Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the Victory show welcome to
[00:00:15] Speaker B: the Victory show where seven figure founders, entrepreneurs and executives reveal the real playbook behind scaling past that first million in recurring revenue. We go beyond the highlight reel into the hard lessons, costly mistakes, key growth, inflection points, and the human decisions that shaped the numbers. And here's the twist. Every conversation becomes a chapter in the Victory book series so the next generation of builders doesn't have to start from scratch. Today I'm sitting down with Ed Suhu, a boundary breaking strategist and business alliances lead at Lenovo's Field C suite, where he connects the dots others don't even see. Using edge computing, smarter infrastructure and design thinking to drive real business transformation. Known for his asymmetrical thinking and strikes stretch the box mindset, Ed operates at the intersection of technology, enterprise and innovation. His superpower helping organizations reimagine what's possible from now to new to next. Whether it's unlocking value in complex ecosystems, enabling scalable edge cloud architectures, or rethinking business models in times of disruption, Ed brings both intellectual clarity and practical execution. A former Teamster startup executive, from seed to IPO to buyout, and now industry fellow at UC Berkeley's center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Ed has lived every layer of the business world and it shows. He's a trusted advisor to founders, early stage VCs and Fortune 500 execs alike, known for his ability to frame big picture opportunities while staying grounded in operational realities. If you're building something that straddles innovation and impact, this is a conversation you don't want to miss. Ed, welcome to the show.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Rachel, thanks so much for the kind intro. I really appreciate it and having the opportunity to share some insights and perspectives. You know, the interesting thing is that the long opening in regards to what I've done, I've done front of house, back of house, and I've been thrown out of house. And all of those experiences really make a very interesting set of three words that I have in my LinkedIn profile, which is connector, catalyst and storyteller. And it's, it's, it's interesting. I had a chat with my head of HR and he called me up and put an appointment on my calendar. And I looked him up. I said, who the heck is this guy? And I said, oh my God, it's hr. I said, I, I, they found me. I said, I'm gone. And he called me, he calmed me down. He goes, he goes, I just wanted to chat with you. Everybody talks about you.
What do you do here? At Lenovo. And I said, well, I can go through that long, you know, 15 sentence description, but I'll. I'll distill it down to this. I'm a truth teller, I'm a storyteller, and I'm a fortune teller.
And he goes, fortune teller? He goes, you read the future? I said, no, actually, when you think about it, fortune tellers read people. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, let's say I'm having a conversation with someone and I'm going to tell them over the next 90 days, you're going to find the love of your life in a coffee shop. I said, what do you think they're going to do? He goes, they're going to the coffee shop. I said, that's our job, is to lay out the landscape and the opportunity and what that would look like. He goes, wow, do we help them find the love of their life? I said, heck, no.
That's up to them. I said, but what do you think happens after that? He goes, they come back? I said, yes, over and over again.
It's to have that conversation, insights and perspectives for us to read each other. It's not just me selling something to him. And over the course of my career, over four and a half decades. Long time, Rachel. In this business, it spanned, you know, blue collar. I was the teamster at Southern Pacific Rail, brakeman, switchman, machinist, the Caterpillar tractor, forklift driver, truck driver, warehousemen, retail clerk, and I swept out Goodyear tire plants. I dropped out of college after my first year and played pool for three years, every day but Christmas. Ranked number six in the world. Long, long, long time ago. A sordid past, to say the least. But I learned a lot. In my first year of college, I actually wrote one paper. Long time ago, 1970, going back almost 55 years. I wrote a paper and I said, in 25 years, 1895, China would be the roaring lion of commerce, and its voice would be heard. I handed in my paper and got a D. The professor goes, what are you thinking? He goes. I said, what do you mean? He goes, they're communists. I said, yeah, that's a political thing. I said, but for hundreds, if not thousands of years, they've been commerce. So let's really think through this, right? And I. I walked them through it, and I still got the D. But what I try to do is look at things a little bit differently. And in all my course of my career, in every job that I've had, from the blue collar to the White collars, two stints at Oracle, hp, Unisys, around a data center that used to be United Airlines and nine startups. So a lot of scar tissue, a lot of been there, done that, and what could have been. And these are things that I think a lot of people look at themselves in the mirror. They kind of like, I want to do a startup. Absolutely. You should. Like Baz Luhrmann wrote a song and his lyrics is, you know, spend some time in Northern California before you get too soft and spend some time in New York, but not too long because you'll be too hard. And I think you have to spend time in various areas to really get a feel for business philosophy. And what Pythia the Oracle always had in a conversation at the temple of Apollo, she always asks before they even started. She goes, she carved it in stone. Know thyself, who are you really and what do you want to be?
[00:05:53] Speaker B: These are the questions we need to ask ourselves. And I think it's so interesting to hear about how many different parts of business you have touched, from the hands on operations to the high level strategy across different industries. You've done nine startups. I mean you are a collector of experiences. And now you, you culminated that into this identity as storyteller, truth teller, fortune teller. Tell us a little bit about the early seedlings of that identity and if there's any particular moments in operating and building those startups where it started to take form.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: You know, it takes a lot of, I wouldn't say courage. I think we overuse that word. Courage is very personal, as is fear. So it takes a lot of willingness to, to try different things. You know, someone said, oh, you're a technologist. I said, well, to a degree, I'm more of an accidentalist. I bump into things, I find things, I mix things that people have never thought about. Innovation comes from things that already exist, but they're combined in new ways. They're addressed to find new markets. And I was chatting with one company, they blow up buildings for a business. Dino Nobel. Dino Dynamite. Nobel, the inventor, Dynamite. And my, my 19 goes, Ed, what do we sell them? I said, well, we can sell, you know, digital twins, physics models, blah blah, blah, high performance workstations. I said, but that's their now business. They said, what do you mean? I said, how do they make money? They said, they blow buildings up. I said, trolled implosions, right? They go, yeah. I said, what's their book of business? They said, maybe about 2,000 buildings a year. I said, not bad. I said, so let's talk to them about their NOW business and help them with that. But now let's challenge them by saying, what would their next business look like? And so I contend that we should share that with our perspective. Their next business should be making money by not blowing buildings up. My team goes, what? He goes, but that's how they make money. I said, no, no, no, no, I get it. They make money from what they know and what they do. Rather, it's what they know that's the value and what they know is the weaknesses of a building. What if you could do an assessment that would do an assessment for buildings to understand the weaknesses to reduce liability insurance? It's. And you go like, whoa. So how many buildings do you think you can do with that? They're like, yeah, I said, how many of those buildings will be future customers when they want to have a controlled implosion?
Nope. No rfp. You already got the data. That's phase one. They said there's more. It's at. Phase two is to then add an additional service, which is to collect all of the relevant data that is used to stand up that building bolts, concrete, girders, piers, etc. What if we had a database that actually understood where all of the defective steel girders from a particular country were forged and they're in these particular buildings? What should we do about that? What would the subscription model look like for builders, owners and the like to subscribe to this plethora of data, data that has no value until you've actually put it together. That's where the game's going to be played. Let's talk to them about how we help them with the now, build anew and expand on the next. And it's, it's very different when in these moments, there's no real research to this. Rachel. These are just gut things that come out because there are two books not in the library, you see behind me, two books that are not in my library. The laws of physics and the laws of gravity. I try to dispense with that because when you're able to be creative, open. I chatted with one company and they were talking about deep fakes, big business coming up, know your customer, kyc, et cetera. And I said, you know, what's interesting is 28 of the companies are doing something very similar, and some of them have deep, deep, deep pockets. How are you really going to differentiate, even though you got $50 million in your seed round, how are you going to stand up and stand out? And we're going back and forth. I said look, you're providing what a commodity soon to be. What is not a commodity is something that is deep and that is earned. And so when we had the Depression, everyone lost a lot of money. Banks weren't trusted. So the government stood up an organization, fdic and that seal went on banks to assure people that their accounts were protected. That is an earned, let's say value proposition and service. The second one is Underwriter's laboratory. When you plug in a device, your assured is not going to blow up or burn, et cetera. So they put the tag of UL on that appliance, that's assurance. And then you want to go for credit, you want to buy a house or a car, whatever. But there's an organization called fico Fair Isaac Composite Score. It's a trusted entity that bankers use before they loan you money. Those three kinds of entities is what you should become to not provide deep fake capabilities, but to provide deep trust. At the end of the day you're providing trust through a technology.
So let's really help people understand what the real value is. And I talk myself out of the job. But what was fascinating is what I try to do is to distill it as simple as possible and then to elevate it beyond what they think, know or have. So I use four letter words, left brain, open ended questions, what do you have, what do you want, what do you need and what do you want and what do you think, what do you want, need, have and et cetera. That's the right brain or left brain, rather the right brain questions, once we discuss that, are what do you care about, what do you fear, what do you like and what do you wish for? Those are the things that are not on public documents. Those are the conversations that open up the dialogue for someone to say. But to get that dialogue, the right brain questions and the answers you have to earn it.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: I agree, I agree. You know it's, it's interesting with all of the pivots that you've had in your career and what you just described of seeing how certifications that builds trust with end users, it's clear that from all of the different experiences you've collected, you have understood patterns across different business models and you've seen a variety of ways to approach a problem or to sell in to an end user to expand their wallet through diversification. I mean it comes through so clearly how your creativity has been enhanced by all these different experiences. When I think a lot of times the advice that's given to young professionals starting out is think about going deep in something and get a lot of expertise versus more horizontal. But I think particularly in the entrepreneurship context, having a variety of different experiences can really benefit you. One topic that often comes up, particularly in an early stage business, is when do you pivot or when do you stick with what you're working on. And a lot of what I'm hearing from you is the forward thinking nature coming up with the next great idea. So how do you balance what could be versus addressing what is today and knowing when it's right to pivot.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: And this is the biggest challenge, right? In the Air Force they teach you a fighter pilot methodology called ooda. Observe, orient, decide, act. You may have a plan. Things change. So in the OODA loop, as they call it, right? It's all about observing and iterating in real time, making decisions, absorbing, collecting information and then calibrating small iterative changes. In our industry, we always, even the history of the world is always about big things, Big bang, actually. Small things. It's the small things that lead up to it, the small things that we overlook. And it's the small things that make a huge difference. And I always tell the story about two plugs, two spark plugs. You know, spark plugs are used to fire a combustion engine, things of that nature. So I did something I hadn't done in 30 years. I decided to work on my own car. It's a 25 year old Ferrari with, you know, 300,000 miles on it now, et cetera. So I decided to work on my own car and I called my mechanic for 40 years, Mario. I said, mario, I'm going to work on my car. He goes, you want me there? I said, I said, no, no, I got this.
So I changed all the spark plugs and did a few other things. I took the car out for a high end run. Within 15 minutes, I got an error message on the diagnostic. It said, misfire, cylinder 5. Limped the car back to my garage. I called customer support audio. We were on the phone for two hours going through everything that I did and he finally said, pull the plug on cylinder five. I said, what can go wrong with a plug? 0.06 millimeter, 132 of an inch. I said, he goes, pull the plug. I pull the plug. I found out what I did, Rachel, is I pinched the gap. There was no gap, which meant no spark, which meant no power. So here was a 400 horsepower machine, twin cam, 40 valves impaired and impacted by the lack of a small gap. Which begs the question, what is the gap in your business that needs attention? What is the gap in your strategy that is so small but very, very impactful to the performance overall? And I found out that a couple things by doing this exercise. One, get your hands dirty again, get in the trenches. Two, I found out why I paid $200 an hour to a Ferrari mechanic. And these are small little stories that I vignettes that I share because these are the things that people like. Oh my God. I said, yeah, you'd be surprised how these small things add up. And if you focus just on one thing, it you're. Let's say you solve a problem. My next question is, what problem does that create? Be like what I go. When you solve a problem, it creates problems because upstream and downstream and cross stream, there's an ecosystem, there's a flow, there's a mechanism, there's a timing. All these things matter. So even if you are efficient, you may not be effective. So I call that, what the f. What the eff are you going for? Efficiency, Are you going to for effectiveness? Big difference, right? So what I try to do is pull people back because everyone has their nose to the grindstone. And when you do that, all you see is sparks. What you want to do is pull back and look at the bigger picture and then come up with a upstream, downstream, I call it. My philosophy when I ran my startups was called 2up. Wherever you are in the organization, you should know two levels up, what they do. And you can stand in and stand up. You should know a level two levels down, two levels to the left as well as two levels to the right. And I asked my audience, I always say, you know, follow my hand to up, to down, to left, to right. One gentleman actually yelled out, amen. I said, I said it is faith, but it's faith in self, faith in team and faith in mission. We move as one, we think as one, and we act as one. Getting a team to align with purpose, with faith makes a world of difference. You will move mountains when you do that. So a lot of my talks, Rachel, are not about ROI return on investment. It's actually ROE return on experience.
What is the experience you're trying to deliver? What do we learn from that? And how do we iterate and make small changes to advance, to differentiate, to drive something different. And it's again, it's not the big bang and big ideas as they are small ideas just to try different things. And. And this makes a world of difference. So that's kind of my Philosophy, I'm self taught in computers. I go way back to paper, punch, tape, People like, what's that? I go, it's like Neolithic times, right? So these are the odd times. I take a lot of those experiences. Conversations, technologies, business practices, failures. Someone said, wait, fail fast. I said, I hate that. Learn fast, right? My job is to get you in. The Special forces mantra is to go from slow is smooth, smooth is fast. My job, get you to smooth fast. It's up to you. And then all of a sudden, we engage them, we empower them, we enlighten them. I gave a presentation Once in Vegas, 120 developers. Oh my God. It was the middle of geekville, right? And I asked everyone in the room, I said, show of hands, how many leaders are in this room? Three hands went up. They thought a leader was a title. So I said, interesting, let me do my presentation on leadership. I'm going to ask you all the same question at the end. So I finished and I said, show of hands, how many leaders are in this room? All hands went up. So I waited three heartbeats and I said, not enough. Stand up, look at each other. When that time comes, you will rise. When that time comes, you will lead just like you're doing now. And everyone's like smiling. And it's, it's. To me, the success in the business is what kind of leader are you? And to me, leaders are like mirrors. There's a convex mirror where the image is bigger. There's a concave mirror where the image is smaller. I always ask the leaders, what kind of mirror are you? How do you make your team feel big or small? Do you give them the opportunity to learn fast, to depend on each other? Are you a servant leader? If you're not, you're here, your timing is here, going to be short. And they said, well, you know, how long are you going to stay in this job? I said, if I do my job right, two years. They're like, what? I go, I should be able to infuse the team with the right philosophy where they start trusting each other. They're going to get the mission done. I'm out of here. My job is to move on. My job is to find my replacement. I hire people that I want to work for. And I think that's an important element to remember as a leader.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Really good lessons in there about how it's important to take time to reflect before pivoting, to not jump too quickly, and the importance of building a team around you that can think on the same level as you in a leadership ownership capacity that helps you determine what are the next right steps to take. Really, really powerful stories. Now, Ed, I'm curious. What does victory look like to you today?
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Victory to me looks like where I don't have to worry about what I say, what I do and where I go. I believe that if I do it correctly, the value that I bring, the insights and perspectives will be shared amongst everyone. To me, that is my victory. It's not money, it's not a title. I really don't care, right? Cio, cto, cdo, eieio, I don't care. What I care about is the legacy I'm going to leave where people not just learn from me per se, but they also take it upon themselves to teach others. To me, the victory is that they see something that they learn from value and they share it with someone else. To me, that is the ultimate victory.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Beautifully said. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Don't listen to anybody. Keep doing and keep learning. Keep trying, no matter what, right? And someone said, would you change anything? I said, oh, my God, if I changed anything, I wouldn't be talking to you. I said, I am here because all the things that I accidentally tripped over or people who saw something in me and they said, oh, my God, I'm going to give this clown a shot. Right? And I gave a presentation once to 120 CIOs in New York. I told stories about my dad. And when I finished, one gentleman came up. He goes, you help me remember what you did, what my dad did and mom did for us. He goes, after you finish, I went outside and I called my father. I'm like, oh, my God. He goes, here's my card. He goes, call me anytime. And I think when you do, I do three things when I try to have conversations. Touch the heart, feed the mind, and stir the soul. If I've done that, I'm done.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Beautifully said. I mean, there is nothing more powerful than when you emotionally connect with the person that you're communicating with. And you have shared such beautiful, vivid stories with us today. I know that our listeners are going to get so much out of this. So, Ed, thank you so much for joining us on the Victory Show.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Rachel, thank you very much. Anytime.
