Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

[00:00:00]

Natalie Nathanson: Today's guest is someone I'm very excited to bring to our listeners.

He is

a visionary technologist who has founded, led, and advised numerous ventures throughout his career before his current venture.

He founded Soha Systems, which was acquired by Akamai Technology in 2017.

He's also

led his current company to earn prestigious accolades, including being named one of America's Best. Startup [00:01:00] employers winning the Tech Ascension Award, the Tech Trailblazers Container Award, and being named of one of Gartner's cool vendors. He is the co-founder and CEO of Rafay Systems. Haseeb Budhani, welcome to the show.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Thank

you for having ti. Good to see you again.

Natalie Nathanson: You as well. And you know, given the ventures that you've led and the organizations that I believe you currently advise, I think it's fair to say that you're a,

a

serial startup guy, and I know that beyond your, your current primary venture, you're, um, work, kind of built that based on a gap that you saw in the market.

So I wanted to start by asking you, you know, what was that opportunity that you saw, and then more importantly, like how did you go about capitalizing on that?

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Uh, Rafay, the company that I work at presently, uh, it is not a new startup. We've been doing this for some time, seven-ish years now. Um, the, the core hypothesis that we started with remains true today, [00:02:00] and the hypothesis has to do with essentially the consumption of compute. Um, different words have been used to describe that idea over, over the seven years.

Um. But, uh, fundamentally the goal has also always been if somebody needs to deploy infrastructure and consume it for, for the purpose of sort of, you know, running applications on it, how do you make it simpler and simpler and simpler? Mm-hmm. The number of locations where you deploy applications could be one or many.

Uh, the type of location where you deploy applications could be different clouds, private data centers, edges, et cetera. Uh, but it should be easy. And, uh, back in 20 18, 20 19, when we were thinking about this problem, uh, it was surprising to us that, uh, actually it's really hard. To, uh, to deploy infrastructure, uh, seamlessly and then deploy applications, uh, seamlessly on top.

And the fun part is it's still a reasonably unsolved [00:03:00] problem. Um, when we started working on this, uh, company, you know, there was a, there was this technology called Kubernetes, which is now, uh, sort of, uh, you know, uh. A substrate that every enterprise uses at this point. Uh, that was a new thing at the time, so it's definitely there.

A lot of focus was on, on Kubernetes and now there's a lot of focus on ai, but fundamentally the problem is the same. Uh, it should be so much easier than it is right now for people to write code, deploy it. Consume the infrastructure they need to deploy it, uh, do their jobs. And, uh, we are on a mission to make it easier and easier.

Uh, we've made significant strides to that end. Uh, we've found, like you said, a very specific gap where we have, uh, built a niche for the company. Uh, and that niche allowed us to make money in the more general purpose enterprise Kubernetes migrant space. And now, over the last year or so, same product, same everything is allowing us to, you know, make a pretty significant dent in the AI infrastructure consumption problem that exists today.[00:04:00]

Natalie Nathanson: I'm

interested to hear on the go to market side, uh, you just talked about, uh, kind of how the market has evolved and kind of now with AI over the past year.

Can you talk about

kinda

what that's meant for your go to market? Any changes that you've put in place, anything like that, that you're working through?

I.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Oh, definitely. Um, so when we were focused on the Kubernetes management market solely, so presently we sort of run two go-to markets essentially, right? So we have a team that very much focused on our enterprise customers. Uh, we have a lot of happy customers that set continue to grow and we want continue to maintain them and bring more on.

And then separately we have. Uh, essentially neo clouds who are deploying GPUs. Same effective problem. The customer is different. So these are people who are buying hardware, uh, and then they want to sell it in some fashion to downstream customers for AI use cases. So slightly different use cases, uh, in in the form, which is more traditional enterprise selling.

The, the go-to-market [00:05:00] remains the same. We have a, we have a very good sales organization and a CS organization that, uh, brings on new customers on the platform and the CS team vs them. And then, you know, enables them to actually con, consume more of a platform. But then on the AI side of the house, we've learned something new.

Uh. This is a very new market. Customers are also early at this, right? They're also learning how to do this right. Um, when it's an early market and there's a lot of gaps in understanding of, for all of us, right? All of us are new to this. It's important if we can build partnerships that make it easy for the customer to, to.

Pick a solution. So we've been, uh, blessed to work, uh, closely with some folks at, in Nvidia. We've published a reference architecture in Nvidia. To that end, uh, we work very closely with the Accenture. Uh, we have a teaming agreement with Accenture, uh, uh, in place globally. Uh, we have worked very closely with OM such as Dell, uh, and when we can sort of come to the table to a customer with, you know, uh, all of these sort of [00:06:00] backings, right?

So, hey, here's an RA with Nvidia. Here's our friends at Accenture, uh, and here's why they support us. Here's all these deals we've already done with Dell, globally. Uh, the customer gets a lot of confidence, right? So being able to do these ecosystem sales or, you know, community sales, if you will, right?

Multiple people coming together to solve a problem, uh, particularly in an early market, is very, very good, right? So, uh, definitely, uh, uh. Uh, that investment has, has worked really, really well for us. In fact, we're applying those same ideas now to our, our, our ongoing traditional business, which by the way is 90% of our business is Kubernetes management.

Um, and finding that, you know, being able to work with the large sis, being able to work with, um, you know, OEM partners, uh, is also solving, uh, uh, a problem and faster for our customers. But definitely there's been a significant, uh. Sort of, you know, growth in our own growth, uh, team. Uh, to that end, uh, partners have become more important to us than they were earlier.

And that's also a function of our company, right? We're a small [00:07:00] company growing not enough proof points. Why would, why would a large partner, you know, want to spend time with us? But now we have enough large customers, right? So now do we have enough credibility for these large partners to engage? And they are.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I, I believe, uh, these kind of ecosystem community sales will only continue to, to grow as of kind of the, the role that they play in the go to market.

I think, you know, it's, it's, uh, easy to, uh, kind of enter a situation and not have the trust or the confidence or not trust what you're seeing kind of digitally, just in the way that, you know, products and services are bought and sold.

Um,

I'm curious to hear for your organization. Um, like what that's meant for the different elements of your go-to market, like sales, marketing, customer, uh, customer success. Are there different kind of skills, different motions, different mindsets, um, that you have either brought into the organization or have kinda expected or needed your team to evolve? Uh, along with?

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Yeah, there's a few things [00:08:00] we've done that are on, you know, sort of prima face. You probably. Surprising, but they seem to make sense now that we've already, you know, done them and, uh, they're in place for a while now. So like, as one example, uh, when we track deals, right? So one of the questions I asked the sellers on our pipeline deals is, okay, well, uh, oh, this, it's great that you're working on this deal, but who's the OM partner?

Who's the si, who's the implementation partner? Um, uh, what, what, uh, devices are they using? What, what G-P-U-C-P-U-L-P-U, et cetera, they using, um.

So this is a news class of questions, and this drives us to the, the, the reason why we ask this is we are trying to tell the, the seller need to go figure out who's the implementation partner, who's the actual si you need to meet these people.

Who's the OEM who's selling the hardware here? Uh, because if you can actually make sure that all of those people who are part of the value chain, right, delivering an end-to-end solution to the customer, if they're clear on the value that we deliver. It only makes the whole sort of picture [00:09:00] simpler to sort of, you know, uh, uh, uh, for the customer to understand.

We all have to work together to solve a customer problem. So in many early startups, not because you don't know what to do, it's purely because you're early, but happens is you don't have the opportunity to work with these large partners, right? So then what happens is you have a larger burden on you. So the customers, let's say, already made some decisions.

I bought this and I put this in a, put this. You now have to explain to the customer how and how you work with all of them. How you don't, uh, sort of interfere with any of the decisions are made. Um, you're not gonna overlap with anything else. That's right. It's the burden is on, is on you. But if apr, if you already have these relationships in place and you can kind of come together into a deal, uh, or your OEM partner is actually telling the customer, yeah, we work with these guys in all these other deals.

You know, yeah. Good to go. Right? So that, that really helps. Um, all of us have to grow to it. That won't happen on day one. It's just not possible. We have to first earn the right for them to pay attention, and then they pay attention. And then you have [00:10:00] to invest with them. You have to help them understand why it matters.

It's all the burden is always on the smaller company. But if you take that on, if you understand why you invest, why investments are being made in the way they're being made, it really pays off to the end, to the, and the end result of this is, um. Sales cycles shrink significantly. I'll give you one example in our more traditional Kubernetes management sales.

Uh, when we do POCs. They take time. Customers try a bunch of things out. And the reason why they try that is because, uh, they have tried other Kubernetes management platforms in the past and they've been disappointed, right? So they don't wanna be disappointed again. So what they're gonna do is they're gonna try everything, right?

So now that's gonna take time, right? It's not gonna happen in a day or a week. It could take a month, a month and a half, two months. And it's, look, it's a massive investment for them. It's a massive investment for us. But if. As an example, Nvidia says, Hey, [00:11:00] we like these guys. We work with them on end number deals.

They've made this and this customer successful. We already have an RA with them. Confidence, right? The bar just went, you know, it dropped because you know, this more important partner, the most important partners told them, yes, uh, you know, these guys are, these guys are good to go. Or if Accenture is saying, Hey, we have seen them now in large, uh, enterprises deploying their Kubernetes management solution, they already work with Freddie Mac.

They already work with the customers at Border Patrol. We are already there. We're watching them do this immediate credibility, right? These are the things that matter. And, uh, this is my focus right now, right? How do I make sure every single deal, there's two partners at a minimum attached. So I'm coaching the sales team to do this to the extent that I can.

And on top of that, uh, the other thing we've done, which is different, right? Um, we could be a software company. We could sell software, and we can say, here's some software, here's some support, here's some documentation. How many people will adopt our so solution if we do that? I don't know. [00:12:00] Uh, not a hundred percent.

'cause this is complicated stuff, right? It takes time, right? And people are busy. Sometimes they may not have the right, uh, expertise in house to kind of do it. So how will we help them? So what we did was we invested in, uh, a small team that really blends in with the customer, right? So all of us have CS organizations, right?

That's not a surprising thing. We used to call them support. Now we call them cs. Um. But in that organization, we've, we've added these people who, for lack of a better phrase, essentially do service delivery. Now, obviously we're not a services company. We don't, we don't charge for implement none of these.

This is not money we make, right? But for us to help the customer think through a project plan, you signed a deal today. You want to be in production in two months, here are all the things that need to happen in the next two months for you to get there, and we're gonna help you track it. We are gonna help you deliver.

Now you're not gonna pay us for this, it's fine 'cause we are a product company. We don't want, this is not where we make money, but being able to help the customer make these [00:13:00] decisions and think about the, the 55 different places where they have to integrate all these systems so that they have the right answer.

We've done this enough times, we know exactly what needs to happen. We'll give you the roadmap and not only will we give you the roadmap, we'll be with you for the first few months. So my expectation of the team is the first three months we're just gonna be there. We're gonna stand there with them all day long.

Because if you do that for everybody wins, the customer's happy because they have something working, we actually get, uh, uh, an expansion significantly faster, right? So it's all, it's a great investment. Um, but it's an odd investment. Why are you guys doing service delivery? We're not doing service. We are helping our customers go to production.

This is a very important investment that I will tell you I did not realize was important four years ago, five years ago. Never thought about this before. I wish I had.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's, it's very interesting and as you were talking, I was thinking about, uh, an old, an MBA classmate of mine that I was speaking to. He is in a kinda chief product [00:14:00] officer kinds of roles in robotics. Um, and he was talking about one of his big ahas was, uh, reeling, realizing they needed to do that kind of at a service delivery enablement.

I think he used different terminology. Um. Uh, remove the friction, uh, for kinda how they were going to market. And I think anytime you have that kind of emerging market where you're, like you said earlier, you're learning with the, the customer, everyone's kind of going through this time together. Uh, the more consultative you can be. Uh, the more, uh, you know, you're setting everybody up for success, right? Like a rising tide, uh, raises all boats kind of, uh, notion. Um, and with that, one area I've been hearing more about recently is, you know, sales engineering as a discipline and importance. Uh, and I think maybe because of that educational part of the sale, curious if that's something you kind of ascribed to.

And, um, if you have any thoughts on that.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: At some point in our company, we decided to [00:15:00] stop calling them, se sales engineers and call them solution architects or sales architects. Um, and, uh, uh, it's not just a a name change for, for the purposes of naming, uh, uh, changing the name. It's, it's really, the function is really different, uh, uh, now. Right?

So whether it's an enterprise who is, uh, looking to operate. Azure Kubernetes across multiple regions, or it's an enterprise who just acquired 104 GPUs from Nvidia, and they're saying, okay, now what do we do? Both are real use cases. The reality is that, uh, we have to really invest the time with the customer to help them think through what happens next.

Right? I don't, I don't mean implementation that comes later, right? But really. Where do you go from here? What are your goals? How do you get there? And there's, that's an architecture conversation. Like truly, it's an architecture conversation. It's a, it's a consultative conversation. Here's how [00:16:00] others do it.

The number one use case in the market is X. Right now, we know we have enough customers. I can tell you what the number one use case is for these things. Um, uh,

and that is a, that is a, that is a job that. So it's really hard to find people for that job. So they have to be sort of very, you know, uh, they have to have incredible bedside manner.

They have to be very technical. They have to be able to speak to super senior people. Uh, and uh, one of the sort of innovations we've done here is we've sort of, kind of taken a permit strategy here in that there's a few of, of, of, of, of, of our colleagues who are very, very good at that. These solution architects are very, very, very good at that.

But then. Right behind them. We have another set of colleagues who are sort of solution engineers, uh, who when the customer says, okay, I like it, I want to go deeper, they take the customer deeper. And then behind them we have people who can actually get super hands on. So we kind of built these, this, this organization in three layers and they sort of, [00:17:00] the point of this is.

The number of people in each of these sort of sub teams don't need to be equal. So the, so the, the front end of this, this tip of the spear, that can be a few people and the ones behind them, there's a few more, and the one band and a few more, right? So that model seems to be working really on scaling really, really well because we are able to find some really, really good talent, very deep, uh, uh, technical people, uh, who are still, uh.

Early in their careers in terms of engaging with customers. By the way, as an aside, one of the things we've invested in is people who've been here long enough in the company, perhaps in quality assurance or operations, they have aspirations to do other things, right? They, everybody wants to grow in their careers, right?

It's only fair. So what we're telling them is, if you wanna be a solution architect, because that's a really, everybody, it's a really cool job actually. You talk to customers, you're technical. Okay. Here's a path. I'm gonna start you at the, at the, at the sort of, at the back end of this peer. You can be the hands-on people, but working with customers.

And then once you [00:18:00] have enough experience, you do this. And once you have enough experience, you do the top, uh, or the front, uh, line work. And that is working really, really well. This is also an innovation that we had not thought about before this happened because we couldn't find enough people.

Right. So we can,

Natalie Nathanson: innovation,

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: yeah, exactly right.

So necessity being the mother of invention. So we are like, okay, we can't find people, so what do we do? Well. Those guys on the team, they're really good. Right? Maybe they'll be interested in helping the customer. Uh, and they were, and then they start helping the customers. I said, you guys are sort of like essays already.

Why don't we make it official and we'll backfill you because backfilling is much easier. Right? And we now have a, have a system where our, you know, folks who've been here a while, they have the opportunity to pick, I want to, I wanna go work on this now. I wanna be the frontend for this kind of an account, or I, I don't wanna talk to a lot of people.

I don't like talking, not many of us don't like to talk all day long. It's fine. But I do wanna be hands on and I wanna play with a bunch of different customer accounts. Alright. We [00:19:00] have multiple options now. Uh, and that also leads to the longevity of the, of the sort of the, you know, the, the, the sort of, the term of the, of, of these engineers in our company, right?

They end up staying a lot longer, uh, because they see a path of growth, um, and they end up learning a lot. But at the same time, the company benefits, right? Because we need this. Without this our, we cannot look the, it's, it's very clear. If we don't have a way to get our customers to production. With a lot of clarity, with a lot of, um, sort of, uh, you know, if you are not helping them with their roadmap, they're not gonna get there, which means we're not gonna make more money.

This is all for material, capitalistic, selfish reasons, but it's truly benefiting.

Natalie Nathanson: I really love hearing about that. I wanna shift gears, uh, a bit hasi and ask you a bit more about you as a leader. Can you talk about your own leadership style? You know, how you describe it, and then, you know, how, how, how has it evolved?

Uh, over the years? I.[00:20:00]

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: So I don't like doing one-on-ones with my direct reports. I don't find them to be useful. We talk enough, uh, all the time. All the time. Uh, so we talk. So I, I prefer meetings that are topical versus let's have a meeting. People are too busy. Everybody wants fewer meetings. So why would I create one more meeting for people?

I do do a bunch of sort of skip level or multi skip level meetings. Because people want to tell me things and they don't wanna tell me things in bigger, uh, settings. So I'll do a bunch of those. So, uh, I have a bunch of calendar meetings with various people across the organization. You know, once every month, once every six weeks, I talk to a bunch of different people.

Uh. Across the organization. I find that to be valuable because a, they, yeah, they do have strong opinions about things. Sometimes they see things that a few of us absolutely miss, right? So it's, uh, kind of refreshing. Sometimes when they point something out, they're like, oh, I never thought about that. Um, and, and these are things that I, I don't know.

I learned over time, and this is also one of those [00:21:00] necessity and, and, and invention things because. If you're working hard enough, you just don't have time, right? So the standard is, well, you must have one-on-ones and you must book a bunch of these things. And I, I travel a lot. I'll be in some other time zone.

I mean, I'm not gonna be available. Uh, so then this becomes a very interesting way to, to engage. So I'll be in an Uber in some city and I'll, I'll do my calls with my team saying, what happened with this? What? I had a topical meetings. But then the, the, the regular meetings that I have with the skip levels, I never miss those.

Doesn't matter where I'm two in the morning, four in the morning, airport, whatever. Not gonna miss them 'cause uh, uh. They're the ones running the company, right? They need, they need to know that, uh, you know, I mean, they're, uh, other than the fact that I'm on a plane, I'm always gonna be there to, to talk to them.

Uh, some of my guys who will listen to this, they will probably slack me and they say, but you've me moved that one meeting the other day. Yes, because I was, I was on a 16 hour flight. Uh, [00:22:00] but on that, I don't, I don't miss them. The, the, these are things that I've learned over the years, um, by talk to kind of also experimenting, but also talking to some very senior people, right?

So the way I learn is I talk to people who are, uh. 4, 5, 6, 7 years ahead relative to where I am in my, in my job, right? Somebody's perhaps running a public company, somebody's running a multi hundred million dollar revenue startup, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and I look at what do they do and how is that different from what I do, and can I apply those ideas to my own shop?

Uh, some I can, some I cannot. Uh, but the only way I learn is by asking. The minute I stop asking or learning, it's not gonna be a good thing.

Natalie Nathanson: Right, right. Um, curious to hear a little bit more about that because I

much ascribe to kind of learning from, from peers and what are people doing in other industry. Uh, where do you go for, for those sources and what do you do that's more kind of, uh, you know, opportunistic versus more kind of planful and deliberate.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: [00:23:00] sort of my, my Friends network is a bunch of people who have similar backgrounds, right? So a bunch of guys and gal who are working on some startup or some, you know, some very senior person in some large organization. Um. Uh, and, uh, I don't know how this has happened, but in the, in, in the sort of the majority group that I hang out with, I'm sort of on the younger side.

So the average age in that group is probably seven, I don't know, eight to 10 years older than me. So then naturally there are people who have a lot more experience than me, right? So, yeah, I spend a lot of time talking to them. I tell them what's going on. I mean, there's, uh, there's, there's folks in my, in my immediate group who have amazing experience, uh, and I'm trying to decide if I should name any of them.

Perhaps I shouldn't, but. But man, these are public company CEOs or, or, you know, very, very successful startup CEOs who've done this multiple times. And they're on the, like, third one, fourth one, fifth one. Um, I mean, they've seen it all, right? So, and they're, they make time. That's about, they make time. If I [00:24:00] tell them, Hey, I just, I need, I need 30 minutes.

I've done this enough times, 10:00 PM I'll text this one special judgment who doesn't live very far from me. I need 30 minutes. Come. And by the time I get there, there's tea ready, and now we're gonna have a conversation. Uh, and I learn, uh, that's what I do. So I, I, I have a group of friends who are very, very successful, uh, who I, I I continue to learn from and share, be very open with them about what's working and what's not.

And then they gimme, gimme very, very good advice. Similarly, my investors are very good, so, uh. I talk to them a lot. Uh, but look, the idea is not, it's not about friends or investors or anything, it's just whoever's willing to give you time. If you can take it, you take it, right? Why would you not learn? Uh, why would you not?

If there's an opportunity to do better, why would you not? Like there's what, 140 families who rely on this company to be successful. It better be successful, right? Because they're, they're all, they're all, all the, not the eng the people who work here. It's [00:25:00] obviously, they're here. But, but we forget about the fact that they all have family.

They're all relying on this company to be successful. That's a significant burden. And if you think like that, then yeah, you're always willing to learn. You have no ego when you think like that.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Um,

it makes me think of just the decision making process in general, right? Because when you're faced with kinda key decisions in the business, kinda high stakes decisions, that is when you want to really make sure you're making kinda the, the right decision or at least getting kind of all of the inputs

from,

and know people internally and, and your peer networks

around you.

Um, we've had a number of conversations, uh, around this. Lately, especially when it feels like the world ahead is very different from the one that we've experienced the last, you know, 5, 10, 20 years. Um, curious to hear about your decision making approach, uh, when it comes to key decisions. Is there anything, Um, to share about, you know, how you go about that and, you know, at what point do you say, okay, enough input?

Like, [00:26:00] let, let me pull the trigger.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: I'll give you an example. Um, early last year, um, we had a sense that the market was shifting. It was going f away from sort of Kubernetes aficionados buying solutions to more operations oriented teams, buying solutions, which means expectations are different. What they focus on is different. They're gonna see this as an engine, not the car.

It just needs to work, if you will. Right? Versus, you know, how shiny is they, right? So, okay, so that's gonna change a lot of things. And while that was going on, we saw this AI thing coming, but we didn't exactly know what our role would be in this space. So what do we do? How do we figure this out? So two options, right?

Uh, or maybe three. One of them is do nothing. That's an option. The other one is, let's go do a bunch of research and we're gonna come back and form an opinion and do something about it. So that's the majority opinion. That's what most people do. Let's go get, let's go talk to a bunch of [00:27:00] customers. Let's do a bunch of research, and that's a reasonable way to do it.

Or you could say, I have a hypothesis. We know our customer base. Let's just go build something, something really small, like just a, just a demo. I'm gonna show it to people. But that's gonna take people, right? Where are we gonna get to people and hire new people? We're gonna make a bet. We're gonna take a few people off the current projects.

They're gonna say work loose. So we have to get approval for that for sure. Uh, and you have to explain to them why this is an important investment and if it doesn't work, you put a timeline. If it doesn't work out, it's okay. Let's go back to normal. It's fine. No worries. Then you try and then you show it to people that they give you negative feedback, which is normal.

And then you fix it, and then they give you slightly better feedback. And then you go to more people. You say, well, this is really working. Let's take more people. Let's take more people. Let's take more people. Um, so this is, this is how you start a company inside a [00:28:00] company, right? This is how you do a startup inside a company.

Uh, we did that last year, right? And it paid off. It really paid off. Um, I think this is how everything should be. Start small. Don't overthink it. If it doesn't work, have very clear timelines in your head, walk away. But if it works, you'd have to have plan A, a priority if it works. This is how I'm gonna invest.

Everybody should be clear on this. The team should be clear. Investors should be clear. Your customers should be clear. They should be confused either, right? Why are you doing this? Here's why it's gonna help you. And we did this last year at our company. We start with very little information. Very, very little information.

But at some point, all of us, at least in startup land, we, we start businesses at some level. It's gut. We can argue we have this data, and Gartner said this, Gartner is a trailing indicator of things. It's not a leading indicator of anything. No. None of these companies are gonna be leading indicators of anything.

We all start things because we see a gap. You said this at the beginning [00:29:00] of this conversation, you saw a gap or this didn't. But usually when you tell people, here's a gap, they say, oh no, there's no gap. I don't see anything. This is nothing. That's how startups start. If everybody saw it. What is the point of a startup?

You saw something. Go to gut. Try it. It works. And if it doesn't work, no problem. Try something else. That's the beauty of our industry.

Natalie Nathanson: That's true. That's, I I really love the way you describe that approach, and it sounds so simple.

Uh, when you articulate that, obviously in the motions, not everything is, is simple and l lots of

kinda micro

decisions to make. Uh, in that, I was listening, uh, on a podcast recently. They were talking about kind of foresight and how to, uh, kind of build that discipline into your organization. it is the combination of like trusting the experience that you've had in your field. Having that good pulse on what else is happening, uh, but then ultimately like needing to, to place some of those bets, like some of those hypotheses. So that really resonates with me.[00:30:00]

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Yeah. And these are not, you know, these are, these are reasonably educated bets, right? We have some very smart people, like you said. They understand the market, they understand the customers, they see their trends. So they're not just, you know, this is not a wet figure in the air thing, right? This is. Well far through, uh, arguments, but they get presented as, as gut because the data's not there.

The data is here. It's not on paper, and the data comes after the fact, but it does. Right? It's, that's why there's so many startups. It's all somebody's notion that the world should be slightly different.

[00:31:00]

Natalie Nathanson: I would love to, uh, shift gears a bit and just learn a little bit more about you and your background. So can you tell me a little bit about, you know, who were you as a child? Do you always know you'd go into an entrepreneur? entrepreneurship and technology? Uh, tell me a bit more about yourself.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: I did not know I was gonna be an engineer. I did not know I was gonna be, uh, an entrepreneur till the end of high school. I thought I was gonna be an accountant. Nothing to do with any of the things I'm working on. Uh, after high school, I took a gap year. Um, and in that time I tried a bunch of things out and that's when I decided, um, yeah, maybe account is not for me.

Maybe I'll do something different. The question was what? Medicine seemed really hard because you gotta learn a lot of things, at least memorize a lot of things. So maybe not that. Then I had a bunch of friends who were [00:32:00] applying to sort of CS engineering programs. Okay. That seems straightforward, right?

Math is not that hard. Physics is not that hard. Let's go to that. So, um, I started applying, uh, even the SATI took sort of the last minute. I never prepared for it. Never took any classes. A bunch of friends were taking the S-A-T-I-I grew up in Pakistan. I, I moved here for undergrad, so I grew up in another country.

Just, just sort of showed up, uh, got good grades. Uh, and there was a friend of ours who was a year ahead of us, and he had applied to a school called USC. Uh, I'd never been to the us. I don't know where this is. I was like, oh, USC is pretty good. You should apply. So, okay, I'll, I'll do that list. And they gave me a scholarship and we showed up.

It just sort of happened. Don't tell my kids, but it sort of happened. Um, ah, things work out. Things work out. Uh, uh, if you, there's an opportunity, you take it. And that's, that's sort of what I've learned. Now. Some things, some, some, some doors open, you just, you walk [00:33:00] through and it ends up being pretty good.

Right. I remember the conversation with this one friend of mine who was like, yeah, you know, all these kids are on class taking SATs.

uh,

we should do that too. Okay. Alright. How does that cost? $60. Okay. I gotta talk to my dad about that. Um. I just took it and then these other kids were taking sat twos, so acts, I guess, whatever.

So yeah, literally everything just sort of happened. Um, I, uh, I was never gonna be in this, in this industry, uh, but I've enjoyed it. I've really, really enjoyed it. Uh, very, very blessed and happy that, uh, you know, I took that gap year and got bored and decided to do other things and turn out that I like this, this whole other thing.

Uh, but even on entrepreneurship, um, never planned it. Uh. Many of us who come from Pakistan or India, you know, we, we come from sort of middle class families. We have sort of a service mentality, right? The idea is you get a job, you could work at 30 years. Like this is, you know, blue collar thinking from the sixties and seventies in the US, right?

Same idea. Back home. You [00:34:00] get a job, you work there for 20, 30 years. If you work in a company for a year and a half and two year and then leave, they'd be like, what happened? Why would you do that? Where's your loyalty? No, no, this. This is how we were trained to, to think. Uh, but then you move to the US and you see a whole different world like this, this, this, this country changes your, your, your mind about, you know, what it means to try new things.

And, and if you have the, uh, opportunity and ability to try new things, you try it and yeah, then, then the world opens up. Yeah. You just have to be a little brave and it ends up being pretty awesome.

Natalie Nathanson: I'm curious to hear, you talked about your kind of, uh, kinda mindset or the culture around you growing up. How do you feel that has impacted kinda how you show up as a leader, as a, as an entrepreneur?

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: So,

most people from my background are unlike the, the more traditional. As a sales per as, by the way, as a CEO, you end up being a salesperson, right? That's sort of part of the job, right? And I think about the follow right. We all have to sell, right? That's part of the job. So the following, I think about a [00:35:00] lot, right?

The traditional seller that you think about, right? Like when somebody pictures a salesperson, they think of sort of a,

a, a,

a, a, football star from college or some track athlete. 'cause they're the ones who end up being the best sales guys because they're, you know, they're the ones who are outgoing and.

Yeah, that a lot of them, that's, that's a lot of 'em, right? But then there's people like us, we do it by necessity. Out of necessity I should say. We end up in these jobs because we're good at something. And then event, usually these things are sort of thrust upon people like us. And, uh, because you don't wanna fail, right?

You'll do anything to not fail. You, you do whatever you can and you learn. You learn, and you learn. Um. Even today? Yes. Yesterday I had a really important meeting with somebody and I was telling him that, you know, walking this meeting, I'm really nervous, but it's okay. You learn how to manage that, but you manage it.

Just, [00:36:00] it's all about this, right? You just, you have clarity. I need to get this done. People are relying on me to get this done. I'm gonna learn how to, to do better, and you just, uh, keep improving and you become great at whatever you wanna be great at. I'm a, I'm a really good sales guy today. Not five years ago, not three years ago now.

Pretty good. You learn.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah,

I think that's one of the things that keeps, uh, It keeps it so interesting, right? Whether it's running a business or entrepreneurship, uh, in general is there's always more to learn. There's always new ways to need to evolve or want to evolve. And I like that, uh, what you mentioned about doing anything not to fail, because that does sound like a lot of other entrepreneurs that, that I know.

And I think it's, uh, so important and goes back to that courage piece, right? When you're not giving yourself a chance to, uh, to fail, you bring that courage and you're always looking for kind of a next path forward.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: I hope that continues [00:37:00] to be the case that I pray. God, that doesn't change, but yes, that is the most important thing, and then you get lucky on top of that.

Natalie Nathanson: Yes. curious to ask you, uh, maybe a more introspective question. Uh, thinking about, uh, your career and maybe, you know, as you started, uh, what advice would you, would you give your, your younger self, uh, in your, you know, first leadership role? So if you were sitting in the room with, uh, younger Haseeb, what would you tell yourself?

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Uh, I'll, I'll, we just talked about it. Uh, sales is the most important thing. Many of my friends who, who start sort of, you know, start early in their career, work on these kinds of. Uh, initiatives start companies or whatever. Uh, I think that I see the following mistake made consistently. We're gonna build a product and then we're gonna hire a rockstar sales leader and magic will happen.

And unfortunately, magic doesn't happen. Right? More startups. Lose their first couple of [00:38:00] CROs or head of sales, right? For this very reason, because there's this, this completely ridiculous expectation that some guy or gal who knows nothing about what you built comes from a whole other thing because they have sold something else in a whole different world.

They will magically be able to apply policy, you know, some process here. And uh, I think people. Uh, people confuse causation and correlation, uh, when it comes to sales, right? So they think because this person was successful here, it must be because they were there. So then bring them here and then magic will happen here.

And they kinda apply this, this ridiculous sort of, you know, correlation chain. And then they say, why is it working? Maybe it's the product. Now the people who burn it are the best people to explain why you should buy. The trick is to actually find a way to bottle the founder sale. Versus replace the founder sale, and I see my friends in the VC industry consistently make this mistake.

You, you are already at 2 million. Let's hire a professional sales guy. [00:39:00] Absolutely not. I've done this now. I did not know this before. I have fallen into the strip twice now. Now, bottle the sale. Not replace the sale. I wish I knew this 10 years ago. I really wish I knew this 10 years ago. Because what happens when, when this mistake is made in a startup, you end up losing time.

You end up losing a year or two years of time, right? And time in a startup is, it's time, but it's money, right? You just wasted 20, 30 million depending on how much you're burning because you're trying to figure this out with a whole new organization. Don't do that, right? There's a better way to do this, uh, sort of with some fits and spurs here at Rafay.

We figured that out. Um, again, by the grocery dots working really well. Our sales business process is working incredibly well, but we found a very, uh, sort of, you know, uh, cohesive, symbiotic way to do this.

Combining this notion of founder selling and professional selling versus replacing, uh, and because we are doing [00:40:00] sort of this together, uh, the sellers are learning how to actually behave like founders.

I see them pitched. Like I, I listen to a lot of force meetings. We record all of our calls. I listen to a lot of them. Um, they're doing a great job 'cause they're, they're becoming storytellers. You know, that's a distinction. The biggest distinction in my opinion is people who built the stuff, they know how to tell the story.

Sellers don't do that. They come in and they talk about speeds and feeds, and I have these customers and are better and how's cheaper. My guys are telling stories, they're not talking features. If I can replicate that to a thousand people, we're the most smart company in this industry.

Natalie Nathanson: Think That's Site Haseeb, and that is, uh, I know that'll resonate with our listeners, so I think that's a, a wonderful place to wrap up our conversation. And, uh, as we do that, if, uh, listeners want to get in touch, what's the best way to reach you?

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: LinkedIn is is excellent. I'm on LinkedIn Haseeb Budhani, uh, my email is [00:41:00] haseeb@rafay.co. I even check my spam folder. Um, yeah, find me anywhere. Happy to chat.

Natalie Nathanson: Wonderful. thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation.

GMT20250807-165822_Recording_separate3: Thank you, Natalie. Good to see you again. I look forward to doing this again at some point.

Natalie Nathanson: Thank you. That would be wonderful. And thank you too to everyone listening. I know I loved hearing so much of what Haseem shared and the conversation, uh, that we just had around founder selling, uh, evolving the organization, capitalizing on market opportunity and, and decision making.

So if today's episode gave you any valuable insights, and I'm sure that it did. Please share this with someone We know this, sharing this kind of, uh, knowledge and experiences helps all of us drive successful transformation in our organization and ourselves. So thank you again Haseeb, and this has been another wonderful conversation on Shift and Thrive. I'll see you all next time.

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