 "Shailesh Rao")
Shailesh Rao says his favourite question while interviewing a potential candidate is: What's your legacy? "The answer to that question gives an indication whether the candidate would be missed by the current employer after he/she has quit," Rao says, as we meet for lunch at Hyatt Regency's La Piazza restaurant - a venue he chose more for convenience rather than any particular preference. Going by his detailed account of the four-year stint at Twitter, one thing is clear: the global microblogging company would surely miss him after he is gone this month-end. The lunch meeting has made me wiser about another amazing knack of super-achievers - they give nothing away. That's because Rao, who held forth for an hour on his plans for Twitter's international business, announced his resignation barely a week later.
When I reach out to him a day after his resignation, Rao gives a delayed response but sticks to the point about his formidable legacy at Twitter. "From designing our international organisation to hiring many of the senior leaders globally to opening dozens of offices around the world, it's been very satisfying... When I started at Twitter, international revenue was practically zero and today 40 per cent of our global revenue comes from outside of the US," he says.
On what he would be doing next, Rao's emailed response avoids specifics but says the "connective tissue" across his time at Google, Twitter and the portfolio of over two dozen angel investments he has made in Asia-based entrepreneurs is a desire to bring technology to Asia for a better quality of life. In addition, his vision is to give confidence to the working youth of the region so that they too can innovate. "I will continue to make sure that whatever I do next allows me to contribute to these two goals that are close to my heart," Rao says.
Rao is mum on the exact reasons for his sudden exit from Twitter, but one can get some indication from what he said during the lunch about why he quit Google in 2012. "I am the sort of guy who likes to be fully in the game, carrying the ball and trying to win, in an operating capacity. I don't like functional leadership role, which becomes inevitable in a company that has grown fast and become too big," he says. When he joined Google, the company had just 2,500 people. That number went up to 45,000 by the time he left. Replace Google with Twitter and the reason for Rao's exit seems to get clear.
As the steward comes to take the order, Rao says he isn't hungry because of late breakfast and would settle for something very light - so tomato risotto is his choice. I order prawn risotto. The next large table is occupied by a boisterous family, forcing both of us to raise the pitch of our voice in order to get heard.
Rao's journey at Twitter has been formidable indeed. As much as 70 per cent of Twitter users are now outside the US and the company has set up 20 offices around the world. When he landed in Singapore where he is based, he was the third employee - that number has crossed 100, and growing. And he thinks Twitter has barely scratched the surface in markets outside the US.
One of the key changes, Rao says, Twitter has brought about is that it has moved far beyond its "140-character avatar" where video is the central tool. "We have become the home of live videos. When something is happening in the world, people want to express their views about it using video on Twitter," Rao says.
He is unstoppable now and gives a fascinating account of how Twitter has offered democratisation of access to a platform that allows anyone in the world - who has a mobile phone and access to SMS - to have a voice and be heard. Twitter is a platform of immense influence not because of the 405 world leaders who are regular users. It's because even ordinary people get a platform to express their opinion that is heard and often followed. Rao gives the example of a 2014 post to Twitter, of a cricket bat placed outside a front door, in honour of cricket player Phillip Hughes who died on the field. The little-known fan's tribute was repeated all over Australia by hundreds of thousands, including the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Unlike other social media platforms, the big change that works in Twitter's favour is that it enjoys a symbiotic relationship with TV. "That's because if something is happening on TV, it sparks conversation - be it sports, politics, or anything else - on Twitter and that goes back to TV content. Media scientists in Twitter have found a definite linkage - volume of tweets is indicative of TV ratings and vice versa. And that happens because TV creates moments, and Twitter is the place to talk about those moments. Twitter, he claims, has been able to demonstrate that when advertisers run campaigns across television and Twitter, they actually see an incremental uplift in brand recall.
"We believe in cross-media integrated campaign experiences rather than fighting and stealing from one another. It's a new direction for media, advertisers and consumer experience, giving a fine alignment between product and services and the audience," Rao says. It has indeed worked, as the average advertising campaign on Twitter is seeing a 3 to 5 per cent engagement rate, which means that of the people who see an advertisement on Twitter, 3 to 5 per cent are engaging with that ad in some way. To put that in context, the engagement rate is 30 to 50 times better than it is in traditional digital advertising.
The waiter stays away as he has by now realised that the guest is in a hurry and is in no mood to order anything else. Rao says the distinction between advertising and content is going away, as all that really matters to a user - whether it comes from an advertiser or from another source - is relevance. Twitter has algorithms that are able to look at who users follow and those accounts on Twitter that they find the most valuable. "We use that to make sure that the advertisements you see are the most relevant to you," he says.
The tomato risotto is long over, but Rao is in a mood to talk. Born in Toronto, he was brought up in the US, where his family moved. Though his father was a chemical and nuclear scientist and almost all his cousins pursued some streams of science, Rao had opted for economics and history. "I chose not to (do engineering or medicine) because it did not interest me. In your career you have to find an intersection between skills and interests. I have had lots of hits and misses along the way."
Rao says he has the discipline of a historian who sees patterns that he can connect back to history, and his analytical side, courtesy his MBA degree, helps him to break from the past and do something new and different. That's the reason he found investment banking a pain as "money as a product" never excited him. "I didn't want to spend my time thinking about convertible bonds and preferred being an active participant in something that changes consumer's life in many ways," Rao says.
Some of his most exciting days were spent at Yodlee, an online financial platform provider based in Redwood City, as no big company can ever give you the opportunity of handling so many things that is necessary if you want to be a business athlete. Going by what he said about his plans after Twitter, it won't be a surprise if Rao goes back to his roots.
