From Consulting to Scalable Intelligence: How Nisos is Pioneering the Managed Intelligence Category

Price packaging rarely makes for compelling storytelling, but for Nisos CEO David Etue, it became the catalyst for transforming their entire business model. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, David shared how rethinking their pricing approach helped create an entirely new market category: managed intelligence.

"I think it would be easier to build the managed intelligence market if the threat intelligence market was 1 billion, not 6 billion," David explains, highlighting a counterintuitive challenge. The size of the existing market actually made innovation harder – with billions being spent on data feeds and portals, customers were already conditioned to accept less than what they truly needed.

The transformation began with a fundamental insight about value creation. As David notes, "What's fascinating about this $6 billion cyber threat intelligence market is that it actually doesn't sell intelligence. It sells data or information." He draws a crucial distinction: "Data is the collection of raw facts, information is data that's logically arranged, and intelligence is information that's curated to enable a timely, actionable and relevant decision."

This realization led to a complete overhaul of their business model. Moving away from hourly consulting rates, Nisos shifted to subscription-based pricing that better aligned with customer value. "That work, from my perspective, isn't good for anyone because the company wants to maximize the hourly rate, the consumer wants to minimize it. But it doesn't really drive any goals of efficiency," David reflects on their previous approach.

The impact was immediate. Beyond taking their subscription revenue "from nearly zero to 20% subscription revenue business to north of 90%," the new model accelerated sales cycles. Instead of lengthy scoping discussions, they could respond immediately to customer needs: "Yes, we can solve that problem. Here's our offering and here's what it cost."

But the transformation went deeper than pricing. David recognized that even the best data feeds face a fundamental challenge: "Even if you've built the best data feed for something, if your customer can't bring it to life, that creates a value challenge and a renewable challenge for you." This insight shaped their entire approach to product development and service delivery.

Rather than just providing data or information, Nisos focused on delivering finished intelligence – insights that customers could act on immediately. This required maintaining a delicate balance between scalability and expertise. "Our products are combinations of people, process and technology. But in our case, it's our people who are a superpower and it's our people who enable our clients to be heroes," David explains.

The results speak for themselves. With net dollar retention exceeding 108% last year, Nisos has proven that their approach resonates with sophisticated buyers. But perhaps more importantly, they've created a new category that solves a fundamental problem in the intelligence market.

Looking ahead, David sees partnerships as a key growth lever. Rather than viewing other intelligence platforms as pure competitors, he sees opportunity in collaboration: "What they ultimately want, beyond someone paying to use their platform data feed, is for that to have a massive impact on their clients success." This mindset recently led to a partnership with Cybersecale, where combining platform capabilities with managed services creates what David calls "transformational impact on our mutual clients."

For founders building in crowded markets, Nisos's journey offers valuable lessons. Sometimes the biggest opportunities come not from building better technology, but from fundamentally rethinking how value is delivered to customers. As David puts it, "Focus. Hands down. Focus." When asked what advice he'd give himself if starting over, he emphasizes the importance of choosing a specific direction and committing fully – even if that means saying no to revenue in the short term.

The story of Nisos demonstrates that even in mature markets, there's room for category creation when you solve fundamental problems in new ways. By focusing on delivering finished intelligence rather than just data, they've built a scalable business that truly transforms how customers work. That's the kind of innovation that sophisticated buyers notice.