Grit

#225 CEO Lattice, Sarah Franklin: Trailblazer

Jan 13, 2025

Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, shares her insights on courageous leadership and the importance of trust within teams. She discusses the challenges of humanizing AI and the need for responsibility in tech development, warning against the pitfalls observed in social media. Franklin emphasizes nurturing resilience in children through independence and essential life skills. Her reflections also touch on learning from experiences and redefining success beyond monetary gains, advocating for impactful leadership and innovation in an evolving workplace.

01:12:01

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Episode guests

Sarah Franklin

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Courage as a CEO involves making bold decisions that inspire trust in your team and may require strategic pivots.

Balancing personal commitments with career ambitions is essential, particularly for parents navigating work and children's education during crises.

Success should be measured beyond monetary gain, focusing instead on meaningful contributions and personal connections that foster purpose.

Deep dives

The Courage to Lead

Leadership requires a unique kind of courage, especially for a CEO navigating the unknown. Taking bold steps without guaranteed outcomes is essential to inspire trust in a team. A decisive leader shows their team that they are willing to reevaluate and pivot when strategies aren’t working, which fosters an environment of reliability and resilience. This courage helps build a foundation of trust and motivates a team to explore opportunities without fear of failure.

Intro

2min

Education and Resilience in a Pandemic

5min

The Benefits of Growing Up Fast

2min

Nurturing Essential Life Skills in Children

12min

Lessons on Life, Loss, and Learning

3min

Empowering Leadership Through Innovation

29min

Reflections on Leadership and Innovation

21min

Guest: Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice

As the CEO of a growing company, Lattice’s Sarah Franklin has learned that one of her most important contributions is taking a leap of faith. “You have to have the courage to be the first one to do it,” she says,” and to show that it can be done, and to pave the way so that then your team feels trust.”

Sarah cautions, though, that sometimes courage is deciding to stop and go a different direction. As agentic AI becomes more common, the people building companies like Lattice should look to the “cautionary tales” of how social media and mobile phones have changed society, she says.

“We can have the courage to say, what are the outcomes that we want to prevent? Or what are the outcomes that we want to make sure happen? This all takes, courage, because it’s all unknown.”

Chapters:

(01:14) - Schooling in Mexico
(04:09) - Raising brave children
(10:28) - Sarah’s upbringing
(13:29) - The pursuit of money
(16:23) - Measuring success
(19:28) - Learnings, not regrets
(22:55) - Make an impact
(26:44) - Pitching Trailhead
(32:56) - Elevating a B2B company
(35:27) - How to colonize Mars
(38:39) - Marketing, the Salesforce way
(44:21) - Dolphining and truth-tellers
(50:56) - Renewed purpose
(56:30) - The challenges of being CEO
(01:00:18) - Pave the way
(01:03:25) - “Humanizing AI”
(01:06:57) - Handling controversy
(01:11:04) - Who Lattice is hiring and what “grit” means to Sarah

Mentioned in this episode: FaceTime, Salesforce, Marc Benioff, Mahatma Gandhi, Instagram, the Fortune 500, Java, Jerry Maguire, National Parks, Nike, Michael Jordan, Apple and “Think Different,” Sara Varni, Scott Holden, Andy Kofoid, Databricks, Datadog, Behind the Cloud, Oracle, Microsoft, Elon Musk, Amazon AWS, George Hu, Mike Rosenbaum, Cheryl Feldman, Zac Otero, Guidewire Software, AI agents, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and LinkedIn.

Links:

Connect with Sarah

Connect with Joubin

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

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