So another very interesting session. Sudheesh Nair, thank you so much for flying up from Palo Alto to be here with us.
Thank you. This is the first time we are meeting so we'll see how it goes.
Yeah, let's see. So, you have a very interesting background. You have built two multi-billion dollar companies, Nutanix and ThoughtSpot, and now you're building another one, just raised about 50 million led by Iconiq. Do you like pain? Tell me about what led you down this path to become a serial entrepreneur.
First of all, I just want to say how Seattle continues to scam the rest of the country. I mean, you guys are always rainy, it's depressing. When you come out and this is the view, San Francisco doesn't have this view. This is unbelievable. Thank you for having me. This is so beautiful.
I'm assuming that these days are just for me, right? I mean, this is not normal.
You're the one who brought it up. It was cloudy before you got here.
Oh, I am kind of sunshine. So that makes sense. Look, I think startups are not for everyone. I think Dr. Deng said as well and I love the humility, you know. He said like it's not for me. And the problem is most people don't get that. But I would also tell you there is no better time to start companies than now because it's just magical. But that doesn't mean that everyone needs to do startups too. Some can join, be part of a larger company and then build a startup within. But this is the time to sort of, the way I think of it is like completely be constrained by your imagination but nothing else. So I couldn't stand on the sidelines.
Absolutely. I heard a really interesting speaker at a summit in Miami not too long ago and he was saying that creativity is infinite and I feel like AI has allowed us to harness that to a limit that was never possible before. So I totally resonate with what you just said. So I would love to understand a little bit about, I think it takes a special type of person to build these companies. So tell me about how you got started with the first one. How did you end up at, I believe it was Nutanix was first.
Yeah. Look, I think the audience is sitting back so hopefully we can have some time for Q&A as well.
Oh yeah, we'll have plenty of time. Let's do that.
Look, I don't want to tell too many stories. Ultimately, it's all about right players and right people, right time, right network. And in general, my style has always been that I make quick decisions. When I see an A/B choice, I make a choice and then take one. So someone like said once that if you're at a fork, take one. I live with that. The second part of that equation that most people don't tell you is that if you take the wrong path, you should be really good at forgiving yourself, learning from the mistake and never look back and then keep doing it. And if you keep doing that, you can build companies, you can start companies, you can fail, you can learn, you can keep building. That's basically the story of my life. Whether it is Nutanix or ThoughtSpot or now TinyFish. Nutanix essentially was the actual story. So Dheeraj and I, there were three of us who were together in another startup that failed phenomenally. It was a company that was invested by Vinod Khosla and raised a lot of money and a lot of amazing people and then failed. And the thing that I learned from that company is that you can have the best investors and the best people but if the luck and timing are not on your side. And sometimes if you have too many cooks in the kitchen, it may not move forward. And those three things are completely different. Luck and timing, right? You could be the best product, but if you're too early, it could be a science project. And if you're too late, that could be a commodity. So, you know, one of the things that when we are in this bubble on Twitter and LinkedIn, we look at this and say, 'Oh, that's the formula. This is the formula. They are doing it right there.' The thing that you have to remember is that we are getting front row seat to a lot of performances. Like I'm going to perform TinyFish right now and you are going to think like it's amazing but I'm going to go back to TinyFish but I get to see the backstage and backstage let me tell you it's not pretty. So the challenge is as you are absorbing all these performances constantly on LinkedIn and Twitter and on conferences like this where people like me come in and say amazing things. I don't want you to compare the performance to the backstage. You only have one backstage pass to your life, your company. So just build because remember like this morning OpenAI announced 5.4 and we had access to it and we've been working with it for some time and our internal channel I posted something, Homer my colleague here can actually verify that. I was telling them that the mettle of a real company, and I'm telling this to OpenAI, okay. I'm telling them that the mettle of a real company is not proven when things are going well but when they are down, when they are punched in the face, what do they do? Are they the kind of company that are coming together or are they the company that runs for the exit? And I'm saying this to OpenAI and think about it, OpenAI, the largest company, like the phenomenon, but inside the company they are under attack. I mean it is insane to imagine a company because it is still young. Microsoft, Amazon, you folks know this. It doesn't happen often. There is no guarantee that OpenAI is going to be the next Amazon. There is so much more that needs to happen for it to happen. And what OpenAI is going to show hopefully in the next few quarters and years is that they don't get shaken because trust me on this, they are under attack. The higher you fly, the lower you fall, the deeper you fall, right? Cursor. I mean, our company used to be all Cursor. Now it's all gone.
