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?
00:23:38 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:23:38] S0: And then uh Gary came and you know we he had So this is the same series in Databricks? [00:23:43] S1: Yes, yes, 13 million tech. Yes, yeah, whatever 40 or 50 posts. We we did 13.5 out of which Bessemer led the round. Okay, and then Databricks was participating in that. But we were in talks with Databricks for a technical partnership for a long time. Uh, I think we are the first company to be doing uh ETL and certified Unity Catalog. I remember that very clearly. Unity catalog was also very new at that time. I think we were even ahead of 510 on the certification. Uh, and now UC is like obviously the market leader, but in that when we started, it was a very small project, and we are the early adopters of that. Uh with Databricks, it is, as I said, right? Um, it's a very unique company. Uh it's very, it's very there's the innovative streak in everybody in the company. So I think um, which is the reason why they acquire, like they're very aggressive in acquiring, also. Um though this year I didn't see a big acquisition from the conference, which kind of like what happened. Uh but uh how did the acquisition happen? [00:24:54] S0: I think so.
00:24:54 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen
[00:24:54] S0: I think so. [00:24:57] S1: We were partners with Snowflake, Databricks, Confluent, everyone, Google, you know, the smaller database companies, bigger database companies, Yugabyte, we were like with everybody, MongoDB, Redis. Two, three millionaires, yes, yes, yes, in that range, and also like on the verge of like closing huge deals. Um and I think with Databricks, uh we were having success with joint customers, and you know, there was like a couple of customers who were moving 80,000, 90,000 tables through Arcion, and I'm sure like words started to spread out that you know, um, we were also doing actually a lot of work with Google and Confluent at that time, like early POCs. And maybe things started spreading that you know this company is building good tech, and finally, we were also like in our head, we had two years of work left to be able to actually compete and solve the problem fully. Um, but um, we always had tremendous relationship with Databricks, the company and uh I personally you know knew the founders also, and you know, um Samir Panashpay, who was the VP of Engineering at that time, you know, who was our sponsor. I knew him. Uh this was, I think, uh, if Samir allows me to say it, like second attempt, because first time I just more of an acquirer attempt, which didn't matter less because our team is in India and the AWS was not there in India. So uh second time was like more tech fit. Uh uh, but we had already had joined customers, they were serious investors, and you know um the GTM team knew about us. Uh and um uh Ali and I met before.
00:26:37 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen, S2
[00:26:37] S0: At that time, Databricks would would be valued at what 10-20 billion, I think when they would they would have started a talk. [00:26:43] S1: Third I believe it was in the 30s range. Okay, yeah. Um and um I mean if Databricks comes calling, like you know, you can't send more. Yeah uh though a part of me as a founder is like, no, no, no, we need to build more. But uh if it were not Databricks, I think we would have thought like a few times, like, you know, uh keep on building keep on building. Uh but with Databricks, I knew that you can keep on building violet databricks because you know, I know Ali and Reynold and Patrick, you know, I know them for a long time. Yeah, um even after the company is at 180 billion, they still want to build everything, yeah. Which is good news and bad news for everybody, but uh it's just like you know, in India they call you know this kid and people, like it's there, right? You know, so but I look up to them if after achieving so much, six, seven billion error and 118 valuation. I mean, there were stories around that Microsoft offered data breaks 40, 50 billion, whatever, and Ali still said no. That is what you want to hear, right? Yeah, that kind of stories, and then somebody like Dario leaving 1 billion dollars on the table and starting a company. That's the story I tell to people. Look at them, don't look at me or like I said, look at these two people. [00:28:03] S2: Yeah. [00:28:05] S1: So if you have an idea and you are passionate, go for it. [00:28:10] S2: Yeah.