Chambers Talks AI, Cybersecurity, Architectures and Market Transitions 

It’s been well over five years since John Chambers stepped down as the CEO of Cisco Systems, a company he took from being a relatively unknown router company to the de facto standard in all things enterprise networking, security and collaboration. I recall sitting down with him at his last Cisco Live conference in San Diego, congratulating him on his iconic career and wishing him well in retirement.

Chambers was quick to correct me. He wasn’t retiring; he was on to the next thing. Cisco had a new leader in CEO Chuck Robbins, and Chambers was looking to make an impact on the world in different ways. Anyone that has ever met Chambers would say that the man has a passion for making a difference and using technology to change the world. He predicted that Cisco and the network would change the way we “work, live, learn and play,” and it most certainly did. The internet, built primarily on Cisco-built gear, democratized the world and created opportunities where none had previously existed.

So, what’s Mr. Chambers been up to? Recently, he joined me on my latest ZKast video interview done in partnership with eWEEK eSPEAKS. Highlights are below:

Chambers still has a passion to change the world

• Post-Cisco, Chambers has moved his career and created his own venture fund, JC2 Ventures.
• When Chambers ran Cisco, his ideal target for acquisition was about 125 employees with about 100 being engineers. He saw this as the ideal size for investing. In the VC arena, these would be late series A or series B.
• JC2 Ventures focuses on early-stage companies. In total, there are 20 in his portfolio.
• Through his investment in these companies, Chambers hopes to change the world one more time.
• Chambers has a passion for the early stage because he believes startups are where the future lies. He told me “almost all job creation will come from small-to-medium businesses getting bigger, i.e. startups.” This means startups will move at a much faster pace than large companies.
• The average growth for his portfolio is about 50% per year and headcount growth at about 40%, which meets the job-creation goal that he has.

Catching market transitions leads to market leadership

• As long as I’ve known Chambers, his favorite two work expressions are a) “market transition,” because catching those can help companies break away from its competitors; and b) “look around the corner,” because this requires the ability to see what’s next.
• The easiest way to do this is to listen to customers and hear what they need. Not all successful executives do this, which is why so many big companies eventually fail.
• Chambers is still speaking to many business and government leaders and is excited about a number of technologies.

Artificial intelligence is pervasive across the JC2 Ventures portfolio

• The technology Chambers is most excited about is artificial intelligence. AI will be bigger than the internet in having a societal and business impact. He has several companies in that area, such as Uniphore and ASAPP and indirectly Sprinklr and Pindrop.
• The impact of AI will in all parts of our lives – from self-driving cars to the ability for doctors to diagnose people’s health-care issues faster.
• The hottest area of AI is currently in customer service and in sales and marketing. Chambers told me that if you “follow the money” (his favorite three-word expression), you can predict where adoption will be indicating AI will have its biggest impact in those areas.
• While there is a tremendous amount of concern of AI usurping jobs, this will be a replay of the internet, where AI will create far more jobs than it takes out of the labor pool.
• AI needs to be thought of as an architecture (Chambers favorite one-word expression) where voice, video and data AI is done from the same platform. Uniphore recently acquired Emotion Research Labs to add video AI to its already…