How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
In Depth
Choosing the right first head of sales
Jyoti discusses skills for initial sales leaders—hands-on management, recruiting experience, and scaling to ~15 reps.
Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- Why companies get stuck in the mid-market and struggle to move up into enterprise
- Why Jyoti deliberately lost Netflix as their customer
- The difference between product-market-sales fit, and product-market-fit
- How to build a scalable, capacity-driven go-to-market machine (instead of chasing deals)
- Diagnosing whether you have a product problem or a distribution problem
- How to hire and evaluate your first head of sales and top sales leaders
- Why Jyoti sold AppDynamics three days before IPO
- The “binary differentiator” rule for launching new products into crowded markets
- Why Harness runs 16 product lines under one roof
Where to find Jyoti:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansal/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/jyotibansalsf
Where to find Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
- This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
References:
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/
- AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com/
- Barclays: https://home.barclays/
- BIG Labs: https://www.biglabs.com/
- Carlos Delatorre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/
- Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/
- Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/
- Citi: https://www.citi.com/
- Cloudability: https://www.apptio.com/products/cloudability/
- Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/
- Dynatrace: https://www.dynatrace.com/
- Harness: https://www.harness.io/
- Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos
- Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/
- Nasdaq: https://www.nasdaq.com/
- Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/
- New Relic: https://newrelic.com/
- Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/
- Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/
- Traceable: https://www.traceable.ai/
- Unusual Ventures: https://www.unusual.vc/
- VMware: https://www.vmware.com/
Timestamps:
(01:48) Why do companies get stuck in the mid-market?
(05:09) Designing a product for enterprise and mid-market
(07:19) Why Jyoti lost Netflix as a customer - on purpose
(10:18) Becoming a scalable GTM organization
(12:32) The real signs of product-market fit
(14:04) Have you delivered the value?
(15:46) How to hire your first sales team
(19:59) The four signs of excellent sales leaders
(23:16) How to interview a sales leader
(27:51) Where Jyoti developed his commercial taste
(29:37) Why early founders need to learn sales
(32:02) How AppDynamics began
(36:36) Why Jyoti sold three days pre-IPO
(41:55) What does a healthy board look like?
(44:23) How Jyoti perceives competition
(46:18) Why you need a binary differentiator
(49:53) How to launch multiple products
(52:00) “We need to be best of breed”
(57:38) Why PMs are like mini-entrepreneurs
(1:00:20) The startup within a startup
(1:02:45) A culture of continuous improvement
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