2005
CJ Desai says he learned about customer engagement from John Thompson, then CEO of Symantec, around 2005.
“our C E O at the time was John Thompson at Symantec, and this was early 2,000 five-ish time frame”
Topic
CJ Desai
17 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2007
CJ Desai says MongoDB was created in 2007 and has been a disruptive force in the decades-old database market.
“MongoDB has been a truly disruptive force with being created in 2007, so it's been only eighteen-ish years.”
2010
CJ Desai cites Meta's pivot toward mobile in early 2010 as an example of a company moving fast on a platform shift.
“Back in, uh, early 2010, when Meta made the pivot towards, uh, mobile, are you pivoting fast?”
2022
CJ Desai describes the fall 2022 launch of ChatGPT as a pivotal moment after which the future of software has been in question.
“I think that's probably a very, uh, pivotal moment with the chat G P T in the fall. Since 2022, now we are three years plus in that journey.”
2025
CJ Desai says 2025 was a breakthrough year for AI coding assistants and that customers give very positive feedback on them.
“So 2025 was a breakthrough year, from my perspective, on the coding assistance, and that's still going on.”
Undated
CJ Desai says Salesforce recently marked its 25th anniversary and that SaaS has existed for at least 25 years.
“I think Salesforce had their twenty-five years anniversary recently, and so s aas has been around for at least twenty-five years”
Undated
CJ Desai says his hiring manager at ServiceNow, Frank Slootman, used to say 'tools are for fools'.
“my hiring manager at ServiceNow, Frank Slootman, used to say, tools are for fools, as in, if you say this is a software tool, that's never a good sign.”
Undated
CJ Desai says only a single-digit number of companies have more than $10 billion in pure-play software revenue.
“how many companies today that are there that are more than 10 billion in software, 10 billion in just pure play software revenue? How many companies are there?”
Undated
CJ Desai says the CTO of a bank in London told him the bank had built 300 applications on MongoDB.
“And finally, the CTO tells me in London, 300. I said, Wow, okay, that's great, 300 applications built on MongoDB.”
Undated
CJ Desai says the bank's total application count was 9,000, so its 300 MongoDB applications were a small share.
“What's the denominator? I understand the numerator is 300. He said, 9,000. I said, 9,000? That's a great opportunity for MongoDB.”
Undated
CJ Desai says he started his career at Oracle Corporation after college and learned how Oracle scaled its database platform.
“I started my career out of college with Oracle Corporation and understood how they scale the database platform”
Undated
CJ Desai says MongoDB's previous CEO, Dave, told him that no challenger database had passed $1 billion in revenue before MongoDB passed $2 billion.
“Nobody has passed billion, and definitely nobody has passed 2 billion, and MongoDB did that, so there's something special there.”
Undated
CJ Desai says the cloud transition that began with AWS is approaching its twentieth year and is still under way.
“if cloud started with A W S, we are in the almost approaching twentieth year, and it's still going on.”
Undated
CJ Desai says many Fortune 500 customers tried office-productivity copilots and report unclear value.
“A lot of them tried with the office productivity type co-pilots, unclear how much value they got out of it.”
Undated
CJ Desai says that when MongoDB published its Q3 results he was repeatedly asked whether growth came from AI and answered that it did not.
“MongoDB published our, uh, Q three results. I got asked this question over and over again, is this because of A I? And I said, absolutely not.”
Undated
CJ Desai says hundreds of AI-native companies build on MongoDB but that they are not what drove its core growth.
“Yes, we have A I native companies building on MongoDB, we have hundreds of them, but that's not this.”
Undated
CJ Desai says only about ten AI-native companies have reached roughly $100 million to $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.
“There are like ten companies like that today, today, right? There are not that many companies”
Episodes