Buchi Reddy Busi Reddy, Co-Founder & CEO @ Levo.ai, joins us to reveal how lessons learned as an eng leader at AppDynamics and other Silicon Valley experiences provided him with the skills & inspiration to co-found Levo.ai. We cover considerations for building security-focused products as a start-up; finding product-market fit & securing your first customers; identifying your product’s champion & finding the data / narratives that support your product; and pricing strategies. Additionally, Buchi shares his personal story of navigating the personal & logistical considerations of attaining an H1-B visa, providing valuable insight for any immigrant founders.

ABOUT BUCHI REDDY BUSI REDDY

Buchi is the CEO and co-founder of Levo.ai, which is on a mission to protect all the APIs and apps in the world to make the digital world more secure. Buchi is a domain expert in APM (Application Performance Management), Observability, distributed tracing and API security areas. He has built multiple enterprise SaaS products in his career. Buchi lives with his wife and son in Bay Area. Loves hiking and dad time.

"Listen to the customers, listen to the companies and that champion will probably make it a bit easier for you to sell to that company. The champion by definition is bought into the concept of they know this problem exists and they can tell inside the company that this problem is there and we need a solution and they also bought into the fact that they like your solution and they would like to buy it. The biggest thing is finding the champion. If you do that, your life becomes a lot more easy.”

- Buchi Reddy Busi Reddy   

Join us at ELC Annual 2023!

ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.

Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco

For tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:

• Buchi’s leadership journey throughout Silicon Valley w/ AppDynamics & more (1:41)
• What inspired Buchi to transition from eng leadership to founding (5:13)
• The role of commitment in overcoming founder challenges & building resiliency (7:43)
• Strategies for filtering & focusing your ideas (9:42)
• Consider the personal risks of the H1-B visa journey (12:02)
• Navigating the logistical side of the H1-B visa process (14:05)
• Eng leadership lessons from past experiences that Buchi is manifesting @ Levo (15:57)
• Buchi’s experience releasing Levo & securing its first customers (19:57)
• Insights on identifying & motivating your champion (22:10)
• Data / stories that Buchi provided to support the product (24:28)
• How & why Buchi determined Levo’s pricing models (28:06)
• Questions to help evaluate / organize the pricing model thought process (30:42)
• Tactics for communicating as a founder without technical language & buzzwords (33:51)
• Rapid fire questions (36:17)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The Best One Yet - Feel brighter every day with our 20-minute pop-biz podcast. The 3 business news stories you need, with fresh takes you can pretend you came up with — Pairs perfectly with your morning oatmeal ritual.
• The Tim Ferriss Show - Tim Ferriss deconstructs world-class performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc.), digging deep to find the tools, tactics, and tricks that listeners can use.
• All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Industry veterans, degenerate gamblers & besties Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social & poker.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/