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:

Where to find Jyoti:

Where to find Brett:

Where to find First Round Capital:

References:

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