Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (00:22): Sanjay, thank you. It’s awesome to be with you today. Really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for the partnership over so many years. It’s just been amazing in terms of what’s transpired over the last nine years. It’s an incredible milestone that we’re thrilled to…celebrate with you. Oh, first of all, thanks for having me here. It’s a pleasure to do it with one of my favorite people and favorite partners. Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (00:40): I really wanted to jump back to the founding journey, just to kick it off, as we think about this Uncommon Path and Uncommon series that we’re really trying to bring to other founders and the uniqueness of what you’ve achieved here at Netskope, which is so profound and so impressive. I was hoping we could go back and really talk about what led to this entrepreneurial drive. After you’d had such success at McAfee, you’d had success at Juniper, what was the impetus? What was inside that said it’s time to take that entrepreneurial leap?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (01:12): Well, first of all, I felt like my entire life had prepared me for it. Selling lipsticks with my mom since I was a kid, to building in larger companies and small, and I’d learned across the board how to sell, how to build, how to innovate, how to hire. And so I kind of felt like this is my time. This is my time to take advantage of all that and do what I love, which is build an iconic company.
And my domain was security and networking, and with the onset of cloud and AI, the inflection point was there, the opportunity was there, and I was ready and I was going to go after it. And so when I met you, I had it all going, passionate and ready to go.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (01:50): It’s incredible. When we first met, you looked like you were in high school. I know you had a lot of experience nonetheless.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (01:58): Wait, are you saying I got older?
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (01:59): Well, no, you still do. But at the time you definitely did. And I remember this nine years ago like it was yesterday. You were originally focused on CASB in the CASB marketplace, and it was crowded. There were a number of different competitors in all different directions, and you had this vision and really this unique idea around how you were going to emerge from that space.
Can you spend a little bit of time talking about what enabled you to really emerge from the masses and be that uncommon winner in such a crowded marketplace? And you weren’t even the first one there by any means.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (02:32): Yeah, absolutely. I think it comes down to the vision that we always had to go long. Our view was, look, we’re going to redefine security and networking. We’re not just going to be a CASB. We’re not just going to cover cloud; we’re going to cover all internet traffic. We’re going to be the new on-ramp for enterprises.
But imagine, I walked in your office and I said, hey, guess what, we’re going to be the new on-ramp for enterprises. All their traffic is going to go through us. And you went, wait, is it Netscape or Netskope? Who are you?
And so when you go to a customer, you can’t say that to them in the beginning. You’re just building your credibility. So what we decided was, look, we’re going to go after cloud, and cloud is whitespace, it’s greenfield. We can build our brand, get in, and then we can expand to achieve our true vision.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (03:16): And—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (03:16): So for us, what let us get past CASB was the original vision, which is hey, cover more than cloud, cover more than just access, do data protection and beyond. So having the long view, while also having the pragmatic view of hey, we’ve got to get in with one thing first. That’s what let us go beyond that.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (03:34): The company’s expanding in so many different directions. It’s a platform business. Everything that happened around network access, zero trust access, secure web gateway, it’s just been ridiculous. When did you start to really roll those products through? When you talk about like, hey, we’re going to focus on one thing—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (03:50): We’re—
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (03:51): —going to be great at one thing, but we’re going to earn that opportunity. At what stage did that really begin to manifest?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (03:57): Yeah, so first of all, in an R&D footprint, we started in the beginning with the vision that we’re going to build this broad platform, but we released obviously our first part.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (04:05): So you didn’t have to do the re-architecture?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (04:06): Yeah, we didn’t have to re-architect it. We knew that we wanted to build it once. We wanted to go long, which requires a unique set of investors to realize that hey, they’re going to go long. They’ve got a grander vision. They’re not going to drive it quarter by quarter.
But go-to-market wise, I would say it was really not until five, six years in where we could say to someone, hey, we have more. Right? The rest of our vision is coming. Here’s module two. And really, if you think about it, it’s in the past two and a half, three years where half of our 20-plus products have been released.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (04:35): It’s been amazing.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (04:36): And so it’s the velocity of hey, go long, build a platform, and then after you’ve done that, you can have a lot of velocity on the new products.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (04:45): One of the things—we can talk about building the platform—and I remember the very courageous board meeting you had where you said, hey, we need to build POPs, access, and network connectivity that’s closer to the customer and do it globally.
(04:57): And to do that was going to be a multi-hundred-million-dollar investment journey that was going to take a lot of years and was going to require a different set of leadership, but we weren’t going to rely on a third-party network. It was going to be a real source of differentiation.
When you thought about building that differentiation and taking that long view, what was required for the company to want to have that vision and then say, this is the only way we’re going to do this if we’re going to really be that emerging market winner that no one else can touch?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (05:25): Yeah, it’s a great question because I’ve always believed that in security, the paradox of security and networking is: I add security and it slows things down. That’s the view always. That’s always how it’s been. And our vision was I’m going to solve that paradox. We’re going to solve it for once, where the network folks go, wow, it’s faster, and the security folks go, I got what I need.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (05:42): But—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (05:42): To do that, I remember walking in that boardroom and I was thinking to myself, okay, I’m going to walk in a room and I’m going to tell them, after already expanding the platform, I’m going to go build one of the largest networks in the world. It’s going to probably take me four to five years. I’m going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars. And guess what? You’re not going to see it until it’s over, until it’s four or five years in.
Most boards would look at you and go, okay… But that’s why you pick who you partner with closely, who understand the view that, look, we told you in the beginning, we’re going to go long. We told you we’re building an iconic company—
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (06:13): And that—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (06:13): —doesn’t happen in a quarter or sometimes a year.
So I think what prepared us for that was picking the proper board, yourself included, and a big part of it always realizing that you don’t sacrifice the long term for the short term. And then third, realizing that you know what, it’s possible. You can solve this paradox. We put those together. We brought on some killer people. I camped out at the AWS office to bring them on, and we went after it.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (06:39): I remember that. Well, the operational efficiency, the unique aspect of security matched with the network access has just been a profound differentiator for Netskope and will continue to be so for years to come.
One of the things that has always, I think, defined the company for me and that you’ve just been phenomenal in terms of really focusing on is really digesting customer feedback and really listening and trying to make your customers successful. When was that embodied? How has that manifested? What lessons can you pass on for others that are thinking about how to build a truly enduring and durable business?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (07:14): Yeah, I think the first thing is have humility. Realize that wait a minute, you don’t know everything. And in fact, you probably don’t even know the majority of things. And so I think having people who could be customers, they could be advisors, they could be investors—listen. It’s important to listen and actually internalize what they’re saying. They each have a perspective, they each have a background, and that can help you.
When I look at customers, I have a saying: some people eat an apple a day. I spend two CXOs a day. For me, that’s my apple. I’ve got to hit two CIOs or CISOs every day, live in the trenches.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (07:49): That’s your diet, right?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (07:50): Yeah, that’s my diet, and I get a lot of great feedback. It could be go-to-market and marketing, could be positioning, could be platform, and that helps drive the company. It’s a great engine to really make sure that what you’re building is going to match what they want.
Now, the other side of that is don’t listen to it 100 percent either, because you’ve got to have a longer view. So you’ve just got to pragmatically marry the two.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (08:12): I think one of the interesting things that you just said as well is that you lead from the front. So it’s not like, oh, customers matter but other people are doing it. It’s actually, if they see the example that you’re manifesting in terms of your diet—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (08:24): And—
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (08:24): —they understand the importance that you’re placing on it, that’s the example that you define for your culture as well. And so other people have followed in suit, which is huge.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (08:31): I think our leaders, who I’d put against anybody, they lead from the front. They know what’s expected, but more so, that’s the kind of people we’ve brought on.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (08:39): They—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (08:39): —want to show by example. They want to be in the trenches. They want to live in the clouds, no pun intended.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (08:44): They—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (08:44): —want to live in both, live in the clouds and live in the trenches.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (08:46): Pun intended, pun accepted. So it’s worked well. Let’s shift a little bit to AI. AI is totally redefining the landscape in a major way—everything around security. Can you talk a little bit about what the company’s doing from an AI product perspective and also how the company is ingesting AI and leveraging AI to make it more successful?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (09:08): So first of all, we’ve had Netskope AI Labs for seven and a half years, which has been amazing. For five years, no one cared. I used to have these folks—
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (09:16): Acronym, what’s—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (09:18): No, I’d have these folks, and I’d be like, nobody wants to talk to us. And now, man, they’re the stars.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (09:23): Center stage.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (09:24): They are. And for seven and a half years, what did they do? They built neural networks. They’re not building foundation models; they’re building for data protection or threat protection or networking. We built neural networks because they were the best way, married with other techniques, to solve the problems we have.
So we built 160 models, we have over 40 patents on them, and we use them in all our products. Now, that’s one—that’s how we use it.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (09:46): And—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (09:46): Of course, on top of it, we build copilots now to make it easier for people to use the product. But in addition to that, what we’ve focused on is enabling companies to use AI. I have a saying that when someone sits in a boardroom and asks a CIO or a CISO, “Can I do this?”—a CEO says, hey, I’d like to use cloud, I’d like to use this AI app—you don’t say no and you don’t say yes. You say yes, and here are my guardrails I’m going to put around this usage.
So for us, that’s what we do: we enable people to use AI, and we put the guardrails around it. So you could say, hey, look, you can go to ChatGPT only if it’s a corporate instance, and you can’t query with sensitive data. In a CEO’s mind, in a boardroom or a CIO’s mind, that’s what they would draw up. We let that happen.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (10:31): And—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (10:31): So the other big use is we’ve enabled over a thousand customers to securely use generative AI.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (10:37): That’s amazing. And how about from an internal perspective? Are AI tools part of the go-to-market, customer service, accelerated development function? How advanced do you think Netskope is on that front as well?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (10:49): I’d say, look, we use AI especially in, I would say, customer-facing functions. For example, I may have smaller customers, and how do I automate their ability to get answers to questions and knowledge base? How do I automate even looking at my forecasts and pipeline?
I mean, the reality is AI is built into every SaaS app now. You’re in Confluence or you’re in GitHub using a copilot with your developers or looking at Cursor. So it’s kind of infused everywhere, and so we let that happen. However, we run an AI governance council. We will never, ever train on people’s data and use it for somebody else. It’s only for that customer’s use when they want it, of course. And so we do have strict governance on how we use it.
So I’d say, look, we have a long way to go, but we’re also being a little more pragmatic. We take into account the security part of AI.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (11:39): This is an incredible milestone for the business, for you, the team, our customers, our ecosystem. When you take the holistic view and take a step back and you think about the uncommon path that you have really created here, is there any single moment or any single lesson you’d pass on that has really enabled this to be the foundational pillar? Obviously a lot of bricks laid and a lot of work along that journey. Anything in particular that stands apart in terms of really creating that uncommon path for you?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (12:11): Yeah, I think a couple. One is resolve. The reality is when we were building our company and our platform—you gave that example of network, give it a product, you could even go to market—a lot of times people said, “Sanjay, that’s not the textbook way to do it,” or “I don’t know, that doesn’t seem like you should be doing that right now.”
I think the thing that has held me is this conviction, this resolve that you know what, no, this is the way the world’s going and this is the way that I, in my gut and through my primary data—I live in the trenches—feel is the right way. And so I do think one of the most powerful things is sometimes to say, no, I get the input, but actually, no, this is the way I think we should do it.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (12:56): And—
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (12:56): You’ve got to have resolve, especially if you’re dealing with people external to you, could be folks in the industry that are well known. And so I just think the uncommon path often is: stick to your knitting, what you believe in. Don’t give up that.
I’ve walked into so many places where they’ve even given up their values because they needed to get something done. And you don’t want to do that. I always have this saying: you’ve got to put your head on your pillow at night. And in the end, that’s what matters. You feel good about yourself, and that’s held us.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (13:27): It just requires, I think, unique fortitude and conviction and belief, because there are so many people that are naysayers or so many people that are saying you’re going a different direction than where they want to go. So applause to you for being the leader to actually steer this through those rocky waters and know that you’re on the right path all the way through.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (13:44): Appreciate that.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (13:45): Talk just a little bit about what you see as the biggest opportunities going forward for cloud security over the next five years.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (13:51): Yeah. We’re in the first inning of the market. I truly believe that we are literally in the early innings. For me, I think about this TAM and I think about the market: security and networking in the cloud and AI era. It’s completely transformed, and that’s our opportunity.
The reality is people work from everywhere. It’s not just people anymore. It’s AI agents, it’s devices. They access things that are in their footprint and outside. They have some cloud, web, SaaS. I mean, it’s probably one of the biggest transformational changes that’s happened in the way people work ever. And AI has kind of thrown kerosene on it. It’s like, yeah, and by the way, here’s this while you’re changing all of how you work and everything else you do.
So I think about us being in the first inning, and ultimately we are building the new highway for the internet. We are building this on-ramp to the internet, which secures and accelerates people’s traffic. And so you think about that TAM—that’s the world. And that TAM’s never going away, and that’s what we’re going after.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (14:51): Sanjay, one of the really unique and impressive things about Netskope is that it’s truly a global company. We’ve got customers all over the world. We work with you in China, it’s been phenomenal. Also, that’s the same for the company’s employee footprint.
Can you talk a little bit about how it has been to grow internationally from an employee standpoint, how you’ve managed the culture, how you think about keeping everyone unified despite being so distributed?
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (15:13): Absolutely. I’ve always believed in a global footprint, global talent. For one, you want to have many different development centers, and obviously as you grow your field, they’re going to be everywhere and they actually enhance your culture. They have a unique vantage point that enriches what you build. So I’ve always believed in global hiring and global culture and global centers of excellence.
So centers of excellence in key areas, and you build off those. You don’t want to be so dispersed from an R&D perspective, but build multiple R&D centers. Second is sales. Look, security and networking, cloud and AI, regulatory environments, sovereignty concerns—that’s a global thing. And so when you look at Europe, some of the biggest economies in the world, some of the biggest manufacturing, retail, financial services. You look at Japan.
I went into Latin America early because I knew who was going to adopt cloud first and skip the legacy that was done. And so really we are global since the beginning. I’ve always believed in that from an employee-building and then always from a customer perspective because the problem we solve is universal.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (16:14): You talk about the uncommon path of resolve and just that vision of sticking with it regardless of how people might want to be a little contrary to that new belief and paradigm, and this is a primary example of it. So congratulations on that success. It’s a really big deal.
One other question about ICONIQ, shifting back, talking about some of the different important aspects of board members, investors: can you talk a little about the engagement on the customer front in terms of helping the customer journey, whether it’s introductions or support or anything that happened on that front as well? We’d love to hear any thoughts on that side.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (16:47): Yeah, absolutely. So what I found was, just through my own knowledge with investors, partners, others, they’re sometimes very good at the East Coast financials, the top 10, or they’re good in the West Coast, but actually there’s 90-plus percent beyond that.
What I found with ICONIQ, I was like, wait a minute, how can they be one link away? And when we ask, hey, we’re trying to get into this account, trying to get to this CXO or so on, they take that and they leverage the ICONIQ network in the right way to help us. And what I’ve seen is I’ve never seen such diversity, the ability to get to so many different places other than the top 10 East Coast financials and the West Coast. The ability to do it internationally, not just in North America—that’s hard.
You look at most partners from an investor/VC perspective, it’s very US-centric. And so I think that diversity globally, that diversity beyond East Coast financials and a few West Coast mid-size companies, that’s been impressive.
And then third, the fact that, hey, our team can raise any of those to you and you’ll be creative and you’ll figure out, okay, how could I help them here? The thing I love about ICONIQ is—and I still remember this day one through every day—you guys are authentic. You tell us what you think. You’re constructive and entrepreneur-friendly. You’ll text me, you’ll call me. You’re helping us. You’re not there in a boardroom to show and have showmanship or pontificate. You’re there to help. And that’s, for us, the most valuable board member and most valuable partner.
The other thing is I still remember this day when I said, I can introduce you to my customers, and you said, no, no, don’t worry, Sanjay, we’ll do that. You gave me this report—I don’t know how big it was, it was like 80, 90 pages—and it was like “Netskope,” and I’m like, oh my goodness. Customer, marketing, a review of every part of us. I looked at my people and went, this is better than anything we could ever create.
And so the level of analytics that you have to look at something properly and pump that out and show that to someone—I’ve never seen that. And so I really commend you on the integrity and the trust and then your ability to really just consume and provide somebody some very detailed analytics that actually helps them versus high-level kind of just pontification. That’s been super valuable.
Will Griffith, Partner, ICONIQ (19:13): Sanjay, this has been amazing. Really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for sharing these lessons and really a lot about the journey that you’ve achieved in Netskope. I think when we think about the uncommon path that unique founders have been able to really define and redefine markets, you epitomize that in every possible way and every part of the ownership of this business.
You talk about things like the board and investors, but it’s really down to every brick, every employee, and every customer, and how you’ve really owned it and defined it and really reestablished the possible. Could not be more excited to celebrate this milestone. It’s a phenomenal achievement, but I know it’s just the beginning. We have a long path ahead together and a long path ahead for Netskope. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Sanjay Beri, founder and CEO, Netskope (19:58): Thanks, Will. I look forward to many, many more years. It’s going to be fun. Take care. Thank you. Awesome.
