Serial entrepreneur Tarun Raisoni discussing his experience building and exiting multiple companies for over $270 million.
This video features serial entrepreneur Tarun Raisoni discussing his experience building and exiting multiple companies for over $270 million. He shares insights on bootstrapping, company culture, spotting trends, and the importance of strategic investors, all while focusing on the full cycle of building and exiting a business.
I firmly believe that people is the most important asset. People are your team but also there is people in partners, there is people in customers. The business is about people and how do you bring people together? How do you execute? [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the Dealmaker Show. So today we have uh one of those founders that I call tier zero you know which are like absolutely unbelievable very hard to uh come across uh and in this case I mean his journey and his story is quite inspiring and we're going to be talking about building scaling you know financing also you know like with his latest baby and then also acquisitions you know he's he's done it you know quite not just once but twice uh on the full cycle and again everything you know that you can think of whether he's building in the team, why people are so important, how to build a culture around them to
really get them excited about the future that you're living into, all of the good stuff. So, brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Tarun Raani. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Alejandro. So, originally born in the US, but it sounds like your family went to India and you grew up there. So, how was life growing up for you? Uh it was uh it was actually pretty amazing growing up in India. I was surrounded by a lot of family. Um and we we grew up in a small town. Uh and uh it was very nice to be uh to be really rooted um into into that family culture into learning. Um so I I really enjoyed my uh my childhood in India. So how do you get to into the whole problem solving? I know also that in India there's quite a a a lot of pressure on the culture to either become a a doctor or to become a a a something that an
engineer right I think that things are obviously changing you know in Spain it was the same thing with either being a lawyer or a banker or a consultant but in India was either being an engineer or being a doctor I mean in your case you ended up becoming an engineer out of all things. Yeah, I ended up uh choosing the path uh that my dad took and um uh I grew up in an engineering family. So I was surrounded by uh a lot of engineers in the family and uh it just naturally gravitated towards that. Um I I did end up choosing uh different uh majors. Uh ended up doing chemical, ended up doing electrical for my masters. Um, so it was fun to learn and I I can see the application of all of that in my in my career journey as I moved along. So, so you did your undergrad there in in in India, but then it took no time to come back to the US. Now, when you came to the US, there was a lot going on, you
know, with the dotcom boom and all of that stuff which made you really think through, you know, in terms of uh choices and options for you. So walk us through what were you seeing, what happened and what kind of uh switch of path you did there. Yeah, I came to US in 99 and obviously there was a huge boom going on here. After a couple of weeks, I realized like um I really need to uh put my heart and my mind uh behind this because this is the future. and uh I ended up uh switching my majors uh at USC to electrical engineering. Um I finished my uh masters and then ended up joining Cisco. Uh that was my starting point of my career and uh at that time Cisco was one of the largest companies I mean the largest company in the world. um networking was uh very much uh front and center for every uh every business and uh it was an amazing journey at Cisco you know 10 years at Cisco got to learn a
lot about the business culture uh enterprise scale um so it was it was phenomenal to be part of that so I mean after being for so long there what make you think hey maybe I I should turn page and go to like a place like Emerson you know it's 10 years it's like almost like becoming a lifer. Huh? I mean Emerson why Emerson? Yeah Alejandra that's a very good question. So um Cisco is not just one company. Cisco is like an industry of 200 companies 50 companies in it. So my career at Cisco was uh I started as a software engineer but I transitioned into pre-sale systems engineering and then into sales and um uh it was a very interesting journey. So I I agree with you 10 years seems a long time but I think 10 years is also the time that it takes to actually learn and build uh something in your career. So uh and then um Emerson came along and they offered me a role uh to work in the data center
business managing some of their hypers scale what we call as hypers scale today but what was called as web uh web 2.0 zero customers in the Bay Area and the opportunity was very interesting. Um I got a chance to work with companies like Google and Facebook back then uh Yahoo um Microsoft Amazon uh so it was very hard to refuse uh that kind of an opportunity and uh and that's what helped me uh build my career. stuff. So then let's talk about to the moment where you realize you want to take ownership of your own future and you know especially after all these years being an employee switching to becoming an entrepreneur I mean it's quite it's quite frightening no because all you knew was the 9 to5 so at what point you know were you like hey maybe maybe I want to I want to do something on my own even when I was working I never believed in a 9 to-5 and I think I realized like since I don't
believe in 9 to5 I need to do something on my own and uh uh it so happened that I was having lunch with one of my clients and he mentioned about a specific gap in the industry where nobody was trying to solve that problem and um a light bulb went in my head and I said this is this is the opportunity to solve this problem and so that's where um uh we started Rahhei systems and that was my first entrepreneurial journey and um it was a lot of fun uh building that up. Now with Rahi systems I think that um just so that people get it what what was the business model there? I mean how are you guys making money? Yeah. Uh so Rahi Rahi was started on the premise of helping clients build data centers globally. So we focused on how we could scale a client to build data centers in multiple countries globally and be able to provide the same consistent service supply chain product in all those
countries uh globally and that was our that was our main focus area as a platform. Um and the idea behind that was very simple. um if if you are going to build a data center, you're going to build a data center across the globe. You're not just going to build a data center in one country or one city. Uh and uh when we started this, it was back in 2012. Cloud was very nent. Uh in fact, Google cloud didn't even exist in its uh entirety back then. So it was a very interesting time for us to kick this off and start this and um uh we were very lucky that cloud took off, data center buildout took off. Um so we were able to ride that wave of growth uh with customers um as they grew their business. Now I know that for you people is is critical. No. and and obviously the way that you were able to surround yourself here being a first-time founder too was phenomenal. So tell us about people. Why
are people so important in especially in hyperrowth companies? in in technology companies um or companies that service technology companies. I I firmly believe that people is the most important asset and uh in my opinion people are are are your team, your own own um uh company but also there is people in partners, there is people in customers and uh the business is about people and how do you bring people together and how do you uh how do you execute? Um at Rahi we we started the business with like about seven or eight people in the first year and um at the end of the 10-year journey we were almost 1,200 employees globally and uh what I what I realized in that journey was uh authentic leadership being transparent uh building the right culture foundation uh staying customer focused and then driving that culture with the team is very important to scale and grow the business. So people is
the most important asset and uh uh I think uh that was the foundation for our for our company uh as we as we built along and what about culture too you know because obviously getting all the people to dance with the same moves you know the same song getting them that excited when it comes to the execution of pushing through towards the future and that future that you're living into is essential. So how do you think about culture whether it was with Rahi or with you know the next companies that you build? Yeah. Um absolutely Alejandra. Culture is the most important fabric that brings people together and the values of the culture in a company are designed and need to be designed in such a way that they help resolve conflicts that typically originate between people. Uh so a very simple example one of the values of our culture is customer first and why is this customer first it's so we can
prioritize our day we…