appeal to everyone." When you try to make everyone happy, no one will be super happy.

Amazing technology, I always say, is built from arguments and discussion, and, "I disagree with you. I think we should do this." "No, we should do that." We have a saying at Snowflake, "Go direct."

We are human beings, so we have conflicts, we have disagreements. So, it's important to be able to do that in a very secure environment where people feel that they can speak up. They can say, "No, I think this is not going to work." And it doesn't matter who you are to say this type of things.

To encourage creativity, you have to encourage everyone to speak. As of today, we are about 9,000 employees. The number one lesson that we learned to grow a company is to hire someone that you trust. Otherwise, you become the bottleneck.

If you hire someone, you have to absolutely trust them from day one. You don't build that trust. I'm from Europe, and Europe, you don't trust people. You start almost with zero.

As you know these people, you give them points, so to speak, and then you fully trust them. The US is the reverse. You start with 100%. You never met this person, you give full trust, and then you remove if you see that it doesn't work.

You have to trust and give someone else the opportunity, do their thing, and this is why you hired them. So, this trust is a super critical aspect, and my take is, give it 100% to them from day one. Don't do the European thing.

As you can see from my thick French accent, I am French by origin, but I lived in the Bay Area for many, many years. I came here in '96. I did my PhD in database systems, but I felt that in France, there was no real opportunity to create new systems. And I'm a creator.

I'm somewhere an artist. It's stupid to say, but software engineers sometime feel of themselves a little bit as artists because they build new things. And France was not a good environment to do that. I did research in France, but then I left to join Oracle, the core development.

Myself and Thierry Cruanes, who is the other co-founder of Snowflake, we were both working in the core database division at Oracle. And the funny thing is that we never wanted to do a company. We never wanted to do a startup, really. We wanted to build an amazing product.

We thought the cloud could be a revolution for data access. Traditionally, people would put data in their data centers, and they would use systems to access this data. We thought with the cloud, we could create a solution so simple where people would not have to manage infrastructure. They could just ask questions to their data, and Snowflake would give them answers.

And to do that, we had to do a startup. We had to do a company. So, Thierry and I, we left Oracle, and when we started with Thierry, we had no idea what we were going to do. We had no idea if we were going to find a great idea.

Finding a great idea takes time. We started in August 2012, and we worked until end of 2012 to start to build a team. So, I had a small apartment on El Camino. Thierry was coming every day to my apartment.

We bought a whiteboard, we had two laptops, and we thought completely from the ground up of what cloud means for these data systems. How cloud can be impactful? How can we build Snowflake in this completely different environment than traditional data centers? And we were dreaming.

And then you work back from that if statement, and you see, maybe we can make it happen. It was a big if. It was a little bit of a dream, but maybe it's not. And let's look at the new technology.

And that's the other important thing: technology unlocks new possibilities, and I think it's important to understand what new technology can do to an industry, and think back a little bit and say, "Wow, cloud, that's what cloud can do." And that's really what we were looking for: how cloud can have a dramatic impact on this industry, which was super old and super boring, somewhere. The world of data, databases, it's boring. And what this great idea was about: in the cloud, you can provision a lot of resources—servers, machines.

So, if you have, let's say, 10 machines, or if you have 100 machines, with 10 times more machines, you can go 10 times faster. So, we say, "Wow, and we know how to do that." So, we said, "Oh, wow, in the cloud, we can allocate maybe 100 servers, 1,000 servers, and we can go therefore 100 times faster, 1,000 times faster." Because we rent the compute resources to the cloud provider, when we're done, we can return that.

And so, in the cloud, if you go 10 times, 100 times faster, you pay exactly the same price because you use these resources 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times less. Even though you have more resources, because you use them less, you pay the same price. So, we said fast in the cloud is free, and if we can do that and this was, of course, technically very challenging but if we can do that, we can build a system that can go 10 times, 100 times faster than any system that exists today, at the time, and yet it will not cost for our customers more. So, that's the killer idea, and when we had this idea, we said if we can make it happen, if we can build it, then we have an amazing company.

So, we knew that this was going to be a revolution, and actually, it became a revolution. We started to have one customer, two customers, and they were blown away by what you could do with Snowflake, and without complexity. It was simple to use, because we removed all the friction. We were able to get more and more customers, and people would talk to each other, and then it gets to this viral state where it exploded.

We were very worried about that because we said, if we show that Snowflake is so different, people are going to be worried, too. At the same time, if you say it's exactly the same as what you are using, people are not going to adopt you. So, you have to find a good balance. Sometime you have to explain yourself in comparison to existing technology.

We, for example, use same terminology that was used in the old days. So, we had a system called warehouse. Everyone knew warehouse, that's a familiar concept. So, you have to use existing concepts such that you can help people go your way and your revolution.

So, somewhere, if you say it's a revolution, it's possible that it would not work. So, you have to bring them slowly, not too fast. So, it's tricky. It's very tricky. It's a lot of explanation, how you explain it, how you make it look familiar somewhere, even though it's very different. So, it's an art.

The number one quality of an amazing product is simplicity. If you can use a product without knowing a lot about this product, this product is going to be amazing.

Think of cars, think of iPhone, think of simple products. These are the one where you say, "Haha, wow!" And a product which is simple, but at the same time so powerful. People who have complex products, but expose this complexity to the end users, are not making great products.

So, for me, it's first of all simplicity, but underneath, again, if you take the analogy of the iPhone, the iPhone is nothing but simple piece of technology. It's probably the most advanced piece of technology. But when you use these products, they are simple. So, that's, to me, is probably the number one aspect of a great product.

Take three fingers and list all the things that you could do potentially, but try to limit it to few, very few important thing. And you rank, you just say, our product, obviously, need this and that. It's always tempting to say, "Oh, I'm going to appeal to everyone," and then you do a bad job because you're trying to make everyone happy. When you try to make everyone happy, no one will be super happy.

So, the way to streamline is both to really focus on few things, and also to make this few things focus on few persona. Don't try to appeal to everyone. We have a saying at Snowflake, "Go direct." We are human beings, so we have conflicts, we have disagreements. And that's very important to recognize. Amazing technology, I always say, is built from arguments and discussion, and, "I disagree with you. I think we should do this." "No, we should do that."

And these discussions are the thing that really makes the best product at the end, because you get to this consensus, you understand different opinions. So, it's important to be able to do that in a very secure environment where people feel that they can speak up. They can say, "No, I think this is not going to work." And it doesn't matter who you are to say this type of things. So, I think to encourage creativity, you have to encourage everyone to speak.

The most important to grow is indeed to hire someone that you trust. Otherwise you become the bottleneck and you don't want to have this full control of everything. How you gain this trust is interesting. I remember actually, the first one was asking a lot of questions before he wanted to sign. He was asking a ton of questions. Like how it's going to work and was suspicious. I am from Europe and in Europe you don't trust people and you start with almost zero. And then as you know these people and trust them, you give them point and fully trust them. 

You build that trust over time. In U.S., you start with 100%. You give them full trust and then you remove. If you see that it doesn't work and I would say the biggest thing for me is that from day one I give full trust. If you hire someone, you have to absolutely trust them from day one. You don't build that trust. It could not work. We made some hiring mistake and we discovered that it's not working for one reason or another then you can remove this trust. But you start from 100%. And give someone else the opportunity to do their thing and you know this is why you hire them. This trust is a super critical aspect and my take is give it 100% to them from day one. Don't do the European thing.