Lessons from Sentry on scaling DevTools and finding product market fit (again) | Milin Desai (Sentry, VMware, Riverbed)
May 16, 2024•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
Milin Desai is the CEO at Sentry, an application monitoring tool for developers. Sentry has recently passed two key milestones: 100K customers and over $100M in ARR. Before Sentry, Milin was a GM at VMware and scaled their cloud networking into a billion-dollar business. Prior to stepping into leadership roles, Milin was a PM at Riverbed and a software engineer at Veritas.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:
The key ingredients of Sentry’s success
Sentry’s developer-centric approach
Lessons on pricing, packaging, and product from VMware
Being an external CEO at a startup
Forging successful relationships with founders
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Referenced:
Building for the Fortune 500,000: https://blog.sentry.io/building-for-the-fortune-500-000/
Carl Eschenbach: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-eschenbach-980543/
Chris Jennings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriskjennings/
David Cramer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcramer/
FRC’s product market fit framework: https://pmf.firstround.com/
Martin Casado: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martincasado/
Pat Gelsinger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patgelsinger/
Raghu Raghuram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghuraghuram/
Riverbed: https://www.riverbed.com/
Sentry: https://sentry.io/
Todd Bazakas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-bazakas-b5a2533/
Veritas: https://www.veritas.com/
VMware: https://www.vmware.com/
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Where to find Milin Desai:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milin-desai-464757/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/virtualmilin
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Where to find Brett Berson:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
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Where to find First Round Capital:
Website: https://firstround.com/
First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(03:03) Joining Sentry as an external CEO
(06:27) The CEO/founder relationship
(09:37) Lessons from VMware
(13:04) What PMs did differently at VMware
(18:04) Becoming the need, not the want
(20:53) Scaling Sentry
(23:07) Building for the “Fortune 500,000”
(27:02) Open versus closed source product
(30:43) The key ingredients to Sentry’s success
(36:21) How Milin updated his playbook at Sentry
(38:49) Focus on packaging, not pricing
(40:29) “Build for the many, not the few”
(41:53) Sentry’s B2D model
(45:10) The second product mindset
(51:03) Contrarian take on building for enterprise
(52:50) Several people who influenced Milin
