UNPAK3D Podcast

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Shyam Rao, the founder and CEO of Punchh, for a deep dive into the world of startups and entrepreneurship. Shyam shares his wealth of experience, from bootstrapping Punchh in its early days to scaling it into a successful venture.

We talk to Sumit Agarwal the founder of Ario and Shape Security (acq by F5 for $1B). We decrypt the the journey from the military to building a deep cybersecurity product and now a personal AI assistant. Listen in to uncover his 3D framework that guided the journey of Shape and now Ario. We wrap with how to navigate M&A, a theme which we believe is going to be a key topic in several board meetings this and next year.

3:13 - Sumit's Journey from Air Force to Security to AI

10:07 - Identifying Hard, Valuable, Fun Opportunities

19:24 - Building 3D defensible, differentiated, delightful tech in tough markets

28:33 - Identifying the right talent

37:38 - How to be Customer Focused NOT Revenue Focused

46:02 - Unlocking Value to Drive Price

55:07 - Solving the demand bottleneck in M&A

58:26 - Decompressing with family

In this episode, we talk to Cedric Bru, the CEO of Taulia. Cedric joined the company after spending 7 years as an exec at Visa. In this episode, we dive deeply into how Cedric put his imprint on the business and navigated a crisis with one of their partners going bankrupt.

1:29 - Cedric’s journey into entrepreneurship and going from big company to startup
18:39 - Embracing the possibility of failure when running a startup
23:40 - Developing a high performance culture
35:28 - Putting your imprint on the business as a new leader

46:15 - Navigating the Greensill Crisis

53:10 - Work life balance
1:03:34 - Advice to start companies in a challenging macro

In this episode we have a great conversation with Varun Badhwar. Varun sold his first company, Redlock, to Palo Alto for over $200M. He recently embarked on his 2nd journey to build Endor Labs, where he raised a $70M Series A to secure the software supply chain.

In this episode we cover:

1:04 - Varun’s foray into startups
8:57 - Hiring and building the best when $s are constrained
17:33 - Positioning for success in a noisy market
32:02 - Early GTM Success in an expensive environment
41:08 - Navigating the Palo Alto Acquisition
50:06 - Spotlight on Endor Labs
58:50 - Decompress

1:12 - Story at Microsoft
9:54 - Dealing with ups and downs
14:30 - Bob’s new book “The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future”
17:55 - Culture through scaling
24:26 - What do you look for when hiring
35:20 - Strategies to compete in the modern landscape
50:42 - Threading the needle

In this episode we cover Mahe's journey to being a founder, how Phenom found it's niche and what makes them successful as a business

1:12 - Mahe’s journey
8:01 - AI’s role in business
20:09 - How do you find a wedge in today’s software saturated world?
29:38 - Building/hiring for a sustainable organization
45:32 - Scaling a business

Join us for this fantastic conversation with Amr Awadallah, the founder of Cloudera and Vectara. We covered a wide range of topics on company building and lessons learned during a long, successful career.

00:45- Amr’s journey to the Valley and breaking in as an immigrant

6:22- Embarking on the Entrepreneurial Journey and Building a Lasting Business

23:30- The art of blending simplicity with technical depth in product

25:05- Balancing culture and talent

31:20- Spotlight on Vector

38:05- Signs of PMF, When to Speed Up and How to Sustain Growth at Scale

42:15- Decompress and Accomplishing your Mission

In this episode we cover:

00:56- Glen's journey to entrepreneurship + healthcare and the learnings along the way

15:19- Getting timing right in healthcare

21:04- Building great culture in tough times

26:40- Hiring the best leaders and putting together an exceptional board

30:11- Advice on scaling at different stages of the business

36:00- Accomplishing his life's mission and staying mentally energized through the journey

On this episode, we go through Andrew's journey through 2 startups and dive into some very interesting lessons learned along the way.

1:20- Andrew's background and journey

4:19- Why Jellyfish and why now? + The market opportunity

15:08- Selecting design partners + Learning from the "No's"

20:36- Tying Vision and Culture

24:58- Andrew's Leadership style + Hiring the right people

32:20- What kept Andrew up at night post-PMF

34:31- Decompressing + Staying mentally fit through the journey

Dheeraj Pandey was the Founder, CEO & Chairman of Nutanix. Nutanix was the fastest company to achieven US$1B ARR scale and the biggest IPO in 2016. He is now working on his next company DevRev. Prior to founding Nutanix, Dheeraj was the VP of Engineering at Aster Data (acquired by Teradata), where he helped build the product and its engineering team from the ground up.

In This Epsiode with Dheeraj, We Discuss: