Playbook
Notion’s Foundations of Product-Led Growth & Marketing: Insights from Rachel Hepworth
Read more
[04:28] How co-founders Ricardo and Mohit met each other at UCLA
[12:40] Mohit and Ricardo discuss the series of challenging circumstances that led to the founding of ThousandEyes
[25:19] How ThousandEyes found product and market fit and scaled the business
[30:01] Words of wisdom on how to hire the best executive team through phases
[45:10] How Mohit and Ricardo discussed and evaluated acquisition options
[1:06:42] Mohit and Ricardo share advice to their younger selves (and new first time founders)
In 2009, Mohit and Ricardo started ThousandEyes to allow everyone to see the performance of the Internet, which over the past 20 years has emerged as the standard for connecting customers and companies in our everyday world. As immigrants in graduate school with expiring visas, they started their company in less than auspicious times during the first financial crisis. ThousandEyes was eventually acquired by Cisco for a reported $1 Billion, but their original founding journey required resiliency and creativity to get the company off the ground. We asked Mohit and Ricardo to share their story with us live. Here are some of the highlights:
Mohit: When we were at UCLA, Ricardo had the startup bug in him. I thought I’d go work in a startup and get to know networking. But Ricardo kept bugging me, and I kept telling him that the startup life wasn’t for me. But when I got laid off, it was a life-changing moment. I called him from the parking lot and said “Let’s do this.”
Ricardo: At the time, we were also still trying to get our green cards. We didn't have any funding yet, but were trying to figure out how we could start our business. And we were still in Los Angeles, which is not the best-known place to start an enterprise tech company. So there were lots of unknowns.
Mohit: This wasn’t Plan A, and it honestly wasn’t even Plan B. This was Plan C. But sometimes the absence of options clarifies what you need to do.
Mohit: Our first customer was a very large internet service provider. At the time, we had no idea what we were doing—I had no selling skills and I made a really embarrassing mistake with our first customer. We got some advice from people who sold enterprise software that if we were going to quote a license price that we should “always” apply a 20 percent fee for maintenance. But that applies when you’re selling hardware and perpetual licenses—not when you’re selling subscription software, like we were doing. We quoted them maintenance which was a mistake - we clearly didn’t really know what we were doing!
About six months later, I realized I’d screwed up. I called our champion and told him we shouldn’t have charged them that line item. The customer laughed and said, “We saw that and we were going to burst your bubble, but we liked you guys and we decided to pay it off.” That was such a touching moment for me, and it reminded me that you should always be honest with your customers.
Mohit: An important element of product-market fit is being able to find customers on your own. Don't assume that because you have five customers coming through introductions that you have product-market fit. You really need to build your own inbound and outbound selling capabilities and not rely solely on your own personal networks. The second point I always stress is that you don’t really know your stickiness until you go through a renewal cycle. It’s easy to sell the first time—but the true test is when you have to get customers to renew. Renewal cycles always reminded us of where we stood – if we were getting extensions and expansions, we knew we had value. When customers churned it always gave us a chance to learn.
Ricardo: In terms of engineering hiring, we realized early on that we didn’t have a large enough network in Silicon Valley so we had to get creative. Nobody knew ThousandEyes as a brand, and very few people understood or could explain what we did. We had to recruit the best and this often meant hiring people from other countries. We ended up with a very diverse team from a geographic point of view—lots of folks from Europe, South America, and Asia. Our approach worked and to this day, we still have folks who’ve been with us for years that we hired in the early days and made tremendous contributions to the company. The other thing we found out is that the folks we brought in from the outside actually tend to switch jobs less often than people who have only worked in tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Mohit: My philosophy is that you don't want to hire for yesterday, but you also don't want to hire for today. If you're in scaling mode, hire for tomorrow. We always looked for potential, versus proven experience.
Ricardo: Putting work above everything isn’t always the best thing to do. If I could go back in time, I would’ve gone to Mohit’s wedding in 2013. The company had less than 10 people at the time, and I thought it was important for me to stay in the office instead of going to India to celebrate his wedding. We were really focused on making sure we were always executing but in retrospect we shouldn’t miss out on those important life events. I’m definitely not going to miss his 10 year anniversary party!
Mohit: Looking back, I should have done a better job of shutting off when I really needed to. Here’s a crazy example: My wife was giving birth to our first child. She was in labor and I was multitasking between helping her through labor and negotiating a customer contract. I should not have done that, and I still regret not being fully present for that moment today. As a founder, being able to shut off is important. You need to be present for everyone.
