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

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Goal
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Start a company early”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders