We only take on 4 clients per month. Join our October cohort. 1 spot left.
Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech’s most innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Mike Long, CEO and Founder of Kosli, a DevOps tool that automates the collection of evidence for compliance and auditing, and has raised $3.5 million in funding.
Key topics discussed in this episode:
While companies in regulated sectors often believe they have unique compliance challenges, Mike found that the underlying problems were remarkably similar. By focusing on these common pain points, such as the need for process adherence and audit readiness, founders can develop solutions with broad applicability and appeal.
In industries dominated by conservative and traditional approaches, adopting a colorful, fun, and unconventional brand identity can help you stand out and attract attention. Don't be afraid to challenge the status quo and inject some personality into your marketing and design.
Mike identified a lack of dedicated communities and events for professionals working on compliance and security issues within DevOps. By taking the initiative to foster these communities, even in the absence of established conferences or forums, founders can position themselves as thought leaders and gather valuable insights and feedback.
While the pressure to secure funding can be intense, especially in a challenging economic climate, it's crucial to take the time to find investors who genuinely understand and support your vision. Rushing into a relationship with the wrong investors can lead to misaligned expectations and strategic missteps down the road.
Despite the hype around other emerging tech hubs, Silicon Valley remains unparalleled in terms of the concentration of experienced professionals, the ease of face-to-face networking, and the culture of paying it forward. Founders who can tap into this ecosystem, even if it means relocating, can benefit from accelerated learning, serendipitous connections, and access to a deep pool of talent and resources.
CEO and Co-Founder of Meroxa
DeVaris Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of Meroxa: Over $19 Million Raised to Empower Engineering Teams with Better Stream Processing
CEO of InfluxData
Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Leading Time Series Provider
CEO & Founder of Unqork
Gary Hoberman, CEO & Founder of Unqork: Over $400 Million Raised to Pioneer the Codeless as a Service (CaaS) Category
CEO and Co-Founder of Zenity
Ben Kliger, CEO and Co-Founder of Zenity: $21.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Security and Governance for AI, Low-Code, and No-Code Development
CEO of Verica
Casey Rosenthal, CEO of Verica: $17 Million Raised to Build the Future of Chaos Engineering
CEO of PostHog
James Hawkins, CEO of PostHog: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Product Analytics
CEO and Co-Founder of Steadybit
Benjamin Wilms, CEO and Co-Founder of Steadybit: $7.8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Chaos Engineering
CEO of Notifi
Paul Kim, CEO of Notifi: $12 Million raised to Build the Future of Web3 Communication Infrastructure
CEO and Co-founder of Unleash
Egil Østhus, CEO of Unleash: $16.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Feature Management
CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed
Jacob Moshenko, CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed: $15.9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization Infrastructure
Co-Founder & CEO of Loft Labs
Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft Labs: $5 Million Raised to Build the Virtual Kubernetes Category
CEO & Founder of Parallel Domain
Kevin McNamara, CEO & Founder of Parallel Domain: $44 Million Raised to Power the Future of Autonomy
Founder and CEO of Sedai
Suresh Mathew, Founder and CEO of Sedai: $18 Million Raised to Automate Cloud Management for Critical Decisions
CEO and Founder of Warp
Zach Lloyd, CEO and Founder of Warp: $70 Million Raised to Build a Better Terminal
Co-Founder of Einblick
Tim Kraska, Co-Founder of Einblick: $6M Raised to Build the Visual Data Computing Category
CEO and Founder of Kraftful
Yana Welinder, CEO and Founder of Kraftful: Over $3 Million Raised to Help Product Builders Create Better Products and Communities
CEO and Co-Founder of Airplane
Ravi Parikh, CEO and Co-Founder of Airplane: Over $40 Million Raised to Build Better Developer Infrastructure For Internal Tooling
Co-Founder and CEO of Launchable
Harpreet Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of Launchable: Over $12 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Testing
CEO and Founder of Smallstep
Mike Malone, CEO and Founder of Smallstep: $26 Million Raised to Build the Future of Certificate Lifecycle Management For DevOps
CEO and Founder of Svix
Tom Hacohen, CEO and Founder of Svix: $10.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Webhooks
CEO of Bardeen
Pascal Weinberger, CEO of Bardeen: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of No-Code Automation
Co-Founder and CEO of CommandBar
James Evans, Co-Founder and CEO of CommandBar: $24 Million Raised to Build the Leading AI-Powered User Assistance Platform
CEO and Co-Founder of Zeet.co
Johnny Dallas, CEO & Co-Founder of Zeet.co: $6M Raised to Power the Future of CI/CD & Deployment
CEO and Founder of Ngrok
Alan Shreve, CEO and Founder of Ngrok: $50 Million Raised to Help Devs Deploy SItes, Services, and Apps
Founder & CEO of Mobot
Eden Full Goh, Founder & CEO of Mobot: Over $17 Million Raised to Power the Future of Mobile App Testing
CEO and Founder of IndyKite
Lasse Andresen, CEO and Founder of IndyKite: $10 Million Raised to Empower Teams to Move Beyond Legacy Identity and Access Management
CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna
Ayal Yogev, CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna: $42 Million to Build The Future of Confidential Computing
David Siegel of Glide
David Siegel, CEO of Glide: Over $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of No-Code Application Development
CEO and Co-Founder of Vimcal
John Li, CEO & Co-Founder of Vimcal: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Calendar Productivity
CEO of Macrometa
Chetan Venkatesh, CEO of Macrometa: $38 Million raised to Build the Hyper Distributed Cloud for the Next Generation of Applications
CEO of Ably Realtime
Matthew O’Riordan, CEO of Ably Realtime: Over $82 Million Raised to Build the Future of Realtime Experience Infrastructure
CEO and Co-Founder of Flox
Ron Efroni, CEO & Co-Founder of Flox: $28 Million Raised to Empower Developers with Reproducible Environments That Span the Enterprise SDLC
CEO and Founder of Formation
Sophie Novati, CEO and Founder of Formation: $9 Million Raised to Build a Virtual Fellowship Program for Software Engineers
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter
Andrew Wolfe, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter: $7 Million Raised to Power the Future of Process Mining
CEO of Aiden
Joshua Aaron, CEO Aiden, $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Packaging and Deployment
Co-Founder and CPO of Spacelift
Marcin Wyszynski, Co-Founder and CPO of Spacelift: Over $22 Million Raised to Build the Future of IaC Management
Co-Founder & CEO of Allstacks
Hersh Tapadia, CEO of Allstacks: $16 Million Raised to Build the Value Stream Intelligence Category
Co-Founder of Graphite
Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder of Graphite: $22.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Code Reviews
CEO & Founder of Formic
Saman Farid, CEO & Founder of Formic: $60 Million Raised to Build the Future of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS)
CEO of Fermyon
Matt Butcher, CEO of Fermyon: $26 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly
Co-founder & CEO of Moesif
Derric Gilling, CEO of Moesif: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of API Analytics
CMO of Leadr
Holly Tate, CMO of Leadr: Building the Future of People Development Platforms
Co-Founders of Cortex
Anish Dhar and Ganesh Datta, Co-Founders of Cortex: Over $52 Million Raised to Improve Developer Productivity
CEO and Co-Founder of LinearB
Ori Keren, CEO and Co-Founder of LinearB: Over $70 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Delivery Management
Founder and CEO of Duro Labs
Michael Corr, CEO of Duro Labs: $4 Million Raised to Power the Future of Hardware Engineering
CEO and Founder of Netdata
Costa Tsaousis, CEO and Founder of Netdata: Over $30 Million Raised to Power the Future of Infrastructure Monitoring
CEO and Co-Founder of AppDome
Tom Tovar, CEO and Co-Founder of AppDome: Over $26 Million Raised to Build the Future of Mobile App Security
CEO and Founder of Esper
Yadhu Gopalan, CEO and Founder of Esper: $100 Million Raised to Build the Future of Android Device Management
CEO of Socket Supply
Paolo Fragomeni, CEO of Socket Supply: $3.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of P2P Computing
CEO of Qovery
Romaric Philogene, CEO of Qovery: $4 Million Raised to Help You Deploy Your Apps on AWS in Seconds
Co-Founder and CEO of Xano
Prakash Chandran, Co-Founder and CEO of Xano: $5.4 Million Raised to Build the Next Generation of No-Code Backend Development
CEO & Co-Founder of Aserto
Omri Gazitt, CEO & Co-Founder at Aserto: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization
Co-Founder & CEO of Mage
Tommy Dang, CEO of Mage: $6.3 Million Raised to Build a Modern Replacement For Airflow
Co-Founder, CPO & CEO of Locofy.ai
Honey Mittal, CEO of Locofy.ai: $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Frontend Development
Co-Founder of Costimize
Stoyan Zulyamsky, Co-Founder of Costimize: $5 Million Raised to Revolutionize Cloud Finance Management
CTO of Merge
Gil Feig, CTO of Merge: $75 Million Raised to Help B2B Companies Build Customer-Facing Integrations via It’s Unified API Platform
CEO and Co-Founder of RisingWave
Yingjun Wu, CEO and Co-Founder of RisingWave Labs: $40 Million Raised to Make Stream Processing Simple, Affordable, and Accessible
CEO and Founder of Octopus Deploy
Paul Stovell, CEO and Founder of Octopus Deploy: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Future of Deployment Automation
CEO of Chronosphere
Martin Mao, CEO of Chronosphere: $250 Million Raised to Build the Future of Observability
CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth
Dylan Etkin, CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth: $25 Million Raised to Make Engineering Teams More Efficient
CEO of Coder
Robert Whiteley, CEO of Coder: $85 Million Raised to Power the Future of Developer Productivity
Founder and CEO of Okteto
Ramiro Berrelleza, CEO of Okteto: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Development
CEO and Founder of Cosmonic
Liam Randall, CEO and Founder of Cosmonic: $8.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly