Sumit Sharma的动态

10y ago today, I was jobless in the summer of 2012 after being layed off from an imploding cloud IaaS startup. I was about to accept an offer from Sameer Dholakia who at the time was SVP Cloud at Citrix to be his head of strategy / chief of staff. During that time, my friend pointed me to this little unknown startup in downtown San Francisco called “MuleSoft”…. I remember thinking … WHAT-soft??? Eh? So I mozied on down from my home in midtown Palo Alto to interview ( just for fun and with ZERO intention of joining- it was meant as a backup in case the opp to work with Sameer fell thru the cracks ). I interviewed for a product job with CEO- Greg Schott , VP Product - Ken Yagen , VP Marketing - Mahau Ma and VP Sales - Simon Parmett ( who went on to become President, and succeeded Greg as CEO several years later). I distinctly recall the beautiful brand new office ( first week in that 77 Geary address) - see the photo I took of how the office looked - and the conference room with the candy and granola bars on the table. I kind of fell in love with everyone I met and the vibe of the place. That night MuleSoft’s head of talent Adriana Torosian called me up - and I’ll never ever forget … “ hi Sumit, it was wonderful to meet you but I’m sorry we don’t see you as a suitable fit… … … … but … … … Greg would like to meet you for breakfast tomorrow and I can’t say why… it’s secret…”. #intrapreneurship Yup. The most intriguing job rejection. I didn’t take her seriously but was intrigued by the secrecy! So the very next morning, I drove to the Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road, and I bump into Marten Mickos who I knew from my previous life, who happened to also be parking his car. I told him I had a mysterious breakfast with Greg Schott from MuleSoft - and Marten is like, “oh yeah? Well tell him I say hi!”. I considered that good luck! Over breakfast on the rosewood patio, overlooking the beautiful backdrop of the portola redwoods, Greg explained how MuleSoft needed to enter the API space - and how he needed someone to show the org how to be scrappy and run fast in order to catalyse what he envisioned to be something game changing for the company. He was also clear that I wouldn’t be involved in the company’s day to day - it had to be completely separate! After a few reference checks by Greg - he was big on back channels - including a glowing reference from Tom Galizia - I got a special CEO mandated ( ie., non published ) job offer that met my compensation ask! #miracleshappen Without thinking too much, I accepted the challenge … I was genuinely taken aback by the trust and autonomy given to me by Greg. I came across some old whiteboards we did together ( 75% of this was his writing - yes he was that technical! ) - to conceptualise the ideas he wanted me to execute on. Please do scrutinise the photos and you’ll see in the details are the same stuff we talk about today regarding APIs… …more in my next post! #startup #apis