TECH’S ULTIMATE
SECOND ACT
Facing 50, Fred Luddy lost his job and his fortune. But in applying
the lessons of his failures, he made ServiceNow the most innovative
company in America—and himself a late-career billionaire.BY KATHLEEN CHAYKOWSKI AND MARK COATNEYGLOBAL 2OOO
V
egas being Vegas, fans have crammed the Venetian Hotel for selfi es with
a graying celebrity working his way through the scrum: Fred Luddy, the
63-year-old founder of ServiceNow, America’s hottest IT-services com-
pany. Neither Wayne Newton nor Celine Dion, Siegfried nor Roy, has
anything on Luddy in Sin City this day, at least among the 18,000 cus-
tomers, vendors and employees in town for Knowledge, ServiceNow’s annual devel-
opers conference.
“When all of these people are happy to see you, honestly you feel like a rock star,” says the spar-
kly-eyed Luddy, having booked extra time between appearances to grip-and-grin with the adoring
hordes. “It’s kind of an undeserved feeling, because they were the inspiration. You folks had all of
the ideas. I just wrote them down and thought about them.”
Forgive Luddy such indulgences. Fourteen years ago, he was pretty much broke, having seen
a $35 million personal fortune vanish overnight in the midst of accounting fraud at his previous
company. h irteen years ago he was a one-man shop, tinkering with ServiceNow’s core product
from his home. Even at er the vindication of an IPO six years ago, the company was worth a mod-
est $2 billion.
h ese days ServiceNow, of Santa Clara, California, maintains a $30 billion market cap, has
6,000-plus employees—and is ranked 1,640 on the Global 2000 list. Its more than 4,000 customers
include 850 of the Global 2000. Last year it had revenues of $1.93 billion, and growth is expected54 | FORBES ASIA JUNE 2018 ETHAN PINES FOR FORBESFred Luddy at his
beachfront home in Del
Mar, California. Success
has meant more time to
spend with his 10-year-
old son and to work on
his next project: making
U.S. healthcare more
a ordable and ei cient.