How Anjuna Built Enterprise Credibility Without Gartner: Leveraging Industry Tailwinds for Category Creation

Creating a new enterprise category typically means waiting months or years for analyst validation. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Anjuna CEO Ayal Yogev revealed how they accelerated market acceptance by riding industry tailwinds instead of waiting for analyst coverage.

The Analyst Coverage Paradox

Every enterprise founder knows the challenge: customers want analyst validation before buying, but analysts want customer traction before providing coverage. As Ayal explains, “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.”

Instead of getting stuck in this loop, Anjuna found a different path to credibility.

Leveraging Industry Momentum

Rather than waiting for analyst validation, Anjuna tapped into 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 explains.

This strategy turned potential competitors into category validators. Every time a major tech company discussed confidential computing, it reinforced Anjuna’s market message.

Creating Customer Choice

Anjuna positioned itself as the enabler of this industry transition. As Ayal notes, “When people want to start using this, they essentially have a choice, either they go rebuild every application or they go use our platform.” This framing made Anjuna’s solution the logical choice for enterprises wanting to adopt confidential computing.

Accelerating Enterprise Adoption

The results were remarkable. “We’re growing extremely fast. We’re about to quadrupling every year now,” Ayal shares. Even more impressively, they’re “closing deals with very large banks within a six month cycle, which is extremely fast compared to how these banks tend to move.”

This rapid adoption wasn’t just about technology – it came from positioning Anjuna as part of a broader industry shift rather than a standalone solution requiring independent validation.

The VMware Parallel

Anjuna’s approach mirrors another infrastructure revolution: virtualization. “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 notes. Like VMware, Anjuna is making a complex technological shift accessible to enterprises.

Building Board-Level Visibility

This strategy has elevated Anjuna’s visibility within enterprises. As Ayal reveals, “We’ve gotten to board level visibility just because of what this enables you to do. This is such a fundamental… It’s not just a security solution that allows you to reduce the risk a little bit. This essentially enables you to do things that you just couldn’t before.”

Lessons for Category Creators

For founders creating new enterprise categories, Anjuna’s experience offers crucial insights:

1. Industry tailwinds can provide stronger validation than early analyst coverage
2. Position your solution as enabling industry transitions, not fighting them
3. Make your offering the logical choice for adopting industry trends
4. Focus on fundamental business enablement, not incremental improvements

The key is understanding that category creation doesn’t always require following the traditional enterprise playbook. Sometimes, riding larger industry waves can provide faster paths to credibility and growth than waiting for analyst validation.