B2BaCEO (with Ashu Garg)

How to Build a Multi-Billion-Dollar Software Business (Mohit Aron, Founder of Cohesity)

In this episode, I'm excited to welcome Mohit Aron back to B2BaCEO for the second time. As the founder of Cohesity and co-founder of Nutanix, Mohit is a titan in the world of enterprise GTM and infrastructure software. With two wildly successful companies under his belt, he's a true expert when it comes to building enterprise software businesses from the ground up. In our conversation, Mohit shares his proven frameworks for validating startup ideas. He reveals hard-won lessons from starting...

How to Grow from Ph.D. to Two-Time Startup CEO (Sanjit Biswas, Co-Founder & CEO of Samsara)

My guest today is Sanjit Biswas, the co-founder and CEO of Samsara, a platform that helps companies digitize their physical operations. In 2023, Samsara reached $1 billion in ARR, making it one of the fastest startups in history to hit this milestone.  But this wasn't Sanjit's first major success. Before starting Samsara, Sanjit left his Ph.D at MIT to build Meraki, a cloud networking company that Cisco acquired for $1.2 billion in 2012. In our conversation, Sanjit shares his journey from ...

How to Win Your First Enterprise Customer (Doug Winter, Founder and CEO at Seismic)

My guest today is Doug Winter, the founder and CEO of Seismic, a leading enterprise sales enablement platform. Today, Seismic has a team of 1,500 people and nearly $400 million in recurring revenue. We start the conversation with Doug explaining what sales enablement actually means. From there, we turn to the early days of Seismic and unpack Doug’s approach to finding product-market fit, positioning, and targeting enterprise customers from day one. He speaks candidly about the challenges of ...

How to Shape the Future of AI (Naveen Rao, VP of Generative AI at Databricks)

My guest this month is Naveen Rao, the co-founder of MosaicML and current head of Generative AI at Databricks. Naveen's journey is unique, as it echoes the evolution of AI itself. He’s best known for founding and selling two successful companies. The first, Nervana, an AI-focused chip company, was acquired by Intel for $400 million in 2016. The second, MosaicML, was acquired by Databricks in June for $1.3 billion. In our conversation, we unpack the insights and frameworks that led Naveen to...

How to Power the AI Boom (Robert Nishihara, Co-Founder & CEO of Anyscale)

In this episode of B2BaCEO, I speak with Robert Nishihara, co-founder and CEO of Anyscale. Anyscale’s aspiration is to build the fastest, most cost-efficient infrastructure for running LLMs and AI workloads. When it is successful, Anyscale will be to the AI era what Microsoft was for the PC era: the underlying operating system on which all AI applications are developed and run. Anyscale is built on Ray, an open-source compute framework that Robert and his co-founders developed as PhD student...

How to Build, Scale, and Sell a Startup (Tracy Young, Co-Founder of TigerEye & PlanGrid)

My guest this month is Tracy Young, the co-founder and former CEO of PlanGrid, a productivity tool for construction companies. From going through YC and losing a co-founder to cancer, to being acquired by Autodesk for $875 million, Tracy has picked up many valuable lessons that other founders and CEOs can learn from. Our conversation unpacks these lessons, including finding (and keeping!) product-market fit, navigating startup growing pains, showing up effectively to board meetings, and mana...

How to Deploy AI in Your Company (Matei Zaharia, CTO & Co-Founder of Databricks)

If you’re not hardcore about AI, then stop the podcast now — because this episode for real technology nerds. Ashu’s guest is Matei Zaharia, CTO and cofounder of Databricks, and a professor of computer science at Stanford University. Ashu and Matei cover a lot of ground — most of it technical, all of it very relevant for anyone who’s serious about building with artificial intelligence. They start with a discussion of Databricks’ early days: how the startup established a foothold in a market...

How to Capture the AI Moment (Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, Chief Strategy Officer at Microsoft)

As everyone listening to this podcast knows, the release of ChatGPT last November ushered in a new age of AI and catalyzed a wave of AI startups. For this episode of B2BaCEO, Ashu goes deep on AI with Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, former serial entrepreneur and investor, and current Chief Strategy Officer at Microsoft. Ashu picks Bobby’s brain on what sectors and problem spaces he thinks are ripe for innovation with AI and what the opportunities for startups are. They then dissect the four layers o...

How to Grow in a Bear Market (Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder & CEO of Gupshup)

Beerud Sheth is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gupshup, a leading platform for cloud messaging. Prior to that he was the cofounder of what is now Upwork, a pioneer of online freelancing and remote work. Beerud took the slow and steady pace to winning the race, building two unicorns over 25 years. On the show, he and Ashu draw from Beerud’s depth of experience and break down how a company can achieve capital-efficient growth in the current economic environment. They also lay out the case for why ...

How to Build a Hundred Billion Dollar Company (Jonathan Siddharth, Co-Founder & CEO of Turing)

Jonathan Siddharth is cofounder and CEO of Turing, the platform that helps companies source, vet, match, and manage the world's best software developers remotely. Jonathan started Turing in Foundation Capital’s offices four years ago and he’s since grown it into a $4B company. On this episode of B2BaCEO, Ashu gets him to talk about how he did it: from best practices for hiring execs and communicating with investors, to the unique fundraising machine that Turing’s built, to navigating throug...

How to Build an Organization (Alex Bouaziz, Co-Founder & CEO of Deel)

Alex Bouaziz is the guest for this edition of the show. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Deel, a global payroll solution that helps businesses hire anyone, anywhere. Founded in 2019, Alex and his team have grown the company into a unicorn with almost a thousand employees in just three short years! In this conversation, he opens up about the thrills and perils of scaling Deel so rapidly: from the things he got right, like how to hire and how to foster a culture of excellence; to where he got i...

How to Be a SaaS Wunderkind (Christian Owens, Founder & CEO of Paddle)

On this episode, Ashu is coming to you from London, where he’s spending the summer. His guest is Christian Owens, founder and CEO of Paddle, a B2B payments infrastructure platform. Christian is a fascinating fellow. He dropped out of high school at 16 to run his first software company, which he scaled to $5 million in revenue — not a bad lemonade stand! He started his second company, Paddle, when he was 18 and, in the ten years since, he’s scaled it to a unicorn with over $55M in revenue. ...

How to Hire People Better Than Yourself (Ashutosh Garg, Founder & CEO of Eightfold)

On this episode, it’s Ashu Garg vs. Ashu Garg. Our guest is his good friend Ashu Garg, who also goes by Ashutosh. Ashutosh is the founder and CEO of Eightfold, an AI-powered talent-acquisition and -management platform, where our Ashu is a board member and early investor in the company. In this conversation, the two Ashus trace Eightfold’s not-always-easy path from altruistic mission to Silicon Valley unicorn. They spend much of their time discussing how to hire the best people. And CEO Ashu...

How to Sell Software (Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot)

On this episode, Ashu’s guest is Yamini Rangan, the CEO of HubSpot. The tagline of the B2BaCEO podcast is “from engineer to CEO,” and that’s exactly the path that Yamini took. She started out as an engineer, then moved to sales, and then eventually to running go-to-market operations as an executive. Less than a year ago, Yamini became the CEO of HubSpot, under unexpected and trying circumstances, which she details in the conversation. Ashu and Yamini spend most of their time discussing how...

How to Be a One-Man C-Suite (Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks)

Nikesh Arora began his career at Fidelity Technologies, where he served as VP Finance. He then went onto T-Mobile, where he was CMO and then in 2004 joined Google, initially running Europe and was ultimately the Chief Business Officer of the company before he left in 2014. He was then president and COO of Softbank Corp before becoming CEO of Palo Alto Networks in 2018. Nikesh has held so many different functional leadership roles that it’s small wonder we’ve dubbed him the “One Man C-Suite.”...

How to Lead With Gusto (Josh Reeves, Co-Founder & CEO of Gusto)

On this episode, Ashu interviews Josh Reeves, founder and CEO of Gusto, which is reimagining payroll, benefits, and HR for modern companies. Josh joins Ashu to celebrate Gusto’s 10th anniversary. Josh explains Gusto’s atypical focus on building for “durability and accountability,” as against the usual Silicon Valley dogma of grow fast or die. He walks listeners through how he scaled the company in stages and the new muscles he had to build at each stage. Ashu delves into how Josh successful...

How to Build a Decacorn (Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder & CEO of Databricks)

DataBricks CEO and cofounder, Ali Ghodsi, is back on the podcast for a third time, making him the most frequent guest we’ve had on the show. On this episode, courtesy of our recent enterprise conference, FC BUILD 2021, Ali shares the founding story of Spark and DataBricks, and his own story of going from an academic to a CEO. Ali breaks down the evolution of DataBricks’ business model and the company’s go-forward vision as a broader platform for data scientists and ML engineers. And he offer...

How to Build a Decacorn (Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder & CEO of DataBricks)

DataBricks CEO and cofounder, Ali Ghodsi, is back on the podcast for a third time, making him the most frequent guest we’ve had on the show. On this episode, courtesy of our recent enterprise conference, FC BUILD 2021, Ali shares the founding story of Spark and DataBricks, and his own story of going from an academic to a CEO. Ali breaks down the evolution of DataBricks’ business model and the company’s go-forward vision as a broader platform for data scientists and ML engineers. And he offer...

How to Amp It Up (Frank Slootman, Chairman & CEO, Snowflake)

How to Win (Dan Springer, CEO of DocuSign)

Dan Springer is a three-time Silicon Valley CEO. He’s currently the CEO of DocuSign, which he took public and subsequently scaled to more than $2 billion in run-rate revenue and $50+ billion in market cap. Any losers out there will want to stop listening now, because this episode is all about how to win: how to win as a CEO, how to win at go-to-market, and how to win the war for talent.

How to Scale Product-Market Fit (Rob Bernshteyn, CEO & Chairman, Coupa Software)

Rob Bernshteyn’s definition of product-market-fit is having “the least lines of code with the maximum amount of value and the highest willingness to pay for that value.” Rob is the CEO of Coupa, the leading business-spend management platform. He’s a product-led and metrics-driven CEO. So, naturally, this conversation is all about product and SaaS metrics. In this episode, Rob unpacks his definition of product-market fit and talks about his formula for scaling a SaaS company to a billion dolla...

BONUS: How to Architect the Future (Max Simkoff, Founder & CEO of Doma)

This is a special bonus episode of B2BaCEO featuring one of Foundation Capital’s own CEOs, Max Simkoff. In 2016, Max founded Doma, a real estate transactions startup, out of our San Francisco office and Foundation led his Series A. Just last week, less than five years later, Doma started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. You can watch the full story of how Doma went from proof-of-concept to public company in our new video series, “Diary of a Startup." But this episode of the podcast ...

How to Do OKRs Right (Deidre Paknad, CEO & Co-Founder of WorkBoard)

This episode goes deep on a topic that many founders, especially first-time founders, obsess over but usually get wrong: OKRs, objectives and key results. And there’s literally no greater authority on this topic than our guest Deidre Paknad, CEO and cofounder of WorkBoard, the enterprise standard in OKR software and expertise. Deidre is one of the most methodical, systematic, and gutsy leaders we’ve ever had on the show. Many CEOs overdo or underdo OKRs. Listen to Deidre and she’ll tell you h...

How to Protect Your Perimeter (Doug Merritt and Mike DeCesare)

Doug Merritt and Mike DeCesare both hold leadership roles at prominent cybersecurity companies. But before they made their way into the CEO seat, both spent many years in a variety of operational positions, gaining a 360-degree view of their respective businesses. Today, Doug leads the team at Splunk with empathy, ensuring all contributors feel valued. And Mike, now co-chairman at Forescout Technologies, explains how his holistic professional journey has made him a more thoughtful leader. We...

How to Go From Idea to IPO (George Kurtz & Michelle Zatlyn)

In this session from our FC BUILD conference, Ashu interviews two billion-dollar founders. When it comes to scaling management, engineering culture, and anticipating future markets, Cloudflare COO Michelle Zatlyn and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are the ones to ask. Each shares a bit about their respective company’s journeys — plus, George explains how a company is like a race car!

How to Grow as a CEO (Tien Tzuo and Edith Harbaugh)

In this installment of our FC BUILD series, my partner Steve Vassallo talks with Edith Harbaugh, co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly, and Tien Tzuo, co-founder and CEO of Zuora. Both former engineers, Edith and Tien offer advice for building a startup, discuss scaling in the time of virtual work, and dissect the art of managing others and themselves.

How to Commercialize Open Source (Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder & CEO of Databricks)

In this discussion from our recent enterprise conference FC BUILD, Ashu interviews Databricks founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi. A rather unconventional company, Databricks began as an open-source project at UC Berkeley that moved into the commercial space after the team realized its impact. Ali and Ashu discuss commercializing an open-source project, identifying product-market fit, and optimizing go-to-market.

How to Manage on the Edge of Chaos (Reed Hastings, CEO & Co-Founder of Netflix)

This is a special episode of B2B a CEO. Last month, Foundation Capital held a special event for all of our CEOs. We hosted a conversation with Foundation’s most illustrious CEO, Reed Hastings, the CEO and cofounder of Netflix. General Partner Steve Vassallo and General Partner Emeritus Mike Schuh interviewed Reed about his new book, No Rules Rules. Reed discusses the evolution of Netflix, and what he’s learned over the decades about how to build a high-performance culture. He also shares a fe...

How to Build a Snowflake (Frank Slootman, Chairman & CEO of Snowflake)

From FC BUILD, our recent enterprise conference, Foundation Capital General Partner Joanne Chen interviews Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. On the heels of his third major IPO, Frank discusses performance culture, scaling, and the future of data.

How to Sell Yourself, Your Startup, and Your Product (Edith Harbaugh, CEO & CoFounder of LaunchDarkly)

On this episode, Ashu interviews Edith Harbaugh, co-founder and CEO of feature management platform LaunchDarkly. They discuss what it takes to leap from an established job to pursue an idea, and how to tackle the woes of fundraising. Edith and Ashu spend the lion’s share of the conversation on the all-important topic of sales. How to sell yourself, your company, and your product. And what to look for when you’re hiring a sales leader.

How to Be an Anti-Racist CEO (Ralph Clark, President & CEO of ShotSpotter)

This episode’s guest is Ralph Clark, the president and CEO of ShotSpotter. Ralph has more than 30 years of experience in corporate finance and organizational leadership roles at IBM, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and several successful tech startups. He and Ashu talk about how executives and the tech industry can confront bias and systemic racism.

How to Hate Losing (George Kurtz, Founder & CEO of Crowdstrike)

George Kurtz, the founder and CEO of Crowdstrike, the most successful cybersecurity company of the past decade, is the very special guest for this episode. George joins Ashu for in-depth conversation on everything from hiring, to board composition, to balancing a hybrid product-and-services model. George also gives specific advice for all you security founders listening.

How to Go to Market (Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder & CEO of Databricks)

On this episode, we have Ali Ghodsi, cofounder and CEO of Databricks, a cloud platform for massive scale data engineering and collaborative data science. For the first third of the podcast, Ali tells us the story of how a research project at the AMP Lab at UC Berkeley grew into Databricks. This will be of particular interest to anyone who wants to know how to commercialize open source. After that, Ali gives listeners a crash course on how to build an early stage go-to-market machine—from ho...

How to Make Your CEO Dreams Come True

In part 2 of my interview with Mark Leslie, we dive deeper into his experience founding Veritas and leading it to become a Fortune 100 software company. We hear more about Mark’s eventual departure from his role as CEO to his current passion for teaching and investing.

How to Make Your CEO Dreams Come True (Mark Leslie, Managing General Partner at Leslie Ventures)

In part 2 of my interview with Mark Leslie, we dive deeper into his experience founding Veritas and leading it to become a Fortune 100 software company. We hear more about Mark’s eventual departure from his role as CEO to his current passion for teaching and investing.

How to Get Through the Covid-19 Crisis

This special episode of the podcast is part oral history of when the plague came to Silicon Valley and part anthology of advice for startups dealing with the fallout of Covid-19. Five CEOs and one CFO, at companies ranging from early stage to public market, share their experiences of coping with the business impact of the pandemic and offer advice for how best to manage through the crisis. The guests for this episode are Mohit Aron, CEO at Cohesity; Andrew Feldman, CEO at Cerebras Systems; Ja...

How to Get Through the Covid-19 Crisis (Various)

This special episode of the podcast is part oral history of when the plague came to Silicon Valley and part anthology of advice for startups dealing with the fallout of Covid-19. Five CEOs and one CFO, at companies ranging from early stage to public market, share their experiences of coping with the business impact of the pandemic and offer advice for how best to manage through the crisis. The guests for this episode are Mohit Aron, CEO at Cohesity; Andrew Feldman, CEO at Cerebras Systems; Ja...

How to Manage Your Board & Everything Else (Mark Leslie, Managing General Partner at Leslie Ventures)

Mark Leslie is the founder & CEO of Veritas Technology, a company he grew from an idea to a Fortune 100 powerhouse worth over $1B in revenue. My interview with Mark was so full of wisdom that we decided there was enough material for at least two episodes. In this first episode, I get into the weeds with Mark on topics ranging from how to manage your board, to pricing and sales, to annual planning. It’s a can’t-miss for all CEOs or CEO-hopefuls!

How to Be Your Best CEO Self (Dane Holewinski, Startup Founder & CEO Coach at Decode)

For the first episode of the new year and new decade, a startup-founder-turned-CEO coach offers some guidance on being your best CEO self.

How to Be a VC Jr. (Adi Garg & Ashu Garg)

This one is for you really, really early-stage founders. Fifth-grader Adi Garg interviews his dad about startups and venture capital and chocolate.

How to Change the World (Ion Stoica, Executive Chairman & Former CEO of Databricks; & Co-Founder of Conviva)

Two-time founder/CEO, and Berkeley computer science professor, Ion Stoica chats with Ashu about what it means to have an impact and how to go from academic to entrepreneur.

How to Scale Sales (Sudheesh Nair and Ajeet Singh of ThoughtSpot)

Sudheesh Nair and Ajeet Singh discuss the tricky process of handing off the CEO baton. They also go deep on how to build a world-class sales organization.

How to Create a Mission-Driven Culture (Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty)

Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, puts people and relationships at the forefront of her business strategy. In this episode of the podcast, she tells me what she’s learned as a two-time CEO and how important it is to create a good company culture with diverse talent. ___   Jennifer Tejada joins PagerDuty https://www.pagerduty.com/newsroom/pagerduty-appoints-saas-industry-veteran-jennifer-tejada-as-ceo/ PagerDuty’s IPO https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/04/11/pagerdutys-ipo-va...

How to Manage Through Influence (Kevin Johnson, CEO of Udemy)

Kevin Johnson led two companies in very different stages of growth. Here’s how he did it and what he looks for in new hires. ___ Ratuken buys Ebates https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ebates-m-a-rakuten/rakuten-says-to-buy-u-s-rebate-site-operator-ebates-for-1-billion-idUSKBN0H40JM20140909 Kevin Johnson becomes CEO of Udemy https://about.udemy.com/press-releases/udemy-board-appoints-kevin-h-johnson-as-new-ceo/ Managing through influence https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-to-...

How to Plan for Success (Mohit Aron, Founder/CEO of Cohesity)

Two-time founder Mohit Aron tells me how blueprints and checklists can guide your startup in its earliest stages. ___ Mohit goes into more detail about his entry point framework https://rajeshsetty.com/2017/06/29/mohit-aron-evaluating-ideas/ Cohesity is on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/14/cohesity-2019-disruptor-50.html More about Geoffrey Moore, creator of the “technology adoption life cycle”: http://www.geoffreyamoore.com/

How to Hire and Fire (Burton Goldfield, CEO of TriNet)

Burton Goldfield tells me his CEO strategy: know the results you want and build your company towards achieving them. ___ TriNet goes public https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/03/27/san-leandro-trinet-ipo-gives-east-bay-a-new-1-billion-company/

How to Scale Company Culture (Aaron Levie, CEO & Co-Founder of Box, Part 2/2)

Aaron tells me how to scale your company while maintaining its culture and the benefits of going public. ___ More about Andy Grove’s 10X theory https://thekeypoint.org/2018/03/19/only-the-paranoid-survive/ Aaron talks more about maintaining company culture while scaling https://firstround.com/review/Aaron-Levie-on-How-to-Scale-10x-as-a-CEO-Built-a-Billion-Dollar-Business/ A Box employee makes his mom proud https://blog.box.com/make-moms-proud Box finally goes public https://money.cn...

How to Pivot (Aaron Levie, CEO & Co-Founder of Box, Part 1/2)

Dorm room startup co-founder Aaron Levie tells me how he made the decision to pivot Box from a consumer product to an enterprise solution. ___ Getting Mark Cuban https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-cold-email-brought-mark-cuban-to-box-11554474601 Aaron’s 2006 email to an investor about the need to pivot https://www.fastcompany.com/1787627/starred-how-box-cofounder-aaron-levie-enticed-vcs-mark-cuban-battle-microsoft-google Aaron talks to Harvard Business Review about Box’s pivot to enter...

How to Scale Happiness (Eric Yuan, Founder/CEO of Zoom)

Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan tells me why and how happiness is an essential part of his multi-billion-dollar company. ___ Glassdoor names Zoom the best tech company to work for in 2019 https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/best-tech-companies-2019/ … and the second best company to work for overall https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm Zoom’s first customer https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2013/08/15/stanford-continuing-studies-takes-education-online-with-zoom-vid...

How to B2B a VC (Ashu Garg, General Partner at Foundation Capital)

The man, the maniac.