Frank Slootman

Frank Slootman
Frank Slootman
Born	Template:Birth year and age
Birthplace	Netherlands
Nationality	American, Dutch
Occupation	Business executive, author
Title	Chairman of the Board
Employer	Snowflake Inc.
Known for	CEO of Snowflake Inc., CEO of ServiceNow, CEO of Data Domain
Education	Erasmus University Rotterdam

Frank Slootman (born 1958) is a Dutch-born American business executive and author who has served as chief executive officer of three enterprise technology companies, each of which he led through an initial public offering. He is best known for his tenure as CEO and later chairman of the board of Snowflake Inc., the cloud-based data warehousing company, a role from which he retired as CEO in February 2024. Prior to Snowflake, Slootman served as CEO of ServiceNow, the cloud-based IT service management company, and before that as CEO of Data Domain, a data storage and deduplication company. His career has been defined by a distinctive pattern: joining companies founded by others and scaling them into large, publicly traded enterprises. Born in the Netherlands and educated at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Slootman relocated to the United States where he built his career in Silicon Valley. His management philosophy, characterized by an emphasis on urgency, directness, and operational discipline, has been the subject of significant coverage in the business press and was detailed in his book Amp It Up, published in 2022.

Early Life

Frank Slootman was born in 1958 in the Netherlands. He grew up in the Netherlands before eventually moving to the United States to pursue his career in the technology industry. Details about his early family life and upbringing remain largely private. According to profiles in major business publications, Slootman has spoken about his Dutch roots and the cultural influence of his upbringing on his direct, no-nonsense management style.

Slootman's background as a European immigrant in Silicon Valley has been a recurring theme in media profiles. Forbes described him as "the outsider" in a major 2021 profile, referencing both his origins outside the traditional Silicon Valley ecosystem and his pattern of entering companies as a professional CEO brought in to scale businesses that others had founded. This outsider identity became a defining characteristic of his career narrative, distinguishing him from the founder-CEO archetype that has dominated the technology industry.

Education

Slootman attended Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, one of the country's leading research universities known for its programs in economics and business. His educational background in economics provided a foundation for his later career in business management and executive leadership in the technology sector. After completing his studies, Slootman eventually relocated to the United States, where he would build his career in enterprise software and data infrastructure.

Career

Data Domain

Slootman's first major CEO role came at Data Domain, an enterprise data storage company specializing in deduplication technology. He joined the company as CEO and led it through a period of rapid growth, ultimately taking it public. Data Domain's IPO marked the first of three such events that Slootman would oversee as CEO during his career. The company's success in the enterprise storage market attracted significant attention from larger technology firms. Data Domain was ultimately acquired by EMC Corporation in 2009 in a deal that valued the company at approximately $2.4 billion, following a bidding war with NetApp. The Data Domain experience established Slootman's reputation as a CEO capable of taking a mid-stage technology company and transforming it into a high-growth public enterprise, a template he would repeat in his subsequent roles.

ServiceNow

Following his time at Data Domain, Slootman was recruited to serve as CEO of ServiceNow, a cloud-based IT service management platform founded by Fred Luddy. Slootman joined the company and was tasked with scaling it from a growing enterprise software business into a major publicly traded company.

Under Slootman's leadership, ServiceNow went through its IPO and experienced substantial growth in both revenue and market capitalization. A 2025 podcast episode by Sequoia Capital's Crucible Moments series described how founder Fred Luddy "reinvented IT software for the cloud" and how "with CEO Frank Slootman they built a $150B+ company." Slootman's tenure at ServiceNow reinforced his reputation as an operator who could take a promising enterprise technology company and drive it to scale through disciplined execution and a focus on growth.

The ServiceNow experience was significant in establishing Slootman's model of professional CEO leadership at founder-led companies. Rather than displacing the company's founding vision, Slootman focused on operationalizing and scaling the existing product and business model, bringing structure, urgency, and market discipline to the organization. ServiceNow has since grown into one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world, with a market capitalization exceeding $150 billion.

Snowflake Inc.

Appointment as CEO

In 2019, Slootman was appointed CEO of Snowflake Inc., a cloud-based data warehousing company. At the time, Snowflake was a closely watched private company—often referred to as a "unicorn"—that had been growing rapidly in the competitive cloud data analytics market. Slootman replaced Bob Muglia, who had served as CEO since 2014. The appointment was seen as a strategic move to bring in a proven operator who could take the company through an IPO and the transition to a public company.

The San Francisco Business Times profiled Slootman's approach shortly after he joined Snowflake, describing how the CEO ran the company with an emphasis on performance and accountability. Business Insider also published an extensive profile of Slootman's leadership at Snowflake, examining his management style and the culture he cultivated at the company.

Snowflake IPO

Snowflake's IPO on September 16, 2020, was one of the largest software IPOs in history. The company priced its shares at $120 per share and saw them more than double on the first day of trading, reaching a market capitalization of approximately $70 billion at the close of its first trading day. The IPO raised approximately $3.4 billion, making it the largest software IPO at the time. The event attracted particular attention because Berkshire Hathaway, the investment conglomerate led by Warren Buffett, participated in the IPO—a rare move for a company not typically associated with high-growth technology investments.

Fortune reported on Slootman's compensation and financial standing following the IPO, noting the significant value of his equity stake in the company. The Snowflake IPO marked the third time in Slootman's career that he had taken a company public, cementing his unusual track record as a "serial IPO CEO" in the technology industry.

Leadership and Management Philosophy

Slootman's management approach at Snowflake drew significant attention from the technology press and business community. He was profiled extensively for his demanding, results-oriented leadership style, which he described in detail in his 2022 book Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity.

In a 2022 interview with SiliconANGLE, Slootman discussed his philosophy of "amping up" organizations—raising the bar on performance expectations, increasing the sense of urgency, and driving intensity across all levels of the company. This approach, which he argued was essential for companies operating in fast-moving technology markets, became closely associated with his personal brand as a CEO.

Forbes characterized Slootman's approach as that of an "outsider" who brought a fresh, uncompromising perspective to companies that needed operational transformation to reach their potential. His Dutch directness and willingness to make difficult personnel and strategic decisions became recurring themes in profiles of his leadership. Business Insider noted that Slootman's management style could be polarizing, with supporters praising his effectiveness and detractors finding his approach abrasive.

In June 2023, Slootman publicly addressed rumors that he planned to resign from Snowflake, calling them "FUD" (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) and affirming his commitment to the company.

Retirement as CEO and Transition to Chairman

On February 28, 2024, Snowflake announced that Slootman was retiring from his position as CEO. The news sent Snowflake's stock down approximately 20 percent in after-hours trading, reflecting the market's view of Slootman's importance to the company's performance and strategic direction. Sridhar Ramaswamy, a former senior vice president of AI at Snowflake, was named as his successor.

Following his departure as CEO, Slootman transitioned to the role of chairman of the board of directors at Snowflake, a position he continued to hold as of 2026.

Stock Sales

In June 2025, Barron's reported that Slootman had announced plans to sell approximately 3 million shares of Snowflake stock, with a total value exceeding $600 million at the time of the announcement. In the following months, Slootman executed a series of stock sales as part of this plan. In January 2026, he sold 180,070 shares of Snowflake common stock for approximately $41.35 million. In February 2026, he sold an additional 100,000 shares for approximately $17.69 million and 105,900 shares for approximately $17.7 million in separate transactions. These transactions were publicly disclosed through regulatory filings as insider transactions.

Board Memberships

In March 2025, Slootman was appointed to the board of directors of Cyera, a data security company. The announcement described Slootman as a "renowned tech exec" and noted that his appointment reflected Cyera's ambitions as a growing enterprise security firm. This appointment indicated Slootman's continued involvement in the technology industry in a governance capacity following his retirement as an operating CEO.

Amp It Up

In 2022, Slootman published Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity, a book outlining his management philosophy and drawing on his experiences at Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake. The book articulated Slootman's core leadership principles, including the importance of setting high expectations, driving urgency throughout an organization, and maintaining intensity in execution. It received attention in the business and technology press, and Slootman discussed its themes in multiple media appearances and interviews.

The book's influence extended beyond Snowflake. A 2025 article on the SaaStr business blog referenced Slootman's philosophy of urgency in the context of a broader discussion about CEO leadership and company performance, citing the approach as an example of how operational intensity can drive results in technology companies.

Personal Life

Slootman was born in the Netherlands and later became a resident of the United States, where he has spent the majority of his professional career. He has maintained a relatively private personal life compared to many prominent Silicon Valley executives. Media profiles have noted his Dutch background and its influence on his direct communication style.

A Belgian financial newspaper, L'Écho, profiled Slootman under the headline describing him as "the maestro of IPOs," reflecting his prominence in European business media as a Dutch-born executive who achieved significant success in American technology companies.

Recognition

Slootman's career has been the subject of extensive coverage in major business and financial publications, including Forbes, Fortune, Barron's, Business Insider, and CNBC. His record of taking three companies through IPOs is considered unusual in the technology industry, where most CEOs are associated with a single major company or public offering.

Forbes featured Slootman in a prominent 2021 profile titled "The Outsider," which examined his career trajectory and management approach. Fortune profiled his compensation and financial standing following the Snowflake IPO, one of the largest in software history. Sequoia Capital featured the ServiceNow story, including Slootman's role, in its Crucible Moments podcast series in 2025, placing the company's development alongside other major technology success stories.

His book Amp It Up further contributed to his profile as a management thinker and practitioner, generating discussion in business media and among enterprise technology leaders about leadership philosophy and organizational performance.

Legacy

Slootman's career is distinguished by his record of leading three separate enterprise technology companies through IPOs—Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake—each time joining as a professional CEO rather than as a founder. This pattern has made him one of the most prominent examples of the professional CEO model in Silicon Valley, in contrast to the founder-led model exemplified by figures such as Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos.

ServiceNow, which Slootman helped scale during his tenure as CEO, has grown into a company with a market capitalization exceeding $150 billion. Snowflake's IPO in 2020 was one of the largest in software history and attracted investment from Berkshire Hathaway, underscoring the company's standing in the market at the time of its public debut.

Slootman's management philosophy, centered on raising expectations and increasing urgency, has been discussed in the context of broader debates about leadership and performance in the technology industry. His book Amp It Up codified this approach, and his ideas have been referenced by business commentators and practitioners in discussions about how to drive growth in enterprise technology companies.

As of 2026, Slootman continues to be active in the technology industry as chairman of the board of Snowflake and as a board member at Cyera, indicating an ongoing role in governance and strategic oversight at technology companies.