When Asheem Chandna arrived at Rubrik’s office in Palo Alto on a Friday evening in early 2015, he couldn’t wait to search out out what the young company that hadn’t yet created a product would show him. Greylock’s partner was not upset.

The company’s CEO, Bipul Sinha, drew on a whiteboard Rubrik’s plan to revamp the info management and recovery market. “The old and new architecture he presented was very convincing,” Chandna said. “Based on my knowledge of the industry, I knew it could be turned into a big business.”

It was a prophetic call. On Thursday, nine years after that meeting, Rubrik began its operations as a publicly traded company with: market capitalization exceeding $6 billion. Greylock owns 13% of the shares, in keeping with the newest SEC reports. By the close of trading Friday, at a share price of $38, nearly 19.9 million shares were value greater than $756 million.

But Chandna says he was motivated to steer the Rubrik team by rather more than simply a desire to tackle the arcane data recovery market. Series B for $40 million in May 2015. (According to SEC filings, the Series B round sold for $2.45 per share, adjusted for splits. Although Greylock also participated in later rounds at higher prices, Chandra’s profits from this round are enormous.)

“The longer I do what I do, the more I truly believe that venture is a people business,” said Chandna, who has been an investor for over 20 years and has an enviable track record of successful exits. He helped incubate Palo Alto Networks within the Greylock offices and until last 12 months served on the board of directors of the nearly $100 billion company. Chandna was also an early investor Application dynamics, Sumo logic and Arista Networks.

Chandna looks for individuals who are usually not only motivated and bold, but in addition aware of their weaknesses and may recruit individuals who can get things done in areas that are usually not the founder’s strong suit.

Another essential ingredient for the founder is sand. “If you had the right technology, but slightly inferior to mine, but you were very aware and persistent, you would beat me,” he said.

This is what he saw in Sinha. The founding father of Rubrik dreamed of beginning a company all his life. Chandra recalls that when he founded a knowledge management and recovery startup in 2013, he couldn’t find strong engineers willing to work there. The business he was attempting to construct wasn’t inherently sexy on the time.

Despite being an investor in Lightspeed for 4 years before founding Rubrik, recruiting talent proved to be a serious challenge for Sinha. But he didn’t quit. He called engineers on LinkedIn after which invited them to coffee breaks outside the workplace.

“The startup path is very difficult, even for the most successful companies,” Chandna said. “I want people who won’t take no for an answer.”

Perhaps it was Sinha’s resolve and ambition that forced him to take his company public despite the unfavorable IPO atmosphere.

“Rubrik has almost $800 million in annual recurring revenue,” Chandna said. “This is more than most companies that have gone public in the last many years. I think they just wanted to keep it going.”

Chandna would not say whether he expects other Greylock portfolio corporations to follow Rubrik’s lead, but added emphatically that the best-performing late-stage corporations are Abnormal Security, Cato Networks, Discord, Figma and Lyra Health.

We will follow their fate closely.

Following a successful demonstration at CES, Rabbit is giving journalists the opportunity to check out the R1, a small orange gadget with an AI-powered voice interface. This comes just weeks after the launch of the Humane Ai Pin, which is similarly touted as a brand new breed of mobile device with artificial intelligence at the center.

While we’re still waiting for detailed reviews (slightly than initial hands-on testing) of the R1, there are some pretty stark differences between the two devices.

Most noticeably, the Ai Pin is screenless and relies on a voice and projector interface, while the R1 has a 2.88-inch screen (though it’s intended for way more than simply entering your Wi-Fi password). And while the AI ​​Pin costs $699 plus a $24 monthly subscription, the R1 costs just $199. Both, in accordance with TechCrunch’s Brian Heater, display the value of fine industrial design.

It seems that neither Ai Pin (who has some really scathing reviews) nor R1 makes a completely convincing argument that it is time to interchange our smartphones or that AI chatbots are the best strategy to get information from the Internet. But most of all, what’s exciting is that the hardware industry is wide open again. Press play after which tell us for those who’re playing to check out R1 or Ai Pin!

Global founders’ capitala Berlin-based early-stage VC firm with close ties to German startup factory Rocket Internet will develop into the enterprise arm of Rocket Internet.

The VC had previously raised two $1 billion funds, and just a few years ago his name was featured in dozens of deals a yr. But then the situation calmed down. Now we all know why: in the longer term, the corporate will invest exclusively from Rocket Internet’s balance sheet.

Last yr Financial Times. announced that Global Founders Capital is within the midst of a major strategic change. A couple of weeks ago, the VC firm reached out to TechCrunch to verify the pivot and discuss the reasoning behind the change.

“To be transparent, there have been quite a few changes at Global Founders Capital in recent years – in terms of fund structure and team composition,” Global Founders Capital partner David Sainteff (pictured above) told us.

Sainteff said the corporate has decided it shouldn’t be the fitting time to lift one other fund since it shouldn’t be a good time to speculate since it doesn’t imagine there are numerous good opportunities that meet the corporate’s criteria and that it doesn’t need more capital to retain competing against other investors to shut a deal.

Global Founders Capital was originally structured as a traditional VC firm with several limited partners participating within the funds. With its first fund, it supported future unicorns comparable to Personio, Revolut and SumUp. With the second fund, the corporate invested in several TechCrunch-covered firms comparable to Pennylane, Ankorstore and Seyna.

Before joining Global Founders Capital seven years ago, Sainteff worked for Rocket Internet he was an investor in Global Founders Capital from the start. Therefore, there was a close bond between them from the very starting.

“After launching the second fund, we decided not to raise another one. Instead, we will use Rocket Internet’s capital,” he confirmed. “We have EUR 300 million on our balance sheet to use for venture investments. We are not planning any collections.”

Honestly, that is a little strange because the corporate’s performance to date seems pretty good. According to Sainteff, the primary fund will generate returns of 3x to 4x. “For the second fund, it is (to say) much too early,” he continued. “But we have some clear winners like Pennylane. We have entered the pre-seed stage and the company is worth over €1 billion.”

The new strategy signifies that Global Founders Capital is now much smaller than it was once, with only five partners left: Fabricio Pettena, Don Stalter, Cedric Asselman, Sainteff and, of course, Rocket Internet co-founder and CEO Oliver Samwer.

The new version of the corporate will also focus exclusively on early-stage investments, in addition to opportunities for further investments in later rounds (series A, B, C, etc.).

Has Global Founders Capital decided not to lift a third fund since it didn’t receive sufficient support from potential limited partners or because of the present technology downturn in comparison with 2021 (aside from the AI ​​boom)? The decision probably relied on each aspects.

“It wasn’t the best time to raise funds with (limited partners),” Sainteff told us. “We believe it was difficult to introduce the need for capital.”

“It’s easy to make a decision when you have EUR 300 million in the bank,” he added. “If other VC firms were in the same boat, they would make the same decision. We do not rule out the possibility of obtaining a fund if the conditions are favorable.”

For now, the pivot is reversing much of the fund’s earlier expansion, because it expanded into more geographies, technology areas and financing stages and added the Global Founders Capital name to a number of deals.