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

Ep. 479 - The Children’s Crusade