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.
00:28:10 · S2, Rajkumar Sen, Siddhartha Ahluwalia
[00:28:10] S2: Yeah. [00:28:11] S1: You know, because you know, they could Alikuta sold a comet and alikuta sold for 15 billion to Microsoft and generation wealth, right? But they didn't. That 50 has turned to 200 now and will turn to 1 trillion, I know. [00:28:24] S0: So you believe that it will go to Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:28:27 · Rajkumar Sen
[00:28:27] S1: I think given the opportunities around data and AI, I also I believe that even Snowflake will grow significantly uh because they have a great product. Uh, as I said, right? Um, if you have a product that can handle structured data very well, uh, I think uh they have a solid data warehousing product. I feel like they're also going to grow. They're gonna like it's not going to be one way. Uh there is going to be tremendous amount of innovation from Snowflake also. Uh, but I don't have so much visibility because I have not worked there and I can only see it from outside as a hopefully as a you know, if I start a company tomorrow as a partner of theirs, yeah. But um there are top, you know, with I think a lot of innovation is going to happen in every vertical, and most of the compute money and infrastructure money is going to end up at Databricks and Snowflake. Where will people go, right? I think AWS is great, but I think uh the app side is completely shifting over to Databricks and Snowflake now. Uh this was not the case earlier, you know, like uh they were dominating in databases and all of this. A lot of that shift has happened. Again, if you went and asked somebody, you know, um, will somebody will take on AWS? Yeah, you wouldn't say no one. Then Snowflake took on AWS. If somebody told you in 2020 somebody is going to take on Snowflake, you would have been okay. No, no, Databricks took on. So, you know, this is the beauty of thing, right? Nothing is constant. Uh, so you know, remains to be seen. But um for Arcion, uh we, you know, uh at some point we we had an offer from Databricks, and obviously, you know, um, they know how to value team and company, which is I already knew it uh from the mosaic.
00:30:19 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Rajkumar Sen, S3, S2
[00:30:19] S0: So they so they valued it properly, though you didn't have to negotiate on the offer and anything. [00:30:23] S1: I don't think we had too many negotiations, and they were very generous also in uh uh employee uh compensation. Okay. So, in addition to X amount of money for the cap table, they were super generous in uh handing out amazing RSU packages for everybody in the company. I can't name numbers, but uh I think uh Jyoti Bansal once gave a famous statement. You know, uh I met X millionaires as part of AppDynamics. I could claim the same actually for 90% of the Arcion employees. Okay, or maybe as of today, everybody given the stock price if they have not sold, uh, because uh database was very, very generous. Yeah, they appreciated the talent we are bringing in. Uh and uh that's the beauty of that company, you know, like uh more than valuing the product or whatever, like you know, the team is also important because you know what you can build inside is more valuable, right? Because with Arcion, how many customers you would have got, right? [00:31:24] S3: 20. [00:31:25] S1: 20. If you're part of Databricks, that number is probably thousand. [00:31:29] S2: Okay.
00:31:30 · Rajkumar Sen
[00:31:30] S1: But for when you left Databricks, the number was thousand for Arcion? We transitioned the product to something called LakeFlow Connect. Okay, um, I can't name the number, but the number is tremendously high. Okay, uh, it's growing. Um and obviously the porting of the project into you know the infrastructure took a little bit of time, and obviously uh product had to be more mature as a startup. You can have less mature product, and if you're part of Databricks portfolio, you have to be super stable and super mature. So we have to do all of that. Uh I think we did well. Uh products up and running. Now I think the products getting integrated with Genie and all of it, also. So, and then I I think more connectors are coming very soon. Uh, so you know um it's a it's gonna it's gonna be good. I I feel proud of the team and what we achieved. Uh and um the I think being see I one uh interesting aspect of Databricks is and maybe it's true for other companies, I haven't worked in Snowflake, Anthropic, or OpenAI. Maybe it's the same everywhere. It's like um you're always pushed to do more. Okay, you can't like Hogia types in India. There is nothing like that. So as much amount of hours I was putting in in Arcion, like the amount of hours actually increased at data points. So your family would be more and happy. Yeah, they're like, okay, we heard that after exit, life is chill. I said, no, no, no, no, no, this company it's actually like you know, uh, there's a lot of training also to be done. Like instead of three salespeople, you're trying to train to like 500. Yeah, instead of talking to five customers, you're going in front of these are like heavyweight customers, right? So it was phenomenal. Um, I enjoyed uh uh that you know that that journey. And but that at some point, you know, I also felt like you know, I was doing this thing for five years, then I did it again for two and a half years. So after seven and a half years, you know, it's like you know, you're doing only comedy movies, and you know, even Leonardo had to do that one big movie to get an Oscar, you know. I don't know if you really wanted to do it.