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I think we're still so much on the expansion part of the story that I'm not sure I know where we stop or, uh, or where the line should be drawn, but it is very important for us to keep two things as our principles while we're expanding. And those two things are first of all, like a platform approach. And what I mean by that, I mean, one plus one equals three. If we're developing a new product and it's one plus one equals two, then it's probably not the right investment for us. And like, if there
Luckily enough for us, there were enough customers in the world that had that specific problem and it was an urgent enough problem that they took a bet on us.
And what we did is we plugged on into that event and we told them, okay, the cloud has many dangers, many risks in terms of security, but it also has many advantages. And we can actually turn the fact that the data is in the cloud into an advantage.
The market was definitely not quite ready for it yet. I think we were coming out with this DSPM positioning, which was new to the market.
We didn't have the facts. This market was very early.
And I think that here we are almost five years later. And when I ask one of our champions in a very big account, we're walking in, you've got so many problems. Why are you spending time with Sayera? Why are you looking at solving data security? It tells me, you know, what's the worst thing that can happen in my company? When you get a question mark email from the CEO on something that happens. And when there's data incidents and data leakage events, that happens all the time. And I want to elimi
I think I would say that there were other spaces that we considered entering. And for me, one of the reasons that we chose data security was more of an emotional reason. I couldn't feel it with the other spaces. I knew there was a problem. The problem was logical. Customers validated that there's a pain and a problem. But I couldn't feel it in my gut that this is like, this really, really, really hurts me.
they managed to democratize the risk, which is something that we're doing also for the data security aspect.
And for us at Sierra, I think that's something we definitely believe in as well. That's doing, doing something extraordinary is worth much more than doing something ordinary.
So we're definitely leveraging our advantage and our position in the market to use that and emphasize on speed and double down on speed and use it as a way to, to completely, you know, change the market in a sense.
The incumbents have no way to compete with that. They're fundamentally like their position in the market is much more established and it's much slower.
We acquired a company last year for $162 million. If you would have told me that when Sierra will be three years old, we will acquire a company for $162 million. I would have told you, you're drunk.
the message that is always portrayed most loudly is expanding the platform is important. It's wonderful. We want you to solve more problems, but the most important thing is that you will continue to solve the problem we brought you for in the first place amazingly well
I think that in every type of like product decision, product strategy decision, we always defer to the customers as a, as a sanity check, right?
going fast, while it's very, very, very scary in many aspects, it actually helps you avoid friction.
I'm very, very much attuned to what the customers are thinking about the product, how they're thinking about the problem statements. And I validate that on, you know, five to 10 customer calls a day.
And you know, our first version was AWS only. So we could pretty much just light up the data in the AWS. Luckily enough for us, there were enough customers in the world that had that specific problem and it was an urgent enough problem that they took a bet on us.
And we can actually turn the fact that the data is in the cloud into an advantage. And we can use the way the cloud is built in order to connect to the underlying cloud provider. And from that position in an agent-less manner, show you all the data you have there and assure that the data is secured as it should be secured.
the primary spend has been on DLP, data loss prevention. These are like controls that are trying to stop the data from getting outside of the enterprise into the wrong hands. But those programs, those DLP programs were quite painful for many of our customers, for many of the enterprises in the market, because the false positive rates were super high because the total cost of ownership of this program was outrageous.
The data security space, if you look at it from a zoom out lens, probably has billions and billions of dollars of existing spend.
the market was definitely not quite ready for it yet. I think we were coming out with this DSPM positioning, which was new to the market.
In a year's time, we moved from being clueless to raising an A-round from Sequoia Capital with Doug Leone and being able to convince Doug and Bogo Mill and the Sequoia team that we know something about the world enough that they chose to invest. So that transition, being able to go through that transition in a year, was, I think, the foundational value proposition for us, teaching us how to talk to customers, how to find pain in customer interactions, how to tie that pain to a commercial engagem
I think they had product market fit of their own in the sense that they've built an engine to take founders like Tamar and me, which are ex-engineers, engineering leaders from the Israeli ecosystem, which was very much not commercial. And in a very orchestrated, managed, but quick way, commercialize you, turn you into a commercial founder for a commercial company that needs to sell, needs to conduct business in the market.
We met with Gilly and with Lior and we clicked and we chose to go with them, a choice that was very, very, very meaningful. And we didn't even know how meaningful when we made it back then, but their coaching and their mentorship was critical to the company's success, to our success as founders and being able to get this rocket ship to take off from the ground.