Nobody knows anything, product market fit is dead, and there's only one moat
Bipul Sinha · Co-founder & CEO, Rubrik
Bipul Sinha grew up in dire circumstances in India, made his way to IIT, and immigrated to the US in search of the American dream. By 40 he had become a successful VC at Lightspeed; he then founded Rubrik, today a $10 billion public company and one of the last decade’s fastest-growing enterprise software businesses. Most founders look to mentors for guidance. Bipul’s first principle is “nobody knows anything.” In this conversation, he shares the mental models that got him here and how he’s rebuilding Rubrik for the AI era.
Bipul Sinha is co-founder and CEO of Rubrik, the cloud data security company he took public in 2024. Before founding Rubrik he was a venture investor at Lightspeed and Blumberg Capital, and immigrated to the US from India after IIT.
The most quotable moments from Bipul Sinha
Building a business is creating a religion. When you create a religion, who do you find? Believers. You don't convert non-believers — your job is to find believers.
Experts never start a company because they're prisoners of the past. So you need to use experts, but you have to use experts expertly.
Averages don't apply to individuals, because averages exist in the past. But people don't exist in the past, people exist now.
The future cannot be created from the past, otherwise the stock market would not exist. If you're in the business of creating the future, you have to assume nobody knows anything about it.
I do not plan or prioritize anything. I only work on the problems that worry me most. Whatever the two or three things that worry me most, I immediately work on and don't procrastinate.
There is only one moat, which is time. You have to be non-consensus and right. That time between non-consensus and consensus is your only moat.
Venture capital should be the most careless money, because it's the most expensive asset class and has to be used in the most risky way. If you're a 10%-growing company, you're creating zero value.