20Product: Is an AI Winter Approaching | The Future of AI Software Development: What is Real & What is BS | OpenAI: WTF is Going on & How Far Into Application Layer Do They Go | The Future Role of Software Engineers with Guy Podjarny
Guy Podjarny founded Tessl, Snyk and Blaze. Tessl is reimagining software development for the AI era and shaping AI Native Development. Snyk created and leads the Developer Security category, and is now a multi-billion dollar company with over 1,000 employees. Guy was previously CTO at Akamai (following its acquisition of Blaze), is an active angel investor, and co-hosts of the AI Native Dev podcast.
In Today's Episode with Guy Podjarny We Discuss:
03:02 Discussion on NVIDIA's Market Position
04:14 Will We See a Trough of Disillusionment in AI
07:36 The Future of AI Development and Specialized Models
10:17 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Dev Tools
17:41 Concerns About Closed vs. Open Development Platforms
21:27 Speculations on AI's Role in Application Layers
24:40 Google's Competitive Edge
25:28 IPO and M&A in the Trump Era
26:45 The Future Role of Software Developers
32:20 Security Challenges in AI Development
33:41 Spicy Questions and Charity Donations
36:05 Quickfire Round: Insights and Advice
How to Build in AI, Lessons From Early Days of Snyk with Founder Guy Podjarny
Guy Podjarny is the founder of Blaze, Snyk, and now Tessl. He’s spent decades building at the center of developers and security. His newest company Tessl is reimagining software development, helping shape a new paradigm he calls AI Native Development.
We talk through his four quadrant framework for building and investing in AI, plus go into the early days of Blaze and Snyk. He shares lessons on marketing to developers, hiring when no one wanted to work for him, overcoming multiple difficult funding rounds, and lessons from multiple M&A processes.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:21) The four quadrants of building and investing in AI
(14:59) Why AI startups are riskier than non-AI startups
(19:42) When to sell your company vs keep building
(24:57) Why hiring the early team is so hard
(26:32) Early marketing tricks from Guy’s first company, Blaze
(29:09) Strategies for using conferences to grow your brand
(33:33) Getting three days of free PR
(38:04) Moving to Ottawa
(42:11) Why Sales Engineer is an underrated founder stepping stone
(45:49) What he learned as CTO of Akamai
(48:31) Starting his third company Tessel, and why there’s no satisfaction without struggle
(50:41) How Snyk got started
(54:10) Creating developer-first security
(59:59) Secrets for developer marketing
(01:02:31) Why podcasts work so well for marketing
(01:06:26) Snyk’s failed Series A
Referenced
Tessl: https://tessl.io/
Snyk: https://snyk.io/
Charting Your AI Native Journey: https://www.tessl.io/blog/charting-your-ai-native-journey
Secure Developer Podcast: https://snyk.io/podcasts/the-secure-developer/
AI Native Dev Podcast: https://www.tessl.io/podcast
We didn’t mention it in the podcast, but Guy just announced the AI Native Dev Conference, a virtual conference on Thurs, November 21st. Join him + many others here https://ai-native-devcon.heysummit.com/
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20VC: Why Being First To Market Does Not Matter, Why You Do Not Have Defensibility on Day 1, How to Analyse Market Size and Present it to Investors, Vitamins vs Painkillers; Do Vitamins Survive Recessions and Good vs Great Messaging with Guy Podjarny @ Sn
Guy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, the leading Developer Security platform, helping developers secure as they build. Guy was previously CTO at Akamai, co-founded Blaze.io (acquired by Akamai), and was the product manager of AppScan, the first AppSec scanner, through Sanctum, Watchfire and IBM. Guy is a public speaker, O'Reilly author, and an active early stage angel investor.
In Today's Episode with Guy Podjarny We Discuss:
1.) From Israeli Military to Founding a $10BN Company:
How Guy made his way into the world of startups from the Israeli military?
What is Guy running away from? Why does he hate tribalism so much?
Does Guy believe serial entrepreneurship is valuable or naivety of young founders is good?
2.) The Secret to Finding Product Market Fit:
Why does Guy believe PMF is a poorly defined term? How does Guy define PMF?
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make while searching for PMF?
What are the most important elements on messaging when it comes to PMF?
If you have a horizontal tool, how do you message and resonate with specific audiences?
3.) Defensibility and Being First to Market:
Does Guy believe that being the first to market is really that valuable?
Does Guy agree that investors expecting defensibility on day 1 is wrong?
Why does Guy think market leadership is way more important than first to market?
What are the true defensible moats that can be built early today?
4.) Lessons from 100 Angel Investments:
What have been the single biggest lessons for Guy from his 100 angel investments?
What are the biggest mistakes angels make when investing today?
How should founders present their market size to investors? Where do they go wrong?
Does Guy invest in both painkiller and vitamin businesses? How does he compare them?
Why is Boldstart Guy's favorite venture capital firm?
SaaStr 205: The Secret To Building A Truly Successful Freemium Product | The 3 Classes of Product & How To Think About Feature Prioritisation | A Framework For Building Strong Cross-Functional Communication Across Locations with Guy Podjarny, Founder & CE
Guy Podjarny is the Founder & CEO @ Snyk, the developer-first solution that automates finding and fixing vulnerabilities in your dependencies. To date, Guy has raised over $32m in VC funding from Snyk from some of the great of venture including Accel, GV, our friends at Boldstart and Canaan Partners, just to name a few. As for Guy, prior to Snyk, he was the CTO of Akamai's Web Performance Business following their acquisition of his startup, Blaze.io. Before founding Blaze, Guy built Web Application Security products, including the first Web App Firewall (AppShield), Dynamic Application Security Testing tool (AppScan) and Static Application Security Testing tool (AppScan Dev Edition). Fun fact on Guy, he is the holder of 18 patents related to security and performance.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How Guy made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found one of the hottest open source companies of our day in the form of Snyk?
How does Guy navigate between the difficult balance of going wide on market and shallow on product or narrow in market and deep in product? What is the decision-making process? What does Guy advise founders on feature prioritisation in the early days? Does Guy agree if you are not embarrassed by V1, you have shipped too late? How does support provide a feedback loop on what to build next?
Why does Guy believe that, "successful freemium requires giving away your secret sauce"? How can one give away enough secret sauce in freemium without giving away too much people don't buy? How does freemium fundamentally alter your relationship to revenue? Where does Guy see many going wrong when pursuing the freemium model?
How does Guy think about the problem of agency with developers using the product but having to sell to CIOs? What 2 things can be done to make this sell easier? What does Guy believe is the right framework to think about pricing through? Why is transparency in enterprise pricing not always optimal?
What does Guy believe is required to have strong and seamless communication across functions and locations? How has Guy seen this change over time and with increased locations? Where does Guy see many going wrong when trying to scale team across location?
Guy's 60 Second SaaStr:
How does Guy know when is the right time to hire your first sales person?
How did Guy learn to let go and trust his team?
What does Guy know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
Read the full transcript on our blog.
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Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Guy Podjarny