From Services to Scale: How Tamnoon Built a Managed Security Platform by Starting with Customer Problems

Most startup playbooks tell you to build a product first. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Tamnoon co-founder Marina Segal revealed how they took the opposite approach: starting with services to deeply understand customer problems before writing a single line of product code.

The Unconventional First Six Months

When Tamnoon launched, they split their initial phase into two distinct approaches. “First three months were very different from the second three months,” Marina explains. Instead of diving straight into product development, they began by providing hands-on services while simultaneously working on fundraising and initial wireframes.

“We were providing service even before we had any product built,” Marina reveals. This services-first approach allowed them to validate their market understanding in real-time, working directly with customers to identify and solve their most pressing cloud security challenges.

From Services to Software

The transition from services to product development wasn’t arbitrary – it was methodically planned. “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,” Marina shares. This gradual evolution allowed them to build with confidence, knowing each feature addressed real customer needs they’d discovered through their services work.

Their focus remained intensely customer-centric during this phase. Marina describes these months as “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.”

Finding the Right Problem to Solve

Through their services work, Tamnoon identified a critical gap in the market. While other companies focused on detection, they discovered the real pain point came after. “What Tamnoon is focused on is this next kind of logical step after the visibility and detection is solved, and this is the remediation and prevention,” Marina explains.

This insight came from hands-on experience with customer problems. “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,” she notes, highlighting the economic reality they discovered through their services work.

Building Trust Through Service

The services-first approach had another unexpected benefit: it helped establish Tamnoon as a trusted advisor rather than just another vendor. “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,” Marina emphasizes.

This positioning has become central to their identity, reflected even in their marketing approach. “We are in the greens, we are solving problems. We are not adding any overhead on the companies. We are actually their trusted advisor,” Marina explains, describing how their early service mentality shaped their entire brand identity.

Scaling Through Technology

While starting with services provided crucial insights, the goal was always to scale through technology. Tamnoon used their service experience to build a platform that could extend human expertise rather than replace it. “We are the MDR for the CNAP space. We are building that remediation and prevention process that can scale the security experts and that is where we are headed,” Marina shares.

This evolution from services to scalable platform offers a powerful lesson for B2B founders: sometimes the best way to build a product isn’t to start with the product at all. By beginning with services, Tamnoon gained deep customer insights, validated their market assumptions, and built relationships that would prove invaluable as they scaled.

Their approach challenges the conventional wisdom about startup execution, suggesting that in complex technical markets, starting with services might be the fastest path to building the right product. It’s a reminder that while everyone else is rushing to ship code, taking time to truly understand customer problems through hands-on work can lead to more effective solutions.