Podcasts about appdynamics

What happens after you “make it”… and realize money was never the point?In this episode, Jyoti Bansal, Founder & CEO of Harness and founder of AppDynamics (sold for $3.7B), sits down with Alisa Cohn for a conversation that cuts deeper than typical startup playbooks.This is not just about building companies. It's about what happens when the finish line disappears… and you have to decide who you are without it.Jyoti shares the unexpected identity crisis that hit after his exit, why he chose to build again anyway, and what most founders misunderstand about success, sales, and staying relevant in a world that's changing faster than your roadmap can keep up.From the brutal reality of startup milestones to the urgency of the AI transformation, this episode is a masterclass in how to think, move, and lead when the stakes are real.You'll learn:Why a worse product can still beat you (and how to prevent it)The hidden identity crisis founders face after a big exitHow to think of entrepreneurship as a craft, not a one-time eventWhy startup growth is about milestones, not perfectionThe real reason most companies fall behind during major tech shiftsHow to operate in “founder mode” when speed is everythingThe difference between product differentiation and go-to-market dominanceHow to build a scalable sales machine (not just hire “charismatic closers”)The hiring framework Jyoti uses to spot elite sales talentHow to align a company fast during high-pressure transformationThe “startup within a startup” model that creates ownership at scaleWhy transparency in numbers builds accountability across the entire orgWe talk about:00:00 The uncomfortable truth after a billion-dollar exit02:00 Why Jyoti came back to build again05:00 The founder identity crisis no one prepares you for08:00 Entrepreneurship as a craft, not a single shot11:00 The milestone framework for building successful companies15:00 The AI transformation and why most companies will lose18:00 Founder mode, speed, and making decisions in real time22:00 Aligning teams when everything is changing fast26:00 Why revenue is the only truth in business29:00 Sales as a competitive advantage 32:00 The myth of “relationship-based” selling35:00 Building a scalable, structured go-to-market machine38:00 How to hire great sales leaders (and avoid getting sold in the interview)41:00 The onboarding mistake most founders make44:00 Transparency, numbers, and company-wide accountability47:00 The “startup within a startup” model explained52:00 Ownership, incentives, and building multiple winning productsFollow Jyoti onLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansalWebsite:  ​https://www.harness.io/Connect with Alisa!Follow Alisa Cohn on Instagram: @alisacohnTwitter: @alisacohnFacebook: facebook.com/alisa.cohnLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisacohn/Website: http://www.alisacohn.comDownload her 5 scripts for delicate conversations (and 1 to make your life better) Grab a copy of From Start-Up to Grown-Up by Alisa Cohn from Amazon

Jad Naous, founder and CEO of Grepr, joins Dash0's Mirko Novakovic to tackle one of observability's biggest problems: too much data and not enough signal. Drawing on his experience at AppDynamics and Apache Druid, Jad explains why current architectures are fundamentally broken, and how Grepr compresses, aggregates and extracts signal directly in the stream, reducing data volume by up to 90% before it ever hits tools like Datadog. They dive into real-time pattern detection across logs and traces, why rule-based pipelines fall short, and how high-signal data is the foundation for any future AI SRE system.

DescriptionBhaskar was employee #1 at AppDynamics, which was sold to Cisco for $3.7B. He and co-founder Jyoti found a way to change how enterprise monitoring tools worked. From tracking low-level code metrics that ops teams didn't understand to monitoring what the business actually cares about.In this episode, Bhaskar breaks down how that one insight won them Netflix and Priceline as early customers, why they ran production POCs that no competitor would dare try, and how a free download called AppDynamics Lite generated over 60% of their leads—in an industry where getting started normally took weeks of professional services and six-figure contracts.Why You Should ListenWhy selling to developers is operating on hard mode.How one-day POCs became the killer enterprise sales weapon.Why freemium disrupted an industry that required weeks of professional services to get started.How they grew from $2M to $12M in revenue in just one year post launch.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, AppDynamics, application monitoring, enterprise SaaS, B2B sales, finding pmf, freemium strategy, Cisco acquisition, production POCChapters00:00:00 Intro00:11:33 Choosing the ICP00:20:37 Landing Netflix with Freemium00:28:44 Growing from $2M to $12M in Year Two00:30:10 The Free Download Strategy That Generated 60% of Leads00:32:04 Days from the NASDAQ Bell—Then Cisco Offered $3.7B00:41:28 The Moment of True Product Market FitSend me a message to let me know what you think!

Jeff Collins, CEO of WanAware The last time the channel faced a shift this fundamental was the rise of the hypervisor. That transition reshaped everything, but it happened inside the four walls of the data center. What’s different about the current moment, argues WanAware CEO Jeff Collins, is that AI workloads, inference nodes, IoT, and SCADA infrastructure are being bolted onto customer environments without the kind of formal network redesign that virtualization demanded. The result is a growing visibility gap that most MSPs don’t realize they have. Collins points to a striking finding from a WanAware survey conducted in late 2025: when business leaders were asked about their visibility gap, they rated it extremely high. When IT was asked the same question, they rated it low. Both were technically right. IT was measuring visibility against the machines in their purview – Active Directory, database servers, web front ends. The business was measuring it against everything else: Kubernetes workloads, cloud functions, agentic AI processes, and infrastructure that might not exist tomorrow. That disconnect is why MSPs can show perfect MTTR and SLA performance while the customer is saying you’re failing. The conversation covers where traditional monitoring breaks down, why 30% false positive rates persist even after major platform investments, and how ephemeral workloads designed to disappear create alerts that will never resolve. Collins makes a compelling case that MSPs need to push visibility up the OSI stack, from layers one through three into the application and business logic layers where margin is significantly higher. He shares a practical framework for how to start, using vertical industry knowledge – particularly in sectors like Canadian oil and gas, where SCADA networks and AWS IoT Core infrastructure represent opportunities to grow a $1,000-a-month customer into a $30,000-a-month engagement. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to the ChannelBuzz.ca podcast, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and still your host for the show. Today we’re talking about a problem a lot of MSPs and channel partners are starting to feel, even if they don’t always have a name for it yet, and that’s visibility. As AI workloads, hybrid architectures and distributed endpoints become the norm, network traffic is changing faster than the tools that many partners rely on to understand what’s actually happening inside their customers’ environments. My guest today is Jeff Collins, CEO of WanAware. Jeff spends a lot of time with service providers and enterprise teams dealing with this shift, where accountability for performance, security and uptime is increasing, even as environments become harder to see and harder to diagnose when something goes wrong. WanAware operates in the network and infrastructure visibility space, but this conversation isn’t about the tools, the dashboards. It’s about how blind spots form in modern networks, why they’re easy to miss until there’s an outage, a security issue, or an SLA failure, and what partners need to understand as AI-driven infrastructure quietly reshapes traffic patterns and dependencies. In this discussion, we’re going to explore where traditional monitoring starts to fall apart, how partners can rethink what good visibility really means today, and why the ability to see what’s happening across distributed environments is quickly becoming both a risk issue and a business opportunity for MSPs. If you’re responsible for customer outcomes, but you don’t always feel confident you can see everything that matters, this conversation is for you. [MUSIC] Robert Dutt: Jeff, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Jeff Collins: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me on. Robert Dutt: You’ve been advising partners, MSPs, VARs, these types of folks through a lot of change over time. Why does this moment with the rise of AI workloads and the continuing trend of hybrid networks feel like a real inflection point rather than sort of just the next evolution of the way things look? Jeff Collins: I think one of the biggest reasons why is because it’s so transformational to what MSPs and resellers and VARs and distributors have dealt with for, let’s say, the last 25 years. If we think about the last major inflection point that they dealt with was really kind of the realm of the hypervisor, this ecosystem where no longer did we have to have a server running an operating system, and that created kind of the whole ecosystem we deal with today. It created cloud, it created containers, all those things were built off this concept of a hypervisor. That was really the last major transformational thing that has happened. Now we fast forward to today and we’ve got this era of AI. We’ve got this era where we’re now taking agentic approaches, generative approaches, to things that our customers deal with every day. When I talk about our customers, those are the customers of the MSP, those are the customers of the reseller, the distributor. Not only are they dealing with that, they’re dealing with this massive evolution in the customer base, but they’re also having to do that same evolution in their own environments. If you’re an MSP and you’re focused on infrastructure, or you’re an MSP and you look more like an MSSP where you’re focused on security, now you’re starting to have to deal with, “Okay, I’ve got these tools, I’ve got these people, I’ve got these agents, I’ve got all these entities inside of my business that are doing something for my customer.” But now I have to think about how am I going to do that faster? How am I going to do that better? How am I going to do that more effectively? Because our customers are getting much more advanced. That’s really one of the biggest things that I see that we’re seeing a lot of, that “Where do I start?” from the channel partner community. When we think about the channel, we know all this stuff is going on, but it seems like such a Herculean lift that I think sometimes it’s hard to know where we make that first step. Robert Dutt: That makes sense. A lot of this, a lot of AI especially, and to a degree sort of the hybridization of the network, that complexity has come on without kind of a formal network redesign. Like you mentioned the transition to hypervisors and that necessitated rethinking how things were done because it was a physical change. Whereas a lot of, especially with AI, it’s kind of being bolted in, added on as you go. Why does that make the environment today harder to understand than maybe it was for past transitions when you’re sitting there watching it as an MSP or other partner? Jeff Collins: Well, I think one of the biggest reasons why this era is so much more difficult than the last transition is because we’re not bound by the four walls of our proverbial house. If we think about when we dealt with the last transition, every customer, their physical server sat inside of something they control. So we’ll refer to it as their house because that’s the easiest kind of comparison we can do. In today’s world, there’s certainly a lot that exists in our customers’ houses and in the houses that the MSP or the reseller or the channel partner or whomever it is are engaged in. But so much of that’s going outside of those walls. And when we think about AI, AI is certainly outside of those walls. I mean, we might be dealing with Anthropic, we might be dealing with ChatGPT or Gemini or the thousand other agentic or generative approaches that are out there. Those are all over the place. And now we’re asking these entities to take oftentimes a process-driven approach that they’ve had for 20, 25 years. And how do you change that process-driven approach when you don’t really know where those workloads, where those assets, where that data is going to reside either today or tomorrow, or even if that data that we’re looking at is even going to exist tomorrow. That’s this whole realm. I mean, we’ve been talking about ephemeral workloads for, you know, let’s call it 14 years, 15 years since really the rise of AWS. But now we’re starting to deal with these ephemeral workloads, not just in the realm of infrastructure, but also in data, in generative concepts, in agents. You know, historically, we had Bob Smith, who might have worked in the NOC. Well, tomorrow, Bob Smith is an agent. What does that look like? It’s AI. What did Bob Smith do yesterday? Did Bob Smith, the new agentic version of Bob Smith, did that person do the right thing, the wrong thing, the incorrect thing? How do we manage that? How do we deal with that? How do we process that? Those are all the things that are across the board, just happening at massive rapid scale. And so, you know, it’s a really difficult time right now to be an MSP or a channel partner, but it’s also an amazing time to be an MSP or channel partner. You know, our world, our capabilities are advancing so fast. You think about one of the simplest use cases that’s out there that all of us think is simple, that MSPs deal with every day, is a circuit outage. You know, a telecom circuit goes down and it’s connected to SD-WAN or it’s connected to a router or it’s connected to some type of device that’s out at the prem. And historically, every MSP on the planet’s dealt with it kind of in a similar way. We get an alert from a monitoring system that feeds a ticketing system. It pops up on a tier one agent’s dashboard. The tier one agent looks at it, they verify power, they verify if the router’s operational, and then they open a ticket with a carrier. And then they, and that’s the hurry up and wait type of world. Well, now in the era of AI, that changes that quite a bit, because every one of those things are very process driven. We don’t need people for that anymore. So now we can have a system take that process flow on, do that. Now, historically, we could use a system to do that. We could write automation and a lot of MSPs did that historically, but the problem with automation is automation is static. When we leverage AI, we can leverage enrichment that helps influence that agentic approach. And so now if there’s a nuance going on, let’s say an example is there’s a global power outage. So let’s say there’s a power outage in the entire Vancouver area. We know that. Well, historically, if we’re looking at that, we see all these customers that are down, we might through a tier one agent approach, a person-based approach that following a process, or even an automated approach, not really correlate that. Because if the MSP is in, let’s say, Montreal, they might not realize there’s a large scale power outage in Vancouver, which is thousands of kilometers away. And so when we think about that, that’s really where these things can change a lot from an agentic perspective. And then the MSP gets the joy of being able to repurpose that person to be much more valuable to their organization, that tier one person can become tier two, and that can really start changing that dynamic a lot. Robert Dutt: Most MSPs would have historically said we have good visibility across what our customers are doing. And probably I would say most believe they have good visibility today. Where does that confidence most often turn out to be misplaced or to start to break down as the model shifts? Jeff Collins: Yeah, so I would 100% agree that most MSPs, when workloads are static, have great visibility. The problem is that in today’s world, so many workloads are becoming dynamic. And we see that change happening consistently. You know, customers, you know, historically MSPs had problems monitoring services inside of a cloud provider. You have ephemeral workloads, you have workloads that aren’t necessarily a server, they’re much more like a service. So you have things that might be a Kubernetes instance, they might be a Kubernetes runtime instance, they might be a function. Those are all things that are crucial to the operation of a customer. They’ve taken those workloads that historically operated on a machine. And they’ve taken those workloads and now they’re in some type of small form factor instance that exists for a very short period of time. That’s been very difficult for MSPs to deal with across the board. But now we take that same concept and that same concept goes outside of the cloud providers. We now have that moving into inference nodes. We now have that moving into IoT and IIoT and OT, where we’re starting to deal with these ecosystems where these workloads are very ephemeral by nature. They might exist for a short period or components of those might exist for a short period, or the way that those are correlated and analyzed might exist. But if you think about inside of a customer from a business risk perspective, those actually carry the highest business risk. An individual Windows 2012 server has some level of business risk. If it’s running SAP, probably a higher level of business risk. But if it’s one Active Directory node and the customer has 100 machines in Active Directory, it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of the world. And so those are the realities of what happens as we kind of think through this stuff. And so for MSPs, this really drives that visibility gap. You know, we did a survey earlier this year, or actually late last year, sorry, in 2025. We did a survey across the board asking business leaders really what the visibility gap was and what they believed. And we asked business leaders and we also asked IT. It was really interesting to see kind of the dichotomy. When you ask the business what the visibility gap was, it was extremely high. When you ask technology what the visibility gap is, it was really low. Now they were both technically right. And here’s why. So IT was thinking about the visibility gap of the machines that they understand, the machines in their purview. So those might be, you know, an Active Directory server, a database server, maybe you have a web front end. Those are all there. And those are 100% being monitored to that IT team or to that MSP. The problem is, is the business itself is operating on a whole bunch of additional workloads that IT doesn’t necessarily have purview to. And so because of that, we start ending up with this difference of visibility. And that’s why oftentimes when you’ll go and you’ll talk to a customer or you’ll go and you’ll talk to the business itself. And the business is saying, why do we have this MSP who works for us? This MSP isn’t doing anything. And the MSP is coming back with these great reports that are showing MTTR is consistently dropping. You know, initial response time, triage time is consistently dropping. We’re blowing out every single metric that we provided you in an SLA or an SLO. And the business is coming back and saying, but you’re failing. And the MSP is saying, I don’t understand. We are not. And here’s all the metrics. And it’s because of this difference in resources that exist, that is what is happening. And so I think that’s one of the big areas that we always have to think through is, you know, as we’re looking at things and as MSPs look at things, they have to continue to be pushing upward inside of the business to understand all those areas that the business is driving that IT, who they’ve historically sold to, may not know about those resources, especially in a lot of these other spaces, AI, IoT, IIoT, OT, ephemeral workloads, cloud workloads, those types of things that are often outside of that scope. Robert Dutt: Yeah. I guess when you’re looking at sort of your visibility stopping basically at the edge of the organization, you’ve got all of this out there, pretty significant impacts on real world issues like latency, like security exposure, like the ability to meet those SLAs that you signed up for, those kinds of things. Jeff Collins: Yeah. Yeah. 100% agreed. And, you know, when you think about the core components that an MSP does, you know, MSPs generally deal with availability and they deal with performance. When you add in the MSSP, now we add in the security component. And some MSPs and MSSPs are more hybrid-based approaches. They may deal with all three. But as you kind of look at those, those core tenant areas have become much more difficult, especially in the last 10 years, certainly in the last year. I mean, the last year has been so disruptive for all that we do. And it’s because those pieces have become much less simple. You know, if I go back 25 years or even 20 years, customers by and large used MPLS networks, rather simple to monitor. You have guaranteed jitter, you have guaranteed latency, you have, you know, all these things that are very easily assumed by an MSP. So if latency exceeds 74 milliseconds between these two individual locations, that breaks the SLA that the provider provides and it’s an easy conversation. You need to go fix this. This is not okay. Well, in today’s world, most of our customers don’t have MPLS networks. Most of them have, you know, sometimes now it’s satellite. They might have Starlink for LEO. They might have 4G or 5G, depending on what portion of the world they’re in. They might have some type of broadband service, fiber broadband, or copper broadband, or some other type of realm. Well, those don’t necessarily have SLAs for that in any way, shape, or form. We may luck out and they have an availability SLA. Maybe it’s three nines or two nines, or maybe not even two nines, depending on what type of service that is. And then when we start moving inside of the network, outside of the service provider, outside of the circuit provider itself, we start moving into other arenas that look like this. You know, historically we had a Dell server, an HP server that had a mean time before failure. Well, that’s pretty easy to understand. If I have a server and it’s going to run for 25,000 hours, it’s easy to understand that life. But when now we’re starting to get services that have an expected failure, and that expected failure is generally measured in less than a year, because the assumption is that the software, the application, resolves that issue. If you’re an MSP and you’re not monitoring the application and you don’t understand the application, you’re now chasing outages that don’t matter. And that’s one of the other things that’s really hard. And we see this all the time. You know, I’ll talk to MSPs and they’re like, “Jeff,” and it goes back to that same conversation we had before of not knowing the business. “Jeff, we get, today we have 30% of our tickets that become false positives. What do we do about that? We’ve gone out and we’ve bought the newest monitoring platform. We’ve implemented AI. We’ve implemented all this automation. We spent $20 million doing that.” These are all real things that I have in conversations with MSPs. And at the end of the day, they still have 30% false positives that they’re working. And the reality is, is because it’s certainly an outage. There was 100% an outage that happened. But the reality is that outage was never going to get restored because the outage was designed. You know, that workload disappeared. A DevOps team or a DevSecOps team deployed a new environment and that workload is now gone. And there’s a brand new workload that you’re not monitoring right now. You know nothing about it. And those are the things that we all collectively have to continually evolve to. It’s that driving up the stack. You know, one of the things that I often see is, you know, we have this proverbial thing that we’ve all dealt with, the OSI model. You know, there’s seven layers to that OSI model. So often in MSPs, we focus on four of them. The problem is, and most MSPs only focus on the first three. They don’t even focus on the fourth one. The issue is, is there’s three more. And those three more are what get driven by the business. And so the more that we can focus on visibility within those three, understanding that, bringing that into our tools, that drives additional value. It also drives significantly larger margin. You know, if we think about margin contribution at monitoring a telecom circuit, that’s a pretty low margin at this point in time. There’s a lot of automation around that. Monitoring a server – that world used to be high-margin, but it’s compressing. Customers are increasingly doing more of this themselves. They’re doing automation directly into their CI/CD pipeline. So it becomes this knife fight. And there’s more and more MSPs that are out there that are also fighting for that same share of market. And so the key is, the more that MSPs can go up market, they can understand, you know, I hate to use this term digital transformation because it literally gets overused every day by every marketing team on the planet. But the reality is, is that if we go behind this marketing abomination of this term, and we actually look at what happens, there’s a ton of value that we can go after. And if we go after that value, and we go after what people are trying to do, we align with that, we can now take those same products, those same processes that we’ve historically had as MSPs, and we can really start evolving that. Moving upward, driving in significant value, taking our tool sets that we may have today, maybe those can evolve with us, maybe we have to make new changes in our tool sets. But the reality is we’re driving that margin upward. So we’re going from maybe our contribution margin to our business today is 30%, let’s say, we can start moving back up into 60, 70, 80% contribution margin from a managed services perspective, which is where we all want to be. We don’t want to be fighting knife fights for 30%. It’s just hard, it’s difficult. Our customer acquisition costs are still generally high. We have salespeople, we have marketing efforts, we have all those things that we’re burning through every day. And we need more and more market share, we need more and more assets that we’re monitoring. And as a result of that, we need better ways that can contribute higher margin and create stickier customers that we’re not in those knife fights with. Robert Dutt: The situation seems to be putting MSPs in a situation where they’re increasingly accountable for outcomes that they can’t fully see the contributing factors of. Before you move on, I just wanted to double click on that just a little bit and just ask, how does that change kind of the risk profile for an MSP when you’re accountable for those things that you don’t completely understand or have complete control over? Jeff Collins: Yeah, I would say a lot of that. And one of the things that MSPs have to think through is a lot of that starts at the sales cycle. If you don’t ask the right questions at the sales cycle stage, oftentimes you get pushed into that ecosystem. When you’re looking at the core functional plumbing behind what a customer is trying to do, and that’s the only thing you’re looking at, you often get siloed into that ecosystem. You’re looking at a server, you’re not looking at SAP. One server going down in SAP doesn’t necessarily mean SAP has a problem. But if that one server is the only HANA server in SAP, that’s catastrophic. You know, it’s this realm of contextual knowledge. Historically MSPs have that contextual knowledge, but it’s all the way at tier three and tier four. That contextual knowledge has to move to tier one. If MSPs want to get to the arena where that is no longer a problem, the contextual pieces have to move downward. You have to go from a hero-based MSP to a process-driven MSP. So many MSPs are built on heroes. It’s really hard to build a scalable business off heroes. You have to have heroes. Heroes are the people that when everything breaks and the world is on fire, they’re the ones who carry you through. And those heroes we want to have, we want to empower them, but they can’t be doing the stuff that should be done at tier one. So if we take that exact same question that you had, Rob, that question is, you know, how do we make, at the end of the day, how do we make MSPs more relevant to their clients and much more aligned with what the client’s trying to do? And that’s by taking the contextual knowledge of what the customer is trying to do, aligning that with the tactical approaches that the MSP is trying to do, and having a very crystal clear playbook of how this tactical component makes up this strategic initiative inside of the business. So we’ll take that, we’ll take that simple example. I shouldn’t say simple. SAP is far from simple. But the reality is, is that SAP is something that customers rely on. And when they rely on that, if SAP goes down the business goes down. And if you have an MSP that’s monitoring that, and at the same second of the same day, the MSP gets 36 tickets. We’ll just pick a random 36 number. 36 severity one tickets come in at that point in time. One of those severity one tickets is for SAP HANA. And the customer only has one instance of that. And that is taking down a large company. So that’s the first ticket. The next 35 tickets are for ephemeral workloads that the customer migrated off of, you got the alert, they migrated to a brand new ephemeral workload. And the 35 don’t matter. They’re false positives. But the one fully matters. In every single MSP on the planet, those 36 tickets are eligible for the same response interval. That’s a pretty tough average to be able to. Are you going to luck out and get the one? Or are you going to luck out, or not luck out, for lack of a better term, and work 35 false positives before you get to the one that matters? Now, most MSPs are going to tell me and they’re going to tell us that, well, we have more than one tier one path. That’s great. But the reality is you need to be responding to that one ticket right now. And you need to understand that that one ticket matters. And the only way you can do that is by starting at the beginning, starting with the sales cycle, understanding what customers are doing. If you’ve already gone down the path and the customer’s embedded, use your customer support teams. Understand what your customers are doing, start layering in that context, start enriching that data, knowing what that actually feeds, and understanding the dependencies and interdependencies inside of that. So if that server goes down, certainly you could by virtue say a database server going down is a SEV-1, but it may not be. If they have four database servers, they’re running in a high availability group, who cares? If one goes down, not the end of the world, go fix it tomorrow. That’s where context, that’s where understanding those dependencies is so crucial. And I mentioned at the beginning of this is how do you take that first step forward? We always take this first step forward and how I instruct MSPs is start doing things like this, take this step forward, break this down into simple programmatic approaches. And when we think about AI, it’s the exact same idea. We move steps forward, we have agentic, we have generative. Pick one, pick an area you want to focus on with your customers, understand the business outcome they’re trying to do. And if you have an inference engine, that’s going to be really crucially important here. So let’s understand that. Let’s monitor that. Let’s understand the intricacies related to how that customer is leveraging it, why it’s important. Are there latency constraints? Are there packet loss constraints? Those types of things. Let’s monitor to that and let’s understand how that happens. And if a customer has an application on the back end, you know, maybe they have New Relic or they have AppDynamics or they have some type of APM toolset, great. Let’s start bringing those into our monitoring. Let’s start bringing that intelligence in, understanding application flows, understanding dependencies, building that to be part of our story. And now we create so much more opportunity for us as an MSP driving that contribution margin northbound. Robert Dutt: So it sounds like we’re kind of defining good visibility in a modern environment and kind of setting up for looking forward as understanding what actually matters to the customer and understanding what kind of flows into it, what all results in that thing that’s important to the customer still being up, still being running, still being functional, and kind of work backwards from there as opposed to the more “this machine is working, this machine is not” kind of approach. Jeff Collins: Yep. Yeah. You want to go from tactical to transformational. That’s really the idea. Robert Dutt: And you shared kind of the idea of the first step to do towards that. I guess as you’re moving towards that first step, you know, is there any one question or kind of mindset that you find works for MSPs to have in mind or asking customers to surface those blind spots and really start to understand what that context is that they have to have? Jeff Collins: Yeah, that’s a really good question, Rob. And, you know, there’s some things that I do tell MSPs to start with before you ever ask that first question. One of them is kind of some of the simple, let’s call it research that you can do before you ever reach out to your customer. One of the easiest things you can do is start by what industry are they in. You know, in Canada, Canada has a lot of oil and gas, lots and lots of oil and gas companies exist in Canada. And so if you have an oil and gas company, we can start right off the bat with a lot of the things that oil and gas companies live and die with. And we’ll just pick on this one as an example. So oil and gas companies have SCADA networks. They have industrial IoT devices that are out there. They’re processing massive amounts of data. That data may be going into the cloud. It may be going into a data center. It may be going into some type of vault or something like that, depending on what they have. But each one of those are things that, as an MSP, you can start out before you ever ask your customer anything. You know that those are the things that exist in their environment. And you can quickly look and see, well, am I monitoring any of those? Well, no, I’m only monitoring Active Directory. Okay, Active Directory is probably important to the oil and gas company. But if it goes down, do they quit producing oil? The answer is probably no. And so if your answer is ever no, you know right off the bat that you’re not monitoring something that’s strategic to your customer. And so the first thing that you should always think about is, okay, if we have this industry, we should be monitoring the things that are strategic. Well, how do we do that? Well, we start with that one step forward. The first thing we talk to them about is just like when we went out and we sold that initial monitoring of Active Directory, they did it because they didn’t have time for it. There’s no oil and gas company on the planet that has time to be monitoring their SCADA networks. They just don’t. They may tell you that they do, but they don’t. So leverage your relationships, leverage your engagement with them and go after those pieces. Understand, you know, if they’re in AWS IoT Core, understand what that looks like. Understand who’s monitoring that. Understand how DevOps is working within that space. Maybe it’s DevSecOps inside of that environment. Understand that convergence of the teams and then start building a story around, you know, let’s take that on for you. Let’s start changing that. Let’s use the same paradigm that we’ve done, driving MTTR down, driving availability up, driving resolution times down, all those types of things. Let’s bring that into the era of SCADA networks, IoT, our core infrastructure. That’s where we start changing the value inside of our customer engagements. And that’s really where I see a huge opportunity for MSPs across Canada, where you can take that environment, you can take those opportunities you already have, and you can grow them from, you know, maybe you bill that customer $1,000 a month. You can grow it to billing them $20,000 or $30,000 a month, but it’s the most crucial $30,000 they spend. Because, you know, if that offshore environment or that, you know, oil sands environment or whatever it might be within the oil and gas space or in the energy sector, whatever it might be, those things are crucial to their business. And so the more that MSPs can kind of make that step forward, and then also start incorporating AI, every single one of those entities is incorporating AI. They’re incorporating it directly into their pipelines. They’re incorporating it directly into their data pipelines, not just the oil and gas pipelines, but each one of those, the more you can incorporate that, the more you can monitor, the more you can show value of everything that you do amazing as an MSP, that’s really where you start creating that intrinsic strategic value and you get out of that tactical approach. Robert Dutt: And the good news is for a lot of these folks in the MSP space, presumably they have some of these pieces already in place, just not necessarily connected up to the technical side, i.e. sales and marketing have been focused on a vertical. And even if they haven’t, because they have customers in this space, they’ve built some of that muscle memory, some of that knowledge of what really matters. Now it’s just a matter, hopefully, of connecting it into the services that they’re offering. Jeff Collins: Yep, totally agreed. Robert Dutt: All right. Well, it’s been a really interesting look at sort of where visibility is at. And I think a real interesting opportunity that you’ve surfaced in terms of how it can be turned into a value conversation. I appreciate your taking the time. Jeff Collins: Sounds great. Thanks so much for having me on, Rob. Robert Dutt: There you have it, my chat with Jeff Collins from WanAware. I’d like to thank Jeff for sharing his insights. The thing that stuck with me from this conversation is how much of what’s changed in the modern network hasn’t been designed in, it’s been bolted on. AI workloads, hybrid architectures, IoT, SCADA, all of it layered into environments without the kind of formal rethinking that happened when we moved to virtualization. And Jeff made a really compelling case that for MSPs, closing that visibility gap isn’t just a risk management play, it’s a revenue opportunity, and potentially a significant one, especially in verticals like energy and critical infrastructure where visibility is tied directly to uptime, safety, and compliance. We’ll be back on Monday with In Case You Missed It, your weekly news roundup. Thanks for listening. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Text us your questions and thoughts!What if the fastest way to elevate your career is to get more human as you get more technical? We sit down with Tamara Kempf, Regional Director, EMEA Customer Success at AppDynamics (a Cisco company), to unpack her career built on curiosity, grit, and the kind of EQ that technology can't replace. We trace her journey from science student to landing a first job at Bloomberg to now Cisco Customer Success leader, turning setbacks into growth, and using AI where it counts without losing the human edge. You'll hear practical stories of how to save days of work, coach teams with empathy, and hire for skills that last.In this episode, we talk about:Lessons from Bloomberg on customer advocacy without authorityIntegrating a startup culture into Cisco's Customer Success teamPragmatic AI use cases that compress a full day's work into minutesHow to create a safe culture to experiment and share failuresRedefining productivity as making time to be humanThe secret to being a great leaderIf you're navigating customer success, leadership, AI adoption, or all three, you'll find tactics you can try today and a mindset that lasts. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review to help more people discover conversations that move careers forward.

Jeff Edwards sits down with Rebecca Leach—former Cisco and AppDynamics leader turned executive coach and founder of Growth Road, an executive coaching practice focused on helping leaders navigate change with clarity, confidence, and connection. After nearly two decades in tech leadership, Rebecca reached a pivotal moment: stay in the familiar rhythm of corporate success, or step into ambiguity and redefine what leadership—and identity—really meant. What followed wasn't just a career transition. It became the foundation for Growth Road, where Rebecca now helps leaders grow through the same kinds of shifts she experienced herself. In this candid conversation, Rebecca shares the emotions behind leaving a long, successful corporate career, the courage it takes to embrace uncertainty, and the lessons leaders can carry forward when the path ahead isn't clear. Why listen: • ⚡ The hidden risk of tying your identity to your title •

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Carilu Melander, Senior Director of Americas Partner Marketing at Zscaler, whose impressive track record spans AWS, AppDynamics, and now leading a high-performing team focused on strategic, data-driven partner marketing. Carilu shares the mindset and frameworks that have helped her team shift from reactive task executors to trusted advisors driving real revenue outcomes.We explore the evolving expectations for partner marketers from aligning campaigns with sales goals to measuring ROI with precision. Carilu dives into how her team uses data to make smarter decisions, build trust with partner sellers, and drive meaningful impact at scale, especially through creative distributor-led programs. For channel professionals looking to sharpen their strategic edge, this episode delivers actionable insights on scalable enablement, ecosystem collaboration, and the future of partner marketing in an AI-powered, ecosystem-first world.Tune in to uncover how to elevate your partner marketing function, build influence with stakeholders, and stay ahead in a fast-changing indirect sales landscape._________________________Learn more about Channext

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News' Moshe Beauford spoke with Nathaniel Stearns, Splunk and cybersecurity consultant at Keos Technology, to discuss Cisco's integration of Splunk following its landmark acquisition and what it means for partners navigating the next era of AI-driven security. Stearns explained that Keos Technology—Splunk's largest professional services provider in the United States—works closely with resellers, distributors, and channel partners to provide pre- and post-sales support around Splunk implementations. “Cisco has been making very accelerated leaps to integrate all of Splunk’s products into its existing portfolio,” Stearns noted. “It's expanding their security capabilities in a really powerful way, and there's a large amount of education happening across the partner ecosystem.” As Cisco weaves Splunk into its infrastructure and security portfolio, Stearns emphasized the growing role of AI integration. “Artificial intelligence is all the buzz these days, but when it comes to driving business outcomes, AI has to be well integrated into valuable tools,” he said. “Cisco is doing a uniquely good job of connecting these tools—networking, security, observability, collaboration—and adding AI to make each one stronger.” For partners, this evolution represents a major opportunity. Stearns explained that Cisco's combined suite—including ThousandEyes, AppDynamics, and now Splunk—offers unmatched visibility, security, and operational intelligence. “Cisco has done a tremendous job bundling these all together and making it the single marketplace you want to go to for your security solutions,” he said. Looking ahead, Stearns predicts that Splunk's integration into Cisco will double its impact across the enterprise landscape. “Splunk was already a strong platform, but now that it's part of Cisco, there's an opportunity to double its business because it fits so perfectly within Cisco's ecosystem,” he added. “Resellers will have a unique opportunity to package these tools together and deliver holistic security and observability solutions.” Learn more about Keos Technology at https://www.keostechnology.com/.

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

Espen Sjaavik er medgründer i Alfred og er en av svært få nordmenn med tung, internasjonal erfaring fra enterprise-salg i amerikanske SaaS-selskaper. I denne episoden deler han playbooken han lærte i selskaper som Gartner, Bazaarvoice, AppDynamics, Cyber Reason og Zscaler – og hvordan han var med på å skape en vekstreise fra 300 millioner til 2,5 milliarder dollar i årlig omsetning og fra 800 til 8000 ansatte. Programleder: Lucas Weldegherbiel, journalist og gründer i Shifter.Dette snakker vi om i episodenHva som skiller middelmådige salgsorganisasjoner fra de besteDe fem byggesteinene i en sterk revenue playbookDypdykk i MEDDIC: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria/process, identified pain og champions – og hvorfor rammeverket må brukes proaktivt, ikke som en passiv “checklist” i CRM.3 Whys: hvorfor gjøre noe i det hele tatt, hvorfor velge akkurat ditt selskap, og hvorfor nå – og hvordan du co-creater business caseLeading indicators-styring:ICCE-modellen for rekruttering (Intelligence, Character, Coachability, Experience)Hva som kjennetegner en virkelig god salgsleder

In this episode of the Playbook Universe, we speak with Kristian Kamber, CEO and co-founder of SPLX AI, about his journey from elite sales roles at AppDynamics and ZScaler to launching his own AI security startup. Kristian shares the inner drive and lessons learned, from a family restaurant business to the high-stakes world of Silicon Valley playbooks, that prepared him to lead a fast-moving, deeply technical company. He reveals the critical steps in finding the right technical co-founder, securing investment, and achieving product-market fit by listening intently to customers. This is essential listening for any sales professional considering the leap into entrepreneurship.

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital.In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mercedes Bent about her fascinating journey from a tech-driven upbringing to becoming a leading venture capitalist. We discussed how her unique background informs her investment philosophy and the importance of originality and non-consensus thinking in today's VC landscape. Our conversation also covered the challenges and opportunities in consumer technology, the transformative impact of AI, and strategies for portfolio construction. One of my key takeaways was the critical role of intuition in identifying exceptional founders, as well as the value of building compounding networks and staying ahead of platform shifts. It was an insightful discussion that offered practical lessons for anyone interested in the future of venture capital. We hope you enjoy the conversation.Thanks for listening to another episode of Venture Unlocked. We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Mercedes. If you'd like to get Venture Unlocked content straight to your inbox, go to ventureunlocked.substack.com and sign up, or go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe. Thanks again for listeningAbout Mercedes BentMercedes Bent is a Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and Co-Founder of venture firm Premise. At Lightspeed, she focused on early-stage investments in consumer, fintech, multicultural markets, and Latin America. She began her career at the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs before moving into the education technology sector with General Assembly. At General Assembly, she helped expand one of the company's key product lines from $2M to $100M in revenue over four years. She joined Lightspeed in 2019 after developing a strong investment perspective in areas such as edtech, VR, and multicultural consumer products. At Lightspeed, she has invested in and worked with companies including Stori, Honeylove, Forage, Magic Eden, Outschool, and Flink. She has also been recognized in industry publications for her contributions to venture capital and efforts to broaden access to entrepreneurship.Lightspeed Venture Partners, founded in 2000, is a global venture capital firm managing over $25 billion in assets with offices across the U.S., Europe, Israel, India, and Southeast Asia. The firm invests from seed to growth stage across enterprise, consumer, fintech, healthcare, and emerging tech. Over the years, Lightspeed has backed more than 500 companies, including Snap, MuleSoft, Affirm, Carta, and Anthropic, and has been part of notable exits like AppDynamics and Nest. With a strong record of helping founders scale and succeed, Lightspeed is recognized as a leading partner for building category-defining companies.During the conversation, we discussed:* Mercedes's Background, Upbringing, and Early Career (1:45)* How Background Informed Firm Values/Culture (4:19)* The Gap in Consumer Technology Investing & Identifying Founders (8:40)* Non-Consensus Investing in Early Stage VC (10:01)* Startup Mentality and KPIs in Fund Management (15:06)* Sourcing vs. Winning Seed Deals – What Matters? (16:19)* Seed Manager vs. Large Fund Business Models (21:21)* Gifted TVPI vs. Earned TVPI, Portfolio Philosophy (26:22)* Consumer Sector's VC Downturn & New Tech Cycles (32:21)* The AI Consumer Technology Wave & Opportunity (35:33)* Identifying Product-Market Pull and Early Leading Indicators (37:08)* Shifts in Distribution Channels in AI (40:09)* Future-casting, Platform Shifts, and AI Companions (43:50)* Lessons from Years in VC & Trusting Intuition (44:27)* Final Thoughts and Takeaways (47:46)I'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Mercedes. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #venture unlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on X. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

In this episode, we sit down with Ronak Desai, Co-founder and CEO of Ciroos, to explore how AI is transforming the world of SRE, DevOps, and operations. With over 20 years of experience at Cisco leading AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability, Ronak brings deep expertise and a powerful vision for the future of operations. Ciroos is pioneering the use of multi-agentic AI to tackle IT toil and dramatically accelerate complex investigations. Their AI SRE Teammate is designed to help engineering teams reduce toil, automate tasks, and cut investigation times from days to hours, and from hours to minutes—all while ensuring humans remain in control. Ronak shares his personal journey, the challenges engineers face today, and how Ciroos is redefining what it means to build reliability and resilience at scale. We also dive into the broader potential of AI in operations, automation, and digital experiences. If you're interested in the future of site reliability, DevOps, and how AI is being applied to real-world challenges in IT, this episode is a must-listen. Host: Jake Aaron Villarreal, leads the top AI Recruitment Firm in Silicon Valley www.matchrelevant.com, uncovering stories of funded startups and goes behinds to scenes to tell their founders journey.  If you are growing AI Startup or have a great storytelling, email us at: jake.villarreal@matchrelevant.com

1: Where is software value heading in the age of AI? In the premiere episode of Technoventure, host Peter High speaks with Asheem Chandna, General Partner at Greylock Partners, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms. Asheem has led early investments in industry-defining companies such as Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics, Rubrik, and Abnormal Security. With over 20 years at Greylock and a background in product management and cybersecurity, Asheem offers a masterclass on how he assesses founders, identifies breakout potential, and mitigates risk—often before a single line of code is written. He also explores the evolving dynamics of enterprise software, the impact of agentic AI, and how cybersecurity must adapt to combat both bad and good AI. Key themes include: Assessing founders in a world of younger AI entrepreneurs The changing nature of enterprise software and data platforms The immigrant's mindset and risk tolerance in venture The venture capitalist's evolving toolkit in the AI era

Jyoti Bansal sold his first company, AppDynamics, to Cisco for $3.7 billion. Harness, his next company, reached a similar valuation a few years later. As an entrepreneur — and as a VC at Unusual Ventures — Jyoti has built and backed multiple billion-dollar startups. But despite his track record, he says technical founders often overlook the same hard truth: good ideas don't build great companies. It's all about execution. In this conversation, Jyoti explains how he helps engineers become CEOs, the leadership frameworks he uses to scale fast without breaking culture, and why each business unit inside Harness runs like a startup of its own. He also talks about what he had to unlearn as he made the leap from founder to investor, and debunks the myth that every entrepreneur needs a mentor. If you're aiming for breakout scale, this episode will give you some useful tactics — and maybe a few reality checks. RUNTIME 44:24 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (3:23) “ I started Big Labs and I call it a startup studio: it's really my lab, a research lab for me to experiment with ideas and projects that I'm excited about.” (6:15) Why Jyoti still carves out time for customer discovery and sales calls. (7:27) “ Harness is designed for kind of this next-generation, AI-based approach for DevOps.” (9:42) “ Our entire philosophy is built with this concept called ‘startups within a startup.'” (11:22) How Harness maintains cohesion and alignment across 16 different modules. (14:00) The specific traits and abilities Jyoti looks for when hiring leaders at Harness. (17:35) Why some engineers are poorly suited to make the leap into entrepreneurship. (20:55) A mental framework that helped Jyoti become a better manager and communicator. (23:59) “ I always leaned on topic-based mentorship, not generic mentorship, which is a particular problem.” (25:53) Why working with a CEO coach “didn't work very well for me.” (27:36) The sectors and types of startups that interest him the most right now. (30:10) How he prefers to be pitched — and how to apply to Unusual Academy's next cohort. (32:24) “ 30, 40% growth rates are where most startups should be looking, at least — ideally much more.” (33:53) “ If we can't see a path to $100M of revenue — or a billion of revenue — we don't invest.” (37:15) The biggest attachment he had to let go of when transitioning from founder to VC. (42:41) The one question he'd ask the CEO if he were interviewing for a job with an early-stage startup. LINKS Jyoti Bansal Harness Traceable Unusual Ventures Unusual Academy Unusual Field Guide Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Application Performance Monitoring Leader AppDynamics, 1/24/2017 SUBSCRIBE

If you've ever worked in software, you know the pressure to ship fast is real. But in today's world, where AI can generate entire codebases in minutes, that pressure is colliding with something else: complexity. More code, more tools, more risk…and somehow, slower delivery. In fact, according to a recent report from GitHub, developers now spend over half their time not coding, but testing, validating, or just waiting for access to the right environment.That's where today's guest comes in.I'm joined by Arjun Iyer, co-founder and CEO of Signadot, and someone who's spent more than 20 years deep in the world of distributed systems and cloud-native software. He's worked at places like AppDynamics, and he's tackling one of the biggest problems in software delivery: how do you move fast and maintain quality?We talk about the real-world bottleneck slowing teams down, why AI isn't the silver bullet because as Arjun shares just generating code doesn't make it production ready, and how concepts like “shift left” are giving teams a smarter way to build. Find out more about Arjun Lyer here.Learn more about Signadot here.Reach out to today's host, Erick Espinosa - erick@sociable.coGet the latest on tech news - https://sociable.co/ Leave an iTunes review  - https://rb.gy/ampk26Follow us on your favourite podcast platform - https://link.chtbl.com/rN3x4ecY

In this episode of Great Leaders UK, we sit down with Alice Carlisle, VP UK&I at Wiz, to uncover how she rose from first-line leader to one of the most sought-after roles in the cybersecurity industry. From taking a struggling ZScaler team and transforming it in under three quarters, to embodying Wiz's values of confidence and humility, Alice's journey is proof that authenticity and unrelenting work ethic drive lasting impact. She delves into the hard lessons of leading through fear-based tactics early in her career, learning the Force Management Playbook at AppDynamics, and then applying it to close LogicMonitor's largest deal ever. Ultimately, we focus on how Alice builds culture, leading by example, caring genuinely for people, and creating internal champions, so that teams win together, not just as individuals. Whether you're scaling a hyper-growth sales org, building a new culture, or simply looking to be a better human in leadership, Alice's playbook is packed with actionable insights on driving growth through customer success and winning with authenticity.

In this episode of Masters of MEDDICC, Andy sits down with Josh Reiner, VP of EMEA at WIZ.This might be controversial, but Josh doesn't like leads. In the current landscape, while customers may be coming to you more informed, they also might be coming with more preconceived ideas about what your solution can (or can't) do. Josh tells Andy all about why it's more important to be able to go into customer engagements where everyone has an open mind about how to solve the problem. Technology presents a great advantage to the modern seller, but there is no shortcut that can replace credibility and understanding the data. Andy and Josh talk about how in the wake of AI, sellers need to avoid relying too heavily on tech, when it is our own hard work that will set us up for real success.Great salespeople are uncomfortable being comfortable. Andy and Josh discuss how A-Players are always striving to be better. As Josh says, “A-Players don't care about money because they have it,” - so the best leaders need to motivate them by challenging them to do their best.We also hear from Josh about how to build a diverse team, a winning culture and more. Don't miss this episode for an insightful take on what truly drives top sales performers and how to stay ahead in the evolving sales landscape!ABOUT JOSH REINER:Josh Reiner is an accomplished Executive with a stellar track record in the SaaS industry, currently serving as the VP of EMEA at Wiz. He began his career at BMC, playing a key role in the reverse takeover by BladeLogic, which set the stage for his leadership path in the tech sector. Josh further refined his collaborative leadership style at AppDynamics, and later at Zscaler, where he made a significant transition from the US to the UK in 2020 with his family. During his time at Zscaler, he played a crucial role in driving growth and aligning global teams to strategic objectives.In early 2024, Josh joined Wiz to lead the EMEA team, driving adoption of the Wiz Cloud Security Platform. His focus is on enabling faster cloud development by fostering collaboration between security, development, and DevOps teams. Josh champions a self-service model that meets the scale and speed demands of modern cloud development, ensuring efficiency and security are optimized in tandem.`ABOUT ANDY WHYTE:The founder of MEDDICC™ and the author of the five-star rated “MEDDICC' book, it's no surprise that Andy has an impressive sales career spanning over 18 years. Andy first started out as a door-to-door, double-glazing salesman where he quickly built up an appetite for sales, hungry for more, he started his B2B career as an SDR, progressing through the ranks to eventually lead the EMEA at Branch before moving on to set up MEDDICC™. Andy used MEDDIC in multiple companies as an individual contributor and sales leader and even implemented MEDDPICC into two SaaS organisations. Known for his mantra “Nobody ever regrets qualifying out” and his passion for the science and art of sales. Away from the day-to-day, Andy practices many skills as a chef, sports coach, taxi, and cleaner in his most important role to date - DAD.

Today's guest is Firaas Rashid, CEO and Founder of Hook. Hook is the B2B SaaS platform focused on predictable revenue growth from existing customers. Backed by Lightspeed and LocalGlobe, Hook is revolutionising the way companies forecast their revenue growth using product usage and customer data. He is passionate about changing the way Customer Success is run and building the leading workplace for ambitious people who want to be part of a team. Before founding Hook, Firaas was CTO and Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at AppDynamics, scaling from $170m to $550m Annual Recurring Revenue in 2 years. He led a rapid journey of rebuilding Customer Success to focus on data-driven prioritisation and scale. Prior to that he was a Director of IT at Credit Suisse. Beyond his role, Firaas finds joy in travel, exploring new restaurants, and even taking to the skies. This episode is brought to you with support from Oracle Netsuite. Learn more at Netsuite.com/scale --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uncharted1/support

Episode 361 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Phil Pergola, CEO at CloudZero. Phil has a tremendous track record and we talk about a lot of great companies that he's helped build throughout his career, but I need to highlight one of these companies in this intro and that is BladeLogic and the lasting impact the company has made. If you've ever read the famous startup book by Ben Horowitz called The Hard Thing About Hard Things… the competitor to his company Opsware was BladeLogic which is absolutely classic. BladeLogic went on to become a public company and was subsequently acquired by BMC Software. Another fascinating point about BladeLogic is the people and how many have gone on to become C-level sales executives or advisors at some of the most successful companies out there like MongoDB, AppDynamics, Snowflake, Wiz, Okta, and others. There is even a podcast called Hunters + Unicorns which interviews a bunch of them. CloudZero is the leader in proactive cloud cost efficiency. They enable engineers to build cost-efficient software without slowing down innovation. The company announced a $32M Series B round of funding last year. In this podcast, we cover: * The importance of building a successful pre and post-sales organization, plus the details of the LAYR model (Land Adopt Expand Retain). * Phil's background and the story of his initial interest in pursuing a career path as an actuary. * A trip down Boston tech memory lane across multiple companies like Eggrock Partners which was acquired by Breakaway Solutions, BladeLogic, enerNOC, and CloudHealth Technologies. * All the details about CloudZero - how they found product market fit, why he joined as CEO, and the latest at the company today. * Advice on raising venture capital funding. * Lots of great advice on being a first time CEO - his lessons learned, what you should think about in the first 90 days, and advice on how to get on the radar for CEO positions. * And so much more. Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Ghazal Asif Fahadi, VP of Channels, Alliances, and Inside Sales at Rubrik, shares her expertise on the importance of channel partnerships in software sales. She highlights two primary reasons why companies often get the channel playbook wrong: inadequate measurement of channel impact and working with too many partners. Ghazal emphasizes that companies often fail to track the incremental contribution of the channel to the business, leading to mistrust and self-sourcing of deals. To address this, she recommends measuring the deals that are sourced by partners and approved by reps to ensure accurate tracking. This approach will enable companies to understand the channel's true impact and make data-driven decisions. Ghazal advises companies to highly qualify their partners, commit to a few strategic partners, and invest in them instead of trying to work with a large number of partners. This strategic approach will allow companies to build stronger relationships, improve focus, and increase accountability. Ghazal attributes the failure of the conventional channel playbook to the lack of understanding of the channel's true impact, particularly among software companies. She notes that many large technology companies that have grown up in the hardware industry may not fully comprehend the importance of measuring channel contributions. This gap in understanding can lead to misguided strategies and ineffective channel partnerships. Ghazal shares a personal anecdote about a turning point at AppDynamics, where they realized the need to establish leading indicators for their channel partners. These leading indicators would help track progress, ensure accountability, and provide a more sales-organization-like approach to the channel. Rubrik has implemented a set of leading indicators to measure the performance of their channel partners, including: * Deal registration: The number of deal registrations submitted by partners * Deal registration conversion: The conversion rate of deal registrations into opportunities * Opportunity conversion: The conversion rate of opportunities into closed deals * Save the Data: A group of people who learn about the chaos caused by cyber attacks and attend events that generate pipeline * Account mapping: Research and identification of high-potential accounts * Propensity to buy: Researching and identifying accounts with a higher likelihood of purchasing the company's technology

In this episode, we speak with the Co-Founder and CEO of Armada, Dan Wright. Armada is the world's first full-stack edge computing platform, revolutionizing connectivity, compute, and AI solutions. Armada enables companies to rapidly deploy, operate and monitor a complete modular data center to the remote corners of the world. Before Armada, Dan was the CEO of DataRobot and COO of AppDynamics. He is invested in the future of technology as an investor, advisor, and board member for various visionary startups, including Abnormal Security, Avi Networks (acquired by VMware), and Embrace. Dan is a Board Member of JDRF. To learn more about this organization click here. I am your host RJ Lumba.  We hope you enjoy the show.  If you like the episode click to follow.

In this episode of Infrastructure Matters, hosts Camberley Bates, Steve Dickens and Krista Macomber give the rundown on conferences and announcements from Broadcom Mainframe Analysts event, NetApp's Analyst event, Splunk and AWS reinforce conferences, plus announcements from Oracle.  Key topics include:  NetApp Analyst Event: NetApp hosted an event in New York, celebrating their recent success and introducing their new "intelligent data infrastructure" positioning covering their focus on unified storage, managing data across hybrid environments seamlessly advancements in AI and data management. Broadcom Mainframe  Analyst Event: Broadcom demonstrated their continued investment and growth in mainframe software, including new capabilities such as Watchtower and  their investment in the "vitality program" focused on training and hiring non-traditional candidates for high-paying system programming roles. AWS reInforce: This AWS event focused on cloud security, highlighted AWS's efforts to enhance their security infrastructure and customer tools, including AI models and new security features.  Splunk Acquisition by Cisco: Splunk, recently acquired by Cisco, showcased their commitment to innovation and integration within Cisco's ecosystem and maintaining innovation momentum while integrating with Cisco's existing technologies like AppDynamics and Thousand Eyes. Oracle Cloud and Google: Oracle & Google announce collaborating to provide customers with interoperability between their respective cloud platforms. 

Have you ever wondered how one of the world's largest airlines ensures that every passenger interaction is seamless, both on the ground and in the air? Today, I'm joined by Dan Field, Director of Platform and Network Engineering at United Airlines.    Dan brings a wealth of experience integrating cutting-edge technology to enhance customer experiences and operational efficiency at United. With tools like Cisco's AppDynamics and innovative solutions like Agent on Demand, Dan and his team are revolutionizing travel.   Agent on Demand allows passengers to connect with agents via call, text, or even video chat. This service eliminates the need to physically wait in line, offering a more convenient option for travelers to manage their journey—everything from seat assignments to boarding times can be handled through a simple QR code scan.   Today's discussion isn't just about the technology itself but about how United Airlines leverages these advancements to significantly improve organizational efficiency and customer satisfaction.   Listeners, as we explore these technological innovations, what are your thoughts on how such technologies could further enhance your travel experiences? Have you encountered any tech-driven solutions during your flights that made a significant difference? Join the conversation and share your views.

Sanjay Nagaraj started his journey in India, where he was born and raised. He earliest influences started at home, as his father taught him honesty and integrity and his mother heavily influenced his growth as an individual. Though he spends most of his time in tech, anytime outside of work is dedicated to time with family, where he gets to see the world through his wife and kids - along with fueling his passion for singing and following his favorite sports team.For Sanjay, one thing that was clear to him was that application builders exposing APIs, you are responsible for making sure those API's are secure. Prior to his current venture, he and his co-founder built AppDynamics, and they saw the growth of API's first hand. As such, businesses were looking for products to help understand API's and protect them - in real time.This is the creation story of Traceable.SponsorsPermitCacheFlyClearQueryKiteworksLinkshttps://traceable.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaynagaraj/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, we discuss ChatGPT-4o, Google I/O Announcements, the impact of AI on smartphones, and executive shuffling at OpenAI and Amazon. Plus, we share some thoughts on how to plan your wedding. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBzblajcAUY) 467 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBzblajcAUY) Runner-up Titles Do what works Blame the children I had an alphanumeric pager in 1993 I like carrots Rundown A.I. Announcements Introducing GPT-4o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQacCB9tDaw) ‎Gemini Apps' release updates & improvements (https://gemini.google.com/updates) Google I/O 2024 (https://io.google/2024/) Palace Intrigue Andy Jassy makes AWS leadership announcement (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/leadership-update-aws-adam-selipsky-matt-garman?ck_subscriber_id=512840665) Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. (https://twitter.com/sama/status/1790518031640347056?s=46&t=zgzybiDdIcGuQ_7WuoOX0A) Sam Altman gracefully thanked his OpenAI cofounder who quit. Then another exec quit hours later. (https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-leadership-shakeup-jan-leike-ilya-sutskever-resign-chatgpt-superalignment-2024-5) Relevant to your Interests Leaked memo: Amazon requires cloud events to spend up to 80% of their time talking about generative AI (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-generative-ai-aws-global-summits-2024-5) Should Cisco Have Paid $3.7 Billion for AppDynamics? (https://sg.news.yahoo.com/finance/news/cisco-paid-3-7-billion-222608679.html) Boomi Dismembers The TIBCO Frankenstein (https://www.forrester.com/blogs/boomi-dismembers-the-tibco-frankenstein/) Apple to Power AI Tools With In-House Server Chips This Year (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-09/apple-to-power-ios-18-ai-features-with-in-house-server-mac-chips-this-year) Cyberattack disrupts operations at major US health care network | CNN Business (https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/tech/cyberattack-disrupts-healthcare-network/index.html) Did IBM make a $6.4 billion blunder by buying HashiCorp? (https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/10/opinion_column_ibm_hashicorp/) How Ahrefs gets a Billion dollar-worth infrastructure with a 90% discount (https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-gets-a-billion-dollar-worth-infrastructure-with-a-90-discount-5edd473b2399) Was VMware's takeover by Broadcom a terrible mistake? (https://techmonitor.ai/technology/cloud/vmware-takeover-by-broadcom-mistake) Apple Will Revamp Siri to Catch Up to Its Chatbot Competitors (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/business/apple-siri-ai-chatgpt.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) DHH: ZIRP driving microservices is quite the take! (https://x.com/dhh/status/1789314705384972506) Squarespace to go private in $7 billion private-equity deal (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/13/squarespace-to-go-private-in-7-billion-private-equity-deal.html) Aligning with User Needs with Rod Johnson (https://www.emilyomier.com/podcast/aligning-with-user-needs-with-rod-johnson) Meta will shut down its Teams competitor Workplace next year (https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24156712/meta-workplace-facebook-work-shutdown) Google Cloud accidentally deletes UniSuper's online account due to ‘unprecedented misconfiguration' (https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/09/unisuper-google-cloud-issue-account-access) DHH: ZIRP driving microservices is quite the take! (https://x.com/dhh/status/1789314705384972506) Nonsense YETI 34 oz French Press (https://www.yeti.com/drinkware/mugs/french-press-34oz.html) - in NL, €125 (https://nl.yeti.com/products/rambler-french-press-34oz)! Underwater bicycle' propels swimmers forward at superhuman speed (https://newatlas.com/marine/seabike-swimming-propeller/) World's Largest Vacuum to Suck Carbon From Atmosphere Turns On for First Time (https://ca.news.yahoo.com/worlds-largest-vacuum-suck-carbon-123026944.html) Conferences Executive Dinner in Atlanta, May 22nd (https://sincusa.com/events/tanzu-atlanta-ga-dinner/) MS Build (https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home), Seattle May 21-23, Matt will be there NDC Oslo (https://substack.com/redirect/8de3819c-db2b-47c8-bd7a-f0a40103de9e?j=eyJ1IjoiMmQ0byJ9.QKaKsDzwnXK5ipYhX0mLOvRP3vpk_3o2b5dd3FXmAkw), Coté speaking (https://substack.com/redirect/41e821af-36ba-4dbb-993c-20755d5f040a?j=eyJ1IjoiMmQ0byJ9.QKaKsDzwnXK5ipYhX0mLOvRP3vpk_3o2b5dd3FXmAkw), June 12th. DevOpsDays Amsterdam (https://devopsdays.org/events/2024-amsterdam/welcome/), June 19-21, 2024, Coté speaking. DevOpsDays Birmingham, August 19–21, 2024 (https://devopsdays.org/events/2024-birmingham-al/welcome/). SpringOne (https://springone.io/?utm_source=cote&utm_campaign=devrel&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=newsletterUpcoming)/VMware Explore US (https://blogs.vmware.com/explore/2024/04/23/want-to-attend-vmware-explore-convince-your-manager-with-these/?utm_source=cote&utm_campaign=devrel&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=newsletterUpcoming), August 26–29, 2024. SREday London 2024 (https://sreday.com/2024-london/), September 19th to 20th, Coté speaking. 20% off with the code SRE20DAY (https://sreday.com/2024-london/#tickets). SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured). Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, Digital WTF (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt), so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads)! Recommendations Brandon: Dark Matter (https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwigrIn86o-GAxVCB60GHX_XCckYABAAGgJwdg&ae=2&gclid=CjwKCAjwupGyBhBBEiwA0UcqaAa8Z6SXzoW8TS-PYFgjm4HL8xNpfmnW3o2W1RQfUS-0K5DpEYHsBRoCyPoQAvD_BwE&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESVeD2akPZ_G87IWC2gzc9HUAMvuTN941I9pWeoTge9Q6YvvFQYnVJDVRn9V0WZ8Ow2eckKnvlIp6ONdvBfFb68l3oKwAfclfRuCaCvZ-dWdYFZuYWY-8&sig=AOD64_1pcfwYWDAqCh9q_XcP8kLsc38mQQ&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiZzf776o-GAxWhD0QIHUUMDwQQ0Qx6BAgJEAM) Coté: The Business of Open Source (https://www.emilyomier.com/podcast) podcast, e.g., episode with Rod Johnson (https://www.emilyomier.com/podcast/aligning-with-user-needs-with-rod-johnson). Photo Credits Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/wedding-signage-on-wall-rfS6oq6MWlU)

In the latest episode of Masters of MEDDICC, MEDDICC CEO Andy Whyte is joined by Luke Rodgers, VP of EMEA at ComplyAdvantage. Together they cover a wide range of topics on the intersection of MEDDPICC and leadership, including what it takes to be a truly successful leader, and the top mistakes people make when they THINK they're using MEDDPICC.One thing that stands out: We need to re-analyze the way we think about success. Andy and Luke talk about the bad habits that can arise when leaders focus too much on revenue and not on the ‘how' of winning. Is it about quantity, or is it about quality?The vast majority of the time, if you ask your customer why they went with your solution, they will say it's because of your team. Luckily, this episode is bursting with actionable tips to take you (and your team) to the next level. Luke is VP of EMEA at ComplyAdvantage. Having originally started his career working for Jeremy Duggan (a McMahon prodigy) as the 1st UK AE at AppDynamics in 2013, he claims the Playbook changed his life. While at AppDynamics, he has held numerous international senior leadership positions in AMER and EMEA, pre and post-the $3.7B Cisco acquisition. In 2020 he joined and founded worldwide sales at Instabase, growing ARR by 10x in 3 years. Now he is using the Playbook to help beat financial crime, a $3.5T per year problem for which ~$280B per year is spent fighting it. Unfortunately

Proven Career Journey in International Business The podcast episode profiles Josh Reiner, current VP of EMEA at SaaS company Wiz. He discusses his career path, having started at BMC where he was part of a reverse takeover by BladeLogic. Josh then transitioned to roles at AppDynamics and Zscaler, learning valuable lessons about collaboration under executives like Dally Rajic.   Establishing Clear Goals and Optimizing Processes As the leader of Zscaler's UK team, Josh emphasized the importance of having a shared vision. Their goal was to gain 3 million users on the platform. To work as one global organization, he optimized handoffs between teams through open communication and incremental weekly improvements. By publishing regular updates on progress, the entire company remained aligned.   Driving Accountability and Continual Learning Josh stresses that frequent coaching sessions and publishing performance metrics kept employees accountable to goals. This also supported continual self-improvement. He looks for candidates willing to learn when hiring and prioritizes diversity to foster new perspectives in teams.   In Summary Through empathetic leadership, Josh achieved significant growth while unifying remote functions. His insights offer a blueprint for maximizing collaboration across borders and building high-performing global organizations.

Leading Global Teams With Empathy Proven Career Journey in International Business The podcast episode profiles Josh Reiner, current VP of EMEA at SaaS company Wiz. He discusses his career path, having started at BMC where he was part of a reverse takeover by BladeLogic. Josh then transitioned to roles at AppDynamics and Zscaler, learning valuable lessons about collaboration under executives like Dally Rajic. Establishing Clear Goals and Optimizing Processes As the leader of Zscaler's UK team, Josh emphasized the importance of having a shared vision. Their goal was to gain 3 million users on the platform. To work as one global organization, he optimized handoffs between teams through open communication and incremental weekly improvements. By publishing regular updates on progress, the entire company remained aligned. Driving Accountability and Continual Learning Josh stresses that frequent coaching sessions and publishing performance metrics kept employees accountable to goals. This also supported continual self-improvement. He looks for candidates willing to learn when hiring and prioritizes diversity to foster new perspectives in teams. In Summary Through empathetic leadership, Josh achieved significant growth while unifying remote functions. His insights offer a blueprint for maximizing collaboration across borders and building high-performing global organizations.

Dan Wright is no typical founder. With a formidable background at software powerhouses like AppDynamics and DataRobot, Dan has shifted his focus towards bridging the technological gap in edge computing with his latest venture, Armada. As the world's first full-stack edge computing platform, Armada integrates computing and AI capabilities directly where data is generated.Dan started Armada after recognizing a significant shift in data generation to the edge and the inadequate response of centralized clouds to the demands of heavy data producers in sectors like oil and gas and manufacturing.In today's episode, Dan discusses the origin story of Armada and its strategic partnership with Starlink, which allows it to extend its edge computing capabilities to remote locations. We also discuss:The impact of edge computingArmada's product suite and roadmapBridging the digital divideBuilding a business with SpaceXAnd much more…This episode is brought to you by the Italian Trade Agency (ITA). • Chapters •00:00 Intro & ITA Ad01:11 What is Armada and why did you start the company?02:33 Adding hardware capabilities04:34 What is edge computing?07:00 75% of all data will be generated at the edge10:12 Serving remote corners of the world11:22 What kind of efficiency will edge computing be able to make?14:06 Armada x Starlink16:59 How did Armada build their relationship with Starlink?18:51 How did you convince SpaceX to work with you?20:30 Without Starlink, can Armada still be successful?22:11 Armada's product suite25:41 Creating demand for 3rd parties in the marketplace28:11 The Galleon30:44 Customer traction, targeting, and product in the field32:58 Armada's smallest but still relevant customer34:18 The competitive landscape36:13 Extreme testing for Galleon38:45 Capital raising41:38 What keeps Dan up at night43:17 Galleons but in space?44:47 10 year vision46:04 Dan's opinion on Starship's next flight test50:40 What does Dan do for fun? • Show notes •Armada's website — www.armada.aiDan's socials — https://twitter.com/danwrightSFMo's socials — https://twitter.com/itsmoislamPayload's socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspacePathfinder archive — Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@payloadspace Pathfinder archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/episodes • About us •Pathfinder is brought to you by Payload, a modern space media brand built from the ground up for a new age of space exploration and commercialization. We deliver need-to-know news and insights daily to 19,000+ commercial, civil, and military space leaders. Payload is read by decision-makers at every leading new space company, along with c-suite leaders at all of the aerospace & defense primes. We're also read on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, and at space agencies around the world.Payload began as a weekly email sent to a few friends and coworkers. Today, we're a team distributed across four time zones and two continents, publishing five media properties across multiple platforms:1) Payload, our flagship daily newsletter, sends M-F @ 9am Eastern2) Pathfinder publishes weekly on Tuesday mornings (pod.payloadspace.com)3) Polaris, our weekly policy briefing, publishes weekly on Tuesdays4) Payload Research, our weekly research and analysis piece,  comes out on Wednesdays You can sign up for all of our publications here: https://payloadspace.com/subscribe/

In our conversation at KubeCon in Paris, Jonah Kowall of Aiven discusses his extensive background in observability, his role at Aiven overseeing product management, and his active involvement in open source projects such as Jaeger, OpenSearch, and OpenTelemetry. We also touch on software licensing and Redis's shift to proprietary software. We explore the challenges of maintaining project sustainability, attracting new contributors, and the importance of cross-project collaboration within the open source community. The discussion encapsulates the vibrant dynamics of open source development, the evolving landscape of observability tools, and underscores the collective endeavor to foster innovation and sustainability in this space.   00:00 Introduction 01:19 Deep Dive into Jaeger: The Observability Tool 02:21 Exploring OpenSearch and Its Ecosystem 03:27 The Impact of Licensing Changes on Open Source 06:20 The Challenge of Sustaining Open Source Projects 09:36 Fostering New Contributors and Community Engagement 12:30 Observability Trends and the Future of Open Source 19:25 Enhancing Collaboration in the Open Source Ecosystem 20:55 Final Thoughts and Advice for Aspiring Contributors   Resources: Jaeger: open source, distributed tracing platform (jaegertracing.io) OpenTelemetry OpenSearch Guest: Jonah Kowall, computer scientist and open-source contributor to OpenSearch, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry. A technical leader across startups to large enterprises specialized in operations, security, and performance. Led Gartner research on monitoring. Product leadership at AppDynamics, Cisco (post-acquisition), Kentik, Logz.io, and is current the head of product management at Aiven building tomorrow's open source data platform for everyone.

Guest: Jyoti Bansal, CEO and co-founder of HarnessCisco 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 Links:Connect with JyotiLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

This week, we discuss the ever expanding CNCF Landscape, bundling and unbundling, and the latest cloud earnings. Plus, some thoughts on soap dispensers in Europe vs. U.S. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pg_rXxn1YQ) 454 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pg_rXxn1YQ) Runner-up Titles Are we streaming. I have the whole earth to roam, so I'm not going to get space madness. If you watch it long enough every movie represents all of life. The sound track to walking the dog. At least it's open source. The Magic Quadrant of Fashion. I guess everyone's cool? What pair of pants do I need? The AirPods Pro pocket. Go down the metaphor hole. I was eating steak, and now I'm eating OpenTofu. Not good, but good enough. The Metaphor Hole Rundown CNCF Landscape (https://landscape.cncf.io) Bundling, Unbundling and Ensh*tification (https://www.thecloudcast.net/2024/02/bundling-unbundling-and-enshtification.html) (Cloudcast Pod) Earnings Meta Beats Sales Forecast Estimates; Announces First Dividend (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-01/meta-beats-sales-forecast-estimates-announces-first-dividend) Amazon Projects Profit Topping Estimates on Further Cost Cutting (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-01/amazon-projectsprofit-topping-estimates-on-further-cost-cutting) Clouded Judgement 2.2.24 - Cloud Giants Report Q4 '23 (https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-2224-cloud-giants?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=56878&post_id=141292535&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2l9&utm_medium=email) Alphabet: Cloud Rebounds (https://www.appeconomyinsights.com/p/alphabet-cloud-rebounds?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) Platformonomics - Follow the CAPEX: Cloud Table Stakes 2023 Retrospective (https://platformonomics.com/2024/02/follow-the-capex-cloud-table-stakes-2023-retrospective/) Relevant to your Interests Shift Happens: A book about keyboards (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwichary/shift-happens) Broadcom's strategy ignores most VMware customers (https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/broadcom_strategy_vmware_customer_impact/) Allen Institute for AI releases ‘truly open source' LLM to drive ‘critical shift' in AI development (https://venturebeat.com/ai/truly-open-source-llm-from-ai2-to-drive-critical-shift-in-ai-development/) OLMo - Open Language Model by AI2 (https://allenai.org/olmo) Threads is growing steadily with more than 130M monthly actives. (https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/C20tMr8Pjeh/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) Leaky Vessels: Docker and runc Container Breakout Vulnerabilities - January 2024 (https://snyk.io/blog/leaky-vessels-docker-runc-container-breakout-vulnerabilities/) From unicorns to unicorpses: Why billion-dollar startups and even VC firms keep imploding (https://fortune.com/longform/failed-unicorn-startups-billion-dollar-valuation-unicorpses/) Dell said to be preparing broad Return To Office mandate (https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/03/dell_return_to_work/?td=rt-3a) Weaveworks shuts down (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/richardsonalexis_hi-everyone-i-am-very-sad-to-announce-activity-7160295096825860096-ZS67?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop) A Giant Reborn: Satya Nadella's Decade as Microsoft CEO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KzIKFpKZKM) Is the $139 Amazon Prime Subscription Still Worth It? (https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/is-the-139-amazon-prime-subscription-still-worth-it-83a597c7?reflink=integratedwebview_share) Everbridge Agrees to $1.5B Buyout Offer From Thoma Bravo (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/everbridge-agrees-to-1-5b-buyout-offer-from-thoma-bravo-179db224?mod=newsviewer_click) Adam Neumann Tries to Buy Back WeWork (https://www.wsj.com/articles/adam-neumann-looks-to-buy-back-wework-86ee5f2b) NinjaOne Notches $1.9 Billion Valuation in Deal Led By Iconiq (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-06/ninjaone-notches-1-9-billion-valuation-in-deal-led-by-iconiq) YouTube TV says it has more than 8 million subscribers (https://www.axios.com/2024/02/06/youtube-tv-subscribers-cable-satellite) Pivotal founder Rob Mee is back with a new startup. (https://twitter.com/alexrkonrad/status/1755278551828300162?s=46&t=zgzybiDdIcGuQ_7WuoOX0A) ESPN, Fox, WBD shake up media with plans for new sports streaming service (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/02/06/ESPN-Disney-Warner-Bros-Discovery-Fox-pay-joint-streaming-service) Arm shares surge 48% after SoftBank-controlled chip designer issues strong forecast (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/08/arm-shares-soar-after-reporting-strong-earnings-and-forecast.html) Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI (https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-dollars-to-reshape-business-of-chips-and-ai-89ab3db0?page=1) Disney invests $1.5B in Epic Games, plans new “games and entertainment universe” (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/02/epic-working-with-disney-on-new-gaming-universe-after-1-5b-investment/) Dynatrace hits $1.4 billion ARR, grabs logos from AppDynamics, aims to grow logs offering (https://www.thestack.technology/dynatrace-hits-1-4-billion-arr-grabs-customers-from-appdynamics-aims-to-grow-logs-offering/) Google and Yahoo Are Cracking Down on Inbox Spam. Don't Expect Less Email Marketing. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-and-yahoo-are-cracking-down-on-inbox-spam-dont-expect-less-email-marketing-dd124c19) Cloudflare's crowd-sources another patent troll case victory (https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/cloudflare_patent_troll/) (Almost) Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years running infrastructure at a startup (https://cep.dev/posts/every-infrastructure-decision-i-endorse-or-regret-after-4-years-running-infrastructure-at-a-startup/) 2024 State of Internal Developer Portals | Port (https://www.getport.io/state-of-internal-developer-portals) Amazon's Cloud Crisis: How AWS Will Lose The Future Of Computing (https://www.semianalysis.com/p/amazons-cloud-crisis-how-aws-will?ck_subscriber_id=1141233388) Yandex: The end of an era for Russia's most innovative firm (https://en.thebell.io/yandex-the-end-of-an-era-for-russias-most-innovative-firm/) How Mastodon made friends with Meta (https://www.platformer.news/mastodon-interview-eugen-rochko-meta-bluesky-threads-federation/?ref=platformer-newsletter) The Vision Pro (https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/the_vision_pro) Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, and more are coming to Apple's Vision Pro at launch (https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/31/24057122/microsoft-apple-vision-pro-office-apps-microsoft-365) Apple's Vision Pro battery pack is hiding the final boss of Lightning cables (https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/31/24057392/apple-vision-pro-battery-lightning-cable) Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/tim-cook-apple-vision-pro?mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_brand=vf) the thing no one will say about Apple Vision Pro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvkgmyfMPks) Working in the Vision Pro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV9Xy6L_rlM) Forgot Your Apple Vision Pro's Passcode? You May Have to Take It Back to Store (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-05/forgot-your-apple-vision-pro-s-passcode-you-may-have-to-take-it-back-to-store) Tesla owners told not to wear Apple virtual reality headsets while driving (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68215614) Nonsense Cynical book summaries (https://www.plg.news/p/aoapm-002-cynical-book-summaries) H-E-B's North Texas impact starting to become clear across groceries, real estate (https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/h-e-b-stores-north-texas-impact-starting-to-become-clear-across-groceries-real-estate/287-86836f22-e000-4d67-83d7-42e66ac01542?fbclid=IwAR1feOapOO7kMdv-xH3oBATelXpoKvf2ioNJEGt5MUzvA_X8C4nYMYPNquI_aem_AUUb7ZEwow8o6qAELGm8Xwb8eYCBdezDAdIpe-9nCSanh6MKQWpd8RIZRqMgBJekf6U#ls972nf7ju9xufblh6q) The 10 Best-Selling Vehicles in America in 2023 (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/best-selling-vehicles-in-america-in-2023/) One of Our Best Websites Died While No One Was Looking (https://slate.com/technology/2024/02/quora-what-happened-ai-decline.html) Stanley Made Reusable Cups Huge. Now It Has to Make Them Sustainable (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-01/stanley-made-reusable-cups-huge-now-it-has-to-make-them-sustainable) Most accurate video I've ever seen (https://x.com/anothercohen/status/1756181201847509392?s=46&t=zgzybiDdIcGuQ_7WuoOX0A) Listener Feedback Brian recommends Subprime Attention Crisis (https://www.audible.com/pd/Subprime-Attention-Crisis-Audiobook/0593454103?ref_pageloadid=Dsqv0n17FOwUqOpK&ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_0593454103_0&pf_rd_p=80765e81-b10a-4f33-b1d3-ffb87793d047&pf_rd_r=7C4TQFGZXK856S6W40BH&pageLoadId=Fo0QcV8X3KEf9ys4&creativeId=4ee810cf-ac8e-4eeb-8b79-40e176d0a225) Andrew recommends the Amazon.com: Sink Soap Dispenser (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SJ8SQ6Q?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share) Conferences SCaLE 21x/DevOpsDays LA, March 14th (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/21x)– (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/21x)17th, 2024 (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/21x) — Coté speaking (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/21x/presentations/we-fear-change), sponsorship slots available. KubeCon EU Paris, March 19 (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/)– (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/)22 (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe/) — Coté on the wait list for the platform side conference. Get 20% off with the discount code KCEU24VMWBC20. DevOpsDays Birmingham, April 17–18, 2024 (https://talks.devopsdays.org/devopsdays-birmingham-al-2024/cfp) Exe (https://ismg.events/roundtable-event/dallas-robust-security-java-applications/?utm_source=cote&utm_campaign=devrel&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=newsletterUpcoming)cutive dinner in Dallas that Coté's hosting on March 13st, 2024 (https://ismg.events/roundtable-event/dallas-robust-security-java-applications/?utm_source=cote&utm_campaign=devrel&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=newsletterUpcoming). If you're an “executive” who might want to buy stuff from Tanzu to get better at your apps, than register. There is also a Tanzu exec event coming up in the next few months, email Coté (mailto:cote@broadcom.com) if you want to hear more about it. SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured). Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, Digital WTF (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt), so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads)! Recommendations Brandon: Chamberlain Smart Garage Control (https://www.myq.com/products/smart-garage-control) Matt: FLOSS Weekly Episode 769: OpenCost — We Spent How Much? (https://hackaday.com/2024/02/07/floss-weekly-episode-769-opencost-we-spent-how-much/) Coté: chocolate covered dates at Tree of Dates (https://maps.app.goo.gl/QRc9Zj89cn4CZmMbA). Photo Credits Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-row-of-books-sitting-on-top-of-a-shelf-HqA7l8IbhmY) Artwork by Google Gemini

Join us in this engaging podcast featuring Spencer Tuttle, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Redis, as he shares his remarkable career journey and imparts invaluable insights into the art of building and scaling organizations. Spencer takes us on a journey through his career, starting with his early days at BMC and later advancing into leadership roles at AppDynamics. Key takeaways from this segment include Spencer's emphasis on mastering each role he undertook. He underscores the importance of learning from exceptional leaders and peers at every career stage, amalgamating their wisdom to forge his unique approach. Spencer's transition to AppDynamics is explored, wherein he unveils his attraction to the company, driven by its exceptional team and the boundless potential of its technology. The evolution of the sales playbook, especially within the context of subscription software, is also a focal point of discussion. The episode delves into Spencer's perspective on pressure, drawing from his experiences at BMC. He articulates how embracing pressure can be a privilege and offers sage advice on taking personal accountability and delivering results. Spencer's journey into first-line leadership is unveiled, where he lays out the critical importance of transparency, team-building, and nurturing a culture that fosters growth and enablement. Alignment between organizational culture and individual expectations is another crucial theme, offering profound insights for both budding and seasoned professionals. Join us for this enlightening exploration of Spencer Tuttle's remarkable career journey and the profound wisdom he has gathered along the way. This podcast series offers a wealth of knowledge on mastering roles, transitioning to leadership, and navigating the dynamic world of business, all delivered by a seasoned expert with a wealth of experience. Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights into building and growing successful organizations.

Today's guest is Firaas Rashid, CEO and Founder of Hook. Hook is the B2B SaaS platform focused on predictable revenue growth from existing customers. Backed by Lightspeed and LocalGlobe, Hook is revolutionising the way companies forecast their revenue growth using product usage and customer data. He is passionate about changing the way Customer Success is run and building the leading workplace for ambitious people who want to be part of a team. Before founding Hook, Firaas was CTO and Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at AppDynamics, scaling from $170m to $550m Annual Recurring Revenue in 2 years. He led a rapid journey of rebuilding Customer Success to focus on data-driven prioritisation and scale. Prior to that he was a Director of IT at Credit Suisse. This week's episode is brought to you by DuploCloud and Montpac. Checkout Duplocloud.com/uncharted to learn how they help automate tedious DevOps tasks and Montpac.com for all your finance and accounting needs. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uncharted1/support

Building a thriving business certainly has a lot to do with hard work, but it's just as much about having a strong network and leveraging those relationships. Today's guest has gathered incredible insights and connections in his long career  to build a platform that facilitates these critical partnerships. Today we sit down with Chad Cardenas, Founder and CEO of The Syndicate Group. The Syndicate Group is pioneering a new evolution of venture capital investing, helping startups scale faster by organizing exclusive investment access for strategics who commit capital, and support a company's go-to-market strategy.With 25 years in the enterprise technology sector, Chad maintains a wealth of experience in sales, leadership, business transformation, innovation, distribution channels, investing and go-to-market strategies. He previously co-founded Trace3 where he served as President and Chief Innovation Officer studying macro trends and their effects in the IT industry. He helped build the tech reseller and integrator to 400 people and over $500 million in revenue before a private equity event in 2017. The Syndicate Group was born out of these experiences based on the realization that startup founders need more than just capital. They need partners who can deliver economies of scale by selling or buying the startups, products, and services. The Syndicate Group aggregates those partners, and gives them skin in the game with pre-IPO investment access. The company's investment portfolio includes high flyers such as AppDynamics, CrowdStrike, Nutanix, Abnormal Security, and Cohesity, where Chad played a key role in driving an aggregate market value of over $30 billion.  Highlights: How TSG developed their unique business model (3:30) How The Syndicate Group's network opportunities are valuable to businesses (5:39) Chad describes the relationship between TSG and a startup in their network (7:53) Chad explains what came first: building syndicate or attracting deal flow (11:52) How TSG attracted initial investors to their business (13:15) How The Syndicate Group vets their potential investment companies (14:39) More about the specific sectors and business TSG focuses their work on (16:21) How TSG manages cap tables with startups that have numerous investors (17:53) Why investors are attracted to TSG's deal flow (19:52) How TSG maintains scaling and growth despite the complexity of the business (21:08) The growth and potential of TSG's business model and unique software platform (23:27) Chad describes the state of competition in the field (24:21) Chad explains the effects of a choppy economy and social climate on business in the VC sector (25:30) Up and coming companies in the Syndicate Group portfolio (27:27) Future pursuits and goals (28:42) Links:Chad Cardenas on LinkedInTSG on LinkedInTSG WebsiteICR LinkedInICR TwitterICR WebsiteFeedback:If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, marion@lowerstreet.co.

Christine Yen is not like other CEO's. She's an engineer, that co-founded a company that has gone onto become, not just a leader in an industry, but also a company that defined the industry category - Observability. I have watched and admired the rise of Honeycomb from a very close vantage point. Formerly in my role at Dynatrace, who is also a leader in this observability space, I saw them quietly go about their business, without really ruffling any feathers. The Datadog's, New Relic's, Appdynamics, and Dynatracers of the world would end up in head to head battles. We'd be quick to jibe back about each other's capabilities but Honeycomb seemed to be walking to the beat of it's own drum. It fascinated me to the point that I really wanted to know more. In this podcast, I had a long sit down, with Christine Yen, the companies co-founder and CEO. We talked about the companies origin and original idea, early success, through the challenges with Go To Market, and being a female tech leader. Enjoy. I certainly did.

(0:00) Intro(1:40) Welcome Jyoti Bansal(2:51) Time management(8:43) Finding product market fit(19:05) Product development cycle(23:12) Startups within startups(29:14) AppDynamics(34:14) Lessons for young founders(43:16) Hiring someone who's "been there, done that"(51:02) Process of fundraising(56:04) Reach the highest tier of VC firm(59:45) Finding investors that believe in you and your company(1:07:20) Founding AppD(1:13:47) Ending up a solo founder(1:20:42) Selling to Cisco(1:27:33) Current state of the markets(1:31:09) Jyoti's thoughts on AI Mixed and edited: Justin HrabovskyProduced: Rashad AssirExecutive Producer: Josh MachizMusic: Griff Lawson 

Brian McCarthy is an accomplished executive and leader with progressive sales and leadership experience building and leading talented teams to achieve hyper-growth within the enterprise software and information services industry. Brian serves as Rubrik's Chief Revenue Officer, where he leads the global go-to-market sales strategy. Previously he led the sales, services and support teams at ThoughtSpot, where he led the go-to-market function and the company's SaaS transformation. Preceding his time at ThoughtSpot, Brian came from AppDynamics, which was acquired by Cisco, where he was responsible for leading the Americas organization as GVP and from QlikTech where he served as President of the Americas. He graduated from Franciscan University.Join us as Brian shares shares insights on managing and enabling sales teams. He emphasizes the importance of caring for and developing employees, and the need for leaders to have a secure mindset. McCarthy and John McMahon discuss tracking deals and stages in the sales process, forecasting, and improving the probability of closing deals. Tons of lessons from two top-tier sales leaders shared on this episode of Revenue Builders.HERE ARE SOME KEY SECTIONS TO CHECK OUT:[0:01:15] Brian's background and experience in sales and leadership roles[0:09:30] Brian's approach to managing and training people[0:17:23] The importance of listening skills in leadership[0:24:33] The unique approach to enablement at Rubric[0:42:04] The critical stage in the sales process for forecasting[0:56:50] The metrics Brian tracks during and after the quarter[1:02:03] The importance of focusing on productivity in a growth company[1:04:35] The impact of churn on productivity and the importance of recruiting and training[1:14:55] Leaders who consistently over forecast or wear rose-colored glassesHIGHLIGHT QUOTES[0:40:33] Leaders job as an ultimate success - John McMahon: “Your job is to get the best players and coaches on your team. And then if you do, you're going to look like a freaking hero, right? And you also hit on something that's really critical is that ‘when is a leader's job done?'. A leader's job's done is when they've been able to prove that they were able to recruit people, train and develop those people to take their spot.That's when it's ultimate success”[1:13:49] The importance of looking at new and existing deals in the forecast - Brian: “I have a much better idea of exactly where they're going to land, plus or minus. And I usually tell them too, as I'm going through, I'll go through and be like, okay, so here's where each of your people are. Here's the range: worst is this all right, I think you're going to be about two and a half million more than you're calling here, but okay, got it.” Learn more about Brian through this link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkmccarthy/Check out John McMahon's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064

Join #CloudTalkLive and learn how to achieve full-stack observability for your business with AppDynamics! Host Jeff DeVerter and guest Keith Llorens will show you how to bridge the gap between IT and business teams, monitor your applications and infrastructure in real-time, and align your business objectives with your IT performance. Don't miss this game-changing transformation for your business!

Cisco's workforce is a diverse group of talented folks whose roles drive real impact across communities.Tune in to this episode to learn more about Nadine James, a global social impact leader with over 15 years of experience designing, launching, and scaling innovative community programs. We learn about Nadine's rich history—including what fuels her passion for social justice and her journey into tech. We gain a glimpse into her day-to-day life, learn more about “compassionate capitalism,” and discuss how this economic system can elevate the human experience. Host Sammy Brenner, Cisco, Virtual Sales Leader, MerakiGuest Nadine James, Cisco, Head of Global Social Impact & Community Engagement, AppDynamics

Jyoti Bansal is a serial entrepreneur, through and through. In 2008, he first made the leap from startup engineer to CEO with AppDynamics, a company that was acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion just under a decade later. After giving retirement a shot, he returned to the founder seat: he started software delivery unicorn Harness, cybersecurity platform Traceable, startup accelerator BIG Labs, and VC firm Unusual Ventures—and has more than 25 US patents under his name. Jyoti shares his simple formula for finding product-market fit, why ringing the Nasdaq closing bell was part of his Cisco negotiation, and how he's learned not to stress about things outside of his control.

This episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different is part of a very special two-part series that we are doing on how to design a legendary career, company and category. This two-part series is a masterclass on how to have a legendary career in technology from 2 different perspectives. On this episode, we have a dialogue with the legendary Joe Sexton. Joe Sexton has been a material contributor to creating well over $40 billion in market value over his legendary career. He's one of the most legendary sales revenues and frankly, overall company leaders I've met or ever had the pleasure of working with. There are many people who would easily pay $25,000 to have lunch with Joe, and today you got him for free and on repeat. So sit back and let this conversation take you into new heights and ideas in the next hour or so. How to Change to Conversation in Tech Industries Christopher and Joe reminisce on the time they spent working together, what they learned from each other during that time, and how they were able to apply what they had learned from each other to their own practices after they pursued their own paths. For Joe Sexton, it was all about changing the conversation about things. Whether he went to McAfee, CrowdStrike, and other different fields in tech, his understanding in improving their business and becoming business leaders in their respective categories was on how to change the conversation, i.e. making a radical change in the usual perspective of a certain product, or creating a new one for a problem that people didn't think of solving before. Know What You Know, and Execute Joe Sexton has taken may advisory roles over the course of his career, and have heard from CEOs that doesn't seem to know what exactly their company does, or what they do in it. “I've spoken literally to well over 100 CEOs in my board role. I've heard pitch after pitch after pitch, and 99 times out of 100, after a half hour of passionate talk and presentation by the CEO, I say, “I've been doing these 35 years, and I don't understand what you said. I mean, I only understand what you do.”” – Joe Sexton On the other hand, Joe has also worked with people who knew what they were good at, and got his help so they could focus on the thing they're good at, rather than stretching themselves thin. Of course, it doesn't mean that you only stay on that level for the rest of your company's development, but learning where you can help your business grow, especially during its start, can spell success or failure in startups and the like. Joe Sexton on Creating Your Opportunities When asked about how he would create opportunities for himself when he got started, Joe replies that that is one of the questions that young people ask him. To answer the question, Joe shares that one must have a good track record on their field and the data to back it up. Because when it's time to compete in the market, these two things will speak for themselves, rather than coming up with a soft pitch and hoping for the best. It's like explaining what you are worth to a company or a potential investor, without needing to resort to technical babble or telling your story from scratch. Having that track record and reputation and the data to back it up means that they have something to look into before you even meet, and that could put them at ease. To learn more about How To Design A Legendary Career, Company, And Category, download and listen to this episode. Bio Joe Sexton Mr. Joe Sexton is an accomplished technology executive who's been part of creating over $40 billion in value. He's served as CEO, President, CRO and SVP, advisor and/or board member for more than a dozen category designing technology firms. He is the former President of Worldwide Field Operations at AppDynamics. ($3.7B purchase by Cisco) Prior to AppDynamics, he spent significant time in senior leadership roles at McAfee ($5B public co), Mercury Interactive ($4.

David Thacker, General Partner at Greylock, shares insights from his career journey. He previously led product development at high-growth tech companies such as Google and LinkedIn and now invests in consumer and B2B2C tech startups. He discusses changes in the venture capital industry and their impact on fundraising for founders.In this episode, you'll learn:3:45 Make calculated bets during slow periods to capitalize on contrarian perspectives.12:16 Founders who start their company to solve a problem understood through a lived experience are able to build some of the best startups.18:30 How has investment decision-making changed since and after the pandemic?21:38 Is venture capital still patient?The non-profit organization that David is passionate about: Tipping PointAbout Guest SpeakerDavid Thacker is a General Partner at Greylock, where he invests in technology startups that focus on solving significant challenges through exceptional product design. He has been at the forefront of Greylock's investments in companies such as Curated, Instawork, Pragma, Wealthsimple, and AmplifyMD, to name a few. Prior to joining Greylock, David had an impressive career as a technologist, having held key product leadership roles at renowned companies like Google and LinkedIn.About GreylockGreylock is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that  invests in entrepreneurs that focus on consumer and enterprise software companies. The firm has invested in market-defining companies, including Airbnb, AppDynamics, Apptio, Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET), Cloudera, Docker, Dropbox, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Medium, Nextdoor, Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW),Pandora (NYSE: P), Pure Storage, and Workday (NYSE: WDAY).Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode. Follow Us:  Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Harness is an emerging leader in the CICD (continuous development) space. Last valued at $3.7B in a 2022 fundraise, this is Jyoti Bansal's second enterprise software unicorn. His first startup Appdynamics was acquired by Cisco the night before their IPO in 2017. In this episode, Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal and Unusual founder John Vrionis take us back 15 years to when Appdynamics first got started. They walk us through their learnings around customer discovery and the journey from having a unique product insight to finding product market fit. With stories from the early days of Harness, we cover: (1:45) How Jyoti arrived at his original insight for Harness (3:27) John and Jyoti on the Unusual Method — a rigorous playbook that they co-teach at Unusual Ventures to help founders find product-market fit (6:33) Why cold outreach - and not friendly conversations - is the best way to validate early assumptions (12:11) How Jyoti looked for early adopters outside Silicon Valley during the customer discovery phase (14:08) Why doing your own cold outreach as a founder is an irreplaceable activity (19:40) How to articulate the business value of your solution so prospects have a reason to buy (23:28) Iterating on your messaging and ICP If you are not seeing similar patterns around the pain (24:42) How Jyoti constructs messaging and defines the “minimum sellable product” (29:15) The surprises Jyoti encountered during customer discovery for Harness (31:55) Why and how exactly founders should focus on efficiency during an economic downturn Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Customer Discovery: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/outreach-playbook Early customer outreach: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/outreach-playbook What are design partners?: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/what-are-design-partners

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast, sponsored by AppDynamics, explores how AppDynamics Cloud brings observability to your Kubernetes deployments by ingesting and visualizing all metrics, events, log and trace data from across your cloud and on-prem landscapes.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast, sponsored by AppDynamics, explores how AppDynamics Cloud brings observability to your Kubernetes deployments by ingesting and visualizing all metrics, events, log and trace data from across your cloud and on-prem landscapes. The post Day Two Cloud 168: Get Kubernetes Observability With AppDynamics Cloud (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast, sponsored by AppDynamics, explores how AppDynamics Cloud brings observability to your Kubernetes deployments by ingesting and visualizing all metrics, events, log and trace data from across your cloud and on-prem landscapes.

Before Zscaler's Dali Rajic arrived at his current company, he helped grow AppDynamics from $7 million in annual recurring revenue to nearly $1 billion — and for his next move, he knew he had to do something even bigger. That's why he was excited to transition to Zscaler's COO in February after more than two years as its CRO: “It was a job worth taking because it stretched me and it made me uncomfortable.”In this episode, Dali and Joubin discuss the state of tech M&A, the meaning of wealth and comfort, the value of hard work, being perceived as intense, going into business instead of science, inspiring your kids, bucketing how your spend your time, integrity and self-awareness, how to recognize your teammates' contributions, injecting tension, cutting through the noise, demanding excellence of yourself, celebrating the moment, and allowing yourself to unwind.In this episode, we cover: Adobe's $20 billion acquisition of Figma, compared to Cisco's 2017 acquisition of AppDynamics (01:18) What AppDynamics could have become if it hadn't sold (08:17) Remembering your roots when you get a life-changing amount of money (12:26) Growing up in Germany, and why Dali came to the US when he was 16 (18:56)  Living to work and finding fulfillment (23:16) The old-school sales style vs. the new generation's (26:10)  The unusual way Dali got hired at AppDynamics, and how he thinks about the arc of his career (30:15) Asking for the things you want and prioritizing your responsibilities (35:59) Hiring mistakes and what traits Dali looks for in candidates (45:36) How to turn big wins into learning moments (50:28) The benefits of making people “uncomfortable” in their jobs (55:23) Maximizing yield for individuals vs. organizations (01:01:39) Why Dali schedules his time off as strictly as his time on (01:08:35) Links: Connect with DaliLinkedIn Connect with Joubin Twitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

In this episode from February 2019, Jyoti Bansal, founding CEO of AppDynamics and co-founder of Unusual Ventures, joins a16z general partner Peter Levine, a16z partner Sateesh Talluri, and host Sonal Choksi to discuss how product and sales evolve together for enterprise go-to-market, including key milestones for both product development and marketing, frameworks for how to think about pre- to post-product market fit, the role of additional levers like services or pricing, and more.For the show transcript, you can go here.