Puneet Agarwal
Puneet brings a strong mix of operating and Venture Capital experience to the True team.
Prior to joining True, Puneet was the VP of Product Management at Geodesic Information Systems, which specializes in mobile and Internet communication products selling to consumers, OEMs, carriers, and online properties. There he helped grow the company from $20M to over $80M in revenue in two years and learned valuable lessons about building a successful team in times of rapid growth. As part of his experience with Geodesic, Puneet lived and worked in India for seven months before settling back in their West Coast offices.
Prior to Geodesic, Puneet spent four years at BEA Systems in a number of roles. Puneet ran product marketing for BEA’s JRockit product, traveled the world evangelizing BEA’s platform to CIOs and developers, and also conceived, initiated, and ran product management and marketing for BEA’s RFID initiative.
Puneet began his career at an early stage integration software startup, Crossworlds Software, which was later sold to IBM. He then spent some time in the investment world in corporate finance and M&A in J.P. Morgan’s tech practice where he worked on several technology IPOs and acquisitions. Puneet also spent two years in Venture Capital at the Mayfield Fund helping to invest in early stage software deals. Puneet joined during the height of the bubble and endured during the downturn as well. It was during this latter period when he helped to lead Mayfield’s investment in Trigo, an early enterprise software company, which was later sold to IBM.
At True, Puneet focuses on infrastructure and software applications specifically around cloud computing, open source, SaaS, and mobile. He currently sits on the board of LoopFuse.
Degree
BS with honors in Industrial Engineering, Stanford University
MS in Industrial Engineering, Stanford University
Mayfield Fellow, Stanford University
True Story
Early on in my career, while working in the enterprise software industry, I experienced a defining moment that truly shaped the rest of my career going forward.
It was an intense time. We were trying to sell our solution to a Fortune 100 retailer, competing against some of the largest software companies in the world. As is often the case, it was a make or break situation for us.
While I was “officially” leading the product side, I quickly realized that it takes an entire team to effectively sell in the early stages. The key to winning was also an intense focus on customer requirements. Luckily, our competition was clearly trying to push a larger solution onto the customer that only partially met their needs at a significantly higher cost.
Even though we also did not have a complete solution since we were helping to create a new market, knowing what we didn’t know was as critical to our success as anything else. At the time, we had been working closely with another startup that had a piece of technology that would perfectly complement our solution. Given we were all operating around open standards, we quickly decided to integrate our two solutions and provide a new offering. The solution ultimately provided a specific set of functionality that was exactly what the customer needed.
In short order, we created a new product, formed a new partnership, and won a flagship customer that would help to propel the business forward. Things moved extremely fast but the months of preparation preceding it enabled the moment.
Part of being entrepreneurial is competing and winning against the odds and essentially doing more with less. It also requires recognizing the situation and at times, operating outside of the norm.
Since that time, sales models have changed dramatically and enterprise software has moved much more toward a frictionless low-cost model similar to the consumer world. However, I realize now as I realized then, that competing and winning requires the right entrepreneurial mindset, the ability to seize the moment, and a sense of creativity.