The Story of Nisos: Building the Future of Managed Intelligence

Great companies often start with a clear mission rather than just a market opportunity. For Nisos, that mission emerged from two former U.S. intelligence community operators who saw a disturbing trend: nation-state actors weren’t just targeting governments anymore – they were going after private companies.

In a recent Category Visionaries episode, CEO David Etue shared how this observation sparked Nisos’s journey: “The founders were two operators in the US intelligence community, and they saw that nation state actors were not just targeting governments, but targeting private sector organizations and really mission focused, said, hey, we’re going to do something about that.”

But having a mission wasn’t enough. The founders recognized that delivering impact required exceptional talent. As David explains, “They founded Nisos on that mission, but importantly, then also hired amazing talent and from day one had the north Star of ensuring that our clients are successful in managing risks and remediating incidents.”

The early days focused on consulting work, which provided crucial market validation. Every project was funded by sophisticated clients willing to pay for solutions to real problems. However, this validation came with a challenge – the company was spreading itself across multiple use cases and buying centers.

A few years in, the team had an epiphany. David recalls, “They stepped back and said, hey, I think we have, instead of being a consulting company, as they were founded, to really look at how we could invest in the trade craft, our intelligence trade craft and importantly, technology enablement to transform how intelligence was delivered.”

This insight led to the creation of managed intelligence as a category. Rather than just providing data feeds or consulting hours, Nisos would deliver finished intelligence that clients could immediately act upon. The transformation wasn’t easy – it meant turning away revenue from services that didn’t fit their new vision.

The pivot required rethinking everything from pricing to delivery. The company moved from hourly billing to subscription pricing, taking subscription revenue “from nearly zero to 20% subscription revenue business to north of 90%.” More importantly, they achieved over 108% net dollar retention, proving that customers saw sustained value in their new approach.

Today, Nisos provides intelligence assessments, monitoring, and investigations for cybersecurity, corporate security, and trust and safety teams. But what makes their story particularly interesting is how they’ve maintained their mission while scaling operations. As David notes, “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.”

Looking ahead, Nisos sees partnerships as a key growth lever. Rather than viewing other intelligence platforms as competitors, they’re finding ways to collaborate. David explains, “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.”

The vision extends beyond current capabilities. “We’re well past the couple of folks in a garage stage,” David notes, “But we’ve got a long way to go to be that 100 million plus company in ARR that we know we can be.” This growth will likely include international expansion, starting with English-speaking markets in the Five Eyes countries before broader global expansion.

What’s particularly striking about Nisos’s journey is how they’ve maintained their original mission – protecting organizations from adversaries – while building a scalable business model. It’s a reminder that sometimes the best way to achieve a mission isn’t through the most obvious path, but through rethinking how value is delivered to customers.