How Rubrik’s IPO paid off massive for Greylock VC Asheem Chandna

When Asheem Chandna drove as much as Rubrik’s workplace in Palo Alto on a Friday night time in early 2015, he was trying ahead to studying what the younger firm that had but to construct its product would present him. The Greylock associate wasn’t disillusioned.

The corporate’s CEO, Bipul Sinha, drew Rubrik’s plan to revamp the info administration and restoration market on a whiteboard. “The previous versus new structure he offered was very compelling,” Chandna stated. “Primarily based on my data of the sector, I knew it may very well be constructed into a big enterprise.”

That was a prescient name. On Thursday, 9 years after that assembly, Rubrik started its life as a publicly traded firm with a market cap of over $6 billion. Greylock holds a 13% stake, in accordance with the most recent SEC filings. By the shut of market Friday, with shares priced at $38, these practically 19.9 million shares had been value over $756 million. 

However Chandna says it was rather more than Rubrik’s want to tackle the arcane information restoration market that motivated him to steer Rubrik’s $40 million Sequence B in Could 2015. (The Sequence B spherical offered for $2.45/share, adjusting for splits, in accordance with these SEC paperwork. Whereas Greylock additionally participated in later rounds at larger costs, Chandra’s returns on this one are hefty.) 

“The longer I do what I do, the extra I basically imagine that enterprise is a folks enterprise,” stated Chandna, who has been an investor for over 20 years and has an enviable monitor document of profitable exits. He has helped incubate Palo Alto Networks in Greylock’s places of work and was on the practically $100 billion-worth firm’s board till final yr. Chandna was additionally an early investor in AppDynamics, Sumo Logic and Arista Networks.

Chandna appears for people who find themselves not solely motivated and bold, however are additionally self-aware of their weaknesses, and might recruit individuals who can get issues executed in areas that aren’t the founder’s sturdy fits.  

One other important ingredient for a founder is grit. “Should you had expertise that was sufficient, however barely inferior to my expertise, however you had been very self-aware and chronic, you’ll beat me,” he stated.

That’s what he noticed in Sinha. Rubrik’s founder had a lifelong dream of beginning an organization. When he based the info administration and restoration startup in 2013, he couldn’t discover sturdy engineers who needed to return work there, Chandra recalled. The enterprise he was making an attempt to construct was inherently not attractive on the time. 

Regardless of having been an investor with Lightspeed for 4 years earlier than launching Rubrik, recruiting expertise turned out to be a giant problem for Sinha. However he didn’t quit. He pinged engineers on LinkedIn after which invited them for espresso blocks away from the place they labored.

“Startup journeys are very arduous, even for probably the most profitable firms,” Chandna stated. “I need individuals who gained’t take ‘no’ for a solution.”

Maybe it was Sinha’s grit and ambition that compelled him to take his firm public regardless of the lukewarm IPO atmosphere.

“Rubrik has slightly below $800 million in annualized recurring income,” Chandna stated, “That’s bigger than most firms that went public within the final a few years. I believe they simply needed to get on with it.”

Chandna declined to say if he expects different Greylock portfolio firms to comply with Rubrik’s lead however added emphatically that the agency’s best-performing late-stage companies are Irregular Safety, Cato Networks, Discord, Figma and Lyra Well being.

We shall be following their destiny intently.