How Elastiflow Identifies Infrastructure Transitions Before Markets Consolidate

How Elastiflow Identifies Infrastructure Transitions Before Markets Consolidate

The best time to enter a market isn’t when it’s emerging or when it’s mature. It’s during the messy middle—when old solutions are breaking down, new infrastructure is being adopted, but winners haven’t been crowned yet.

Most startups either arrive too early, burning capital to educate a market that isn’t ready, or too late, fighting entrenched players with unassailable advantages. The sweet spot exists in a narrow window during platform transitions when urgent pain meets available budget but category positions remain fluid.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Robert Cowart, CEO and Co-Founder of Elastiflow, explained how they identified the cloud-native infrastructure transition at exactly the right moment—late enough that organizations had acute pain, early enough that solutions hadn’t consolidated around winners.

The Signal: When Old Tools Stop Working

Elastiflow’s original positioning around network visibility put them in a crowded, mature market. They could see the problem—organizations needed better visibility into network behavior. But the timing was wrong for competing with established players.

The breakthrough came from watching infrastructure itself evolve. “What we saw was there’s a massive shift going on from traditional VM based and appliance based workloads to cloud native container and Kubernetes based workloads,” Robert observed.

This observation alone wasn’t actionable. Everyone could see Kubernetes adoption increasing. The question was: when does adoption cross the threshold from “interesting trend” to “urgent business problem that requires new solutions”?

Robert identified the inflection point: “The old way of doing things doesn’t work in these new environments.”

That single sentence captures the market timing insight. When legacy approaches break down in ways organizations can’t work around, you’ve found the window. Too early and organizations haven’t hit the breaking point yet. Too late and new solutions have already emerged and captured share.

Why Infrastructure Transitions Create Startup Opportunities

Platform shifts like the move to cloud-native infrastructure create temporary asymmetries that favor startups over incumbents. The dynamics are specific and predictable.

Incumbents have revenue tied to legacy approaches. Their installed base runs on VMs and appliances. Their product roadmaps optimize for existing customers. When infrastructure shifts, they can’t simply abandon their core—they have to bridge old and new while maintaining revenue from legacy deployments.

This creates a window where incumbents are caught between serving existing customers and building for emerging platforms. They announce Kubernetes support, but it’s often adapted from their legacy architecture rather than built native to the new paradigm.

Startups can skip the legacy altogether. No existing customers to support. No revenue tied to old approaches. No technical debt from previous architectural decisions. They can build exclusively for the new platform.

Robert articulated this advantage when explaining Elastiflow’s technical decisions: “We realized that to really effectively do observability for those types of environments, we need to build a solution that is designed from the ground up to actually run in those environments, be deployed with the same CICD, GitOps type automation tools that devops teams are used to using.”

The phrase “from the ground up” is key. This isn’t porting old software to new infrastructure—it’s rethinking the entire approach based on how the new platform actually works.

Identifying the Transition Timing

The hardest part of infrastructure transition strategy isn’t recognizing that change is happening—it’s timing entry correctly. Enter too early and the market isn’t ready. Enter too late and positions have solidified.

Several signals indicated Elastiflow’s timing was right:

First, organizations were deploying Kubernetes in production at scale. Not just experimenting in dev environments, but running business-critical workloads. This meant the pain was acute enough to justify budget for solutions.

Second, existing visibility tools were demonstrably inadequate. Robert noted the specific problem: “There’s a massive problem of lack of visibility in containerized and Kubernetes environments.” The gap wasn’t theoretical—it was creating operational issues organizations were actively trying to solve.

Third, no clear winners had emerged. The cloud-native observability space had multiple players but no dominant standard. Category positions remained fluid enough that a well-executed product could gain share.

Fourth, budget existed specifically for cloud-native tooling. Organizations weren’t asking “should we monitor Kubernetes?” They were asking “which Kubernetes monitoring solution should we buy?” The decision to spend had been made—the only question was which vendor to choose.

The Technology Timing: eBPF as Signal

One particularly tactical aspect of Elastiflow’s timing strategy involved emerging technologies like eBPF. Robert was candid about this: “eBPF is the latest, coolest buzzword that everybody wants to talk about. So being able to talk about how we use eBPF to provide that visibility definitely helps capture mindshare when we’re talking to prospects.”

Buzzwords often get dismissed as hype. But Robert’s insight reveals their strategic value: when a technology becomes a buzzword, it means buyers are actively researching and budgeting for it.

eBPF isn’t just marketing language—it’s a specific technology that solves real problems in Kubernetes environments. More importantly, it’s a technology that represents the new way of doing things versus the old way.

When prospects start asking “do you use eBPF?” in sales conversations, they’re signaling they understand the old approaches don’t work and they’re looking for solutions built on newer technology. That’s a timing signal—the market has progressed from “we need monitoring” to “we need monitoring built with modern technology stacks.”

The Risk of Being Too Early

Elastiflow’s experience with their initial security positioning illustrates the cost of mistiming. “We realized that we were probably a little bit early to that market,” Robert explained. “There was a lot of competing solutions already that were taking the oxygen out of the room.”

Being “too early” is often founder-speak for being wrong. But Robert’s framing reveals a more nuanced lesson: they weren’t wrong about the problem, they were wrong about the timing. The market had already consolidated around established players with momentum.

This is the paradox of infrastructure markets: being first doesn’t guarantee winning. Sometimes being first means educating the market while competitors copy your approach with more resources. Other times it means fighting established players who already own the space.

The lesson isn’t to avoid early markets entirely—it’s to recognize when early means “the market is forming and positions are fluid” versus “the market has formed and incumbents have won.”

The Validation Loop: Customer Pain as Confirmation

One way Elastiflow validated their timing was through direct customer feedback about pain points. Organizations weren’t asking hypothetical questions about potential Kubernetes monitoring needs. They were describing specific operational problems they were experiencing right now.

The shift from hypothetical to actual is a critical timing signal. When prospects say “we’re evaluating monitoring options for when we eventually move to Kubernetes,” you’re too early. When they say “we’re running Kubernetes in production and we can’t see what’s happening,” you’ve hit the window.

Robert’s observation captures this: “There’s a massive problem of lack of visibility in containerized and Kubernetes environments.” The word “massive” isn’t hyperbole—it’s validation that the pain is widespread and acute enough to drive purchasing decisions.

Why This Pattern Repeats

Infrastructure transitions follow predictable patterns. New platforms emerge, organizations begin adoption, existing tools prove inadequate, temporary gaps appear before new solutions consolidate.

The window for startup entry exists between “existing tools don’t work” and “new winners have emerged.” That window might last two to three years—long enough to build and gain traction, short enough that timing matters enormously.

For founders looking to apply this pattern, the key indicators are:

Organizations deploying new infrastructure in production at scale, not just experimenting. Pain from inadequate tooling is acute and creating operational problems. Budget exists specifically for solutions to those problems. No clear category winners have emerged yet. Incumbents are announcing support but shipping adapted solutions rather than native-built ones.

When all five conditions align, you’ve found the timing window.

The Strategic Commitment Required

Finding the right timing window is only valuable if you’re willing to make corresponding product commitments. Elastiflow couldn’t just claim to support Kubernetes—they had to rebuild their architecture to be genuinely cloud-native.

“We realized that to really effectively do observability for those types of environments, we need to build a solution that is designed from the ground up to actually run in those environments, be deployed with the same CICD, GitOps type automation tools that devops teams are used to using,” Robert explained.

This wasn’t incremental feature development. It was fundamental rearchitecture based on the conviction that the platform shift was real and permanent. Half-measures—adding Kubernetes support to legacy architecture—wouldn’t capture the opportunity.

The Broader Lesson About Platform Shifts

What emerges from Elastiflow’s experience is a framework for infrastructure timing: watch for platform adoption crossing from experimentation to production deployment, identify where existing tools break in the new paradigm, validate that pain is widespread enough to create urgent budget, confirm that solutions haven’t consolidated around winners, and commit to building native to the new platform rather than adapting legacy approaches.

Robert’s journey with Elastiflow demonstrates that market timing isn’t luck—it’s pattern recognition. The cloud-native transition created a predictable opportunity window. Elastiflow entered that window at the right moment, built the right solution for it, and positioned themselves to capture share before positions solidified.

For founders navigating infrastructure markets, the lesson is clear: being first or being best matters less than being positioned correctly when old solutions stop working and new ones haven’t won yet. That’s the window. Missing it means fighting either indifference or entrenchment. Catching it means competing in a market ready for solutions but not yet locked into them.