Databricks Co-Founder Says Enterprise Sales Depend on People and Partners

Databricks co-founder and Senior Vice President of Field Engineering Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji said startups need people, processes and partners as well as strong technology to win large enterprise customers, describing sales access as a key benefit of the company’s Microsoft partnership.

“People and processes matter the most,” Tavakoli-Shiraji said in an interview published Oct. 26.

He recalled that Databricks had been unable to secure a meeting with UBS before partnering with Microsoft. After the partnership, Microsoft sales staff arranged meetings and advocated for Databricks, he said. Sales agreements could also use Microsoft’s terms.

“It was a huge boon to us that we were able to partner with somebody who had that access and distribution,” Tavakoli-Shiraji said.

Microsoft announced Azure Databricks on Nov. 15, 2017, as a jointly created analytics service available to Azure users. Microsoft had announced on April 26, 2017, that UBS was turning to Azure for its digital transformation, months before the Azure Databricks announcement.

For AI products, Tavakoli-Shiraji grouped enterprise concerns into four areas: context, choice, cost and control. Context means teaching AI company-specific terms and processes. Choice means giving customers the ability to switch models, while cost and control cover managing expenses and protecting systems and data.

He put 99% of the companies he encounters at level one or two on his five-level AI adoption framework. He described the first stage as employees having access to ChatGPT and the fifth as AI changing business processes.