Building a Venture Scale Cyber Security Startup in the Age of AI: Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So, when once you got the $15 million, how long did it take you to get the fresh product out?

Alon Jackson: Well, a product is a big word. An MVP or providing initial value—that’s actually an interesting story. It took us two weeks.

Sramana Mitra: Two weeks! Tell me more. What did you put in the MVP?

Alon Jackson: I’ll share. Within two weeks after formally establishing the company, signing an LLC, we were connected to a global enterprise brand with thousands of employees. We didn’t have a UI. We actually shared an Excel spreadsheet with them and said, “Hey, this is what we found.” I was very anxious, actually, because this was the first time we were looking at data in the wild and trying to validate our thesis in real-world scenarios.

We were unsure how many non-human connections we were going to find in such an organization, now that they were willing to give us access for the first time. That was very exciting. We found more than we expected, and they guided us in terms of what they found interesting and how they want the UI to look.

Sramana Mitra: But you said you were looking at Excel spreadsheets. Excel spreadsheets were looking at data off breaches, or what data were you looking at?

Alon Jackson: Basically, what we enabled them to do for the first time was to see what kind of access exists to the enterprise that is not done by users. It could be webhooks or applications – what has access, not who has access, to their critical infrastructure. For them, it was mind-blowing and eye-opening. I literally found thousands.

Sramana Mitra: All the vulnerabilities you were able to tabulate and show them—these are your vulnerabilities, how do you protect them? That’s the MVP.

Alon Jackson: How do you make sense of them? What are you supposed to do with them now that you found them? These are things we worked hand-in-hand with our initial design partners to build the first UI that actually looks like a tool. But the first value was actually given with that very simple spreadsheet.

Sramana Mitra: It’s very powerful what you’re saying. And the reason I’m spending time on this is because people have real difficulty coming up with what’s in the MVP.

What you are saying is that your MVP is a classic identification of the pain point inside the enterprise. You were basically, in a very short time—two weeks, or even less probably—able to show to potential buyers inside the enterprise that these are your vulnerabilities, and our tool can identify them. And then we are going to show you how to close those gaps. This is an amazing way to be able to sell long-term.

Alon Jackson: Yes. I don’t know if I would really categorize it as an MVP, because I don’t think it’s a minimal viable product at all. It was really just an Excel spreadsheet.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, sure.

Alon Jackson: It was first and foremost de-risking the whole thesis of the company. Getting the data from the field for the first time and helping us build the MVP accordingly. But it really accelerates getting to the pain point, like you said, as soon as possible.

Sramana Mitra: We have a whole module in our training program about B2B sales or enterprise sales, especially complex selling. We have this concept called “pain extraction question”—how do you extract the pain of an enterprise and start a conversation?

What you’re saying is that you were able to show all the vulnerabilities of the enterprise in that very quick process of engagement. Then that gives you permission to have the larger conversation of how to solve that problem. That’s an amazing sales tool.

Alon Jackson: Yes. I would say that we were engaged with that specific design partner for months before. They were part of us raising the round. VCs talked with them to validate the thesis. So, this was kind of a more advanced stage of the same.

Sramana Mitra: You were at an advanced stage, but having developed that tool with one customer or one design partner, I’m sure you could use it repeatedly. There was huge repeatability that you were able to accomplish once that was in place.

Alon Jackson: A hundred percent. It became a basic tool that we would give to different enterprises—a quick taste of what we can do for them, very, very quickly.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Building a Venture Scale Cyber Security Startup in the Age of AI: Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security
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