Building a Venture Scale Cyber Security Startup in the Age of AI: Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What were the milestones of that first round of $15 million financing that you raised? What did you accomplish with that and in what timeframe?

Alon Jackson: It took us about a year and a half to really pinpoint the value and find an initial product-market fit. As I’d shared, we started with a very immature tagline of “integration access management.” After bringing in the first marketing team, we changed it to “app-to-app security” or securing app-to-app connections. It’s catchier and has some benefits, but also some downfalls—it can be a bit too high-level and mean different things to different people.

So, we focused on figuring out the go-to-market motion and breaking into a very noisy, crowded market.

Sramana Mitra: Very, very noisy market. Were you selling direct?

Alon Jackson: We started selling direct. I think you always start with founder-led sales. We moved to a channel-first model very quickly, but the first handful of customers were direct and very much word-of-mouth. Initial customers who saw the value and believed in our mission and vision were eager to introduce us to their colleagues. That was our first major milestone. Then reaching the first $1 million in ARR and raising the Series A round.

Sramana Mitra: Did you reach the first $1 million with founder-led sales?

Alon Jackson: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: At what point in this trajectory did you introduce the first channel partner, and what was the nature of that channel ?

Alon Jackson: We hired someone quite early in the trajectory of a typical cyber security startup, right after raising the A round. We brought in a VP of Sales and then a Director of Partnerships and Channels. He built a full program. It was not just doubling down on one specific partner, but working across different geographies—West Coast, East Coast, verticals, and even opening new markets like the UK. We became a partnership-led sales organization from the beginning.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of partners were you going after? System integrators, cyber security consultants, managed service providers? What was the particular type of channel partners?

Alon Jackson: Less managed services, more VARs—like GuidePoint, Aurora. These are folks with deep cyber security insights, not just for customers but also for market trends and tools. They’re trusted advisors, so our success is their success.

Sramana Mitra: The cybersecurity startup space is incredibly noisy. It’s tough to get buyers’ attention. Channel partners help with that, but they also get hit up by tons of startups. What helped you close those partner deals?

Alon Jackson: To break through the noise, you need to find a sweet spot that’s both important and unique. It’s hard to do. If it’s only important, many others are doing it. If it’s only unique, it’s more academic and not commercial. You need something that’s unsolved today, will grow in the future, and has business potential. That belief and clarity in a pitch can get you in the door with customers and partners.

Getting a response to a pitch—people saying, “That’s interesting, I don’t have a solution to this”—is already a good sign. Once you’re in, partners look for long-term, real partnerships. They want the latest and greatest in the market and something valuable for their customers . We made real investments—ARR, revenue, time, and effort—to enable and support them, offer fair margins, and build a sustainable flywheel.

Sramana Mitra: I’m surprised you haven’t talked about your fantastic sales tool we mentioned earlier. Those partners need to sell, right? Having a tool that shows vulnerabilities and the need for a strategy to plug them must have been very attractive for a channel partner.

Alon Jackson: Absolutely. Today, if you can’t show value instantly, it’s very hard to run enterprise tools. People expect cloud-based solutions with a “taste, try, and buy” experience. That tool is still something we’re using today, in a very similar format to what we had when the company was just two weeks old.

This segment is part 3 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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