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Every entrepreneur has an exciting story to tell while building his or her company. The common thread across many of these stories is how a team stepped up to solve a challenge which resulted in a key customer buying its solution, thus taking the company to the next level.

This is one such story at NetScaler. This is a major customer win that happened right after our second generation product launch in July 2002. It was one of the worst financial meltdowns the industry had experienced after the dot-com bubble crash; NetScaler had money to last till the middle of December. We had pitched to at least 30-40 venture capitalists but no one was interested in investing in an infrastructure company at that time.

It was very critical for us to build the customer traction to convince VCs that it was definitely worthwhile for them to consider investing in NetScaler. NetScaler was a 60-people company with about 15 engineers in India at that time. We found Web-Ex, a large web conferencing company, was interested in our product. They evaluated the product for two months and found our technology very compelling. Around the middle of September, Web-Ex clearly indicated that they were interested in our product, but they wanted a key functionality developed into the product which was not a very simple process.

We wanted to win this customer badly and get a PO before the end of the quarter, which was September 30. The team in the U.S. and India looked at the requirement and did some analysis and came back and said they would deliver a demo of that key functionality by the end of September. We then went back to Web-Ex to get a commitment that we would indeed get a PO if we demonstrated that functionality by that time.

The teams in the U.S. and India worked day and night and managed to deliver the feature to Web-Ex and, as promised, we did a demo on September 29. Customers became very emotional to see how hard the team had worked to solve a complex problem. We did end up getting a $250,000 PO for this which resulted in Sequoia Capital investing in the company. NetScaler went on to build a great company with over 75 percent of the world’s internet users touching the NetScaler product daily.

NetScaler was eventually bought by Citrix and today NetScaler product is generating over $200 million of annual sales and is touching thousands of customers, creating over 1,000 jobs all over the globe.

The incident I have narrated demonstrated an extraordinary team effort and commitment that resulted in creating the world-class company that NetScaler is today as well as creating wealth for hundreds of people, managing to make a huge difference in their personal lives.

What touches me most is when someone walks up to me and says how NetScaler returns helped him/her to buy a house or made it possible for him/her to send a child to a good college etc.

After all, as per our saying, “Sarve Janh Sukhino Bhavanthu,” which means that an entrepreneur gets a lot of satisfaction if he/she can make a positive difference to someone’s life.

Tips for aspiring entrepreneurs:
1. To build a great company you need a:
a. Great product
b. Great team
c. Great markets.
2. Opportunities are massive today as compared to even 10 years ago. This means the entrepreneur needs to be even more laser-sharp to focus on areas that he/she understands well.
3. The toughest decision an entrepreneur and a startup company have to make is to say “no.” Saying yes is very easy and the more you say yes, the more focus your company loses and resources are spread thin. At the same time, you have to know when and for what you should say no, otherwise you might end up saying no to the wrong thing and lose a huge market opportunity.
4. You, as an entrepreneur, need to be open and broad-minded and at the same time take tough decisions and stand by them.
5. You should allow debates within the organization rather than adopt a dictatorial approach.

B.V. JAGADEESH is the President and CEO of 3Leaf Systems. He co-founded Exodus Communications and led its highly successful IPO and was instrumental in founding VPNet. He has also been the Group VP of Citrix Systems’s Application Networking Group Technologies.

Tags:
3Leaf Systems, B.V. Jagadeesh, Citrix Systems, Exodus Communications, VPNet