Video: The Road to Investment - Growth Stories with BigPanda
For several years BigPanda has established itself as a category leader in the AIOps space. Their $190 million Series D earlier this year brings their valuation to $1.2 billion, securing their spot amongst Israel’s unicorns.
In this installment of our 'Growth Stories' video series, our managing partner Shay Grinfeld sits down with BigPanda CEO and co-founder Assaf Resnick to discuss team building, support, and the events that shaped the start of our partnership in 2017.
Fast forward to today, BigPanda continues to prove its leadership in resolving the tsunami of IT outages and alerts, and we’re excited to be a part of the many exciting developments on their horizon.
What drove you to invest in BigPanda?
Shay
It’s always easy to do a Monday morning debrief on your investment decision. And we're sitting now with BigPanda and we're very excited about the future. And yes, it was a great decision to invest.
In parallel, we had our conviction. We knew that the problem is real; we were talking to Assaf and Elik throughout the process. And even though not all the metrics were there in terms of sales consistency and market reaction, we knew that this is something that is bound for success.
And we made the leap. We said what's missing here is the execution. The product is great, the people are great, and we can support that process. That's when we stepped in to bring it to the next stage of what we call ‘product-market sales fit’, not just product-market fit.
What was the due diligence process with Greenfield like?
Assaf
You challenged us to think more about our sales efficiency and SaaS metrics. How we think about more metric and data driven approaches to building and scaling the company.
And going through the due diligence process with you, I learned a lot as an entrepreneur about how I should be thinking about the next scale in my company, and how I can bring more discipline and data driven approaches to doing so.
So that process for me is what helped me gain a lot of conviction about the value you guys could add to us, and how to go from a small company into a scalable company.
What were some of the initial conversations when assessing BigPanda?
Shay
I remember first meeting in San Francisco in one of the tower offices overlooking the bay. I was asking you to look at the models, and talking with you about sales efficiency.
Looking back, it was premature to talk about sales efficiency, but we sat together and said, “if this could hit those numbers in four to eight quarters, that's great.”
But pretty quickly we refocused our attention said, “wait a minute; we have to first continue building the team and put the right building blocks in place to support that growth.”
It was very interesting to start working together in identifying the key areas that will actually create that momentum.
What kind of support did Greenfield provide to BigPanda?
Assaf
I was very appreciative of the patience and support from Greenfield.
You guys told me, “hey Assaf; leadership, specifically scalable leadership, is critical to building the DNA of a multibillion-dollar company.”
And you guys gave us the support, the runway, and the patience to go and find the right and scalable executives.
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About BigPanda
BigPanda keeps businesses running with AIOps that transform IT data into insight and action. With BigPanda’s AIOps platform, businesses prevent IT outages, improve incident management and deliver extraordinary customer experiences.
BigPanda’s AIOps Event Correlation and Automation platform helps Fortune 500 enterprises such as Intel, Cisco, United, Abbott, Marriott and Expedia take a giant step towards Autonomous IT Operations. BigPanda is backed by Advent International, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, Mayfield, Battery Ventures, Glynn Capital, Mayfield, Greenfield Partners and Pelion. Visit www.bigpanda.io for more information.
