Why/What/How & My Learnings…

Poojan Kumar (CEO & Co-founder, Clumio)

Entrepreneurship

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My Background

• Grew up in India, did my Bachelors in Computer Science @ IIT Bombay• Masters, Computer Science @ Stanford• Oracle (Co-founder of Oracle Exadata)• Co-founder & VP Eng, PixBlitz [10 people company]• VMware (Head of Data Products)• Co-founder & CEO, PernixData (acquired by Nutanix) [$65M venture capital raised over

4 years; $20M annual revenue; 200 people company]• Nutanix (VP, Engineering & Products)• Current: Co-founder & CEO, Clumio (Founded Oct 2017, 15 people today)

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Passion

• Creation• Technology, but also the Business of Technology

• Solving problems that someone is willing to pay for (enterprise space)

• Comfortable taking risks to chase a dream…

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If we can build it, they will come.

B2B Infrastructure, biotech

Examples: Snowflake Computing, Pure Storage

We can build it, will they come?

Consumer, business applications

Examples: Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Uber

If we can build it, will they come?

Hobbyists

Examples: Personal computers (inexpensive hobby), rockets (expensive hobby)

No man’s land.

Service businesses like consulting

High

Low

DEMAND RISK

TECHNICAL RISK

Low

High

Framework

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Entrepreneurship: Why?

• 3 reasons why people start companies• To change the world• To become famous• To make a LOT of money

• Turns out that to achieve any one of them, you have to achieve the other two

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Entrepreneurship: What?

• Risk Taking• Experience• Big Idea: Find a big problem and a discontinuity in the industry• Money

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Entrepreneurship: How?

• Risk Taking• Think of non linear progression, not just linear progression

• Experience• One of the best experiences you can get is joining EARLY in a startup

• Big Idea• Think of big problems that can take advantage of discontinuity and doing more with software

• Raise Money!

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Discontinuity Example: PernixData

© PernixData. All rights reserved.

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Scale-out storage performance using any server media

Hypervisor

Decouple storage performance from capacity

Any shared storage for capacity and data

services

FVP Software

• 10x Faster VMs• Scale-out IOPS with compute• 95% lower storage costs

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Help me Raise Money!

• What do you really need?• Big idea & discontinuity• Awesome team (Co-founders & Complimentary Skills)• Product Clarity & deep understanding of Competition• Technology / IP (Defensible)• GTM Strategy• Reference Customers• Execution (Timeline, What/When/How, How much Money)• The above is your deck!

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Example

• PernixData: 2 guys and a powerpoint! Raised $7M Series A • Took 25 engineers and 1.5 years to create a 1.0• Took raising $65M over 4 years to create a business ($20M/year, ~1000 customers at

acquisition)• Lesson: Easy to create products in PPT, but requires money in reality• Clumio: 3 guys and a powerpoint! • Will take 35 engineers and 1.5 years to create a 1.0• Will take raise hundreds of millions over the next 5-7 years to create a multi billion dollar

company

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Remember!

• There is NO company without MONEY• If you cannot raise money for your idea, go find another idea • How much MONEY?

• Money that takes you from point A to point B• Example: For a enterprise product from PPT to early product with customers• Then you raise more money to scale and show how you can scale revenue by scaling sales

and marketing (AKA find a product market fit)• Then you raise money to scale even further and innovate more• And that’s what’s called Series A, Series B, Series C• Don’t go over your skies• THERE IS NO FINISH LINE!

Company Evolution Example: PernixData

© PernixData. All rights reserved. 12

Founded

Feb

2012

Aug

2013

FVP 1.0First clustered solution with read/write

May

201

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FVP 2.01st to support flash and RAM

Aug

2014

First Full Fiscal Year - $9.3 million

~400 customers200k VMs optimized

Feb

2014

Feb

2015

Aug

2015

FVP 3.0

500+ customersArchitect 1.0

Q1

2016

First paying customer

FVP Freedom

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What makes a Company?

• Team• Big Idea & Discontinuity• Right Investors• Great Board• Great Advisors

• Surround yourself with the RIGHT advisors• PernixData: Mark Leslie, John Thompson, Paul Sallaberry and more

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Don’t forget to Learn!

• Listen to the Market• An Entrepreneur needs to have a BIG long term vision but also the ability to LISTEN to

the market and be nimble

• Be a sponge!• Listen to what your advisors and board says• Listen to your sales• Listen to your customers• Be open-minded

• Take advantage of Silicon Valley! Don’t settle…• And last but not the least, DON’T LOSE YOUR ATTENTION TO DETAIL

every step along the way…

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Some words to live by….

The secret of getting ahead“is getting started”

- Mark Twain

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Thank You!