 Everyone welcome to this special CUBE conversation. We are here in the Palo Alto studios of the CUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host here with Rehan Jaleel, former president and CEO of Elastica. Here to talk about the people first network and his approach and experiences in his entrepreneurial journey. Rehan, thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting. So we were talking before we came on. You have a great entrepreneurial journey. It's a great podcast up on the mayfield.com website. Really a good story about what you've done. But you had a lot of different kind of experiences through your progression journey and entrepreneurship. You had some failures and some successes. And certainly now with cloud security is hot. I'm sure you're probably going to go on to another one, but what's it like right now for you? You just left semantic. You're kind of out on your own. That's right. Are you clipping coupons going to go to the beach and hang out? Are you working on a new startup? What's happening? Yeah, I think it's, there's a lot to do. Frankly for me, it's very important to actually understand some new problems that needs to be solved. Especially there's so much changing with AI and all the intrusions as you're seeing that that's breaches that are going on. There are no new problems to solve and that's where my head is. I'm not going to take too much of a break. I'm going to get going. Yeah, you seem eager to go. I mean, that's most entrepreneurs do that. Talk about, let's talk about some of the experiences you had on one of the things we were talking in about 14 of my cameras that back in the old days when before internet broadband wireless was hot, you did a startup around Y-Max which was early days of broadband wireless. That's right. And then you had some failures, successes but didn't work out. Then you had another wireless startup that was successful, that became part of that 4G movement. This is an example of being correct in the thesis but you picked the wrong door to go through. Talk about that journey because I think that time in history, this is around 2001 to 2002 just in three time frame. This was the internet was growing. Wireless, we didn't have the phones we have now, obviously it's smart phone in 2007, years later. That's right. This was pre-mobile boom. This was the beginning of the shift to broadband, true broadband. Now we see it everywhere LTE, 5Gs around the corner. This was a pivotal moment but for you, you were as an entrepreneur, you had the right decision, broadband wireless, but it was shifting. Feels like cloud today but I want to get into that journey. What did you learn? I think there were two very different companies. The mission of the first company which I joined as an employee, the first company, which was to take the high speed internet to the masses. In US and some developed world, they were DSL and cable kind of was coming up but that infrastructure did not exist in the rest of the world and the mission was that if we could take same level of high speed connectivity and enable it for the rest of the world, it'd be really cool and this is back in the day. So thesis was right and hence I joined that company and it was a lot of fun, I learned a lot but I think one thing you have to realize even in those times to do such a massive project and to go against some massive incumbents which exist in those ecosystems, the differentiation has to be extremely high and to create differentiation on the radio side of things is just very difficult and I think so and of course, at that time the economy took a bad turn and that company didn't have a significant big outcome. From that learning, I evolved the thesis that this technology needs to go mobile and this is again pre-iPhone times, it was Blackberry times. So if you were to go talk to investors and say, look the world is going to look like when we will have internet in our pocket, the people would smile at you, it's like what are you talking about, right? So even raising money for that was not easy and that was my first company that I started myself called Y-Chorus and thesis there was that what if you could have DSL type connectivity and literally all internet's power in your pocket? But the learnings from the first company were that if you go try to do that straight in the wireless side of things in a telco environment, the competition is going to be significantly high. The scale, the presence, the market power they have. And the purchasing cycle, most important is the purchasing cycles. People take time to, even if you come up with something really compelling, by the time it's going to be getting deployed, somebody will catch up to you. I mean just think about the time, this is the time for the folks watching if you're younger or even older like my age. Think about it, you didn't, I mean to actually have a phone in the car and surfing the internet didn't exist. I mean you could barely get emails just through a lower latency and a lower bandwidth. Internet tower, they didn't have the broadband. And so today we surf, watch movies in the car. So this was pre-broadband. So I remember the time when we were testing one router, it's like, look we're getting a ping back before we're driving down 101. It's like, that was like a miracle. Now it's now standard. This is when big shifts happen and a lot of people are comparing that kind of environment to what we're seeing with cloud computing now. You've seen Amazon Web Services, it's a $27 billion run rate, 47% a year. Google with great technology now entering in, Microsoft pivoting to cloud. Those are big players. And startups are now trying to figure out what you learned and how to not get in the way but also draft off the momentum. What's your view of this and what advice do you have for entrepreneurs that are out there? Because this is the number one question that I hear and I talk about with entrepreneurs either behind closed doors or on the queue. I think it's a blessing to have actually some infrastructure like that. But if you don't do it right, it could be a curse. What I mean by that is that you have to leverage something that is available to you and not trying to kind of reinvent, do something slightly better. So I think on the infrastructure side, you have to be very thoughtful on where you could potentially play and where frankly some of the big players like AWS or Microsoft and perhaps Google is going to be basically wanting to actually play themselves in that area. However, in said that, but the ecosystem and the layer of services that is made available, it's actually a big, big blessing for startups because all the value creation is kind of moving up the chain. And if you leverage that, then the cost of building startups and cost of doing new things is kind of gone down. So we did something very similar with Elastica which was all about security for the cloud, from the cloud. And if you didn't have that infrastructure layer available, the amount of money that would have required would have been significantly higher. So the cloud gets you scaled up, leveled up quicker, faster, go to market more agile and dynamic. And then you can wrap IP around those old tasks of provisioning servers. There's plenty of intellectual property that first you can put on top of it, but in a vertical fashion, at least for Elastica it was very much kind of a vertical solution of security for the cloud and SaaS applications itself. Instead of trying to redo your own servers and server stack and automation. I mean, things that are available just make you so fun. So you guys were successful with the cloud. Quite successful. And you sold that company to Symantec. What year was that? Actually, it was 2015, we sold it to BlueCoat. Oh, BlueCoat, okay, that was the BlueCoat. And the BlueCoat got acquired or, you know, by Symantec, but then BlueCoat management took over Symantec. And that was great. So we have like two acquisitions back to back. That's nice, it's a good experience. So I want to, before we move on to some of the things that are more personal, I want to get your take on an entrepreneurial dynamic that a lot of successful entrepreneurs take and I want to get your reaction to. Most entrepreneurs are very optimistic. You know, they see the opportunity recognition, they go for it, you know, they're persistent. But they're also in discovery mode to validate their thesis and always kind of self-aware. But there's always the fatal flaw out there that potentially could be there. We talked about broadband wireless, directionally correct, good concept. Fatal flaw was the incumbents. How do you, in essence, debug a startup venture, venture architecture or venture plan? Because if there's a fatal flaw in that, it's like a bug in software. How is an entrepreneur, do you debug that? I mean, in your journey, as you had successes and you learned from some of the things that were teachable moments for you, is there a debugging formula? How would you react to that? How would you explain entrepreneurs? Because that's what they always are naturally doing. Where's the fatal flaw? Where's the fatal flaw? Yeah, I think, and it's, I think extremely important. So firstly, intellectual honesty in setting your own direction is very important. You certainly have to have the aspiration to go do something and have that as you go do it. But the same time setting direction is the most important thing. Or keep tuning the direction over time is actually extremely important. And then there is no one answer. The key thing is that if you're going to be building something, you have to see if there's going to be a big market for it. That's the first thing. And then when you're going to get there, how that option is going to be there? Would you have an advantage in adoption as compared to incumbents if they get there? So I think you have to have a thesis because you just can't always project the right way, especially in the enterprise side of things. And if you can actually crack that code, and then if when you do offer this to the market, is it going to be easy to adopt, easy to accept by the customers? And would it have some kind of effect of quick movement? I think you have to have all those right. And some trend, if it kind of gives you support, like when we built Elastica, there was this is the cloud is going to take over. The SaaS is going to happen. There was a tailwind for you. So it was a tailwind. So it happened interestingly at the times when we had the product. Same actually happened for Y-Chorus, interestingly, where the thesis that the need of very high speed internet to a mobile device, this is pre-iPhone times would happen. And luckily iPhone came on in around 2007 timeframe and we had the product which Telcos would have needed. And the iPhone came along and we ended up building one of the first 4G networks along with ClearWire in Southern California. So I think all these things kind of have to line up the market, big market timing, your strategic advantage, your acceptance, all these- The self-awareness is a great point. Also having versatility and having the skills to flex because to get all those things right, you're kind of juggling. Yeah. How that persists. Okay, I got to ask you about people first. What does people first mean to you? At the end, I think, frankly, that is the core, core of startups. And we've been kind of lucky within Elastica. Our main reason for success has been that the team that we ended up having and building over time, they not only had actually very good diverse skillset because Elastica required very diverse skillset from networking to cloud to AI to all those, but the chemistry between the team was also quite amazing. So I think if you understand that the, not only the people in the company and the dynamics within them is going to be, which is going to be required, then you start paying attention to the culture that goes along with it, right? So the culture of executing as well as doing it with kindness and humility along the way. Sharing the experience, the journey together, co-creating, kind of creating that super glue. That's right. And the culture. That's super important. Extremely important. What have you learned in your, over your journey around where it's worked, where it hasn't? Because a lot of people are trying to figure out that people equation. I mean, it's people, they really, if they sincerely believe they want to do it, but sometimes people don't know the playbook. Is there a playbook? Is there a, or people just go by their gut. What's your advice on, you know, someone said, hey, you know, I really want to get my people equation, right? I want to get that right. We have a mission. We want to share that mission. What are some of the things that that entrepreneurs and companies can do, like immediately, that's easy to get going? I think being, is communication. And upfront, I think you to start communicating, not just in words, but in the things that you do yourself. Because it's not, words don't count, how you actually deal with people and how you actually treat them and how you actually collaborate. It actually really matters. And you have to, that actually is the driving force of actually starting a culture, I would say, in place. And then, if you observe any, anything that are working out, communication is going to be the key. You openly communicate. And do it in a way that it's not a hostile environment. I love your history. I love your background. My personal family is a family of immigrants that comes to the United States. You have a very immigrant story. Andy Grove was an immigrant, founder of Intel. I mean, Silicon Valley is born, entrepreneurship is indiscriminate. Entrepreneurs are who they are. But you have an interesting story where you came from, how you came to Silicon Valley. Tell that story. Yeah. So I was born in Pakistan. My parents were born in India. So they migrated to Pakistan. And this just happens to be that I came here for studies. Interestingly, I didn't know much about Silicon Valley, to be honest. And I happened to have a job in Sun Microsystem that happened to be in Silicon Valley. But when I came here, it was kind of a blessing. This is exactly where I needed to be. Because even when I was going to grad school, I had the aspiration to actually go do something on my own. But I didn't know how. And when you come here to Silicon Valley, the people around you and the friendship that you create here and the relations that you build here and what you learn from the other people is actually quite amazing. So I feel very blessed. And it really is a special place. And you have to kind of understand that vibe and culture. I want to ask you a personal question. A lot of entrepreneurs, if they can go to business school and get an entrepreneurship degree, some do. But I always have that debate. You're kind of born with this, kind of my philosophy. Some people might debate that. There's always a classic debate. Are you born with it or can you learn it or both? Some people know their entrepreneurs early young. Some figure it out like me when I'm in my 30s. Is when I kind of figured out that I have that entrepreneurial talent looking back at some of the things I did. When did you find out that you knew that you were entrepreneurial? And you wanted to build stuff on your own. You said, this is who I am as a person. What was that moment like? I think very early. I didn't have any doubt. This was undergrad times. Back in my undergrad school in Pakistan. I think I knew that I'll be doing something on my own. And that's exactly what I wanted to do. So how I would do it, what time it's going to be. I didn't know any of that. But I had this kind of some belief in my mind that I would basically build some things and build business around it. So it was quite early. I had a good time. You were lucky you got some time. And when you came to Silicon Valley, what were some of the things you did? Was it like, oh my God, this is an amazing place or did you have to do some networking? What were some of the things that you did when you first came in to really kind of get into that groove swing, entrepreneurial groove swing? This is one of those times when Sun was an amazing place. I ended up at Sun Microsystems. And the people there were unbelievably talented. They have all kind of talented people there. So I think- Very entrepreneurial too coming out of Stanford. It's got McNeely, all the early DNA in there was all very entrepreneurial. Exactly. So I think that was again, a place where you could learn a lot, not just in technology, but actually how to solve problems, how to understand customer problems that you could solve and build new technology on top of it. So I think, and I didn't stay there that long. Within a couple of years, I decided that I need to go basically join a small company where I could do more things beyond just designing one aspect or just I was building microprocessor designs. Instead of just doing that, I could do other roles also. So I joined the Bordner-Rogos company, a part of that you mentioned. As an entrepreneur, one of the big decisions is who you're going to marry in terms of a VC or partner, financial partner. That's right. It truly is taking on a new partnership. And that's a big struggle. And I think we've seen the brogrammer culture certainly amplified as it's just recently past decade where everyone wants to go for the big valuations and think, oh wow, look at, I've only sold 15% of my company and raised 10 million or a big number. Look how great that is. But then you realize that when they come to board meetings. You got them a good valuation, but they're going to want to be receptive on the other side. So there's a dynamic in fundraising early on, not just market selection as a venture, but partner selection. Talk about how important that is, how you handled it, and advice for people thinking about selection of a financial partner. Yeah. See, in technology companies where you have to invest a bunch in R&D early on, you do need money. It's just the way it works. But money is not everything because right now at least today, money is kind of commodity. You can actually raise from many, many different sources, many different VCs. But one thing I've learned within startups is that any and all startups will have good times and bad times. We'll have doubts in a strategy and we'll have conviction. And when those times are not so good, you need people who you can just go talk frankly without worrying about it and without getting judged along the way. Trust. Trust is the key. So I think you pick people essentially based on how much you actually trust them, especially very, very early stage startups. And then as you go along, perhaps things change over time because over time with the company scaling, you may need a lot more money. But I think, again, people first, you want to partner with people you can actually trust. And the hard conversations sometimes you want to have, you want to be self-aware and that's always step one, but two, vulnerability and then partnering with a financial partner that's going to sit on the same side of the table at the right times. And maybe on the other side to be a counterbalance at the right times. And also when you need more money, they got to help you sell the next round too. There's a lot of things that they have to do. And the dynamic is critical. And you've had success with that. So far has been a success. Well, what's the big thing happening right now in your mind, just to kind of take it forward now as we look forward, you see a lot of cloud computing got a great experience with cloud. You've been successful. Cloud security is really hot. What do you see as opportunities in the cloud space as now that you got your entrepreneurial, 20 mile stare out there looking for opportunities, I'm sure you probably mean more security space, but in general, as an entrepreneur, what do you see as things that people can go after? Markets. In general, I say on the enterprise side of things, anything that simplifies work and automates it, whether it's using AI and whether you're using other technologies, software technology, I think that's where it's going to go more because of horizontal layers where you have big data platforms and you have infrastructure providers. I think they are doing a great job in enabling the ecosystem, but now we're going to see a lot more verticalized solutions based on machine learning and AI and automation. I think that's, we're going to see a lot more. There's plenty of opportunity out there. It's super early too, and you're very young. Do you agree with that? Absolutely. Yeah. Great. Well, thanks for coming in the CUBE conversation. Appreciate this part of the Mayfields. People first conversations. I'm John Furrier with the CUBE. We're here on Jalil, former presidency of Elastica, successful serial entrepreneur about to embark on his next adventure. Good luck and look forward to catching up. Thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks for watching. This is the CUBE Conversation People First Network. I'm John Furrier.