Startup means struggle and that means fun. There have been tough times and these were the most rewarding ones in terms of learning. Even if there were moments of doubt, they were very brief and never overshadowed the drive to solve the problem.
When I started I had no idea how difficult this journey was going to be. I was inexperienced. And that helped a lot. Sometimes being inexperienced is good. We wanted to change the world. We dreamt of doing something which nobody had done before. I’m happy that we achieved it in the world of Ethical Hacking.
While conducting an ethical hacking exercise to determine the security loopholes, we had a moment of truth and we asked ourselves - Once we find a way to break in, do we try as hard as before to find all the other possible ways to break in? It’s obvious that as humans we tend to become complacent and the mental incentive to find all the ways to penetrate diminishes. So ethical hacking fundamentally does not provide the complete picture of all the flaws and hence does not solve the complete problem.
To overcome this barrier related to basic human instinct, we explored the usage of Artificial Intelligence to simulate all multi-stage attack possibilities. It’s a complex computer science problem and once we solved it we got a lot of recognition from organizations like Intel, University of California Berkeley, Nasscom, etc. We were very happy but after some time we had our second moment of truth – we realized that we were getting more awards than business. So we asked ourselves: why?
After some deep analysis we realized that it is extremely difficult for an organization to hire good security persons and it is more difficult to retain them; hence, they don’t have enough people to run the tool. We felt that a penetration testing service which can be used anytime and anywhere is the need of the day. We decided to leave the software approach and adopted the emerging Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. Thus, the world’s first On Demand Penetration Testing was born!
Funding for the idea
When Nilanjan and I started iViZ, I was still at IIT. I had no money and also decided not to apply for placement. At that time, I had a website to promote Indian art and luckily, along with other painters’, some of my paintings got sold and I had build a cash reserve of 20K. That was the bootstrapping period. Then we raised a small amount of Angel money from one of our customers – eRevmax. Later we raised USD 4M from IDG Ventures as series A.
How to stay relevant and avoid business disruption
iViZ just got acquired by US-based Cigital Inc., one of the largest application security testing providers in the world. Our short term focus is to utilize the common synergies and successfully integrate. By leveraging our cloud-based technology we recently launched a solution called “3D Application Security Testing”. For the first time in the world, we are launching a subscription using which customers can test unlimited number of applications, unlimited number of times at a flat fee. Our competition has licenses tied to specific applications, which reduces flexibility, increases cost, and raises procurement overhead since many customers cannot anticipate future application trends. We believe our solution is disruptive.
Policies that may have helped or hindered along the way
Interestingly, we have built iViZ without feeling the presence of the government or policies either helping or creating barrier directly. I believe one of the major forces that can help India to drive forward is encouraging new companies that can create non-linear growth. If the government has to facilitate that, then it should create new rules for startups. We do not treat the kids at home in the same manner as adults. Kids need nurturing. Similarly, the government can do various things like creating new policies for startups to increase ease of running business, make friendly taxation laws, etc. Singapore and various other countries are wooing Indian entrepreneurs right now. After Brain Drain, I’m afraid there may be an “Entrepreneurship Drain” if the government doesn’t take appropriate steps.
Mentors & startup advisors
I believe entrepreneurship is about continuous learning. I am fortunate that there are a lot of individuals who inspired me and also helped me throughout the journey, like DD Ganguly, founder of Dimdim, Arjun Malhotra, founder of HCL, and many others. Sudhir Sethi from IDG ventures, who had been my board member, also played a big role.
Office location and geography go a long way in such businesses. We made a shift to Bangalore which helped us. Since 70% of our business is international, I believe that the key management including me should have moved to USA to facilitate faster growth.
Our cheat-sheets…
I believe that the ability to continuously question yourself and your ideas is very important. It is very important not to get married to an Idea. Ideas don’t matter. It is the problem that matters. If you have to get married to anything then get married to a “great problem”. Do whatever it takes to solve the problem. Choose or discard ideas based on whether it works or not. The art is the ability to learn iteratively in a very fast manner. Everybody will make mistakes. The goal is not to minimize mistakes but to maximize learning and execute.
What worked for us…
The tipping point was to figure out a few innovations in our product which enabled us to solve some real customer problems. Our offering of unlimited testing at a fixed fee reduced costs for customers. Our offering of “Zero False Positive” and “Business Logic Testing with 100% Threat Class Coverage” helped our customers to get such quality results which automated tools could not match. Once we understood this, it was a matter of productizing our sales process and creating a unified marketing communication.
For us tracking business trends is more than tracking business. We need to track what is happening in the world of hackers. We participate in major technology and hacking conferences. We read reports and continuously monitor what’s happening in the world. Today information is in abundance. We have the problem of plenty. The trick is finding the needle in the haystack.
What keeps us motivated…
The most important learning for me was that entrepreneurship is a journey, not a goal. The moment I realized this it helped me to relish my journey a lot more. I believe that wanting something very badly can come in the way of happiness. Is there anybody who could achieve the top and always stay there? Too much of attachment with the goal is going to create misery while achieving it, or when you lose it to somebody else later. If you relish the journey, then you can be way happier. If you wake up every morning with the excitement of enjoying the journey and learning something new then nothing can come in the way of your motivation.
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