WSO Podcast | E134: Google Strategy + M&A as An Engineer
About
In this episode, Sara walks us through her time at Michigan working toward both a bachelors and masters in engineering as well as how she was able to land an internship alongside other MBAs at Microsoft to help launch her career into strategy and corporate development in the cloud computing space. We learn how her technical background was an asset and about her thought process of transitioning to Google's corp dev team instead of the next shiny startup in silicon valley.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 134) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Sara walks us through her time at Michigan, working toward both a bachelor's and master's in engineering, as well as how she was able to land an internship alongside other MBAs at Microsoft to help launch her career into strategy and corporate development in the cloud computing space. We learn how her technical background was an asset and about her thought process of transitioning to Google's Corp Dev team instead of the next shiny startup in Silicon Valley. Enjoy. All right, Sara, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast. Thanks for having me. So it'd be awesome if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio. Absolutely. So, Sarah, I currently work as part of Google's corporate development team. Originally, I'm from Michigan, went to school at University of Michigan, studying industrial and operations engineering. I have both my bachelor's and my master's and that pivoted from engineering to tech and tech, business and finance. After graduating, I went to work full time at Microsoft Doing Strategy and M&A. After that had a career in venture capital. I'm 12 Microsoft's venture fund and now I'm here at Google doing M&A and investments for Google and Alphabet more broadly. Very cool track. A little bit different than what we typically have on the pod, so I'm excited about this conversation. So let's talk a little bit about your time. Back in undergrad at Michigan, were you? Tell me about what you were thinking you were going to do?
Sara: [00:01:57] Did you have
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:58] Family
Sara: [00:01:58] In any family
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:00] And like strategy or M&A? Or did you have family engineers? What was kind of the background? Did they kind of guide you or were you like, I'm going on my own path? Yeah, a great question, I actually came into school wanting to be a math major, took calc three honors calc three at Michigan and quickly realized pure math was not for me. I had a few friends that were a couple of years older that were in industrial and operations engineering program,
Sara: [00:02:26] And the way that they explained it to me is this is a mix. The degree is really a mix between the business world and the engineering world. So it's basically business with the heavy quantitative background and a lot of emphasis on kind of financial modeling and financial engineering. And I thought that was kind of the perfect intersection for me to kind of combine my strengths in math with my desire to kind of be in a more business role and so transferred to the School of Engineering and ended up just being a great fit for me and kind of what I wanted to do.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:58] And so when did you make that transition, like sophomore year or sophomore year that I made the transfers and came on over? Can you tell me about your internships during school, like how you progressed and what you did there? Yeah, absolutely. I had one
Sara: [00:03:14] Internship that I did for full time. I took a semester off and worked for Mercedes-Benz R&D, and as part of that is very typical for an industrial engineer. I did project engineering. I actually led their EPA emissions testing program for North America. Oh wow.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:31] It's just a six month program. How did you get that? How do you lead? That seems like
Sara: [00:03:35] A big deal. It was a little bit of a big deal. One month into my internship, my manager laughed and they said, well, you've been here for one month. Here you go until we find someone else. And so it was a great experience and very cool to kind of work. Work at an automotive company and kind of developed their process and also do a lot of process improvement as part of what they had been doing for years is kind of the same way. That's interesting to me that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:59] After a month, they were willing to do that. Was it? Do you think it was out of necessity or out of because they saw something in you? You can be honest. You don't worry about you. We won't be bragging, just be honest. I hope it's a mix of both, but it was definitely a necessity. Drove it a lot.
Sara: [00:04:11] I think, you know, getting someone into role and up to speed is not something you can do immediately. And so in the interim, they had someone there that was covering all the bases and was able to drive the process forward. And so they kind of let me run with it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:26] What is even a project engineer do? It is like day to day. Ok, so you're coordinating with the other engineers, you're kind of like the lead. It is it's kind of a project management role mixed with engineering. You kind of oversee the entire process for emissions testing. So we were
Sara: [00:04:45] Bringing in vehicles, getting them tested at regular intervals, running those reports and then giving the cars back and submitting this testing to the EPA.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:55] And that was after your sophomore year or after your junior year. This story is six months that was six months, kind of,
Sara: [00:05:01] Yeah, so it's part of my junior year. I took a semester off and did this, and so it was very valuable to have some full time experience and kind of infused some thinking into kind of what I wanted to do and what I didn't want to do. As I went for and kind in the courses, I took what I wanted to learn a little bit further. So I I thought it was a great experience and highly encourage anyone that wants to take some time off and had some real world experience to do that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:29] It looks like you jumped right into another internship at Goldman after that. Can you tell me about how you even landed that? Because I think a lot of people on this podcast are like Goldman Sachs, you know, it's like the end all, be all. Tell me how you landed that.
Sara: [00:05:41] What type of internship
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:42] Was it for what group stuff like that? Yeah, absolutely. You know, during my junior year, I don't think I had a strong conviction one way or the other in terms of what I wanted to get into. After my
Sara: [00:05:55] Co-op at Mercedes benz, I kind of wanted more business experience, not necessarily knowing entirely what that meant. And through the formal kind of recruiting process that Michigan was lined up with interviews at,at several different companies, some management consulting, some banks and so was had. An interview lined up with Goldman Sachs interview process went really well. I think they really enjoyed kind of somebody with an engineering background bringing a little bit more like quantitative chops into their group and set it up, getting landing the internship and joining Goldman Sachs for a summer and their credit risk and advisory group thinking more about part of their overall finance division, thinking about credit risk and more refined advisory. So you kind of finish that up. Went back to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:46] School for it looks like a semester.
I did, yes, and so have the return offer to go back there full time decided actually to stay at Michigan and pursue a fifth year and finish out my master's and so. University of Michigan has this great program through the Tauber Institute, where they combine Ross Business School and School of Engineering into a joint
Sara: [00:07:09] Program, and they have MBAs, master's of engineering and Masters of Supply Chain. Students come together and it kind of gives an interdisciplinary look across this field and kind of better prepares each of those fields engineering with the business tools that they needed business to. It ends with a little bit of more of the engineering and supply chain and supply chain, engineering and business, and so a really kind of nice interdisciplinary program across the two schools.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:38] Sounds like the people in that program would be really sharp or at least more have a more quantitative background. Can you tell me about like what people from that program typically go
Sara: [00:07:45] On to do? Is it kind
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:47] Of like what you ended up going strategy in M&A, right? Which is not typical? Or it sounds like it's that sounds more like an MBA type
Sara: [00:07:55] Exit, but it's a bit atypical program. I think to your point, I think it does. It's a very high bar to get into the program, and I think it is an amazing opportunity to both learn different skills and learn from the different people in the program. And so typical roots floks from the program go into is, you know, operations role supply chain at companies. Oftentimes they accelerate very quickly in their career. They're leading kind of global supply chains for companies like Tesla, Apple
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:28] Or Warner Bros. Like where the pinnacle is, like the CEO for one of these? Yes, that's he does kind of churn out that type of role. But that being said, I think the skills that you learn
Sara: [00:08:38] Can be applicable across a lot of different industries. And I had other friends that went into more management consulting roles to investment banking and then me that went into kind of more of a strategy and M&A role. So that's like
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:50] A one year program. Typically, it's a combination of of your undergrad and your master's, and so you take courses through your undergrad, and that's why you're able to finish it off in a fifth year in five years. Ok, so tell me about how you started recruiting for Microsoft when you kind of started thinking about strategy or M&A is kind of interesting for me. Was it like you're between your fourth and fifth year or like in your fifth year yeah, it was between my fourth and fifth year that they started the top recruiting cycle. It's a little bit more of a structured recruiting process.
Sara: [00:09:24] So the Taubman Institute for Partners, they have Amazon, BorgWarner, Microsoft and others, Boeing and others that participate and in a more structured way. And so there's a set of interviews at the end. It's actually a matching program. And so you rank the companies that you thought were most interesting after the interview process. They rank you and you actually get matched into internships, and that's
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:48] A great open problem. Great operations problem. Yeah, for like a
Sara: [00:09:54] Game theory, rather. Absolutely. And so very optimized to kind of deliver the best outcomes for both the companies and for the students looking for experiences. And so I went through the interview process with Microsoft as part of that and ultimately got matched into their internship.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:12] Very cool and tell me a little bit about what that internship was like. You know, this was kind of a first strategy role for you, right? Absolutely. Does it feel super like non-technical for you? Did it feel like a good match and tell me about how you felt like, OK, this is something I'm going to do full time. You know, I it was a brand new space for me, I had not worked in tech before. The group that I joined was focused on what was then Microsoft Server into tool business. And so, you know, thinking about cloud computing, backend infrastructure, all things that I had no experience in. So day one of the job kind of came in and I was like, Great, what is the cloud? Let's it there. But the summer internship was an incredible opportunity. I think it was very much, you know. Drinking from a firehose, I think it was a lot to learn at once, but also a great opportunity to kind of bring some more operational engineering skills into more of a strategy project. And so the summer was focused on one strategy project and having kind of the ability to structure that. Think about cost synergies. Think about where are the revenue opportunities for Microsoft to accelerate some of their businesses and then at the end of the summer present to leadership on what what are opportunities for the business, I think was a phenomenal experience. I think learning the
Sara: [00:11:38] Entire crew and having kind of a tangible. Project at the end to present was a was great.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:44] Were you nervous on that final presentation? I'm sure that's nerve wracking to lay leadership having to go off and how many? One of my one of the questions that popped in my head is,
Sara: [00:11:52] Is this along? Are you doing these
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:53] Internship alongside other MBAs or are you doing this along undergrads? It's alongside other MBAs.
Sara: [00:11:59] And so for this project, it was me paired with an MBA and we had a joint project together.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:04] It's pretty impressive. It's kind of like you'd never even got an MBA, but you get this MBA internship. Absolutely. I was part of Microsoft's MBA internship experience, and so got all the perks that went along with that and got some of the incredible MBAs that Microsoft had hired and recruited kind of across the business. Is that because the program, Michigan is so selective that they're willing to do that? Yes, I think so.
Sara: [00:12:25] I think on that team that hired another master's student similar to my trajectory onto the team and had a phenomenal experience with him, I think he was very smart and ended up being a pretty core part of the team. And so they were willing to kind of take on more students from this pathway.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:42] He paved the way. Good for that program. Good rep. Ok, so you're kind of going through you do the final presentation
Sara: [00:12:50] Microsoft business
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:52] Takes off because of your presentation right now because they've been doing really well. No, I will say actually at the time, the leader of the group and our executive sponsor with Satya Nadella before he became CEO. And so he was the ultimate stakeholder for our project, and I think that was a phenomenal experience. Ultimately, I ended up joining Microsoft full a full time after my masters, and by that time he had been promoted to CEO. So it was a great opportunity to get to kind of work with him before he took on that outsized role at the company. For sure, for sure.
A little harder to get in touch with them, probably. But anyway, so you're so you're kind of coming through this program. You did the internship, you get the return offer. Do you accept on the spot or did you say, Hey, I need to shop this a little bit. I need to kind of figure out what my other options are. You know, I was waiting to hear back from Microsoft, and so I went through more of a formal recruiting process at Michigan. I was recruiting at mostly management consulting firms and talking to them. And then kind of later on, what did you think about the
Sara: [00:13:49] Interview process of a McKinsey
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:51] Being BCG case, case, interview process or an Oliver Wyman, whoever you're entering with
Sara: [00:13:56] To a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:57] Strategy in M&A interview? It was actually very similar. And so the interview process for Microsoft revolved around case studies, and so it was actually a very similar process that Microsoft had. Did they expect you to know reps of like how to do it, how to run an M&A process? It was less geared towards an M&A process and more through strategic thinking, how would you approach this problem? Open ended kind of questions to get and get a sense of how do you think through a
Sara: [00:14:24] Problem which makes sense?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:26] They probably have their own bankers, they probably hire bankers when they need to or whatnot. Or is that not true? Do you
Sara: [00:14:33] Guys have your own like, do you guys
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:34] Run the whole process yourself? I can't comment on the internal process at Microsoft,
Sara: [00:14:39] But there is, you know, I think we do all internally, we do a lot of different analysis. We run the process, we do financial modeling. It's a pretty comprehensive process.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:50] Did you did you feel like your degree prepares you for the financial modeling aspect? Or do you feel like you had to do some self study for that?
Sara: [00:14:58] It's interesting the type of financial, the type of modeling in general that that I learned through my master's program was actually a lot more detailed and building kind of much more complex scenario analysis and forecasting models. And being some of that, I think, was actually a very super skill to the M&A team and kind of bolstering our quantitative abilities. But fundamentally, the modeling you need is much more on a simple level. So I think it was still a learning curve to understand, you know, specific to M&A, how to model a deal, how to think through the through the process, how to think through synergies and ultimately arrive at kind of a recommendation and valuation.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:41] Great. So you OK, so you are waiting on that Microsoft offer? Is it typical that they take a little bit of time with their MBA interns as the internship or you already kind of in other processes with consulting?
Sara: [00:15:55] What was your thought process? Go consulting, go back to Microsoft.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:58] What was what was the thoughts in terms of? I mean, you clearly enjoyed your time there.
Sara: [00:16:03] Not summer, I really enjoyed my time, I think I was hoping to get the return off for Microsoft, given the team was so small, I think it was just an open question on if they would have the headcount or not to bring on you. And so you had to kind of obligatory go through the process with other companies.I wanted to kind of look at the entire package that I was being offered and the Microsoft offer came in. It was it was a no brainer for me. I think it was exactly kind of what I wanted to do next and a very easy decision for me. And so stop recruiting with any other firms and accepted it actually the very next day.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:39] So awesome. How'd you feel about moving out to the West Coast? It was a big change, I think most folks that I was friends with in Michigan either ended up in Chicago or New York, and so not many people were talking about moving to the West Coast. I had not any familiarity with Seattle before my internship, but spending a summer in Seattle was beautiful and was just absolutely great
Sara: [00:17:03] To get a chance to go back.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:05] Very cool. So you're you kind of you're you're graduating from your master's program. You're gearing up to start there. Tell me about that kind of first month of what it was like. And you're obviously doing a lot of training, probably some fun. And then. I guess tell me the month after your training finished, like when you actually hit the ground and you're. Did it feel natural because you'd already kind of done the internship? Did you feel like you were catching up at all? And whether you said a little bit about the M&A and stuff like that, but just to get people a sense of what was the hardest part about that? Absolutely. It was extremely unnatural. I think the summer consisted of kind of a broader strategy project so very focused on one one ongoing strategy project. When I joined full time, probably 80 percent of my time was focused on M&A and only 20 percent was focused on more general strategy. It was a lot to dive into focus on. The team had 10 years plus of banking experience, very, very sharp and talented folks that I worked with. I remember I think it was day two and I started. They were like, We're looking at x y z deal. We need you to put together a financial model for the company and then some preliminary thoughts. And I was like, OK, great.
Sara: [00:18:19] And you know, my colleague looked at me and she's like, You seem a little lost. Do you know what you're doing? Have you have you done a model before? And I was like, You know, actually, I haven't done a financial model before of this kind. But if you kind of just walk me through the general overview, I think I can get it. And her question mark was, you know, didn't you learn this during your MBA? I was like, Oh, I don't have my MBA. And I think it was a little bit of a, Oh, why did we hire you moment? But I feel like I proved the team wrong a little bit. I was a quick learner. I, of course, a lot of time to kind of learn the fundamentals and basics and soon actually became kind of the go-to person for all financial modeling on the team.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:58] And how long do you think it took you to get there?
Sara: [00:19:02] Three months, four months, we, you know, four to six months to really feel comfortable and after a year, I think I was, you know, I was the go to person on the team. And so I think the engineering kind of quantitative background helped to kind of absorb and learn all these new things. But it was definitely a big learning curve, and it was great that they had the patience for me to kind of get up to speed and learn the processes. Yeah, that's awesome. So you're
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:27] You're kind
Sara: [00:19:27] Of there for a couple of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:29] Years. Tell me how things progressed. So you became good to finish model or any other kind of things that emerge or change from your one to your two. Or you're just like looking at a ton of deals, you know, probably consummating some of them correct. And then passing on a lot of them, I'm sure. But then tell me a little bit about just how things progress. And when you started thinking, Hey, this this mentors thing is kind of interesting. Or if it came out of the blue. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Sara: [00:19:54] I think, you know, over my tenure on the M&A team at Microsoft, we were very focused on Microsoft's cloud and enterprise business. And so it's a place that's not as natural to think about in tech because it's a lot of backend infrastructure. Its tools, developers use its cybersecurity for your infrastructure. And so learning just those areas, I think, Is always a learning curve, no matter kind of what area within cloud. So every new project was a little bit like, let's learn this from scratch and let's learn about this place, learn about the players, the market, what's happening. And so it never got boring. The job. All this kind of keeps you on your toes because every new area is a new space to think about and learn about. But over time, kind of honed more of the M&A process. The M&A framework and thinking and kind of applying it to deals looked at a lot of deals in my time there and ultimately worked on for deals that closed and ended up being kind of big contributors to microsoft's cloud and enterprise business. And so it's awesome, really great a great deal that I got a chance to work on.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:00] And do you feel like you mentioned that it was a relatively small team? I mean, Microsoft is obviously huge, but are you are you able to share kind of like around the size of this strategy M&A team that you're working for? Like, were you working directly for like one person, 10
Sara: [00:21:15] People, three people
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:16] Just to get an idea of like. Was it hard jumping between projects or were you like always on
Sara: [00:21:21] All the deals because it was
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:23] Because you were kind of giving that cloud kind of silo? Yeah, I mean, I think our team is pretty, pretty small and tight knit, and,
Sara: [00:21:32] You know, I was Working on a few deals at a time at any given moment Did not cover all the deals. I think we had a few folks that we would split between different projects. And so for me, it was not working on all the deals, but all of us had like three or four deals that I was simultaneously looking at.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:50] Did you feel like it was like banking hours, like an
Sara: [00:21:52] Associate that you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:53] Hear like 80 plus hour weeks? Or were you? Was it more reasonable, like a 60 day, 60 to 70?I think there are definitely very busy weeks, especially kind of getting up to speed. I think, you know, the first call it, six months or pretty crazy that it really depended on deal flow. I think when deals are hot, you have to be on and active and things are a little bit calmer. I think it was a little bit more regular hours, like a 50 ish or so. So, yeah, OK. And then tell me what the transition?
Sara: [00:22:21] How did how did this come up? And this jump to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:25] It was called M12. Is that correct? Correct. So while I was working for the M&A team, you know, I had no kind of. Interest in kind of recruiting or looking at, I think I was still
Sara: [00:22:36] Getting to do a lot of interesting work and a lot of interesting deals around kind of my three year mark on the team is when Microsoft launched their new venture ARM called Microsoft Ventures back in the day. It's now been rebranded as 12. as they launched, I was kind of assigned to help the group kind of think about synergies with Microsoft getting connected to the broader corporate group and kind of built the relationship with the with the arm through that. And so as they look to expand their team and kind of bring on new members. They said, You know, why don't you talk to a few people on our team and get to know us better and ultimately ended up offering me a position to join the venture arm, which was a phenomenal opportunity. And so it came up a little bit more organically through relationships. Ended up joining them 12 as kind of a founding member and helping them kind of build and create out Microsoft's venture arm.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:34] Was this were these relationships more because like, you just started some coffee chats you kind of just exploring, were you? Was there a kind of a goal in your head of like, I want to learn a different asset. I want to go earlier stage? Or was it really just genuine curiosity? You're asking interesting
Sara: [00:23:53] Questions and then suddenly being
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:55] Like, Well,
Sara: [00:23:55] Why don't you come and join us? Which were a mix of a mix, a little bit of both of those things. Our venture group and our omni group at the time rolled up to the head of our business development of our business development. Org is a pretty senior organization. It's folks who have 15 20 years of work experience naturally tends to skew to more senior roles. I was definitely one of the last experience younger folks in the org, and I think there was a lot of emphasis in trying to kind of grow and develop the next generation of leaders that would grow up with the org. And so as part of that really got our opportunities to a lot of different leaders across the broader business development. Org and so some of that came naturally from that and others just came from. Building good relationships and asking good questions.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:46] They had tapped you as future leadership and then you broke their heart. Ok, I just get. So here you are. You're there, you're basically. You know, doing interesting work, right,
Sara: [00:24:58] You're closing
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:59] For big deals and strategy and M&A for the cloud business of Microsoft, your pit, then you pivot kind of to still in her business development, but you're now looking at earlier stage stuff still for cloud or for everything from everything, I think heavily tilted on enterprise tech, but it was much broader in terms of kind of the areas that we looked at. Did you feel like V.C.? The VC
Sara: [00:25:21] World was harder to lose deals
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:22] Or easier to close deals, much easier
Sara: [00:25:25] And easier. Ultimately, the team is the decision maker and M&A. There's a lot of different decision makers, a lot of different approvals to get through. And so the process takes a lot longer and requires a lot more input from the business on deals. Whereas VC, I think we can do a lot more nimble and make decisions very
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:44] Quickly, and most of the time you're probably investing as mentor debt. Or were you doing stuff later in the capital structure like Series A Series B? It was mostly later stage, I think the sweet spot with Series A Series C. Earlier also did things later. Was there a certain like level of? Was there any sort of cap on terms of like assets that you guys could tap if the right deal came along or like you felt like, you know, it's basically like billions of dollars, it didn't matter.
Sara: [00:26:13] Like, could you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:14] If you had, for example, like there was the next? I don't know. The next big CRM coming down, and it was like the perfect whatever for, you know, perfect enterprise platform for you guys to acquire. Could you guys have done like a. A $500 million area, I don't know, a 300 million miles round or something like that. I won't get into kind of the structure of the fun, but I will say I think
Sara: [00:26:38] There was a lot of interest to do interesting deals and kind of build a more robust venture arm, which I think now one of the top B.C. corporate VC arms that there is. And I hesitate to say corporate because I think there's a very strict wall between 12 and broader Microsoft. Yeah, very much kind of runs like a financial. Dc is a really great partner to startups, and so they have kind of the full backing of Microsoft and a lot of autonomy to kind of do what they want and I'll start ups. And at the same time, they are backed by Microsoft. And so you still kind of get the support of the broader group need it. And that, I think, is really a defining factor for startups as they think about scaling and growing.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:20] Cool. So, yeah, I mean, so you're there.
Sara: [00:27:23] You're now been in
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:23] Microsoft for almost four years. You know, first in the strategy and then you kind of pivot to the Microsoft Ventures. Tell me a little bit about what you were thinking kind of coming up on that fourth year
Sara: [00:27:38] In terms of your own career.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:40] It sounds like you're getting opportunities. Do you feel like? There was there was new things you needed. Do you feel like there was
Sara: [00:27:50] There just, you know, did Google come,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:52] Come, come knocking? And it was just
Sara: [00:27:54] Too interesting of a of an
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:56] Opportunity I'd love to hear just that transition your thought process of jumping from one firm to another because. I know it's super
Sara: [00:28:04] Common nowadays, but I like I talked to somebody
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:07] Recently and they were like at a firm for like 15 years of like straight out of undergrad, like, that's the weirdest thing nowadays. I've never seen that. So like, I like to hear just the.
Sara: [00:28:17] The thought process of OK, now is the right
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:19] Time to move
Sara: [00:28:20] Versus not Iraq.I think I was actually kind of poking around having been at Microsoft for a while. I think as I looked across my other peers at
microsoft, it was a lot of folks that had been there, you know, 15, 20 plus years. It's really a great place to build your career. I think there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of growth as I kind of looked out in the market, though, I kind of did see the trend where people were jumping around companies, getting different experiences. And ultimately, I felt like an opportunity to go to a different company will make me more marketable, longer term and present new opportunities and learning and growth that comes from just,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:00] Oh yeah, I mean, it was also your first job right out of school. Exactly. It's a little bit of the edge to what else is out there and kind of see, Google opportunity came along. It was really just a great bet. It kind of combined my M&A experience with investment and also offered me the opportunity to work at another huge tech company and kind of see the way that they think through these issues and the spaces that they're looking at. What was your thought process of moving down to the SF? And are you in that sf right now or did you get out because of COVID and
Sara: [00:29:29] Everything else? Yeah. So I for the Google job, I relocated to the Bay Area. I think back then, you know, San Francisco and the Bay Area as the tech epicentre. And so if you want to grow your career at some point, you're going to need to be there. And so I kind of took the plunge and kind of went all in with Google and the
bay Area. You know, now with the with COVID and kind of now people working from home took the opportunity to pop back up to Seattle to get a little bit more space to work from home. But for the last two years, I've been down in the bay and really loved it. I don't think I can emphasize enough how much. Movement and TAC and conversations happen in the bay and as much as other cities are growing in terms of tech presence. The bay is still very much the center of gravity and Majority of transactions and things happen there and it's really nice to be plugged into that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:23] It's interesting you went back up to Seattle and I assume home is near Michigan. All right. Again, I think Seattle family and Seattle, no family, but friends, and so there's a little bit of a now a home aspect associated with Seattle. Of course. I mean, you're there for four years. It makes sense. You're there for four years.
Sara: [00:30:43] So that's cool. So like you are like, they're like, Come up here.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:46] Come back.
Sara: [00:30:47] Cool. Ok, I see our West Coast hours. So I think that was also a contributing factor is to say it's a good point in point. So you're so
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:56] You're that transition. It sounds like the opportunity presented itself. Was it through a recruiter or was it through just your outreach,
Sara: [00:31:03] Just
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:04] Networking kind of stuff like that? Can you talk to me a little bit about
Sara: [00:31:07] How you kind of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:08] Got the
Sara: [00:31:08] Opportunity to even
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:10] Interview? And then was it through like networking or was it through like a formal process? I think
Sara: [00:31:14] Google is known to be pretty
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:17] Regimented, I think, and pretty,
Sara: 00:31:19] Pretty thoughtful in
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:20] Terms of how they recruit, but just getting into that process. Was there anything special like networking that you did? Actually, there wasn't anything special in terms of networking that I did for this job, I think a recruiter reached out and it sounded like an interesting opportunity and I just wanted to learn more. After hearing more about it, it sounded very, very interesting. I ended up going through kind of more of their formal recruiting process, which I think it's a very robust, very long process.
Sara: [00:31:48] I think end to end took maybe four and a half months. Oh my gosh. And so was a very long process, but also very thorough. You got to meet the team. You've got to learn a lot about the Google culture, kind of how they think. And ultimately, I think Google really prides itself on having a high bar of talent and hiring. And so the process kind of helps make sure that the right talent is coming through.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:11] What was your thought process of going there versus going to like a startup
Sara: [00:32:14] Or taking your
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:15] Town to like a Series C or something like that, or try to get in pre IPO? Like the what was your thought process of that is something like you liked the structure or the offer that would just have the offers that just happened to come in during that time because for months, theoretically, you weren't just looking at, you know, Google, what's the other with or other potential opportunities that were interesting to you?
Sara: [00:32:37] They came up. And how did you think about that? We actually considered startup opportunity. I think at the time I wanted more transactional experience, and you really get that at the big tech firms. Nobody is doing looking
at the breadth and kind of velocity of deals that a Microsoft or Google is doing. There's very few places I could go from Microsoft that can give me the opportunity to get a lot of exposure and a lot of learning and a condensed amount of time. One of those,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:05] What if you went away from deal making those or another potential, you know, they call it and exit opportunities or another exit opportunity from a strategy in Corp Dev or also like leaning more back to your strategy that you could have done. Definitely, I think there was opportunities, I think for me, I wanted to stay in the VC and M&A world.
Sara: [00:33:24] You know? There's also a lot of opportunities working kind of big tech you've got to work with and the leaders across the industry, which I think is a phenomenal experience and very little rules inside companies get the opportunity to opportunity to do that. And so for me, I think I wanted to continue having that type of experience and building those types of relationships versus at a startup. I think it's very fast paced. You get to learn a lot as you go, but you're very focused on kind of building your core product, whereas at a larger company, I have the chance to kind of get a breadth of different products, different areas, different sizes. And so I really enjoy having that breadth look.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:02] For sure. Very cool. Well, it sounds like you're in a great spot. Congratulations on the transition and all the success so far is before I call the pod. You know, we're coming up on a little over a half hour. Is there anything else you want to share with the listeners before we call it any kind of words of wisdom
Sara: [00:34:18] That you've
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:19] Can experience, whether it's career, whether it's anything else as well? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think my biggest advice is, you know, I came
Sara: [00:34:26] From a very non-traditional background. Whoever you're trying to go, I think there is a pathway to it. You know, typically corporate development, it's typically, you know, business school investment banking, corporate development, but that's not the only pathway. And so wherever you are, I think there, there's always a kind of a path to get to where you want. And I think some of the best careers are built with kind of jumping around through interesting roles. And so that would be kind of my biggest advice for folks is to not get too caught up in traditional backgrounds and actually have kind of some unique experiences to bring to the table
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:02] And love it kind of started it all the way back in your Mercedes Benz project when you were thrown to the thrown to the Wolves. But very cool. Well, thank you, Sarah, so much for taking the time to share your story. Really appreciate it. I think. I think the listeners will love it. Thank you, Patrick,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:19] And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis dot com.
Sara: [00:35:29] And till next time.
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