A Conversation with Druva Co-Founder Jaspreet Singh (Video)

Video A Conversation with Druva Co-Founder Jaspreet Singh (Video) 39

Posted by Roblimo on Friday May 22, 2015 @04:30PM from the doo-wop-is-now-de-dupe dept.

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This was originally going to be an interview about the state of enterprise-level backup software in an increasingly edge computing-focused world, but we rapidly drifted into talking about how Druva started in Pune (near Bangalore) and ended up moving to Silicon Valley. We hear plenty about American software companies moving to India, but not a lot about Indian software companies moving here. Druva had good reasons for the move, the chief one being a financing deal with Sequoia Capital. Aside from that, though, Jaspreet says the talent pool -- not just developers but software marketing people and other important staffers -- is more concentrated in Silicon Valley than almost anywhere else in the world. 'It's like Hollywood for geeks,' Jaspreet says. This doesn't mean business is necessarily easy in the USA: Jaspreet ended up laying off his entire staff. Twice. And he made other mistakes as a young, new CEO bringing a company to life in a crowded field.

Those mistakes, which Jaspreet shares freely with us, are like a business school 'Start-Up Pitfalls' class. You may never want to do your own startup, but if you're a developer or otherwise involved with the software industry, there's a good chance that you'll have a chance to work for one at some point. And if you have that chance, you'll be glad you watched this video (or read the transcript) before you take the startup plunge.

Robin Miller for Slashdot: This is Jaspreet Singh, he is the CEO and founder of Druva, and Druva is working on... describe it... the edge of what?’

Jaspreet Singh : Druva, the way I would say it is that, without putting too much marketing into it, is a convergence of data production right, we’re trying to converge backup DR availability governance into a single solution in the cloud. Today cloud is synonymous with endpoints, a solution predominantly works on endpoints and being at the edge but the idea, the vision is to take it towards a core, eventually towards a big mainstream or mainframe servers, internet to data centers eventually, but it’s a convergence of backup archival, e-discovery, availability for data at the edge.

Slashdot: Okay. So backup, I have been hearing a lot about backup the last few years, it’s a big deal. And it is cloud for small businesses, medium sized businesses. Do you want cloud or do you really want to just have – I mean hard drives are cheap, here’s one, this is a hard drive and it’s a pretty hefty hard drive, you can store a lot of video on it. In fact this is one of my video archives and shouldn’t people be doing that rather than dealing with the insecurity of the cloud?

Jaspreet: Good question. People are insecure just the way they were insecure about AC current when JPMorgan invested in Edison’s, and their was a story about JPMorgan saying, I like the idea of burning my light, I don’t like that the sound of current in my basement, my wife can’t sleep. Why don’t you put that damn thing in your basement? Right. So the idea of insecurity is there, but I think it's a disruption; no disruption is even sided, people get the benefit, the business benefit of consuming something as an SLA rather than trying to blow up your backyard. Siemens Security people initially worried about virtualization. Well, it’s a great business value, it’s not about tech, cloud is not tech for me, cloud is a business model of delivering an enterprise SLA that we got a data durability, reliability of time, security covered, not about how you do it or a bunch of hard drives, all this backup there, it’s a business model delivered 24/7.

Slashdot: Okay. Now here’s a really amusing question. We keep reading all day, every day, about companies starting in the U.S., then moving some or all of their programming and other work to India. Now you started out where?

Jaspreet: We started out in a small city called Pune, it’s where I was an engineer for a company called Veritas and my co-founder was there. We spent our first two years in a small – we wished we had a garage, it was not even a garage. So, we actually started there and we built some good tech, it was a bad time to start the company, 2008, when the economy was going down but we sold some good stuff. Me and my small team we sold some good staff and I got married, so double disaster and then eventually got noticed by Sequoia in 2010. And sequoia said that we don’t understand what exactly is going on, but there are bunch of people in our city not known to produce products or good services. Our selling in an economy which nobody is selling anything, we like the idea, we want to fund you guys, but you’ve got to move to the Valley and to me it’s not about anything else but where the talent is, we didn’t’ get the best talent. India has some great engineers, especially today after the last 10 years of good outsourcing or good company building good tech products there. It was the idea of building a product for a startup, the talent pool which understands how to ship product, how to market product, how to packet stuff, how to sell stuff, but the talent pool doesn’t make this anywhere else beyond the small valley or maybe a few cities beside the valley. It’s getting out there now and honestly in five years I see great stories from Israel, China and India.

Slashdot: Yeah.

Jaspreet: But then we moved here to really build a solid base here, Sequoia was extremely helpful. It was a lot of learning curve. I remember the first time when I went to the airport, when I went to the council embassy to get my visa, the gentleman on the visa counter was like shit, you own a startup, you’re telling me Sequoia funded you, just go back, we’re not going to let you in, so I had to go back, couldn’t get in the country. They didn’t believe me. So I took some help, I took some help from Sequoia, I had to convince the guy that I am building a startup out of India, I want to go to US.

Slashdot: Yeah.

Jaspreet: So it was a struggle but we went through it.

Slashdot: Okay. So, in the end you’re in, right?

Jaspreet: In the end I had to convince that I do have a startup, I do have a real product, and Sequoia is a real investor. It did help that Sequoia got the ambassador to India to write a letter. It did help that I was on the cover of two magazines, so I had to convince the guy to let me in.

Slashdot: I read, I believe in Forbes, that you had actually hired and fired two entire teams? That was where, India or here?

Jaspreet: It was here, actually mixed. I’m not too proud of that, I had to, being a young founder, being a first time entrepreneur... it's just a learning curve, great people hired in wrong jobs, I just didn’t understand, when I came to the valley and people asked me, what kind of marketing team do you want, I didn’t know what kind existed, what kind of business model existed, so it was my own learning curve rather than anything else to know what I really need, get people on board and understand and there is a general, it’s the way I see as an outsider perspective or as an insider now. I think this place is a Hollywood for geeks.

Slashdot: So, what you are saying is, all the beautiful geeks come there and now they are parking cars and pumping gas? (That’s an old song about Hollywood.)

Jaspreet: We had a lot of wisdom, a lot of the way things should be done, and as a gut feel I went with it initially but then realized that’s not what Druva journey should be. We got to find our own path. And I had to re-engineer my teams twice and I had to say sorry and move on and every struggle I faced made the team stronger and made me stronger, so eventually got a very strong team and loving it.

Slashdot: I am sure it was hard on the people who were in and out and it was hard on you too, wasn’t it?

Jaspreet: It was for sure harder on people, I mean I’m in control of my destiny, but I’m sure – I don’t feel so proud about, I just had to get it done.

Slashdot: Alright. It’s a culture thing, it’s a cultural difference, should there be classes in how to be an American entrepreneur, that should be given to or even it could be online telecom classes? How to be an American entrepreneur, the difference in cultures, what do you think, do we need that class?

Jaspreet: I don’t think so, this is my opinion, I don’t think so and I think there are already classes which I took in the prior field. I think the strategy was good enough – your strategy is only good enough until the next punch in your face, right?

Slashdot: Yes.

Jaspreet: So, you have a lot of good wisdom which is a good peace time story, but what you’re really doing is running a war, you go to act on the instinct we get and we got to change strategy depending on situations unique to you, so I felt for that general wisdom, I felt for general wisdom that this is how you do stuff which is actually not true, just like hardware or when you weld a machine, it changes so much that what chipset you buy, how do you build your bus, which drive you put in... How about memory? If you put your stuff wrong, you may be under utilizing some parts, over utilizing and over working some parts. Same in a startup or a business strategy. You got to price performance changes in market, the market changes, people changes, process changes, trend changes, decide a lot about shifting gears on the spot. So general wisdom is what I felt for, and I would highly advise any entrepreneur to find their own path and redefine any kind of wisdom.

Slashdot: Okay. I guess I am asking this for the people who might want to follow in your footsteps and build a startup themselves: How can they avoid your mistakes? I have given many talks to young journalists and I’m not telling them I’m smarter than they are because I’m not smarter than they are, I’ve just had longer to make the mistakes. I guess it all comes down that I’ve made more mistakes, and now I’m better at avoiding them. What about that? What would you say to the next person, the next generation of startups? How would you tell them not to have the problems you had?

Jaspreet: A good question. Robin, who you are is, is because you made some mistakes, the mistakes define you actually, there is no avoiding them in my mind, you can give a lot of thumb rules that do this, don’t do this, which were probably good twenty years back or ten years back. I think having an adviser who could be your sounding board and could give you some push, some root, could definitely help. I advise a lot of startups now and I tell them that I can only tell them what worked for me and I can give them basic thumb rules, but they got to make their own mistakes. In a startup you’re running your head front in the dark and there’s no avoiding bumping your head around because it is what it is, you are not looking for positive validation, you are looking for a negative validation, what could go wrong. You are not looking for the path, you are looking for the path that you’ve chosen, where could you bump your head...

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