From high school dropout to CEO, with Autodesk’s Andrew Anagnost

Jeff Berman (0:02)

Before we get to the rest of our conversation today, I want to spend a moment sharing with you about Masters of Scale Summit, which returns to San Francisco this October 20th to 22nd.

So many of us feel overwhelmed right now. It feels like so much of the world is careening, and we don't have power, we don't have agency. That's the thing about the Masters of Scale Summit. It's really designed to remind us that we do have agency. Agency to lead, agency to design, to build the relationships and the partnerships that empower us, and to make the change that we want to see. We program a stage, we curate an audience, we set a schedule that builds in time for these relationships to be made and to grow, so that by the time you leave Summit, you are fired out of a cannon, ready to run through walls to do better in the world. With the agency that you actually have, I hope to see you there.

Visit mastersofscale.com/summit.

Andrew Anagnost (1:10)

I think we are the product of the people that lift us up. I really believe that. I never believe this bull crap. Oh, you know, I did this all myself. Who do you want behind you? The one that believes in your mission, or the one that you paid to be there, the mercenary? You want the one who believes in your mission.

Try a startup while you're young.

Jeff Berman (1:29)

Why do you tell people that?

Andrew Anagnost (1:30)

You learn a set of skills that is really hard to learn in a larger company, because everybody's being so careful in a larger company. All that's stripped away in a startup. You're just trying to survive and you're trying to make it happen.

Jeff Berman (1:47)

This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host.

With us today is Andrew Anagnost, the CEO of Autodesk. And while you may not be familiar with the company itself, you're definitely familiar with the company does, because pretty much everything that you are looking at in the real world, their software help make. Welcome to Masters of Scale. Thank you.

Andrew Anagnost (2:07)

Yeah, we like to talk about Autodesk as the biggest tech company nobody's heard of. Everything that you see in the world, the cars that you see on the roads, the bridges they drive over, the machines that you see, the phone, the buildings. It's built and designed using our software.

Jeff Berman (2:25)

I'm keen to get into the story of how you joined the company and became CEO and how you're leading it through this era. But I want to go way back because we were learning before we started the recording that you and I have more than a few things in common. But one of them is neither of us was our best self as a teenager.

Andrew Anagnost (2:42)

No, I was not my best self.

Jeff Berman (2:43)

What were your teen years like?

Andrew Anagnost (2:45)

Yeah, my teen years were a little rough. All right. As I progressed through and got into high school, I essentially started numbing myself. And lack of a better word, I self-medicated. I just went off the rails and I dropped out of high school for a while there, ended up in the wrong places, was never a violent kid. The only person I really ever hurt was myself. I was the only high school dropout that would show up for the trigonometry class sometimes under the influence of something. And one day, one of the teachers came up to me and he said, you know what, you can ruin your life all you want, but you're not going to ruin the rest of the people's lives in this room. Get the hell out of my class. You know? And I remember to this day, right? I can see his face in my face. I can feel his breath, right? You know, it's one of those things where at the moment, I just laughed at him, didn't stick with me. But he was very brave, this teacher. And I remember not that long later when I was expelled and I got into a very serious car accident, almost killed the passenger in the car.

And I was handcuffed, I was on the ground in a gravel driveway, you know, smashed down, I was injured. And, you know, his voice just banged through my head. And I've never, I've never forgotten him. Mr. Carrington. Hello, Mr. Carrington, if you're still alive out there. Most people that drop out of high school, get expelled, have problems, don't end up going to graduate school at Stanford. So in that respects, I'm kind of a statistical anomaly.