Standing Out in the Crowded Cybersecurity Market: Pingsafe's Strategy for Differentiation with Dhiraj Khare, VP-Sales

In today's episode, our host, Andrew Monaghan, sits down with Dhiraj Khare from Pingsafe, a leading cloud security platform company. Dhiraj shares some fascinating insights about their journey in the cybersecurity space and the strategies they've employed to drive revenue for their startup.

From their memorable first day at Pingsafe, coming from a similar cloud security platform company to handling a significant transaction with a nonprofit organization backed by prestigious foundations, Dhiraj takes us through their experiences in securing meaningful deals.

We also delve into Pingsafe's innovative approach of looking at cloud infrastructure from an attacker's perspective, its unique CNAP platform, and the challenges they face in a crowded market with over 3400 cybersecurity vendors.

Dhiraj offers valuable advice on differentiation, building a strong customer base, and the importance of localization in the Indian and Southeast Asian markets. They highlight their commitment to providing unparalleled customer success and discuss the potential of the Indian market for startups.

Tune in to this episode to learn how Pingsafe's revolutionary platform is transforming the cybersecurity landscape and how they are navigating the challenges of scaling and expanding globally. Get ready for an enlightening conversation with Dhiraj Khare at Pingsafe!

Pingsafe
Dhiraj Khare on LinkedIn

Transcript

Andrew Monaghan [00:00:00]:

Cloud security is so crowded right now, so it's so hard to break in. And if you are trying to do it, it's important to have a different approach and be able to show the value behind your different approach. In this interview, I chat with Dhiraj Khare, the VP of Sales at PingSafe. Their product does have a unique angle and also they're expanding around the world from India where they have over a hundred customers already. Don't go away. Welcome to the Cybersecurity Startup Revenue Podcast, where we help cybersecurity companies grow revenue faster. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan. Our guest today is Dhiraj Khare, VP of Sales at PingSafe. Dhiraj, welcome to the podcast.

Dhiraj Khare [00:00:49]:

Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Monaghan [00:00:51]:

I'm looking forward to our discussion this morning. Dhiraj, obviously PingSafe is doing some interesting things in the cloud security world, but this is the first time I've talked to a company officially based out of India about where your DNA is and where you're coming from. So I'm really intrigued to learn about what that really means and how you're thinking about the expansion of sales and the go-to-market into other parts of the world if you start that process and how far you've got and how you're thinking about that. So I think for the audience, it's going to be an interesting conversation about the insights and the challenges of doing that and what there is to learn and what you've learned from going through that process. So it'll be interesting to hear the narrative about how that's been going. Well, dear Hajj, let's talk about where you are and talk about Pingsafe. So I looked at the website and Pingsafe is in the cloud security area. If I was a CISO and we met each other at a conference, black hat's coming up in a couple of months' time, and I said to you, so Dhiraj what does PingSafe do? How would you answer that question?

Dhiraj Khare [00:01:56]:

The most simplest way? Pingsafe is one of the unique cloud security platform companies that follows attacker intelligence as the core of our foundation and gives you the unique findings, and the most actionable insights that a CISO or a security engineer should be focusing on in order to do that. There is a lot of devil in the detail of how we do it and all that, but I think if I have to make a quick 32nd pitch, I would say our core strength lies in a unified cloud security platform that is powered by the attacker's intelligence.

Andrew Monaghan [00:02:28]:

So you said attacker intelligence. Why don't you tell me a bit more about what that means?

Dhiraj Khare [00:02:32]:

Yeah, so let me just take a step back. The company is founded by my CEO. His name is Anand Prakash and he happens to be the top ranking security researcher. He used to participate in the public bug bounty programs of companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Salesforce, Uber, and he maintained his rank as top five bug bounty hunters globally for five years in a row. And he was also featured by Forbes 30 under 30, for the impact that he's created in terms of saving millions of users of life. So when he was doing those bug bounty programs, he realized that all of these big corporations, big companies have no shortage of tools, no shortage of talent, no shortage of in-house ability. But at the same time, hackers like him, the Whitehead hackers, and the security researchers like him were able to surface the alerts, surface the gaps, which were not visible to them. And that's when he realized that most of these tools are doing a great job, we have a lot of respect for them. But then those tools were designed yesterday and they were not able to fill in the gap that attackers are able to find out. And basically what attackers do is they try to combine multiple low-severity alerts to look into from one lens and start exploiting those combinations, those toxic combinations, and kind of take advantage of the situation. So the idea here is, why not build a platform that provides you with all the traditional bells and whistles, but also wraps it up on top of it as an attacker's diligence so that you have unique insights? Most time customers are buried with thousands of alerts which are all low severity and important things always fall through the cracks. Security teams are one of those teams in every organization which is under the immense pressure of fixing things, addressing the audits, addressing the internal response teams, and all that. And in between, then, if they have a platform that can give them the most meaningful and actionable alerts or the intel, they will be able to act fast and they will be able to make their overall posture much better. So with that vision, we build this platform. And that's the reason why I said attack and intelligence, because if you look at it historically, most of the companies that are introduced in the market-solving security problems in different aspects, they're all designed from a defensive mindset, right? And people deploy offensive engineers, the Red teamers, the VIPT engineers, and all that as a part of services. Imagine that being shipped as a part of a product, fully automated and highly intelligent. It can do wonders for you. So that's the reason why I say yes.

Andrew Monaghan [00:05:01]:

Yeah. So then make sure I understand this. The, I guess, two lenses. One is the lens when you're developing the product is from an attacker-first mindset. So you're building the product so that it thinks about what they're doing as opposed to a defensive mindset. And then when you're looking at the alerts, then the intelligence behind the alerts is from an attacker mindset as well. And therefore you're giving slightly different recommendations to the teams, the operations teams, of what they should go fix. Is that two sides of that I've got right? Or if I missed that actually it's.

Dhiraj Khare [00:05:33]:

Two in one box. Looking at the cloud infrastructure itself from an attacker's mindset. What happens is if you have several incidents happen over the period of time, let's say within one hour's time and you have some transaction going on in your cloud you probably will get 5610 hundred low severity alerts and a hacker may be able to combine two or three of those hundred low severity alert and will be able to create a high impact. Practically, it is impossible to see which two of them from those hundreds or thousands of them are creating this kind of impact on the naked human eye. So from a system point of view, we build that system smart enough that can figure out the most toxic combination within your cloud infrastructure and surface the alerts which are likely to be exploitable by a black hat hacker or bad people out there. You will be able to take immediate action on top of it and you can prioritize those things. So that's the reason why I use the word attacker intelligence along with the cloud security platform. So we are a full-blown CNAP platform. And the reason I use Word in most of my customer conversations, I use CNAP because we are over and beyond CNAP.

Andrew Monaghan [00:06:42]:

Yeah, I noticed on your website you hit four of the alphabet soup of cloud security acronyms. You got CNAP, you got CSPM, CWPP, and KSPM. And then you get the infrastructure as code. And also the cloud detection response there as well. So covering a lot of different little buzzwords in there, right? Is that the idea that this is more of a complete platform as opposed to just one of those? Yeah.

Dhiraj Khare [00:07:08]:

So traditionally, if you look at it, the way the industry has evolved in terms of adoption of the cloud also is purely because you would find that the cloud has also evolved over a period of time. The way companies used to use the public cloud five years ago, the way they use now is very different. I mean, five years ago they were just doing lift and shift. They were installing their VAR files, they're installing their physical applications in the cloud as bare metal machines, right? Today they are doing modernization on containerization and microservices and all that. So the security requirement varied from time to time. And in this entire pursuit, what happens is they keep on buying security tools piecemeal. So when the misconfiguration was a big problem, they bought a tool for misconfiguration. When workload protection is a problem, they bought a tool for workload protection. When entitlement management was a problem, they bought a tool for entitlement management. When IAC was introduced, infrastructure as a code got introduced, and they bought a tool for infrastructure as a code. But because not just the customers, but also the security companies have started acquiring these product companies from different smaller startups and all that. And they started to stitch this platform. It doesn't really help because all of this technology was built in different timestamps, built by different types of engineers on different types of languages and none of them talk to each other. So the real context is missing in the name of the platform. The market is shipping a dashboard that is hyperlinked to other dashboards. So where we thought there is a difference is because while for the sake of doing everything you have tick marks. But then when it comes to findings, the findings are not really correlated. Finding findings is not context-aware and because of that you have thousands of alerts to look through and you end up missing important things falling through the cracks. So at PingSafe, we build everything as a part of the platform with unique attacker intelligence as a core of it and we make sure that the output of one engine goes as an input to another engine to enhance the value. And that's how most of the time we reduce false positives by 90 95% and give the most actionable insight to the customers which is fruitful and meaningful for them. I hope that kind of makes sense.

Andrew Monaghan [00:09:21]:

Is that the use case that's usually your entry point then where people are looking for I need help, I've got way too many alerts, they're not actionable and you can come in. Is that usually the entry point or is there something else that you're looking for early stage with a prospect?

Dhiraj Khare [00:09:35]:

Yeah, so there are customers who are using silos technologies in such cases are enterprises, but as salespeople, we always try to find out different hooks and it varies from customer to customer, it varies from their maturity cycle. So sometimes obviously too many alerts and having zero actionable alerts or zero visibility across multi-cloud infrastructure is the hook. But sometimes they already use something for certain use cases. In that case, we have to figure out what are the gaps and it usually turns out to be that there are modules or there are services within. I mean there is a portion of our product that is completely unique and which is not there in the infrastructure at all. They want to start with that journey first, like the way we have an offensive security engine that kind of sends the harmless payload and flushes out the most actionable things for you right then and there. So it's more like having Red Teamer which is automated your infrastructure and giving you the actionable insight firsthand.

Andrew Monaghan [00:10:36]:

It's a big story in the cloud world for the past couple of years has been the success of Wiz. I would imagine that a lot of times you're asked the question do you compete with Wiz? Do you sit alongside the How do you coexist or not? How do you usually handle that mean?

Dhiraj Khare [00:10:52]:

I'm a big fan of Simon Sneak and I believe that your biggest competitor is you yourself. So if you are better than your six-month-old version then you're doing the right job. And that's one philosophy and ideology I coach my team with. That is a better version of you every time you hit a new customer meeting. But honestly, yes, we have overlapping offerings, but first of all, as of now, our large focus was on this part of the globe. So we haven't faced that often. But wherever we face them, actually we born a couple of use case deals against them also primarily because of our attacker intelligence and our unique sweet spot, which is around figuring out how an attacker thinks and then keeping you one step ahead of that.

Andrew Monaghan [00:11:39]:

So that's interesting. Then what you're saying is that although Wiz has had some great success in the Indian subcontinent, hasn't necessarily been their strong point so far. They haven't focused on it and therefore you just don't run into them too much. Is that right?

Dhiraj Khare [00:11:54]:

Yes, I mean, I've not faced them at all, hardly in 1% of the deals I might have faced them, but.

Andrew Monaghan [00:12:00]:

Largely well, there's an advantage right there of your starting point being in India, right? You get to build the product, test out the product, get the feedback and get success and get customers in an area that many other countries, us, Israel, places that would probably ignore. Right. It's not going to be their high priority. So you get an advantage by starting there, it sounds like. Yeah.

Dhiraj Khare [00:12:23]:

Plus this entire as I said, the country itself has 102 unicorns and plus a fairly large enterprise market. And then because of the population, most of the SaaS companies which are driven by the volumes, they're heavily concentrated in this part of the world, not just India, but entire Southeast Asia and all of those. So I personally feel that cloud adoption in this part of the globe is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more to come.

Andrew Monaghan [00:12:52]:

Well, tell us about your sales team.

Dhiraj Khare [00:12:53]:

Right, I mean, I personally believe that a sales team has to be a well-oiled machine. So you should have all nuts and bolts in all aspects. So what comprises the right revenue function is that if you have the right blend of the field sales AES, the customer success, the sales engineers, the strs, the channel team, and the Ops team, that kind of keeps the entire data flow in the right direction. So I'm a year old in the company and I joined this company almost twelve months ago. Me being the first person, I wanted to first see whether this thing really works and all that. And I was super happy to kind of the closed initial 60, 70, and 80 logos largely with me and my founder and CEO. We together used to wear the cap of the sales engineer and the salesperson at different times. And then gradually I built the team. Now we have a fairly large team of around 1820 people who do spreading across.

Andrew Monaghan [00:13:53]:

That's awesome. So you were the first salesperson in, you got to get the first 60 or 70 logos. That's awesome. And then you'd be able to scale it out. I think you said 18 people on the team now. That's a heck of progress in the last year.

Dhiraj Khare [00:14:05]:

I mean the entire team that we built is built with that vision that we'll continue to grow multifold from here on. Because already the right asset set of examples is done. The playbook is ready, all the FAQs are ready. We made our mistakes, learned from them, and moved on. So all of that is now ready and now we are in the right path of growth. So we have the content to teach and that is relevant, right? Because you may hire a person who has a superhero in a big setup, right? But then if you don't have the relevant content to teach your sales reps or to your sales engineers and to your customer success, you'll be failing miserably, right? But in this case, because I and the founders folded our sleeves and get us into the job, we know what is and it's very important because you'll not find this content available in any playbook. Because this is for the first time we are doing it from here. And the second thing is this localization is very important in India and in Southeast Asia, people think very differently. I can give you a classic example. While all of us are strong believers of MEDPic and MEDPic says when you qualify the entire opportunity with the economic buyer, the budget, the metrics, and everything and that's when you start the trial in India, trial probably starts after the first discussion and then all of those things follow. So that's a cultural thing. People want to see the product in action. They're all hands-on because of enough tech talent on the ground. So building the right qualification metrics in this kind of a world which is also and bringing that localization flavor to MEDPic and all that is also important. So now we have learned a lot and I'm not saying that we are pros, but like I said, we'll be better six months down the line from what we are today. And that's how we can continue to grow.

Andrew Monaghan [00:15:52]:

And is the team all servicing India right now? Or have you started the expansion into different countries?

Dhiraj Khare [00:16:01]:

Say? I would not call that expansion. We will call that pilot the way we did the pilot in India. The same kind of pilots we've started in some of the other countries as well.

Andrew Monaghan [00:16:11]:

So where's next for you then in terms of building out other countries as you grow?

Dhiraj Khare [00:16:15]:

So there are two-fold to it. One is obviously us is a big market and I think things are starting to settle down here and there as well. So we are already focusing on that market in terms of our land strategy. And I personally feel that expanding into other countries in Southeast Asia is also important and including the Middle East, because the Middle East is also a market that is enterprise heavy, right at the tip where they are deciding to move to the cloud and when. The biggest problem with today's enterprises is that they all wanted to move to the cloud, but they're worried about security. And this is a market that is extremely trust driven. So they need to trust somebody to kind of take the next step. So that's the whole exercise.

Andrew Monaghan [00:17:01]:

Entire nine yards of yeah, so wherever they are in the world, the excitement of the cloud is there and they're moving there at various speeds and their biggest challenge is going to be security is what you're hearing. So the common use case or common, I guess, general pain point. But imagine, as you were saying, country by country, region by region, slightly different nuances, maybe how far along they are is usually one. People say Europe for example, is maybe a year or two, sometimes behind the US in terms of the adoption of new technologies. You probably find the same thing in Southeast Asia. Maybe everyone's at different stages, right? Yeah.

Dhiraj Khare [00:17:35]:

I mean some of these European countries are not even on the hyper scalers they are using still the data center model. Some of these companies are on the MSSP model. So there are multiple permutations and combinations and it's just that the timing is as soon as a lot of these Enterprise, CIOs, and CISOs when I interact, I realize that usually these people are timing it. If they have hardware refresh coming in the next five years or three years or two years, that cloud adoption journey is also timed in that phase. Like should I start my cloud journey now? But then they start the journey and they realize that there's a lot of modernization that they need to do. So that's where they started doing private modernization, but in their on-prem infrastructure so that they can always switch to the cloud whenever the timing is correct. So between that makes if they get the confidence, and know we can move to the cloud safely, that's when I think they will have more confidence. It's actually in the best interest of the hyper scalers also to promote security companies like the US.

Andrew Monaghan [00:18:40]:

Dhiraj, let's learn a bit more about you though. I'm going to ask you to pick three questions between one and 35 and I'll read out the corresponding questions. So, first number, please.

Dhiraj Khare [00:18:52]:

I'd go with five.

Andrew Monaghan [00:18:54]:

Number five. They say that home is where the heart is. Where is home for you?

Dhiraj Khare [00:19:01]:

Bangalore. Pink safe and my home in Bangalore.

Andrew Monaghan [00:19:05]:

Is that where you grew up?

Dhiraj Khare [00:19:06]:

For most of my last 15 years, I've been here. So despite all the good and bad, I like the weather, like the people, like the Cosmo culture people coming from all over the world and the country. Very welcoming and supportive.

Andrew Monaghan [00:19:21]:

Yeah, I think my impression of Bangalore is a bit of a hotbed for tech in India originally. I think a lot of companies had sites there, their offshore site there. But then this startup culture is built up around it. I got that about right. This is?

Dhiraj Khare [00:19:35]:

Yes, indeed. A Silicon Valley of India. Pretty exciting stuff. We have 102 unicorns from India. Most of them are headquartered in Bangalore.

Andrew Monaghan [00:19:45]:

102 unicorns in India. Wow, that's nuts. And is that mostly because of the big market that India provides or is it because they're expanding elsewhere around the world as well?

Dhiraj Khare [00:19:56]:

No, there are indeed a lot of companies that are serving global customers. There are a lot of companies which it's purely because I would say the new generation of kids who are coming out of college, have no fear of losing out because of the internet going all over the place earlier. What used to happen is the problems that people see in the western territories. By the time those problems used to come to this part of the globe, they used to imitate the problem and that's why they call it as MeToo startup. But today everybody sees the problem with the same lens because the internet is everywhere. So people sitting in any remote corner of the world can fix that problem and build a startup around it. So that was the reason I would say Superwoman and of Know, Bangalore and a couple of other cities in the world are those cities where you have an abundance of talent. Any tech that gets introduced, exploited, or used, all of those happen in Bangalore India.

Andrew Monaghan [00:20:53]:

That's awesome. And it seems like the talent level is super high and you have that unique combination of really high talent level. But I guess part of the attraction is the cost level is down compared to hiring engineers in Silicon Valley or maybe even in Israel these days. Right.

Dhiraj Khare [00:21:11]:

So to be honest, the way it is growing and the paying appetite of the companies have increased. There has been an article published around this. Bangalore particularly is pretty expensive and it is more expensive than a couple of cities and states because of the cost of living increase and the kind of money people are expecting. So although there is a difference, certainly, but then there is not a huge gap.

Andrew Monaghan [00:21:37]:

So it's not as big as it used to be. That's awesome. So really the talent level and as you say, the fearlessness, right? People coming out of college and just saying why not, right? Why not me? Why not go and do this? That's awesome. All right, one more number between one and 35. Eight. Number eight. All right. If it wasn't Bangalore, where else in the world would you love to live?

Dhiraj Khare [00:22:00]:

I would love to live in a city called like I just it just so happened that I've been to the know during a week before Christmas and I felt know this is one of the most beautiful places to live in. And while it's a fine blend of corporations as well as the history, the culture, and the weather, so it felt that combination of all these three things. But obviously, from a work perspective, it's kind of slow, not as fast as the way some of the cities like Bangalore and Bay areas and all of those cities work, but it has a lot of meaningful businesses, it has a lot of good weather and all that. So that's my personal choice.

Andrew Monaghan [00:22:42]:

But yeah, sounds like it captured your imagination when you were there. All right, one more number. Team one and 35, please. 1212. Okay. Window or aisle?

Dhiraj Khare [00:22:52]:

Window.

Andrew Monaghan [00:22:53]:

Why window?

Dhiraj Khare [00:22:54]:

I mean, it's more comfortable, especially the people who are a little taller.

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:00]:

And.

Dhiraj Khare [00:23:00]:

You get to hold your head towards the window while sleeping.

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:04]:

That's true. For a long flight, you get something to rest your head against. Right.

Dhiraj Khare [00:23:09]:

Imagine me living in this part of the globe every time I have to travel, the minimum flight is 18 hours or 12 hours. So it's pretty long.

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:17]:

Yeah, you hear people in the US. Complaining about their three-hour, four-hour flight and then you think about, well, what about the people making 18 hours flights? It's a whole different game right there.

Dhiraj Khare [00:23:26]:

Absolutely.

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:30]:

Well, I'm going to ask you to go back to you joined Pingsafe last year. You came on board as the first salesperson. Do you remember the day when you yourself won your first deal at Pingsafe?

Dhiraj Khare [00:23:41]:

Yeah, that's a very, very memorable day because the day I joined Pingsafe previously I was also in a similar cloud security platform company, which was like I was the country manager for that company in India. So I knew the space, I knew the product, I knew the technology. So I was kind of ready from day zero. And I know how to pitch the customer and at least do the initial qualifications, the product level nuances where obviously you get up with time. So that was the inbound lead that came that very first day. And my founder and I were looking at that lead and we said there's not enough information available about this cloud in the public domain. This client is in the public domain. So let's qualify this out because we don't have that time to kind of that was the first day and we want to basically utilize the time in the right direction. And I said, no, there's no harm in having a 15-minute call because that was my like I wanted to test the water myself and see and it just so happened that the customer that we landed is a nonprofit organization backed by the Melinda Gate Foundation as well as the Google Foundation. And they are doing a lot of innovative work with governments and they handle public data and they are sitting all data sets on AWS and Google. So it was fairly crucial, security was fairly crucial for them. And a few months down the line, we closed and we landed that logo. And I ran through that entire transaction as a rep myself and followed the entire metpig and built those relationships, met the economic buyer and all of that, and felt so fulfilling. Not just because you landed that logo, but also because the first deal that you built is from a nonprofit company that is doing really meaningful stuff for people out there.

Andrew Monaghan [00:25:19]:

Yeah, I love the fact that it was tempting to qualify for that. Right. And your thought was, well, at least give it a go. Nothing to lose, right? Maybe just practice and then somehow it turns into the first awesome. As you're you said before, you're thinking about the process of landing in the North American market. Anything that you're thinking about how different it might be to what you've learned in India or are you thinking we just need to have our baseline of what we know and then see how we adapt it from there?

Dhiraj Khare [00:25:49]:

I think building any scalable sales organization and hiring the right people is the foundation of anything. Right. But what I've also realized is when the company is not like the entire engineering team is a different part of the globe, you also have to build some amount of engineering muscles or tech muscles on the ground. It's not an entirely net new territory for me because I've done global business in my time at Bongodb and in my time at Liferay and other organizations. So while I was driving that business through the GSIS in India. So I know how it works in a large enterprise setup. But the mid-market is something in which you require local on-ground connects and that is basically a fast-moving transaction business.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:36]:

So it's a case of figuring out who has access to that mid-market for you in North America, right?

Dhiraj Khare [00:26:42]:

Yeah. Figuring out the right hire and also going through. So I'm a strong believer in using the channel to the fullest potential. And we have a couple of engine investors who are pretty strong in that market and have a lot of advice and past experiences around how to scale, how to approach, and all that. And we are kind of collating and brainstorming.

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:05]:

What questions do you have for me, dear? Hajj. Yeah.

Dhiraj Khare [00:27:08]:

So I want to understand from you looking at where we are right now and as we change orbit because you've been talking to a lot of sales leaders and the founders and CROs of different organizations. What do you think we should be careful of as we grow and change orbit to the next thing? And what are the one or two words of advice that you want to give?

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:28]:

So, as you were talking before, a couple of things came to mind. One unique to your segment in the market and one just in general. So I think what you'll find for sure is almost every account you go to, even going down to mid-market is going to. Have some sort of CSPM in place already. And if they don't, it means they're super immature in terms of how they're thinking about things, which might mean you have to kind of qualify them out a little bit. So you're going to have a CSPM already. And therefore what you'll have to do, I think, is really figure out what your message is and how you handle that. What is our happily coexist message and what's our evidence to say we can do it, and where are the value points in doing that? Coexist people have bought these CSPMs and obviously, Wiz and Orca are the ones that are the predominant ones. They bought them in the last couple of years. They're not ready to throw them out, right? So just be ready with that. What's our strong story to say? This is why it makes sense to have us as well. Otherwise, you'll find that especially in today's market where purse strings are being tightened, it'll be harder and harder for them to make the case. They need to go beyond what they have. Some of the less informed companies might have made the case to finance and to the It CFO type of organization that this purchase that they made two years ago was going to be the be-all and end-all for their cloud security platform and therefore having to go and ask for more. They've got to be very careful how they do that. So I would have ears wide open as you get the first interactions in these other markets where the other CSPMs have done quite well, and just say, what can we learn about what they're really looking for and where their gaps are? As you were saying before. Right? You understand where the gaps are. Where does the market believe the gap is? That they even want to engage with you and really build out a very strong story about how to coexist with that. So I think that's one area I think the other area now, as you know, most of my knowledge is the North American market. I used to sell into Europe a lot, but that was before Clyde was really a thing. So I'd hate to make any generalizations about the European market, but certainly, in the North American market, I think you're dead right, is that partners are where you're going to be. And the kind of message I would give you is I think too often what we do is default to the standard, oh, we need a couple of AES, we need two or three SDRs, we might need a liter couple of Ses, let's go with that, right? That becomes a very expensive model very quickly. And what people are generally finding right now is that unless you can truly invest and optimize and really work at the SDR function, it's not going to produce the results that you're hoping for. So I would think about alternative reasons and rights to market reasons to buy and rights to market that might get you the traction that you're looking for. Now you mentioned mean, obviously, if you go out to mid-market, there's a lot of boutique type security partners in the US. And you don't need that many of them to be on board with you to really start getting your beachhead and getting that land done. I think the huge thing you have in your favor when you're talking to those folks is you've got those 70, 80 plus customers already. This is not something that was dreamed up in someone's garage in Palo Alto or Tel Aviv last year and with two customers, right, this is tried and true and tested and all the rest of it. And that's huge for partners because I think from the partner standpoint, you'll find that some of them don't want to deal with you, which is fine. You'll find that some of them actually want to take fresh technology and maybe different technology to their customers, right, because that helps them elevate their stature. But the thing they're scared of is the end of the day, what they really care about is keeping their customers happy and buying from them, not whether your technology is successful and you're trying to expand in North America. So they're very protective of this better work and this better be real and you can't screw up my customers, right? So the fact that you've got this base there that you're learning from and iterated and got the bugs out I think is a huge advantage for you in terms of how you go and engage with those folks.

Dhiraj Khare [00:32:01]:

I just to thank you so much for the two important pieces of advice and I think I'm hearing the feedback in a similar line from all the other people whom I'm talking to. Interestingly. So the count of customers is not just 70, 80, it's cross 100. And we were recently featured by G Two as the enterprise leader in the cloud security space globally. So that kind of is a very big validation because as most of you know, g Two is one place where customers have to genuinely put the product review with their screenshots and it's not that you can just get it right. So it's a lot of every single one of our customers. That's what sometimes when we, during the course of our negotiations with our customers, we say every single bit of a customer you put your finger in and we'll let you talk to him. And that's the kind of value that we have delivered over the last year, the kind of support, the kind of engineering bandwidth we have committed to them, the kind of feedback that we have listened to them, and the kind of loop that we run with the ensuring that it's one thing selling a product, but it's another thing that when you make sure that the products succeed inside the organization, you build the entire organization with that security culture. Every single alert is seen and looked at with severity and that sincerity from the client side. We build those cultures. So I think culture is very important, not just within the organization, but when you go outside and work with your customers, making sure that they all follow the same goal.

Andrew Monaghan [00:33:28]:

I love you said that because I think that right now there are 3400 vendors in cybersecurity. It seems like every week there's a new one in Cloud. And whether pick your acronym right there's someone trying to do something different in each of those. So differentiation is hard. And the more you think about rather than just being faster, whatever CNAP or a faster CWPP or we do a little bit better, what can be the positioning that says, well, this is completely different. And I would be thinking about that to say if someone looks at our website if someone listens to what we say in those first meetings, are they going to get a sense this is just like everyone else, but a little bit different? Or are they going to get a sense that actually no, this looked and felt and touched like, this is really worth exploring because it seems like these guys have a different take on this. And maybe it's the attacker intelligence that's part of that. Maybe it's what you were saying just now about you wanting to follow through and make sure that the customer success is there and you understand it's a longer game to play, but you're going to have ultimately much healthier and happier customers. Maybe there's something in there to think about, but I think any company breaking into the market right now, it's tough for them to do it. As I say, I think the huge advantage you have is hundreds of customers where you've got past that. And I think there's a lot of companies right now that're eking out their first ten or 20 customers. And the fact that you've got so many and if they're referenceable and you figure out, how do I harness that, that's going to be important. Well, dear Hatch, look, I really enjoyed our conversation today. I love when companies in other parts of the world, as you know, right, North America, we get very eccentric and we think about ourselves all the time and we think know everything that's so important is happening here when in reality, that's not the know. And I love hearing new companies and success stories coming out of other countries, especially in India where you have a unique culture there and you've got so much top talent in that part of the world working on these big important problems. So I love it when I hear about new companies coming in. If someone wants to continue the conversation with you, Dhiraj, what's the best way to get hold of you reaching out?

Dhiraj Khare [00:35:45]:

To me over email? I'm dhiraj@pingsafe.com so pretty simple.

Andrew Monaghan [00:35:50]:

All right, I'll put that in the show notes.

Dhiraj Khare [00:35:53]:

I'm pretty responsive on LinkedIn messages as well.

Andrew Monaghan [00:35:56]:

What I'll do is I'll put your email and your LinkedIn profile in the show notes for people if they want to get in touch. But listen, I wish you every success for this year and next, and we'd love to see you get some good success in the North American market.

Dhiraj Khare [00:36:08]:

Thank you so much. Thanks for the kind words.

Andrew Monaghan [00:36:11]:

I really enjoyed that conversation with Deerheads. It's always great to get a different perspective from people building companies and products in different parts of the world and having the advantage of doing that and seeing how they're thinking about expanding from the initial success they've had into the rest of the world. Three takeaways for me. One is just that idea of being able to start in India. That's a market that maybe we devalue too much in the Western world, right? They've literally got multinationals based out of the sophisticated It organizations based out of there, as he says, 102 unicorns right now, based out of India. What a great place in which to work and build your company and test your product and get feedback without having to enter the bare right of being in Western Europe or in North America. Markets, unique events. You're doing that, it counts for something. No doubt. When Safe expands into North America, there'd be some people that discount maybe the fact that they've built it in India. I think that's a mistake. I think sophisticated buyers will recognize that 100 plus customers, all those reviews actually count for something. And it's worth looking at what they're doing and why they're getting so much success. The second takeaway for me was Deerhudge went in as a senior person. He went in as the future leader of sales, but he was the first person in sales that the CEO hired to bring in. And that's a great model to work with. There are different ways to start selling, and some people like to bring in an SDR to support the CEO. Some people think a couple of AES might be the way to go. I think if you can find that person who truly is the roll-up-the-sleeve sort of person, and not trying to empire a build from day one, and has the ability to really get in there and sell the stuff and learn, I think it's so valuable. And that's what he was able to do. Being the salesperson, being at the forefront of winning all those clients is going to set them up for success. Set Deerhead up for success in terms of how he builds the team going forward. I really love that. And he was able to build a playbook that enabled them to hire more people. I think, again, one of the mistakes I've seen people make is CEO hires a couple of junior people, either AES or SDRs, in that type of role to come in. Those people, I'm sure they're good at what they do, but building playbooks and having the learning mentality is not often what their skill set is, whereas if you bring someone in more senior, they're able to have that kind of wider view and understand what the playbook really needs to be and the importance of it. So, good takeaway from there. And the third thing is, I think a lot of people claim that obviously, you want to have the long-term success of customers, that's what's going to get the renewals, all the rest of it, but it really feels like it's ping safe. They're doubling down, tripling down on doing the work to understand their customers, understand what's working, and what's not working, and therefore figuring out what they need to adjust the roadmap to make long-term success and customers a key part of that. So these are great takeaways from me and I hope you have yours too. And I wish the team, every success and a big safe move forward.