00:25:53 · Varun Badhwar
[00:25:53] S0: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, look, I I am blessed to have a good track record, and fundraising has never been the issue here. Every round has been preempted in this company. We've never really had to go out officially and run a run a fundraise process. Uh, but you know, at the same time, the expectations get higher too. I don't think anybody is expecting Varun Badhwar to go create another $250 million exit outcome, right? I think the the belief, my personal belief, my own expectation of me, let alone everybody else, is that I've did that before. I learned how to build a much bigger scale business within Palo Alto Networks. And now I want to build an IP oval business independently. So expectations get higher, pressure gets higher. Also, I think we just we haven't talked about the elephant in the room. Like building a business and navigating it through today is wild compared to 2020, you know, 2017, 2018. CI, like the speed of change of technology. I may have product market fit today, I may not have it in a quarter, even though I'm a scaled up startup. Or, you know, a company with one-tenth of the capital could potentially race to building something relatively competitive much faster. So the question always becomes like, what's the moat now, right? How much of it is, you know, people say this is a system of record mode, data mode. Sure, but I think I think those things matter. Um ultimately, I think what your customers believe about you and your ability to support and service them, because they're all going through the same shifts. Um, how we react, how we show our velocity of shipping with speed and thoughtfulness, um, how we help them navigate all these changes uh matter the most. I think having loyal customers and loyal employees that help you navigate through this change is the best thing you can have. But I call it wild because of certainly those two things I mentioned about competitive dynamics, product market fit dynamics. Um but also it's like every morning when I wake up and before I get on my phone, there's this little thing in the back of my head. I'm like, oh, like what's what's today? What's today bringing out, right? What is the what is the next big launch from a lab? What is the next big thing happening in the industry?
00:28:15 · Varun Badhwar, Siddhartha Ahluwalia
What you know, we not talked about regulation yet, but there's so much chatter right now about open weight models and is US going to regulate. Are certain things gonna get bought banned? Like this has consequences. These have lasting consequences for companies like us. And uh the good news then, I comfort myself thinking I'm not the only one. If you're Sam Altman, if you're Dario, it doesn't matter if you're running the best biggest labs in the world. That same paranoia has to be living in the back of your head every single day. [00:28:48] S1: Yeah, because uh Sam and Dario both have the fear of getting disrupted by Chinese open source, right?
00:28:48 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Varun Badhwar
[00:28:48] S1: Yeah, because uh Sam and Dario both have the fear of getting disrupted by Chinese open source, right? [00:28:56] S0: So everybody has the fear of I am not in full control. Uh, but you know, as a as a founder, multi-time founder, the last two times I built companies, I felt I have full control of this car. And then there are things outside I don't control. Now it's like I don't control the outside. Also, who knows what shifts, right? Um it's exhilarating, it's uh scary at the same time. And so you just have to have a very balanced view of what are the things I control. I usually chuckle when people ask me what's the two to three year roadmap of Endor. I'm like, if I could tell you with high degree of confidence what six months holds, it would be a win. Uh because I have now learned to live with situations where we literally last quarter, two of the products we shipped last quarter, if at the beginning of quarter you had asked me if we would be building those things, I would say no way. So that's the pace of change that we're living in, and that's the pace of change I'm trying to help my employees understand is the new reality, is living in controlled chaos or organized chaos, as I call it. [00:30:01] S1: And how big is the team today at Endor? [00:30:03] S0: Endor is closing in to about 200 people. Uh Bangalore has about 55, 60 people now, and then uh 140, most of whom are in the US. [00:30:17] S1: And in US, everybody's here in the Bay Area?
00:30:17 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Varun Badhwar
[00:30:17] S1: And in US, everybody's here in the Bay Area? [00:30:20] S0: So Bay Area is a high degree of concentration. This is a headquarters where you're at today. Um, but you know, our go-to-market team is fairly spread out because we have more geographic focus. We also have an office in Europe, uh, in the Netherlands. Uh, it's a kind of a lot of our deep researchers and engineering talent is built there. Uh, and we're continuing to hire. So if anybody's listening here and interested in working at the intersection of uh the biggest change of our time, which is agentix software development and how to secure it, then you know, we're looking for people around the world. [00:30:50] S1: Why is there a Darth Vader in your office?
00:30:50 · Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Varun Badhwar
[00:30:50] S1: Why is there a Darth Vader in your office? [00:30:54] S0: So um, if you haven't guessed it with Endoor Labs, the name Endor comes from um kind of inspiration from Star Wars. The the quick story on that is you know, 2021, when I was starting the company, LLMs didn't exist, so I couldn't go to an agent and say, help me find a domain name and a uh, you know, uh company name that can align. Two hours into this process of trying to find a domain name. I was just tired. We're watching Star Wars in the back. And I needed this done that day because I had a term sheet, and literally the VC needed a name to put on the term sheet. So uh my brother-in-law were and I were just joking around and he said, Well, let's try some Star Wars stuff. And so I have to give him credit. You know, Endor was the name that came from him, which is a forest moon. It actually plays very nicely with the David and Goliath kind of storyline at Endor, you know, where the underdogs in security helping secure the world. And we play a lot of Endor and Star Wars themes around here, and like the team really wanted Darth Vader around here. And we also have Ewoks and little Ewok squishies around, and we call our employees Ewoks. [00:32:00] S1: So you mentioned that today, for any founder, the market is obviously not in control. Their product roadmap is also not in control. So, what are the things that are really in control?
00:32:11 · Varun Badhwar
[00:32:11] S0: Um, I think the number one thing that is in control is the quality of talent you bring into the company, right? So that is non-negotiable because you may think you're building A, you might end up building B. Uh, you need the people that are first principles, system thinkers that will basically out-hustle the market. So that's one. The second thing you control is the culture you define in the company and some of the core things, like for us, customer obsession is critical. In times of uncertainty, how do I decide if I do A versus B versus C? We believe in our customers, we believe in understanding deeply their businesses, their pains, and understanding how to help them navigate it. Because if we can help them navigate their challenges, we will win because then by nature we'll build a good product. Uh, and the third thing I think fundamentally is I think entrepreneurship is not just always about solving the hardest unsolved problem. It's about solving a large problem in the most practical way with the best distribution and reach you can create. So oftentimes I talk to founders that I, you know, will come to me for advice saying, look, I've solved such a hard problem, but I can't get people's attention. I'm like, maybe you solved a really, really hard problem, but did you connect it to what the customers' needs are? The example I gave is if you're here in mainland USA and you're trying to build this amazing resort in a dream vacation place on an island, and you forget the transport problem, how are you gonna get people to come here to finally see your vision and realize your vision? Then you miss the mark. And so I always say you got to find a problem that is near-sighted for now, but there's a long path to build, and the arc is pretty uh significant. And then work with your customers to get them there to the dreamland. But don't be sitting there waiting for your customers, waiting where they are, because maybe you've missed the mark because you were just too far ahead.