A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:06:49 · Arvind Jain, Pablo Srugo
[00:06:49] S0: It was tough for me internally first, before I even discussed with somebody. I had to figure out why, how, does it make sense, why? We actually built the organization to an extent where we had great leaders and they're doing great job. In fact, they're better than me. I felt I had the ability to do a really good smooth transition and start Glean, but I was so excited about it. It's a problem that is something that I feel is really fundamental. We believe that we make such a big impact on the lives of people who use our product. [00:07:26] S1: Now, weren't there – just thinking through this problem, like you said, it was a problem that everybody faced. In a sense, it classified in the world of obvious problems that are just really hard to solve, but weren't there some – I remember Dropbox I think had put something out in this space or was at least marketing that they had a solution. Were there a lot of big names going after this problem as well?
00:07:26 · Pablo Srugo, Arvind Jain
[00:07:26] S1: Now, weren't there – just thinking through this problem, like you said, it was a problem that everybody faced. In a sense, it classified in the world of obvious problems that are just really hard to solve, but weren't there some – I remember Dropbox I think had put something out in this space or was at least marketing that they had a solution. Were there a lot of big names going after this problem as well? [00:07:47] S0: Historically, this is not a new problem, helping employees find information at work. There've been companies. Google had a product, too, but nobody really solved it in a way where somebody liked the product, where the problem actually got solved. Overall, I would say it was more of a neglected space as opposed to a space where a lot of companies were thinking about doing something. When we came in, we built the product, we felt that we were the only ones who were truly focused on bringing assistance to employees with a product like ours. Most of our journey has felt more like creating the market for it as opposed to competing with other vendors with a better product. [00:08:30] S1: Walk me through those early days. You finally do decide to leave Rubrik. My understanding is you raised that, I think it was $15 million round, right out of the gate. What was that process like? I assume, was it relatively straightforward just because of your background and what you've proven so far?
00:08:30 · Pablo Srugo, Arvind Jain
[00:08:30] S1: Walk me through those early days. You finally do decide to leave Rubrik. My understanding is you raised that, I think it was $15 million round, right out of the gate. What was that process like? I assume, was it relatively straightforward just because of your background and what you've proven so far? [00:08:46] S0: Yeah, the process of raising capital was relatively smooth, but I think it was interesting. There were investors who would tell me that they would back me because I have experienced building a company before, but they didn't want to back the idea that I was working on. There was some struggle because I think this was a difficult problem. There were no successes in enterprise search which is how people clubbed us as into that category, and so rightfully so, there was some hesitation from investors, but you always find, ultimately, there are great investors who have the capacity to actually take on big challenges. They're not afraid of all the risks. [00:09:31] S1: What's the first step? You already validated the idea, so do you just go right into building the product? What do you focus on in those early days? [00:09:40] S0: First thing first, right? I think, for me, the validation happened just it was actually something that was fundamental, something that just I believed in. I didn't need anyone to validate. In fact, the more people I would talk to, especially people who have business acumen, they would actually turn me farther from this idea. I actually chose not to talk to too many people.
00:09:40 · Arvind Jain, Pablo Srugo
[00:09:40] S0: First thing first, right? I think, for me, the validation happened just it was actually something that was fundamental, something that just I believed in. I didn't need anyone to validate. In fact, the more people I would talk to, especially people who have business acumen, they would actually turn me farther from this idea. I actually chose not to talk to too many people. [00:10:08] S1: How come? What would they say? Were they not aware? They didn't feel the problem themselves or was it something else? [00:10:14] S0: Everybody feels the problem, but everybody felt that in those days that, hey, I can live with it. I can live with this problem. [00:10:23] S1: Like a nice to have.
00:10:23 · Pablo Srugo, Arvind Jain
[00:10:23] S1: Like a nice to have. [00:10:24] S0: Yeah, I feel this is a nice to have. This is a vitamin. This is not a painkiller. I have a much more simplistic thought process. I don't think about those. I'm not a business person either, but for me, it was like I was going with the engineering mindset, which is that, look, I know all these engineers, they're spending one third of their time just trying to find things. They're frustrated and there's some value to be created here. Part of it was that, just that belief, and actually not just me, whoever we hired in our initial founding team and the people who we hired after that, all the people who came to work at Glean had the same level of belief in the problem that we're trying to solve. That's the only reason they came, that it's a problem that they faced in their work lives, and they knew it was important. They were also engineers. Initially, you hire engineers, so you don't think about the vitamin and the painkiller and the nice to have versus must have. That's not how you think users go and solve a problem. That's our initial journey is to – and I think it's important. It's important sometimes not to over-analyze and actually focus on the end user and the problem and just go and solve it.
00:11:38 · Pablo Srugo, Arvind Jain
[00:11:38] S1: It's interesting. A lot of these vitamins, they feel that until, like you said, you have the thing and then you realize you can't live without it anymore. Then it's effectively a painkiller because you create the pain, right? Did you do, I'm curious back then, you talk about over-analyzing, which this is a theme that I've seen through and through in so many of these early stories. Things work because people build something that solve problems and then the market presented itself. How much thinking did you do at the time of TAM analysis, market size, pricing, all these things? [00:12:07] S0: That's a great question. Sometimes we talk to our team about it. We didn't do any TAM analysis. How do you do TAM? There's no product in the market. Nobody actually is even solving this problem. You had to really – basically my mindset was that this is fundamental. Initially, when people are – investors ask me, okay, what's the TAM or how big is this opportunity? How would you even figure out how much people would pay for it? What should be the price and what's the ROI? How are you going to prove the ROI? You won't be able to prove the ROI because saving time is so nebulous. My question to them would be always that, okay, think about email. Do you think you need email in your company? Nobody doubts it. I said, what's the ROI of it? Nobody can come up with the ROI either.