Jyoti Bansal details how Cisco preempted AppDynamics' planned IPO with escalating offers just days before the company was scheduled to ring the Nasdaq opening bell.
“And this conversation started three days before the IPO Cisco came in and said, you know, we'll, we'll pay you more than you. The price you will list. And we said, no, it's, we'll go IPO. Said, no, they came with another price, which is like, we'll pay you more than one and a half times of your IP, what you would, what you will trade at. We said, no, then so we'll pay you two and a half times of what you will trade at.”
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Insight
Category leaders win on superior sales culture rather than pure product
“Normally what happens is like the number one company Is number one, not just because they have great product, but because they also have a very strong sales culture and DNA. No, most of the time you do want someone who is like spent. So they know what good sal…”
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Disclosure
Board misalignment over long-term vision was a factor in selling AppDynamics
“But if I have investors who don't want to do that for the longterm, we want to do in something different vision for what the company should be. Then you're kind of misaligned and that creates a big execution and uncertainty and risk. Unfortunately, we had thos…”
Jyoti BansalNov 19, 2025▶ 39:05How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
“But we create a model that we don't bundle things. So each of these modules are sold on their own to create accountability. They will never be best of breed in them. If we don't have accountability to the customer, the minute we bundle it, then you can have li…”
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Disclosure
AppDynamics fired Netflix as a customer to protect its engineering capacity
“Some point in time, and that was the hardest decision I probably ever made, we decided to lose them. They were so much bigger than our customer number, you know, like they were customer number one in terms of their size, and our customer number two to 20 combi…”
Jyoti BansalNov 19, 2025▶ 7:58How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
Insight
Enterprise product-market fit requires delivering verified ROI to 25 distinct customers
“For most enterprise software products over time, the rule of thumb that I've learned is that if you have delivered value to 25 customers, you have a very strong product market fit.”
Jyoti BansalNov 19, 2025▶ 12:42How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
Insight
Technical founders should hire a senior sales leader before individual reps
“If you don't have experience managing salespeople, try not to learn as on the job for the first time there. If you can, you know, you have the money and ability to recruit a senior person, do that because you're de-risking your learning and a lot of things tha…”
Jyoti BansalNov 19, 2025▶ 15:47How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
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