Asheem joined Greylock in 2003. He has been an investor and board director with over 20 technology companies, including three public companies and numerous that have been acquired in strong M&A outcomes. He has been a founding investor in multiple companies, including Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco for $3.85B), Sumo Logic (Nasdaq: SUMO) and others.
“The greatest reward of this work is collaborating with teams that are mission-oriented and strive for excellence in everything they do: company culture, team-building, product, go-to-market and providing customers with something new that was previously impossible.”
Asheem currently serves on the company boards of Abnormal, Censys, Dazz, Delphix, Neeva, Obsidian, Palo Alto Networks (NYSE:PANW), and Rubrik.
Asheem’s career is marked by interest and growing expertise in enterprise markets, products and company building. He has helped create and grow multiple businesses to market-leading positions – both as a venture capitalist (2003 – present), and previously at high-growth companies (1988 – 2002).
“It’s a privilege to be able to work closely with entrepreneurs to achieve product market fit and rapidly scale.”
Before arriving at Greylock, Asheem held product management, marketing, and business development leadership positions at Check Point Software and CoroNet Systems (acquired by Compuware). During his Check Point tenure, the company grew from $10M to $500M+ in annual revenues. Asheem began his career in product and marketing roles at AT&T Bell Laboratories and SynOptics/Bay Networks.
Asheem’s prior company investments and/or company boards include Aquantia (MRVL), Arista Networks (ANET), Aruba Networks (HPE), Avi Networks (VMW), CipherTrust (McAfee), Imperva (Thoma Bravo), NetBoost (INTC), PortAuthority Technologies (Forcepoint), Securent (CSCO), Sourcefire (CSCO), Skyhigh Networks (McAfee), Sumo Logic, TechProcess (Ingenico), Xsigo Systems (ORCL), and Zenprise (CTXS).
He has been included in the Forbes Midas List since 2012, and the New York Times / CB Insights top venture capitalists list since inception in 2016. Born and raised in India, Asheem holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Case Western Reserve University.
Asheem led Greylock’s Series A investment in Skyhigh Networks. A brief flashback in Asheem’s words:
“It was a Friday night in a windowless San Jose conference room in early 2013. The RSA trade show would open on Monday in San Francisco. Rajiv Gupta, the visionary indefatigable founder of the fledgling startup Skyhigh Networks, knew he had a breakthrough approach to cloud security. But the articulation wasn’t clear and so I tried a dose of reality. ‘The product is early. We have no messaging, no VP of marketing, no website. We’re not ready.’”
“It was a tough message – especially as midnight approached. But I had been working with early-stage companies for many years at Greylock, and I felt my role at this moment was simply to be candid. Rajiv listened, but he wanted to keep brainstorming. Soon we found ourselves, side-by-side in front of the white board. We started trying out key messages, crafting use cases, wordsmithing clearer definitions and a picture began to emerge. Burmese food had been ordered in, but it remained largely untouched as we took turns scribbling, diagraming, and testing one another’s ideas. Suddenly Rajiv stepped back from the whiteboard and said to me: ‘We don’t just have a company launch here. We are inventing a new product category.’”
“By noon Tuesday, the Skyhigh Networks booth at RSA was mobbed. Gartner would soon christen Rajiv’s concept as ‘Cloud Access Security Broker.’ CASB was launched.”