When Don Faul, head of operations of Pinterest, first went from serving as an Infantry and Reconnaissance leader in the U.S. Marine Corps to seeking opportunities in Silicon Valley, he nearly gave up.
“I didn’t get too many calls back. I didn’t get too many interviews. I didn’t get great feedback from the companies that I was interviewing with,” he says.
The self-described gadget geek nearly came to the conclusion that the tech world might not be for him, but one opportunity led to another, eventually putting Faul in a position to lead. He points to several charts in his talk, speaking about what it takes to go from a flat line to an upward curve. Having joined Facebook in early 2008 before going on to help Pinterest become of the leading social networking companies, Faul knows a thing or two about growth.
“It took me a long time to realize that those skills and experiences that I learned in the Marine Corps were just as relevant at Facebook and Google and Pinterest as they were on the battlefield,” he says.  
Watch his talk to learn why leadership is so central is to building a successful company around a culture of sustained innovation.