Jyoti Bansal, 46, sold his startup AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion after the communications technology giant offered the deal right when AppDynamics was about to go public in 2017.
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However, this also had the effect of raising the values of the shares held by his employees. And it was not by just a nominal amount either. The value of the shares of at least 400 employees rose to at least $1 million each, according to a CNBC Make It report.
“We had dozens of employees with $5 million-plus outcomes,” the report quoted Bansal as saying. “These are life-changing outcomes.” Bansal himself owned 14% of the company.
Who is Jyoti Bansal?
Jyoti Bansal grew up in Rajasthan and attended the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, studying computer science. He moved to the US in 2000 to work in tech at Silicon Valley.
He worked at multiple Silicon Valley startups, eventually founding AppDynamics, his first very own startup in 2008. The company’s products are for monitoring, diagnosing and troubleshooting performance slowdowns and other glitches in software code.
Bansal had decided to sell AppDynamics to Cisco noting the compatibility of AppDynamics’ software products with Cisco’s portfolio as well as the positive impact it can have on nearly the company’s nearly 1,200 employees.
Another important reason was that a $3.7 billion market capitalisation would have taken at least “three to four years of great execution,” with risks as well.
However, Bansal also regretted the decision later, experiencing a sense of aimlessness without a startup to lead, while also feeling he could have continued to grow it further.
As a result, he didn’t stop there. He went on to co-found Traceable and Harness, two other software companies. Harness became valued at $3.7 billion in 2022.
He also is a co-founder and partner at VC firm Unusual Ventures. In yet another CNBC Make It interview, he was quoted as saying “my cheat code is to not do too much multitasking.”
The report quoted Jay Chaudhry, the billionaire founder and CEO of Zscaler as saying that “people in the company were ecstatic; they had never imagined so much money. Many were buying new houses, new cars. I know one person who took six months off, rented an RV, and travelled around the country. They finally had the freedom to do what they wanted.”
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