Inside the fastest-growing unicorn in Silicon Valley

Bipul Sinha wants to build #Rubrik into one of the world’s largest companies. In his first role as a CEO and entrepreneur, it would be quite a feat. That’s not to say he was unknown in Silicon Valley before founding Rubrik in 2014. As a prominent venture capitalist at #Lightspeed Venture Partners, and before that #BlumbergCapital, he was a founding investor in #PernixData, #PulseNews (acquired by #LinkedIn ), #Hootsuite, #Numerify and #Nutanix. The latter is significant because both #Rubrik and its rival #Cohesity were founded by individuals involved in the founding of Nutanix, which sells #hyperconvergedinfrastructure appliances and fetched a $2.2 billion valuation in its IPO last year. Sinha founded Rubrik with Arvind Jain (VP of engineering, formerly #Google), Arvind Nithrakashyap (CTO, formerly #Oracle) and Soham Mazumdar (architect, formerly Facebook and Google). Clearly, Sinha knows how to raise money. Naturally, Lightspeed was the first investor in Rubrik in a $10 million Series A funding round in March 2015, but others have followed suit. The company completed its Series D round in April, raising $180 million at a valuation of $1.3 billion, although Sinha admitted they didn’t need the money and still haven’t touched the Series C money but require a balance sheet that can withstand any unexpected shocks. There’s also the matter of an IPO, of course, something Sinha plans for 2019 with bold aspirations to be cash flow positive before then. “[The Series D funding round] gives us plenty of runway to do one on our terms,” Rubrik’s marketing VP John Koo tells Information Age during a visit to the company’s Palo Alto office.

http://www.information-age.com/inside-fastest-growing-unicorn-silicon-valley-123467489/