ThousandEyes Co-Founders Mohit Lad and Ricardo Oliveira Join Decibel as Founder Advisors

We are excited to announce that Mohit Lad and Ricardo Oliveira, founders of ThousandEyes (recently acquired by Cisco for a reported $1 Billion), have joined Decibel as Founder Advisors. Mohit and Ricardo started ThousandEyes in 2009 to allow everyone to see the performance of the Internet, which over the past 20 years has emerged as the standard for connecting customers and companies in our everyday world. As immigrants in graduate school with expiring visas, they started their companies in less than auspicious times during the first financial crisis. Together, they shared their wisdom for new founders in this recent Q&A.

How did you meet? And when did you start ThousandEyes together?

Ricardo: My first contact with Mohit was in one of the dark underground classrooms at UCLA—he was trying to explain some details about a complex Internet protocol called BGP. He was eating chips with chopsticks to keep his fingers clean, so he could quickly get back to typing on his computer. I still remember what he looked like to this day - he wore flip-flops all the time, and I liked that he was not afraid to be a bit eccentric. At the same time, he seemed like someone who was incredibly focused on the work and put in a lot of effort to help students in the class. We hit it off pretty quickly.  

Mohit: The first time Ricardo walked into the computer science lab, I noticed he was one of the few well-dressed Ph.D. students in the class. He also liked surfing which made me doubly suspicious. I remember thinking, “This guy wears really nice jeans. He must be too cool to understand how the Internet works.” I didn’t know what to think but we luckily got staffed on a project together in his first year. That’s when I realized that he was one of the most creative thinkers in our class, worked hard, and also knew how to make the work fun. And even when he was finishing up his Ph.D., Ricardo really had the startup bug in him.

Did you both always know you wanted to start a company together?

Ricardo: Mohit, you should really answer this one first!

Mohit: Very few people know this story and the honest answer is no. In 2008, I graduated one year before Ricardo and tried to get a job as a faculty professor. I couldn’t get any jobs at the time, so I went into the private sector and got a job at a networking startup company. After only three months, the financial crisis hit and I lost my job. Along the way, Ricardo bugged me about a startup idea that we discussed for a long time. I kept telling him it wasn’t for me but when I was laid off and stood outside in the parking lot wondering what I should do next, Ricardo was the first person I called. I said, “Let’s do this.” To be honest, our visas were expiring in 6 months and we didn’t have other options, so it seemed like a good time to take the shot since we’d be under positive pressure to make the company a success. This wasn’t Plan A, and it honestly wasn’t even Plan B. This was Plan C. But sometimes the absence of options clarifies what you need to do.

What was building ThousandEyes like in the early years?

Mohit: I think every startup needs to find a few non-traditional ways to get off the ground. We couldn’t get any VCs to give us money so we actually applied to get a grant from the National Science Foundation. We also couldn’t really afford to buy expensive office space, furniture, or hardware so we had to come up with clever ways to find used gear. At one point, we talked with companies who were shutting down so that we could offer to buy their servers before they were thrown in the dumpsters (or in some cases, pull them out of them). I also think everyone needs a little luck in the beginning - we had a great early reference customer who bought our software after seeing one demo even though we still didn’t have an office. Everything changes once you have one great reference using your software in production.

Did you have early product/market fit?

Ricardo: Looking back, I think we had a tough time explaining what we did to customers in the very beginning. Everyone understood that they had to monitor their private networks and applications, and they were happy to spend money on those two types of products. But at ThousandEyes, we noticed that more businesses were using the Internet as the conduit for pretty much everything and nobody could see those connections. We had the best way to monitor the Internet but we had to invent the category, and in the beginning it felt like we were swimming upstream. The momentum changed when we finally could make it easy for customers to use our product–it was easier for them to see the value when they could use it for themselves without a lot of explanation.  

Along the way, you both had many offers to sell the company. When did you think it was the right time to sell? Why sell to Cisco?  

Mohit: Early on in our business, we were not very open to selling and always focused on trying to build a long-term business. I actually look back and feel I was not as open to the idea as I should have been as a founder and had a very myopic view when approached by acquirers. One lesson I learned from the former Splunk CEO Godfrey Sullivan when he joined the ThousandEyes board was that you can’t just dismiss people when they talk about acquisitions—that’s it was my job as a CEO to explore opportunities and do the right thing for shareholders, employees, and customers. We always have to consider what is best for all stakeholders in ThousandEyes as founders, and that was a significant eye-opener for me.

Ricardo: For me, the acquisition with Cisco was really about growing the opportunity for our people and our product. ThousandEyes had fantastic customers—about 20% of them were Fortune 500 companies. But we realized that over 750,000 customers trust the Cisco brand for Internet connectivity, and we knew we could accelerate with their help. It was also clear that Cisco wanted us to continue as ThousandEyes, with the team intact, so we could continue to grow and serve our long-standing customers. Cisco’s leadership takes a unique view on acquisitions–we want to learn from their culture, and they want to learn from ours. Culture was an important consideration on both sides.

It's 2020, and a lot has changed. As new Founder Advisors at Decibel, what advice would you share with founders who are starting companies in today’s world?

Mohit: Speaking from personal experience, there is no “perfect” plan for a startup, and I would argue that a downturn is actually a great time to start a company. It might be a hard time to scale a company right now but if you are just starting you can really focus the next year or two on getting your product right. If you can start with a lean team and have a great idea, now is the time to go for it. I also think a downturn is a good time to get creative - if norms are being broken, you get the liberty to create a culture that’s unique.

Ricardo: I also think there are some huge advantages to the “fully remote” world that you can capitalize on as a startup. You don’t have to pay for office space, you don’t necessarily have to meet customers in person, and you can save on the time and cost of travel. Every company needs to rethink culture and creativity in the era of COVID-19. It’s harder to brainstorm and whiteboard new products when you aren’t together, so everyone needs to work harder to inspire one another. But that also creates an opportunity for those startups that can find a way to overcome this challenge.

‍