From 100 Questions to Rubrik’s IPO

As security threats continue to grow and breaches become more common, protecting critical data will only become more important—and Rubrik leads the way. Congratulations to Bipul Sinha and the remarkable team at Rubrik on this milestone.

The first time we met Rubrik, it was clear that Bipul, Arvind Nithrakashyap, Arvind Jain and Soham Mazumdar had conviction about the market and were getting some early traction. Instead of backing up an entire data center — which was expensive and inefficient — they were helping enterprise customers back up the most critical data from their most important applications.

That insight alone is why we wanted to lead their Series D. But what impressed us most is what happened next.

At the end of every investment, we try to take the founders out for a celebratory meal. In this case, we suggested some very nice restaurants, but the Rubrik founders nixed all of them. Instead, they wanted to go to an authentic Indian restaurant in Palo Alto (Amber India). And after the meal, they started asking questions.

Bipul kicked off by wanting to know why we got excited about AppDynamics — a company we backed in 2013. When we started giving a cursory answer, he stopped us. “No, no, no. Let’s get deeper. What was it about Jyoti’s vision that got you so excited?”

For the next hour, we probably answered a hundred questions about AppDynamics, Datadog, Pure Storage and other companies we partnered with. Why were they successful? How did they hire? How did they scale? Bipul and his co-founders were like sponges, soaking up every bit of tech history.

That’s when we realized how special the Rubrik team actually was. We could tell how much they wanted to be great. And in the years since, we’ve seen that greatness again and again.

When we first partnered, Rubrik had about 50 employees and $50 million in revenue. Today, they have more than 3,000 employees and $784.0 million in ARR as of January 31, 2024 — something very few Silicon Valley companies ever achieve. Over the last few years, they’ve successfully pivoted from backing up and recovering application data to protecting full company data and growing in a sustainable way. IVP is honored to have a front-row seat to it all - from customer growth to acquisitions to the cultivation of an incredible exec team.

The biggest moments in life are usually bittersweet. On the one hand, today’s IPO means we’ll be less involved with Rubrik. But after seeing how much work it took to get to this day, we couldn’t be prouder of the team. And we believe that if Rubrik continues to innovate across security markets, the best is yet to come.

We’ll be rooting for them all the way.