Jay Chaudhry is the definition of a self-starter. Born in the Himalayas with no running water or electricity until high school, Jay has now scaled Zscaler to a $30B public company. He and his wife went all in many times over—betting their life savings and quitting their jobs to launch their first venture, Secure IT, which became a huge success. Jay then parlayed that into building multiple more self-funded, successful cybersecurity companies before founding Zscaler.
In this episode, Jay shares his playbook for building disruptive companies, how he picks a market, and insights on using AI to combat modern breaches—plus his perspectives on life, family, and money.
(00:00) Intro
(01:39) Humble Beginnings in the Himalayas
(03:46) First Steps in the USA
(04:25) Accidental Path to Entrepreneurship
(05:55) From Engineer to Sales and Marketing
(11:57) Founding the First Company
(13:08) The Cybersecurity Vision
(22:34) The Zscaler Vision: Inspired by Salesforce
(27:56) Innovative Beginnings and Team Formation
(29:33) Customer Validation and Market Disruption
(31:41) Navigating Venture Capital and Early Investments
(35:26) Scaling Sales and Global Expansion
(38:59) Zero Trust and Product Evolution
(41:43) AI’s Impact on Cybersecurity
(54:03) Public Market Transition and Leadership Insights
(55:44) Personal Reflections and Future Outlook
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint’s AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures – a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you’re interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
