Former Cisco boss thinks tech leaders are too cocky

John Chambers, who ran Cisco for 20 years, reckons the leaders of tech companies need to dial down the arrogance a bit.

He made the comment to Yahoo Finance in the context of the tech venture capital business he started up since stepping down from Cisco. “I worry about our industry – it’s a tug-of-war between overconfidence, bordering on arrogance, among some of the leaders,” He said. “It’s hard to get that arrogance out of them.”

Chambers’ major issue with this mindset is that arrogance can prevent the people running tech startups from continuing to learn and grow, which makes them less attractive investment prospects. “For the companies I select, if they are arrogant I don’t touch it,” he said. “I have developed a criteria. If the CEO doesn’t want to be coached, if they don’t know what they don’t know, and truly if the chemistry is off, I don’t touch them.”

The VC business is called JC2 Ventures, so named because Chambers runs it with his son. Showing the kind of humility he expects of his fellow tech moguls Chambers named his son after himself and JC2 Ventures apparently has 12 companies in its investment portfolio.