00:16:35 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:16:35] S0: Okay. [00:16:35] S1: Yeah. So there's uh similar use case, not on MongoDB, but from a uh they wanted to do real-time replication from one of the largest warehouses uh to a modern like platform for real-time analytics. So, you know, as I said, like there is no we didn't come at a pattern because uh the pattern I actually wanted was from on-prem through all app systems. And I was trying to go to this big data warehousing company said, hey, why are you pushing files and recomputing the whole thing every day? Because the source table probably changed only one row, but you're but everybody is making money, you know. It's like if you're spinning up a big compute to redo the batch, everyone's you will make money. But uh, I think that twist came when Databricks launched Delta Lake, and then I think people are working on similar things and iceberg because Netflix was like, you know, event design is the future. Uh, and Databricks came up with a paper Delta Lake. They said no, no, no, no, no, you know, you need to do CDC into Data Warehouse, and they'd also give the opportunity to, you know, make the format open source. I think Delta Lake and Iceberg were tremendous because they launched at the same time, right? [00:17:47] S0: 2018, 2018.
00:17:47 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:17:47] S0: 2018, 2018. [00:17:48] S1: And uh, I always say, like, to you know, all Databricks folks and ex-Arcion folks, that if that's what the market needs to also appreciate what we're doing and come together. If there are no Delta Lake and Iceberg, the exit for Arcion would have been 18 million because we had an offer for 18 million from one of the other database companies uh for migrations. You didn't have the replication use case and without Delta Lake or Iceberg. Yeah. Uh if you had run out of money before Delta Lake or Iceberg had come, we would have been bankrupt. [00:18:18] S0: So tell me about the the fundraising journey in Arcion. How was the first round? What a prox dilution or valuation you did for the first subsequent round. [00:18:28] S1: Yeah, it was uh very difficult, but also I got like uh investors who believed. [00:18:36] S0: Yeah. [00:18:37] S1: Um initially we had uh some ancient money from some ex uh Facebook uh gang uh who knew me from MemSQL days as a director of engineering doing stuff. So look at this, we put some money in him. But uh obviously, you know, I had a set of people who were with me, but then when they saw fundraising challenges, they went back to their own. Yeah, yeah, they all let you know they're I still super good friends with them, but naturally, you know. [00:19:07] S0: Yeah, but living in Bay Area is hard.
00:19:07 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:19:07] S0: Yeah, but living in Bay Area is hard. [00:19:10] S1: If you're already uh stable and all, then you know, I mean it's a then they're not not able to raise that much. Um but um I had a good fortune of uh through one of them actually, uh one of the uh founders, co-founders meet uh Alok Nandan, who at that point of time was in emergent ventures Ventam at first race, you know him very well. Um Alok actually had stayed at Azure and Salesforce, and he also struggled with that problem while he was at Salesforce. So he said, I know this problem for machine learning, it's needed for you know triggering new jobs and all. Uh, but maybe the problem exists for databases also. So I think, and then um got the opportunity to talk to Uncle at Emergent. They led the initial um seed round, and uh obviously they were also a small fund at that time. Yeah, that gave me the initial capital to build a team. I uh hired somebody in India um uh and Europe, uh, and one person here, so we scrappy team. Yeah, uh, but then you know, yeah, it's um it was quite a journey, you know. [00:20:24] S0: Um you said you came to shutting down multiple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:24 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:20:24] S0: Um you said you came to shutting down multiple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:20:28] S1: That I think um probably is true for many startups. We had that uh situation uh a couple of times because uh COVID also impacted us badly because spending was so initially, whatever round you raised, let's say less than a million dollars, you would have run out of it in 18 months. Yeah, yeah, very soon. And also um because, as I said, right, we got bits and pieces, right? Some MongoDB, some Teradata to Postgres, some migration, some Cassandra to somewhere. But there is no theme, yeah, which is also getting hard to fundraise. You know, we talked about one of your LPs, right? Which extensively talk to them. People are understanding that this is this is needed in future at some point. This has to be there. Without it, economics of data movement would scale for. But then they were not seeing the value right away because you know there's no customers doing that. Um, and so fundraising was hard. Uh obviously, we talked to Informatica once and others uh when we were about to, you know, uh and I was on H1 also. Okay. Uh so as you mentioned about dilution, right? Like, you know, because if you're on H1 as an employee, you cannot have more than X percent uh of the company. So I obviously started the company with one half of what a regular founder would have, but you know, that's you know, I and who had the other? [00:22:00] S0: Half investors.
00:22:00 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:22:00] S0: Half investors. [00:22:02] S1: But to be fair, they're also taking a risk on a first-time founder on a visa. What if somebody? So, you know, it's it's you know, they're no heart feelings actually. I'm very appreciative of my investors taking a bet on me, especially you know Alok, Ankur then Amit, who they Alok and Amit started first race. Uh Salil Deshpande Unusual Ventures who took a big technical bet on the company. [00:22:26] S0: So Salil came in the next round. [00:22:28] S1: Salil came yeah as a seed extension. Okay. Yeah, I think uh he quit Bain and started unproductive adventures. We were one of the first investments there. Primarily, I think, because of the time pressure we were able to run out of money. So uh so it's a journey. I think uh fundraising after a point when we had like a little bit of repeatable thing, and I think um uh when the Delta Lake and Iceberg we started to get traction, then our CDC wasn't as hard as how did CDJ happen? CDC, I think we had the numbers, um, but we needed to get our story together. So once we did the story together, like we also um convinced one of our advisors, Gary Hagmiller, to uh uh step up as CEO. Um, and um because we needed like someone who had like more operating experience than the previous CEO. So um uh our previous CEO, Miriana, she did a great job at the seed stage and she was in the company. We both realized that you know we need you know uh somebody else to kind of take it to the next level. And uh she she was there from Angel to 2018 to 21. Yeah, 21, yeah.
00:22:28 · Rajkumar Sen, Siddhartha Ahluwalia
[00:22:28] S1: Salil came yeah as a seed extension. Okay. Yeah, I think uh he quit Bain and started unproductive adventures. We were one of the first investments there. Primarily, I think, because of the time pressure we were able to run out of money. So uh so it's a journey. I think uh fundraising after a point when we had like a little bit of repeatable thing, and I think um uh when the Delta Lake and Iceberg we started to get traction, then our CDC wasn't as hard as how did CDJ happen? CDC, I think we had the numbers, um, but we needed to get our story together. So once we did the story together, like we also um convinced one of our advisors, Gary Hagmiller, to uh uh step up as CEO. Um, and um because we needed like someone who had like more operating experience than the previous CEO. So um uh our previous CEO, Miriana, she did a great job at the seed stage and she was in the company. We both realized that you know we need you know uh somebody else to kind of take it to the next level. And uh she she was there from Angel to 2018 to 21. Yeah, 21, yeah. [00:23:38] S0: And then uh Gary came and you know we he had So this is the same series in Databricks?