Gururaj Pandurangi

Founder

Sammamish, Washington, United States24 yrs 3 mos experience

Highly Stable

Key Highlights

3x founder with successful startup exits.
Expert in building product-led growth strategies.
Strong background in cloud computing and security.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and Cloud Computing expert with a focus on product-led growth.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Product-led Growth (plg)Sales Led Growth (slg)InvestmentsMentoringInformation SecurityCloud ComputingGo-to-market Strategy

Other Skills

Agile MethodologiesAgile Project ManagementCustomer-Focused program planning and executionData backed decision-makingDistributed SystemsDistributed TeamsERPEarly-stage StartupsEnd-to-end ownership/accountability of the programEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP)Enterprise SoftwareInformation SystemsLarge Scale SystemsLeadershipManagement

About

3x Founder: Engineer turned entrepreneur, exited 2 product startups ($2-10m ARR) and 1 cloud consulting company (150+ cloud consultants). Building my 3rd one, ThriveStack. My previous startups were partner-led and sales-led. With significant investments in Sales & Marketing (S&M budgets were 60% company spend). Overtime I discovered that product-led startups were out-competing and getting deployed faster than us. I realized that "We are in the age of self-service". Buyers and Users prefer self-discovery over sales interactions. Building a self-serve product is very different than building a traditional sales-led product. Now, building ThriveStack, an modern AI-enabled platform to enable Self-Serve for B2B companies, allowing their users to Signup, Try and Buy their products w/o (less) Sales conversations.

Experience

24 yrs 3 mos

Total Experience

3 yrs

Average Tenure

2 yrs 10 mos

Current Experience

Thrivestack

CEO and Founder

Jun 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 10 mos · United States

Embarking on a mission to address these inquiries:
Can we make SaaS companies build fast and GTM at scale? At the same time.
Can we simplify the implementation of PLG for SaaS companies?
Can we make Growth efficient?
Can we foster collaboration across diverse departments driving SaaS Growth through a collaborative, multi-player mode?

Early-stage StartupsSoftware as a Service (SaaS)Sales Led Growth (SLG)Product-Led Growth (PLG)

Zscaler

VP, Public Cloud Infrastructure Security

Apr 2020 – May 2023 · 3 yrs 1 mo

Cloud ComputingLarge Scale SystemsInformation Security

Early stage startups

Investor & Advisor

Apr 2019 – Present · 7 yrs · United States

Investing and Advising a dozen+ early-stage startups.
Always happy to connect with great small teams, attempting to solve bigger-than-them problems.

Early-stage StartupsMentoringInvestments

Cloudneeti

CEO & Founder (Acquired by Zscaler)

Apr 2018 – Apr 2020 · 2 yrs · United States

Disrupting cloud workload assurance space with Cloudneeti, laser focused on Continuous Cybersecurity and Compliance posture management.
Security & Compliance Validation engine for Azure Blueprints like http://aka.ms/healthblueprint, http://aka.ms/pciblueprint
Global presenter on cloud, security, compliance, and architecture.

Early-stage StartupsGo-to-Market StrategyLarge Scale SystemsInformation Security

Avyan corp

CEO and Founder

Jul 2011 – Apr 2019 · 7 yrs 9 mos · Redmond, WA

Avyan Consulting's prime focus is to build upon its expertise in helping medium and large scale enterprises embrace the benefits of Cloud Computing and Big Data Technologies.
Leading a startup organization of multiple global delivery teams, based out in US, India and Eastern Europe, focusing on product engineering and solution development in the following areas
Leading an enterprise scale Azure and AWS adoption by bringing in critical workloads for IaaS and PaaS. Built and led core Cloud Engineering, Cloud DevOps, Cloud Security and Cloud Operations teams.
Led a team of data scientists and cloud engineering – Product recommendation engine using machine learning for a large retail eCommerce store. Increased conversion ratio by 400% and continuing
Built and Sold a cloud migration and assessment product to a large ISV.
Partnering with a mid-sized Application & Platform vendor along with various key initiatives with Microsoft Premier Services team / Microsoft Azure and Dynamics CRM Online teams in developing and delivering various offerings.
Managing a team of cloud architects & engineers leading multiple cloud migration efforts for two large enterprise customers to AWS and Azure cloud and big-data solutions.
Work extensively with customers (typical personas include VP Engg/CTO/CFO/Developers/Architects/) in providing them services ranging from - advice on managing & running efficient operations (e.g. reduce COGS, improve Performance, Resiliency), building and managing IP/workshops events, partnering with various Windows Azure teams to ship iterations on many services (Product planning, Engineering, Supportability and Marketing teams).