B2B a CEO (with Ashu Garg)

In this session from our FC BUILD conference, Ashu interviews two billion-dollar founders. When it comes to scaling management, engineering culture, and anticipating future markets, Cloudflare COO Michelle Zatlyn and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are the ones to ask. Each shares a bit about their respective company’s journeys — plus, George explains how a company is like a race car!

In this installment of our FC BUILD series, my partner Steve Vassallo talks with Edith Harbaugh, co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly, and Tien Tzuo, co-founder and CEO of Zuora. Both former engineers, Edith and Tien offer advice for building a startup, discuss scaling in the time of virtual work, and dissect the art of managing others and themselves.

In this discussion from our recent enterprise conference FC BUILD, Ashu interviews Databricks founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi. A rather unconventional company, Databricks began as an open-source project at UC Berkley that moved into the commercial space after the team realized its impact. Ali and Ashu discuss commercializing an open-source project, identifying product-market fit, and optimizing go-to-market.

This is a special episode of B2B a CEO. Last month, Foundation Capital held a special event for all of our CEOs. We hosted a conversation with Foundation’s most illustrious CEO, Reed Hastings, the CEO and cofounder of Netflix. General Partner Steve Vassallo and General Partner Emeritus Mike Schuh interviewed Reed about his new book, No Rules Rules. Reed discusses the evolution of Netflix, and what he’s learned over the decades about how to build a high-performance culture. He also shares a few stories from back in the day. https://foundationcapital.com/how-to-manage-on-the-edge-of-chaos/

From FC BUILD, our recent enterprise conference, Foundation Capital General Partner Joanne Chen interviews Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. On the heels of his third major IPO, Frank discusses performance culture, scaling, and the future of data.

On this episode, Ashu interviews Edith Harbaugh, co-founder and CEO of feature management platform LaunchDarkly. They discuss what it takes to leap from an established job to pursue an idea, and how to tackle the woes of fundraising. Edith and Ashu spend the lion’s share of the conversation on the all-important topic of sales. How to sell yourself, your company, and your product. And what to look for when you’re hiring a sales leader.

This episode’s guest is Ralph Clark, the president and CEO of ShotSpotter. Ralph has more than 30 years of experience in corporate finance and organizational leadership roles at IBM, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and several successful tech startups. He and Ashu talk about how executives and the tech industry can confront bias and systemic racism.

George Kurtz, the founder and CEO of Crowdstrike, the most successful cybersecurity company of the past decade, is the very special guest for this episode. George joins Ashu for in-depth conversation on everything from hiring, to board composition, to balancing a hybrid product-and-services model. George also gives specific advice for all you security founders listening.

On this episode, we have Ali Ghodsi, cofounder and CEO of Databricks, a cloud platform for massive scale data engineering and collaborative data science. For the first third of the podcast, Ali tells us the story of how a research project at the AMP Lab at UC Berkeley grew into Databricks. This will be of particular interest to anyone who wants to know how to commercialize open source. After that, Ali gives listeners a crash course on how to build an early stage go-to-market machine—from how and who to hire, to how to coordinate sales and marketing, to how to...

In part 2 of my interview with Mark Leslie, we dive deeper into his experience founding Veritas and leading it to become a Fortune 100 software company. We hear more about Mark’s eventual departure from his role as CEO to his current passion for teaching and investing.

This special episode of the podcast is part oral history of when the plague came to Silicon Valley and part anthology of advice for startups dealing with the fallout of Covid-19. Five CEOs and one CFO, at companies ranging from early stage to public market, share their experiences of coping with the business impact of the pandemic and offer advice for how best to manage through the crisis. The guests for this episode are Mohit Aron, CEO at Cohesity; Andrew Feldman, CEO at Cerebras Systems; Jack Lazar, former CFO; Mark Leslie, retired CEO at Veritas Technologies; Jonathan Siddharth, CEO at...

Mark Leslie is the founder & CEO of Veritas Technology, a company he grew from an idea to a Fortune 100 powerhouse worth over $1B in revenue. My interview with Mark was so full of wisdom that we decided there was enough material for at least two episodes. In this first episode, I get into the weeds with Mark on topics ranging from how to manage your board, to pricing and sales, to annual planning. It’s a can’t-miss for all CEOs or CEO-hopefuls!

For the first episode of the new year and new decade, a startup-founder-turned-CEO coach offers some guidance on being your best CEO self.

This one is for you really, really early-stage founders. Fifth-grader Adi Garg interviews his dad about startups and venture capital and chocolate.

Two-time founder/CEO, and Berkeley computer science professor, Ion Stoica chats with Ashu about what it means to have an impact and how to go from academic to entrepreneur.

Sudheesh Nair and Ajeet Singh discuss the tricky process of handing off the CEO baton. They also go deep on how to build a world-class sales organization.

Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, puts people and relationships at the forefront of her business strategy. In this episode of the podcast, she tells me what she’s learned as a two-time CEO and how important it is to create a good company culture with diverse talent.

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Jennifer Tejada joins PagerDuty

https://www.pagerduty.com/newsroom/pagerduty-appoints-saas-industry-veteran-jennifer-tejada-as-ceo/

PagerDuty’s IPO

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/04/11/pagerdutys-ipo-values-it-at-18-billion--heres-why-it-had-doubters-early-on/#492fc12632b3

Jennifer rings the NYSE opening bell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtRKFLOHXuU

...

Kevin Johnson led two companies in very different stages of growth. Here’s how he did it and what he looks for in new hires.

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Ratuken buys Ebates

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ebates-m-a-rakuten/rakuten-says-to-buy-u-s-rebate-site-operator-ebates-for-1-billion-idUSKBN0H40JM20140909

Kevin Johnson becomes CEO of Udemy

https://about.udemy.com/press-releases/udemy-board-appoints-kevin-h-johnson-as-new-ceo/

Managing through influence

https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-to-lead-with-influence-instead-of-authority

Two-time founder Mohit Aron tells me how blueprints and checklists can guide your startup in its earliest stages.

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Mohit goes into more detail about his entry point framework

https://rajeshsetty.com/2017/06/29/mohit-aron-evaluating-ideas/

Cohesity is on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/14/cohesity-2019-disruptor-50.html

More about Geoffrey Moore, creator of the “technology adoption life cycle”:

http://www.geoffreyamoore.com/

Burton Goldfield tells me his CEO strategy: know the results you want and build your company towards achieving them.

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TriNet goes public

https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/03/27/san-leandro-trinet-ipo-gives-east-bay-a-new-1-billion-company/

Aaron tells me how to scale your company while maintaining its culture and the benefits of going public.

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More about Andy Grove’s 10X theory

https://thekeypoint.org/2018/03/19/only-the-paranoid-survive/

Aaron talks more about maintaining company culture while scaling

https://firstround.com/review/Aaron-Levie-on-How-to-Scale-10x-as-a-CEO-Built-a-Billion-Dollar-Business/

A Box employee makes his mom proud

https://blog.box.com/make-moms-proud

Box finally goes public

https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/23/investing/box-ipo-tech-stocks/index.html

Dorm room startup co-founder Aaron Levie tells me how he made the decision to pivot Box from a consumer product to an enterprise solution.

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Getting Mark Cuban

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-cold-email-brought-mark-cuban-to-box-11554474601

Aaron’s 2006 email to an investor about the need to pivot

https://www.fastcompany.com/1787627/starred-how-box-cofounder-aaron-levie-enticed-vcs-mark-cuban-battle-microsoft-google

Aaron talks to Harvard Business Review about Box’s pivot to enterprise

https://hbr.org/ideacast/2017/12/boxs-ceo-on-pivoting-to-the-enterprise-market.html

Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan tells me why and how happiness is an essential part of his multi-billion-dollar company.

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Glassdoor names Zoom the best tech company to work for in 2019

https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/best-tech-companies-2019/

… and the second best company to work for overall

https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm

Zoom’s first customer

https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2013/08/15/stanford-continuing-studies-takes-education-online-with-zoom-video-conferencing/

Yes, there really is a happiness crew

https://www.builtincolorado.com/2018/07/27/spotlight-working-at-zoom-video-communications-culture

Zoom goes public, happ...

The man, the maniac.

Tien Tzuo, Co-Founder and CEO of Zuora, tells me how he tells his company’s story when he pitches to customers and investors and how to scale up to $1 billion.

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Tien’s book

https://www.zuora.com/subscribed/author/

Zuora prepares for its IPO

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/zuora-prices-ipo-at-14-per-share--valuing-the-company-at-1-point-44-billion.html

Tien’s daughter rings the opening bell

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/04/12/opening-bell-april-12-2018.html

Tien’s interview with NYT where he mentions his dislike of one-on-ones

https://www.nyti...

Frederic Laluyaux’s first startup flopped but he has taken that experience with him to his current position as president and CEO of Aera Technology. Frederic tells me how to new founders can find what they’re looking for.

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Aera Technology

https://www.aeratechnology.com/

Anaplan’s re-launch

https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20170620-fusionops-rebrands-as-aera-technology-after-landing-50-million-in-venture-funds/

Anaplan’s $1 billion valuation

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/anaplan-valued-at-1-1-billion-after-90-million-pre-ipo-round

Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FreeWheel Doug Knopper tells me how he uses his considerable Silicon Valley experience to train the next generation of talent with his new project, CEOhacker.

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DoubleClick acquired

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick.html

FreeWheel acquired

https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/01/comcast-freewheel/

Silicon Valley’s diversity problem

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/20/silicon-valleys-diversity-problem-is-its-achilles-heel.html

FreeWheel’s commitment to diversity

http://freewheel.tv/freewheel-views/engineers-week-thriving-through-diversity/

CEOhacker

https://www.ceohacker.com/

Super-networker and Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta tells me how listening to people and creating a good company culture has turned the customer success software platform into a market leader.

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Nick Mehta’s site

https://www.mehtaphysical.com/

Gainsight

https://www.gainsight.com/

The one page strategic plan

https://scalingup.com/book/

Shoshin

https://alyjuma.com/shoshin/

Gainsight was one of the best small companies to work for in 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/12/10/costco-google-t-mobile-ranked-best-companies-work-2018/2202327002/

Co-Founder and CEO of Nutanix Dheeraj Pandey took his company from an idea to a unicorn in just five years. He tells me how he still feels like an underdog and why simple, reliable products make successful companies.

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Nutanix is a unicorn

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2014/01/14/nutanix-101m-round-unicorn/#429b0793582a

Nutanix goes public

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/business/dealbook/ipo-values-cloud-company-nutanix-at-2-18-billion.html

Red ocean vs. blue ocean

https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/red-ocean-vs-blue-ocean-strategy/

Dheeraj’s “focus, listen, respect” and “less is more”...

Jyoti Bansal’s AppDynamics recently sold to Cisco for $3.8 billion. As a first-time sole founder and CEO from a tech background, Jyoti tells me what he learned about the business side of things.

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Cisco buys AppDynamics for $3.7 billion

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/24/cisco-buys-tech-ipo-candidate-appdynamics-for-37-billion.htm

AppDynamics completes first funding round

https://www.appdynamics.com/press-release/appdynamics-secures-55-million-venture-funding-greylock-ventures-and-lightspeed/

“The Four Horsemen of Saas”

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-four-horsemen-of-saas/

AppDynamics raises $11 million in Series B round

https://www.appdynamics.com/press-release/appdynamics-raises-11-milli...