5 Go-to-Market Lessons from Cranium’s Journey in Building an AI Security Category

Sometimes timing in technology is everything. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Cranium CEO Jonathan Dambrot reveals that while people eagerly seek his insights about AI security today, “two years ago, when we started this process, not so much.”

Here are the key go-to-market lessons from Cranium’s journey in building an AI security category:

1. Build Category Consensus Through Community Rather than attempting to define a category single-handedly, Cranium took a collaborative approach. As Jonathan explains, “We have been working really hard to make sure from a category perspective, we have good consensus.” The company partnered with organizations like ISAACS and the Global Resilience Federation, bringing together industry leaders including Microsoft, Mitre, and CISA to develop practitioner guides for AI security.
2. Design with Enterprise Scale in Mind Cranium’s evolution from KPMG’s studio provided unique insights into enterprise needs. “If you want to solve really big problems, there’s no better place than a big four,” Jonathan notes. “You see big problems at the largest scale and you get to get involved in them.” This experience shaped their product development to address enterprise-level challenges from day one.
3. Balance Innovation with Regulatory Reality In emerging technology categories, regulatory engagement is crucial. Jonathan’s team actively participates in discussions with government officials at state and federal levels. This proactive approach helps shape the regulatory landscape while building credibility. As he points out, “The problem in the US is you’re going to see this very similar to the way that GDPR versus some of the stateside privacy regulations work… if we’re not careful, it can become very bifurcated.”
4. Build for Rapid Market Evolution The pace of change in AI requires extraordinary adaptability. Jonathan reflects, “There were some things that we decided to do early on that I think were informed by the conversations we had with our design partners a couple of years ago that we’re modifying now because of, obviously, the changes in these models.” His stark warning: “If you’re not building right now to keep up with that change in that pace, you’re dead.”
5. Address Market Fear Through Transparency Recognizing widespread anxiety about AI, Cranium made transparency central to their go-to-market strategy. “I’ve never seen more fear around any type of technology than AI,” Jonathan observes. “If we don’t solve this the right way, this fear will manifest into something really bad.” This insight drove their focus on building trust through visibility and compliance tools.

The timing of Cranium’s market entry illustrates another crucial lesson: sometimes the market needs time to recognize the problem you’re solving. Jonathan spent years speaking with security professionals, noting that “over maybe the course of a couple of years, I spoke to probably 100 CISOs, and I couldn’t get a positive answer to the question of how do you get visibility into the machine learning and AI systems.”

Looking ahead, Jonathan predicts a stark divide between companies that embrace AI thoughtfully and those that delay: “I think those that really understand it, they start building around it, they really take it and accept it today and start building it into everything that they’re doing are going to be in a much better position.”

For founders building in emerging technology categories, Cranium’s journey offers valuable lessons in patience, adaptability, and the importance of building trust through transparency and community engagement. The key is recognizing that category creation isn’t just about technology – it’s about addressing fundamental market needs and fears while navigating complex regulatory landscapes.

As AI continues its exponential growth, these lessons become increasingly relevant for founders across the technology spectrum. The companies that successfully build trust while adapting to rapid change will be best positioned to define and lead their categories.