Summary
Harness is proving that innovation at scale doesn’t have to come at the cost of speed or focus. By adopting a “startup within a startup” model, independent teams operate with the agility of a startup while leveraging shared infrastructure to move faster and smarter. This approach is blurring the lines between engineering, product, and business, requiring leaders to build cross-disciplinary skills, create tighter alignment on outcomes, and embed accountability at every level. In an era where AI is accelerating both opportunity and competition, this model offers a blueprint for scaling innovation that directly drives business impact.
In this session, you'll get insights into:
- How Harness structures independent startup teams to innovate quickly while maintaining accountability
- Essential product and business skills engineering leaders need to become true strategic partners
- Strategies for aligning roadmaps, investment decisions, and metrics across engineering and product
- How to connect engineering work directly to business outcomes to maximize impact
- Leadership principles for fostering rapid innovation cycles that scale without losing focus
Speakers
Jyoti Bansal is a serial entrepreneur and a silicon valley technology visionary. Jyoti believes passionately in software’s ability to change the world for the better.
In 2008, he founded AppDynamics, an application intelligence company that provides enterprises with real-time insights into application performance. Jyoti led the company as Founder & CEO for the first eight years, and as Founder & Chairman for the last one year until its acquisition by Cisco for $3.7 Billion in January 2017.
In 2017, he launched BIG Labs, a startup studio, as a vehicle for “parallel entrepreneurship,” where he can co-create companies that can help define the future of software and technology.
Jyoti has been a recipient of many leadership awards, including Forbes’ “Best Cloud Computing CEO to Work For”, and “Best CEO” by San Francisco Business Times at the Annual Tech & Innovation Award. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year™ for Northern California in 2016.
Jyoti received his BS in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Prior to founding AppDynamics, Jyoti worked at various silicon valley startups as a software engineer and architect. Jyoti is the lead inventor on 20+ US patents.
Matt is a partner at Menlo Ventures, investing multi-stage across AI infrastructure (DevOps, data stack, middleware, API platforms), AI-first SaaS, and robotics. Since joining in 2015, he has led investments in companies including Anthropic, Airbase, Benchling, Carta, Envoy, Harness, Heap (acquired by Contentsquare), Netlify, Observable, and Zylo, and served on boards such as Egnyte and Datastax. His track record also includes acquisitions by Shopify, VMware, Workday, Qualtrics, Cisco, HPE, and Apple.
Previously, Matt spent over 15 years as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he was an early observer at Google, launched the iFund with Apple, sourced DocuSign, and invested in Upstart, Noom, Puppet, Shazam, AppDynamics, and more. Many of these companies achieved major exits, including IPOs and multi-billion-dollar acquisitions.
Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at Netboost (acquired by Intel) and Sun Microsystems. Matt holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Tufts and an MBA from Stanford, where he serves as vice chairman of the Engineering Venture Fund. He is also co-chair of Duke University’s computer science committee on the Board of Visitors.
on ELC Annual 2025