The Exchanges

Q I mean, I love that as an entry point. I do have to also, given the perspective that you said about kind of starting in 1998, and seeing that really fascinating time, because you obviously saw the boom and then the bust, and then also saw the bust of 2008. How did that early exposure impact your operating mindset, do you think, when you look back with hindsight?

A It's kind of hard to believe for me to say this now, but literally that company, I started in 98, merged another company, it went public in October of 1999, and by January of 2000, we had a five billion dollar market cap. But that seemed candidly at that time, normal. And what I realized though, was that when we went public, this felt like the victory dance. We had declared victory. We created enormous value and all was well. But then I woke up the next morning and realized, oh my God, we have a whole new shareholder base whose cost basis is so much higher now because they bought into the IPO and they want to see value accrued from there. And I just realized that So operationally, culturally, and even fiscally, we weren't really ready to be a public company. Now, I wasn't CEO, but I was a section-sixteen officer, and it just hit home to me that we were just not ready to be a public company. And that company, unfortunately, went belly-up about 18 months later as a function of the fact that 70% of our customers were dot-coms. When their venture capital dried up, it obviously impacted our business. Luckily, I didn't lose my shirt. I didn't spend my Paper wealth on anything crazy, but that experience was seared into me, so when I started my next company, Blade Logic, in 2001, I was on a mission to prove, one, that I wasn't one of those bubble jerks who just got lucky, and two, that…

AI assessment note: “that experience was seared into me, so when I started my next company”

Q Yeah, absolutely. In terms of kind of the two different decision making types. In terms of kind of the self-reflection and hindsight, when you look at those changes in terms of how you operate as a leader, Are there elements today where you'd like to improve or amend your leadership style?

A I would say one of the things I struggle with is patience. I'm not, if you talk to some people, I'm not the most patient person. It served me well in many cases because one of my strengths is to create a sense of urgency around a particular issue, but there's times when I do think that being a little more patient and recognizing that sometimes you have to be inefficient to be effective is an important attribute, and that's something I constantly need to work on. That the best answer is not the shortest path between point A and point B. It's making sure that you really, for example, get your team to buy in, And then once they have conviction about something, even though they may take longer to get there, then you actually have served the business better by getting broader buy-in in a particular decision versus forcing everyone to kind of buy into a decision when you've not really convinced them that that's the right thing to do. So understanding that being inefficient to be effective is a thing that I always need to kind of work on.

AI assessment note: “I would say one of the things I struggle with is patience.”

Q little bit confused. There's one, like the Speed of decision making is so important, and it's kind of a good decision made today is better than a perfect one tomorrow. But then on the flip side, there's the, you have to pause, ingest the data, think rationally, and then strategize on the next steps. How do you think about and advise on which one to err on the side of?

A Actually, Jeff Bezos has spoken about this topic, and he describes two types of decisions. One, there's type one decisions that in some ways are irrevocable, so you have to spend a lot of time, so potentially as a VC, making an investment in the company is You know, if you decide that the next day after you wire the money, oh my God, I made a mistake. Well, guess what? You can't call them back and said, can I get my money back? Conversely, there's type two decisions where you don't need perfect data to make a decision. You just need good enough data. And with some good judgment, you can make a decision. And the value there is to actually make a decision quickly, because if you realize you made a bad decision, then you can just quickly correct that decision. So it really depends on whether it's a type one decision. Versus a type two decision. And so if it's a type one decision, you really have to spend the time and do the research and do your homework and make sure you have as good information as possible to make the right decision. And in type two decisions, you probably get to about 70% of the data you need, and then you can act. And obviously recognizing that you can fix that decision if it turns out to be a wrong one.

AI assessment note: “So it really depends on whether it's a type one decision. Versus a type two decision.”

Q I mean, I love that as an entry point. I do have to also, given the perspective that you said about kind of starting in 1998, and seeing that really fascinating time, because you obviously saw the boom and then the bust, and then also saw the bust of 2008. How did that early exposure impact your operating mindset, do you think, when you look back with hindsight?

A It's kind of hard to believe for me to say this now, but literally that company, I started in 98, merged another company, it went public in October of 1999, and by January of 2000, we had a five billion dollar market cap. But that seemed candidly at that time, normal. And what I realized though, was that when we went public, this felt like the victory dance. We had declared victory. We created enormous value and all was well. But then I woke up the next morning and realized, oh my God, we have a whole new shareholder base whose cost basis is so much higher now because they bought into the IPO and they want to see value accrued from there. And I just realized that So operationally, culturally, and even fiscally, we weren't really ready to be a public company. Now, I wasn't CEO, but I was a section-sixteen officer, and it just hit home to me that we were just not ready to be a public company. And that company, unfortunately, went belly-up about 18 months later as a function of the fact that 70% of our customers were dot-coms. When their venture capital dried up, it obviously impacted our business. Luckily, I didn't lose my shirt. I didn't spend my Paper wealth on anything crazy, but that experience was seared into me, so when I started my next company, Blade Logic, in 2001, I was on a mission to prove, one, that I wasn't one of those bubble jerks who just got lucky, and two, that…

AI assessment note: “that experience was seared into me, so when I started my next company”

Q open source is just every provider really trying to move their clients off their own, you know, AWS or whatever onto managed services. Do you think the kind of prior model won't work for open source companies where they don't manage the services and they don't have the higher margins as a result? How do you think about that transition to the requirement to be managed services for their clients?

A I think it starts with the customer. I think the customers typically today want to consume infrastructure as a service. Customers realize that with the complexity of applications, the work in terms of managing and maintaining infrastructure is getting more and more complex, but that's really undifferentiated work. It's not really going to create a competitive advantage for that company to build competency around that area. What's really going to build a competitive advantage for them is building world-class software products or leveraging software and data In unique and innovative ways to drive their business. So what companies are realizing is why am I spending all this time investing and maintaining and managing my infrastructure versus like focusing on what really matters. So that's why there's this push to use services or especially cloud services as a way to consume technology. Then I think for open source companies, if that's the case, then the question is like, why would a customer choose to use you directly versus say a third party cloud provider? And I think for us, we were the originators of the code. There was no prior art MongoDB. Two, we built a truly world-class managed cloud service through Atlas. And three, we believe that it was important to support the three major cloud providers, not just run on one particular cloud, but we support Amazon, Google, and Azure. …

AI assessment note: “I think the customers typically today want to consume infrastructure as a service.”

Q It's incredible to hear about that kind of strength through vulnerability there. And I think it comes through kind of maturity and experience. And I guess it takes me to a big question for me, which is like, when you look at your role as CEO today and how you approach it, how have you seen your style of leadership change over the last decade?

A Yeah, I would say that's one of them. Like I learned that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness, and that's really played well, not just with the board, but also with my own management team and people in the company, because it's okay to be the village idiot in the meeting when you say, you know, I just don't understand this. And when I say something like that, because I generally don't understand something, I can see people's faces. They relax because they probably were struggling with what the presenter was presenting or what decision we're trying to make. And informality breeds more candor. And so the temperature in the room goes down, you have more authentic conversations, and so that's been something that has really been seared into me. The second thing I've learned over time is that good news will find me anywhere. I could be literally on an island in Timbuktu, and I'll get a call or a message saying, hey, we closed that deal, we hired that rockstar engineer, the product got shipped on time, etc. It'll find me no matter where I am. But bad news, bad news travels very slowly, especially up the organization. And it's far worse than what people are telling you. So whenever I see bad news or hear about bad news, I assume two things. One, I'm the last to know. And two, it's far worse than what people are telling me. Imagine a situation where you're having a customer and …

AI assessment note: “I learned that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness, and that's really played well”

Q It's incredible to hear about that kind of strength through vulnerability there. And I think it comes through kind of maturity and experience. And I guess it takes me to a big question for me, which is like, when you look at your role as CEO today and how you approach it, how have you seen your style of leadership change over the last decade?

A Yeah, I would say that's one of them. Like I learned that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness, and that's really played well, not just with the board, but also with my own management team and people in the company, because it's okay to be the village idiot in the meeting when you say, you know, I just don't understand this. And when I say something like that, because I generally don't understand something, I can see people's faces. They relax because they probably were struggling with what the presenter was presenting or what decision we're trying to make. And informality breeds more candor. And so the temperature in the room goes down, you have more authentic conversations, and so that's been something that has really been seared into me. The second thing I've learned over time is that good news will find me anywhere. I could be literally on an island in Timbuktu, and I'll get a call or a message saying, hey, we closed that deal, we hired that rockstar engineer, the product got shipped on time, etc. It'll find me no matter where I am. But bad news, bad news travels very slowly, especially up the organization. And it's far worse than what people are telling you. So whenever I see bad news or hear about bad news, I assume two things. One, I'm the last to know. And two, it's far worse than what people are telling me. Imagine a situation where you're having a customer and …

AI assessment note: “I learned that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness”

Q communicating that throughout the organization. I do want to kind of hone in on the team a little bit. Because Mongo has obviously scaled so incredibly well over the last few years. And a lot of people say that with company scaling, people are destined for certain stages. Would you agree with that? And what have been your learnings here on the plasticity of people to scale with the company?

A Yes. One of the attributes I think of is really important for leaders who can scale is that they're students of the game and not the master of the game. And what I mean by that is that you have to have the attitude that you don't have all the answers. That you have to listen well, you have to ask good questions, you have to be incredibly curious, and through that process, you can be, continue to grow as a leader. The leaders I see who fail are the ones who think they have all the answers, are not good listeners, and once you think you're the master of the game, it's pretty much over. And what they'll tend to do is cut and paste from their last experience, but every company has a unique circumstance. Different types of customers, different competitive environment, different buying behavior, different financing requirements, etc., And so just trying to cut and paste what you learned from the past, your current company is a recipe for disaster. So the best leaders are really embraced being a student of the game, not a master of the game. And I think that's something for leaders who scale. And frankly, in my experience, I started BladeLogic, a software company. I had never actually led a software company, let alone actually worked at a software company. So I took the approach of, you know what, I need to go talk to people who built great software businesses to learn from them. And …

AI assessment note: “Yes. One of the attributes I think of is really important for leaders who can scale”

Q Can I ask, if you do decide that the external is more suitable for the position, and you do engage in that process of bringing them in, is there a right way to do it without disincentivizing or discouraging the existing team or person within the team that wanted that role?

A Sure. I mean, obviously it's important to communicate why that person didn't get the job. What was it about their skills or experiences or lack thereof that didn't make them suitable for taking that next bigger role? I think it's very, very important to be honest and straight with people and also not just give them the feedback, but commit to working with them so that when other opportunities occur later and in a company that's growing quickly, there'll always be more opportunities that you're committed on making them and working with them and developing them To get a bigger leadership role. So to me, it just starts with basic communications and authentic feedback. And the feedback comes back in two dimensions. And as I said, there's really two reasons why people fail. One is either they have the skills to do the job, or they don't have the will or the motivation to do the job. And so when you give people feedback, you need to give feedback on those two dimensions. What is it that they're doing that is limiting their ability to go next level? You know, what skill gaps do they have, et cetera, or what is it about their passion and energy level or work ethic that's missing for them to be ready? And I think when you break it down that way, it becomes much easier for someone to internalize in terms of what they need to work on.

AI assessment note: “starts with basic communications and authentic feedback”

Q great team together, the investors can help with that, and a lot of investors do claim to help with hiring. I spoke to Chip at Flybridge and Rodolph at Sequoia before, And I'm intrigued to ask, you were a VC before, so you have the hindsight and the kind of knowledge on both sides of the table. What did you look for in your investors when you were selecting them?

A First, obviously, is money. So assuming that you have more than one investor giving you money, then the question is like, what else do they bring to the table? To me, depending on the stage of company you are, especially the early stage, one of the biggest things you're trying to race to is credibility. And is raising money from a tier one investor going to really help you With credibility with potential recruits, credibility with potential partners, and obviously credibility with obviously potential customers. And so that's another key criteria. The third thing is, what is the conviction of that investor around your business? And that's evidenced by how much homework have they done? Have they spoken to customers? Have they spoken to the competition? And do they have real conviction and support to understand why about your business? Because every business is going to hit some problem or some speed bump. Every business is going to go through some challenging times, and the investors who have really done their diligence, who have really done their homework, will maintain that conviction even through those difficult times. It's those investors who've done drive-by diligence, just wanting to be part of a party round, they're the ones who are going to panic when something goes wrong because they just don't have that inner conviction about your business. So my advice to any entrepren…

AI assessment note: “First, obviously, is money. So assuming that you have more than one investor”

Q the show. I think your big question for me, honestly, Dev, would be, I've just gained my first few board seats over the last kind of 18 months, and the question I have for you is, what advice would you give to me, having just joined my first few boards over the last 18 months, and what would you advise me, given the experience on both sides of the table?

A Again, I would, I would be the student of the game and not the master, and the first way to be the student of the game is really trying to understand, you know, How you can be helpful, learn from other great board members and investors of how they were really helpful to their companies. And you have to remember, you know, being a founder and CEO is a very, very lonely job because everyone, you know, they speak to Um, has some agenda, not necessarily a malicious agenda, but they have some agenda. And, and, and so it's very hard to get unvarnished feedback where someone's, you know, own incentives are not kind of being influencing the feedback that that person is getting. The more you can give unvarnished feedback that not is all about you, but it's about helping them, the more you can build credibility with them in terms of, of them viewing you as a partner. And to me, one of the most precious commodities out there is trust. And so the more you can build a trusted relationship with, with that, with that founder by being there for them, you know, helping them around big problems, bringing new ideas that they may not have contemplated, but also recognizing that they're the ones in charge around the company and you're just there to help is incredibly important.

AI assessment note: “I would be the student of the game and not the master”

Q I mean, there are two really important things for me to pick up on there. In terms of kind of creating that Culture, which really allows for that bad news to be spread. Is there anything that you think works in terms of creating that really kind of environment of trust and security for employees and for colleagues to share the bad news freely?

A One, as a leader, you have to embrace bad news. You have to thank people for giving you the information straight. You have to recognize those people because the tone is set at the top. And if you're someone who doesn't like hearing bad news or basically shoots the messenger, you Then guess what? You're not going to get information given to you straight, and it's not going to make you a very good leader. So it's all about how you recognize, reward people who are quick to share bad news, and obviously, who are motivated to do the right thing. And so, uh, I believe incentives drives behavior, so you have to try to create the right incentive system for people to share bad news quickly, and obviously, and then to take action.

AI assessment note: “you have to try to create the right incentive system for people to share bad news”

Q communicating that throughout the organization. I do want to kind of hone in on the team a little bit. Because Mongo has obviously scaled so incredibly well over the last few years. And a lot of people say that with company scaling, people are destined for certain stages. Would you agree with that? And what have been your learnings here on the plasticity of people to scale with the company?

A Yes. One of the attributes I think of is really important for leaders who can scale is that they're students of the game and not the master of the game. And what I mean by that is that you have to have the attitude that you don't have all the answers. That you have to listen well, you have to ask good questions, you have to be incredibly curious, and through that process, you can be, continue to grow as a leader. The leaders I see who fail are the ones who think they have all the answers, are not good listeners, and once you think you're the master of the game, it's pretty much over. And what they'll tend to do is cut and paste from their last experience, but every company has a unique circumstance. Different types of customers, different competitive environment, different buying behavior, different financing requirements, etc., And so just trying to cut and paste what you learned from the past, your current company is a recipe for disaster. So the best leaders are really embraced being a student of the game, not a master of the game. And I think that's something for leaders who scale. And frankly, in my experience, I started BladeLogic, a software company. I had never actually led a software company, let alone actually worked at a software company. So I took the approach of, you know what, I need to go talk to people who built great software businesses to learn from them. And …

AI assessment note: “One of the attributes I think of is really important for leaders who can scale”

Q great team together, the investors can help with that, and a lot of investors do claim to help with hiring. I spoke to Chip at Flybridge and Rodolph at Sequoia before, And I'm intrigued to ask, you were a VC before, so you have the hindsight and the kind of knowledge on both sides of the table. What did you look for in your investors when you were selecting them?

A First, obviously, is money. So assuming that you have more than one investor giving you money, then the question is like, what else do they bring to the table? To me, depending on the stage of company you are, especially the early stage, one of the biggest things you're trying to race to is credibility. And is raising money from a tier one investor going to really help you With credibility with potential recruits, credibility with potential partners, and obviously credibility with obviously potential customers. And so that's another key criteria. The third thing is, what is the conviction of that investor around your business? And that's evidenced by how much homework have they done? Have they spoken to customers? Have they spoken to the competition? And do they have real conviction and support to understand why about your business? Because every business is going to hit some problem or some speed bump. Every business is going to go through some challenging times, and the investors who have really done their diligence, who have really done their homework, will maintain that conviction even through those difficult times. It's those investors who've done drive-by diligence, just wanting to be part of a party round, they're the ones who are going to panic when something goes wrong because they just don't have that inner conviction about your business. So my advice to any entrepren…

AI assessment note: “First, obviously, is money... then the question is like, what else do they bring”

Q Are VCs biased against New York Tech, and why?

A I think they used to be. I think that's changing fairly quickly. Candidly, when I was at Greylock, there was a bias against investing in East Coast companies because there was a perception that the best companies were on the West Coast. And for many cases, that was true. What's changed, I think, is one, that I think there's great talent everywhere, and the access to capital has now become much more freely available, not just in the East Coast, but frankly, In many other parts of the world. And what I'm finding is that one of the advantages of being in New York is, one, I can walk out the door out of my office whenever I get back to my office and basically see customers, you know, almost on every corner block. Two, when I travel to Europe, it's like traveling to the West Coast, so it's not that long of a plane trip. It's also fairly easy to get to the Middle East and other parts of EMEA. And then going to Asia, frankly, is not that much longer a plane ride than say flying from California. The other thing about California is that I just find that the cost structure in California has got to such a point that it's very hard to build a business because when you map the money flows, you can basically see the money flowing from LPs to landlords because you have to pay new grants so much more because their cost of living is so much higher in California. I'm not suggesting New York is c…

AI assessment note: “I think they used to be. I think that's changing fairly quickly.”

Q Not at all, but I would love to kick off with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and how did you come to found Mongo?

A So a couple things. I, being a good Indian boy, I could do anything I wanted to do as long as it was either being an engineer or a doctor. So I went to engineering school and when I left engineering school, I realized I had no interest in sitting behind a desk solving technical problems. I really got interested between the intersection of technology and business. And so I took a job with AT&T where I got a rotational assignment. It was supposed to be kind of a leadership track where I got rotational assignments in a variety of different functions, marketing, product management, program management, and even sales. And the thing I actually really liked was actually the sales part. And my parents, my dad was an engineer. They had a fairly pejorative perspective on sales. They thought salespeople were like used car salespeople. But, uh, what I really found was that I liked engaging with customers, liked to understand what their problems were and how I could help solve their problems. And I started to appreciate sales more as I spent more and more time doing a variety of things because I saw in those days, in the early nineties, the large companies had an enormous amount of account control. With customers. And so even though if you have the best mousetrap, it was still not easy to win business because these companies have such good account control. They take the senior execs to the …

AI assessment note: “my interest in startups started growing as I was in the”

Q Yeah, absolutely. In terms of kind of the two different decision making types. In terms of kind of the self-reflection and hindsight, when you look at those changes in terms of how you operate as a leader, Are there elements today where you'd like to improve or amend your leadership style?

A I would say one of the things I struggle with is patience. I'm not, if you talk to some people, I'm not the most patient person. It served me well in many cases because one of my strengths is to create a sense of urgency around a particular issue, but there's times when I do think that being a little more patient and recognizing that sometimes you have to be inefficient to be effective is an important attribute, and that's something I constantly need to work on. That the best answer is not the shortest path between point A and point B. It's making sure that you really, for example, get your team to buy in, And then once they have conviction about something, even though they may take longer to get there, then you actually have served the business better by getting broader buy-in in a particular decision versus forcing everyone to kind of buy into a decision when you've not really convinced them that that's the right thing to do. So understanding that being inefficient to be effective is a thing that I always need to kind of work on.

AI assessment note: “one of the things I struggle with is patience.”

Q mean, amazing to hear about the revenue growth there. I do want to take it back to the team because the big question always for me, Deb, is when you have that incredible scaling, like you mentioned, sometimes people scale, sometimes people don't. How do you think about internal up-leveling Versus bringing in externals, and is there a right way to think about layering and doing it the right way?

A One of the classic mistakes I see a lot of people make is when they're assessing an internal candidate versus an external candidate, and the biggest mistake they make is they don't fully appreciate the asymmetry of data that they have between the internal candidate and the external candidate, and here's what I mean. That internal candidate that you work with for a number of years, you know what they're really good at, but you also know that some areas maybe that they're not so strong in, But you have a very nuanced and more complete view of that person. Whereas that person who shows up for the job interview with a sterling resume looks good on paper, says all the right things in the interview, dazzles you with their charm and personality. All of a sudden you're like, wow, this person is really, really strong. But the challenge is that you have very little data about that person. Even if you do reference checks and other things, you still have far less information about that person than the internal candidate. And the mistake I see a lot of people making is that They quickly gravitate to that external candidate because they look so good, but then literally six or 12 months later, they realize, you know what, this person also is nuanced. There's some things they're good at and some things they're not good at, and oh, by the way, they may not actually have been better than that in…

AI assessment note: “they don't fully appreciate the asymmetry of data that they have”

Q the show. I think your big question for me, honestly, Dev, would be, I've just gained my first few board seats over the last kind of 18 months, and the question I have for you is, what advice would you give to me, having just joined my first few boards over the last 18 months, and what would you advise me, given the experience on both sides of the table?

A Again, I would, I would be the student of the game and not the master, and the first way to be the student of the game is really trying to understand, you know, How you can be helpful, learn from other great board members and investors of how they were really helpful to their companies. And you have to remember, you know, being a founder and CEO is a very, very lonely job because everyone, you know, they speak to Um, has some agenda, not necessarily a malicious agenda, but they have some agenda. And, and, and so it's very hard to get unvarnished feedback where someone's, you know, own incentives are not kind of being influencing the feedback that that person is getting. The more you can give unvarnished feedback that not is all about you, but it's about helping them, the more you can build credibility with them in terms of, of them viewing you as a partner. And to me, one of the most precious commodities out there is trust. And so the more you can build a trusted relationship with, with that, with that founder by being there for them, you know, helping them around big problems, bringing new ideas that they may not have contemplated, but also recognizing that they're the ones in charge around the company and you're just there to help is incredibly important.

AI assessment note: “I would be the student of the game and not the master”

Q Are VCs biased against New York Tech, and why?

A I think they used to be. I think that's changing fairly quickly. Candidly, when I was at Greylock, there was a bias against investing in East Coast companies because there was a perception that the best companies were on the West Coast. And for many cases, that was true. What's changed, I think, is one, that I think there's great talent everywhere, and the access to capital has now become much more freely available, not just in the East Coast, but frankly, In many other parts of the world. And what I'm finding is that one of the advantages of being in New York is, one, I can walk out the door out of my office whenever I get back to my office and basically see customers, you know, almost on every corner block. Two, when I travel to Europe, it's like traveling to the West Coast, so it's not that long of a plane trip. It's also fairly easy to get to the Middle East and other parts of EMEA. And then going to Asia, frankly, is not that much longer a plane ride than say flying from California. The other thing about California is that I just find that the cost structure in California has got to such a point that it's very hard to build a business because when you map the money flows, you can basically see the money flowing from LPs to landlords because you have to pay new grants so much more because their cost of living is so much higher in California. I'm not suggesting New York is c…

AI assessment note: “I think they used to be. I think that's changing fairly quickly.”

Q It's like having a whole new team. My word, it sounds exhausting. I do want to finish there with the final one. What do the next five years hold for you and for Mongo? Can you paint that picture for us?

A Well, we're going after a very, very large market. The market is estimated to be about a hundred billion by 2023, and we have a little over half a percent share. And so if we even just get to five percent share, we become a massive company. So we believe that the market is there for us. We think the market is ripe for disruption. The world is changing very, very quickly. The incumbent technology has been around for 40 years. This is a technology that was built and designed in a pre-cloud, pre-mobile, and even pre-internet. We believe that we have a lot of evidence to show that people are really gravitating to MongoDB, given the large developer community that's really supportive of MongoDB. Now we have over 18,000 customers of all shapes and sizes across almost every geography and vertical industry using us for almost every conceivable use case. And we believe that what's happened in the cloud is that a lot of people obviously have leveraged the cloud. There's lots of benefits to moving to the cloud, but in some ways they basically replicated their own traditional data centers in the cloud with all these different data silos and different protocols to work with those different silos. And we believe that developers really want one API to have access to a platform that enables a wide variety of use cases, and we believe that given our track record, given the approach and the way w…

AI assessment note: “if we even just get to five percent share, we become a massive company.”

Q mean, amazing to hear about the revenue growth there. I do want to take it back to the team because the big question always for me, Deb, is when you have that incredible scaling, like you mentioned, sometimes people scale, sometimes people don't. How do you think about internal up-leveling Versus bringing in externals, and is there a right way to think about layering and doing it the right way?

A One of the classic mistakes I see a lot of people make is when they're assessing an internal candidate versus an external candidate, and the biggest mistake they make is they don't fully appreciate the asymmetry of data that they have between the internal candidate and the external candidate, and here's what I mean. That internal candidate that you work with for a number of years, you know what they're really good at, but you also know that some areas maybe that they're not so strong in, But you have a very nuanced and more complete view of that person. Whereas that person who shows up for the job interview with a sterling resume looks good on paper, says all the right things in the interview, dazzles you with their charm and personality. All of a sudden you're like, wow, this person is really, really strong. But the challenge is that you have very little data about that person. Even if you do reference checks and other things, you still have far less information about that person than the internal candidate. And the mistake I see a lot of people making is that They quickly gravitate to that external candidate because they look so good, but then literally six or 12 months later, they realize, you know what, this person also is nuanced. There's some things they're good at and some things they're not good at, and oh, by the way, they may not actually have been better than that in…

AI assessment note: “the biggest mistake they make is they don't fully appreciate the asymmetry of data”

Q What would you most like to change about the world of tech and venture?

A The challenge I had raising money the first time, it took me three years to launch my first company. Obviously I had no track record. I graduated from state schools. I didn't have like this kind of A plus pedigree. And what I would say was that there was a certain bias against me because I didn't have quote unquote all the right credentials. I would just say that I believe that there's still some bias today. I mean, today, now, if I want to raise capital, I can probably raise it in a nanosecond, because I've made a lot of people a lot of money, but I think there's still some systemic bias in the system about enabling women, founders, enabling people of color to build great businesses, and I would encourage, and I think the tech community is doing a lot to change that, but I think there's more to be done.

AI assessment note: “there's still some systemic bias in the system about enabling women, founders”

Q Not at all, but I would love to kick off with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and how did you come to found Mongo?

A So a couple things. I, being a good Indian boy, I could do anything I wanted to do as long as it was either being an engineer or a doctor. So I went to engineering school and when I left engineering school, I realized I had no interest in sitting behind a desk solving technical problems. I really got interested between the intersection of technology and business. And so I took a job with AT&T where I got a rotational assignment. It was supposed to be kind of a leadership track where I got rotational assignments in a variety of different functions, marketing, product management, program management, and even sales. And the thing I actually really liked was actually the sales part. And my parents, my dad was an engineer. They had a fairly pejorative perspective on sales. They thought salespeople were like used car salespeople. But, uh, what I really found was that I liked engaging with customers, liked to understand what their problems were and how I could help solve their problems. And I started to appreciate sales more as I spent more and more time doing a variety of things because I saw in those days, in the early nineties, the large companies had an enormous amount of account control. With customers. And so even though if you have the best mousetrap, it was still not easy to win business because these companies have such good account control. They take the senior execs to the …

AI assessment note: “my interest in startups started growing as I was in the”

Q What would you most like to change about the world of tech and venture?

A The challenge I had raising money the first time, it took me three years to launch my first company. Obviously I had no track record. I graduated from state schools. I didn't have like this kind of A plus pedigree. And what I would say was that there was a certain bias against me because I didn't have quote unquote all the right credentials. I would just say that I believe that there's still some bias today. I mean, today, now, if I want to raise capital, I can probably raise it in a nanosecond, because I've made a lot of people a lot of money, but I think there's still some systemic bias in the system about enabling women, founders, enabling people of color to build great businesses, and I would encourage, and I think the tech community is doing a lot to change that, but I think there's more to be done.

AI assessment note: “there's still some systemic bias in the system about enabling women, founders, enabling people”

Q into healthcare. I hate it. I've done it before. Two portfolio companies went bust. Not for me. How do you really kind of have this mental plasticity to approach every situation with that fresh perspective and not rely on past data points, which really kind of present the wrong outcome to you in a potentially new situation? How do you have that renewed perspective and how do you create that?

A Well, I have some guiding principles. One of them is I believe strongly in product market fit. So, for example, one of the things that got me very interested in MongoDB, because when I was a VC, I was looking at the next generation database market. This was in the early part of this past decade, when a lot of companies were getting funded, and there was a belief that given away the explosion of data and how applications were built, that they needed to be a better mousetrap. And I looked at a couple of competing investments to MongoDB, and when I did my diligence, it was clear that MongoDB was way ahead of the competition. In terms of like, you know, developer mindshare and even commercial traction. So I ended up passing those investments. So when I got the call from MongoDB, I was intrigued enough to take a meeting and met with the founders and the board members. And when I started doing some diligence, what became clear to me, it was while the company had great product market fit, there were a lot of things that were broken inside the company. Its go-to-market was broken, and frankly, the leadership team, there were a lot of people who I probably just didn't think were a good fit, and so you could say that, you know, that could be a scary thing to join a company where there's all these things that are not working, but what gave me conviction about MongoDB was that you never be…

AI assessment note: “Well, I have some guiding principles. One of them is I believe strongly in product market fit.”