How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)

Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products. In today’s episode, we discuss: • Why companies get stuck in the mid-market and struggle to move up into enterprise • Why Jyoti deliberately lost Netflix as their customer • The difference between product-market-sales fit, and product-market-fit • How to build a scalable, capacity-driven go-to-market machine (instead of chasing deals) • Diagnosing whether you have a product problem or a distribution problem • How to hire and evaluate your first head of sales and top sales leaders • Why Jyoti sold AppDynamics three days before IPO • The “binary differentiator” rule for launching new products into crowded markets • Why Harness runs 16 product lines under one roof Where to find Jyoti: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansal/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/jyotibansalsf Where to find Brett: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: • Website: https://firstround.com/ • First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital • This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast References: • Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ • AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com/ • Barclays: https://home.barclays/ • BIG Labs: https://www.biglabs.com/ • Carlos Delatorre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/ • Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/ • Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ • Citi: https://www.citi.com/ • Cloudability: https://www.apptio.com/products/cloudability/ • Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/ • Dynatrace: https://www.dynatrace.com/ • Harness: https://www.harness.io/ • Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos • Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ • Nasdaq: https://www.nasdaq.com/ • Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/ • New Relic: https://newrelic.com/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/ • Traceable: https://www.traceable.ai/ • Unusual Ventures: https://www.unusual.vc/ • VMware: https://www.vmware.com/ Timestamps: (01:48) Why do companies get stuck in the mid-market? (05:09) Designing a product for enterprise and mid-market (07:19) Why Jyoti lost Netflix as a customer - on purpose (10:18) Becoming a scalable GTM organization (12:32) The real signs of product-market fit (14:04) Have you delivered the value? (15:46) How to hire your first sales team (19:59) The four signs of excellent sales leaders (23:16) How to interview a sales leader (27:51) Where Jyoti developed his commercial taste (29:37) Why early founders need to learn sales (32:02) How AppDynamics began (36:36) Why Jyoti sold three days pre-IPO (41:55) What does a healthy board look like? (44:23) How Jyoti perceives competition (46:18) Why you need a binary differentiator (49:53) How to launch multiple products (52:00) “We need to be best of breed” (57:38) Why PMs are like mini-entrepreneurs (1:00:20) The startup within a startup (1:02:45) A culture of continuous improvement