Netskope founder and CEO Sanjay Beri discusses how to recruit engineering talent in the South Bay against Silicon Valley tech giants.
Opinion
Beri: Salespeople at Cisco are farmers, disqualified from Netskope hiring
“They're not the people who work at Cisco, any of those companies now. If they work there, they're pretty much disqualified from being the type of people that we want, because they're not going to be hunters, they're going to be farmers.”
Insight
Beri: Chief Security Officers Are the Biggest Bottleneck to Cloud Adoption
“The biggest bottleneck nowadays to adoption of cloud in most enterprises is actually the chief security officer, and so we give him or her what they need to say yes to enabling the cloud.”
Disclosure
Beri: Netskope Refused Acquisition Talks Despite Rivals Selling for $800M
“So when everybody came calling, we said, look,
Thank you, but no, we're not interested, not even interested in talking, right? The last company in our space was acquired for close to eight hundred million, and we said, look, we're not even interested in talki…”
Insight
Beri: Early startup hires should strictly be product builders, not sales
“When you pick people in the beginning of your company, you're actually finding people who actually build a product, right? You're not looking for sales, you're not looking for marketing, and so the first thing is you're looking for great architects, engineers,…”
Assertion Partly supported
Beri: Netskope's co-founders all stepped down into individual contributor roles
“They're here today they're still sort of the product leaders of our company over time, they changed their roles. They're not managers, not leaders, they're individuals, but because of their cultural fit, as they grew, they were savvy enough to realize that, lo…”
Insight
Beri: Board members must not pontificate using 20-year-old playbooks
“One of the most important quote hires you make is obviously your investor, or your board member, and just like you would hire maybe your 100th, your 400th, or your 1000th person, you want to obviously have the frame of what your culture, your company is, and s…”