When Asheem Chandna drove as much as Rubrik’s workplace in Palo Alto on a Friday evening in early 2015, he was trying ahead to studying what the younger firm that had but to construct its product would present him. The Greylock accomplice wasn’t disillusioned.
The corporate’s CEO, Bipul Sinha, drew Rubrik’s plan to revamp the info administration and restoration market on a whiteboard. “The previous versus new structure he introduced was very compelling,” Chandna mentioned. “Primarily based on my data of the sector, I knew it may very well be constructed into a big enterprise.”
That was a prescient name. On Thursday, 9 years after that assembly, Rubrik started its life as a publicly traded firm with a market cap of over $6 billion. Greylock holds a 13% stake, in response to the newest SEC filings. By the shut of market Friday, with shares priced at $38, these practically 19.9 million shares have been price over $756 million.
However Chandna says it was rather more than Rubrik’s want to tackle the arcane knowledge restoration market that motivated him to steer Rubrik’s $40 million Collection B in Might 2015. (The Collection B spherical bought for $2.45/share, adjusting for splits, in response to these SEC paperwork. Whereas Greylock additionally participated in later rounds at increased costs, Chandra’s returns on this one are hefty.)
“The longer I do what I do, the extra I basically imagine that enterprise is a individuals enterprise,” mentioned Chandna, who has been an investor for over 20 years and has an enviable monitor file of profitable exits. He has helped incubate Palo Alto Networks in Greylock’s places of work and was on the practically $100 billion-worth firm’s board till final 12 months. Chandna was additionally an early investor in AppDynamics, Sumo Logic and Arista Networks.
Chandna appears to be like for people who find themselves not solely motivated and impressive, however are additionally self-aware of their weaknesses, and might recruit individuals who can get issues executed in areas that aren’t the founder’s robust fits.
One other important ingredient for a founder is grit. “When you had know-how that was ample, however barely inferior to my know-how, however you have been very self-aware and chronic, you’ll beat me,” he mentioned.
That’s what he noticed in Sinha. Rubrik’s founder had a lifelong dream of beginning an organization. When he based the info administration and restoration startup in 2013, he couldn’t discover robust engineers who needed to return work there, Chandra recalled. The enterprise he was making an attempt to construct was inherently not attractive on the time.
Regardless of having been an investor with Lightspeed for 4 years earlier than launching Rubrik, recruiting expertise turned out to be a giant problem for Sinha. However he didn’t quit. He pinged engineers on LinkedIn after which invited them for espresso blocks away from the place they labored.
“Startup journeys are very arduous, even for probably the most profitable corporations,” Chandna mentioned. “I need individuals who received’t take ‘no’ for a solution.”
Maybe it was Sinha’s grit and ambition that compelled him to take his firm public regardless of the lukewarm IPO atmosphere.
“Rubrik has slightly below $800 million in annualized recurring income,” Chandna mentioned, “That’s bigger than most corporations that went public within the final a few years. I believe they simply needed to get on with it.”
Chandna declined to say if he expects different Greylock portfolio corporations to comply with Rubrik’s lead however added emphatically that the agency’s best-performing late-stage companies are Irregular Safety, Cato Networks, Discord, Figma and Lyra Well being.
We will probably be following their destiny carefully.
