- Philip Moyer says his stint at Amazon was one of the most impactful of his career, in part due to the company’s emphasis on customers over shareholders.
Vimeo’s new CEO, Philip Moyer, has been around the block among the biggest tech companies.
While he most recently led Google’s applied AI engineering team, his career included a 15-year stint as a general manager in sales and technology at Microsoft and two years at Amazon’s financial services. The latter experience was the most “instructive,” he admits, and it centered around a unique policy against using adverbs.
But the reason is more logical than you may think.
“When we would write press releases, we weren’t allowed to use adverbs,” Moyer tells Fortune. “We had to actually not talk about the features of our products, but instead the problems we were solving for customers. And I would tell you that it was a really instructional reset in the language that I had to use.”
Corporate speak can cause companies to ‘lose their way’
Amazon has long been known for its unique leadership practices, such as a “two pizza rule” that defines small team size, as well as 16 principles like “bias for action” and “disagree and commit.” However, the company’s emphasis on customer value—versus shareholder value—is what most impressed Moyer. A failure to focus on the customer can be “one of the most dangerous things” for a company, he says.
“When they bring in outside consulting organizations, they talk in corporate speak, or they talk in terms of numbers as opposed to problems and people, I think that’s when companies lose their way,” Moyer adds.
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He’s brought his lessons with him in his new role as chief executive at Vimeo. While the video-sharing platform was heading down a path of decline last year, Vimeo is now on track for double-digit growth by the end of the year, Moyer says.
How to get ahead in the business world, according to Vimeo’s CEO
As now the leader of an $800 million company, Moyer learned many of his lessons the hard way, and he has advice for future business leaders:
“First and foremost, do not be anxious,” Moyer says. “They’re going to do amazing as long as they do the work.”
He also adds that it’s important to remember that despite any perception, no enterprise is created as easily as you may think.
“Every company, every great AI unicorn, any company I’ve ever worked for was never the overnight success that it appears in the press release. It’s always a 10-year journey,” he says.
Take OpenAI, for example—one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. The artificial intelligence startup did not explode in popularity until 2023, thanks in part to its success with ChatGPT. However, OpenAI was founded in late 2015, and its visionaries, like Sam Altman, were likely working on the concept years prior.
Those who are willing to put in the hard work, even when it may go unnoticed at first, will come out ahead on the other side, Moyer adds.
“You can do a lot of work in the dark—a lot of work that people don’t see—but as long as you’re doing the work, you ultimately will be successful in the thing that you’re working on.”
