Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain (Part 4)

Vineet Jain: Secondly and this is very important, we have storage companies as partners. When I started, I worked with Netgear here in Sta. Clara. Then I went to NetApp in 2011 as we grew and the customers were saying, “Who’s Net Gear?” The idea here is that the on-premise storage companies look at Egnyte as a complement. I will never stand up in a conference and make a stupid statement like, “EMC and NetApp’s days are numbered, because everything is going to the cloud.” That’s not a reality. That’s just good to get a sound bite out and journalists love that.

What happens is we are focused on a huge part of our go-to market driven to the channel. The channel is driven around the distribution ecosystem of a NetApp, EMC, or a Netgear. When you have big channel partners and say, “You’re used to selling boxes. We still have you do that but how about if I layer this SaaS model and start generating an annuity income stream on top of it.” You preserve what you do because I’m telling the customer that cloud is not enough. That message is rarely resonating right now.

My big focus from a sales motion is a huge focus on channel sales. I recently hired Jeff as my Head of Channel Sales from EMC. 22% of the business is already coming from the channel. It’s not a huge number. It’s not insignificant. I expect that by the end of the year, we’ll probably have 40% of the new business coming from the channel.

Sramana Mitra: I think the smart piece is that you have established a business model that supports that channel sales model. In the low-end, it’s not just viable. Even though these companies are going public, I see lots of danger signs all over those IPO’s.

Vineet Jain: I have been praying and hoping that either of these two companies go for a very good IPO. I wish them all the best because if they go for a great IPO, it’s going to increase our valuation by 20% within a week or two. Let’s be pragmatic about it. I’m hell-bent on hitting a recognized revenue. My goal is to see how soon I can get $200 million. At the current trajectory, we could, as long as we execute the plan, hit this number by 2015. I’m keen on building this company for the longer term and have the aspiration to do an IPO. I came as an immigrant here in Silicon Valley in 1993. No rags to riches story; I’m not rich yet. I had $100 in my pocket. So I have the aspiration to build a very successful product company in Silicon Valley and take it public.

Sramana Mitra: I’m sure you will do that. In terms of timing, you’re going to have to be careful because these IPOs are going to happen, and they’re go to implode. You’re going to have to sit out that implosion and re-energize and educate the market on why your model is better. I think you’re going to have to be a bit patient on this.

Vineet Jain: No disagreement. That’s why I said if they have to go for an IPO, do a good one or get acquired. Either of those situations are good for us because, think about it this way, I have the least amount of capital raised in this space. It’s $62.5 million and I can tell you the amount of money raised by all these companies compared to us.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain
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