Databricks revisited: $7B ARR growing 80% a year, and the critics who think the moat is EDR logs

thedealdirector · x · 2026-10-30

Infra Play #167 revisits Databricks and CEO Ali Ghodsi. Key points:

When Ghodsi took the CEO job in 2015, Databricks had $1.5M revenue and a board secretly interviewing replacements; today he's called one of Silicon Valley's best CEOs, an assessment Ben Horowitz shares.
Databricks now runs a $7B ARR growing 80% a year — twice as fast as Snowflake, with a run rate 30% higher.
Ghodsi's playbook: find the single biggest bottleneck, then apply absurd, disproportionate attention for two to three years. He also argues great CEOs can't be conflict-averse — he turned down strong executives who held grudges.
The company rejected the standard "playbook" sales approach in favor of a distinctive technical, accountability-driven culture.
The reblogger pushes back: a dozen vendors have done this for a decade with full suites, most of that data is EDR logs being met by all-you-can-eat security consolidation offers, and SREs don't care about Unity Catalog.

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