Building an AI Unicorn: Glean CEO Arvind Jain (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In your selection of which investors to work with, what was your decision making? Was it people you worked with before?

Arvind Jain: There are two key investors in our first round. One of them was Ravi from Lightspeed. I had worked with him in my previous startup. It was an easy choice from that perspective. We also raised from Kleiner Perkins. They had the right experience for us.

Building an AI Unicorn: Glean CEO Arvind Jain (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This problem has been identified a long time ago. People have tried to build such enterprise knowledge management companies before. I’ve seen many of these attempts. Mostly they’ve failed. While these attempts were made and failing, there was an explosion of digital tools and data. All this was happening in parallel.

In 2019, the enterprise world is more data-rich. There’s more to draw from. AI has become mainstream by this time. What is it in your approach that is different in 2019?

Building an AI Unicorn: Glean CEO Arvind Jain (Part 1)

Arvind is an experienced entrepreneur who was able to raise $15M on a concept to solve a big problem. Since then, Glean has been abundantly funded, generates abundant revenue and has become a legitimate Unicorn.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Unicorn First Using Services from Utah

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Our tried-and-true mantra of Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later rings throughout Dave Elkington’s story. As the Founder of InsideSales.com, he used services to bootstrap a Unicorn that had raised close to $140 million in VC funding when we spoke in 2015. Revenue was scaling 100% year over year then. InsideSales.com became known as XANT and was acquired by Aurea Software in 2021.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances?

Dave Elkington: I grew up in Utah. I went to school here. My parents are both school teachers and worked for the state and federal government. It was a little bit atypical. My dad was a rancher growing up in Idaho. My mom is from Canada. When people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them I wanted to be a millionaire. They would ask why. I’d be like, “Not for the money, but purely for the sake of accomplishment of being able to do that.” I went to school locally. My education is a little bit eclectic. I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy. I also have minors in Hebrew, Japanese History, and Business. I also studied, for about a year, in Israel. I decided I wanted to go get some international experience and I had family in Israel. I dropped out of school at BYU and applied to the Hebrew University. I got accepted and transferred credits. I did that for a little over a year, dropped out of school, and applied to BYU. I got re-accepted and then finished at BYU.

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From Hardcore Techie to Unicorn Entrepreneur: Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix (Part 1)

Inspiring story of a passionate technical founder who has built one of the iconic fast growth Unicorns in the tech industry.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

10 More Indian Unicorns

We previously analyzed 10 Indian Unicorns. Many are unjustifiably overvalued, some are not. However, if the founders can keep their heads straight and execute, thereby back-filling the valuations, invaluable infrastructure could get built in sector after sector.

Here are 10 more:

• Chargebee Helps Businesses Manage their Subscription Billing
• BrowserStack Addresses a $45B Market Opportunity
• Mindtickle Leverages AI for Sales Enablement
• upGrad Consolidating within the EdTech Sector
• Eruditus Targets the K-12 Market
• Zetwerk Brings eCommerce to Manufacturers
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456th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight

Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, first spoke with me when Gainsight was very young. Much has happened since. This conversation catches us up on the interim years since 2013. Gainsight recently raised money from Vista Equity at $1.1 Billion valuation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Unicorn Investments with Ravi Mohan of Shasta Ventures

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Ravi Mohan.

Ravi Mohan is Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, a firm that has invested in three SaaS Unicorns. Ravi discusses these investments: Apptio, Anaplan, and Zuora. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:

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