The following interview is a conversation we had with Marina Segal, CEO of Tamnoon, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Security
Marina Segal
Thank you for having me, Brett.
Brett
Not a problem. Super excited for this conversation. I’d love to begin with talking a little bit about your background. So I see that you were in the IDF. Whenever I have founders on who are in the IDF, I like to ask them, what was it like? What did you learn from that experience?
Marina Segal
IDF was me being in Israel for my first three years after immigrating to Israel from Ukraine. First of all, it teached me a new language because it was really my first and true life experience with speaking to people who were not my classmates. I learned that you can be from anywhere in the country. It doesn’t matter who you are, what country you’re coming from, whether you are a man or a woman. You can be whatever you need to be for your army service. And that was actually something that you then realized that this is how the country operates. I was never feeling anything in terms of being a minority in every place in the countries. And I see huge influence on that has to do with everybody doing the army service together, irrespective of who you are.
Marina Segal
I am not sharing security related background from the IDF, even though I would want to be in the IDF intelligence versus for my security background. I’m coming from a very niche service, serving as an ISO office, training different people in the army service who needed to do an ISO training. So the only thing I took to my professional career is that compliance related flavor and frameworks that come from ISO. But I took much more than that on my personal level.
Brett
What year did you move to the US?
Marina Segal
I moved to the US in 2014. So I was way after the army service. I was working in Deloitte. I actually moved to Canada first, and then I moved to us.
Brett
What was going on inside your mind when you landed in the US?
Marina Segal
Oh my God. Those people, they don’t share what they think, and I need to figure out in between the lines, and it’s so hard. That was my kind of a struggle in the jobs that I took in the beginning in the United States. I actually needed to learn from scratch on how to write emails so I don’t offend anyone with my answers. And I’m still learning. I think I’m getting better at that after ten years in the United States. And I think the part of the reasons I got into that startup journey was actually me trying to be closer to israeli community. And that’s how I got introduced to many different founders from the community and got into the cloud security at the first place.
Brett
What was it about cloud security that first got your attention? And then what is it about cloud security that’s maintained your attention because you’ve spent, what, the last ten or 15 years on security?
Marina Segal
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think since I finished my degree, my passion was around taking processes, optimizing them, and bringing technology into day to day tasks of people. And that’s how I started with Deloitte. I was part of the risk management practice, helping with compliance assessments, PCI audits, and different types of implementations in the field. My desire was always to stop doing manual work that can be automated and use tools and solutions for that. And my first exposure to I wasn’t security forever, but cloud security is where I really got passionate about the industry. That happened when I was at credit karma back then, were moving our infrastructure to the cloud and I was looking for different solutions, and one of the solutions was the startup that I joined and we used domain security.
Marina Segal
And that began my kind of a journey into the cloud security space.
Brett
When it comes to leaders that inspire you, what leader has inspired you the most, would you say?
Marina Segal
I thought about this question a lot. I think the huge influence on me had my grandma had, and she was real inspiration because she was that woman who had a family and she needed to run an entire manufacturing, I guess, department with many people with huge responsibility. And she was doing that, juggling life and work. And I think that was always, you would talk to her and you would feel that it’s piece of cake to do that, and it’s nothing that complicated. And I think I took a lot from that approach into my professional experience. I think that approach, I hear that a lot about myself, where people tell me that you always think that everything can be done, and then I think that comes from there.
Marina Segal
Another leader that has huge influence on me was a partner at Deloitte and she was a true admiration in terms of the way she was able to take super stressful situation and make it feel like everything will be fine and find the ways to manage people at the level without any kind of a hierarchical structure. You didn’t feel that you are reporting to her when you would work with her. It felt like here. And I think that those two people, before even I started my career with my grandma and in very early beginning of my career had a huge influence.
Brett
That’s amazing. Let’s switch gears now. Let’s dive a bit deeper into the company. So when it comes to the problem that Tim Newton solves, how do you define the problem?
Marina Segal
So in cloud security space, there is an amazing amount of technology and inspiring companies who are providing visibility and detection solutions and then do it really well. This whole industry is just blooming. And then you have a lot of tools like we orcap, Prisma, cloud dominant security and others generating billions of dollars on products in cloud security space. And I think that the problem of detection and visibility is really now we can say that we know how to solve it. What Timnon is focused on is this next kind of a logical step after the visibility and detection is solved, and this is the remediation and prevention, how are we moving from the level of maturity where we are at now? Okay, we know how to detect something in the cloud into the mode of.
Marina Segal
We know how to remediate and prevent at the same level and scalability. And this is a much more complex problem, in my opinion, because it wouldn’t cost you to detect one more thing, but it may cost you a lot of money to remediate and prevent it if you are not solving it the right way.
Brett
What does Tamnoon mean?
Marina Segal
Tamnoon is a hebrew word. So this word means octopus in Hebrew. And the story behind it was when Idan, my Co-Founder, and I, were looking for domains or names to call our startup, which was in very early days, were looking for something not straightforward in terms of names. We wanted to have some abstract definition. So we found that animal or fruit or anything that is not related directly to the industry can be that thing. And then we just talked to our kids, and my kid back then, he was really into undersea animals. And we described what Tamnoon is going to be. And we said that Tamnoon needs to be intelligent, it needs to involve many different processes and solutions, and it needs to. To be something that can scale be, and that’s an octopus.
Marina Segal
And he went away so that’s how we called our company, Tamdun.
Brett
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Brett
Now back today’s episode. What did the first 90, or maybe let’s say six months, what did the first six months look like for Tamine?
Marina Segal
First six months, they were very different. First three months were very different from the second three months. First three months were we incorporated the company I was busy was fundraising. In between, were doing a lot of fun stuff, such as first wireframes for the product, first design partnership engagements with our initial customers and adopters. And that was us building that, really from scratch. We were providing service even before we had any product built. The next three months were actually us starting to deploy very tiny product, and it had basically one dashboard and an integration screen and speak to more and more customers. So I think the second three months were really busy on customers, really busy with endless calls to validate and define the product roadmap, the company roadmap and make sure that we are moving into the right direction.
Brett
If you reflect on those first paying customers that you were able to land, how did you pull it off and what did you learn from that experience and that journey?
Marina Segal
So the first customers that are actually still our really dear advocates and great customers, first of all, they came through connections that I would never think that I would be connected to after many years of me not being in touch with. And what I learned is that you need to be able to just ask anyone in your network a question, whether they want to hear your story or not, and you would be surprised how many people are open and are curious about the stuff that you are building. And so one of those first customers who I’m talking about, he worked with me in one of the ad hoc projects that I was there for a month, and we never been in touch since then.
Marina Segal
And then I just, were connected on LinkedIn, and I just reached out and asked if he wants to listen to what we are building. And he is now benefiting with the entire cloud security journey from our engagement. Another customer I’ve met at one of the webinar sessions of our partners and I just reached out. So I think learning wise, don’t be shy, reach out to everybody and you would be surprised how curious people are.
Brett
How do you define your marketing philosophy and your approach to marketing? As I was spending time on your website before this interview, I noticed it looks a little different. It doesn’t look the same as all the other cybersecurity sites out there.
Marina Segal
I think that cybersecurity these days is very crowded space and the industry is really evolving. And there are a lot of startups that even I’m sometimes looking at different startups and they all look blended to me. And I may not remember the names or the company product idea, but I do remember the visuals a lot. So for me, it was important to stand out. That’s why the green colors, that’s why we are very positive in our language. And it’s for a reason. First, because we want to stand out, and second is because we are managed cloud security. So we actually, instead of providing yet another solution or yet another problem that CISO or the security team will need to manage, we are coming to solve and manage those tools for them. And that’s why we want to be positive.
Marina Segal
We are in the greens, we are solving problems. We are not adding any overhead on the companies. We are actually their trusted advisor. That’s why we have humans on our website, to kind of show that we are actually the extension of your team and not the overhead that your team.
Brett
Will need to manage when it comes to your market. Category. Is the category CSPM or what is the category?
Marina Segal
We are on the crossroads between the MDRs and Cnaps. I think we are merging two categories into one. On the one hand we are providing managed CNAP, and on the other hand, it’s a solution that involves experts. So we basically will be. If I’m talking about which category I’m falling into, I’m more on the managed side. Managed technologies or tech enabled managed services. You can call them MDRs in some cases. So that is the combination.
Brett
What are you doing to rise above all the noise that exists in some cybersecurity? So when I go way to. I’ve been to black hat a few times, I’ve been to RSA a few times and it kind of feels like everyone’s saying the same thing. And I just think it must be very difficult to stand out. What are you doing to stand out?
Marina Segal
We are bringing managed services to the customers. We don’t believe that technology can be managed on its own. We still need humans to operate it. The operators are definitely in high demand. And that’s our main differentiator. Aside from the technology that is obviously top notch, and we have all the buzzwords that you can think of, the CnaP, the AI, the NDR, all of this exists. But I think in the end of the day, we are there to solve the problems, and we are there to solve the problems with human centric technology. And that’s the differentiator.
Brett
As I mentioned in the intro, you’ve raised over 5 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this entire journey?
Marina Segal
I had one piece of advice. In the early days of Tamnoon, you can be either raising or not raising. And having this definition in your mind whenever you are speaking to investors is super important. And I think another kind of a guideline that I’m following a lot is I don’t want to speak to investors if I don’t need to speak to investors. What I want to do is to speak to customers and only go to investors when I’m raising, when I’m in that fundraising mode, no offense to investors, they’re all amazing. They’re all doing their job. I think for the company, for the business drivers of the company, it’s the most important thing for the CEO to be focused on the business and not on the fundraising.
Brett
Let’s imagine you’re talking to a friend and they say, Marina, I’m going to start a cybersecurity company focused on cloud security. What would be the number one piece of advice that you’d give them based on your experience building this company and just experience in the industry, find the.
Marina Segal
Right team to build it with.
Brett
How did you find the right team? What was your process like?
Marina Segal
I worked with Idan at Dom nine security, and through that experience, it really reminds me of a process of dating. You need to find that person who you want to be spending a lot of time with. And our brainstorming and ideation process and all of the interactions with Zidane were great. And we had that alignment on the principles in our kind of management styles, as well as our understanding of the tech. So I think I was lucky to have an opportunity to work with the person before starting a company together. And that goes a long way. There are a lot of challenges in the process. There are a lot of tough conversations. There are a lot of times where I wish things were different.
Marina Segal
But I think the most important thing is that we are able to solve and find ways to compromise and find the conflicts, resolution discussions to be coming to the right place. In the end of the day.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building?
Marina Segal
Our vision is very simple. We are the MdR for the synapse space. We are building that remediation and prevention process that can scale the security experts and that is where we are headed.
Brett
Amazing. Love the vision. We are up on time, so we’ll have to wrap here before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in and want to follow with your journey, where should they go?
Marina Segal
Connect with me on the LinkedIn and I’m pretty active over there and you can find me on Timnoon’s website. Just book a demo, book a meeting and I will make sure that we can connect.
Brett
Awesome. Maria, thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been a lot of fun.
Marina Segal
Brett, thank you so much for having me. Have a good day.
Brett
Take care.
Marina Segal
Bye.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast and for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you.
Brett
On the next episode.
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