Podcasts Business SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 708: $35M Raised to Tell IT Departments What Alerts Are Important

708: $35M Raised to Tell IT Departments What Alerts Are Important

Published: July 2, 2017, 9 a.m.

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Assaf Resnick. He\\u2019s the founder and CEO of BigPanda, an algorithm-make IT operations platform that turns IT alert noise into insight, unifies fragmented operations and enables digital enterprises to attain dramatic or pretty high service levels. Prior to founding the company, he was an investor for Sequoia Capital where he focused on early stage companies across enterprise software, SaaS and the internet sector.

Famous Five:

  • Favorite Book? \\u2013 The Goal
  • What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 N/A
  • Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Salesforce
  • How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 5
  • If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 \\u201cStart a company early\\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 01:17 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Assaf to the show
  • 01:52 \\u2013 Sometimes, Assaf would still ask himself why he left Sequoia
  • 02:00 \\u2013 Assaf spent 6 years in Sequoia and it was an opportunity of a lifetime
  • 02:19 \\u2013 Assaf started in Sequoia when he was 29
  • 02:36 \\u2013 Assaf was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, so he left Sequoia
  • 03:30 \\u2013 Assaf\\u2019s stayed in Sequoia for personal career growth
  • 03:43 \\u2013 Sequoia is different from other VC firms
  • 04:31 \\u2013 For Assaf, Sequoia expresses the combination of opportunities in the market
  • 05:33 \\u2013 Assaf is proud of the deals that he had made with Sequoia
  • 06:00 \\u2013 Assaf found Snaptu to be an interesting deal they invested in
  • 07:00 \\u2013 BigPanda automates the ability of human-beings and IT operations to keep up with data centers that are radically evolved
  • 07:50 \\u2013 The big part of IT spending usually goes to the engineers
  • 08:00 \\u2013 In the data centers, they have to keep the software and infrastructure that is radically transforming running
  • 08:40 \\u2013 A data company needs to have a handful of tools, data centers and servers
  • 09:15 \\u2013 One of BigPanda\\u2019s clients is a Fortune 50 and a large networking company
    • 09:30 \\u2013 The company now has SaaS offerings and gives the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they promise to companies
    • 10:15 \\u2013 The company has teams of engineers in Ukraine, California and India that use 15 monitoring tools to see what is happening
    • 10:37 \\u2013 The company has 70K data points they need to keep track
    • 11:05 \\u2013 The amount of data engineers they need has become an issue
  • 11:27 \\u2013 The problems in the war room can be both preventative and reactionary
  • 11:45 \\u2013 BigPanda uses a lot machine learning and dynamic classroom instruction to get through the noise
  • 12:10 \\u2013 An alert can be a problem with the server and something that you can just leave out
  • 13:31 \\u2013 One should examine if the \\u201cif/then statements\\u201d are dynamic
  • 13:45 \\u2013 The \\u201cif/then statements\\u201d vary day by day, then variables change quickly
  • 14:13 \\u2013 BigPanda was launched in 2012
  • 14:20 \\u2013 BigPanda is a SaaS company which charges annually
  • 14:45 \\u2013 Pricing average
  • 14:51 \\u2013 BigPanda caters to very large companies
  • 15:20 \\u2013 Team size is 60
  • 15:28 \\u2013 BigPanda has raised almost $35M
  • 15:46 \\u2013 BigPanda has done a regional series B
  • 16:08 \\u2013 BigPanda partners with Sequoia, Mayfield and In Battery
  • 16:28 \\u2013 At the end of 2015, people started devaluing some unicorns
  • 16:59 \\u2013 When Assaf saw rain clouds forming, he thought it made sense to get a winter coat from a capital perspective
  • 17:40 \\u2013 BigPanda had plenty of pipelines
  • 18:02 \\u2013 Half of the company is based in Palo Alto and half is in Tel Aviv, Israel
    • 19:03 \\u2013 Half of the people are in engineering and product, the other half is marketing
  • 19:49 \\u2013 BigPanda is very disciplined with their model
  • 20:39 \\u2013 BigPanda has around 25 companies from Fortune 500
  • 22:20 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

  1. If you\\u2019ve committed to always being there for your client, you better follow through on that.
  2. No matter how many engineers you have, there\\u2019s always a chance of them missing a lapse in the data.
  3. Start your business as early as possible.

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Resources Mentioned:

  • The Top Inbox \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
  • Klipfolio \\u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
  • Hotjar \\u2013 Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you\\u2019re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
  • Acuity Scheduling \\u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
  • Host Gator\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
  • Audible\\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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