Peggy Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Magic Leap
Interviewer: Maria Aspan, FORTUNE

MPW Summit 2020: Leap of Faith: One on One with Peggy Johnson

Peggy Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Magic Leap

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The long-time tech exec has taken on a new role: Leading a hot but challenged augmented reality startup.

Hello everyone. We have something really beautiful to offer you now a long shahm folding leather bag, courtesy of our partner in Sydney. Um but you have to know your fortune history to get back in just a moment, I'm going to ask you a trivia question related to fortune. The third person that the correct answer in the chat function role with here is the question what woman was fortunes all time longest serving employee and coined the phrase hedge fund again, what woman with fortunes all time longest serving employee? And to coin the phrase hedge funds, the winner will have her name shown on the message bar during the next session and will be contacted by fortune. Good luck everybody. So now back to our discussions and a giant in the tech world, was experiencing a new reality in july Peggy johnson, formerly of Microsoft, took on the role of Ceo of the augmented reality startup, magically he drinks fortune. Senior writer Maria aspen to talk more about this new venture and what it's like to make such a pivot pivot in the middle of a pandemic Maria over to you. I'd like to start by asking about your decision to take this job because you also left a really big job at Microsoft where you were on the senior leadership committee, you were the top steelmaker and you said this july when you decided to become magically ceo that it really says something that I would choose police Microsoft now because Microsoft doing so well. So why did you decide to leave Microsoft? And why was just the job and the company that made you do it? Well, thanks Maria, thanks for having me. It's a real honor to be here with you. And fortunately today, you know, you're right, I had a wonderful job at Microsoft. Many people turn the best job in the world and you know, Microsoft, uh, world class company Satya Nadella is an iconic leader and but I had an ambition for a while to be a Ceo, but I knew it needed to be the right fit for me. And frankly when I saw that Ronnie had stepped down as Ceo of magically made my hand, I was very intentional about it and mostly because I am, you know, I had, I had had a great run at Microsoft, I loved it, but I just wanted to step into that role when you look around there, so few women cEOs and even fewer in the tech industry and I just wanted to take the reins and do it, but I knew it had to be the right fit and I felt that magically was for me. How did you weigh deciding to take the leap of faith now to go into a startup versus thinking about waiting and seeing. It's a big tech ceo job eventually opened up. Well, again, it had to be something I was passionate about. And when I looked at medically they're involved in augmented reality and I had a history of augmented reality going back to my home days. Uh we have developed of euphoria augmented reality product. Obviously Microsoft had holo lens and I was familiar with magically because I had met Ronnie at a conference and he invited me out to the company. But what really impressed me is that the strong set of assets that magically has, they have an innovative device, amazing software platform and frankly one of the most significant I. P. Portfolios of any company of its size. Uh but even more so they have a diverse and very high performing, talented team. And so that's what what drew me in both the topic, augmented reality as well as I felt all the assets were in place for success and it was something it was an area that I loved. Um, that said obviously magically has had its challenges. That you're, um, is laid off about a third of its workforce in april it's investors have written down evaluation and it's in the middle of this pivot from consumer to enterprise that you came into all of that. And one of the phrases, um, used when your, when your new child was announced was the Glass Cliff. Do you worry about the Glass Club? I don't worry at all about it. And frankly, sometimes it's exhausting that that term is always put forward when a, when a woman steps into a ceo job, I chose this and I chose it because of all the elements that that that were in place. And frankly there pivot to enterprise was very encouraging to see. Um so my job as I stepped in was very focused and to continue to grow the list of partnerships that they had begun just previous to me coming in in the enterprise space And then obviously I could bring the enterprise partnerships that I was familiar with from the industry, being in the industry for 35 years there as well. And um so I don't see any cliff ahead at all. I'm excited about it. I'm confident that the company is on track for success ahead. Yeah, Is to tell us a bit more about that now that you've been at the company for eight weeks, um you you're in the middle of a listening tour in a 30, 60, 90 day plan, what have you learned and what can you tell us about what you'll be spending the rest of the Iran? Well, first of all I would say, as I stepped into the company, what was very exciting to see? It is just the momentum that in the A. R. V. R. Category right now. Uh By the end of 2024 I. D. C. Predicts 100 and $40 billion market. So the groundwork was there for that. Um what you know what I'm focused on is ensuring that we're picking the right areas of enterprise to focus on. So things like training will be super important if you layer than the environment that we're in now in the covid world where it's harder to do in person training, you can imagine that that that's something that rises to the top of enterprise needs another area is something we call remote assist. So if you have the device on it, makes itself is a head mounted display where you can still see your physical world around you, but then we augment it with your digital world. So that could be text or images or video or a three D. Volumetric life person who's remote from you. And so we're most assists can be when you have somebody who might not be fully trained on a machine that has gone down on a factory floor and they can call in an expert who might be a continent away that if we can see what the employee can see, they can circle things that can point out sensors. You can imagine that's a great help for enterprise. And then lastly, just the field of 3D visualization. So you you imagine you have design schemes who in a covid world can't meet in person anymore and that you might be designed in a car pair of shoes and you can have everybody call into a meeting and have the three D. Image in front of everybody no matter what they're calling in from they can make it bigger, smaller, they can change shape color. Uh so it's quite a tool for enterprise and I think more broadly every enterprise will have a need for this. But those are the areas on keeping the company's super focused on in the short term because of the need and because of the real return on investment that our enterprise customers can see from a total like augmented reality. I think you also recently used the headset to conduct part of the board meeting. Do you see that the NdP events like this as being a use case going forward? I do. I think these two d video conferences can be a bit exhausting when you're on them all day long, you can't talk at the same time. It's there's there's sort of a flatness to them. So I decided let's hold our boarding inside of the device and all of our board members uh put on their headsets and they all showed up in my room behind me here. So they were in my library and uh we had uh we had them visualize in two different ways so our board could see it. One is sort of a generic human form and another where we had a camera capture on one of our presenters and we could see him as if he was standing during my library and and the board members, by the way, we're on three continents. We had no latency. We were uh talking all at one time laughing together. It felt finally that emotional factor that you're getting a physical meeting with back again. And we had somebody presenting screens up on three walls here, and they all saw with what we saw. It was lots of fun, as well as very informative. Well maybe we can do mp w next year, at least partially through our, but um I mhm. We will take questions if there are any, but before we get to them, I would love to ask you about another area that's long been a focus of yours at Qualcomm at Microsoft, um expanding the diversity and inclusion of the tech industry. How are you thinking about that and continuing your efforts as you transition to this new job at magically Right? It it is it's another passionate area of mine. I'm an engineer, I have been in this industry for over 35 years, that's a long time, and it was not always easy to navigate. And so I started those efforts, even back at qualcomm, I always had, um, I wouldn't, uh, leadership team that I would, I would gather together and, you know, we would sort of be sounding board for each other. It was very formal thing, but we, I had that for all the years, I was that quote. Um, and then at Microsoft, I had the opportunity to build a team from scratch. I started an early stage venture fund and because I had that opportunity, I was able to build a diverse set of investors. And we also have focused on diverse founders who don't always get the attention that they deserve. So it is going to remain a focus of mine at magically. Uh, we happen to have a fairly diverse team already, though. I'm committed to making all of our members public by the answer of the year, the team, but that we can track it in it. You need to shine a light on things like your diversity numbers in order to be able to improve them. I've already also added to my team quite a bit of diversity for about 50% diverse at this point. Uh we've got a great member, a great set of numbers that are coming in and just excited about making more of an impact in that area going forward at magically. I'd like to stay on the transparency topic for a minute because we've, we've heard even during the summit, a large call from leaders including jane fraser at Citigroup yesterday that transparency is absolutely the first step towards towards greater diversity and inclusion, even when numbers are bad. How do you think about um being transparent in public, not just to employees, but do you feel an obligation to be transparent to the wider world as well? You know, I do and I think it's it's actually helpful to have a transparency. I think employees who are candidates who are looking at your company appreciate that kind of transparency and say, you know, we're not going to shy away from these numbers, going to shine a light on them and we are going to improve them and and just given my background and I can't even the challenges of being oftentimes the only female in the room uh in in a tech company, it's a lonesome feelings and I want to focus on creating the best environment so all of our employees can do their best work. And that means having a continued focus on diversity equity and inclusion, not just the check box, it has to be a constant thing. Mhm. Well, we have one minute left and I'd like to close by asking what is as the ceo of now a prominent tech company. Um what's your challenge to the M. P. W. Community? What do you want us to be? What do you want to be bragging about this time next year? Wow. I love for us all to be using. The magically hits us because I think if we are not still in a covid environment, they can definitely increase uh you know our ability to interact with each other and to really connect on an emotional level. Um But otherwise I just uh all of the attendees well this year and hopefully next year we'll have the opportunity to be together in again uh The Fortune event. It's always one of my favorites every year. Wonderful. Well thank you so much for joining us, Peggy. Thank you Maria, thanks for having me.