Build or Buy: Scaling Through Acquisitions & Ownership w/ Marianna Tessel & Aileen Lee #58

Marianna Tessel (CTO @ Intuit) & Aileen Lee (Founder/Managing Partner @ Cowboy Ventures) cover how to navigate the build vs. buy decision! They share the frameworks they use to make a “buy” decision, how they assess engineering talent during acquisitions, how they decide between vendor software vs. open-source vs. building yourself. Plus the leadership skills that help Marianna lead a 5,000+ person team!

MARIANNA TESSEL, CTO @ INTUIT

Marianna oversees Intuit’s technology strategy and leads all of Intuit’s product engineering, data science, information technology and information security teams worldwide. Marianna's been at the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops.

Marianna previously served as Executive VP of Strategic Development at Docker, held leadership roles at VMware, Ariba, and General Magic working on the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops.

AILEEN LEE, FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER @ COWBOY VENTURES

Aileen is founding Partner at Cowboy Ventures, a team that backs seed-stage technology companies re-imagining work and life through technology, what they call “life 2.0”. Cowboy Ventures works with startups like Guild Education, Lightstep, Dollar Shave Club, and Tally.

Aileen periodically writes about technology insights and is known for coining the business term “unicorn” for public and private companies valued over $1bn. She has been named to the Forbes Midas List of best investors and Forbes Most Powerful Women, as well as to Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people.

Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was founding CEO of RMG Networks, and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, is mom of 3, wife to a startup founder, an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and co-founder of the non-profit All Raise - aiming to accelerate success for women in the technology ecosystem.

SHOW NOTES

• About Marianna’s role at Intuit (2:33)
• How many acquisitions / build vs. buy decisions have you had to make? (4:35)
• Marianna’s evaluation framework for buying companies (6:26)
• Assessing engineering talent in acqui-hires (9:37)
• How do you decide to buy vendor software or build yourself? (15:41)
• How do you define what’s core to the business vs. context? (19:11)
• Where are you looking to buy instead of build right now? (21:40)
• Hard & soft skills that helped Marianna advance her career and run a 5000+ person team (23:48)
• Were you always good at the "developing talent" and "managing" part of being a CTO? (26:50)

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