In this episode, Todd sits down with Michel Longra, a seasoned Silicon Valley executive who played pivotal roles in companies that helped build the modern commercial internet—including Cisco, Juniper, and most recently Calix, where he helped lead a dramatic multi-year transformation culminating in market dominance and a successful exit.
Michel shares his journey of joining Calix when it was still a legacy hardware company and guiding it through a complete reinvention into a cloud-first, software-driven broadband experience platform. What followed was a seven-year climb involving strategic bets, supply chain pivots, massive restructuring, building a new technology stack, shifting the company culture, and scaling from rural broadband customers to winning major enterprise clients like Verizon.
He talks through the hard realities of transforming a public company in real time—retraining the team, replacing outdated skill sets, pushing a new go-to-market model, and helping customers evolve their thinking from “buying bandwidth” to buying experience and service.
Michel also shares candid insights about leadership, scaling, and the difference between founders who want to “cash out” versus those who want to build a company that truly lasts. He dives into the importance of succession planning, why founders struggle with delegation, and how failing to prepare for 5–10x growth is the hidden reason so many companies collapse when things finally take off.
The conversation also explores the parallels between today’s AI boom and the original dot-com era. Michel sees AI as an accelerant to productivity and decision-making—but not a replacement for adaptable, mission-driven, motivated human teams. He warns against overhyping AI models that are limited by the data of the past and unable to adapt to truly novel situations.
Finally, Michel shares wisdom on how early-stage founders should plan for exit, choose the right mentors, ask the right questions, and think deeply about whether they’re building a quick flip… or a company designed to make lasting impact.
This episode is a masterclass in leadership, scale, reinvention, and the human side of technology from someone who has lived every chapter of the journey.
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