How Arvind Jain Built a $7 Billion AI Company That Knows Everything About Your Company | Glean CEO

At Rubrik we were growing very fast 2017, 2018 when we tripled our workforce, but with all that growth, you know, we were actually slowing down instead of actually being able to do more things. The largest complaint that we saw from people was people complaining that, you know, I can't find, you know, anything inside this company. I can't find the right information that I need to do my job. I can't find the right people who could actually help me with, you know, the task that I have that I need to complete. That was the start of me getting sort of really passionate and excited about solving this problem.

Glean is a very simple product. Think of it just like ChatGPT or Google Gemini but inside your company. It has a full context and knowledge of how your company works and it's able to use that also as an input to actually help you with whatever questions or tasks that you have. It knows how your business works. It knows who are the different people inside the company. It knows about every single document that has been written inside the company. It has also read every single conversation that has happened between two team members. It's been part of every meeting. Think of it like that. That's our key direction. We want to be that personal proactive companion.

I was at Google for about 11 years. Worked on a lot of different Google products. The most exciting thing for me to go to Google was that I would actually get to work on this really cool product that I use every day myself. When I joined there, like, it was still relatively small. It was a privately held startup. I didn't think so much about it's going to be one of the largest companies in the world.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so I grew up in Jaipur in India and then went to IIT for engineering. I studied computer science and a lot of my experiences were all formed there, like in terms of, like, first of course, like just becoming an engineer, learning technology, you know, falling in love with software engineering, and then also the sort of, like, you know, some of the other characteristics that you need, like, you know, to succeed in the career, like working hard and persevering, you know, making sure that you don't give up, become competitive, like, you know, a lot of those things, you know, actually happened, you know, at the IIT for me.

No, there's no default plan. In fact, there's no plan for me to even become an engineer. I became an engineer by accident, like, you know, in those days for us, like, you know, in my hometown, it was not like such a well-known path. In fact, like, you know, my parents, for example, didn't even know what IIT is or what engineering is. And so, somewhat, you know, accidental, like, you know, I learned from, you know, my fellow students, you know, in the high school when we were in grade 11 that, you know, there was something called IIT and you appear for an exam and then you get to live in a big city like Delhi or Bombay. And so that was sort of what initially got me excited about this. Like, otherwise, like, I was not, like, I didn't grow up, like, you know, wanting to be an engineer, you know, as such. So that's the start of the journey. After I got into IIT, I think it did become sort of the default path for most of the people who wanted to sort of continue their education, learn more. Like, it was fairly common for folks to actually go to the US to continue their further studies. And so that was part of the plan. And I think, like, you know, I got sort of more, it became more realistic for me, like, you know, in my third year of college that yes, I was also going to do it. Before that, I was still not thinking about leaving the country.

Yes.

Yeah, that was my first job after I finished college and it was easy because the college where I studied, it's in Seattle which is the headquarters of Microsoft and they were the largest employer. They would come, you know, they would basically hang out at the campus all the time and so it was an easy choice in some ways for me. I wanted to stay in Seattle because I loved the environment and that was pretty much, like, you know, the only company that was out there in technology. So I started my career there.

Well, first of all, Google was a product that I was already using on a daily basis as an engineer in my personal life. Whenever I had questions, when I was looking for information, that was the place I would go to. So it was an incredibly useful tool and I was really, the most exciting thing for me to go to Google was that I would actually get to work on this really cool product that I use every day myself. And so that was the driving force. When I joined there, like, it was still, like, relatively small, it was a privately held startup. And frankly, like, you know, I didn't think so much about, like, that this company is going to become very successful. It's going to be one of the largest companies in the world. As an engineer, like, I didn't really think about those things, you know, I was actually more interested in learning technology. I was more interested in working with people who I could learn from. And at Google, they hired the best people in the world. And every really smart person that I knew, you know, was going to Google and working there. So for me, like, you know, it was an incredible opportunity that I saw to be among the world's best engineers and scientists and researchers and learn from them. So that was sort of really the main thing that drew me to the company, not so much like what's going to happen to the business because, you know, when you think about business, in fact, like, for a long time people were not excited about Google's business. Like, search felt like a commodity, people felt there were a lot of other search engines too. So it's only at some point when it really took off and people realized that this is a great business.

Yeah, so I was at Google for about 11 years. And in that time I got to build, work on a lot of different Google products. Primarily search. So I worked on Google search initially when I joined, that was the only thing that we used to work on anyway. So I spent a lot of, like, many of my years working on search, managing some of the core search teams. And then through that journey I also worked on a few other really cool products like Google Maps. You know, I actually, one of the key projects that I started was like allowing Google to actually build maps on its own, like, you know, actually crowdsourcing maps development through our end users. So I worked on that. I worked on YouTube, building the system that actually delivered videos to millions and billions of people worldwide. So these were like some of the really amazing products and technologies that I got to work on. And I think we made good impact, like, you know, of course collectively. To come back to your original question of, okay, what does that distinguished engineer mean, it's just like, I think, as you make contributions at Google, like, you know, we had a technical ladder and you would get recognized on that ladder, move up, like, you know, as you sort of make impact inside the company. And that used to be like one of the senior most levels. And I think after a long journey of being an engineer and building some good systems, you know, I got to have that recognition.

When I was, like, before I actually even went to the engineering college or, like, while I was in IIT, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And part of it was because that was the norm, you know, for us, like, you know, in a small town, like, you know, there are no professional jobs to be had, like, you really had to, like, you know, figure something out on your own. And so that was sort of my goal. But then, like, you know, after my undergrad, after my graduate school, I took the job and didn't really think much of, like, starting a company for quite some time. Like, it was a desire but I actually never made it happen. When we started Rubrik, you know, that desire was still there but it was not the driver for why we started the company. Like, I was not actively thinking about ideas on what to build. And my journey with Rubrik was more, the network, you know, that we have. Like, you know, one of my friends, you know, who I know through the IIT network, he was the one who wanted to actually start a company. He was an investor, he's the CEO of Rubrik right now as well. His name is Bipul. And he was the one who was actually interested in starting a company and he wanted to do it with, you know, the right sort of partner to him, like, who could actually really take care of all the technology and building the product out of it. And so, and we known each other for more than a decade at the time, close friends. And he asked me, you know, would you like to build a company together? And that actually felt quite appealing to me. You know, we brought complimentary skills to the task, to the job. And I actually felt like, you know, there was a good opportunity in the area that we're thinking about. So that's how it got started. So he was the catalyst, but then I had the interest, the desire, and also the excitement to do it.