Y Combinator · Video summary

How Jeetu Patel Runs Cisco Like the World’s Largest Startup

Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer, discusses how he's instilling a founder's mindset at the company, going all-in on AI, and the massive data center buildout currently underway.

Y Combinator · October 8, 2026 · 43-min episode · 4-min read

How Jeetu Patel Runs Cisco Like the World’s Largest Startup

Key takeaways

⛏️Cisco is positioning itself as the "picks and shovels" company for the AI era, providing essential infrastructure for the massive technological shift.01:22
💡Jeetu Patel instills a "founder mode" mentality at Cisco, encouraging a deep sense of ownership and cross-functional engagement, especially during periods of rapid change.03:42
⚖️Cisco's leadership team is structured with a "rule of thirds" (internal operators, external market experts, and acquired founders) to balance scale, market insight, and entrepreneurial drive.05:08
🧠AI's goal at Cisco is not just efficiency, but to generate original insights that solve problems previously unimaginable, potentially leading to a need for more engineers.09:21
🚀Cisco's AI adoption strategy for its 32,000 engineers was to declare that not using AI would lead to job loss, emphasizing its necessity in a secular shift.10:21
📈The current data center buildout is not an "overbuild" because infrastructure is being consumed almost instantly, indicating a supply-constrained market driven by AI agents.22:12

Chapters

0:05Jeetu Patel's Personal Story and Lessons for Founders
0:17Cisco as the Picks and Shovels Company for the AI Era
0:17The Massive Data Center Buildout
0:27AI Safety and Trusted Delegation
0:44Transforming Cisco with a Founder's Mindset
0:45Cisco's AI Strategy: Speed, Scale, and Safety

The digest

Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, is leading a remarkable transformation within one of the world's largest and most established technology companies. His vision is to operate Cisco like the "world's largest startup," combining the agility and speed of a nascent company with the immense scale and resources of a global leader. This ambitious undertaking is particularly critical as Cisco positions itself as the "picks and shovels" provider for the burgeoning AI era.

The AI Infrastructure Gold Rush

Patel views Cisco's role in the current technological landscape as foundational. Just as prospectors needed tools during the gold rush, the AI era demands robust infrastructure. Cisco aims to be the leading provider of this infrastructure, ensuring that AI runs securely, safely, and at scale. This is a significant shift from how Cisco might have been perceived just a few years ago, highlighting the rapid and profound transformation underway within the company. The challenge, Patel explains, is to navigate this change within a massive organization, a feat he attributes more to the dedicated teams than to individual leaders.