Christian Chabot (Co-Founder, Tableau) dives into the journey from bootstrapping Tableau in the early days to eventually IPOing and selling to Salesforce for $15.7B. Christian shares the biggest operating lessons from scaling Tableau and thoughtful insights for founders, especially those in the business software industry.
(0:00) Intro
(0:55) Christian’s Early Career and Entrepreneurial Journey
(3:14) Finding an opportunity in the market
(6:12) Joining SoftBank
(7:14) Lessons on venture capital
(10:50) Company origin stories
(12:03) The Birth of Tableau: From Idea to Company
(16:20) Getting right in the early days
(20:55) Commercializing something out of academia
(23:42) Bootstrapping it
(28:23) The growth and success of Tableau
(32:38) Reflections on the journey and the future
(43:57) Patience and basic metrics in business growth
(45:33) The role of external investors in business expansion
(48:02) The impact of capital on business ambitions and control
(49:38) Choosing the right investor
(51:39) The importance of maintaining control in fundraising
(54:11) Competition in business growth
(58:28) The importance of team chemistry in scaling a business
(1:02:19) Impact of disruptive hiring practices on business growth
(1:21:26) Power of community and innovating marketing
(1:26:16) Global expansion
Produced: Rashad Assir & Leah Clapper
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures – a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you’re interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
4 Comments
Thank you for this great conversation with Christian Chabot. Tableau will always be, hands down, the best company I ever had the privilege to work for. I met Christian in early 2015 as I was onboarding in Seattle. He is an incredibly charismatic person. I am so fortunate to have been part of the Tableau story.
Great conversations and person. Sadly Tableau is shadow of product/company after acquired from Salesforce. I doesn't have community of crazy people anymore 🙂
At his last SKO Sales Kick-Off in front of the whole company Christian told the story, and when he got to the Tableau Desktop 7.0 part, he proceeded to do a demo…
For the Feb 2016 stock price drop, I was still with the company at that time (APAC region). I don't recall there was at all a discussion about the price. Keep in mind that there is always the "no trading" period around the time that the company announcing the quarterly earning. By the time the employee can sell/buy stock, it was always already over.