Apr 14, 2021 · 20m · top-founders
Granulate Breaking Records in Cloud Computing Savings Space, $30m Revenue Next?
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this interview with Nathan Latka, Granulate co-founder Asaf Ezra details how the company's real-time compute optimization software delivers tens of millions in enterprise cloud savings, supported by a $30 million Series B round and rapid team scaling.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 40.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.1 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 1.9 Nathan pushing back 3.4
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:40 Pushback on founder origin heuristic
Ezra dryly rejects Latka's broad claim about investing in ex-IDF founders by calling it a very bad heuristic.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 5:31 Latka rejects vague customer rangesLatka cuts off Ezra's hedging to insist on an average ACV sweet spot due to time constraints.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 2:27 Ezra explains usage-based pricing architectureEzra corrects Latka's misconception about cost-reduction pricing by explaining their core-hour performance model.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 16:45 Latka reverse engineers company revenueLatka uses Ezra's earlier admissions on savings and fee percentage to calculate and declare Granulate's implied revenue.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Previewing Granulate's Net Savings and Cost Reduction Model | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The segment primarily consists of a clip preview, host sponsor ad read, and biographical introduction of Asaf Ezra. | |
| Granulate's Usage-Based Pricing and Core Deployment Scale | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Latka probes the billing model and core counts. Ezra clarifies that billing is per core per hour rather than quarterly, and explains why their initial load balancer approach failed. | |
| Customer Cost Reduction Economics and Thirty Million Dollars Saved | 6 | 4 | 2 | 6 | Latka presses Ezra repeatedly to give a specific average monthly ACV rather than broad ranges. Ezra holds his ground by explaining the mathematical split between customer net savings and Granulate fees. | |
| Team Structure, Intelligence Roots, and Quota-Carrying Sales Organization | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | Ezra lightly mocks Latka's blanket heuristic regarding military intelligence backgrounds, while Latka digs into sales rep capacity and quota benchmarks. | |
| Series B Funding Round and Valuation Dynamics | 6 | 2 | 3 | 5 | Latka presses for Series B valuation and dilution metrics. Ezra politely refuses to give the valuation but yields the percentage sold when pressed on a narrower range. | |
| Early Customer Acquisition Hustle and Workload Segmentation | 7 | 3 | 4 | 7 | Latka utilizes Ezra's previously cited data points to corner him into an implied revenue figure of $6M to $7M. Ezra stonewalls confirming revenue, but Latka asserts the math directly to the audience. | |
| Rapid-Fire Questions on Mentors, Habits, and Entrepreneurial Lessons | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Standard rapid-fire concluding questions where Ezra discusses mentors, work habits, and tech stack while Latka keeps the pace moving. | |
| Episode Conclusion and Summary of Granulate's Trajectory | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Solo host closing summary recapping Granulate's key metrics and funding history. |
Statements from this episode (16)
Ezra: Granulate prices on per-core per-hour usage, not cost savings
“So we price it on a per core per hour basis. It's price per usage, not per on the cost reduction.”
Ezra: Some Granulate customers expand from 30 to 3,000 machines in two weeks
“And then we have customers starting at 30 machines going all the way to 3000 in two weeks.”
Ezra: Granulate's largest customer manages around 250,000 cores on the platform
“Oh, that's around 250,000.”
Ezra: Granulate delivers 30% to 60% performance gains per VM
“We switched to something else that you can start with a single VM, but the worst case and the cost benefit is like, I'm risking single VM with this unknown company, and I can gain 30, 40, 60% on my performance improvements.”
Granulate captures roughly 20% to 25% of customer net compute savings
“On average, granularly a customer, if they choose to take all the benefit into cost reduction, see about 75 to 80% of net savings. But they keep, and granulate is paid around 20 to 25% of the net savings.”
Granulate recruits R&D primarily from founders' former military intelligence unit
“Our R&D team makes most of the company and they're all coming from the same pretty much the same group within the army that my co-founder and I came from.”
Granulate aims to double quota-carrying sales reps to 30 by year-end
“15 or so, 12 or so, by the way. And we're going on to 30 at the end of the year.”
Ezra: Over 65% of Granulate sales representatives hit quota targets
“Yeah, I think we're over 65% at this point.”
Ezra: Granulate has raised almost $50 million in total capital
“So we've raised almost fifty million dollars in total. Last round was a series B in December.”
Granulate more than doubled its headcount from 22 employees in four months
“We were 20 one or 22, I think, in December. And as you can probably understand, we're over double that.”
Ezra: Granulate will finish 2021 with over 6x revenue growth
“We need to keep hammering on that, and we'll end the year over six times last year.”