Rubrik CEO: From A $1,000-A-Month Garage In San Francisco To A Public Company

0:00Bipul Sinha:In 2017-18, we bet the whole company on this cyber recovery and cyber resilience angle because what we realized was you can't prevent the unpreventable. You can't stop all cyber attacks and cyber attacks will be successful. How do you keep your services up and running to ensure that banks can still have the ATM working, hospitals can still do patient care and things like that. And now with AI and AI-induced attacks or AI-powered attacks, it's only accelerating this phenomenon. In some ways, the old world of cybersecurity is dead.

0:44What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty-gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change? I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

1:22Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. I'm your host, Jessica Neal. And I have my co-host here, Peter Clark. Hi, Pete. Hey. How are you doing today? Doing well. Okay. Are you ready for this? My guest co-host, you know, we'll see. When I'm interim, right? You are interim. You're trying out. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'm trying to get the interim or guest co-host removed, you know, so I'm just the standard. Well, let's see how you do today, you know. Our guest is going to let us. Help me out. It's a trial for me. Our guest is going to let us know. and you said his name, so I'll say his name.

1:59We have Bipple Sina here on the show today, and he is the CEO and founder of a company that many of you have probably heard of. It's called Rubrik. And Rubrik is, he's going to tell us all about it, but I feel like you're at this really crucial inflection point for all of us in technology right now, Bipple, and I want to hear about that. But I also want to hear about your story, your story as becoming a founder, because you grew up and I think your dad was a bit of an entrepreneur, if I remember correctly. And so maybe it's just in your blood, but you were an operator and investor and now you're a founder and CEO.

2:39So we want to know the story. Go back, go back in time with your dad. How did this all happen?

2:46Bipul Sinha:Thank you, Jessica and Pete. Much appreciated the opportunity. look everybody is a product of how they grew up and what are the influences around them and in many ways I say that I'm my dad's spokesperson I'm the embodiment of his ambition and I was not a great student I didn't go to a proper middle school or high school and after a government high school in India in a tier four city he asked me to drop out after that and don't go to a local college because unemployment rate was 90 % back in the day because the education was not great and I was not a good student. And he said, why don't you drop out, prepare at home and give this entrance examination to the top school in India, which has like 1 % acceptance rate.

3:36Bipul Sinha:And this was like an impossible dream because I didn't know any English and I wasn't a great student and I didn't have background to go to a top school. And first time I gave the exam, I failed. And then he said, what's the worst can happen, drop out again. And I sat at home and my choices were either I make into a top school, engineering school in India, or sell tobacco in the street corner. I mean, there's literally binary choices. And I'm here talking to you as all the result of his belief and ambition. And one thing led to the other and I came to America and here I am. And you passed that exam and that exam was to get into IIT, right?

4:18Bipul Sinha:Yes, that exam was to get into IIT. I studied electrical engineering there. Okay. And just so everyone knows, I mean, that is a very, very, very hard school to get into. Not many people get into it. I'm sure many, many apply. But back in the day, and I don't know about you, Pete, but Pete and I I both grew up in recruiting. I eventually went into HR. But I only look for engineers that were coming out of IIT. That was like criteria. I was like, wait, if they didn't graduate from there, we don't want to talk to them. But I mean, amazing engineers were produced out of IIT. So it's a hard exam. I mean, it's an elimination process.

4:59Bipul Sinha:And when you have a country of a billion people and a few hundred thousand people appear in these exams and you are taking back in the day. like 2 ,000 kids will get admission across four, five campuses. It was a tough thing. But at some level, being in an isolated environment and not knowing the odd against you is somewhat positive, right? That's why they say ignorance is bliss. Yeah. Yeah. And so you go to IIT, you major in electrical engineering, and then what happens? So coming out of college, I got a job at IBM, Tata IBM, and I was the primary breadwinner of the family because our family back then was very, very poor.

5:39Bipul Sinha:And I needed a job to support the family. And one of the reasons I wanted to come to America was to earn in dollars because back 30 years ago, a dollar was 40 rupees. So that was the fastest way to take the family out of poverty. And I started to kind of ask my friends that how can I get a job in America? One thing led to the other and a company in Atlanta gave me a job. And I landed about 29 years ago. Wow. Amazing. What was that company? American Megatrends. Those guys used to make server boxes and motherboards and BIOS. And it was a very interesting journey for me. I was one year out of college and I came to America as a hardware engineer.

6:26Bipul Sinha:and then shortly thereafter started doing software and then came to Silicon Valley about 27 years ago. So you moved to Atlanta and then a couple of years later, you get to Silicon Valley. Yes. And what was that like? It was very scary because back in 1999, you go to any party. That was like the boom. That was a boom time. You go to any party and everybody was becoming millionaire and billionaires. and my wife had left her job and had joined UC for her master's. So we went from double income to single income and the cost of living just ballooned. And you come to Silicon Valley and it was boom time.

7:09Bipul Sinha:I joined Oracle. And it was a little scary because the apartments will not give you a long-term contract. The cost of everything was ballooning. At one point, I felt like the poorest guy on the street. time might get priced out of Silicon Valley. Yeah. Well, I moved to San Francisco right around the same time. I think I moved in 2000. You know, it was a little bit after I graduated college, 99 or 2000. And I could not afford an apartment. So I had to rent an apartment that was actually a garage in San Francisco. I had to keep my clothes in the trunk of my car because this was like, this area was like closed, San Francisco woods.

8:03Do you know that area? It's like nice houses, but anyways, it's kind of foggy all the time. So it was foggy all the time and it smelled like mildew in my closet. So I had to keep all my clothes in the trunk of my car. And my parents came to visit me and they came by my apartment and my mom like was like please to my my dad please get her out of this like apartment and he's like no she's fine good life lesson yeah but i yeah i was paying a thousand dollars to live in a garage i know those are the times you think yeah i mean but builds character 100 percent so you you move to the valley it's boom time it's scary you start working for oracle which is a better bet than a startup at that time.

8:48Bipul Sinha:I mean, obviously, after 2001, it was very clear that Oracle was a better place. Yeah. You know, also living in Silicon Valley and through these cycles, it also gives you perspective about what is long lasting and what is temporary. And back in the day, with so many companies going public and everybody making money on everything, and everything was expensive. I remember one news story that made a lot of noise about how a startup was giving BMWs to engineers to join them. And that made like such a splash. But also it kind of told you that focus on value creation, not just on the hype of like what is highly valued or what has more money today.

9:35So true. So true.

9:36Bipul Sinha:Good advice today again. Yeah, I know. I feel like I don't think we're there at the give the BMW away, but it's getting interesting. BMW is not expensive enough. They're giving away Porsches. Yeah, maybe that's the thing for these AI companies to start giving away. But then you stay at Oracle for a while, but then somehow you get into investing. So I spent about seven, eight years at Oracle, and I really got incredible experience in terms of the talent around Oracle, the new things that we were building. We were the first company who built a larger scale distributed system on Linux. And also just the ambition of Oracle, Larry's persona imposed into the company.

10:26Bipul Sinha:So it was really an incredible experience for me. I worked with a really amazing set of people like Snowflake founders were my colleagues. Nutanix founder was my colleague. My product manager went on to start his company. So there's a lot of talent that came out. But at one point, I thought that while I'm good at engineering, I'm not like passionate about spending all my life in engineering. I wanted to look at businesses more holistically. And as a result, I decided to join MBA part time and then convinced a venture capitalist to give me a job as investing. And I didn't know much about venture capital back in the day.

11:02Bipul Sinha:But kudos to him that he gave me an opportunity. And that was Lightspeed, right? No, this was before Lightspeed, a small firm called Blumberg Capital. Okay. And so then you went to Lightspeed after that? Then I went to Lightspeed. Okay. And how long were you an investor? Probably close to 10 years, maybe a little bit less than that. Okay. Which, you know, now I'm at TCV and Pete's at Excel. So we are in that world. And it really does give you a very different perspective on things because you're looking at so many different businesses. And the breadth is so, I personally think is so interesting.

11:41And so what was it about you that you loved about investing or didn't maybe?

11:47Bipul Sinha:So in the early days, I loved investing because it allowed me to kind of learn about a new subject area, a new business area very, very quickly because you don't have months and months to make a decision about an investment. You have to learn about that space, meet really smart people, understand their motives, understand their background. And you have to make a call whether this thing will make money or not. So that was extremely exciting. And venture is like an elimination job. You are meeting hundreds of people and making maybe two investments a year. So it's kind of like a lot of thinking about what can go wrong.

12:26Bipul Sinha:and after some time in venture capital what i realized was that humans have two estates the state of intellect and the state of will so if you look at investors they work from the state of intellect they are pessimistic what is the downside what could go wrong why would this succeed because you are eliminating and when you are an entrepreneur so then you are in the state of will and the state of will is is optimistic because you have a portfolio of one and you are going to succeed and drive no matter what. And I felt like I'm better suited in the state of will than in the state of intellect. Yeah.

13:05So was there something that happened that gave you that aha, or you just kind of got there over time?

13:13Bipul Sinha:So I was observing a few things. In many situations, I would be the first investor in companies and I'll sit with entrepreneurs and kind of work with them in terms of the company building. And over time, I realized that I have lots of ideas in terms of how to build culture, how to build companies, how to market products for companies. And then I also realized that unlike many investors, I was also an operator and also product builder and engineer. So in some ways, I was thinking that, hey, I'm sitting on the sideline and all these entrepreneurs are running and I'm clapping on the sideline. And if I know these things about product, about operations, about market, why not jump in and apply all your ideas and live in that state of will of creating something?

14:03Bipul Sinha:And at some point, you would realize that if I ask you who was the funder of Microsoft, you would not know it or not remember it. But you all know the founder of Microsoft. Yeah. I realized that in the valley, for good or for bad, founders have a very distinct kind of recognition. And I want to create something because, look, I came to America as a very poor kid, got so many opportunities in America, very lucky to be an American. And it was my way to create something which is lasting for America. I know. I bet your dad is like so proud. He's no more. He passed away five years ago, but he did see the rubrics beginning.

14:51Good. And so what did he have to say about all this?

14:55Bipul Sinha:He will not tell me directly, but my mom used to say that. Come on, dads. Come on, dads. He was very excited to see that I started a company, and it felt like that it is a right path for me to be an artist. Yeah, so amazing. So Pete, you do the rubric side. Well, yeah, but I actually back to the Bloomberg to Lightspeed. I mean, what you said you got the opportunity to jump into venture and then it was a couple of years before Lightspeed came calling. How did that transition occur? How'd you get to know the various teams there that sort of helped kind of make that change for you? I was very happy at Blumberg Capital.

15:37Bipul Sinha:We were doing like early stage CDJ investments. And then one day I got a LinkedIn message from Ravi Matre, who is the founder and the CEO of Lightspeed now. And he wanted to meet with me. And so we got together somewhere in the middle because I was in the city and he was on Sand Hill. So we met somewhere in Burlingame area. and then one thing led to the other. I thought that in spite of so much success at Lightspeed, the hunger was there to go win bigger and better deals, really make an impactful firm. And they had the capital base to really take on the bet that will really propel the firm to the next level.

16:22Bipul Sinha:And that was really exciting. And I met with all his partners and there was a little bit of a meeting of mind that this is the right place for me. So I decided to leave Blumberg. I still have great relationship with David. He was incredible. He's an incredible person. He gave me an opportunity to be in venture. But I went to Lightspeed and worked there for four years and then decided to leave to start Roomba. I was going to ask that. The round came together so quickly and Lightspeed didn't let me get out of the room when I first told them the story. So they wrote a$10 million check, Lightspeed, just on the PowerPoint presentation.

17:03Bipul Sinha:Back then, 12 years ago, that was a big deal. And then we had a few other angel investors who came together. But it really came together very, very quickly. And I didn't have a chance to include a lot of even my friends. So pre-Rubic, what investments at Lightspeed did you do or did you like? I'm just curious what you were excited about when you were investing before you sort of switched to starting Rubrik. I was very lucky to be part of a few situations that went on to become a very large company. I was involved with Nutanix as the first investor, first board member. Nutanix went public. I also put together the founding team of Brace.

17:46Bipul Sinha:And Brace went on to become a public company. I was part of the deal team that invested in Snapchat. So that was also a great experience. Although I was not the lead, Jeremy Liu led the round from Lightspeed, but I was part of the team and I saw how two people can really went out to start off a very large social phenomena. You know, when you see these situations, these ambitious entrepreneurs going out there and creating things, it inspires you. Mm-hmm. It does. Yeah. So you were inspired and started Rubric. But I feel like from what I remember about Rubric in the early days, it's not the Rubric it is today.

18:28Is that?

18:29Bipul Sinha:So I had to raise capital quickly because as I was saying, Lightspeed didn't let us out of the room. So we picked the name Scaled Data as the name of the company to raise capital. and I wanted to build a long-term company. And I never believed in a solo founder kind of a story because long-term companies are built on the back of great product and great technology and great culture. So I called three of my friends and four of us literally sat in a room to get Rubrik started. And we set a deadline that within six months, rename the company to the actual name. And I used to do ice cream socials from 4.30 to 5.30 every afternoon, every weekday afternoon, and get all our engineers to come together to pick up names.

19:22Bipul Sinha:And one of my co-founders and one of our founding engineers, together they picked the name Rubrik. And on the first glance, I didn't like that name. Really? I like it. And I had to sleep on it. and next day when I got up, I thought, wow, this is a great name. I was too confused about it. And first thing I did was I went and bought the URL and domain and then announced to the company that we are now Rubrik. What was your first choice for a name then before Rubrik? I don't want to even say it. They still make fun of me. Well, you know, Reed once changed our, well, I guess it was before it was red.

20:04Netflix, we were purple. if you can imagine that it didn't look very good and yeah anyway so don't be embarrassed it's all an evolution so you go you're a founder and you had been an operator and an investor but never a founder what was the thing that was hardest for you so this was the first time

20:29Bipul Sinha:rubric is the first startup that i ever worked in so i never worked at a startup never been a founder. I'd only managed 15 people at max before this. So every experience was new for me. But one thing that I realized in venture capital was that talent is, everybody says that they want to hire top talent, but hiring top talent is saying is one thing and realizing and doing it is something else. And I thought I was a hotspot VC. As soon as I come out, you'll have 20 people will join me overnight. And I said, I want to be the recruiter for Rubrik. I don't want to hire a recruiting firm or any other recruiter because I wanted to feel the pain of recruiting top people.

21:16Bipul Sinha:And I remember, I mean, I had a lot of networks, so I brought in a bunch of people. My co-founder rejected everybody. They said they are not good enough. And then many people that I knew who were really good, they had some life situation or some professional situation. They were not ready to leave. so after 45 days of rubric i had zero hire i literally remember i used to get up two o 'clock in the morning with sweat thinking what did i do with my career because these guys are not letting me hire anybody we have to build this product we have only 10 million dollars in the bank and i don't want to run out of money yeah and it was very scary so i remember after like 45-50 days, I told Radhika, my wife, that give me permission to not have breakfast or dinner at home.

22:07Bipul Sinha:I want to dedicate the next 90 days, whatever it takes to recruit. And what I did was, since we were doing backup and back in the day, the market was all about mobile and social and local and Uber. So I created a pitch deck about why this company has a chance to succeed and what the price of success is. So I created a pitch deck for candidates. And I used to sit next to Google Office and YouTube Office since like seven o 'clock in the morning. And I used to cold call people on LinkedIn. And on the first meeting, I'll meet them physically and pitch them on rubric with a pitch deck. And after another 45 days, I could hire four people.

22:51And that really started the rubric

22:55Bipul Sinha:recruiting train, but it really taught me about the effort it is needed to really recruit the top people. And that foundation or that the DNA of the company in terms of hiring top talent still persist. And I'm still as hard about hiring top people as I was back in the day. I love that. I mean, this is something that Pete and I preach all day long. Some listen, Some don't, but I think as a founder, as a CEO, your primary job is that. It's building the company. And those that recognize that and get that early on, it turns out much better than the ones that don't. It's a hard thing to do, I must say.

23:42Bipul Sinha:If somebody asked me recently that if you ever go and start another company, I said, I can't even imagine how hard it is. Yeah, it's so hard. You'll hire a recruiter right away to work with you. Yeah. Did you ever hire a recruiting team? So after first nine months, I hired all our early engineers. I hired our first set of go-to-market team. And after nine months, one of our friends sent us a person who was looking for an inside sales job. And I spoke with him and I asked him, what do you do? He said, I'm a mechanical engineer doing mechanical design. I want to switch into sales, inside sales. And I really liked him.