#4 Guy Podjarny, Co-founder & President of Snyk | Lessons in scaling from a €8B business

Guy Podjarny is Co-founder and President of Snyk – the €8B developer-first security platform. Together, we unpack tactical considerations that go into scaling a business – especially one with a product-led, freemium-based go-to-market.

Guy started Snyk with his co-founders Assaf and Danny in 2015, spent four years as CEO, and migrated into his current role of President in 2019.

Built dually in Tel-Aviv and London, and later in a distributed fashion around the world, Snyk is a platform that enables developers to automatically detect and fix vulnerabilities in their code and stack.

Today, Snyk employs 1200 people is valued at closer to 8 billion euros. They’ve got there by raising a whopping 1.3 billion euros from iconic investors like Accel, GV, Coatue, Tiger Global, Addition, Blackrock and so many more.

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1:11 What are the most important traits to have within a founding team?

2:17 What should non-technical founders spend time on in the early days?

3:23 What are the humane characteristics of great founding teams?

4:51 How do you know to stop pursuing a given idea?

6:16 Snyk's most critical milestone in the first month, quarter and year?

9:28 Why should you launch a crappy product early?

11:36 With a product-led go-to-market, which systems ensure deep learning?

15:09 Why did you choose a product-led go-to-market?

18:11 What are the signs that you should hire a professional CEO to replace you?

20:12 What can an exceptional external CEO bring to the table?

21:42 Having been acquired in the past, what do you optimize for acquiring companies?

24:22 How do you judge when to say yes and when to say no?

25:02 What do founders underinvest in early on? How about the inverse of that?

26.18 What is one important truth about company-building that very few people would agree with?