Varun Badhwar is a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record of building transformative cyber-security organizations. Prior to founding RedLock, Varun cofounded CipherCloud, a leader in cloud security with over 400 employees and 2 million users. Follow him @varun__badhwar.
Who is your hero? (In business, life, or both.)
Elon Musk is my professional hero for being the real-life Tony Stark (Ironman). He has proven time and again his willingness to challenge status quo, from automobiles to space travel. He’s taught me never to fear failure with disruptive ideas.
My wife is my personal hero for her unwavering commitment in ensuring I maintain a healthy and well-balanced lifestyle. As an entrepreneur, it’s extremely easy to stay plugged in 24/7. However, I’ve discovered that my productivity and decision-making abilities improve when I actually disconnect from work for a few hours each evening and at least one entire day during the weekend to focus on my family, friends and community.
What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?
The most impactful advice I received was from Richard Branson. He mentioned that as a young professional and entrepreneur, he was constantly trying to work himself out of a job. While some may believe that having exclusive knowledge about a particular function or job responsibility within your organization guarantees job security and growth, on the contrary, I was able to broaden my skills by taking on additional responsibilities and focusing on addressing new business challenges. This required me to accelerate my value within the organization and focus on mentoring and growing others around me. By doing so, I took control of my career destiny.
What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?
It would have to be building and releasing products too quickly without adequate levels of customer engagement. Compared to the B2C market, where you can build and launch products extremely quickly with the intent that customers will follow, the B2B market is an entirely different ball game. Building successful enterprise software businesses requires significant customer engagement upfront. For instance, while the user of an enterprise product may find the solution useful, that doesn’t necessarily mean the executive sponsor will be interested in prioritizing its funding. Keep in mind that you’re always competing for budgets, resources and priorities.
My advice to any B2B entrepreneurs is to take their time identifying their product-market fit. Engage with at least 5-10 design partners from your target market to define and validate the product specs and purchase criteria prior to heavily investing in developing the solution.
What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?
I like to start my day by checking the top news stories, especially in my vertical. It’s a great way to survey what’s emerged overnight and helps me prioritize, plan, and review what’s critical to achieve that day. Since I subscribe to a number of security related blogs and news feeds, it’s also a great way to stay on top of the latest security breaches that may emerge as topics of conversation.
What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?
Keep operational expenses at a bare minimum even after you close your first financing round. It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get carried away by offering swanky office space, free meals and other Google-like perks as a means of attracting talent. Instead, focus on identifying product-market fit and acquiring marquee customers. You need to anticipate having adequate cash reserves to allow for some adjustments to the original business plan, and for your next round of financing to take three to six months longer than you originally hoped for.
Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?
Never stop selling. The best entrepreneurs are are constantly selling to employees, customers, partners and investors. As a founder, you need to have 100 percent conviction in what you’re doing, and have others around you be equally passionate about the business.
What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?
In simple business terms, I define success of my businesses based on healthy growth in new customer acquisitions, high degree of customer success measured by renewals and referencability, and a low employee attrition rate. All of this must be accomplished while driving the business to profitability. After all, our investors need to succeed as well.
