How Epic’s 82-year-old billionaire CEO, Judy Faulkner, built her software factory
CNBC
Judy Faulkner has publicly described herself as “the accidental CEO.”
She told CNBC she read books and took daylong or multiday courses to learn more about management, business and leadership. But she didn’t always follow their advice.
“I never got an MBA, which I think is a really good thing,” Faulkner said. “They would have taught me, ‘Here’s how you do venture capital.’ We didn’t do it. ‘Here’s how you go public.’ We didn’t do it. ‘Here’s how you do budgets.’ We don’t have budgets. We say, if you need it, buy it. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it.”
At the company’s Users Group Meeting last year, Faulkner took the stage dressed as a swan, with a plume of feathers in her hair. Every UGM meeting has a theme — this one was “storytime.” In costume, Faulkner told the thousands of health-care executives in attendance about her aversion to the public market.
“Why be owned by people whose interest is primarily return of equity?” she said.
She’s equally opposed to selling the business, which she makes clear in the company’s second commandment.
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