“Wanna come on my podcast?” — that was the subject line of an email that landed an Indian-origin podcaster the interview of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Podcast host Dwarkesh Patel, who has interviewed the likes of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever on his Dwarkesh Podcast, recently was amused to find Nadella on his newsletter subscriber list.
Perhaps not thinking twice, Patel shot off an email to Nadella with a rather cold subject line — ‘Wanna come on my podcast?’
“Hi Satya, Saw your email on my newsletter subscriber list. Appreciate you tuning in! Would you be interested in coming on my podcast? Previous guests include Mark Zuckerberg, Iony Blair, and llya Sutskever. I’m keen to hear how you’re thinking about Al (and Microsoft) over the next over the next 3/10/25 years. Happy to sort through logistics with your point person. Thanks for considering,” the mail read.
Four minutes later came Nadella’s reply. “Your pod is super. I would love to,” he said.
On Thursday, Patel shared, on X, a glimpse from the behind-the-scenes of his podcast with Nadella.
“Kids, don’t underestimate the power of a cold email,” Patel captioned the tweet.
During the podcast, Patel asked Satya Nadella about his time at Microsoft, calling him a “company man” as he has been at Microsoft for 34 years. Nadella has been the chairman and CEO of the tech giant since 2014.
In response, Nadella said he feels “more excited” with every year that he has been at Microsoft. “For anybody joining Microsoft… as long as they feel that they can use this as a platform for both their economic return but also a sense of purpose, a sense of mission that they can accomplish by using us as a platform. Right, so therefore that’s the contract,” he said, as they went on to discuss AGI and quantum breakthroughs at length.