From Zero to Enterprise: Dasera’s Strategy for Breaking Into the CISO Suite Without a Legacy Brand Name
In cybersecurity, where trust is currency and established brands dominate, breaking into the CISO suite as a newcomer requires more than just a good product. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Dasera founder Ani Chaudhuri revealed their unconventional approach to winning enterprise trust.
The Trust Challenge
Selling data security solutions presents a unique challenge. As Ani explains, “It requires a lot of permissions. It requires people to be convinced about you so that they can give you the keys to their kingdom, because guess what? You will be touching their data because you’re protecting it.”
This isn’t a bottom-up sale where individual engineers can get started independently. “It is not one of those where an individual engineer can get it started because you’ll not have all of the necessary permissions,” Ani notes. The strategy had to be top-down from the beginning.
Technical Excellence First
Rather than competing on brand recognition, Dasera made a strategic decision to lead with technical superiority. “Our strategy from the very beginning has been that we will be the best technology in the space, then we will be the best customer success company in the space. And then we are going to go and talk about marketing and sales,” Ani shares.
The Pricing Disruption
In an industry where go-to-market costs are astronomical (“this space spends anywhere between ten to $20 per dollar that is brought in”), Dasera took a radically different approach. They disrupted the market by “giving you a starting point of about $500 per datastore per month so you can get started.”
This pricing strategy wasn’t just about being cheaper – it was about removing friction from the buying process. As Ani puts it, “There’s no excuse not to get started in terms of protecting your data.”
The Partnership Strategy
Instead of trying to build brand recognition from scratch, Dasera leveraged partnerships with established players. When major companies like Palo Alto Networks started acquiring capabilities through acquisitions, Ani saw an opportunity: “There are lots of companies that compete with them and they need these weapons too.”
This insight led to strategic partnerships with companies like Cisco and Cohesity, with more partnerships in the pipeline. As Ani reveals, “We have two or three in the pipeline, which we will be announcing through June and July. I think those will reduce the amount of friction that we see today as a startup.”
Market Education as a Strategy
Rather than rushing to close deals, Dasera invested in market education. “Last year was a year where people were educating themselves about data security,” Ani explains. This patience is now paying off: “We are seeing that the same budgets are coming into play… our expected growth this year is going to be in five to ten x from last year.”
The Analyst Relations Play
Breaking into enterprise requires credibility with industry analysts, but Dasera approached this relationship differently. “A lot of times we think of analysts as people who actually know, but I think they are the people who aggregate and are able to connect dots because they have better visibility,” Ani shares.
Their approach? “You have to continue to educate them and you have to share their experiences so that they can put your dots in that big map.”
Lessons for Enterprise Startups
Dasera’s journey offers several key insights for startups targeting enterprise customers:
- Lead with technical excellence over marketing
- Use innovative pricing to remove friction
- Leverage partnerships to build credibility
- Invest in market education
- Build genuine analyst relationships
For founders targeting enterprise customers, particularly in security and compliance spaces, Dasera’s experience shows that the path to the CISO’s office doesn’t have to run through traditional brand building. By focusing on technical excellence, strategic partnerships, and innovative pricing, startups can earn enterprise trust even without a legacy brand name.
As Ani summarizes, success comes from a combination of “market conditions have become better… the market and us and analysts have kind of gotten penciled in version of what an ideal product at this level of maturity of the market looks like… and thirdly, that we have gotten really good at what we do.”