Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Rubrik Demanded Paid Pilots to Ensure Enterprise Skin in the Game

Soham Mazumdar · He quit Google, launched Rubrik—then grew to $1B ARR & a $16B market cap. | Soham Mazumdar, Co-Fo... · PMF Show · Sep 2, 2025 · at 16:51

Rubrik co-founder Soham Mazumdar explains Rubrik's sales strategy for data center enterprise hardware.

0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 33.0s
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“So we always did paid pilots at Rubrik. I think the rationale was that, you know, you want some skin in the game. And then, you know, there is a, there is this like data center hardware component, right? So it's kind of like, it's a lot of effort to kind of get like a POC going. So in some ways, if you're not, not at all vested in it, I think it's, it is not like, you know, like just press a button and you're, you know, like a trial just starts. This was like a significant amount of effort on the customer's part as well. So we want to make sure that there was skin in the game.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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