Prem Jain is a UC Davis alumni, and an incredibly accomplished founder, CEO, and engineer. He spent 23 years at Cisco systems, during which he was a member of the elite trio known internally as MarioPremLuca or MPLS. These engineers were funded by Cisco to participate in “Spin ins” – a form of R&D in which Cisco funds experimental startups (some of which were led by Jain) then, if they’re successful, purchases them for a healthy price.

“[Prem Jain’s] team and their startups were responsible for every breakout product that Cisco created in the past two decades.” – UC Davis Leadership

After his time at Cisco, Jain founded Pensando systems, a data center optimization startup, then retired after it was sold to AMD in a transaction valued at $1.9 billion.

In this episode, Prem Jain joined us at the Startup Center to discuss finding a niche, determining if the market is ready for an idea, networking, his definition of failure, and much more!