Some influencers rise in one era but thrive in another. Robert Swan is the ultimate example. He began his career at General Electric, climbing the ranks of that mega company over 15 years. But in the late 1990s, he leapt headfirst into the tech boom, going from one dot.com venture to the next until he landed at eBay as CFO.
Last year, he became the chief executive of Intel, where he has helped the world's biggest chip-maker reach $70 billion in annual sales. And now Apple is eyeing $1 billion worth of Intel's modem business. He's here to talk about why tech is at the center of the business world and what that means for everyone else.
I'm Andy Serwer. Welcome to "Influencers," and welcome to our guest, Bob Swan, the CEO of Intel. Bob, great to see you.
BOB SWAN: Great, Andy. Wonderful to be here with you.
ANDY SERWER: Actually we're here with you, right, because we're here in the Intel offices in San Francisco. So thanks so much for hosting us here today.
BOB SWAN: Yeah, it's great to have you.
ANDY SERWER: So you have been CEO for about four months now. And I guess it's logical to ask you, how's it going and what's your strategy for the company at this point?
BOB SWAN: Well four months-- I'd start with time flies when you're having fun maybe as a starter. But for the last four months and even for the six or so months before that when I was in the interim capacity, we've had a strategy that we think is pretty clear and we feel comfortable with it. And in essence, it's about transforming the company from a PC-centric company to a data-centric company-- to take advantage of the increasing demands that both enterprises and consumers have for data and all the technology that's required to store, process, analyze, and retrieve that data.
So that's what we've been doing-- focused on key technology inflections to position the company well for an increasingly data-centric world. And four months in, it's just as much fun today as it was day one.
ANDY SERWER: Recently, you said, Bob, something to the effect that the company had let shareholders down. What did you mean by that? And how do you plan to change that?
BOB SWAN: Yeah. So we closed 2018-- it was our 50th anniversary. And it was the best year in the company's history. So we felt very good exit in 2018. And we came into 2019 with what I'd characterize as both tailwinds and headwinds, but we gave an outlook for 2019 that said we'd continue with our strategy.
And we thought 2019 would be yet another record year for the company. And the reality was 90 days in, our outlook for the rest of the year-- while we had a very strong first quarter-- 90 days in, our outlook for the rest of the year was not quite as good as maybe we thought it would be when we entered the year.
So we lowered our outlook. And in that, we take our responsibility and our accountability seriously. And we let investors down. We told them that we weren't going to quite play out the year as well as we expected in January. All that being said, in our 51st year, it'll be the second-best year in the history of the company based on the outlook we gave.
So we feel good about the trends. We feel good about strategically where we are. But we don't like to disappoint our investors.
ANDY SERWER: Right. Sort of over-deliver ultimately is what you're looking for.
BOB SWAN: Ultimately, yes.
ANDY SERWER: So let's talk about how you grew up-- upstate New York. What was that like? Did you want to be the CEO of a tech company when you grew up when you were young?
BOB SWAN: That was the least of my worries. So I grew up in upstate New York. I have eight siblings-- all kind of condensed. And you know, my worries at the time were more about, you know, winning the next basketball game and trying to avoid infuriating my brothers at my expense. So that was my biggest worries at the time.
But I grew up with great parents and wonderful siblings. And we're very tight today. So I was more worried about, you know, being a good sibling, being a son were more things that I was preoccupied with at the time.
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