About this episode
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
