Doug Merritt: Creating a decacorn in Splunk and identifying trends

In this episode we have a special guest - Doug Merritt - who has shaped not a unicorn but a decacorn - a company valued at more than $10 billion. As the former CEO of Splunk, he steered this big data company to extraordinary heights. In just six years under Doug's leadership, Splunk's market cap soared past $25 billion, and its annual recurring revenue skyrocketed from $200 million to a staggering $3 billion. At its peak, over 50% of Splunk revenues came from security applications.

Doug's journey began as a coder and developer before transitioning to sales leadership and eventually CEO of a publicly traded company. His entrepreneurial roots trace back to founding a company called Icarian, which was acquired by WorkStream. He then went on to hold senior management positions at tech giants like Cisco, SAP, and PeopleSoft. Today Doug is the Chairman and CEO of Aviatrix, a secure cloud networking leader that has raised over $350 million in venture funding and serves over 500 global customers.

Throughout his time at Splunk, Doug hired, mentored, and promoted well-known executives in the infrastructure and cyber industry, from Haiyan Song to Jason Child to Snehal Antani. In this episode, Doug discusses what he looks for in executives, how he evaluates their ability to succeed, and what founders should keep in mind when building their leadership teams. As the CEO of Splunk, Doug led several acquisitions including SignalFx and Phantom Cyber. On Inside the Network, he shares how founders should think about M&A and what they need to do to achieve successful exits. In our conversation, we'll explore Doug's career evolution, insights from his founder experience, and key lessons learned while scaling Splunk into a decacorn. We'll also discuss his current role at Aviatrix and his vision for the future of cloud technology and generative AI.

Episode Transcript

Sid Trivedi (00:04):
Welcome to Inside the Network. I'm Sid Trivedi.

Ross Haleliuk (00:08):
I'm Ross Haleliuk.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (00:09):
And I am Mahendra Ramsinghani.

Ross Haleliuk (00:11):
We've spent decades building, investing, and
researching cybersecuritycompanies.

Sid Trivedi (00:19):
On this podcast, we invite you to join us inside the
network, where we bring the bestfounders, operators, and
investors building the future ofcyber.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (00:31):
Today, we have a special guest, Doug
Merritt, who has shaped not aunicorn, but a decacorn, a
company valued more than$10,000,000,000. As the former
CEO of Splunk, Doug steered thisbig data company to
extraordinary heights. In just 6years, under Doug's leadership,

(00:53):
Splunk's market cap soared past$25,000,000,000 and its annual
recurring revenues skyrocketedfrom $200,000,000 to a
staggering $3,000,000,000 At itspeak, over 50% of Splunk's
revenues came from securityapplications. Join us today as
we dive into the mind of aleader who doesn't just think

(01:15):
outside the box. He builds awhole new one.
Doug's journey began as a coderand a developer before
transitioning to salesleadership and eventually CEO of
a publicly traded company. Hisentrepreneurial roots trace back
to founding a company calledIcarian, which was acquired by

(01:35):
Workstream. He then went on tohold senior management positions
at tech giants like Cisco, SAP,and PeopleSoft. Today, Doug is
the chairman and CEO ofAviatrix, a secure cloud
networking leader that hasraised over $350,000,000 in
venture funding and serves over500 global customers. In our

(01:59):
conversation today, Sid, Ross,and I will explore Doug's career
evolution, insights from hisfounder experience, and key
lessons learned while scalingSplunk into a decacorn.

Sid Trivedi (02:13):
Hey, Doug. Welcome to Inside the Network. We have 4
different sections to talk abouttoday, Doug, and we're gonna
start with your background. Andlet's go all the way to the
beginning. And the beginning wasyou kind of spent 3 years as a
coder at Accenture, and then youdiverted your career into sales.
And you started as an insidesales rep, and you moved your

(02:33):
way up at some pretty greatcompanies from Oracle to
Powersoft to Patrol. Manyfounders have this technical
background that you startedwith, but they haven't spent a
lot of time with customers. Whatadvice do you have for founders
who are trying to build thatselling DNA that you have built
over multiple decades now?

Doug Merritt (02:51):
Yeah. It's really in my 2 years of quasi semi
retirement, whatever I wannacall the time period between
Splunk and Aviatrix. I spent alot of time investing and
advising. I jumped on a coupleof boards and I was surprised
that most of my time wasactually on seed and series a
companies because Splunk andsome of the larger companies,
people with SoftTest AB had beenwith, I thought it would be more

(03:12):
scale oriented. But it was greatto get back to, all right, so
what's it look like when you'rehiring your very first CRO?
Or you made a mistake and you'rehiring your second CRO and
second CMO. And this is anabsolutely pervasive problem.
Like I'll start with tech hasshifted it a lot over the past
20 years. I think tech orientedfounders were a thing, but they
weren't dominant. And that haschanged where I think with

(03:33):
product led growth and a lot ofthe core lower level
infrastructure enablementtechnologies, it's now much more
typical to have an X engineer ora true deep technical founder as
leader.
And that first time period,months, semesters, years of
trying to get the company offthe ground before you decide to
bring in a professional salesand marketing person, there's so
much that the founder learnsabout customer interaction and

(03:55):
how do you get those dealsacross across the table and is
really difficult for everybodyto transition from that founder
led sale to more of aprofessional marketing and sales
orientation. And the two piecesof advice that I've had for
those teams is 1, give yourselfgrace and recognize that you
have not been a seller. And atthis point in time as a founder,

(04:17):
you probably are not going to besomeone that's carried a bag and
been on quota. And until you'vedone that, it's really you don't
have the true understanding.Right?
The same respect that you'd giveto the depth of understanding
you have to have as a developer,that it's not something you
picked up in months and youcan't just read books. You need
to actually do the work for awhile. That exists also in sales

(04:40):
and marketing. There's some artto it, there's a lot of science,
a lot of experience. So mycoaching to everybody is be
super curious.
Like that growth mindset thingwe talk about, it is really
important. Be inquisitive, becurious, be hyper empathetic.
And then 2, you've got to bepatient because the second
mistake that I've seen mostearly, most of these teams make

(05:00):
is you're on a growthtrajectory. The plan that you've
sold the VCs is continued upinto the right. Those sales were
really hard fought.
Now you're dealing in theclassic Jeffrey Moore cross knit
chasm, you're dealing with thoseleading and early adopters and
it was hand to hand combat andand you as the founder and
whoever you're doing that withwere pivoting and and learning

(05:21):
and adjusting and tuning.There's this setup that I see
with most CROs coming in. 1, notunderstand that's gonna take
that while you and your mindhave perfected the pitch and
while you think you've gotproduct market fit, it's
probably not scalable yet. Andyou've gotta give the new person
that comes in a couple of monthsof tagging along with you and
listening aggressively to howyou're interacting with

(05:44):
customers and learning, goingback to the few that you have,
what really worked so it can beput into something repeatable
that that person and otherpeople can understand. But the
other piece with that patienceis that leader typically has 4
very different things that youexpect out of them.
1, close deals. That's a fulltime job. 2, set up all the

(06:05):
systems so that we actually havegot a reasonable instance of
Salesforce. We've got Gong orsomething like that in place and
we're collecting dataeffectively. And that's a full
time job.
3, create all the processes andenablement and methodologies.
Like, how are we gonna sell? Arewe MEDDIC or MEDDPIC? And are we
gonna have a BDR team, an SDRteam, and how they interleave
with the core reps? And so a tonof work there as a full time

(06:28):
job.
And then 4, be, use your networkand be a super recruiter, which
is also a full time job. So yougive these poor people 4 full
time jobs and sequencing andprioritization I just find is so
important in every leadershiprole and you've got to help them
with the prioritization. And Itend to emphasize, let them
learn, let them understand andbuild the materials and put the

(06:50):
sales processes in and begin tobuild the systems without this
huge onus of go out and hire abunch of people and you're
responsible for closing allthose deals. And the opposite
usually happens, which is goclose these deals, most
important thing, and start tobring people in. But the people,
they don't have time to reallyunderstand how to make it
repeatable and they don't putany of the processes and

(07:10):
infrastructure in place and thenyou hit a wall and that's why
you're usually not too long downthe road looking for your 2nd
CRO and then your 3rd CRO.
And so it's just but that kindof goes all the way back to
setting expectations properlywith VCs on when you're ready to
bring in a professional VP ofsales, director of sales, CRO,
whatever the title is gonna be,how do you set them up for

(07:30):
success?

Ross Haleliuk (07:31):
Many today think of you as a public company CEO,
but you've also walked thefounder's path. You started
Ikarian back in 1996 and servedas a CEO for 5 years right
through the acquisition byWorkstream. What were some of
the key learnings for you as afounder, and how have you
adopted that as a CEO?

Doug Merritt (07:51):
Yeah. Great question. I had almost the
opposite learnings of what Ijust talked about, which was I
coded for a couple of years,very, very mediocre coder. So I
was reasonably technical, butnot deeply technical. And then I
sold for a lot of years and Iwas really good at selling and
pivoting and listening, veryconsultative.
And I over the course of mycareer, and I whipsawed the

(08:14):
organization prettydramatically. I didn't really
understand what it meant toreliably and scalably and
repeatably deliver software. Ididn't brilliant. You intuitive,
but you just haven't lived it.Going back to until you've been
in that org, it's difficult toreally understand it.
I didn't understand how muchspace product managers need to
make sure they harden the p theMRD and the PRD and that they

(08:34):
actually get a chance to define.And then engineering needs time
to actually go through the fulldevelopment release cycle. And
so I'd be great at going andtalking to a customer and they
were a little bit different thanthe last customer. We had sold
AT and T and on what Icarian didand then we talked to Kaiser
Permanente, totally differentorganizations like, oh no, no,
we could do that for you aswell. And so my biggest lesson

(08:56):
through Icarian was havingwalked a mile in different
departmental shoes is reallyimportant to be a good CEO.
And I logically and kind ofemotionally learned what it was
like to be in engineering andwhere those mistakes were. And
we wound up with a reasonableoutcome for the company. And,
but it wasn't what any of uswanted, which is what led me to
take the head of engineering jobat PeopleSoft because that was a

(09:19):
huge radical departure. But socore lessons, again, be being a
super aggressive listener and bereally empathetic to all
different facets across anorganization. And while you're
really urgent, you have to be asa founder.
And while you know more thanmost because you have got the
image in your head, like youreally have got to slow down and

(09:39):
listen to your folks.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (09:40):
Thank you, Doug. I like the term super
aggressive listener and, ofcourse, being empathetic to not
just a few, but all thedifferent facets across the
organization. Now companies likePeopleSoft, SAP, and Cisco are
very different from the scrappystartup world that we live in.
Help us understand some keydifferences in being a general

(10:03):
manager at a company like SAP orCisco versus being the CEO of a
startup.

Doug Merritt (10:09):
I think the number one thing that I took away from
first PeopleSoft, but didn'tcarry it to SAP and Cisco is the
the power of a platform, thepower of of market share and
customer base is is insanelypowerful. Like you look outside
and it's like, man, that'sthat's a pretty good thing to
have. But and VCs definitelyappreciate go to market is
really tough. Building thatlarge customer base is really

(10:31):
tough and therefore enterprisesales is one of the key elements
to get there. But until you sitinside those companies, you
don't really understand the lockthat these companies have with
that, with the buyers that theyserve.
And then one of the betterexamples when I was at SAP, the
first division that me and myteam kind of came up with, it
wasn't really a charter, becamethe governance risk and
compliance division. It wasright after Sarbanes Oxley

(10:53):
passed and we came up with thewhole product suite to help the
CFO function with all the chaosand craziness of managing
finances in a Starbucks, aSarbanes Oxley driven world. And
then we bought this small littlecompany and one of the top SAP
customers at the time had boughta competitor and the CIO was

(11:13):
actually on the board ofadvisors and I think he was an
investor in that competitor andwe had him out for a briefing in
Palo Alto as part of the PaloAlto product team and walked
through the roadmap of why, whohad bought and why it was
important and where thedirection was going. At the end
of that meeting, he called histeam up and they'd already
bought and we're rolling out theproduct, said, I mean, he's

(11:35):
literally in the conferenceroom, said to cancel the rollout
and I'm stepping off the boardof advisors because SAP is going
this other direction.
So it's getting to the pointwhere you have the customer
loyalty that a largeorganization has is it's the
goal that most of us want topursue. It's very difficult to
do and as a startup the moreawareness you can have of how

(11:56):
powerful that relationship isand think through how to take
advantage of that. Like what canyou do on 1 +1 equals 3 basis
that really makes that largeorganization look good is one of
the more important things youcan do to get you across that
chasm and again to get some ofthe volume. The other piece I
learned is being a generalmanager of a big and complex

(12:17):
division. It was a$1,000,000,000 plus division of
PeopleSoft.
We went up building close to a$1,000,000,000 division at SAP
from close to nothing. Cisco isvery different. That was kind of
a functional, leadership role,but as complex as that
leadership is, it's still verydifferent than being a CEO. And
you can kind of delude yourselfto an extent because you've got
for me, especially at, at SAP, Ihad full span of control,

(12:39):
everything down to sales,especially to sales groups. But
when your neck is online everysingle day as the accountable
person reporting to the boardand the investors and every buck
truly stops with you, it doeschange everything.
It's great, great trainingbecause you have to be good at,
you have to understandengineering, you have to
understand marketing, you haveto understand sales to make
these roles work. You do getsome of that empathy that I was

(13:00):
talking about earlier on howdifficult it is, how how
different the departments areand and how difficult it is to
manage across them. But it'sstill not the same as being a
founder or a CEO.

Sid Trivedi (13:09):
I think this this comment and this point around
empathy and humility just keepscoming back and and clearly that
was something you learned,whether that be, you know, as an
individual coder, as an insidesales rep, as a founder, and
then finally also as a as a GM.And I I think it set you up in a
very good position for that thattime at Splunk.

Doug Merritt (13:28):
Yeah. Definitely a set of life lessons. It's, we're
coached early on in school, anyof us super, super tight pay
folks that you wanna sit infront of the class and be the
smartest kid and always answerall the questions and the the
the right answer is whatmatters. And once you get out of
school and you start to work,you realize answer is important.
Like getting to it the rightanswer matters, but there's lots

(13:49):
of right answers.
And getting people to understandwhere you're going and
understanding the feedback fromthem and that kind of that whole
working organism that can evolveif you let it evolve, like
that's the hard part is how doyou get 10 ors or a 100 ors or a
1000 or 10000 or growing inclose to the same direction? And

(14:10):
I think a lot of people arewriting about empathy and
humility and and growth mindsetand because that, to me, is one
of the foundational elements ofhow you make that happen.

Sid Trivedi (14:20):
Let's move on to the second section, and this
section is really around scalingSplunk. And you first joined
Splunk to run field operationsunder Godfrey Sullivan who had
helped to take the companypublic and created this new
darling in the SIEM market. Andyou became CEO in the fall of
2015. The company at the timehad a market cap about of about

(14:41):
7 and a half $1,000,000,000 andabout 200,000,000 of ARR. And it
was back then best known as alog aggregation tool helping IT
ops teams find the root cause offailure and decrease mean time
to respond.
Over the next 6 years, as you asCEO, you grew the business to
nearly 3,000,000,000 of ARR, andthe market cap peaked at

(15:02):
$35,000,000,000. How did youdecide to extend this market
opportunity and evolve theplatform so that it fully went
across IT, DevOps, and Cyber.

Doug Merritt (15:12):
It was an incredible seven and a half
years because about a year and ahalf of of CRO slash SVP of
field ops. And there's a lot ofeveryone credits all the
brilliance that they have onthese great leadership roles and
a massive chunk is luck andtiming. Like Splunk has this
incredible product with the coreindex and landed and did a good

(15:33):
job of helping the market beaware of the value of logs. And
and I got I got to inherit that.But when I came in, SIEM wasn't
a thing yet actually.
It really we were still sellingto IT ops, a little bit of
cyber. And Godfrey was adamantat that point in time, like we
don't want Gartner talking aboutus as a SIEM or we don't even
really want to go after cyberthat aggressively. There was

(15:56):
really good rationale aroundthat. One, we were playing at a
very different level than theSIEMs were. They're a structured
data source.
You refine the data that goesinto a SIEM so that you can
create the incidents and eventmanagement alert frameworks.
That doesn't generally happenagainst non structured index
data. You want that in memoryand refined. So it's more of an

(16:18):
application and, and we were anindex, but 2, security at that
point in time was, didn't havethe power they have today. And
they were what we called Splunkhuggers.
Right? We, what we wanted waspeople to dump a bunch of data
into Splunk and then share it.So there's more and more use
cases and insights that peoplewould get from this non
structured data store and cyberwas really, really protective of
the data, which went against oneof our core tenants. Despite

(16:41):
Godfrey's insistence and mycarry on of, hey, let's not
wander into that SIEM marketyet. There's also a strategic
element to that.
We tend to couple with HPArcSight and the other SIEMs as
the invest we were theinvestigative data lake that IT
ops use first and then cybereventually start to use as well.
And we complimented the SIEM andI didn't want to go in and tell

(17:02):
the people that just bought theSIEM or done a big renewal. Hey,
that was a bad decision. Like,why'd you do that? Use us as a
SIEM.
So we're really trying to becooperative. But what we what we
saw is there's a whole host ofIT ops use cases and then there
are a whole host of SecOps usecases Now if we could harden an
app on top, it would do a betterjob of helping people understand

(17:22):
what the platform did becausethis investigative better MTTR
data lake thing based on logswas still hard for people to
conceptualize. So I think therewere 2 elements that really
helped get Splunk on thatcontinued really rapid hyper
growth phase. 1 was despite theubiquity of what the platform
could do, constraining thenumber of use cases to a set of

(17:44):
a high value, high volume,generally horizontal use cases
across IT ops and SecOps. AndSIM became the most important of
those over time.
But we had a whole series ofapplications, ITSI and a bunch
of others that tried tocrystallize for different points
in the IT ops and SecOpslandscape, how you could get
immediate value from Splunkwithout having to grow into it

(18:06):
based on doing a bunch ofqueries and finding the answer
for yourself. Now it's hard toget across to Salesforce because
we were, Godfrey was reallyinsistent, we're not a platform,
but but we were a platform salesteam in the sense that we went
in and said, hey, here's thisgreat tool. How do you want to
use it? We could do here, there.Oh, what do you want to do?
And let's investigate with youand let's collaborate. And
buyers don't generally likethat. They want an answer. I'm

(18:28):
fine with buyers. The more youmake them think, the more
frustrated they get.
It's like we're the experts,we've studied this, here is the
answer. We've got a lot ofcustomers like you, that's why
you're doing business with us.Do it this way, please. So that
was a big effort to get to moreprescriptive selling and less
consultative selling, and itreally was use case back. The
second piece was making a bet onthe Cloud, which sounds stupid

(18:50):
in 2024 and even in 2014, 15it's like, what do you mean
you're not in the Cloud?
But data is as we're seeing it'sfinicky, like there's people are
worried about it. Where does itgo? And how many people see it?
And is it safe in the cloud ornot? And what's happening with
residency?
And what's happening withprivacy? And so it was a bit of
a gamble to go to cloud. Wereally got there. There's lots

(19:11):
of good business model reasons,but the core was we had seen our
bigger customers get to petabytescale and then 10 plus petabyte
scale and they're on their wayto get to a 100 petabyte and
potentially exabyte scale. WhenI looked at the complexity and
the technical skill necessarywhen you got to 100 of terabytes
and petabytes per day ofingestion, it's like, wow.
Yeah. A good tech company can dothat. The Googles, the Apples,

(19:33):
the Facebooks, but man, theaverage company, there's no way.
So how do we help them? We'vegot to do it for them, which
meant going to the cloud.
Yeah. That was a great tailwindand it also was made life
incredibly complicated becauseat the same time that we're
trying that we're in hypergrowthand we're trying to move to a
use case orientation and we'regoing through a complete
replatformization of thetechnology. It was not

(19:54):
horizontal scale out. It wasn'tmicroservices oriented. We had a
lot of static relationshipbetween the compute and storage
layers.
So insanely difficult for thecompany. You're now taking the
street through this crazyjourney of, Hey, nothing's going
to look good. Cash is going togo upside down. Revenues could
go upside down. Op margins goupside, but trust us.
It's all gonna work out. It'snot a journey for the faint of

(20:16):
heart. But if you have customersuccess as a top metric, it was
what we needed to do. And and itwound up being, I think, a big,
big lever for the growth of thecompany.

Sid Trivedi (20:25):
How much do you think the success of scaling
that ARR 15 times from 200 to3,000,000,000 was based on
execution versus vision? Was ityou know, was was the vision
obvious, what you justdescribed? And really, what what
was hard to do was makeexecuting on that vision, or was
the the vision the hard part, noone else had thought through

(20:46):
those things? And the executionwas, you know, as good as you
could do with all of the changesthat you are making.

Doug Merritt (20:52):
I am firmly in the cap, maybe too rotated, that
execution's a premium, not theidea or the insight, especially
in our industry. But I think ingeneral, I think humans are
really smart. And in tech, Iyou've you've gotta be super
creative and smart. And any ideayou have, I I assume there's a
100 or a 1000 or 10000 peoplethat have the exact same idea.
The premium is how do youactually bring that thing to

(21:14):
life?
So log data, and we weren't theonly ones. I just think we did
better than anybody else. Andthen we out execute them,
getting that platform to cloud.If anything, we were late.
Making this platform use casecentric, that's a tried and true
orientation that you can go backto Microsoft and IBM at the
beginning of tech and thenthat's bit of play that they've
run.
So I don't, you know, puttingthat all together and making it

(21:36):
digestible for people andselling to people on the vision,
like, there's definitely skillto that. But the hard part is,
so we wanna get to the cloud.How? What's the sequencing? How
do you prioritize stuff?
How do you deal with theunexpected turbulence that
always comes up? Happens if yougotta change personnel because
you've got the wrong people? Andthat's just that's just the
grind of these jobs. And I thinkall the premium's in the grind.

Ross Haleliuk (21:58):
Talking about execution, a big part of that is
always about the people.Throughout your time at Splunk,
you hired, mentored, andpromoted well known executives
both across infra and cyber.From people like Haiyan Song,
who now runs a big part of thebusiness at NetApp, to Jason
Child, who is now the CFO atARM, to Sunil Antony, who went

(22:20):
on to start his own companyHorizon 3. What are the 1, 2 top
trades you look for inexecutives, and how do you
motivate them to do their bestwork?

Doug Merritt (22:30):
Yeah. We had a great team at Splunk, and and
some of those folks, Godfreybrought in, some I brought in,
and we were lucky again to havethis incredible brand that
people actually wanted to workfor. The way that I have learned
to filter is when you're dealingwith, SVP or EVP or C level
hire, what we've been taught inmost of our hiring through our
careers is competence is reallyimportant. And most of us

(22:52):
started in engineering or sales.And so you do a classic
engineering hiring, coding testsand thinking tests, and it's all
about competence.
You know, can you actually dothis job? At that level, what I
learned and had learned it thehard way a few times is to get
to be a candidate at that level,your competence has to be high.
You still have to test for it.Is it relevant? Is your
competence relevant to whatwe're trying to drive?

(23:14):
But I think it all becomes grit,resiliency, empathy, creativity,
operational efficacy. They'remore of the intangible elements
that come with these execs. It'sso interesting to hear people
talk about the past because theymake it generally sound so
predictive and linear and anyonethat's gone through it knows

(23:35):
it's so non deterministic andnon linear and non predictive
and therefore the skills reallycome back to how aware can you
be of signals, which why I thinkempathy and listening is so
important. How quickly can youprocess? How quickly can you
make decisions often withoutinformation and without the
comfort of assurance?

(23:56):
And then how humble can you beon admitting you're wrong and
pivoting quickly? And then whatkind of grit and tenacity do you
have to be okay being wrong andpicking yourself up after you've
face planted for the 3rd timeand still being excited about
moving forward? I mean, thoseare harder to test for. I think,
you know, set spend a lot oftime with folks and ask them
much more of those situationalquestions of how is how'd your

(24:17):
life progress and tell me aboutthe hard issues you went through
and describe those in moredetail and tell me all about
your failure. There's a lot ofstandard review questions there,
but that is where ultimatelyI've kind of pivoted to being
the most important thing for theexec team hired.

Sid Trivedi (24:30):
Doug, one thing you've done very well is you
also identified when the rightperson would be great at that
point in time, as well asassessing when they weren't
likely the the right person forthat point in time and and
swapping them out. What advicedo you have for founders on how
to assess when, hey. We need toupscale this role. We need
somebody else. What what's thethe thought process in your head

(24:51):
that you think through?

Doug Merritt (24:53):
I'll do it. I'm I'll echo the trite advice of
never ever can look back andsay, jeez. I wish I'd taken more
time and given someone morechances before I had a hard
conversation, And I can 100%look back, like literally 100%
say, oh my God, I knew in myheart, like my all my alarm
bells are going off. And I justI was way too slow to act. And

(25:15):
everyone will say that, likethat's trite advice for me.
What it means is I really likecollaborating with my team. I
learned from them as well ashopefully they get some learning
from me. So I want to be, I wantto be involved. The signal for
me is when I feel like I'mrepeating myself over and over,
I keep asking for the samething. Like we've agreed that

(25:35):
this, this one deliverable isreally important.
You've got to get more granularon this aspect of operations, or
I need you to create somethingin this area that's strategic
or, and I'm back on my 3rd or4th meeting and I'm asking for
the same thing and it's stillnot being delivered. That is
usually that first early warningof, okay, something's wrong.
Because like they've got the IQ,like they've got lots of

(25:56):
different facilities to make ithappen. They probably don't know
how to get it done. And I'mtrying to collapse the time even
now, still after so many yearsdoing this, how do I help them
see they're having difficulty?
What quick mentoring can I giveto help them get over the hump
that I'm trying to shorten timeof if you don't rush to the
water and take the drink, I'mtrying to show you the water,
I'm not going to force you adrink, then we've got to have a

(26:17):
quick conversation of I think,you know, maybe I need to hire
above you, maybe I we need tomove you somewhere, maybe you
need to move out of the company,but there's just no it's really
difficult, I think, to dragsomeone through that given the
speed of what's happening in ourindustry and the expectations
that we all have to live with?

Mahendra Ramsinghani (26:33):
Thank you, Doug. You've given us some great
insights on market dynamics andtalent acquisition. Let us shift
our focus to another crucialaspect of your leadership at
Splunk, strategic acquisitions.You led several key acquisitions
like SignalFX and Tandem Cyber.Can you walk us through the
acquisition process from thebuyer's perspective?

(26:54):
As you were the CEO of a publiccompany, what factors did you
consider when evaluatingpotential startups for
acquisition? And let's flip thatscript over. What advice would
you give to founders who mightfind themselves in discussions
with acquirers? How can theybest navigate these interactions
and negotiations?

Doug Merritt (27:13):
So one, whenever I hear a founder or a CEO of a
small company say, you know,what's your goal? And say to be
bought, And we're targeting tobe an acquisition target or
something. It's like, I lose mymind. It's like, do you
understand how difficult it isto get bought? That's the worst
strategy in the world.
You can never build a company tobe acquirable. You've gotta be
open. You've got a fiduciaryduty to yourself and your

(27:35):
investors. You gotta be open toM and A if it, if it occurs, but
M and A happens because you'rebuilding something really
special and unique that is, hasthe opportunity to become an
independent public company. Andif not, it's gonna be very
difficult to get bought Ibelieve.
As a buyer, I've only been inhigh growth companies. So my
view is very skewed. I know thatpeople buy for market share. I

(27:56):
just try to take out thecompetition. I've never done
that in my roles.
And I know companies likeBroadcom can buy more for
operational efficiency andmargin enhancement. And it's
almost a great, I'd say it's aPE company to an extent. I've
never, never been there. I'malways trying to figure out how
do we accelerate growth. And tome, that's 2 different things

(28:16):
that again, you have to havedone this well to be
interesting.
I'm generally not buyingmarketing and sales expertise
because at PeopleSoft, at SAP,at Splunk, we had a lot of that
and it's nice to get someadditional great marketing and
sales folks, but we already havegot a great system in place. I'm
trying to figure out a way toeither fill out and round out

(28:37):
aspects of the buyer's journeyfor what we do for that buying
center. And it's just a build bypartner approach. And we
generally have determined likewith Phantom, Hey, something
like a security orchestration,automation and response is
really important. And we could,but yes, it's software.
You can always build iteventually. But we looked at it,

(28:57):
it's like it's at least 2 yearsto build this, maybe more. You
always underestimate themarket's moving pretty quickly.
Let's go out and we couldpartner, but we think it's
pretty strategic. We want toactually, we think it's very
tightly coupled with the coreSIM market.
We want to own that asset. Solet's find the best property we
can, which was the same thinkingwith signal effects. But there
were a bunch of smaller tuck insaround signal effects that were

(29:18):
trying to highlight differentelements of the observability
and DevOps world. But with thatorientation, it's kind of a tech
team tuck in and a technologyaugmentation piece, which goes
back to, to build a greatcompany, you know, laser focused
on the buyer, what the problemis, how do you take unique
approach to really solve thatproblem and ultimately disrupt

(29:40):
the market because you'recreating a brand new category,
you're creating brand newcapability, not doing product
market fit, if I'm just gonnabuild a better, better mousetrap
than the person behind me andactually reimagine the way it
gets done. And if you do thatsuper well, you'll for sure grow
within your buying center andthen you'll get potentially the
opportunity of someone thatAurea is bigger than you in that
buying center saying, I wantthat.
And if you do that right, you'rein the catbird seat of, yeah.

(30:03):
Yeah. That combination makessense or no. I really wanna
continue to try and go on myown.

Sid Trivedi (30:08):
We've talked a lot about Splunk. Let's talk a
little bit about new beginningsand and Aviatrix in that topic.
You left Splunk at the end of2021, and I remember sitting
down with you and and grabbingdrinks in Palo Alto, and you
spent a year and a half doingvarious different things. And
then in July of 2023, you joinedAviatrix where you are today as
CEO. You had quite a fewdifferent options.

(30:30):
I remember having a few of theseconversations with you to be CEO
at a whole different set ofcompanies. You also had other
options. You know, you couldhave joined a venture firm. You
could have gone and, you know,started your own firm. You could
have just taken some time offand served on board roles.
Why did you choose Aviatrix,which at the time and still is

(30:52):
as a private growth company, afew 100 employees, very
different from Splunk?

Doug Merritt (30:56):
Very different. Yeah. So I toyed with all that
you talked about. I did a bunchof sidecar investing. I
partnered with a couple of VCfirms.
I toyed with, do I wanna be aninvestment partner versus
venture or operating partner?But really cross the transom and
be on your side of the table.And do I wanna be retired? And
through all of that, it's likeI'm just way too much energy to

(31:17):
be retired. Investing is awesomeand advising is great, but I
like being on the playing fieldwith the rest of the team and be
in the middle of stuff.
So I did get to like 2 years ofback and forth. It's like, no,
no, I need to be on a team. Ilove the purpose, the vision,
purpose mission, everyone's init together. I was not targeting
Aviatrix in any way. I did alittle bit of networking at

(31:39):
Cisco, but I would put myself asa very, very lightweight, I
guess, advanced beginner onnetworking.
And it's a tough category, butwe had 1, a couple of board
members I'm close to that Ideeply respect and we have a
long lasting relationship with.And ultimately we all have that
maxim of you join a company andyou leave a boss, like your

(32:00):
board is your boss and you'vegot to love your board. So that
was, that was a strong draw. Iwanted something with a decent
So I determined private would beinteresting versus public. If I
would be back on the playingfield with everybody, that means
you're in the trenches andyou're interacting with
customers deeply.
You're going through productreview cycles. You're deeply
meshed in QBRs. You're in theday to day fabric of the
business. As a public companyCEO, you get that, but there's a

(32:23):
reasonable chunk of your time.Yeah.
Today's blue screen of death isa good example. Like that's a
huge distraction from what thatCEO would normally be doing.
There's a reasonable chunk ofyour time that is not that. And
the bigger you get, the moretime you spend not inside the
company just by the nature ofthe job. So that led to private
and then within private, therewere a bunch of criteria, but at
the core is who do you serve andhow unique is what you do?

(32:43):
And, what Aviatrix does, soAviatrix, I didn't know this
before Aviatrix, is a femalepilot. I guess you would call it
an aviator, but if you're afemale, it's an Aviatrix. And we
had a female founder and thatmetaphor was, hey, we're cloud
networking. And her idea wasit's like a air traffic

(33:04):
controller or a pilot. Likeyou're trying to make sure that
things go from one spot to theother in the air, which makes
sense from once I realized thatit's like, oh, okay, it's kind
of a cool name.
That describes what we do. But,what I found in my couple years
off is the landscape is so, socrowded right now with so many
companies that are well fundedthat are all look alike and for

(33:25):
a whole series of reasons,networking has been overlooked
to a large extent. And what wecertainly found is we
reconfigured Splunk completelyto be a cloud native service to
work well in the cloud.Everything has got to be
rethought. And right nowAviatrix is the only company on
the planet that has a cloudneutral data plane.

(33:46):
The actual packet mover. Wetouch filter route optimize
packets at the packet layeracross all the major clouds and
now onto edge providers, theEquinixes and MegaPorts of the
world and into some of the nextgeneration L M providers. And I
looked at it and said that it'slike Splunk, you're serving a
super technical buyer, networkengineer, network ops is kind of

(34:08):
like IT ops, IT ops engineer,underappreciated. Like they've
got incredibly difficult job.The entire weight of the world
sits on their shoulders becauseas we're seeing today, when
systems crash, like the worldstops and networking couldn't be
more of a ring zero activity.
If you can't deliver packets,nothing works other than maybe
if an OS crashes. I guessthey're similar and it's not

(34:30):
that crowded. The alternative iscloud native networking services
and the cloud's the wholemessage was developers, you're
awesome. All those other people,like, don't you want to get rid
of them? Like, don't you justwant to code?
Forget networking and storageand infrastructure and QA, like
just go code and we'll take careof the rest of it for you. And

(34:50):
that's just not true. Andnetworking is really, really
difficult. And what happens onthat last mile and what happens
as you traverse multipledifferent hops? You need
visibility, you need control,you need resiliency and you need
effective and efficientdeveloped services.
And so that combination of boardthat I know and like a good

(35:12):
balance sheet with the abilityto maneuver and a really
compelling problem for adifficult buyer that I think is
harder to replicate without 10other people that have something
that looks incredibly similar,for me, was was a good
concoction of, okay, get back onthe playing field and see what
you can do.

Ross Haleliuk (35:26):
You've talked a lot about the reasons why cloud
networking is such an intriguingmarket to go after. How are you
looking to evolve the businessAviatrix is in? I would love to
understand what your vision andyour priorities are.

Doug Merritt (35:39):
Continue that Splunk parallel. 2 of the major
initiatives, there are a fewothers, are literally replicas
of Splunk. One right now thesoftware is completely customer
self managed, which is anadvantage. It's all native in
the cloud, but because we'reliterally touching packets and
we don't control the underlay,all the physical infrastructure
is controlled by the cloudproviders themselves, Then the

(35:59):
customer's got to retain controlof the data plane because they
are accountable and they areresponsible for, for the data
inside those packets. Butthere's big chunks of what we
provide that could be deliveredas a service and we can make the
data plane feel much more likeas a service.
So one like Splunk with the biginitiatives is all right, let's
make it easier on people.Networking is a very difficult

(36:20):
area, much like trying to managecomplex and super high volume
data environments. There's onlyso many people with skills to do
that. Let's shorten that for thecustomers that we can actually
provide them the skills thatthey might have a difficult time
finding and procuring and givethem a better experience. The
second piece is Aviatrix hasbuilt this really broad based
platform, networking platform.
We do all different combinationsof routing use cases, load

(36:42):
balancing use cases, networkaddress translation, and adding
use cases, firewalling usecases. And we're continuing to
wander into other areas ofnetworking. That's awesome. But
like with Splunk customers needcrisp use case. And so we're
pivoting the company to be muchmore use case centric.
Yep, you can do anything withthis thing. It's a box of Legos
for companies like you. Here'sthe 2 areas that we've seen them

(37:04):
start with over and over. Andthen here's where they go next
and next. So it sounds trivial,really, really difficult to
execute across the countrycompany, especially one that is
pretty firmly entrenched inlet's be consultative, come in,
see what you need, like we'lllots of investigation and we'll
work together to figure out whatyou need.
The two areas I'm really excitedabout is long term what the
world is wanting withnetworking, given how complex it

(37:25):
is and how much more complexit's becoming. Like we thought
everyone said cloud would makeit the world simpler. Cloud made
the world much more complex.There's hundreds of services per
cloud. Those services are notdefined the same across clouds.
So, and you still are holdingonto your last generation
technologies and you should fora while because not all those
things belong in a cloud. Nowwe've got generative AI and the,

(37:46):
invasion of a whole new set ofdata centers. So the complexity
of the world I think is going tobe exponentially increasing and
having a consistent networkingvisibility, manageability, cost
optimization, reliability layerI think becomes even more
profound. So we're expandingwhat the current things we do
across a broader, broaderlandscape. And then 2, the power

(38:10):
of gen AI has been to do some ofthe more difficult and high
pattern matching thought workfor human beings so we can
continue to kind of go up thestack.
And networking is one of thosereally, really difficult areas
going back to that complexity Italked about. And where I think
we eventually need to get to isautonomous, self healing, self
managing networks. And becausewe're at such a low layer and we

(38:33):
see so much with the way that weimplement and we've been working
for the past quarter or a couplequarters on how do we take this
data we're accumulating and alot more data we're going to
start to accumulate as we beginto move pieces of what we do to
as a service so that we canactually, go down that path.
And, and again, take the loadoff the customers wherever
possible on intent basednetworking. I'm trying to get

(38:55):
this thing done, render thenetwork for me.
Self adapting networking, selfhealing networking. And so those
are the 2, We don't really fullyplay there. We were we've
expanded to Equinix and Megaporton the edge. We've got more work
to do across these nextgeneration data centers. And
then brand new ground on whatwe're doing with the Gen AI
work.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (39:13):
It definitely Sounds like an
exciting time when Gen AI meetsnetworking. And we completely
agree that when we think aboutnetworking, we often do not
realize its complexity. And sowhat you're building at Aviatrix
sounds really cool. Let's talkabout leadership changes as you
bring your own fingerprints toAviatrix. How do you see the

(39:36):
leadership team evolving?
How do you see its visionplaying out over the next 5
years? Both Sid and I know JohnDonnelly, who used to be at
Cloudknox Security, a companythat both Foundation Capital and
my firm Secure Octane hadinvested in. And John clearly is
the kind of a guy that can gofrom 0 to 10. Who are some of

(39:57):
the other people that you haveidentified to come in and help
you at Aviatrix?

Doug Merritt (40:03):
The interesting environment that I came into is
like so many companies in fallof 22 and spring of 23, we went
through a ton of changes.Funding environment had changed,
buying environment had changed.And then through all those
changes, a bunch of downsizingsand restructurings. By the time
I got there, the with the normalexecutive team, the C suite,
whatever you wanna call them,had all left, almost all left.

(40:24):
We had a CFO still.
And so I walked in and I forgetthe exact account. It is
somewhere between 19 23 directreports that were a combination
of directors and VPs. And I dida very contrarian thing, the
usual approach. And I fought my,I went back and forth with
myself. I still go back andforth with myself, if I was the
right approach, is immediatelyopen up a bunch of racks.

(40:44):
I know I was going to need aCMO, a CRO, a SVP of
engineering, a chief customerofficer, like just a CHRO, just
go across and open them all up.The quicker you can fill out
that tune the better. But I hadan appreciation coming in.
Networking is really, reallycomplex. That's one of the
reasons why it's not overfundedright now.
And this company had been inbusiness now, we're close to 10
years, that they've been at thisfor a while. Take the time and

(41:07):
learn. They've got this rareopportunity to really understand
what does the landscape looklike? What's the culture of the
company? Where do you want totake the company over time?
And then hopefully you'll do abetter job of bringing in the
right exec with the rightskills, the right personality,
the right cultural fit for whatyou need. So John was a good
example. He started as aconsultant for us and he's added

(41:27):
a ton of value, but it was I wastrying in every way possible to
be be thoughtful so we couldguide this company in the right
direction. We're at the pointnow we've basically filled out
that slate, which is great. Wethe latest hire, which I'm
really excited about is oursenior vice president of
engineering and CTO, a gentlemannamed Anurban Sengupta, who most

(41:48):
recently was running all theKubernetes landscape at, at
Google, at GCP.
So, but he had been NSX, the SDNlayer at VMware that Nisara
found his way into, or I guessNysara helped start. And he was
at Cisco before that and akernel developer before that.
So, you know, really goodbackground. And I may not have
gone there right away if Ihadn't spent more time

(42:10):
understanding the technicallandscape. There's this really
interesting combination ofknowing the last generation
network networking, knowingsoftware refined networking,
which never really got all thetraction it should have, knowing
cloud networking and knowingnext generation compute and
ephemeral workloads.
But I feel like, you know, we'vegot a really good team now and
we'll continue to evolve thatteam. But a journey of patience.

(42:32):
Like, there are many months.It's like, oh, my gosh. If I
just would have accelerated thisa little bit more, I wouldn't
have yeah.
I wouldn't be up at midnight andand worried about this topic
right now. So we'll see.

Sid Trivedi (42:42):
Talking talking about hiring in this time when
it's starting to get competitiveonce again to hire high quality
talent, what advice do you havefor founders on being able to go
and get the people they reallywant on the team? How do you go
and do that? How do you go andsell this this vision when
you're at a startup?

Doug Merritt (43:00):
I think it's one of the best times to be
recruiting right now. There area lot of people in flight.
Right? There were a lot oflayoffs. There's a lot of churn.
There's a lot of missedexpectations out there. I think
the hardest, hardest piece isspending the time to get truly
clear on what is it you need andbeing patient, like having
maintaining your bar and notcaving. Even though the board is

(43:22):
probably be on your back, you'regoing to be your own worst enemy
and I've got to get this thingdone to make sure that you bring
in the right person, that you'vespent the time on the role, you
know what you're looking forboth quantitatively and
qualitatively, going back tosome of those characteristics we
were talking about, and thenjust don't cave. And it's and
again, so trite everyone says itbut when you're in the moment

(43:43):
it's hard to actually live theadvice. There's one way doors
and two way doors.
Hiring is a one way doordecision. It's reversible, It
just is really expensive anddifficult to reverse. And so
giving yourself enough support,enough multiple pairs of eyes,
rigorous interview frameworksand then patience to make sure

(44:06):
that it's okay. Like you mighteven lose a candidate or 2
because there's a process youwant to go through and there's
assurance that you want to bringin the right person. And it
takes a lot of courage to dothat properly.
But there's so much talent outthere right now. It's, I've, I'm
blown away at, at howenthusiastic I mean, there's a
whole new love of tech. I thinkGen AI is completely people were

(44:28):
trying to figure out blockchainand was it gonna be real or
wasn't gonna be real and, andit's got its value and it but it
wasn't a revolution like Gen AIis. I think Gen AI is the entire
industry back leaning forward,and people are coming out of
retirement because of it. And soI think there's it's a great
time to be hiring.

Sid Trivedi (44:45):
You already mentioned Gen AI, and we have to
talk about it. And then our lastsection, we're gonna talk a
little bit about catchingtrends.

Doug Merritt (44:51):
And I

Sid Trivedi (44:51):
think for the listeners who've listened so
far, they will have recognizedthat you're particularly good at
catching trends and figuring outhow to build out a vision to to
really scale a business. And oneof those trends is is Gen AI.
What are your thoughts on thisGen AI trend, and where do you
think there are opportunitiesfor innovation that that
founders aren't thinking abouttoday?

Doug Merritt (45:12):
1 so I I came in it came in I was retired when
Chat GPT 3 0 and 3 5 werereleased and spent a lot of time
on YouTube videos and playingwith both with Chat GPT and then
the many that popped up, Claudeand Mistral, and I know them had
a sequence here. But I came intoAviatrix with the kind of

(45:33):
Chamath perspective of this isgoing to change everything and I
can change it now. So JulyAugust of last year, it's like
we are a 100% gen AI based. Webrought in a whole tool stack,
whole abstraction layers. Wecould play with multiple LLMs,
low code, no code framework, nonNoSQL based data repository.
We had control over likeeverything that I thought we

(45:55):
needed. And we were gonnarebuild all these applications
and we're only gonna we're gonnabe able to get to $500,000,000
in sales with 20 enterprisesales reps and couldn't be more
excited about the potential ofJNI. And what I've found at year
end and we've got a good techteam is, wow, it's really hard.
Like the promise is there forsure, and I have no doubt that
we're gonna get there, but itreminds me of trying to build,

(46:16):
multi tiered Internet apps in1997, 98, 99. Doable.
Doable. Just a lot of bailingwire and bobby pins to try and
get everything from the webinterface before web app servers
existed all the way back to thedatabase. And I feel like that's
where you are right now at GenAI. So we're still on it and
back in like crazy, but I stillthink we're still at that lower

(46:37):
infrastructure layer. How do wemake Gen AI oriented software
development life cycle workableto crank out really meaningful
and interesting enterprise appsthat can radically change the
legal department, the marketingdepartment, the sales
department, the supportdepartment?
I know there's all these storiesof, oh my God, we're doing
everything with JAN. We've got 3support engineers. I literally
do not believe it. Having playedwith 3 different frameworks now

(46:59):
and the one that we're building,it's really hard still to make
these tuned and interesting andinteresting and learning
oriented and non hallucinogenic.And so it really works at the
quality level that we need.
So I guess my first breathing ofit's okay is no one's losing
their job anytime soon, but itwill happen over time. Like it's
it's going to climb the curvepretty quickly. But I'd be

(47:21):
investing. Obviously, I thinkmost companies have missed the
core model wave that's beingdominated by a few super
successful, very rich. It's hardto do it well, but all the
magic's going to come inbuilding the in helping to build
the applications and how do youhave specialized models, vector
DBs are obviously going to playa huge role in where we're
going, but that plumbing isimportant and then the promise

(47:44):
that everyone jumped to rightaway, but I think they're
finding like I'm finding, youcan get there.
It's just hard. The promise isgoing to be in apps. But we
launched Cycarion in 1996, 1995,96 when the browser came and
again, none of the coreinfrastructure was there. And we
got an app out and the app was amulti tiered app and it was all
browser based, but it was 20times harder than if we had

(48:07):
built it in 1999 and it was 100times harder than if we built it
in 2,008 and it was 10,000 timesharder than if we built it in
2015. We were buying datacenters, leasing data center
space, begging Cisco for corerouting equipment and Sun for
servers.
We had to build our ownmiddleware layers and web app
layers. We had to build our owncoding frameworks, workflow

(48:30):
engines, like all the stuffthat's free, totally available,
has been since 2015, 2014, 13 onthe cloud. We had to build from
scratch, and that's what I feelwe are now with these Gen AI
apps. And so the next Salesforceis out there, but the money is
gonna be made right now.Obviously, chat GBT and the core
frameworks where the money isimmediately and that NVIDIA and

(48:50):
the chips and then theframeworks.
But I can see that every cycleis the same. When I go back to
mainframes, mini computers,client server revolution,
internet apps, like you can gothrough the, I still believe in
the OSI 7 layer stack. You canjust see layer versus layer,
what needs to be built and whereare we yet on maturity and then
where do you fill in? And so I'mexcited about the networking

(49:11):
layer in this world. Like that'sway down there, layer 3, layer
4.
That means it's gonna be a lotof work as well, but, it's
awesome. Like, it's I amdefinitely excited about the
next 5 to 10 years.

Sid Trivedi (49:20):
I I think the thing that I I've been reading about
this pretty extensively, and oneof the most interesting pieces
that I recently read was Itracked these CIO reports from
the different banks and the theresearch organizations quite
closely, and and Morgan Stanleypushed their most recent Q2 2024
CIO report. And in that, theykind of asked the same question

(49:40):
of within kind of your IT orgs,which are the areas that you're
most in in interested in inadopting Gen AI in? And in the
past, last year, it was verymuch around, we want to use Gen
AI to help our customers. Wewanna improve customer success.
And that has completely turned.
And I think part of it isexactly why what you mentioned,
Doug, which is that folks haverealized it doesn't work as well

(50:02):
yet. So they're using instead ofkind of focusing on the outward
kind of customer of, focusedexperience, they're really
focused on the inward. How canwe improve employee productivity
Yes. So that each of ourdifferent units can work harder?

Doug Merritt (50:14):
Yep. Which which again was a whole series of
applications. Like, you go backevery generation. Like, what
where where was all the bigimpact made? Well, it started
with core financials, core HR,core sales, and then where did
it migrate to?
Oh, it all systems engagement.It's all about customer. But
until you get that core stuffbuilt, it's hard to get the
systems engagement to work. Yes,that is not it's not surprising.

(50:38):
It's good.
This guy did not read thereport. I'll have to look at it
now, but it would follow myintuition.

Ross Haleliuk (50:42):
You've been very good at catching trends and
understanding how markets canexpand. What is the secret
behind how you spot theseopportunities? Is it something
you read or people you speakwith that are giving you all
these lines of insight?

Doug Merritt (50:59):
I am I am super curious. I listen to probably 10
different podcasts, and I tryand read a lot. But if I really
trace everything back fromAccenture, honestly, it's a
network of people over time thatmost of the ideas that I don't
think I've looked for a jobsince Accenture. A bunch of guys
from Accenture that I knew, menand women, went over to Oracle
and it was like, Hey, why don'tyou come over here? And then

(51:19):
that has happened everywhereI've gone and almost every
investment that I've made andI've gotten in way too many
companies now.
We have talked about thatseparately. I've been over 20
private companies. Like, whatthe heck am I doing? I'm not a
VC. But they've almost all beeneither friends at VC companies
saying, hey, you know, we knowwhat you like and this sounds
pretty interesting.
Do you want to take a look? Orfriends and ex coworkers. It's

(51:42):
like, hey, I went out and Istarted this new thing. You
know, can you help? Do you wantto put some money in?
And so I think going back to GenAI, like, there's humans are
social creatures. And thepremium on in real life, I
think, is going to continue togo up month over month and year
over year. And there's nosubstitute for the type of trust
that you and I have becausewe've known each other for, I

(52:02):
think, 20 plus years now. And wegot a ton of face to face time
together. And this modality isnot bad and it helps, but that's
most of my learning is my textthreads, my friends calling me
up, and people just, like,grabbing me by the ear and
saying, hey, pay attention.
There's something interestinghappening over here.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (52:20):
Thank you, Doug. Listening to 10 podcasts
is clearly one way to keep upwith the trends. Maybe we should
include in our show list a fewof those podcasts. In your
career as CEO scaling multiplecompanies to billions of
revenues and even creating adecacorn, can you talk about 1

(52:41):
or 2 key traits that you'veconsistently observed in
successful companies? Whatattributes seem to be crucial
for achieving that level ofgrowth and success?

Doug Merritt (52:52):
Again, probably super trite, but customer
obsession, that curiosity,growth mindset, and customer
obsession combination is just soimportant. What got me excited
about being in tech started withmy realization interview cycle,
because I thought I want to bean investment banker, that
technology liberates informationand knowledge and I've had a

(53:14):
strong attachment of humans dobetter when we're less bordered
on all aspects. Where can wewander to and what data do we
have access to and whateducation we have access to. And
it's like, oh my gosh, this iswhether it's way back in the
business or whether it's, youknow, something like Khan
Academy or this is unbelievablygood for humanity, if I can be
part of it. But then throughthat, I was all b to b, it

(53:36):
really if you don't if you'renot really hungry for solving
someone's problem, like thatdeep empathy of what is it like
to be a network engineer?
And I've never been one. So I,you know, spent a year now of of
meeting with a ton of networkengineers. Like, what is your
day in the life like? Oh, wow.Like, that's really painful.
How do we make that better? Butthat customer obsession and

(53:57):
genuine curiosity and empathyand, like, we're changing our
whole tagline. A couple of them.1, the network is the cloud,
which I'm we've got to keepexplaining and we've got to get
better with videos and other,but I love that concept of you
don't want to be stranded in adata center or series of data
centers. You want to use theentire landscape to your
advantage.
Like that's the whole point ofthese investments that people

(54:19):
have made. And if you don't havenetworking flexibility, you
can't get there. But the themesunderneath that are we need to
make networking cool again. It'sso important to the world And
those valiant network engineersthat people think almost forgot
existed, like, they'renetworking heroes. Without them,
all this cool stuff, thisconversation we're having, it's

(54:39):
not possible.
The network goes down. We can'tdo this gosh darn podcast. So
how do we give those guys, thosemen and women love? They're
they've got a really hard job.They're the first people blamed.
They spend all their time tryingto justify it's not their issue,
and then they're trying to thinkaround corners. Like, you guys
think this is super easy. Youdon't have to worry about us.
Hey. Connection is hard.

(54:59):
There's laws of physics.Networking is very complex.
Like, thank God we are thinkingabout it so that you can
actually get the way of lifethat you want. So that's that is
it's kind of manifest in whatwe're doing here at Aviatrix. I
just get so passionate about,like, how do you how do you find
people that need help and thenbe open to think through how to
really help them.
And I think if you do those twothings, you're gonna wind up

(55:21):
building a medium, large orextra large company. Likely not
small though, unless you pickeda tiny, tiny audience. But most
of the audiences that we'll pickare are big enough that they can
feel that that size.

Sid Trivedi (55:30):
Last question. Where is Doug in 5 years?

Doug Merritt (55:33):
If we do things right and we get lucky and the
timing is right, now thenhopefully I am talking to my
successor about when it's timefor that person to succeed me as
the CEO of public companyAviatrix. And and hopefully at
that point in time I'll actuallybe ready to retire and see the

(55:56):
last few years of my kids' highschool, my youngest kid's high
school, and travel a little bitmore, and that'd be ideal. But
but in all cases, no no matterwhat pivots and twists occur, I
can't imagine not being superdeeply involved still in tech. I
just it was interesting tryingto take a break just how clear
it was that I'm way too excitedabout this industry and what it

(56:19):
does for people and howimportant it is to not be deeply
involved in now as an operator,and and then we'll see what
happens, with the outcome ofAviatrix and whether I
eventually get to join you onyour side of the table, Sid.

Sid Trivedi (56:32):
Well, you are too kind, Doug. And I I think it's
just been so amazing to see yourjourney and and career
trajectory, and I'm so happythat you took on another CEO
role, that you didn't go andretire. I know we had this
conversation a year and a halfago, but I'm so glad that you
didn't choose to kind of moveaway. And I'm just so excited to
see how you build out Aviatrix,and, hopefully, we'll have you

(56:54):
on in a few years as you'retaking the company public.

Doug Merritt (56:56):
I look forward to that as well. Thank you so much,
Doug, for joining us. Thank youfor joining us Inside the
network.

Ross Haleliuk (57:04):
If you like this episode, please leave us a
review and share it with others.

Mahendra Ramsinghani (57:10):
If you really, really liked it and you
have some feedback for us, wrapit on a bottle of Yamazaki and
send it to me first.

Sid Trivedi (57:19):
No. Don't do that. Mahendra gets too many gifts
already. Please reach out byemail or LinkedIn.