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

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

The corporate’s CEO, Bipul Sinha, drew Rubrik’s plan to revamp the information 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 might 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 keeping 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 way more than Rubrik’s need to tackle the arcane knowledge restoration market that motivated him to guide Rubrik’s $40 million Collection B in Could 2015. (The Collection B spherical offered for $2.45/share, adjusting for splits, in keeping with these SEC paperwork. Whereas Greylock additionally participated in later rounds at greater costs, Chandna’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 report 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 seems to be 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 achieved in areas that aren’t the founder’s robust fits.  

One other important ingredient for a founder is grit. “If you happen to had expertise that was satisfactory, however barely inferior to my expertise, however you had been very self-aware and protracted, 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 information administration and restoration startup in 2013, he couldn’t discover robust engineers who wished to return work there, Chandna recalled. The enterprise he was attempting 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 an enormous 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 exhausting, even for essentially the most profitable corporations,” Chandna stated. “I would like 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 corporations that went public within the final a few years. I feel they only wished to get on with it.”

Chandna declined to say if he expects different Greylock portfolio corporations to observe 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 can be following their destiny carefully.