When Asheem Chandna drove as much as Rubrik’s workplace in Palo Alto on a Friday evening in early 2015, he was trying ahead to studying what the younger firm that had but to construct its product would present him. The Greylock companion wasn’t dissatisfied.
The corporate’s CEO, Bipul Sinha, drew Rubrik’s plan to revamp the info administration and restoration market on a whiteboard. “The old versus new architecture he presented was very compelling,” Chandna mentioned. “Based on my knowledge of the sector, I knew it could be built into a large business.”
That was a prescient name. On Thursday, 9 years after that assembly, Rubric started its life as a publicly traded firm with a market cap of over $6 billion. Greylock holds a 13% stake, according to the latest SEC filings. By the shut of market Friday, with shares priced at $38, these almost 19.9 million shares have been price over $756 million.
However Chandna says it was way more than Rubrik’s want to tackle the arcane knowledge restoration market that motivated him to steer Rubrik’s $40 million Series B in Might 2015. (The Sequence B spherical bought for $2.45/share, adjusting for splits, in response to these SEC paperwork. Whereas Greylock additionally participated in later rounds at greater costs, Chandra’s returns on this one are hefty.)
“The longer I do what I do, the more I fundamentally believe that venture is a people business,” mentioned Chandna, who has been an investor for over 20 years and has an enviable monitor document of profitable exits. He has helped incubate Palo Alto Networks in Greylock’s workplaces and was on the almost $100 billion-worth firm’s board till final yr. Chandna was additionally an early investor in AppDynamics, Sumo Logic and Arista Networks.
Chandna appears to be like for people who find themselves not solely motivated and impressive, however are additionally self-aware of their weaknesses, and may recruit individuals who can get issues finished in areas that aren’t the founder’s sturdy fits.
One other important ingredient for a founder is grit. “If you had technology that was adequate, but slightly inferior to my technology, but you were very self-aware and persistent, you will beat me,” he mentioned.
That’s what he noticed in Sinha. Rubrik’s founder had a lifelong dream of beginning an organization. When he based the info administration and restoration startup in 2013, he couldn’t discover sturdy engineers who wished to come back work there, Chandra recalled. The enterprise he was making an attempt to construct was inherently not horny on the time.
Regardless of having been an investor with Lightspeed for 4 years earlier than launching Rubrik, recruiting expertise turned out to be an enormous problem for Sinha. However he didn’t quit. He pinged engineers on LinkedIn after which invited them for espresso blocks away from the place they labored.
“Startup journeys are very hard, even for the most successful companies,” Chandna mentioned. “I want people who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Maybe it was Sinha’s grit and ambition that compelled him to take his firm public regardless of the lukewarm IPO atmosphere.
“Rubric has just under $800 million in annualized recurring revenue,” Chandna mentioned, “That’s larger than most companies that went public in the last many years. I think they just wanted to get on with it.”
Chandna declined to say if he expects different Greylock portfolio corporations to comply with Rubrik’s lead however added emphatically that the agency’s best-performing late-stage companies are Irregular Safety, Cato Networks, Discord, Figma and Lyra Well being.
We shall be following their destiny intently.
