Databricks CIO leads an 8000 person “startup” with big company aspirations

When you think about a startup, you probably imagine a small company with a handful of daring employees, but Databricks, a company that has been around since 2013 doesn’t really fit that vision, at least not anymore. In its most recent funding round at the end of last year, it raised $10 billion at an eye-popping $62 billion valuation, making it one of the most valuable private companies, according to CNBC.
In total, Databricks has raised $14 billion and acquired 10 companies, per Crunchbase. Its last fund raising round was a Series J. Not many startups have funding that stretches to the J round, but perhaps most surprising for a company that has still yet to IPO, is the number of employees.
“We are an 8000 person startup,” CIO Naveen Zutshi told FastForward with a hint of a smile. He recognizes that most startups aren’t this big. They don’t have a projected $3 billion revenue rate as his company does. They're not typically looking at being cash flow positive before they go public, yet Databricks is looking at all of these things, and as the head of IT, the company’s CIO has to build a technology strategy for a company growing revenue at 60 percent year over year, per the company's most recent numbers.
Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research says the company has definitely outgrown the moniker of startup, but that Zutshi is the right person for the job regardless. “Naveen is an innovative CIO that does well in high growth, dynamic enterprise environments. It’s why I wouldn’t call him a startup CIO,” Wang told FastForward.
He points to Zutshi’s prior job as CIO at Palo Alto Networks, a mature public cybersecurity company, as preparing him for a rapidly growing company like Databricks. He describes both companies as massively demanding, unforgiving and dynamic environments. Wang says that means, “They have rapidly changing requirements, high stakes transactions and rapid sales growth.”
While Palo Alto might have prepared Zutshi for his current position, it brings its own set of unique challenges as he guides the company’s IT strategy. All of this points to a company that, even at this level, thinks rather purposefully. Yet it doesn’t seem to have slowed it down, as the company’s growth and performance prove.
Maintaining the startup edge
Much like Salesforce, Databricks is both a producer of AI products, while using it operationally inside the organization, giving a tech leader like Zutshi an unusual perspective. Yet much like any company, he needs to align AI solutions inside the organization with the needs of the business units to get the maximum results. “I think where a lot of IT departments fail is that failure to have that tight communication with the business operations,” he said. The goal is to use technology to have a positive impact on how they run their parts of the business, regardless whether that is AI or something else.
One way to find practical technology solutions to help the business run more efficiently, while maintaining the energy of a less developed startup, is via hackathons, days where people inside the organization come together, brainstorm ideas and come up with practical applications to improve business processes.
Zutshi says the most recent hackathon generated almost 20 ideas, some of which turned into solutions that are used regularly by business units including a tool used by the legal department to summarize terms and conditions in contracts. Another tool that came out of the hackathons helps inside sales reps respond to inquiries faster by automatically generating emails to potential customers.
He has also begun experimenting with AI agents, but says it’s still early in terms of practical application. “I think we are at the very early stages of agentic AI where ultimately agents can take a complex series of tasks and perform them on your behalf. I don't think we are there yet. Right now, what we have is a notion of agents and tools that help you,” he said. It could take some time for the reality to match the vision to undertake this series of complex tasks, crossing systems without any direct (or very little) human supervision.
Even at a software company like Databricks that is selling AI products, it’s not easy to manage the level of change that generative AI brings to a company, and Zutshi says it’s important to acknowledge that. “My take on change management is that ultimately, regardless of which company you're part of, whether you are in a software company like ours, or you're in a non-tech company, behavior changes are very difficult,” he said.
“Folks are used to doing things a certain way, and for you to change your behavior, to do something differently, is a big shift.” He says he tries to manage that by incorporating those tech changes into the flow of business, and that can help ease that anxiety that employees may have about introducing new ways of doing things.
Startups bring new energy
When a company is changing and growing as rapidly as Databricks, it can use all the help it can get, and startups – young companies with bold ideas – can certainly play a significant role, especially at a more mature startup like Databricks. We’ve certainly seen larger companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle buy innovation instead of building it. What makes Databricks unique is that they have that small company mindset, still growing and innovating, but are combining that energy with strategic acquisitions and partnering with startups.
They consider working with startups for the same reasons many companies do, because they provide innovative solutions you might not find at established companies. “One of the things that we find pretty interesting with startups is they are finding different ways of solving the problem in a much more disruptive fashion that can jump start or step change improvement in productivity,” he said.
The company puts startups, and indeed all potential vendors, through a fairly rigorous evaluation process. “We go through an IT assessment, security assessment, privacy assessment, a full legal framework as well, and then we may audit them, we may test, we may Red Team them as an example,” he said.
As the company continues to grow and develop, and very likely go public one of these days, he says one of the keys to their success is the internal company culture, one that welcomes and supports new employees. “I'm glad the culture of Databricks is one where people help each other quite a bit, and so they can get up to speed faster,” he said. As long as it can maintain that kind of cultural focal point, the company can continue to grow as it has without losing the edge that has made it so successful to this point.
Photo credit: Databricks