It’s a given that visionary leadership is required to navigate successfully through the turbulent business climate of 2020 and beyond. That’s even more true for startups, which have a 90% rate of failure at the best of times.

Sharing his secrets, serial tech entrepreneur Ajeet Singh (pictured), co-founder of Nutanix Inc. and co-founder and executive chairman of ThoughtSpot Inc., spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed what it takes to be a visionary in the technology industry, how Singh identifies and executes on opportunity, and what to expect from the upcoming ThoughtSpot Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference, set to begin on Dec. 9. (* Disclosure below.)

Start with the problem, not the solution

Contrary to common perception, coming up with a brilliant, new product is not the first step, according to Singh. “What I’m passionate about is identifying very large markets with very, very big problems,” he said.

With ThoughtSpot, that market was analytics software. Singh was able to see that while massive transformation was occurring in capturing and storing data, the end-user solutions were “still stuck in the old-times.”

“Why can’t analytics be as easy as Google?” Singh asked. And just like that, a new market segment was born.

Having identified the market and the problem to solve, Singh moved to step three: Gathering the best talent possible.

“It took a lot of very deliberate effort to find the right kind of people who have a builder’s mentality and are also deep experts in areas like search large-scale distributed systems and very passionate about user experience,” he said.

With that super-team in place, it was time for them to head to the whiteboard and set about creating the perfectly designed solution from scratch. For the ThoughtSpot team, that was “a solution that is designed for that non-technical user with a very design thinking, UX-first approach to make it super easy for anyone to ask that question,” Singh said.

While ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics platform makes searching structural data simple, getting there took years of investment in building deep technology with scalability and baked-in security and governance, according to Singh.

“Taking off-the-shelf search technology that is built for unstructured data and sticking it onto a product that is required to do analytics on enterprise data doesn’t work,” he said.

A search engine on the surface, underneath “a massive number-crunching machine” is how Singh described the platform. “If a user has a question, they should be able to get an answer instantly,” he said. “They shouldn’t have to wait. That is what we achieve with search.”

The AI-powered side of the platform takes performance a step further by predicting answers to questions the user didn’t even know to ask.

Another level of innovation is due to be announced during the ThoughtSpot Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference.

“We have this motto in the company where we say we are only ever 2% done,” Singh said, describing how innovation is a continuous journey. “In today’s world, nobody gets it right the first time. If you’re trying to do something fundamentally different, if you’re copying somebody else, then you’re too late already.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the ThoughtSpot Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Beyond.2020 Digital Data Analytics Conference. Neither ThoughtSpot, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE