What’s one to do after creating a billion-dollar startup? Well, if you’re Rubrik co-founder Arvind Jain, you simply start another one.
Jain co-founded Glean, an enterprise software company that businesses use to let employees easily search for HR answers. Are you looking for how much PTO you have left or upcoming company holidays? Glean has the answers. It’s essentially ChatGPT but for the workplace.
He launched the company in 2019 after noticing a gap in the market for a product that could more seamlessly address HR issues. Jain spoke to us about the fundraising process for this company, saying that back then, there almost wasn’t a market for enterprise software of this sort and that investors — as well as clients — saw it as taking a risk to back a product in such an underdeveloped industry.
Any doubts about the company’s potential were quickly dispelled. Today, Glean stands tall with a valuation of over $2.2 billion, having secured more than $200 million in venture capital.
Jain also discussed how artificial intelligence has developed over the years, allowing the company to provide more accurate answers to complex questions. He said not everyone was familiar with large language models (LLMs) a few years ago, despite the fact that they were already used in the market. Glean knew about them, though, which is why Jain says LLMs were always a part of the product development.
“We were the first company to actually build vector search and embeddings and these other terms you hear these days in the AI world,” he told Found.
Jain also spoke briefly about cybersecurity and its importance in building AI products. Rubrik is a cybersecurity company, so it was no surprise that Jain had many thoughts on how to better secure consumer and client data. “Cybersecurity is actually one of the key pillars,” he said. “When you think about AI, you have to think about security first before you think about rolling out AI inside a company.”
Near the end of the conversation, Jain spoke about his more hands-off leadership style, prioritizing leaving his employees to do what he hired them to do best. He likes hiring passionate people and calls himself a product-obsessed founder. He’s still learning how to be a CEO, as he was head of research and development while at Rubrik. But he’s getting on.
He hopes that Glean can transform the way people work and become a generational company that one day goes public. For Jain, that would be two times the charm.
