Managing Risk: MetricStream Chairman Gunjan Sinha (Part 2)

Sramana: When did you start MetricStream?

Gunjan Sinha: We started MetricStream in 1999. The MetricStream we know today was created with the merger of Zaplet in 2004. Zaplet had raised a lot of money from institutional investors, and I essentially did a reverse merger to pull this current company from that environment. Shellye Archambeau served as the CEO and I took the role of executive chairman. Vinod Khosla was also a part of the board; that was when he was with Kleiner Perkins. We brought in Advanced Equities as new investors to help build the company.

Over the past seven years we have built MetricStream into a market leading company that is acknowledged by Gartner and Forrester. We have customers all over the world. Our clients use us for risk management, compliance, and governance.

Sramana: Let’s talk some about the blood, sweat, and tears of being an entrepreneur. Why did you go down the path of entrepreneurship?

Gunjan Sinha: Entrepreneurship is an interesting journey and one that I would recommend to anyone. While it is a difficult path to take, it is also very rewarding and extremely exciting. In 1993 I got together with some friends. We had absolutely no money but we all wanted to start brainstorming to come up with some sort of business idea. We had a little bit of savings here and there, but by and large we all had a big dream and desire to make something happen.

We tinkered with a dozen different ideas. We thought about building a voice mail system. We looked at interactive voice response systems and telephonic systems. What really got us excited was a tiny project we received from the American Red Cross. They wanted us to build a website for their Palo Alto chapter in 1994. The web was very new at the time and the Mosaic browser had just been invented. One thing led to another, and we discovered the power of communities.

Sramana: How much did you charge the American Red Cross in 1994 for their website?

Gunjan Sinha: It was a few thousand dollars to begin with. The novelty factor was high and nobody knew what to charge. I just made up the quote. We did all of this work out of my apartment in Mountain View. I was sharing an apartment with Ashutosh Roy at the time.

Sramana: You have done two ventures with Ashu. What constitutes a good co-founder, and what is the secret to having a good relationship with them?

Gunjan Sinha: Ashu and I are very good friends to this day. I knew him back at school in Delhi; we shared a hostel together. He was two years my senior. There was a lot of familiarity when we reunited at Stanford. He was in the business school while I was there working on my masters. We just started brainstorming and we had a high degree of alignment. We had a shared vision and commitment that has spanned a long time. We were both cognizant of that vision. We would not make unilateral decisions, and we always kept the other person in mind.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Managing Risk: MetricStream Chairman Gunjan Sinha
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