Beyond DoD: How Vali Cyber Expanded from Government to Enterprise Markets

Making the leap from government to enterprise markets is a delicate balancing act. For Vali Cyber, their DoD roots proved both an asset and a challenge as they expanded into commercial markets.

In a recent Category Visionaries episode, CTO Austin Gadient shared their expansion strategy, starting with their initial focus. “Starting out we’re definitely focused on DoD organizations, but we knew to really grow the company we couldn’t be solely focused on DoD. We needed to focus on enterprises.”

Their expansion strategy centered on finding enterprise customers with similar mission-critical needs to their DoD clients. “We really needed to find those enterprise organizations that had lots of Linux systems and that also had a really dire need to protect them,” Austin explains. “Financials would be a great example of organizations that have lots of Linux systems, and the consequences of them failing to protect those systems are very severe.”

This focused approach helped them identify market segments where their military-grade security expertise would resonate most strongly. But they also needed to adapt their positioning for enterprise buyers who think differently about security products.

“Something that we learned along the way is that there’s a best of breed product, which is what we are, which is what zero walk is,” Austin shares. “Then you also have platform plays and platform plays really focus on covering every type of system out there… Different types of customers are going to prefer these sorts of approaches depending on how much they care about the actual security of their systems as opposed to coverage.”

Their military background actually helped build credibility with enterprise customers. “I think that knowing that we came from an area where we’re focused on mission critical systems, I think that was an important thing for customers to understand,” Austin notes.

However, they had to adapt their go-to-market strategy. “We have a very experienced sales team that has been in this industry for a long time,” Austin explains. “Because they’ve been selling security products for a long time, they’ve had excellent relationships with cybersecurity experts and with CISOs and other decision makers in the buying process.”

The company also developed different messaging tiers for various stakeholders. “We’ve developed different types of messaging for different types of people that we interact with… We do have higher level messaging which is focused on kind of big picture stuff, and lower level, more technical messaging for those folks that are going to be more hands on with the product.”

For founders looking to expand from government to enterprise markets, Vali Cyber’s experience offers valuable lessons. First, leverage your government expertise where it adds credibility. Second, understand how enterprise buying decisions differ from government procurement. Finally, adapt your messaging and sales approach while maintaining the core value proposition that made you successful in the first place.