The Neon Show
Hi, I am your host Siddhartha! I have been an entrepreneur from 2012-2017 building two products AddoDoc and Babygogo. After selling my company to SHEROES, I and my partner Nansi decided to start up again. But we felt unequipped in our skillset in 2018 to build a large company. We had known 0-1 journey from our startups but lacked the experience of building 1-10 journeys.
Hence was born the Neon Show (Earlier 100x Entrepreneur) to learn from founders and investors, the mindset to scale yourself and your company. This quest still keeps us excited even after 5 years and doing 200+ episodes.
We welcome you to our journey to understand what goes behind building a super successful company. Every episode is done with a very selfish motive, that I and Nansi should come out as a better entrepreneur and professional after absorbing the learnings.
The Neon Show
The Art of Enterprise Sale: Selling Startups to Giants with Poojan Kumar
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What does it take to build a company that industry giants want to buy?
Poojan Kumar built and exited two enterprise infrastructure companies, PernixData to Nutanix and Clumio to Commvault.
He began his career at Oracle, where he wrote the original code for Exadata and helped scale it into a billion-dollar product line. But his real founder journey began when he left the corporate world to chase what he calls the “Discontinuity Thesis.”
At PernixData, that discontinuity was the shift from hard disks to flash storage. The company scaled to $25 million in revenue before being acquired by Nutanix. At Clumio, the discontinuity was public cloud. Clumio went on to raise $186 million to build a cloud-native backup and cyber resilience platform before being acquired by Commvault, where Poojan now serves as GM of the business line.
If you want to understand how enduring enterprise companies are actually built and acquired this episode is for you.
0:00 - Trailer
0:48 - 25 Years in Enterprise
03:02 - Founders Should Look for Discontinuity
04:25 - $25M ARR, $60M Funding & an Exit in 6 Years
06:28 - The Thesis Behind Clumio's Acquisition
07:36 - The Landscape of Data Backup
09:08 - What Should Founders in Security & Data Build?
11:48 - Cloud vs AI: The New Data & Storage Stack
13:59 - The Unanswered Questions Enterprises Have Today
16:38 - How Infra Changed Between Pernix, Clumio & Today
18:31 - Scaling to $25M Before Acquisition, Twice
20:43 - Why is AI Adoption Bottom-Up, Not Top-Down?
21:26 - Claude vs Codex vs Copilot
22:34 - When Cloud Outgrew the Backup Playbook
25:41 - Are Fragmented Clouds Silent Killers?
28:06 - Fundraising Takes You from Point A to Point B
32:29 - Selling to Commvault vs Nutanix
34:33 - What Leads to an 8-Figure Exit?
36:55 - How a Technical Founder Excelled at Sales
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This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.
I'm on the board of Y Common Air. 175 companies last batch. 159 were enterprise.
SPEAKER_00What are the unanswered questions that enterprises have today?
SPEAKER_01What data is going where in the enterprise? From all the employees to agentic applications and what data they're sharing with those MCP servers and how is the data flow happening between all of these MCP servers and within my own AgenTIC application?
SPEAKER_00We have built multiple companies, sold Clumio to Comvault. The previous company you sold to Nutanix. Today raised to $60 million combined across both their companies. How would you advise first-time founders on raising money and exploring MA opportunities?
SPEAKER_01You know, whenever I look at starting something, you have to look at what's the big discontinuity happening in the sector. Back in the day, the big discontinuity was.
SPEAKER_00Hi, this is Siddhartha Aluwaliya, your host at Neon Show and managing partner at Neon Fund, a fund that has invested in some of the best enterprise AI companies between the US and India corridor, like Atomic Work, Spot Draft, CloudSec. Today I have with me Pujan Kumar. Pujan, welcome to the Neon Show.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Siddharth. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00You have built multiple companies. Recently, you sold Clumio to Commvault. Today, you know, you are the GM for the entire Clumio business line for Commvault, right? The previous company you sold to Nutanix, right? So uh it's been an amazing journey, and you are one of the folks who worked on uh the data storage, data warehousing for a long period of time. How did in your life you decide to commit to this vertical? Maybe you can start with your Oracle journey where you led the product.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah, it's been uh 25 plus years in the enterprise. Uh started off at Oracle as an engineer, and then I would say, you know, sometimes you know the right things happen right place at the right time. We ended up working on something uh brand new and built it from scratch. That became Exadata, uh, which essentially was the first integrated hardware software appliance that Oracle shipped for data warehousing before data warehousing moved to the cloud. That was the data warehousing play within Oracle. Still, you know, doing really well, and it was one of the fastest growing products, get to getting to a billion dollars of revenue at Oracle while I was there. Uh, now obviously it's much bigger. But that was my first this thing of seeing something beginning from scratch to you know, from an engineering writing code to seeing what happens when you know the right product market fit happens. And and of course, what in that case it was within Oracle and with 10,000 plus sellers selling it, and but but really got an opportunity to see when you know the product and technology meets the business uh of technology. So that gave me the drive and the spirit to go and say, I want to do this myself. Obviously, doing it yourself outside is very different and much harder, uh, much harder to do than doing it within a safe uh uh this thing of Oracle. Uh so I started Purniks, that was my first uh journey as uh as founder CEO. And anytime, you know, when I think about starting.
SPEAKER_00And which year was this when you started Purnik?
SPEAKER_01This was early 2012.
SPEAKER_00And you had already spent like 10 years with Oracle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this was already, I think, you know, about you know, 10 years at Oracle and a couple years at VMware also back then. So from Oracle I had gone to VMware and then started uh started Purniks. Uh and you know, whenever I you know look at starting something in at least in the enterprise, you have to look at what's the big discontinuity happening in the sector, right? Back in the day, you know, in the storage uh space, I was per nix was at the intersection of virtualization and storage. And so back in the day, the big discontinuity was a shift of uh from hard disks to flash, yeah, right? And you know, flash was much, much faster, and and the you know, economics were getting better and better. And so that was a time when you know companies like Nutanix and Pure and all of these, you know, also were built. Fusion IO was a was a big player in in the flash play. So we are really building you know a software that would make virtualization and flash in the server meet and make uh virtual environments you know operate much, much faster using flash in the server. So that was the thesis using the discontinuity of uh hard disk to flash. And and essentially that was the thesis behind uh behind PurNix. Uh that was about a you know almost a five five-year journey. And ultimately that uh got acquired by Nutanix, uh, which is where I spent uh some time at Nutanix, you know, both integrating the the Purniks uh you know stack into Nutanix.
SPEAKER_00If you can give a rough idea of what scale did Pernix achieve before the acquisition?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was about uh you know 25 million of revenue. Wow, independent. Independently, yes. Uh when we got acquired, we're about 25 million of revenue.
SPEAKER_00And how much you had raised at Purnik's?
SPEAKER_01Per Nix was uh about funded about 60-ish million. Uh very efficient. Yeah, that was pretty, pretty efficient, absolutely. Yeah. And we had you know operations uh you know in multiple countries, you know, around the globe and uh close to 900 you know paying customers when we got acquired.
SPEAKER_00And how uh and how much uh period of time you took it to from starting to 25 million in revenue?
SPEAKER_01Four and a half years from beginning to to acquisition. Yeah, yeah. And then a lot of it was you know also, I think uh it became very clear that yeah, this would thrive much better as part of a uh a bigger bigger company. And so that's that's what we did. Uh and that was Nutanix was doing extremely well back then, and this was a good fit from a team perspective.
SPEAKER_00And this is when Nutanix had already scaled to a billion in revenue or before that?
SPEAKER_01I don't think they had got to a billion. This is pre-IP on Nutanix. Yeah. As far as I remember it, they hadn't got to a billion, uh, but I might be wrong on that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's all now I'm I'm jogging, jogging my memory. It's it's it's uh almost 10 years, 10 years ago, right? Uh the acquisition happened in 2016, if I remember right. That was that, and then Nutanix, you know, was uh was a was a was a great company and spent uh a good amount of time uh both with the the Pernic side but also looking at a few new initiatives uh within Nutanix. Uh you know, a couple of them are still around and and doing well, as far as I know. Uh but then again in 2017, I got to a point where you know the big discontinuity happening in the sector back then was uh public cloud, right? You know, it was you know still you know relatively early days you can say of public cloud. You know, AWS had had done well, and then Azure was trying to do, and GCP was you know significantly behind, but again, you know, early investments in GCP. And then you know, just companies like Snowflake and Datadog were good inspiration. They're not gone public yet.
SPEAKER_00They were very early at back then.
SPEAKER_01Yes, relatively early. And so you know that became a motivation like, okay, can you know what can be done in in the public cloud? Can you can you rethink uh an enterprise use case that would basically the public cloud economics, the public cloud scale would change it, right? So that was the uh the thesis behind the the Clumio idea, which was really about can we build a backup you know data protection, a cyber resilience platform in the public cloud, taking advantage of the primitives of the public cloud and ultimately going and catering to applications uh built in the public cloud, right? Uh so that was the beginning of the journey at uh at Clumio. That was uh late 2017, early 2018 is when we got started uh with Clumio. Um and that was about a uh seven-year journey uh to acquisition by Commvault uh almost a year and a half ago. Uh and but the journey continues. You know, we're now now part of Commvault, uh still kind of uh running uh the Clumio initiative and and focusing on exactly the mission we started off with and really going and continuing to build the business uh with Clumio, but as part of Commvault.
SPEAKER_00Understood. So if you can share more about you know the the landscape of data backup, right? Which are the largest companies there? Wave of Clumio solving a unique niche, and right, and how did the acquisition happen?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, data backup I think is obviously been around and there's multiple players in in the space. Uh, you know, one of them, you know, Rubrik just went public about a year and a half ago, also. Uh so in general, I think you can kind of break it up into you know, historically, companies focusing on backing up data center and on-prem environments really well. And then came public cloud, where the hyperscalers themselves would provide uh you know backup and data protection for workloads in the public cloud. Uh and then and then there is SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and so on and so forth that also require uh you know backup, right? And so if you look at it, you know, these were essentially three three use cases. And some companies, you know, trying to do one or two, or or in some cases trying to do all three of these uh these use cases. Clumio was squarely focused on the on the public cloud use case, like because again, more and more applications built in the cloud and the scale and that the architecture needed to go and you know provide backup and cyber resilience for them was very different than an architecture needed to go back up on-prem or even backup SaaS applications, right? And so that's what we did at Clumio. But then if you look at you know the other players, including Commvault, it's it's more of a broader platform trying to cover SaaS, on-prem, and then also cloud use cases, right?
SPEAKER_00If you had seen how the trends are shifting now, what would you suggest that an entrepreneur who has similar background as yours in virtualization, in data storage, would build it for an AI world?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think today is a very uh very different world of AI. And in fact, we are we ourselves asked this question to us repeatedly like if you were building you know Clumio today, how would you build it, right?
SPEAKER_00Would love to answer that question.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. How would you essentially think about you know AI and agentic? And and of course, you know, now with the world of you know data protection and security, uh, you know, kind of adjacencies happening together, where customers are also asking us for you know security feature sets on top of the protection platform. How would you essentially you know kind of marry all of these three things together, right? The AI agentic stuff, the security stuff, and then your your traditional data protection. And I think that is where I would say, irrespective of the field, that is where the opportunity exists, right? Because these are all very, very large markets, right? And the technologies to build it is is is all are very deep in most cases, right? But then, you know, how do you essentially take advantage of what you know AI can can give you and essentially in some cases even build faster, right? And also in some cases think very different in terms of how you would essentially you know build it. Like for example, you know, back in the day you would essentially you know say, okay, how do I build a platform which is very easy to use, right? Where somebody can go come to your website and start using it and even start consuming it, which is you know how Snowflake did it, which is consumption-oriented. We at Clumi also did it the same way, right? Consumption-oriented, right? And and and then again, now how do you take it to the next level where you make that whole thing very agentic also in terms of how you know the customer interacts with the platform and so on and so forth. Right? So it's it's it's it's time for any use case, and that's what's happening in security, if you see, right? Every every use case in security also is getting you know rethought. Like, okay, how can I uh I build a you know uh maybe uh an agent, right, that can do this automatically versus relying on how it was being done before. So every workflow is being being reinvented and every use case is being rethought. And that's how I would say anybody should think about it. Take take a large problem, take a take a you know reasonably big market to go after, and essentially look at okay, how would you essentially tackle it if you're building from scratch today? Because that's the advantage a startup has, because you don't have any legacy to deal with, and you can be very nimble and agile and really go and do something that you know typical large vendors can't do it very easily.
SPEAKER_00And let's say today you have to explain the entire data and storage stack for an AI world, how would you explain it to a layman?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean like the for data and storage stack for an AI world, I think is more and more. I think if you look at AI applications are being built in the cloud, right? And so the stack in the cloud looks very different than uh in an application that was built in the data center, right? And so this is a stack that is you know using very cloud native primitives, right? Which is where I think you know, architecturally, how we have built Clumio and all also matters because these applications, these agentic applications in the cloud will also need protection, right? And if at all, we'll need more of it because the chances of things going wrong could be higher, right? You you can imagine, right, with with all the stuff happening in uh in the agentic world, you might want to go go back in time and so on and so forth, right? But but the the primitives are are more serverless architectures. The primitives are more scale technologies like you know S3 that Amazon provides, object storage, right? You know, gone are the days that you're going to run applications sitting in big virtual machines and attaching storage to it and so on and so forth, right? You know, you're basically going to build an architecture that can you know scale up and down as needed, can run anywhere around the globe in any region that the cloud provider provides it, and an infrastructure that can just come up, you know, it's basically a bunch of Terraform that can bring up the infrastructure, the application can do it, do its thing, and essentially use the primitives that the cloud provider provides in terms of large-scale storage like S3 for their persistence and so on and so forth. So that's how you know these uh these new applications you know look like. Now, good news is as they are built, at least from you know, selfishly from a you know from a cyber resilience platform perspective, you know, all these applications in the enterprise will still need you know protection and cyber resilience and all that. So that's the that's that's a benefit. Like, and as the applications are built in the in the cloud more and more and built for scale and so on and so forth, you know, you have to go and rethink how you're going to protect them, and which is where you know platforms like us come in come in place.
SPEAKER_00What are the unanswered questions that enterprises have today in terms of storage, security when when they are deploying agents?
SPEAKER_01I think if you think about it, right? I think there's like uh you know, if you're if if I'm sure if you're a CIO of any of uh large companies today and you're thinking about AI adoption, you know, this whole thing around, you know, sure, I I don't know like my who is who's who's using what, like what what data is going where uh in the enterprise, uh from my endpoints from from all the employees to agentic applications and and and and these agents, you know, how are they interacting with you know MCP servers out there, and then what data they're sharing with those MCP servers and how is the data flow happening between uh between all of these MCP servers and within my own agentic application. I think all of these things are real unanswered questions. And I think as as as more and more of this is going to happen, I think you know somebody needs to go and look at this holistically and and make sure that if you're a CIO of a company, you can essentially have full visibility into my endpoints, you know, accessing these models to the outside world or all of these agentic uh applications that are interacting and even sharing data, sharing my data with MCP servers and what's being shared and and track the lineage of what happened when and what got shared in case now have to go back in time and and see it. I think that is very early days. I don't think anybody has has really tackled this holistically yet. But this is, I think, important.
SPEAKER_00But do you think enterprises are productively deploying agents today or or not yet?
SPEAKER_01I think uh it's it's it's depending on who it is. I think obviously there is there is one thing that's definitely happening, which is adopting uh you know services that you know are are is is is is is abstracting it for you, right? So that's that's happening already, right? You know, people you know definitely doing it for their own use cases, right? So, you know, for example, support is is a is an interesting vertical, right? Which is a lot of stuff happening within support where you know the ticket deflection and automatic resolution of tickets, these are things whether somebody builds it themselves or uses a third-party platform available out there. I think that's the vertical that you're seeing all of this happening. Like we're we're seeing in the legal vertical, you know, with the Harveys of the world, right? So I think there are different verticals depending on the enterprise where they're definitely taking advantage of these things. So it's it's it's happening, whether using a third-party uh application or in some cases building it yourself.
SPEAKER_00When you started Pernix data versus when you started Clumio, uh between both these worlds and today, how did the infrastructure change across these three worlds? Pernix, Clumia, and today?
SPEAKER_01I think it's it's uh it's a whole different world, right? You know, in the I think between Pernix and Clumia also, you know, I felt it was very different. Where, you know, back in the day, it was super early days of the cloud, public cloud. So in early 2012, obviously nobody was thinking as talking as much about the public cloud. I think maybe 2014, 2015 is the first time even AWS came and talked about their and how they're doing with their public cloud, as far as I remember. But uh, but when I started Clumio, I think it was a like a cloud first world. Even like, you know, in Bernix, I had a data center in my own office, right? You know, and and stuff like that. Because obviously I had to test out all the storage and I had, you know, VMware servers and you know.
SPEAKER_00That would have been really expensive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, super expensive. I had, you know, I mean, I moved offices also remember I had to make sure I need in you know uh space for a data center and so on and so forth, all the testing we used to do. But Clumio, we just started in the laptops and everything was in the cloud, right? So it was just a very different world. And fast forward now, I think if you're starting today, you're even going to the next level, even you know, using you know tools like uh you know anthropic cloud code and stuff like that, and really starting, you know, from the scratch with tools like that and and and and how you are scaling your organization, how even you know the assumptions of uh the business model and how fast you can scale your business in the AI world, I think is is very different. Sky is the limit, right? In terms of you know how fast you can scale, how fast you can build things, like I think it's different. I thought between Perniks and Clumio it was a different world, but I think it's vastly different uh if you if you start a company today versus you know in a few years ago.
SPEAKER_00So in Pernix also you scaled to 25 million before acquisition. In Clumio also, I think the public numbers are you scaled to 25 million dollars of revenue before the acquisition. So how was scaling different in both these companies? What was required to scale in both these companies?
SPEAKER_01I think it's very different, right? I think uh, you know, in the in in the in the in the traditional in the data-centered world, it was, you know, again, it was it was really about, you know, at the end of the day, you know, hiring your your your sales team and and going after the traditional buyer and stuff like that. Even from that to Clumio, the buyer profile really changed, right? Because firstly it was a very consumption-oriented. You could actually go and start using the platform and scaling yourself. Like people used public cloud, right, and started using like how people are doing, you know, uh with AI today, right? And stuff like that. Nobody is necessarily talking to a salesperson to start using some of these things. So that had already started happening between, I would say, you know, Pernix and Clumio, where people would essentially start, you know, using the platform and without needing to talk to anybody in the company, right? And that mindset was super important. And you know, there's obviously folks like AWS that pioneered that and folks like Snowflake that that also did that. And so, but but today that that's a given, right? You know, today's buyer out there is essentially going and doing their own, you know, uh research and going and figuring it out, even in wanting to try out things themselves. And maybe when it comes to a point that oh they're they're doing a very broad scale adoption and and and the CIO gets involved and and and it's it's it's a it's a it's a bigger this thing that is when I think you know sales and the traditional that stuff is is there. But otherwise, the the ground up adoption is how you have to target it. You have to essentially think about how are you going to essentially get this thing in the hands of your end user, make it very easy, yeah and essentially make sure that it's uh it's something that is is is loved by the end user. And and that's how, you know, and I think all the successful companies uh today in the AI space are pretty much that, right? I think they've seen adoption you know ground up and it's not really top down where somebody says.
SPEAKER_00And why is adoption ground up and not top-down today?
SPEAKER_01Because I think this is the day and age where you know people want to be able to touch and feel the the things. It's not something that, oh, I'm using this because I was told to use this because you know somebody told that I you know I shook hands with somebody else and and decided to use this platform. The the the end user wants to essentially go have, you know, use the use the thing they want to go and use, right? And and they will go and do their own thing and and go figure it out. And you cannot uh essentially, you know, if you try to do anything drop-down, you're you're gonna have either people who are unhappy or essentially it's not going to succeed. I think the right way is to see what what is getting adopted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the right examples could there could be Claude versus all others, right? Claude versus Cursor and Codex and Copilot. Yep, yep. Like because all these three companies, Cursor, uh Codex by OpenAI and Copilot by Microsoft, they have all sold to the enterprises. Yes. But developers are not using them.
SPEAKER_01Correct, exactly. And then if you see like you know, look at look at what you know Claude has done, right? It's just mind boggling, right? It's uh the scale is uh the scale is mind boggling, and I'm sure it's it's continuing to scale after that. But but again, that's that's the thing, right? It's like uh it's like the The equivalent of the developer for a cloud code is exactly how you know you can say, you know, uh it was a cloud architect for AWS, right? Uh or a DevOps person in the in the AWS world, right? So on and so forth. It's like it's I think there's a lot of analogies you can draw. That's exactly how you know these things got very successful. They built uh an uh an honest product that worked, right? That you know, when developers wanted to try it, they could try it and and and and they fell in love with it, right? That's that's how it works.
SPEAKER_00And how do you because you have seen the entire journey, when and how did cloud outgrew the backup playbook?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean so I I think uh you know, you know, obviously initially it was all AWS, right? And then you know Azure came in and then GCP, and now of course, you know, uh we have GCP, we have we have Azure, we have AWS, and okay, we have OCI. So I think today it's a very different world than it was back then. But you know, one thing was very clear, I think as you know, as more and more mission critical stuff started going to the cloud, right? Where you know, I cannot lose this data. This is customer-facing data, right? I cannot have like and the infrastructure was essentially you know something that was not managed by clicking buttons on a UI, but by code, right? And you know, mistakes can happen, right? Where you can essentially go and, oh, I wanted to delete this. By mistake, I deleted something else, right? So stuff like that, you know, when when all of that stuff has started happening, and when you know uh you know, mission critical applications, customer-facing applications started moving to the cloud, it became very clear that okay, I need to make sure that the underlying data has uh has a copy, right? Just in case of anything anything bad. Obviously, the cloud vendor is making sure that I have 11 nines of durability. That's awesome. But that doesn't prevent from a deletion happening because if I ask a cloud vendor to delete something, guess what? The cloud vendor will delete it because you ask me to delete it. And once it's deleted, it's gone. So that durability does not help you with with deletion, right? And so this is where you need to have a different copy. And then, of course, with the you know, the whole thing around ransomware and and and stuff like that, like you know, obviously, uh a typical ransomware, you know, is going to essentially go and you know attack your primary, but they also will attack your your backup if there is a backup because that is your resort to go and recover, right? So then you know that became an important thing where okay, I need to keep my protected copy in a security domain that is separate from my primary, right? So that basically means I have to somehow keep it either with a third party or make sure that the security of that is not compromised if the security of this is compromised. And also, you know, backup also and data protection also became a way of detecting some of the bad actors because guess what? When a bad actor comes and starts encrypting a bunch of data, the the protection and this resilience platform that is packing it up also notices it and can see anomalies and detect it and say, oh, by the way, I'm seeing this, is this expected and can alert the user. So I think all of these things came together. Uh and it became a thing where, okay, irrespective of the destination of the data, where it's sitting in a SaaS provider, uh like Microsoft 365 or Salesforce or sitting in my data center or sitting in the cloud, I still need to think about you know cyber resilience as a as a holistic thing. And so that's uh what has happened over the last, I would say, you know, five to ten years.
SPEAKER_00You have previously had your opinions on multi-cloud, and you have said fragmented clouds are silent killers. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, no, I I think I uh see ultimately uh you know, if you look at it, you know, historically people would essentially look at uh you know build on a single cloud, right? The reason to go multi-cloud has been very, like you know, in some cases it's been more you know business and yeah, you you are getting partnerships from all three of clouds. Exactly. Some case some cases being, you know, you know, I I bought something that is is built of based off a different cloud and stuff like that. But I think you know, no matter what, you really have to go and figure out which public cloud, you know, is the right one for you and which application is the one you want to put. Like, okay, maybe in some cases of analytics thing you want to maybe go GCP, maybe you know, something else you're going AWS and so on and so forth, right? But but net of it is, I think, you know, very rarely do you see you know this fragmentation happening that oh, you're running you know everything everywhere. That's that doesn't make any sense. And you're you're basically inviting more issues for you and you know the automation, and and because the infrastructure in the public cloud, the way you're using it, you know, it's just a piece of code spinning up infrastructure. So management becomes a headache, you know, costs and so on and so forth, right? So this fragmentation doesn't really make too much sense. But having said that, you know, the largest larger enterprise today, as we know, are all multi-cloud, and that is that is that is a new reality, and and and that's that's great because you know, for you know, the the the cyber resilience display for for for folks like us at the end of the day, we provide that.
SPEAKER_00No, you you provide solutions on from when managing multi-cloud.
SPEAKER_01That's that's interesting, but again, that doesn't mean it's it's it's it's as fragmented, but at the end of the day, as far as you have some meaningful stuff running everywhere, it makes more sense.
SPEAKER_00But I think some of the folks started for optimizing cost across the three cloud, but ultimately you end up with more cost because your risk, security, and compliance across all three clouds triple up.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. That's exactly what it is. That's why I think you have to be very thoughtful in terms of how you why you're doing it, and cost cannot be the only factor. And sometimes it's not in control, I said. I think in a more you know, large clients that that we have, and you know, I'm sure others see the same thing. You know, you acquire companies and those companies have been built on a certain cloud, you're not going to change those things. Certain architectures are there, architectures exactly, they're already existing. So you you end up uh you know living through that.
SPEAKER_00In your journey, uh you have today raised almost uh 260 million dollars combined across both your companies, right? Uh had two very successful exits. So, how would you advise first-time founders on first raising money and second the process of raising money and second on uh exploring MAP opportunities, how to do that, how to build relationships with your prospective buyers?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I think uh two different things. I think in terms of raising money, you know, obviously I think the the world has changed, you know, what used to be seed uh even when I started parentix is very different than what is what is seed today, right? And series A and so on and so forth. But ultimately, I think at the end of the day, it's uh it's very important to go raise the right amount of money to be successful, right? I I see fundraising is more of a thing that gets you from point A to point B, and you have to be very clear what the point A is, what the point B is, and what it takes to essentially get there. And and I think sometimes having too much is also a problem because you can get distracted and do things that you typically would not have done. So I think that's something that uh is super important. I think you know I I've made my fair share of mistakes there too uh when when you raised you know way more capital than than than what you needed, right? So I think that's something to keep in mind also. Obviously, whom you want to raise it from, uh the right partner matters a lot because you know if you're taking a long-term point of view, you want somebody who's taking a long-term point of view and so on and so forth. And and also getting the right partner so that you know you're essentially getting what you need from that individual or that firm, right? Those are the other things. M ⁇ A, completely different, right? You know, I I I'll compare it to uh a large deal, right? If you're if you're if you're uh trying to sell a large deal uh to a customer, you're essentially going to internalize that it's going to take time, right? It's not going to happen overnight, right? If somebody's going to make a big purchase, they're going to want to get to know you, the team, get to, you know, use the platform. And you know, there's a trust that is also established over time when somebody is, at least early on, before you become a well-known brand and stuff like that. Early on, if somebody, a CIA or whoever, a customer in their shoes is making a big bet on you, there's that trust that takes time, right, to establish. Same thing, I would say, for from an MA perspective, right? When somebody is uh you know is looking to buy a company, at the end of the day, you know, they're buying, you know, uh a platform, a company to essentially make it part of the bigger entity and really grow it, right? And so I think uh it's it's it's it's it's it's a large deal at some level, right? It's similar to a large deal. So I think that it takes time. It takes time, whether you're working with uh you know um the product owner or the CEO on the other side, if you're a founder, CEO yourself, if that's your goal, I think you need to take the time to make the relationship, to make sure that there is a good fit from both sides, and there's alignment in terms of because the the job is not done the day the acquisition happens. You know, there's a different job that starts, but it starts the day, and and so there has to be alignment in terms of what that journey looks like post-acquisition, especially for a founder. You have created this, this is your baby, and you're essentially you know going as part of a maybe a larger company and merging, it's still your baby, and you need to make sure that there's alignment in terms of what that baby's future looks like as part of the bigger company. I think, and all of those things, I think both ways. I think somebody acquiring also at the end of the day, they're they're they're spending money and they're investing even after the acquisition, you know, they are trusting you for you know what you created and what you're going to continue with, you know, up to a certain point. I'm sure, you know, and you know, I it things can change over time, but at least, you know, for a for some you know, at some time post-acquisition, you know, there has to be the exact alignment in terms of what that looks like, right? So all of those things I would say is what you should think about, especially you know, when you're looking not just to optimize the the the price tag, but really optimizing the fact that what you created continues to live on and continues to delight customers, you know, in a in a different form factor, but continues to do that. That mission should not change.
SPEAKER_00So in in your journeys, how did the first relationship with Nutanix happen? In the second journey, how did the relationship with Convoid happen?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean I would say uh Commodore was unique. Uh I'll talk Nutanix was the easier one, I would say, because again, firstly, our companies was right across each other, but more importantly, uh the founder, CEO of Nutanix, I'm a big fan of Mdi Raj, uh is doing a new company called DevRev right now. He's somebody, you know, uh I've known from my Oracle days, right? So I obviously saw Nutanix from its early days uh and uh had a lot of respect for for him and what he had created. And and that that relationship at some level is already there. Okay, so you knew him for most from Oracle. From from a long time, exactly. Yeah, we pretty much grew up together at Oracle, right? And then we shared our same investor and uh in in terms of light speed and so on and so forth. So a lot of things were common. Uh Comwalt, on the other hand, was very different. I did not know uh the CEO, uh Sanjay, uh East Coast based company, so nothing in common. I can say, you know, East Coast, West Coast, it was uh not a not a CEO I knew, uh no investors in common, and so on and so forth. But that's a relationship uh that I took time to build. And uh and I would say I think there's a lot of you know cultural elements that were very common uh with the two companies, the mindset, the customer first mindset. And I really clicked with Sanjay Really. I'm a big fan of what he has done over the last six plus years uh at Commvault. And I genuinely felt that okay, if if if this were to happen again, it was I think it was a year and a half before the acquisition is when I met him for the first time.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you knew him for one and a half years?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but before that I never met him, so it was the thing. I knew him for a year and a half, we had kept in touch. But more importantly, I think it was it was very clear from from from meeting one up until the day of acquisition, and and even more true today, there was a lot of alignment in terms of what the future looks like, and uh and I think I felt that this is a place where you know the the the platform will thrive and and do really well and will continue the journey to delight customers, and that's what we're doing today.
SPEAKER_00Uh one of the very important points now I want to bring up is uh you sold an eight-figure deal, you know, uh uh in your second company. So, how did you, you know, as a founder learn from let's say selling to from four figure to five figure to six to seven to eight? How did that journey happen for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean honestly, I think uh, you know, irrespective of the size of the deal, uh means every any deal, whether it became you know six figures or seven figures, uh at the end of the day, it started small, right? Everything started small, right? Uh obviously in some cases uh the customer itself is is is not very big, so obviously there's a certain you know uh scale it it can get to, we know that. In some cases, you know, we know the customer is is large, so you know the so obviously it can it can get much bigger. But in all cases, I I would say I think the number one thing that you know we would always focus on is to make sure that what we said we are going to do, we deliver that, right? What the you know, as I always joke about, right? It's very easy to build products in PowerPoint, right? But then it's very hard to build products in reality and products that work well in a customer environment, solve the customer pain, and continue to scale as the customer scales, as the demand scale, right? And I think that is what we take a lot of pride at. So in the case of large customers that have scaled with us, even though it has started small, one thing that we have done is we've kept close. Like we would create a Slack channel between the customer and the folks on the customer side, the users on the customer side and our own engineers and and SEs and stuff like that. And so there's real-time communication, right? And that builds trust and our responses on all of those. And till today, we do that with our large customers, right? With our large customers, it's it's the relationship is a very intimate relationship, and that gives the trust to the customer, and of course, obviously, the product and the platform has to work and continues to scale. You combine that along with the responsiveness and all of those things and and staying on top of issues. And again, things happen, but how you deal with them when things happen, that matters a lot. You do all of those things right, automatically, you know, the deal sizes go up in the sense that the customer scales and you essentially go scale with them. I think that just that just happens. As I say, do the right things, and some of these things just happen.
SPEAKER_00And you were a technical founder, right? Absolutely when you were at Oticol. How did you graduate to learn sales?
SPEAKER_01No, I think it was hard. Uh, I would say, you know, I joke about it, right? First time as a first-time CEO at at Purniks, I was totally clueless, right? Didn't even know how to go about hiring my first uh salesperson, what to even ask. Uh and so this is where you know I would essentially surround myself with people who had done it before in the form of advisors. And the good news, at least in Silicon Valley, for people in Silicon Valley, I think there is so much out here and so much you know, access to people and and and founders who have done it before and and uh and people who are willing to give back to the founders of today, right? Uh so I think that that that exists, at least in Silicon Valley it exists. So I would basically do it do that, surround myself with folks like that who would essentially, I know, are you know uh are my my advisors at at Purniks at least, like literally would help me even in interviewing, you know, our head of sales, in in and before even we had a head of sales, you know, interviewing with uh with the reps. And in in some cases, you know, you know, VCs who have essentially either been operators themselves or have essentially been in startups for long enough, they would also essentially be folks who would help you with with all of these things. So I think just making sure that you have the right ecosystem of people who can complement you in places that you don't know. Uh like, you know, I know what I'm building, I know how to go and build a world-class engineering team and build the product and stuff like that. So maybe I don't need as much there, but everywhere else, marketing, how do you launch the company, sales, all of those things, at least doing it for the first time, you want to surround yourself uh with folks who can help you with that, and then be very you know grounded and be humble and listen and take it all in. And that's how at least I have been able to adapt myself and learn and do some of these things. And which is what I tell, you know, I whenever I help any founders today, I also basically tell them the same thing, right? Yeah, just just uh any place that you feel you don't have the right skill set and you don't know what you don't know, that's okay. There's enough people out there uh who know it, and you just got to get surround yourself with those folks, and that's it. It's as simple as that. I think the key is to have the humility to do that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you so much, Pujan. Loved our interaction.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, thank you very much. I really appreciate this, and you know, and I'm super excited uh in what you folks are doing with the with the Neon Fund and uh where you're going with this.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, it means a lot.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.