Glean co-founder and CEO Arvind Jain discusses ignoring conventional business validation advice during the early stages of building enterprise search unicorn Glean.
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Jain: Glean intentionally did not charge customers for its first two years
“We actually were not selling the product. We had no pricing. We had no plans to make revenue. That was an intentional decision we made that we were actually not even charged for our product for the first two years.”
Insight
Jain: Big Tech safety nets and zero consequences for failure breed complacency
“Cause sometimes I feel like, you know, at Google, I was not feeling challenged anymore. Cause you know, we're such a successful company and we could always, you know, take big problems, you know, and work on them. And it didn't matter if they failed. Cause lik…”
Disclosure
Jain: Glean skipped TAM analysis entirely because the market did not exist
“Like, you know, sometimes we sort of talk to our team about it, so we didn't do any TAM analysis. Like, how do you do TAM? There's no product in the market. Nobody actually is even solving this problem.”
Insight
Jain: Avoid using friends as early design partners; prioritize cold outreach instead
“I didn't actually go and, like, you know, hit my friends, you know, and say, like, hey, can you actually, you know, take this product and give me feedback? Because I felt like, you know, they'll all be very nice to me. And they will do it like, you know, even …”
Insight
Jain: First-time founders optimize for entrepreneurial success; repeat founders focus on problems
“For a first time founder, like, you know, they're actually trying to, their goal is actually You know, succeed as an entrepreneur. They want to actually learn that, you know, that art. Sort of like, you know, it's personal in that sense. You know, for me, that…”
Insight
Jain: Mental surrender pushes the true startup failure rate closer to 99%
“Like, you hear these stats that nine out of 10 startups fail, and I like to tell them that, like, look, no, it's not nine out of 10, it's 99 out of hundred, because you didn't count all the first 90 startups that the founder killed themselves, like, you know, …”