Lyt til B2BaCEO (with Ashu Garg)

My guest today is Arvind Jain, the founder and CEO of Glean. Before Glean, Arvind spent over a decade building Google's search infrastructure. He then co-founded Rubrik, which recently passed $1B ARR. With Glean, Arvind is tackling the longstanding challenge of enterprise search. Yet his vision goes beyond this. He believes every employee should have their own team of AI agents to help them work smarter and achieve more.  In our conversation, Arvind shares his journey as a technical founder and offers his unique perspective on what it takes to build a successful startup today. We also discuss where AI is heading, and where he sees the biggest opportunities for founders.  Hope you find this conversation valuable!  Chapters: * 00:00 Cold open * 04:42 How Arvind began his journey in search * 06:59 Arvind on Glean's mission * 08:50 The evolution of enterprise search * 12:56 How AI unlocks a new dimension for search * 16:56 Lessons for AI startup founders * 21:23 Navigating the AI startup landscape * 25:44 The "build vs. buy" decision with AI models * 31:09 Defining the role of AI in business * 34:57 The future of work with AI agents * 39:30 The shift from SaaS to Service-as-Software * 41:21 Concluding thoughts

Frank Slootman turns the 'founder mode vs. manager mode’ debate on its head.  Frank’s track record in B2B land is iconic: He took Data Domain from pre-revenues to a $2.5B acquisition by EMC. He led the IPO at ServiceNow, and when he left the company, it was worth $34B. Frank then took Snowflake public, and the company was worth over $70B when he retired earlier this year.  After three successful CEO stints, Frank isn’t buying Silicon Valley’s fairytales about founders. His leadership style combines a manager’s prowess with a founder’s passion. Frank epitomizes what some might call “owner mode!”   (00:07) Frank's thoughts on 'founder mode' vs. 'manager mode'  (00:47) The role of non-founder managers and CEOs  (09:59) How to manage effectively without micro-managing  (17:11) The importance of intellectual honesty (18:32) Frank's thoughts on being 'in the arena'  (21:04) What it really takes to build a viable business  (28:34) Contrasting ServiceNow and Snowflake  (33:40) The impact of AI on business  (39:01) The future of app ecosystems  (44:50) Becoming a student of leadership  (46:31) Managing investor relationships  (48:04) Why Frank doesn't think about his legacy  (50:17) Closing Thoughts

Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, has guided the cloud content management platform from a dorm room project into a publicly traded company with over $1B in annual revenue. In his second appearance on B2BaCEO, Aaron reflects on his founder journey, sharing how Box capitalized on cloud computing and their recent push to integrate generative AI. But our conversation goes far beyond Box. Aaron’s role has given him a unique vantage point on what the latest advances in AI mean for founders. We explore the AI applications that excite him most, where he sees opportunities for startups over incumbents, and the potential areas in AI that founders might be overlooking. (0:00) Intro (2:26) The Box journey (4:23) Transitioning to enterprise (8:26) Building a GTM flywheel (11:45) Lessons from the enterprise journey (15:16) Where AI is heading (18:14) Facing the innovator's dilemma (20:54) AI agents (26:15) Why AI is positive sum for the economy (30:24) The AI doomer debate (34:22) The evolving model ecosystem (40:30) Parting advice for founders

In this episode, I talk with Srinath Sridhar, CEO & Cofounder of Regie.ai, who has always been ahead of the AI curve. Sri and his co-founder Matt Millen started Regie.ai in 2019 with the idea that GPT-3 would transform how all of us write emails. Today, Regie uses AI to automate sales prospecting for the enterprise. The company's Auto-Pilot automates most of the repetitive tasks involved in demand generation, including writing sequences, scheduling calls and responding to emails. Sri knew in early 2019 that LLMs would be a game-changer. What he didn’t know was exactly what product to build. In this episode, we’ll dig into the details of how he did it.

In this episode, I'm excited to welcome Mohit Aron back to B2BaCEO for the second time. As the founder of Cohesity and co-founder of Nutanix, Mohit is a titan in the world of enterprise GTM and infrastructure software. With two wildly successful companies under his belt, he's a true expert when it comes to building enterprise software businesses from the ground up. In our conversation, Mohit shares his proven frameworks for validating startup ideas. He reveals hard-won lessons from starting Nutanix and Cohesity, with real-world examples that bring his advice to life. We explore product-market fit—what it really looks like in practice—as well as how to build a team and manage performance in a high-growth startup. We wrap up by discussing the topic du jour, generative AI, and the opportunities it opens for startups. This episode is full of insights for technical founders. I hope you enjoy it! (00:00) Intro (00:21) Mohit's framework for a bulletproof startup hypothesis document (07:53) Why your MVP shouldn't be your full vision (10:39) Cohesity's journey from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, and 10 to 100+ (17:19) Examples of founders not being intellectually honest about their hypotheses (20:35) How to accurately size your startup's market (TAM) (23:55) Balancing founder conviction with naysayer feedback (31:02) Adapting the hypothesis document for the generative AI era (34:19) Mohit's definition of product-market fit (39:05) When to hit the gas on sales hiring (and when not to) (44:59) Mohit's system for competency-based hiring (53:17) Implementing performance management via quarterly calibrations (56:00) What Mohit would do differently as a technical founder (58:07) Mohit's top advice for founders (60:09) The industries ripe for disruption by generative AI (62:04) Book recommendations for founders