The following interview is a conversation we had with Edward Wu, CEO & Founder of Dropzone AI, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI SOC Analysts.
Brett
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Category Visionaries. Today we’re speaking with Edward Wu, CEO & Founder of Dropzone AI, a next generation cybersecurity platform that’s raised over 20 million in funding. Edward, how’s it going today?
Edward Wu
I’m good. Thank you for having me.
Brett
No problem. I’m super excited and I’d love to just jump right in. Talk to us. What are you building today?
Edward Wu
Yeah, so at Dropzone AI, we are building AI security analysts. So we’re leveraging the advancements in generative AI to replicate the thought process and techniques of human cybersecurity analysts.
Brett
As I understand it in the SoC, a lot of it’s painful manual work. Is that a fair understanding?
Edward Wu
Yes. You can think of a SoC kind of like, to some extent, a police department in the cyberspace, similar to police departments in large us cities for soCs, most of them are overwhelmed by the number of security alerts that the security analysts have to investigate each and every day.
Brett
What’s going to happen to all of those? Is it maybe like level one analyst in the SoC, what’s going to happen to them? Do they get moved into a different level of security or a different role in security? What happens to all the security analysts out there?
Edward Wu
Yeah. So at this moment, there’s a recent survey that shows the world needs. Around the world in aggregate, has around 10 million cybersecurity job openings. But the world talent pool around cybersecurity is only 6 million. So there are a 4 million talent shortage in cybersecurity alone. So our vision with our technology is by offloading the voluminous, repetitive analytical work and a tier one work to our AI system as the human cyber defenders and the human SoC analysts get to focus only the real threats as well as critical projects.
Brett
Take us back to February 2023, when you were founding the company. What was it about this problem of bringing autonomous technology to the SoC? What was it about this problem and this solution and this company that made you say, yep, that’s it. I’m going to go build a company around this.
Edward Wu
Yeah. So, February 2023. So before funding Dropzone AI, I was a senior principal scientist at another cybersecurity startup called Actual Hub networks. So I was there for eight years, and I built actual Hub’s AI, ML and detection product from scratch. And during my eight years, I essentially was building technology that generates security alerts for the SoC teams to look at. So over that time, I was able to work with a lot of soCs. It really came away with the realization that most socs are already struggling to properly investigate all these security alerts they are receiving. So instead of adding and generating more security alerts for us to investigate, I decided to switch sides and solve this opportunity to build technology that’s specialized, easy processing of security alerts.
Brett
How did you land your first paying customers? What was that like? Obviously, every founder that’s listening in knows that can be difficult to get those first paying customers across the line. What was that like for you, and what did you learn from that experience?
Edward Wu
Yeah, I would say for us, our first paying customer was also our first POC. So I do think a lot of times it feels a little bit like matchmaking, where obviously in the early days the technology is immature, the team is small, and I think for us, were able to identify our first POC and then data first paying customer by essentially looking for practitioners in the cybersecurity space who are early adopters, the people who to some extent have almost as much conviction and kind of trust and faith in where the technology can ultimately deliver.
Brett
As I was preparing for this interview, I spent some time on your website, and I have to say that the messaging is very clear. It’s very crisp. Now, when I look at your background, and as you were talking there, you didn’t say anything about a marketing background or a go to market background. So talk to us about what that was like for you, learning marketing, and then talk to us about how you got your messaging and all of that. So crisp and so clear.
Edward Wu
Thank you. I appreciate you liking our messaging. For me. Yes, I don’t have a marketing background. I’m a product and software developer. However, during my time at actual hub, I actually worked with marketing extensively, trying to help position us correctly, say the correct things and be precise and not undersell, but also simultaneously not oversell the technology. Cybersecurity is a very interesting space with regards to marketing because the technologies are pretty sophisticated and oftentimes it’s difficult to actually evaluate the product. And because of that, in cybersecurity there are a lot of vendors that take advantage of the fact are those factors and really sell fud.
Edward Wu
So for me, one thing I have done, a practice I have been doing for many years, is I do spend a lot of time going to easy large industry expos and trade shows, spend time actually going through the booths and hear everybodys pitches. I found those industry expos to be a great opportunity to get a condensed shot of the pictures from 20 or 50 different vendors. And by doing that, I think it helps me to build a subconscious sense of what kind of pictures are good and what kind of pictures are bad. Because if you get 50 pictures in a single day, I think most people intuitively can figure out, oh, I like that one better versus this.
Edward Wu
So that’s one exercise I’ve done for many years that I think helped me to calibrate how to accurately present our technology and how to precisely message our value proposition without just become selling fud.
Brett
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Brett
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Brett
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Brett
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Brett
Launching your own podcast, visit Front Lines IO Slash podcast. Now back today’s episode. I’ve been going to RSA and Black hat for the past five years or so, and whenever I’m there and I’m walking around, I just think, wow, everyone seems to be kind of saying the same thing. And I just know it’s very difficult in cybersecurity to really stand out and rise above the noise. What are you seeing that works? How are you rising above all that noise? Apart from having very crisp and very clear messaging?
Edward Wu
Yeah, good question. I would say two things. One is being very precise on what we can actually do. I think one big challenge with cybersecurity messaging overall is you can say subconscious bias or tendency for vendors to say essential to message essentially by us, and you will be safe. Most practitioners know thats not the truth. So being precise on what we can actually deliver and what we cannot, I think thats very important. And then another component specific for Dropzone AI is we are building in public and we have been very transparent. For example, we are the only vendor in our market, large or small, that has a publicly facing test drive our website. And that’s ungated, where anybody on the Internet can try and place with our technology. In addition to that, our website, we have a dozen of different interactive product demos.
Edward Wu
Again, that’s ungated, where everybody can see how our technology works in different real world scenarios. And I found that being transparent and not hide the technology behind closed door demos really help us to build credibility and allow our buyers. As you know, modern buyers do a lot more research than before they even reach out.
Brett
Who are you primarily marketing to then? Is it like the director of security operations? Is it the CISO? Who are you trying to really speak to?
Edward Wu
Yeah, for us, I would say we’re primarily targeting the director, VP and CISO level. Obviously everybody wants to talk to the CISO. At the same time, obviously, CISO are oftentimes very overwhelmed by the vendor outreach and messaging. For us primarily we focus on the VPN director, somebody who can see the big picture and can have interests and affinity to testing out new technologies to help the operation to move the needle while simultaneously is closer to the day to day, will understand the pain points of people doing the tier one work, as well as the difficulty in finding enough people to thoroughly investigate 100% of the security alerts.
Brett
When it comes to your market category, how do you think about the market category that you’re in? Is this a category, croatian play where you’re creating a completely new category?
Edward Wu
Yeah, I do think we are creating a category kind of similar to, if were to zoom out, what we are building at Dropzone AI is part of the bigger tectonic shift or the tectonic wave of AI insert job role here. So AI software developer, AI SDR, AI customer support, and I think similar to all of those, there are no existing market segments, no product segments that directly competes with the number of entry level roles in those verticals. So for us, AI security analyst is a new category. And most people, you know, most security practitioners don’t know it’s possible and they have never heard of it.
Brett
What are you doing to educate the market so that they’re aware that the solution exists? And I think most importantly, they trust it. How do you get people to trust something that’s so new, that’s so different?
Edward Wu
Yeah, I think that’s steply, the billion dollar. We’re still trying to figure out ourselves. However, we have seen a number of factors at play. So part of it is it’s kind of a little bit similar to autonomous driving. There is a chicken and egg problem because if nobody tries it, then nobody can get reviews about it, about the technology and then see late maturity or the earlier maturity will not be able to building enough confidence to buy it. So for us, a big part of building trust is identifying early adopters. So we actually work with them to mature our technology. And during that, we are also building trust with our early adopters and turning our early adopters into early advocates. Because the technology in the vacuum, every vendor, at least in cybersecurity, all claims the product is perfect.
Edward Wu
Again, that’s far from the reality, and that’s where customer needs third party industry validation. And also the product being transparent are realistically what they can and cannot do today make a big difference.
Brett
As I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over 20 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Edward Wu
That’s a good question. For us, our fundraising is a little bit unique, that both of our rounds were preemptive, so we actually didn’t have to go out there and pitch 50 investors in order to get the investment. So our experience is definitely pretty unique and biased. But in my mind, the best time to raise money is when you don’t need it. And this is where to some extent, by focusing on building the technology, making sure our early adopters are happy, and because for us, we are working in the intersection of the two largest tailwinds in the tech industry, which are Genai and cybersecurity. By focusing on the technology, it kind of allowed the right investors to find us naturally.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future, what’s the big picture vision look like?
Edward Wu
Yeah, so for Dropzone AI, our vision is if we look at cyber defense today, it’s clear that human cyber defenders are losing. If we look at the number of attacks, the intensity of the attacks, and that’s also when we know attackers today are not yet fully utilizing, see, newer technologies like generative AI, it’s clear that human cyber defenders alone are insufficient to protect our shared digital future. And this is where our vision is, for Dropzone AI to be the leader in the space where we are leveraging generative AI to build AI systems that can augment and reinforce and force multiply the cyber. Human cyber defenders.
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision. Final question, or I guess not really a question, but if there’s any founders that are listening in, where should they go? Where can they follow more with what you’re building your journey, where should they go?
Edward Wu
Yeah, so definitely check us out at our website, which is Dropzone AI. Yeah, and as I mentioned, we do have a public test drive, so if you’re interested, definitely feel free to check it out and let us know if you think, you know, if our AI security analyst is very good or maybe it makes some mistakes.
Brett
Amazing. Edward, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
Edward Wu
Thank you.
Brett
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