Dasera’s Path to Product-Market Fit: How Listening to Design Partners Transformed an Insider Threat Tool into a Comprehensive Data Security Platform

Discover how Dasera evolved from a SQL query inspection tool to a comprehensive data security platform by listening to early customers and design partners, transforming their product-market fit strategy.

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Dasera’s Path to Product-Market Fit: How Listening to Design Partners Transformed an Insider Threat Tool into a Comprehensive Data Security Platform

Dasera’s Path to Product-Market Fit: How Listening to Design Partners Transformed an Insider Threat Tool into a Comprehensive Data Security Platform

In early 2019, while data breaches were already making headlines, most companies still lacked a coherent data security strategy. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Dasera founder Ani Chaudhuri revealed how his team’s willingness to evolve their product vision in response to customer feedback led to a dramatic transformation of their platform.

The Initial Vision

“The first time when we started, we’re thinking about the Sera… we were thinking that it would be an insider threat tool,” Ani shares. The original concept focused on SQL query inspection, aiming to identify risks from internal data access. But as they began engaging with potential customers, a more complex picture emerged.

The Six-Month Discovery

Instead of rushing to build, Dasera spent their first six months in intensive customer discovery. “Noah and I kind of, in the first six months, what we did was we interviewed a lot of people, trying to understand the problem and defining it very tightly,” Ani explains. This period proved crucial in understanding the broader context of data security challenges.

The COVID Catalyst

Just as they were gaining momentum, the pandemic hit. “Within, I think, four months of the company’s founding Covid hit,” Ani recalls. “And it was almost like the world had come to a standstill in many aspects.” But rather than paralysis, this period enabled deeper reflection on their product direction.

The Evolution Through Customer Feedback

By listening to their design partners, a pattern emerged. Organizations weren’t just struggling with insider threats – they needed a comprehensive approach to data security. This led to a fundamental expansion of their platform’s capabilities.

“We kind of evolved the product to a point where we not only look at insider threat, but the entire data lifecycle,” Ani explains. The platform grew to handle “structured, semi structured, unstructured and application data in the cloud and on prem, which is way, way larger than what we thought the company would be.”

Four Questions that Changed Everything

Through these interactions, Dasera identified four fundamental questions that every organization needed to answer:

  • Where is my data?
  • What data do I have?
  • Who has access to it?
  • What risk are they introducing when they’re interacting with that data?

This framework became the foundation for their expanded platform vision.

From Design Partners to Paying Customers

The transition from feedback to revenue began in late 2021. “We thought we were ready was in 2021, mid to late 2021. And so went from those people who were, I would say design partners, a couple of them became our first paying customers,” Ani shares.

The Market Education Challenge

Even with a superior product, Dasera faced the challenge of market readiness. “Last year was a year where people were educating themselves about data security,” Ani explains. “You would be doing POCs, you would be meeting a lot of people and they would say, this is something important, but not for now. We’ll budget for it next year.”

This patience in market development is now paying off, with the company projecting “five to ten x growth this year.” The key was understanding that market creation is as important as product creation.

Lessons for Founders

Dasera’s journey offers several crucial lessons for founders navigating product-market fit:

  1. Start with intense customer discovery before building
  2. Let early customer feedback expand your vision when warranted
  3. Convert design partners into paying customers
  4. Be patient with market education in emerging categories
  5. Build for where the market is going, not just where it is

For founders building in emerging categories, Dasera’s evolution from a focused tool to a comprehensive platform demonstrates the value of staying close to customer needs while maintaining the patience to let the market mature. As Ani summarizes, you can have the best product and go-to-market motion, “but if the market is not ready, it’s not ready.”

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