In Depth

How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)

In Depth

Show Notes

Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

Why companies get stuck in the mid-market and struggle to move up into enterprise

Why Jyoti deliberately lost Netflix as their customer

The difference between product-market-sales fit, and product-market-fit

How to build a scalable, capacity-driven go-to-market machine (instead of chasing deals)

Diagnosing whether you have a product problem or a distribution problem

How to hire and evaluate your first head of sales and top sales leaders

Why Jyoti sold AppDynamics three days before IPO

The “binary differentiator” rule for launching new products into crowded markets

Why Harness runs 16 product lines under one roof

Where to find Jyoti:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansal/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/jyotibansalsf

Where to find Brett:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

Where to find First Round Capital:

Website: https://firstround.com/

First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital

This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

References:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/

AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com/

Barclays: https://home.barclays/

BIG Labs: https://www.biglabs.com/

Carlos Delatorre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/

Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/

Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/

Citi: https://www.citi.com/

Cloudability: https://www.apptio.com/products/cloudability/

Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/

Dynatrace: https://www.dynatrace.com/

Harness: https://www.harness.io/

Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos

Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/

Nasdaq: https://www.nasdaq.com/

Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/

New Relic: https://newrelic.com/

Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/

Traceable: https://www.traceable.ai/

Unusual Ventures: https://www.unusual.vc/

VMware: https://www.vmware.com/

Timestamps:

(01:48) Why do companies get stuck in the mid-market?

(05:09) Designing a product for enterprise and mid-market

(07:19) Why Jyoti lost Netflix as a customer - on purpose

(10:18) Becoming a scalable GTM organization

(12:32) The real signs of product-market fit

(14:04) Have you delivered the value?

(15:46) How to hire your first sales team

(19:59) The four signs of excellent sales leaders

(23:16) How to interview a sales leader

(27:51) Where Jyoti developed his commercial taste

(29:37) Why early founders need to learn sales

(32:02) How AppDynamics began

(36:36) Why Jyoti sold three days pre-IPO

(41:55) What does a healthy board look like?

(44:23) How Jyoti perceives competition

(46:18) Why you need a binary differentiator

(49:53) How to launch multiple products

(52:00) “We need to be best of breed”

(57:38) Why PMs are like mini-entrepreneurs

(1:00:20) The startup within a startup

(1:02:45) A culture of continuous improvement

More from In Depth

Aug 27, 2026

In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of CoreAI at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Jay spent over a decade as Facebook's global head of engineering, scaling the company from a few hundred engineers to billions of users, then ran the cybersecurity company Lacework as CEO through its acquisition by Fortinet. In this conversation, he breaks down the five ingredients of great engineering leadership, discusses why he'd rather run two competing bets in parallel than forecast a winner, and explains why company culture remains more important than ever for teams to get right.

Jul 30, 2026

In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Lindsey Scrase, COO of Checkr. Before joining Checkr as CRO and later stepping into the COO seat, Lindsey spent nearly a decade at Google Cloud as global managing director for SMB, mid-market, and startups. In this conversation, she breaks down why moving upmarket into enterprise trips up so many startups looking to scale, how Checkr rebuilt its sales compensation model to keep pace with growth, and where AI is already reshaping her operations and go-to-market teams.

Jul 24, 2026

In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Jon Noronha, co-founder and CPO of Gamma, the AI-native presentation platform used by more than 100 million people. In this conversation, he walks through Gamma’s distinct eras of product-market fit: from a pre-AI struggle with a year of runway left, to an overnight AI-fueled explosion, to today’s unplanned scramble into enterprise sales. Jon also unpacks his hard-won lessons on horizontal versus vertical bets, monetizing AI products, and why nailing onboarding turned out to be the whole game.

Jul 16, 2026

In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Eric Sager, COO of Plaid, following stints as CRO of Bluevine and Head of Sales at Square. During his seven-year tenure at Plaid, Eric has helped lead the business through a pandemic, Visa's collapsed acquisition, a fintech downturn, and the AI boom. In today’s conversation, he unpacks how he kept teams focused during turbulent times, why he refuses to run at 100% capacity, and how he re-architected the go-to-market function as Plaid scaled.

Jun 25, 2026

In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase, the open-source Postgres platform now serving more than seven million developers. Before Supabase, Paul launched a Thumbtack-style marketplace in Southeast Asia and co-founded an office-management startup called Nimbus, experiences that taught him to separate fundraising from building and to find product-market fit before blitzscaling. He breaks down how a single tagline change for Supabase unlocked product-market fit, why he runs a fully distributed async team with near-zero attrition, and how he turned PLG signals into a product-led sales motion comped only on incremental uplift.

See all episodes →