People First, Always: The Founder’s Journey of Sundeep Goel
At 6:00 a.m. on the first morning of Engage’s Cohort 15 Kickoff, a few bleary-eyed founders showed up at an Orangetheory class. Among them was Sundeep Goel, founder and CEO of Mavvrik, joined by his teammate, Austin. An early morning, completely optional workout before a week of nonstop corporate meetings isn’t how most people would choose to start the day, but it says everything about who Sundeep is — the kind of leader who leads by doing and builds through connection. That early workout wasn’t necessarily about fitness, it was about presence. “You can’t build culture through words,” he says. “You build it through what and who you show up for.”
From Frustration to Purpose
Before Mavvrik existed, Sundeep was struck by a statistic that bothered him deeply: 30 to 35% of cloud spend is wasted. This wasn’t just inefficiency, it was a human problem. Overspending led to layoffs, missed targets, and unnecessary pain across organizations.
When he met his technical co-founders, Safi and Darmawan, they saw an engineering challenge to optimize while Sundeep saw a human one. Together, they fused those perspectives into something powerful: a business built to save companies money and protect people’s livelihoods. Mavvrik acts as a financial control center for modern IT, giving enterprises one platform to proactively manage costs and forecast spend across AI, cloud, SaaS, and on-prem infrastructure. That blend of business acumen and empathy has been at the core of Mavvrik — and Sundeep’s leadership — ever since.
The Early Years: Grit, Doubt, and Deep Commitment
Like most startups, Mavvrik’s first year was full of uncertainty. “There were moments,” he admits, “when I questioned everything.” After years of being the trusted second-in-command across several high-growth companies, Sundeep knew what it meant to shoulder responsibility and guide teams through critical moments. So when it came time to lead his own venture, he felt a different kind of weight — to his investors, co-founders, employees, and to a mission that felt too important to walk away from.
He remembers the breakthrough moment vividly: landing a major deal with a large European financial services company. It wasn’t easy, the conditions were tough, and access to customers was limited, but it was a critical morale boost that validated the team’s vision.
The people who joined him early on like Nicole, the VP of Customer Success, and Ben, the first sales hire who made 300 cold calls a day for six months, truly embody the grit that defines Mavvrik’s culture. “If you’re just here for a paycheck,” Sundeep says, “this probably isn’t the right place.” His team doesn’t see Mavvrik as a job, they see it as a legacy.
Leading Through Change: A Pivot with Purpose
As the company evolved, Sundeep made a difficult but strategic decision: to pivot from cloud FinOps (a crowded, commoditized market) toward AI cost governance, a domain with higher complexity and bigger stakes. He credits Engage for helping validate the direction, as conversations with nearly a dozen of our corporate partners confirmed the growing demand for smarter AI infrastructure cost control.
It wasn’t a shift of technology as much as mindset. AI cost management required a deeper understanding of hybrid infrastructure — traditional compute, SaaS, even data center overhead like electricity and cooling. Where others saw complexity, Sundeep saw opportunity.
The Heart of Leadership: People Over Perfection
Startups are emotional rollercoasters, and Sundeep doesn’t sugarcoat that. He’s open about the mental toll of being a founder and the importance of managing through uncertainty. His approach is simple but profound: make decisions you can “sleep on,” prioritize others’ needs before your own, and remember that no path is ever perfect. Do your best with a clear conscience.
That philosophy has earned him the trust of investors, employees, and customers alike. It’s also what sustains him. “You can’t control outcomes,” he says, “but you can control how you show up.”
Legacy in Motion: Beyond Business Success
Over time, Sundeep’s definition of success has evolved. It’s no longer about career milestones, it’s about legacy. He’s proud of what Mavvrik represents within Austin’s tech ecosystem and wants it to outlast him, not just as a company but as a culture that values efficiency, humanity, and purpose.
In an industry where speed and scale dominate every conversation, Sundeep stands out for grounding his leadership in something timeless: people. Whether it’s showing up for a 6 a.m. workout or leading his company through market pivots, his actions reflect the same belief. The most enduring companies are built by founders who never forget the human side of innovation.
When asked what drives him now, Sundeep pauses before answering. “At some point,” he says, “it stops being about you. It becomes about the people who believed in you, and the example you leave behind.”
Sundeep’s Founder Equation
To close every founder conversation, we borrow a twist on the renowned question by Guy Raz, the host of How I Built This, who always asks: “How much of your success do you attribute to luck, and how much to hard work?”
We adapted it slightly because every founder we meet says success is never just one thing. It’s timing, people, mistakes, persistence, and everything in between.
So we asked Sundeep: For you, what’s been the real equation?
His answer came without hesitation:
“Emotional perseverance + (forced) blue-sky mindset + tremendous people surrounding the mission.”
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