Beyond Security: How One Founder’s Unconventional GTM Strategy Created a New Infrastructure Category

Creating a new enterprise category often means throwing out the conventional playbook. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Anjuna CEO Ayal Yogev revealed how rethinking traditional security go-to-market strategies led to quadrupling revenue and six-month enterprise sales cycles. Here are the strategic insights from their journey:

Target Value Centers, Not Traditional Buyers

Most security startups follow a predictable path: build a security product, sell to security teams, focus on risk reduction. Anjuna discovered a different approach. “What was surprising to me is that we end up talking to the CIO or the infrastructure team and not necessarily to the security team,” Ayal reveals. This insight emerged from understanding that security should enable business rather than just reduce risk.

“Security is an enabler. If you build security the right way, then you can do things that you just couldn’t do before,” Ayal explains. This mindset shift transformed Anjuna’s entire go-to-market motion, leading to faster sales cycles and higher-level conversations.

Leverage Industry Tailwinds

Rather than fighting an uphill battle for market recognition alone, Anjuna harnessed broader industry movements. “When Microsoft is talking about this and Amazon is talking about this and Google Cloud is talking about this and Intel and AMD and Nvidia, it all essentially helps us because customers are looking for way to leverage this,” Ayal notes.

This approach solved the classic chicken-and-egg problem of analyst validation. “There’s sort of like a chicken and egg type of saying because they’re not going to talk to you or take you seriously until they hear enough about it from customers. But then there’s some customers who are not going to buy or talk to you unless they hear about it from Gartner and Forrester.”

Start Small, Think Big

Instead of pushing for complete transformation immediately, Anjuna focuses on proving value through targeted initial deployments. “To me, a lot of it now is about go-to-market execution. And that’s the phase I’m working on now is essentially getting as many customers as possible, even with sort of a small landing use case,” Ayal explains.

This strategy recognizes that infrastructure decisions tend to standardize over time. Once a solution proves valuable in one area, expansion becomes natural as companies rarely maintain multiple solutions for the same infrastructure need.

Make the Revolutionary Feel Evolutionary

Anjuna draws parallels to previous successful infrastructure shifts, making their innovation feel like a natural evolution. “VMware is a great example… I’m seeing a lot of similarities, kind of what we’re going through and what VMware went through in their early days,” Ayal shares. This helps enterprises contextualize the change within familiar patterns of technology adoption.

Build for Long-term Category Leadership

Anjuna’s strategy isn’t just about near-term sales – it’s about establishing category leadership. With “let’s say two years lead on the technology side,” Ayal emphasizes that “a lot of it now is about go-to-market execution.” The goal is clear: “Anybody that wants to use confidential computing knows that Anjuna is the platform to go do that. That’s the best way to leverage this new category.”

For founders building new enterprise categories, Anjuna’s experience offers a crucial lesson: sometimes the most effective go-to-market strategy means completely rethinking who your buyer should be. By focusing on enabling business value rather than just reducing risk, selling through infrastructure teams instead of security, and making revolutionary technology feel evolutionary, Anjuna has created a playbook for building and dominating new enterprise categories.

This approach requires courage – it means walking away from established playbooks and trusted patterns. But for founders aiming to create truly transformative categories, it might be the surest path to success.