He quit his cozy Google job & founded not 1 but 2 unicorns— then grew from $1M to $12M ARR in 2 years. | Ashutosh Garg, Founder of Eightfold AI

Ashutosh is one of those rare founders who founded not just one, but two unicorns. He worked at Google for 4 years, left and started Bloomreach, which was last valued at $2.2B.  

Halfway through that journey, he left to do it all over again.  He started Eightfold AI which is the one we're talking about today. In 2021, he raised $220M from Softbank at a $2.1B valuation. 

When he left Bloomreach, he didn't even have a clear idea of what he was going to build. He just knew he wanted to have more impact and go from 0 to 1 again.

It took him about 2 years to figure it out— then he grew from $1M ARR to $3M ARR in a year & to $12M ARR the year after that. 

Why you should listen

• Why founders need to validate ideas with an open mind to not have tunnel vision.
• Why even unicorn founders don't get it right and often need to pivot to success. 
• How to address problems that are not just today problems, but likely to be problems for a long time. 

Keywords

unicorn founder, Bloomreach, Eightfold, product-market fit, pivot, HR space, digital marketers, talent, hiring, market need, scaling

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:41) His first unicorn - Bloomreach
(00:05:22) Starting Eightfold AI
(00:08:50) Not Marrying Yourself to One Idea
(00:11:55) Finding real customer problems
(00:14:46) Solving Today's Problems vs Future Problems
(00:16:47) Hiring From Already Rejected Candidates
(00:22:50) Fundraising
(00:24:40) Building a V1
(00:27:00) Pivoting and then Reverting Back
(00:30:43) First Customers
(00:32:59) Finding Product Market Fit
(00:35:04) One Piece of Advice

Send me a message to let me know what you think!