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A Conversation with Druva Co-Founder Jaspreet Singh (Video)
This was originally going to be an interview about the state of enterprise-level backup software in an increasingly edge computing-focused world, but we rapidly drifted into talking about how Druva started in Pune (near Bangalore) and ended up moving to Silicon Valley. We hear plenty about American software companies moving to India, but not a lot about Indian software companies moving here. Druva had good reasons for the move, the chief one being a financing deal with Sequoia Capital. Aside from that, though, Jaspreet says the talent pool -- not just developers but software marketing people and other important staffers -- is more concentrated in Silicon Valley than almost anywhere else in the world. 'It's like Hollywood for geeks,' Jaspreet says. This doesn't mean business is necessarily easy in the USA: Jaspreet ended up laying off his entire staff. Twice. And he made other mistakes as a young, new CEO bringing a company to life in a crowded field.
Those mistakes, which Jaspreet shares freely with us, are like a business school 'Start-Up Pitfalls' class. You may never want to do your own startup, but if you're a developer or otherwise involved with the software industry, there's a good chance that you'll have a chance to work for one at some point. And if you have that chance, you'll be glad you watched this video (or read the transcript) before you take the startup plunge.
Those mistakes, which Jaspreet shares freely with us, are like a business school 'Start-Up Pitfalls' class. You may never want to do your own startup, but if you're a developer or otherwise involved with the software industry, there's a good chance that you'll have a chance to work for one at some point. And if you have that chance, you'll be glad you watched this video (or read the transcript) before you take the startup plunge.
Robin Miller for Slashdot: This is Jaspreet Singh, he is the CEO and founder of Druva, and Druva is working on... describe it... the edge of what?’
Jaspreet Singh : Druva, the way I would say it is that, without putting too much marketing into it, is a convergence of data production right, we’re trying to converge backup DR availability governance into a single solution in the cloud. Today cloud is synonymous with endpoints, a solution predominantly works on endpoints and being at the edge but the idea, the vision is to take it towards a core, eventually towards a big mainstream or mainframe servers, internet to data centers eventually, but it’s a convergence of backup archival, e-discovery, availability for data at the edge.
Maybe the reason you've laid off your entire staff twice is because you don't know what it is you're doing. I've heard more coherent answers from the Obama Administration.