Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 130: Ani Chaudhuri, CEO and co-founder of Dasera, an Innovation Sandbox finalist at RSA this year

Transcript

130: Ani Chaudhuri, CEO and co-founder of Dasera, an Innovation Sandbox finalist at RSA this year · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Tassara is a finalist in the innovation sandbox at RSA.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Find out what they do, what their innovation is, and how fast they're growing in this discussion with their CEO, Annie Chowdhury.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, which exists because at B2B startups it's hard to get consistent traction and scale to sales team.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sales Bluebird gives you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or ten about selling and about growing and establishing startups.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Andrew Monahan.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Our guest today is Ani Chowdry, co-founder and CEO at The SERA.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Ani, welcome to Sales Blue Bird.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Good to be here, Andrew.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to our conversation.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually a special episode of the podcast where I'm interviewing the CEOs from companies which have been selected for the RSA conference innovation sandbox, which is a really cool concept where they're selecting companies and letting them uh highlight themselves and have a little competition about it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's similar to previous interview episodes I've done, but a little bit different.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: But Ani, before we get to the meat of the business side of this, let's get to know the real Ani Chadri.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've got 15 questions listed here.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Choose a number between one and 15, and I'll tell you which question corresponds to it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Seven.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Seven is name one great airport that you love to go to.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, that's a good one.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think my favorite airport is any airport in Hawaii because it just has this vibe of vacation and relaxation.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're they're kind of outdoors, right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the feel of it.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a transition in and out.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's no huge walls of concrete like some airports.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and people give you lays and it has a whole different feel.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, one more number between one and fifteen.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: One.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: One is dive bar or cocktail bar?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Cocktail bar, always.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I always cocktail bar.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And another number?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: 15.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: 15.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Window or aisle.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Always the aisle, never the window.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you are on the window, if you need to get out, you disturb other people.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is okay to be disturbed than to disturb somebody.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I prefer the aisle.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Good one.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the SERA.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So quickly give us the size of company, employees, what stage are you at, things like that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: De SARA is a data security company.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are currently just over 20 people, planning to double in the next six weeks.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time this gets to two months from today, we will be double the size.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are seed funded, so we've raised 9 million, 3 million pre-seed, and a 6 million seed.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our seed was led by Sierra Ventures and participated in our investors from previous rounds, which is Sama Capital and Santel Angels.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: We also have some professionals in the field like Mark Weatherford and Selim IC who are investors.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Great validation there from some good people there.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about this era then.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm a simple guy from Scotland, been in security sales for 20 years.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not technical.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Explain to me what does this era do?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: This era helps operationalize data governance.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: The way to think about it is that you've got three teams, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: The compliance team, the security team, and the data team.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that is compliance or anything that is security eventually lands up in the hands of data to go implement.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Today, the point solutions that they have don't solve it.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: They don't create something that is continuous.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we do is we help understand a policy, convert it into some guardrails and an automated workflow, and help them scale it in an automated way.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we do.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And of those three teams, which one is the one that ends up really being the buyer?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: The data team.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: The data team.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The tasks and the asks come to them, and then they have to do the stuff.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we enable them to do is take the entire data lifecycle and put in all the guardrails that they need from a di from a security and compliance perspective.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So what are they doing right now then to handle all that?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a combination of three things.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: One is that they're point products that do some things.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Second one is they use a lot of spreadsheets and survey forms to answer the questions that they need to.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And third is have their fingers crossed.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not the best strategy right there, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm the head of data then and I'm thinking about this and my team's using spreadsheets, what is the absolute pain that I'm experiencing that's going to be a natural fit then for customer of DeSera?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the way to think about it is in the form of questions.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is understanding your entire context, your data infrastructure context, your data attribute context, and your data user context.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have that context, you begin to have a holistic view of where you stand.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have that, the second piece is taking the PDF policies and converting them into algorithms that can self-manage.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so the second piece that we have is a policy engine which is plain English.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: If this, then that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: If I see this kind of data, what should I be doing?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the third piece is once any of those policies are broken, how do I handle that?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the automated pieces come in.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a workflow which could be as easy as sending out a Slack message telling somebody you shouldn't be doing this, or as complicated as letting a sim tool basically deal with stuff as something happens.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So on one side, we are capturing all of the context, taking it through visibility, policies, and workflow.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And at the other end, you have all the tools that you already work with that these integrate into.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And is there a problem then that they can do any of that, or it's just slow to do, or they're not doing it, and there's some sort of audit impact or fines?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a mix.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, imagine you own data in a company.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You may have a catalog tool, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there are great companies like Elation and Big ID, which help you create these catalogs.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then what do you do with the catalog?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: How do you operationalize the information that you got, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that means that not only do you have to classify the data, you have to understand the security and compliance obligations around that.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Once you know that, you have to also be able to look at the data as it is moving through different platforms and being touched by different people in the company.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we do all of that, all the way from the moment data hits your system, we track it, we put layers of context and intelligence around it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We will then create rules that help you with data hygiene and how you handle the data.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: We look at who has access to that data and when they're actually using the access, uh, are they introducing risk?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like, for example, data exfiltration is a simple one.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: What about privacy violation?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: We do that too.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you sunset the data, we track it and make sure that you have complete visibility into where that data is going.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not mention the company name, but uh, is there one customer you could tell us?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how did they get started with you?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: What was their entry point into working with you?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to actually talk about uh fintech company.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It is a public fintech company that got acquired by another large public fintech company.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we were setting up their instance, and head of data basically said, Well, I'll give you access to our sandbox, and it's okay if you don't find any PII, as long as you can classify some of the non-PII information, we should be okay.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And within the hour as we were deploying it, there were 39 instances of PII showing up in the sandbox.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: After that, he said, So now that I can see the PII, how do I make sure it doesn't happen again?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And just from that filter view, you hit a button and create a policy that I don't want to see this again.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so anytime anybody brings in PII, it'll tell the data owner to clean it up.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Automatically it'll do that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: The second, as we after we deployed, he basically said, Well, how about some use cases?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, we our merchant data is sacrosanct.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want anybody to be downloading that data.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in our platform, because we also look at how data is being used, we were able to find multiple instances where people had run select star queries around merchant data.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the time to value in our platform is under an hour.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And these days that's that's pretty rapid, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's the big innovation that caused the sandbox selection team to pick you guys?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about the security space or the compliance space or the data space, these are converging, right?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Previously, what used to be was that you've got these point products and security, which were primarily access control and DLP in some form or fashion.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: On the compliance side, it is the ability, and these are primarily service-centric, legal-centric softwares where you're doing check boxes and you're compliant, you can file a report.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: On the data side, most of the software was focused on how do I make data more efficient, which is data catalog, data quality, and stuff like that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think where we shine is the ability to bring these three circles together faster, bring this with fewer resources and very, very simplistic approach to handling the complicated world of data.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's a combination of approaches that no one's really done before, it sounds like.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we are pulling all of these together, but we also integrate with people in our ecosystem.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if you already had a data catalog, we can work with that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have one, you can use ours.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so our approach has been we will do whatever it takes to make the customer successful.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been our approach, and that's helped us both in terms of telling our story as well as working with our customers.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And on the data catalog side, is that across all stores, cloud, on-prem, mobile, the whole lot?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we focus primarily on structured and semi-structured data in the cloud.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a commercial database, and that is like 99% of our customers are actually there.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: As far as on-prem is concerned, the way we think about it is our solution is platform agnostic, but we are a startup, so we need to kind of pick our targets.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we have decided to go with cloud companies for now.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And is that what makes an ideal prospect for you then?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is that one of the filters and what other ones do you have?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the way we think about this space is not size of company, but the importance of data in their lives.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the two things that we look for, does this company collect a lot of data and do they use that data as a strategic differentiator?
• 11:56
  unknown: Okay.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Which means a lot of hands are touching that data.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Once you hit that X, Y axis, on the top right are all the companies that make perfect targets for us.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then we, of course, run filters like, you know, are they in the cloud or are they some are they on-prem?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Currently, we have customers across multiple verticals.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for example, we've got healthcare, we've got financial services, we've got consumer, we've got food technologies, we've got technology companies, including some of the larger commercial database companies who are hosted in the cloud.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are working with them to solve some of their problems too.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's quite a big market, though, right?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're on top of a trend where more and more are cloud and data-centric, I would imagine.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's absolutely true.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if they are, they've got the same governance requirements that everyone else has, but even more acute, let's say, because of the nature of their business.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the way to think about this problem is that it does not actually stem from governance.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Government governance is a pressure, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about it, there's a perfect storm.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: On one side, you have the governance aspects, which is an external factor.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: The other external factor is the thriving business of stolen data, right?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the external ones.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: From the internal perspective, the velocity at which you can spin up servers in the cloud.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, the quantum of data and the different forms of data that you use.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, the number of people and the ways that they're using that data, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: This creates a perfect storm.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So even if I understand certain governance principles well and I can deploy it in one place, how am I going to deploy it in 30 places overnight?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some of which may just be up for a few seconds or minutes because it was a temporary database.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we are able to cover that scale and that speed that companies require.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: What's the big vision for DeSera over the next five years, Annie?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in a way, I don't actually have a vision for DeSERA.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: What we have decided to do as a company is that we have a vision for this space.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: We want people to think about data security differently.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if we are large enough as a company, we will be able to influence thinking.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so the way we think about it is that there are two insights that we have gleaned.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is you cannot protect data through point solutions at a point in time, like a snapshot.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have to think about the data lifecycle.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we protect the entire data lifecycle.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is data is organic in nature.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So when people say this is the new oil, they've got it wrong.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's more like a garden with multiple stakeholders, extremely organic and growing super fast.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so any solution that is going to protect that data has to be more organic rather than a fixed target solution.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So these are the two insights that we drive.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the data is one of these things, it gets everywhere, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever people think about where they think it might be, they're surprised about where other places it is too.
• 15:14
  unknown: Right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the surprise is this that it's not like you know, you understand 90% of the data and 10% is not understood.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the other way around.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: You just understand 10% of the data, then 90% you don't understand, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so having a very strong view of what you're building is actually likely to get in the way of building what you want to build.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have to know that you don't know, because then your approach is very different.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we have some underlying principles, but we know that we don't know.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: We work with our customers to understand their use cases and get closer to their pain and do whatever it takes to make that happen.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: It must be tough though to park the ego a little bit to one side and just be highly curious about what's going on with the customers, right?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is a difficult space where the bad guys are winning.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see how anybody can have an ego in this space.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in a way, if you are not a product company that is focused on a solution, and here is the paradox here, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you're a product company, okay, this is what we have, we can solve your problem or we can't.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Versus saying we are a product company, we have the foundational pieces.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's walk a mile together to understand what you need, and we will do whatever it takes to make you successful.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is going to be that is the harder one because there is this fear that we'll be doing one-off things for customers.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Security sometimes is one-off.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there may be a customer who needs something special.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to do that while still get making sure that the that the core of the product stays, you know, true to itself.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that perspective.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do you have a sales team right now, Annie?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we have, I think, one of the best sales team uh in place.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's we uh brought in Dave Macau, and you should definitely talk to Dave.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: He uh he he's my co-founder and head of sales.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we are one of those companies where one of the co-founders is in the technology side, that is Noah Johnson.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the co-founders is on the sales side, that is David Macau, and I'm the co-founder who basically helps bring in the right people, keeps them motivated, and brings the resources in.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we do have a sales force in place.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: We are actually doing our sales kickoff uh this week, tomorrow, day after, and the day after that.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have a good strong sales engineering team as well.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, we are we are doubling in the next six to eight weeks.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: How did you and David think about hiring the first people after David as he started building?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: When when was the right time to bring people on board?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And who were they?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: What type of people were they?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually a great question.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think hiring, whether it is sales or engineering or different business roles, is uh is a life project.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is a life project because you may have a job description, but you're actually hiring for the team.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what that means is when you bring in somebody, how is that person going to work with the rest of the people cross-functionally?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are very early.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we are looking for people who can see the problem, understand the whys, right, listen to what the customer wants, and yet be able to show them a slightly different uh way of thinking.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: We are we are not a so think about our hiring.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we have looked at people in security, we have looked at people in data, and all of those are important to us because they've all each of them brings a different perspective.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: We are still not at that stage where we can say that our sales is repeatable.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is not, right?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it is going to be years before that happens because the space is evolving.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are looking for people who have got these three traits.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: One is that they have they are they have a culture fit with what our company is and how it does.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you spoke about checking the ego at the door.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that they have a learning mindset because the space is evolving and you have to have a learning mindset.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the third one is that they should have sound grounding of the functional expertise that they bring on board.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So when we see these three things, we know that this is likely a good candidate.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's how we went about.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when you say sound grounding and functional, you mean in sales or in a certain certain type of sales?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, sales.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've gone through this cycle of trying to sell to security and then realizing that the security folks are bringing in the data folks.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is it's a team sport.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: The security folks understand the infrastructural pieces better, while the data folks actually have context for the data.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: They understand what is happening with the data, who's using the data.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so one or the other is not enough.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to start in one place, but you have to have somebody who's like open to understanding that.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: First we had systems that were like perimeter defense, right?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was when security was an IT function.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then it gives then you went to applications and stuff like that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so it became a separate security function, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now the most volatile radioactive piece is data, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so the specialization has gone from broader to narrower, but it is cross-functional.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we look for people from data or from security.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like your observation about the learning side.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think when sales people come in at an earlier stage company, so much is still in the air about what do people care about and how do we describe it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And whole parts of a sales process are you know in the best possible way, they're guesses, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Until you go prove the thing true or not true as you engage with prospects.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have someone that can't do that, then it becomes very limiting in the learning of the company, never mind the learning of the individual.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure David's been thinking about that quite a bit.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um back to our original question.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the first hires after David, were they salespeople?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Were they SEs?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Were they SDR type people?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: How did you scale from there?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think our SE and salespeople came at about the same time.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we realized that we had a messaging that people were saying, yes, we understand what you're trying to do.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as we were able to shorten our sales cycle, so our sales cycle when we started was like about 120-ish days.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now it is about 60-ish days.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's when we realized that when it went from 120 to 60, and when we realized that it was not just a security sale, but it's a convergence sale, that's when we realized, okay, we have the insight, we are able to message it properly.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when that's now when we are actually doubling the you know team size.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Got it, got it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And in terms of uh customer acquisition, when you've got past you know, friends and family customers, were there were there certain routes to get uh to rise above the noise that seemed to work and get you better meetings and better connections with people?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, what we realized is that in the friends and family customer, it is a lot harder because you can't push the customer.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You are uh leveraging.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Relationship more than the problem.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we started.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we quickly realized that for us, you know, so there is the vanity metric that I've got these logos.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody asks you how did you get these logos?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so we quickly realized that we wouldn't be able to build a long-term company around that story.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: We honestly had to go to strangers and be able to sell, right?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we are focused.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: We are focused on actually sitting down with companies, listening to what they need.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we go to companies, they recognize this problem.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do I operationalize my data governance?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Data GovOps has to happen.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is the next wave.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as we show them our capabilities, they say, okay, so for example, I have a notebook here, and yesterday we were talking to a customer and said, okay, what are your what do you want to achieve today?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to see?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: What are your problems?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they gave us six questions, right?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, what we will do is we are not going to demo the product like we demo it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: We are like, okay, here are all the capabilities.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't help anybody.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So these are prop when they gave us these questions, that is a way to think about the use cases.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we said we will answer these questions not by talking to you, but you actually showing you in the product.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's how we are currently selling, which is listen to the customer's problem and then deliver the product.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: First demo the product to answer those questions and then follow that up with deploying it in their environment so that they can see the answers to the same questions that they put together when we are talking to them.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they see it in the in their own eyes, in their own data.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And are you at the stage in the market where you're doing a lot of evangelizing about the idea of bringing these three areas together in one tool, or do people just kind of get it?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: People get it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: There are two types of people.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: One is people who believe it can be done, and when they deploy it, they see it.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the others, it's a yes or it's a yes, but not now.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the way to think about it is there is recognition of the problem widely, but the urgency is distributed amongst early adopters and the innovators and early adopters and the early mainstream.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the mainstream and the laggards will follow.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I know you're definitely hiring given what you said before.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to double the company in the next few weeks, which is an awesome time to be there and experience that and go through that growth.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is the careers page on your website the best place for people to go if they're interested?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: That, or they can just email me at onny at the sera.com.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we are hiring in every function, all the way from product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have a hiring tip?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a funny market right now, right?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh, you know, with everything that's happened in the last few weeks, the balance has shifted maybe a little bit again.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: But any tips on on hiring candidates for early stage companies?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think uh so so I can tell you what we do, right?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and sometimes it also depends on what metric you use for hiring.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Some people may just use quantity, some will use quality, some will use a combination, right?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are deciding to build a really large company, which basically means that people we hire today have to be good operationally at the individual level, but they should also have the potential to be leaders, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the profile that we are looking for requires a very clear view of what the future holds, and that comes from sharing transparently what who your company is why you exist and how you operate.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, in our company, we tell people that we are absolutely transparent about everything, including board minutes.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like when we present to the board, for example, the same Friday, we will basically present the same debt to the company so that they know exactly what we are showing, right?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have that radical level of uh transparency.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: The second one is fairness.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: So in our company, for example, we are very, very clear that we will take care of people, meaning that taking care of people is not so much about who's getting more or less, but people are getting uh at par with others.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: You should not feel like, could I have negotiated better?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: We just just don't make the so in each of our bands as as people come in, so whether it's senior, mid-level, or junior, the bands are generally within$10,000.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then we provide people with, for example, two offers.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: One is higher cash, lower equity, higher equity, lower cash, and they can choose.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so when somebody says, Well, I chose the upper, you know that you chose the upper, which basically means you know you got the lower of the others.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so the second one is fairness, and the third one is there's always course correction with people.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Always, right?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you are invested in the success of people and your teammates, and this is not only for the CEO or the leaders, it's for at the peer level as well.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is everybody focusing on making sure that somebody else is going to win in the team as well, right?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you're looking for people like that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So for us, those are the three things that we look for, which goes back to what the company culture is for us, which is it's transparent, it's fair, and it is focused on being the best place to work.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: I love that thoughtful perspective around that, right?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: If I was coming in to interview, I would certainly appreciate that that seemed to be the culture you were trying to build as a company.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, it's probably not as thoughtful as many other companies are in terms of how they view this whole area, right?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I think each of the company, like there are several companies we benchmark on.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there are very, very good practices.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you just have to pick the one that works for you and works for the with the personalities in play, right?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You you're trying to put together a team that is going to stick around and they are going to like stay up nights because I don't want somebody, let's say we have a deliverable and there's a promise made by sales.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: You want the engineers to understand at the human level the challenges instead of, okay, this is a ticket that I need to take care of, or this is a sprint feature that I'm taking care of, versus thinking like this is a customer who is probably putting their neck out to give us this deal, and my sales guy is putting out his neck to make that happen.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, what am I willing to do?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you're able to create this thread and this mesh, the company will operate well.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Annie, this is an exciting time for the company.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're going through a growth spurt coming up here.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're part of the innovation sandbox at RSA.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: It really seems like there's a lot going on and a lot of uh excitement around what you're building there.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: So congrats on your success so far, and I wish you every success at the sandbox contest and also throughout the rest of the year and beyond.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Andrew.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are honored to be here and be recognized by the industry and our customers.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know if there's anything else that I can do for you.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my discussion with Ani Chadri, the CEO at DeSera.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed it, got in some good topics, and I had three takeaways.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: The first one was that DeSera is helping three distinct teams, which often have been siloed.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: That is the compliance team, the data team, and the security team.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: But of those three, at the end of the day, it's the data team, which is the one that has to go and implement the tools.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that came from my second takeaway was they realized that their initial outreaches to friends and family, while it's useful, wasn't giving them the feedback and the candid understanding of what people wanted.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it was only when they started going to strangers that they realized the importance of the data team, and that was probably going to be their entry point into many accounts.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: My third takeaway was Ani said about hiring people.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: He looks for culture fit, a disposition to learning, and thirdly the functional expertise and whatever role they're taking, and in our case, it would be sales.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: But going back to what he was saying about learning, you know, at early stage companies, so little is really figured out.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: So when you go in there, it has to be on the understanding that we're going to learn as we go.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have to make some assumptions, we have to learn and listen and take the feedback and see what happens.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we try new ways to explain what we do, and we try new ways to get into accounts, and we're always learning.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's from that learning that we're going to be able to keep adjusting and then find that beautiful sales model and go forward from there.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: So those are my three takeaways from discussion.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Really enjoyed it, and I wish to Sarah every success in the Innovation Sandbox context.