New Delhi: Every entrepreneur has a dream and a vision – to found a successful startup. AppDynamics founder Jyoti Bansal also had a similar dream. He had already turned his dream into reality, but one day, with a stone in his heart, he made a difficult decision. He decided to sell his company for $3.7 billion. In an interview with CNBC Make It, he shared that what initially seemed like a major accomplishment turned out to be one of his biggest regrets. Jyoti Bansal had decided to sell her software company keeping the welfare of her employees in mind.

When Jyoti Bansal sold AppDynamics for $3.7 billion in 2017, he made 400 of his employees millionaires. The San Francisco-based, Indian-born entrepreneur described the sale as the most difficult decision of his career, but one he made for the benefit of his employees. As AppDynamics prepared to go public in 2017, tech giant Cisco offered to buy the company for $3.7 billion.

Who is Jyoti Bansal?
Actually, Jyoti Bansal is an Indian-American businessman born in India. Jyoti Bansal always wanted to be an entrepreneur. He is a graduate of IIT Delhi. He is considered the principal inventor on more than 20 U.S. patents. After working as a software developer in Silicon Valley for eight years, he finally got his green card and founded his startup. He founded AppDynamics to solve the biggest problems he faced as an engineer. Developed tools to detect and resolve errors in software applications.

What is AppDynamics?
Unlike many software startups, AppDynamics was built with the enterprise market in mind. That means large companies that have the ability to spend thousands, if not millions, of dollars each year. Notably, the company has created a unique identity by helping large companies fix their buggy apps. The official website states: “AppDynamics is powered by Cisco and is dedicated to helping companies look at their technology from a business perspective so they can prioritize what matters most.” We design observability -area and simplify the challenge of digital transformation for the world’s largest companies. We help companies succeed by converting performance into profit.

Why AppDynamics sold?
In her 40s, Jyoti Bansal spent years honing her software engineering skills and only then did her ambitious entrepreneurship come to fruition. There were several reasons behind their decision to sell AppDynamics. These include the synergies of the company’s software products with the Cisco portfolio and the potential financial and cultural impact on its approximately 1,200 employees. When we discussed the reasons we considered before the acquisition, we said that we can become part of large platforms like Cisco and their customer base and market. This was one reason. The second reason was the culture, i.e. the environment that your employees find. Cisco has given the AppDynamics unit a lot of freedom and they deserve credit for that.

He said the third reason was economic. As the sole founder, I was fortunate that any outcome would have been fine for me financially. (But) we had about 300 employees making over a million dollars after they accepted the last offer we got. There were dozens of our employees who received more than five million dollars.

Why does Bansal “regret” his decision?
Bansal described the experience after selling the company as sleepless. He said some people might think selling the company was easy, but it was the most difficult decision of his career. He told the media that after the celebration, he realized he didn’t even need to go home. He described the moment as full of happiness and sadness. He said that I had completely devoted nine years of my life to this work that we were doing there. Suddenly it’s the end of a chapter.

He said: “After the company was sold, I realized that I really enjoyed building the company, developing the product, solving problems, competing in the market, everything that goes with building a company, what I went through.” It was very difficult and stressful, but I loved it. I also felt like we didn’t quite do what we could have done. However, Bansal admitted that selling AppDynamics to Cisco was the right decision given the information available at the time. This deal was also financially beneficial for him as he held more than 14 percent of the company’s shares.

They also compared their post-IPO forecasts with Cisco’s startup valuation to assess which option was financially better. He said it took a good three to four years of work to reach a market cap of $3.7 billion. He said that represents a three to four year risk that we have … reduced for all employees there. This is an important impact.

Tags: special project, US News, World News