Frank Slootman is a well-known name in the fields of enterprise software and technology that are changing. Slootman is known for his no-nonsense leadership style and his ability to help companies grow in ways that have never been seen before. He has made a lasting impact on three major tech companies: Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake. Slootman was born in the Netherlands in 1958. His journey from being an economics student to one of the most respected and richest CEOs in tech is a story of strategic vision, hard work, and a unique way of leading that puts results ahead of feelings.
The Beginning of His Life and Career
Frank Slootman was born in the Netherlands and went to Erasmus University Rotterdam to get his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics. After finishing school, he started working in market research at Uniroyal, a tire company. In 1982, he moved to the United States to look for better job opportunities. He worked at tech companies like Compuware, where he got his first management job in 1995, and Borland Software, where he learned about the fast-changing tech world. These jobs helped him become successful later on by teaching him how to run a business more efficiently and how the market works.
In 2003, Slootman got his big break when he became the CEO of Data Domain, a storage startup that was about to go out of business. The company was a risky business because it only had a few million dollars in the bank and no customers. But Slootman thought the company’s new way of backing up and deduplicating data had promise. Under his leadership, Data Domain became the market leader, with sales growing to $600 million a year in just six years. In 2007, the company went public on NASDAQ. In 2009, EMC bought it for $2.4 billion after a bidding war with NetApp. This success made Slootman a “growth doctor” who could turn failing businesses into industry leaders.
ServiceNow: Reaching New Heights
Slootman became the head of ServiceNow, a cloud software company based in San Diego that focuses on IT service management, in 2011. ServiceNow was making about $100 million a year at the time, but it wasn’t ready to handle its fast growth. Slootman said it had “the maturity of a popsicle stand,” but he saw a chance to expand its services beyond IT to include other business processes.
ServiceNow changed a lot under his direction. Slootman changed the structure of the executive team, often bringing in trusted coworkers from Data Domain, like CFO Mike Scarpelli and HR head Shelly Begun. He focused on operational discipline, which meant that the company’s priorities were limited to those that would help it grow. When Slootman left in 2017, ServiceNow’s revenue had grown to $1.4 billion, and its market cap had grown to $14 billion after a successful IPO in 2012. ServiceNow’s market cap is now more than $100 billion, which shows how strong the company Slootman built is. He was well-respected in Silicon Valley for being able to grow the company while keeping a culture focused on performance.
Snowflake: The biggest IPO ever
Slootman took a short break from work to race sailboats and run his Invisible Hand Ventures. In 2019, he became the CEO of Snowflake, a cloud-based data warehousing company. Former Oracle engineers started Snowflake in 2012. It was already a “unicorn” in Silicon Valley, worth $4 billion, but its board asked Slootman to help them get ready for an IPO. His hiring caused a lot of talk because he took over for popular CEO Bob Muglia, which shocked employees but showed the board’s desire to get the most out of Snowflake.
Slootman changed the way Snowflake’s sales team worked to focus on bigger clients and made things run more smoothly by hiring trusted aides like Scarpelli and Begun. His strategic focus on using AI and improving the cloud data platform made Snowflake a leader in the data cloud era. He led Snowflake through the biggest software IPO ever in 2020. The company was worth more than $80 billion on its first day of trading, and it raised $3.4 billion. When Slootman left as CEO in February 2024, Snowflake’s annual revenue had grown from $265 million to $2.8 billion, and the number of customers had grown to over 9,400. His 5.9% stake in the company, which was worth about $2 billion, made him one of the richest non-founder CEOs in tech.
“Amp It Up” is the way I think about leadership.
People often say that Slootman’s style of leadership is intense, confrontational, and focused on results. In his 2022 book, Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity, he talks about how to get organizations to reach their full potential by getting rid of “slack.” He wants everyone to focus on growth, set high standards, and create a culture of “drivers” instead of “passengers.” This means that employees should take ownership instead of just going along with the flow.
There are some problems with his method. Some people say that Slootman’s “my way or the highway” style has caused a lot of employees to leave because he doesn’t seem to care about them. In 2021, he got a lot of criticism for saying that diversity goals shouldn’t be more important than merit when hiring. He later apologized. He was also annoyed with employees who were politically active because he thought it took away from business priorities. Even though people have said bad things about Slootman, his results speak for themselves. He says that his method brings in the right people and keeps out those who don’t fit with his vision.
Slootman’s hiring philosophy puts results ahead of traditional interviews, and he is known for bringing in trusted team members from previous companies to make sure everyone is on the same page. His motto of “relentless realism” and facing “brutal facts” has been praised by people like HashiCorp CEO David McJannet, who said that Slootman is good at starting businesses over and over again.
Effect and Legacy
No one in the enterprise tech world has a better track record than Slootman. He is one of the few CEOs to have led three companies through successful IPOs, each of which was worth a billion dollars. He is strategically smart because he can spot and take advantage of market opportunities in storage (Data Domain), IT services (ServiceNow), and cloud data warehousing (Snowflake). People on X talk about his reputation as a “turnaround titan,” and one user says he is “one of the only people to build three $1B+ revenue businesses.”
His wealth, which was thought to be $2.2 billion in 2021, shows how well he has done financially, mostly because of stock sales and his stake in Snowflake. But Slootman’s effect goes beyond just numbers. He has changed the way that big tech companies grow by putting an emphasis on operational excellence and putting the customer first. Snowflake can compete with big players like Amazon’s Redshift and Databricks because of his influence. ServiceNow is still the best at managing IT services.
Frank Slootman Net Worth:
Frank Slootman’s net worth in 2025 is thought to be between $1.3 billion and $3.7 billion, according to different sources. Bloomberg and others say that the most reliable number is about $3.7 billion as of February 2024, when he left his job as CEO of Snowflake. He got most of his money from being a leader at Snowflake, ServiceNow, and Data Domain. He also made a lot of money by selling and holding stocks. As of July 2025, SEC filings show that he owns about 271,205 shares of Snowflake (worth $58 million) and 95,076 shares of ServiceNow (worth $90 million). Slootman has sold millions of Snowflake shares in the past few years, including a big deal worth $95 million in July 2025. His pay at Snowflake also included a valuable options package that was said to be worth $1.3 billion a year while he was there. Some sources, on the other hand, say that his net worth dropped by $500 million in early 2024 because the stock price went down after he left as CEO.
The Future
When Slootman quit as CEO of Snowflake in February 2024, the news caused the company’s stock to drop 18%, showing how much investors trusted his leadership. He became Chairman of the Board, and Sridhar Ramaswamy, who used to be in charge of Google Ads and Neeva, became CEO. Slootman said he trusted Ramaswamy and that his knowledge of AI was important for Snowflake’s future. Even though he is retired, Slootman’s ideas live on through his work on the board and the ideas in Amp It Up.
Slootman is still a huge name in tech at 65. His books, Tape Sucks (2011) and Amp It Up (2022), give advice to people who want to be leaders by stressing the importance of clarity, urgency, and performance. Slootman’s legacy as a leader who changed things for the better is safe, whether he goes back to being CEO or stays on as a mentor. His career is a model for how to turn potential into power, showing that any business can become unstoppable if it focuses on the right things.
