Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

Eric Schmidt · Jonathan Rosenberg · Alan Eagle

Apr 2019 · HarperAudio · Narrated by Dan Woren

About this audiobook

The team behind How Google Works returns with management lessons from legendary coach and business executive, Bill Campbell, whose mentoring of some of our most successful modern entrepreneurs has helped create well over a trillion dollars in market value.

Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. In addition, this business genius mentored dozens of other important leaders on both coasts, from entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to educators to football players, leaving behind a legacy of growing companies, successful people, respect, friendship, and love after his death in 2016.

Leaders at Google for over a decade, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle experienced firsthand how the man fondly known as Coach Bill built trusting relationships, fostered personal growth—even in those at the pinnacle of their careers—inspired courage, and identified and resolved simmering tensions that inevitably arise in fast-moving environments. To honor their mentor and inspire and teach future generations, they have codified his wisdom in this essential guide.

Based on interviews with over eighty people who knew and loved Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach explains the Coach’s principles and illustrates them with stories from the many great people and companies with which he worked. The result is a blueprint for forward-thinking business leaders and managers that will help them create higher performing and faster moving cultures, teams, and companies.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Ratings and reviews

I've always wondered how technology pioneers, who are often engineers with no experience running a company, learned how to become business leaders. Now we know: Bill Campbell. This former football coach knew what the tech pioneers did not. He mentored them and taught them about the importance of things like: humility, leadership, strategic thinking, and love. Yes, love. I enjoyed this book a great deal.

One of the most inspiring books I've read/listened. Thank you, authors, for putting this book together with amazing stories of how a great coach drove so much impact in the world.

Very interesting/inspiring book.

About the author

Eric Schmidt served as Google CEO and chairman from 2001 until 2011, Google executive chairman from 2011 to 2015, and Alphabet executive chairman from 2015 to 2018.

Jonathan Rosenberg was a Senior Vice President at Google and is an advisor to the Alphabet management team. He ran the Google product team from 2002 to 2011.

Alan Eagle is an author and executive communications consultant, helping leaders and companies shape and tell their stories. He spent 16 years at Google, partnering with executives to communicate the company’s story to clients, partners, employees, and the public. He is the co-author of the books How Google Works and Trillion Dollar Coach, and the author, all by himself, of seven letters-to-the-editor published in Sports Illustrated. He has never won the New Yorker Caption Contest.