Good morning.
In the early 1990s, before he became CEO of five different tech companies, Peter McKay was a young controller with an accounting degree who was trying to make a move into sales. “I’m like, ‘if I don’t get out of accounting now, I’ll be there for life,’” says McKay. Facing resistance, he signed up for a Dale Carnegie course and then landed a sales role at Computer Associates. “To this day, I still quote all the things that I learned from Dale Carnegie,” says McKay, now CEO of cybersecurity company Snyk.
As McKay and I were chatting yesterday about ransomware and plans for an IPO, we discovered we’re both Dale Carnegie grads. I did an eight-week course at 13 as part of Junior Achievement, and still have my marked-up copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. After jokingly repeating each other’s name—the “sweetest and most important sound” to the name-holder, Carnegie wrote—we marveled that a 1936 self-help book by a former lard salesman has remained a bestseller for almost nine decades.
