Sheryl Sandberg: Chief operator

Simon Jack (0:08)

It's early 2008, and we're inside a gated mansion in Averton, California, a small town that would soon be dubbed the most expensive zip code in America.

Zing Tsjeng (0:17)

A 38-year-old woman is having dinner with a 23-year-old man. This is not their first date, but the pair are still checking each other out and eyeing each other up. They're both wondering if things might work out between them. He's a curly-haired tech nerd who never finished college. She's an experienced operator who's worked at the highest levels of government and has just made one of the world's biggest companies profitable.

Simon Jack (0:39)

But then again, he's also the world's youngest self-made billionaire, and she wouldn't mind joining him.

Zing Tsjeng (0:46)

The wine flows and an offer is forthcoming. Just then, her husband walks into the room. What is she getting them into?

Simon Jack (0:56)

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

Zing Tsjeng (1:02)

We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion.

Simon Jack (1:06)

I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

Zing Tsjeng (1:09)

And I'm Zing Tsjeng, and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

Simon Jack (1:11)

And today's billionaire is Sheryl Sandberg, best known as Chief Operating Officer at Facebook and then, when it was renamed Meta, at the job she had from 2008 to 2022

Zing Tsjeng (1:25)

And it's that fact that she had a job, that she was an employee of a company and not the owner or employer, that makes her quite unusual among the people that recover on Good Bad Billionaire. She's not a founder, she's not a CEO, but she is a billionaire, and she's currently worth around $2.4 billion.

Simon Jack (1:42)

Yeah, we've often said that it's very hard to become a billionaire simply by getting a paycheck alone, but she earned that cash by becoming one of the most influential operators in Silicon Valley history. Her major contribution was figuring out how to monetize Facebook, how to get Facebook making the billions that it did.

Zing Tsjeng (1:59)

The year that she joined the company took in $272 million in revenue. The year of her departure, turnover had reached $118 billion.

Simon Jack (2:09)

Wow.

Zing Tsjeng (2:10)

Simon, you've met her, what is she like?

Simon Jack (2:12)

She is a quiet, petite woman who projects an enormous and intimidating presence.

Zing Tsjeng (2:22)

How does she do that?

Simon Jack (2:23)

She's got a kind of authority and gravitas to her and she is fiercely punctual. She comes in, sits down, there's very little small talk and she's out exactly when she says she's going to be out, ushered out by her people and she talks very softly but firmly.

So softly that you literally have to lean in to hear what she's having to say, which of course was the name of a book that she wrote. So a woman of massive authority, a little bit scary actually. I mean, for someone who's quietly spoken, but you know you're in the presence of someone who's, I would say, fearsomely competent.

Zing Tsjeng (3:06)

Right. Given that you've met CEOs and politicians, the fact that you were slightly intimidated gives me room for pause.

Simon Jack (3:14)

No, I think she would be one of the most, not intimidating in the fact you're actually scared, but in the sense that don't say something dumb, Simon. Do you know what I mean? That's that kind of thing, because she comes with such a reputation and she's the real deal.

Zing Tsjeng (3:28)

But what does a COO or Chief Operating Officer actually do? Because you've covered a lot of CEOs, but I think this is the first COO we've ever talked about on the show.

Simon Jack (3:37)

Yeah, and has an unusual role here. So CEO sets the direction, the vision for the company, here's our strategy going forward. The CFO says, here's the money to do it, or we can't afford to do this and we can't afford to do that. The Chief Operating Officer is how to fix problems, how to solve it, how is this actually going to work? You could say project manager in chief. How do the nuts and bolts of the company work? That's the preserve of the COO, Chief Operating Officer. And she's probably the most famous person who's ever held that title, I would say.

Zing Tsjeng (4:06)

Yeah, and she fixed the problem of how do you get a social network like Facebook to make money?

Simon Jack (4:11)

And boy, did she ever fix that. Well, let us lean in and take Sheryl Sandberg from zero to her first million.