Inspired Execution

Welcome back to the Inspired Execution Podcast. Each episode shares the experience and learnings of a world-class leader on their journey to success. The guests on this podcast are bold, brilliant, and not afraid to change. As you navigate your own path, we hope you feel inspired by their stories, lessons learned, and the vision of the future. Joining us on the Inspired Execution Podcast is founder, entrepreneur, investor Jyoti Bansal. Jyoti is not your average Silicon Valley visionary.

He sold his company AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion. Today, he runs three companies at the same time. It's no wonder he's being named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. Today, Jyoti shares his journey on building multiple unicorns, tips for staying energized while balancing many roles, and the importance of being mission-driven versus money-driven. Jyoti, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

Good to be here, Chet.

I cannot help but start with your track record because wow, right? You've started multiple unicorn businesses, which we'll talk about, but you're also currently running multiple companies. How do you do that all at the same time, be energized? Give us a sense of what does your week look like? How do you divide your time? How do you get energized to make that happen?

A lot of people ask me this question. It all comes down to almost a cliche that if you are enjoying what you do, it doesn't feel like a job. It's just something you enjoy. That's your passion. That's what you do for fun. When I sold my first company, AppDynamics, I tried to retire and everyone was like, "Oh, you should retire now. Why do you work anymore?" I was like, okay, that makes sense. I should retire. I tried to do it, and after nine months, I realized I don't really like too many things.

I don't like playing golf too long. I can sit on a beach, but not for more than a few days. This is what I like to do, building companies, building products, the hustle and bustle of the startup. Many times people are like, "I'm going to do something. And then when I retire, then I'm going to really do something that I enjoy." I'm fortunate that I'm doing now what I enjoy. That makes it much more easier and that's what drives the energy. You're enjoying what you're doing. And then a lot of people ask me the question, what you asked, how do you manage your time, how many hours, et cetera.

I look at it slightly differently. I don't try look in terms of how many hours I'm spending where. I look at it in terms of almost like time allocation, like impact allocation, like where can I make more impact. Impact can change. Sometimes there's something that's so impactful going on in the company that you have to put a lot of time and energy on that. You can move the needle either this way by doing it well, or by not doing it well, you can move the needle this way as well.

That's where you put time and energy and how I look at where is the most impact. The impact, it depends on the stage of the company. The impact could be different.

That's a great perspective, by the way. Let me go back to the first comment you made. At the end of the day, it's about liking and loving what you do. My general take on your comment is I think it's if you didn't like something, if you were not in love with something before, you're not going to fall in love with carpentry or golf after. You have to have that passion long before you retire. You cannot say, "I'm retired and now I'm going to have a passion," because you either have it before because you're not going to have it after. It seems like you agree.

Sometimes people do. Sometimes people are like, I'm working on this. Once I make enough money I'm going to go and open a bar because that's really what I enjoy, which is also reasonable and valid. In my case, that's on the case, what I'm doing is what I want to do when I retire as well. That makes it a bit easy.

I agree. As I tell folks, the day I retire is the day I'm not vertical. I think that's the best way to put it. Because if you're doing what you love, I think it just works out really well. I like your second comment a lot about impact because I think a lot of folks who have run companies think of it, I am the CEO, I've got to spend X time on marketing, X time with customers, X time on sales.

I certainly think that every leader, whether they are a senior executive or an executive or a manager or a coach, you should always think not about I need to do one-on-ones, but where do you have impact based on the team and the strategy and the stage of where your project or company is? It seems like you're applying that across the board.

Definitely. To me, you can be spending time on things where it won't make any difference. You spend two hours on something, and did it really make any difference if you didn't do that? Positive or negative difference? I put everything in that framework. Yes, I always have a rough framework. The two areas that I like to make sure I'm spending enough time for both my companies, one is product because I am a product guy fundamentally, that's my passion and I definitely like to be in the thick of the product, and second is customers.

I have to talk to customers myself and spend some time, because it's impossible to design the right products or even think about your sales, marketing, overall strategy in any ways unless you don't have a direct connection, direct link, direct conversations with customers. Those are the two things I feel like I have to do those, those happening and then I have enough going on and then I can figure out where do I make the most impact.

That's awesome. Let's start a little bit with your journey. Your first company, AppDynamics, was acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion and a lot of people who have been inspired to be like you will say, "Oh my God, your happiest moment was probably when the check cashed or when Cisco announced that they were acquiring you." Having gone through with some of this, my take would be that was probably not the most magical moment of your journey.

What was it? Can you pinpoint to a couple of moments, because there are many, right? You cannot say there was one moment that made the company. What are a couple of moments that you remember that just touched your heart and that made a difference to you and the company?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. When the company exits, it was a big acquisition for us, $3.7 billion, but that was a very bittersweet moment. You're happy, but you're sad. You're sad because almost a big chapter in your life is over. I spent nine years of my life, day in, day out, blood, sweat and tears and something, and now that chapter is over. It doesn't make you the happiest because you're kind of sad about that as well. That's why it's always so bittersweet at that moment.

But when I look back at the moments, the first time you get something are normally the very happy moments you remember. The first time I got the funding, I was a first time founder in my late 20s at that time trying to raise capital for the idea I had. It was hard. A lot of VCs will reject me and say, "It's too early to market, not large enough," whatever, all kind of reasons. The first time I got an offer from my investor, I knew the company is real now because I have some money to get the company going.

That was definitely a very happy moment. I remember the first time we closed a paying customer and you get the check. In those days you used to get physical checks. Now you get the wire in bank, but you used to get physical checks. You get the physical check. I still remember the picture of it. Took a picture. Framed it. That's the first money you get from the customer. I really remember another moment when where you feel the friends you make to a customer. When someone says, "Okay, you guys have made a big difference to what we do, to our business."

In AppDynamics, we're selling a product for people to monitor and troubleshoot problems and software fast. The users will say, "Okay, this makes my life easy and I'm really happy." You hear that. It's okay. You filled something that you set out to do. I would say I get very happy when AppDynamics got acquired by Cisco, we had about 400 people who made more than a million dollars and many people who made $5 million plus. It was a great outcome for employees and that's something I take a lot of pride in.

Even now I get some time messages, "Hey, we just bought a new house from the money we made in AppDynamics," and those are still happy moments. Okay, not just we were successful as a company, but we made impact in our employees' and people's lives there.

That's awesome. That is so awesome. Harness is now valued at $3.7 billion as well. There's the number again. You've been very successful, and one of the things that I certainly implement, try to forget your last success, because you're a different person and the company is different. How is your approach different with Harness versus AppDynamics because you're a different leader now?

I'm a different leader, but also the markets are different, the products are different, the competitive dynamics are different, and the times are different too. How your customers do things are different than what they used to do 10 years ago. I am a strong believer in what you said as well. It doesn't matter what you did before. Your customers don't really care. You have to still build the best products. You have to compete in the market. You have to do right execution.

There's some advantages you get as a second time CEO that you can recruit better, you can attract more talent, fundraising is much easier. It's not like I had to pitch 30 VCs to get my first check. It's 30 VCs were knocking on my door to give me the check. That part becomes easier, but everything else is the same. You still have to find product market fit. The product market fit part doesn't change. It's equally hard every time.

The part of competing in the market and getting customers to care for what you're doing, finding more products to build as you grow the market, all those things are still the same that you have to navigate. I look at the few things I like to keep constant. For me, when I look back at what works for me is my formula and I call it my simple five point formula, but it comes down to make sure that we keep expanding our time. Our total addressable market, we keep expanding it. It's already large and we keep expanding.

Because if we do that, then life becomes easier because you have more and more, larger and larger market to go after. I like to make sure that our product has to be in the top three in our space. Whatever area of market use cases we are going after, we have to be in the top three. Ideally, number one, number two, but sometimes hard to know what's number one, what's number two. But let's say we are in top three, we build very strong sales execution around our product.

It's not just the product, but the sales were exceptionally strong. Fourth is we really take care of customers. Not just say it, every company says it as just a checkbox, but really, really take care of customers. And then fifth, you create a good open collaborative culture, a culture where people like to be part of the company because it's open and transparent and it's collaborative. People are in together. I look at if those five things are there, I'm happy running the business because I know that's the business I enjoy.

And everything else, then you adapt and figure out, which is very different every time. I would think top level things I look at between AppDynamics and Harness and Traceable and all my companies are about the same.

That's awesome. There's some commonalities. You keep your guiding principles or whatever, tenets, whatever you want to call it, constant, but then morph everything around that. It's also you having fun when you're doing these things.

You don't want to be operating in a environment where it's against your guiding principle. Different people have different guiding principles for me, but some people might want to enjoy running a company that's low growth. I don't enjoy it. For me, I like to enjoy we are building new products, we're growing our time, we are expanding our platform, and we're growing, growing, growing, and that's more fun for me. If we get to a point where that's not possible, I will stop having fun in the company.

Yeah, no, for sure. This is a good segue into my next question because that is truly what a mission orientation is about. Because if you're mission oriented and it's not a job, then you're going to say, "Hey, the mission was to create a high growth company that affected as many customers as possible across the board," and that's not being successful. Maybe we should do something else, pivot to doing something else.

That orientation, it's not about abandoning your current mission, but it's about pivoting to a new one. And I think a lot of people miss that, right? Because if it's a job, then you're like, okay, I'm fine at 15% growth. It's just the way it is. The markets are hard.

No, that's the thing. And also, different people have different strengths. You have to play to your strength. In my case, I look at my strength as building more products and expanding markets and going after a high growth mission, serving bigger and bigger aspect of the market. I have to play to that strength.

If your business changes, obviously you morph and you pivot and you go into different things, but then you are in a spot where you're not playing to your strengths and then maybe you need to surround yourself or bring more people who are better on those strengths and you have to be humble about that too, right?

Yeah, no, that's awesome. From the mission orientation thing that we're talking about, let's talk about people because it is about people, like you said. Hiring the right people is critical. It's obvious. What's the one question you ask every candidate? It doesn't matter what function.

Yeah, that's a good question. I like to see what people are proud of. That's the one question I always like because that tells me a lot of what is their core strength and what they want to build towards. I normally like to ask, what are you most proud of that you have done in your career? People have different kind of things. Sometimes people will be, "I'm very proud of the team I built."

Sometimes people will be like, "I'm very proud of this very complex technical problem we solve." Sometimes people will be like, "I'm very proud of these hard results we were able to achieve." That kind of tells you about people, how they think, what will drive them and what will make them proud.

For sure. I think that's a great tip for our listeners, which is at the end of the day, they are trying to see if they fit into the mission that you're driving. You're trying to figure out if they fit into the mission as well. For them to know more about the mission and you, the leader, and for you to know more about how they fit and a little bit more about them, the people, rather than the skills is really important. It shows you what's important to them.

Exactly. It's very also important for us to understand when you're hiring someone, what would make people successful and proud three, four years from now and is our job aligned with that? If not, they're likely not going to be happy and excited about that.

No, I agree. I agree. We talked about mission orientation. What would be your tip to leaders about what are techniques you've used to make sure that you get the point across that it is not about individual accomplishment, it is about the team winning. I talk about this concept called the no look pass. You can score a goal, you can score a basket, but you choose not to.

You say that the other person actually has a higher likelihood of making it happen and so give them the ball, pass them the ball, whatever it is. And that's, in my mind at least, a focus on the team, i.e. the mission winning. What are some things that you have done to make sure that that mission orientation shows up in your teams?

Well, to me there are three parts of it. One is setting the mission very clear, that people know what the mission is. When we look at AppDynamics, my first company, the mission we set was the whole world is running on code. Can we go and instrument every line of code so the developers who are writing that code can watch it? It was a big mission that we want to instrument every line of code in the world that allows developers to fix problems when that happens in the code.

In my new company Harness, our mission is there are 30 million developers in the world, can we make them 20, 30% more efficient by bringing them the right developer tools to do their job building code and testing code and deploying code and everything around it? Now, making developers in the world 20, 30% more efficient is a clear mission that we keep building towards, and the rest will come from it. That's one part of the mission. I also like to define almost a path, like a financial path, which is a path to let's say when we are starting, path to our first 100 million of ARR.

We say okay, this is the path you want to shoot for. We go roughly from this to this in five years or some number. They say, okay, now it's the path to $1 billion of ARR and we go from here to here in this many years. Our mission is to achieve something, but there's a financial business path that is tied to it and with a financial goal as well. We are not going to follow the path exactly, but at least there's something that people do.

The second part is communicating that I've learned over time, like the hardware that you have to do it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, to the point when people get bored of it. When people, "Okay, stop it. I've heard it many times," that to me is a good time. People have to know. Otherwise, as the company get larger and larger, you just lost the clarity around it. The strategic repetition of a few things, a few thing you want to be that is very clear. That's the second part. The third part is make a collective mission after that. You define a clear mission. You make sure that mission is communicated clearly all the time and many times.

And third, it becomes a collective mission that is not your mission or a few people's mission, it's everyone is in the same mission. When every employee believes in the mission to the point that it's not even a question, it's more about people talk about, "Hey, in our plan we want to be there, but we need to fix these things over next two, three years to do this," and even maybe the earliest in the career employees talking about those, that means they're all of that. Then it becomes almost like a collective destiny as well because everyone is thinking about it.

You have collective brain power around it. People are questioning if you're not on the right path, et cetera. I look at it from those three things. I can define the mission clearly, communicate it as many times as possible, so there's no confusion on what the mission is, and a high level path. Believe that it's possible and then make it a collective mission.

That is gold. That's a phenomenal way to think about it. I want to shift a little bit and talk a little bit about AI, and I want to take it in two different directions here. I'm as excited about generative AI as I was, actually more excited about generative AI and predictive AI today than I was with the browser in '94 because I think it's going to affect every industry and the pace at which it's going to happen is going to be bigger and it's going to have a bigger impact on almost everything quicker. Do you agree with that statement and what are your thoughts on it?

Yeah, I 100% agree. It's a disruptive moment in the evolution of technology. The way browser was and internet was and mobile was generative AI is. It can definitely help redefine and change how so many of different job disciplines are done from programming code to writing content, to helping customers and doing sales. Almost every discipline has a massive transformational impact that's possible.

The pace is extremely, extremely, extremely high. That's why it's so disruptive. Some technology is like, okay, that will take 10 years for the technology to become mature. This is like in six months, the disruption happening. Another six months, it'll be a different world.

I also think this time around, a lot of people don't get this, there's a discussion happening very quickly. No one talked about regulating the internet in 1994. I think the pace at which I think governments are going to work is also going to be dramatically different than anything they've ever done before because the pace of innovation is breathtaking. Harness is a AI company. You've been doing that for a while. You are going to double down on it, obviously.

You are using many techniques. Now you can leverage LLMs and things like that, and not to say that you weren't doing those. But a large portion of us as a leader is to maybe practice what we preach. As you think about your companies, it's going to disrupt those functions as well. How do you get folks within your company to say, "Hey, we need to lead the charge. We need to make sure that we are AI first across all functions as well."

When I look at say in my companies, people are smart. They're reading all the news. They follow how big impactful it is. You don't really have to tell them that it's a big deception, but how do we get it all jump-started that we have to be leading the charge on it? One thing that we did at Harness and we are doing at my other company Traceable now is to do a company-wide hackathon. We did a company-wide hackathon all on generative AI.

Everyone in Harness have three days, do a hackathon, build something using generative AI for features in our product to innovate, something how we can help our customers better, how can we go to do market better all doing generative AI. At Harness, we had 54 projects came out of it. You have this rich library of 54 ideas and half of them are already working in three days, because hackathons are a very powerful ways to get things going. And then what it also did is everyone was educated in LLMs and generative AI because everyone worked on it for three days.

We essentially gave everyone go and compete and do it and work on it. It's like everyone now is very educated and aware on generative AI. They understand what's possible, what's not possible to some extent, and now we have a rich library of ideas to also go and look at productizing. That's a strategy that I've used to get the whole company behind it and get excited and get involved around it, and it has gone well for us.

Jyoti, this is awesome. I feel like we've not even explored the product side and the tech side of this. At some point, we'll have to do this again. I want to pivot a little bit and go through some rapid questions obviously brought to you by GPT. First question, what's the most interesting fact you know?

What's the most interesting fact I know?

I should say the one that's not most obvious, because we all know a lot of things. What would be a good one?

I like to read history a lot, and I always get fascinated by the Roman Empire and how long it could last even after the Eastern part of the Roman Empire versus the Western part of the Roman Empire. It's fascinating to see your empire lasting 1,600 years. But what get the empire last is the foundations you built around it, the principles, the institutions. They keep going and going and going even when the people go away. There's a lot of fascinating facts that I know and I love to read.

One book everyone should read.

When you're getting new to the business, someone early, I always loved Good to Great. It's just a simple book, but it gets you a sense of what does it mean to have a great company and a great business and what's the difference in a good business and a great business?

What's an unpopular opinion you have about leadership?

I don't believe in this high degree of command and control leadership and sometimes it could be unpopular. I believe as long as you create alignment on the mission and create measurability and accountability, people figure things out and people do a pretty good job. Many times people don't find that as a popular leadership style, but that's something I strongly believe in because it's so much better. Hundreds of brains are much better than one or two brains. That works so much better for me.

What's the hardest truth you've had to accept?

I should have looked at your script before.

Man, these questions are really good. I think a good example would be I'm human.

Well, the hardest truth is along those lines. You have to figure out what your strengths and what your weaknesses are. You can spend a lot of time fixing your weaknesses, but I feel like the best use of your time is to maximize your strengths and surround you with other people who have the other strengths that you're not very strong on. Then you have people with superpowers. You find your superpower and you just focus on that mostly and you bring people with other superpowers around you, and then you have a very strong group of people.

One piece of advice you would tell your younger self.

One piece of advice for my younger self is broaden what you want to learn. The earlier you learn more things, the better it is. When you start something and you want to become good at something, you focus on that one area. But I do think the more time you spend on learning different things, and I look at learning business, learning markets, learning the people, behaviors, dynamics, I wish I started putting more energy and time in learning things earlier.

That's good advice. Jyoti, thank you very much for joining our podcast. I think our listeners are going to have a blast listening to this, and don't be surprised if we have you come back again. Thank you very much for doing this.

It was great to be here and really good questions here.

Thanks, Jyoti.