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<p>Today, we hear from Anna Claiborne and Dave Ward of PacketFabric. Anna co-founded the company in 2015 and currently serves as CTO and CPO. Dave joined PacketFabric as CEO in 2020. Listen as they discuss why a business is only as strong as its network, how to trust yourself through your journey, and lots more!</p>
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Inspired Execution

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<div class="column"><strong>Timestamps:</strong><br />0:36 - Welcome to today&rsquo;s episode with guests Anna Claiborne and Dave Ward<br />1:22 - What drew Dave to join PacketFabric<br />3:43 - How Anna knew that Dave was the right person for the role of CEO<br />5:46 - Creating new users and unexpected early adopters<br />8:30 - PacketFabric's elevator pitch<br />9:52 - How Cisco prepared Dave to be a CEO<br />11:33 - Anna&rsquo;s largest career mistake which has turned out to be her biggest learning lesson</div>
<div class="column">12:53 - Dave&rsquo;s advice for his younger self<br />14:27 - Rapid-fire questions<br />19:13 - The single word which best describes great leaders</div>
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<p class="column"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">To begin, Dave shares what excited him most about PacketFabric: the company&rsquo;s completely fresh take on software-defined networking. Not only had they invented a ground-up, cloud-native SDN platform, but they also operated a network. To Dave, this showed that the two founders, Anna and Jezebel, really understood what it meant to build a software-defined internet. Anna knew that Dave was the right guy for the job because he believed in the vision and had tried solving the same problems in his previous roles. Finding someone who fully understands and meshes well with your vision is often the biggest challenge for new companies.</span></p>
<p>For many networking people, the idea of cloud-first seems like a massive, daunting jump. Many of PacketFabric&rsquo;s early adopters, Anna reveals, were hardcore network engineers. From being in the industry for so long, most of them already understood fundamentally that the process of networking needed to change beyond just speed. PacketFabric's slogan states that your business is only as smart as your network. It is likely that every single person in an organization has their own story of network failures. With PacketFabric, organizations can know what it feels like to never have to wait on a network again.</p>
<p>Prior to joining PacketFabric, Dave drove Cisco&rsquo;s Core Innovation Program. What this position ingrained in his brain was the idea that customers and their needs come first. On the innovation side, he gained a deep background in technology, sales, and running large teams and projects. As someone who has begun several other companies, Anna identifies that the biggest mistake she made early on was not trusting in her own voice and intuition. She's turned this into her biggest strength by growing in her confidence and expressing her convictions. Similarly, Dave&rsquo;s advice for his younger self would be that there is no lock on good design patterns. Just because someone is older than you doesn&rsquo;t mean they have the right answers. Anna reveals that PacketFabric has never required degrees for their roles because this only one indicator of success out of so many.</p>
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<p>As the episode draws to a close, Anna and Dave engage in a rapid-fire round of questions. Hear the words they would choose to describe themselves and each other, what they most appreciate about each other, the technology they are most excited about, and more!</p>
<p>Thank you for listening and please don&rsquo;t forget to like and subscribe!</p>
Links:</div>
<div class="column">Learn more about <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaclaiborne/">Anna Claiborne</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-ward-3248b23/">Dave Ward</a>. Find more episodes of Inspired Execution <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inspired-execution/id1526477155">here</a>.</div>
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Episode Transcript