Guest: Jyoti Bansal, CEO and co-founder of Harness
Cisco bought Jyoti Bansal’s first company AppDynamics for $3.7 billion, making him a very wealthy man. But after two African safaris, a week of Michelin-starred meals in Tokyo, and more adventures all around the world, he realized that spending his money didn’t truly make him happy. After some soul-searching, he realized what he really enjoyed: “I liked to build companies. That is my craft ... If someone enjoys playing gold for six hours, I would enjoy working on a startup for six hours.”
In this episode, Jyoti and Joubin discuss the evolution of Grit, Carlos Delatorre, Tom Mendoza, Glean, growing up in India, traveling the world, three-star restaurants, soul-searching, automating gruntwork, paying for nice hotels, red-eye flights, product-market fit, Jeff Bezos, the “three-layered cake,” Frank Slootman, raising the bar for distribution, technical debt, structural efficiency, and taking pride in your work.
In this episode, we cover:
- (00:59) - Top-tier CROs
- (04:18) - The video game levels of startups
- (07:24) - Selling AppDynamics to Cisco
- (09:16) - Keeping up with high-growth companies
- (12:10) - The chip on Jyoti’s shoulder
- (16:15) - How he thinks about money
- (18:02) - Do what you enjoy every day
- (22:32) - “What would make me happy?”
- (24:56) - Starting BIG Labs and Harness
- (29:16) - Adjusting to a new reality
- (34:13) - Work-life balance
- (36:30) - What gets easier — and harder — over time
- (41:44) - Product vs. distribution
- (46:46) - Paying it forward
- (48:29) - The next level
- (50:24) - The four lists
- (53:45) - Assigning clear responsibilities
- (56:06) - Jyoti’s favorite interview question
- (57:41) - Who Harness is hiring
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