The Founder Formula

Oded Hareven - Co-Founder Akeyless

• Trace3 • Episode 42

Share episode

The rise of machines has led to a tsunami of machine identities. This Founder set out to manage those identities and protect their secrets.

In this episode, of The Founder Formula, our co-hosts Todd Gallina and Sandy Salty interview Oded Hareven, the Co-Founder and CEO of Akeyless. The three of them discuss the significance of the Akeyless name, the commitment it takes to found a company, fundraising strategies, and balancing risk vs. success. 


Listen to this and all of The Founder Formula episodes through your favorite podcast platform or Trace3.com.

Intro:

We hope you're ready. Let's get into the show.

Todd Gallina:

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the show. My name is Todd Galena and with me is CMO of Trace3, Sandy Salty. Hello, Sandy.

Sandy Salty:

Hi, Todd. Good to be here.

Todd Gallina:

Great to have you here. Another exciting episode coming up with another exciting founder.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah,

Todd Gallina:

this is going to be a really good one, I think. Yes, I'm excited about this show. And we have some big news because we are going to be launching another show. It's going to be a video podcast. And perhaps you'd like to tell the audience about this show that's coming up.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah, I'd be happy to. Why'd they keep us off video, by the way? We have a face for radio. So, well, so the show is called Live AI. And really the premise is that AI is such a big topic in our space and honestly in the world, right? And we know that it's going to be extremely transformational. I think everybody knows like AI is a big wave that's coming our way. And what we've observed is that there's just so much philosophical talk around AI labeled as, you know, air quotes, thought leadership, right? Frankly, there's so much fluff, Todd, that we believe our audience is really hungry for something real, like something that is content that is based on real-life use cases in the enterprise. Like, what are IT leaders doing to transform their businesses with the help of AI? And really less... philosophy and fluff. I think people are just inundated and frankly, at this point, nauseated was just kind of the high level talk.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, yeah. It appears to be a lot of philosophical chat, as you mentioned, and we need more practical chat.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah.

Todd Gallina:

And it's funny because I remember way back when a CEO would walk into the head of IT and say, hey, I'm spending so much money on this email platform. There's How do we cut costs there? And imagine you're sitting there and you run a technology department and your CEO has just had his first interaction with a chat GPT.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. It's like delivering 10 times the value in seconds, you know, and at this point, like doing so for free. And so, yeah, I mean, it's going to be revolutionary. Yeah. obviously the kind of the chat GPT phenomenon is gaining a lot of adoption very, very quickly. And probably with chat GPT, our industry is still sort of scratching the surface of what's to come. So, yeah, I mean, definitely like early days in the gen AI side of artificial intelligence, but trace three is bullish on kind of this concept that It's going to be transformative, and we are here to help our clients and future clients take advantage of that transformation.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, and take advantage of it by showing them how their peers are doing it.

Sandy Salty:

Well said.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah. I've been blessed to have been near the first couple of episodes that have been recorded, and we are hearing stories of folks that had early access issues, to open AI's open source, wrote their own Python to create their own internal version of ChatGPT before ChatGPT's public launch in November of 2022. And it's very inspirational to see how far an internal technology team can take this technology.

Sandy Salty:

Totally. And actually, speaking of inspirational, like, A lot of times there is a bit of a chasm between technology and how it actually impacts the human experience. Like, how does it really make a difference in our day-to-day life? And how does it improve it? And what we're starting to hear is stories of AI being used for early detection in healthcare. Things that are super meaningful, right, that impact... really impact how we live our lives and impact our health and the decisions that we make based on this new intelligence. And so it's really kind of breaking down that chasm between technology and how it's truly impacting the world in a meaningful way, which I think is pretty exciting. Now, there's also a very dark side to AI, as we know. Yes. Which we will be getting into.

Todd Gallina:

Dark AI would be the name of that show. No, definitely some terrifying stuff. Okay, so I'm going to put you on the spot. Yeah. What is the most recent sandy, salty use– of a chat GPT prompt tool?

Sandy Salty:

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. This is so funny. This is a good story. So I was going to a friend's birthday dinner last night. In

Todd Gallina:

the middle of the week?

Sandy Salty:

In the middle of the week, yeah. We're wild animals. I know it's crazy. And on the way to the dinner, I realized that I didn't have a present in hand. So I was like, I wonder if there's something that I can... buy on the fly. And then I was like, what would that be, right? So literally, my question to ChatGPT is, what do you buy a grown man who loves Legos and loves hockey and loves beer?

Todd Gallina:

Oh my gosh.

Sandy Salty:

And I was shocked by how smart the answer was. It gave me answers I would have never come up

Todd Gallina:

with. We're dying to know. What's one of the answers? A Rubik's Cube? I can't remember it.

Sandy Salty:

But they were really, really good answers.

Todd Gallina:

Did you act on it? Did you go shopping after that? Or did you write on the card, I owe you a whatever

Sandy Salty:

this was? No, I didn't go shopping right after that because I was like, oh yeah, chat GPT. What else can I ask it? I got super into it. How

Todd Gallina:

do I get out of giving this What

Sandy Salty:

is a clever excuse for getting out of this dinner? No, I'm just kidding. No, no. I actually my next question was, what should I order at this restaurant destination that I was going to? And then again, it gave me I said, like, what are the best menu options at this restaurant? And it gave me like, here are the top three things that I should order. people seem to be most pleased with. Oh my gosh. Surprising. I can tell you the answers for that because I remember everything. Okay. Yeah. Tell us. It was giant meatball. Number two was a schnitzel.

Todd Gallina:

Okay.

Sandy Salty:

So two funny answers. And the third was lamb chops.

Todd Gallina:

Oh my gosh. Less interesting, but. It is. In fact, you should have given me enough data for me to guess the name of the restaurant, but I can't. I'm familiar with places that serve giant meatballs. Schnitzel's a total curveball.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah.

Todd Gallina:

Where was it?

Sandy Salty:

I'll tell you later. No free commercials. No free advertising on this podcast. By the way, from my perspective, super exciting news because we're talking about new shows and releases. And a couple of episodes ago, you and I talked about your own founder journey, which is... really the build and development of your company, Force 5. And I was extremely pleased to hear that your animation, your short, got accepted into Comic-Con in San Diego. I mean, that is very, very big news. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you.

Todd Gallina:

Thanks. Thanks. Yes, so the animated short that I've been working on with our hopes of it becoming a series, yes, will be premiering at Comic-Con International, which is in... From this recording, it's a little over six weeks away. It's in July is when Comic-Con is. And so, yeah, I'm super thrilled. It's going to have an audience of 250 people there. And I'm just really excited because the subject matter of this short is perfect for Comic-Con. I've gone to Comic-Con since I've been in high school. And I've been there almost every year. And it's really... It was really created for that type of fan in mind, so it'll be the first time that we're showing this in front of any type of audience, so I'm a little nervous, but I'm super honored to have been, to have had this film selected. I cannot

Sandy Salty:

wait

Todd Gallina:

to see the short film.

Sandy Salty:

You're going to come? Oh my gosh, if you'll have me. Yes, of course.

Todd Gallina:

You're the

Sandy Salty:

first invite. Ask ChatGPT, how do I get into Todd Galina's Force 5 as showing and viewing? No, I would love to be there. Gosh, what an

Todd Gallina:

honor. Well, thank you for mentioning that. So, I think it's about time that we introduce our guest. What do you say?

Sandy Salty:

Let's do it.

Todd Gallina:

Okay. Okay, our guest is a former member of the IDF Cybersecurity Elite Unit that specializes in identity and access management technologies and has held various senior product and project management positions in both enterprise organizations and startups. The company he co-founded, Akeyless... which simplifies the management of secrets in cloud and DevOps environments, recently closed a $65 million Series B round in 2022. He joins us from New York. Please welcome to the show, Odid Haravan. Odid, welcome to the show. Great to have you. Yeah.

Oded Hareven:

Hi, Todd. How are you? Good to be here. Thank

Todd Gallina:

you. You're welcome.

Sandy Salty:

Thanks, Odid. Thanks for being with us today. So let's talk about a key list. What is the problem space that we're solving for?

Oded Hareven:

Sure. So, AQS is all about the machine identity space, and to be specific, the secrets, managing the secrets and protecting the secrets of those machine identities. In the last few years, we've seen a rise in the number of machines and the secrets that they leverage. Basically, those are passwords and other technical names, certificates and keys and API keys and such. But basically, just as humans need to communicate with machines, with servers, with automated processes, with applications, Then humans need to provide their passwords, their authentication objects. The same goes with machines. So automated processes, Kubernetes clusters, containers, those kind of stuff, work with the cloud and on-prem, they need to communicate with each other and they need to prove their identity. Now, last few years, according to the trends that are happening, DevOps automation, cloud transformation, containerization, all of those and all around includes zero trust, most favorite trend. But all of those basically have provided a good, you know, a great place for machines to rise. So we're not talking about 45x machines identities comparing to human identities. We're talking about a great boom, a tsunami of those machines that need to be managed. And those machines, each and every one of them have a secret, one or several of those in order to authenticate to other systems, right? So basically, when you're logging into your bank account, you have your own password, but then your bank account within that web application have behind that thing, a lot of different databases, different services within the bag information systems. And this is where Achilles is operating, protecting those secrets, protecting those credential certificates and keys within those workload environments. As a last sentence, today we have more machines than employees on every certain organization. It means that obviously back in the days we could have managed physical machines and then think of, all right, so the human factor is the more important Today, again, as mentioned, we have a tsunami of those machines that need to be managed and protected, and especially with their secrets. So secrets management, that's the space.

Sandy Salty:

It is certainly the rise of the machines era. And what's the significance of Akeyless, the name itself? What's the history on that?

Oded Hareven:

Oh, on the name itself. Back in the days when we have met for the first time... I've met our president and then co-founder. I've met him, you know, for a coffee before we, you know, it was our first conversation. And he was like, I have, I have here, you know, a potential CTO, my later to the days, our third co-founder. And he said, we have something around, you know, encryption keys and cloud. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. He said, we have, it looks like we have a technology to manage encryption keys and using encryption keys just by having those fragments and without ever combining those fragments so the encryption key never exists so it was like i was like okay so you don't need a key in order to actually run encryption the encryption by the way is what protects uh those uh those secrets uh on assassin ramen this is why we call ourselves both this we'll talk about that later on but basically he told me that and then i went back home i woke up the next day 5 a.m out of nothing and i was like no keys, that's the Achilles heel of the encryption world or the cloud world, authentication world, the Achilles heel, and in Hebrew, Achilles, and Achilles, and Achilles, it is being pronounced the same. So the Achilles heel for the encryption world is protecting the encryption key, and for the authentication world is to protect that key, that password key. So actually, Achilles basically means no key, those fragments never combine, and this is how we heal The AQ is so creative. Yeah, it's like a perfect merger. Not mine. It was a dream. I don't know how to say where did it come from. So it's basically a thought came to the mind. That's brilliant.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, it's an example of how important sleep is and capturing what happens during your sleep. That's great.

Oded Hareven:

Well, apparently, if I thought about that, maybe I would sleep more in the following five years in which I stopped sleeping. So if you want to talk about running a company, then we can talk about that, how to better operate without sleeping, by the way, it does have some good vibes there when you stop sleeping. That's a good impact of those natural drugs, if you'd like. That's where the juices really start flowing, the creativity of the mind. Well, to add to that, you know, a newborn and a three-year-old back then, you know, having your kids, you know, during those nights and, oh my God, well, happy.

Sandy Salty:

So this is actually, you brought up a topic that we barely ever cover on Founder Formula. Being a founder, you're essentially birthing something, right? But you're also, in your case, you actually had a human child as well, a human birth. Is there, tell us about- Which one do you love more? Oh, wow. Just kidding, no, just kidding. Very provocative, very provocative. No, but what, truly, Oded, how did you balance that?

Oded Hareven:

I must answer Todd's question. You know, he basically asked, who much do I like more, my kids or my company? And the answer is always my wife. Like, don't test me. She's listening. What, why are you kidding? So basically going back to your question, you know, how is it, how is it like to give it birth, right? How, how does, you know, your balance and how do you, how do you make it happen? Especially when you're, you know, personal life and you're being requested at home or whatever. First and, and, and, you know, for most or for the basics parts, this kind of decision of starting a company, especially obviously when having a family, it's not just the one person. decision. And I'm not just talking it, you know, just because it sounds good. It's because literally that was, uh, That was a decision to be made as a couple, to be made as parents, that starting a company and a business, it's a commitment that we are still, we are in it every day now, six years since we took that decision to start. The first year was bootstrapping. The second year was the first year of, you know, funding, et cetera, and seeding. But basically, today, we've also relocated to the U.S. almost a year ago. It has a lot of meaning. Now, back to your question, how to balance, you don't balance it. That's the right answer. That's the exact answer. It's a chaotic environment in which my best observation to myself and being retrospectively, introspectively and retrospectively, every couple of weeks or, you know what, let's put the pressure out, every quarter, every three months, There's a change in the way that either you manage what you manage, the people that you manage, the way that you need to look at things and the direction that you need to choose on a more tactical level. Um, and sometimes you, you know, at the beginning where you don't have a lot of money to fund, then how do you maximize whatever you have? And how do you maximize the talent? When, when are you involved or not involved? How soon are you, you know, doing your own slide decks and when do you choose for other ones to deal with it? And those are just very basic examples. Uh, and, and every startup has its own, you know, has its own beginnings and, and things, some high tech and some not necessarily, but basically, uh, What I'm trying to say here is nothing is defined. The chaos is there and you need to have this internal balance rather than expecting it to come out of your schedule. That's the first thing is basically to remember where are you going and to have a strong belief that you're going to a very, let's say, important target for you. So that would guide you along the way.

Sandy Salty:

It's great advice. And it sounds like you have to be just as intentional with your attack Yeah, that's

Oded Hareven:

tough. It is. It is. Yeah, the toughest part, by the way, sorry to interrupt is, you know, having your, you know, your kid, you're nine years old to start talking about it. And she's very right. And she's very sharp. She's like, Daddy, you're six years in there. I was three years old. Are you going to be here in my, in my bat mitzvah, which is for her daughter, like daughter of Ross when she's 12. And you're constantly with your phone. Like, where are you going to be with me, right? So she knows that there are times in which I'm not there. And she knows that there are times in which I'm completely with her and only with her. But yeah, it sometimes can tear your heart out. But I'm trying to make that balance up in any one of those worlds.

Todd Gallina:

Yeah, and that's the burden of being a founder. This stuff is not easy. And I do want to... Talk a little bit about the other two founders. There's three at Achilles. And you mentioned one earlier, one who assumed the president's role, the others as the CTO role. Can you tell us a little bit about where you met these other two and maybe the complementary personalities and roles you guys have assumed?

Oded Hareven:

Of course. This is actually a great story of complementary personalities, exactly as you said. The original story started when Rafael came with the idea of how to overcome the notion of keeping encryption keys, not even necessarily secrets back then, but keeping encryption keys on untrusted environments such as the cloud. So he came up with this model of fragmented keys that are never combined. And he's a great autodidact. and a curious person as default, he was looking for someone to partner with. And by friends and some family, he got to Shai, our president. And Shai basically, you know, Shai is a business guy. He's a business guy for 30 years, been involved in M&As and startups and been five-time CEO. And basically he brought up, you know, the idea, first idea that says, you know, let's, okay, when I take this technology, I sense that this is interesting. You should, you know, we should start working together. But the thing is that I need to look for a CEO, which is product oriented very much so, because this is how companies today, you know, how they move. So he started to look and we got, you know, obviously he was able to pick up the phone. We met together. We worked together back in CA Technologies around, it's now more than 10, 14 years back. Oh my God, 15 years back work. working together back in state technologies in the Israeli branch. He was the country manager. I was the beginning solution architect and later as a program manager for the entire professional services. So basically he knew me for there. So that was, I was his peak back then. I was the managing product for a company named Movit, completely off the enterprise security world. And for our listeners, by the way, being generic with, you know, tasting a lot of different worlds is something so great. So I was doing enterprise before, enterprise security before, then I went to B2C space with mobile application, with the world of public transportation. Later on, this company acquired by Intel for $1 billion. So this is basically where I was busy at, and Shai called me, and this is basically the background. As for myself, I'm a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. I'm a retired captain in the field of cybersecurity and infrastructure and DevOps, before we called that DevOps. After that, CA, as I've mentioned. Got it, got it. So

Todd Gallina:

you've worn many hats, but is it safe to say your sweet spot is product, you personally?

Oded Hareven:

Yeah, although, you know, professional services that I've done for years and I've been within an enterprise, so I've done things that I started my career basically with being a customer. being a customer in a large organization such as the Israeli Defense Forces. It's one of the largest organizations in Israel and actually one that is considered to be extra large if you compare it to a large corporate in the U.S. So that was the starter, understanding the technicalities, understanding how IT works back then before we called that platform and engineering, et cetera. And then professional services, customer support, customer success, those are where my world Okay. Wow.

Sandy Salty:

Multiple perspectives there that I'm sure you

Oded Hareven:

serve. Yeah, I've had... I've had friends who literally, you know, call me, you know, you're an idiot. Why are you jumping so much between different industries? And when having, you know, up to the fact that you're able to, you know, to be, you know, I was working for a very known vendor back then, you know, it's American vendor, big, you know, in Israel back then. It was something, you know, a great place in the food chain and had a great job and then decided to go to consumer business, not necessarily as a direct business, You know, to begin with, and then to later on go to there, it was kind of a jump, you know, but, you know, since we're talking about entrepreneurship and being, you know, and basically take yourself out of the comfort zone, I'm very much into that basically to do, you know, sometimes they say, take yourself out of the comfort zone, but actually, More of listening to what is really that you want to do, which is a kind of a Gen Z, right? A message today. But really look for the fashion that you like and you're interested with and you're curious about and things are, you know, and good things would follow.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah. Well, so you triggered a question and, you know, when we think about your history... We go back to having walked the shoes of the enterprise customer. But if we rewind even earlier than that, I found over the course of these interviews that entrepreneurs and founders always have kind of this common thread between them, which is there's always some sort of catalyst in their youth. Be it their, you know, there's struggle that they had to overcome at some point in their life, or they come from extremely entrepreneurial parents and grandparents. Is there anything on the personal front that you think, in a lot of ways, set up this entrepreneur's journey for you, Odin?

Oded Hareven:

Wow. Well, the answer is yes. Some of them are extremely deep and some of them are very private. But generally speaking, I'll call it this way. You know, I've had a friend who asked me, you know, he said, I have a dream. I really want to do it. I want to run a company. And then I asked, you know, Is it about the money? He said, yes, mostly. It's because, you know, I want to do it. I want to succeed. Or it's not just about the money, but it's more about the success. And then I told him, listen, if you don't have... And it's my thought, right? It's great to just want to be famous, right? Although it's high-tech, guys. It's not big. It's about, you know, running a company. But it's... I said it's okay to feel, you want to feel more successful with what you do, but I believe that if you won't have this... kind of a need to overcome something right within your personal story that troubles you right either some of us you know as a kid because you know you have this story with other kids that didn't accept you or you have this kind of a father or you have this kind of a story of the place where you've grown or you've met a lot of different people in different you know countries because you were you know a child or you know someone who moved a lot there are all kind of different We are all humans and we have our scars and every scar works in order to start the psychology to work and the mental ideas of overcoming the obstacles, right? So there's a lot of depth in there. So assuming that you are connecting to that one and not necessarily that you are aware of it, that's your job to do, but You need to have that something that would help you in that difficult 3 a.m. at night in which you're working on a certain slide that you need to basically provide for 6 a.m. because you promised that. And this is just one example of many of the difficult things that you would be requested to do, either within you're being pushed on a meeting within eight other people, either their customers, partners, or your board. There are a lot of different things that you would find yourself doing, and they're extremely difficult I love that. So, yeah, I think, yeah, that's my angle.

Sandy Salty:

Yeah, I think founders are special creatures and the pattern continues. It's like there's always that sense of grit at the end of the day and to your point that they have to tap into when things get tough. You

Oded Hareven:

need to prove it. You need to prove it to yourself more than anyone else. All right, that's 100%. Prove it to yourself. Yeah, sorry, please.

Sandy Salty:

Let's get into a very popular topic in the world of founders and startups, and that's venture capital. So you completed your series B two years ago and successfully raised a total of $80 million. Congratulations on it. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. If you could give our listeners a few tips on how to effectively raise capital, what would they be? I mean, I know it's a loaded question. What are VCs looking for? Maybe that's a better way of asking it.

Oded Hareven:

Well, it depends, obviously, right, on the different stages. And the seed is very much known to be the stage where you sell the dream. But the honest truth is that you're selling a dream every day. It does not end on a seed. But on the seed stage, it is very much important to find a... and painful issue that have a need and you're able to somehow prove that there is a big need around it, that there is a great market around it, a very large one and potentially Bigger than a billion or two or three billion so that basically you'll be able to operate within that market and you will be able to grab at least the initial movement within that particular market. So the pain... the size of the opportunity, and then obviously your ability to execute. So we've mentioned, you know, the founders, the different capabilities, the business product, the technology that goes together. The team that you're presenting is extremely important. And the fact everyone are committed within that team. I've heard about those different, you know, funny stories around, you know, sorry to say it funny, but basically it is like that when seed-based founders, you know, going into an investor's meeting and they're saying, oh, we're still working our personal, you know, part time work, part time jobs. And it's like, so are you fully committed or not? And I know it sometimes sounds like, you know, it's pushy to ask it, but I know As you know, today, as of today, I understand that much better. Why investors, especially in those stages, they ask for full commitment and to see that you're totally inside. Because if you're not 180% convinced what you're doing is great, then you'll have a lot of, you know, you'll have some difficulties to persuade others. So going back, what is it that they're looking for? Again, approved for a pain, approved for a very big market and approved for a I think

Todd Gallina:

it's you just mentioned something. I wouldn't give anybody money if they were still working a part time job. I mean, isn't the seed money that here you go, let's go. Are there real instances where people are like, hey, I love you. You've just given me and my two partners some seed money, but I'm going to still continue to keep my role at CA and keep the ball moving there. I mean, that would be a. That would be a non-starter for me.

Oded Hareven:

Well, so you got it. This is why for us it was clear from the very first moment. My wife, she was pregnant when we were having the first bootstrapping year. It was clear to me that I'm not going to work rather on anything besides Achilles. So you need to be able to fund yourself. Otherwise, don't go to that journey. There is no other way.

Todd Gallina:

Well, you mentioned... You mentioned that the three roles that you currently had probably around the seed funding. What was the first hire the three of you agreed on, the fourth person, shall we say, that you brought in?

Oded Hareven:

Back in the days, our VP R&D, and today, Ori Mankali, our SVP Engineering. For no question, that was the first and the most important place to start with. I tend to say that it's not that, you know, I found Ori, but Ori found me or we found Ori and Ori found us. For me, it was the very first task to have. I did that for 80 days nonstop because that's the starter of the company. Interviewed dozens until we found each other. And it was a terrific, you know, an amazing process back to have. That was the first time for me to really understand how deep am I with, you know, interviewing and how I like it in terms of, you know, finding the right people for the right time. But the process was very much into finding the one that would lead us in terms of starting the deployment or the implementation of our dream, where we had our first alpha that was created by Rafael. Then we had the one to create the platform, literally, the platform in which we're going to stand, the platform in which we're going to provide, and the service that we have today. Ori has a background in AWS, highly technical, graduate of electricity engineering, and today he's managing around 30, 40 people.

Todd Gallina:

Wow. So you needed a chief engineer and it took, you said, 80 days to find him?

Oded Hareven:

80 days. 80 days constantly working on that. As for the beginning, that's the most important part. After you know that you have the first dollar, this is what you need to do because you need to run it. You need to make sure that you have something to sell.

Todd Gallina:

That's great.

Sandy Salty:

Well, you brought us back to the technology, which is perfect because at the start of this, you mentioned Vault-less versus Vault. And I'd love to hear that concept and what that actually means for our

Oded Hareven:

audience. Sure. So, well, the null part for people who know us, so I can be very open about it. We are known to be, to start with, right? We're known to be the number one alternative for HashiCorp Vault. That's a known DevOps security secrets management solution that is mostly self-deployed. Secrets management is a mission-critical system That means that you need to have multiple of those clusters of hash sheets known to be hassleful. And, you know, I'm selling even in my sleep. But basically, this is how it works. So what we provide is basically a SaaS service based on our DFC technology, the ability to encrypt any type of objects without, you know, without using fragments of encryption keys without ever combining them. This provides zero knowledge, giving the fragments to be one of the fragments to be on the contract. So the Vault-less basically means if you have a Vault heavy duty, heavy to maintain, heavy to implement, you need to have all of those different clusters with an Azure Vault, then you need to work very hard, just as the Vault is very heavy, right, than the actual Vault. With the Vault-less approach, this is what we call the third generation of secrets management. It's basically the ability to enjoy and fully service four nodes of an ability all around the world with a key list to manage your different secrets, your API key lists. certificates, credentials, all of those objects used between machines in order to authenticate. So you're able to enjoy that, to enjoy the vault-less service without the ability to manage your own vault, without the ability to manage your own kind of vaulting system for your credentials. So we provide everything, we develop everything from ground up to basically fit the enterprise great need. We have a tool to Fortune 5 as our customers. We have some of the S&P 500, we have great reputable names in the U.S., 70% of our business in the U.S., and today we see great names even coming up in the future having the IBM acquisition of HashiCorp.

Todd Gallina:

So when we were chatting prior to this call, you had shared something with me about G2. You leveraged them to develop credibility. It's the first I'd actually heard of them. So can you tell our listeners about G2 and why that platform was important for you guys?

Oded Hareven:

Oh, sure. So... G2 is a platform in which there's a comparison between different technologies. It's one of the most common uses. I don't know if it's more for high-end, maybe high-end uses more Gartner, high-end enterprises, but for the majority of comparisons in the market, G2 is very much known. especially at the beginning where we understood that traffic within the internet with comparison, HashiCorp versus Achilles, right, and things as such. So what we've done, we've made sure that our profile there is very much maintained in a well-refreshed and appealing way and made sure that we have as maximum reviews as we can have as early as we can. We actually had a good period in which we had more reviews than our competitors, which was great. Obviously, we found it's more difficult to maintain, but this provided us part of what we tried to achieve, which is to be consistent that the small startup wishes to sell for large enterprises, you need to find a way to basically create all the resources on the facade that would make you look bigger and bigger than you actually are. For the first Fortune 5 that we sold to, the company size was around 30 employees. And you need to make sure that everyone trusts you And it is more difficult for companies to trust much smaller companies, like tiny and sized companies. So you do all kinds of things that you can. G2 was one of those strategies in our tools. The other ones were to have our own conference. So in the very peak days of the COVID-19, we've had our own key conference in New York back in 2021 in November. We invited a lot of people despite the COVID-19 It was very successful, large stage. We still have it on our website, large screens, etc. And that was also part of the strategy to be perceived as bigger than we are. And today, thank God, we're able to deliver on that promise.

Todd Gallina:

That's great. That's great. Did you continue with the live event or was that just a one-time thing you did in November 21?

Oded Hareven:

So November 21, we had some thoughts to continue with that a year after. We did a smaller one then. You know, there was some other days in the markets in which we had a quarter or two that we had to decide differently. But we are aiming to have now a bigger one hopefully next year.

Todd Gallina:

Well, yeah, we are also in the large live event game and it is quite, quite an animal.

Oded Hareven:

It's a beast.

Sandy Salty:

You're putting it.

Oded Hareven:

It's a, it's a beast. And I can't, you know, I can't say, I can't say more even about the excitement of having your own as a vendor to have your own event, despite, you know, the numerous, you know, it requires a lot of investment in terms of obviously the funds that are required. And I'm very happy that we have this opportunity. We'll make that once again, if not even once a year, as we will be grown more and more and more.

Sandy Salty:

Well, Oded, I want to get back to the founder's journey a bit. I found that founders have a very complicated relationship with the topic of failure. On one hand, they fully embrace that failure as part of an inevitable part of the journey, entrepreneurial journey. But on the other hand, I feel like most founders, good ones, are setting such a high bar for themselves and for their team and for their business that it makes it feel like failure is not an option. Let's just call it what it is, right? Yeah. I'd love to get your perspective on, I guess, how do you create room for failure, right? And continue to sort of propagate creativity and risk and bravery, right? That culture. But at the same time, right? Strive for a successful mission. How do you balance those two sort of paradoxical philosophies as a leader?

Oded Hareven:

It's a very interesting point of view that you mentioned, which is this balance of failure is not an option, but then on the other side, you need to embrace the failure. How do you have this balance? Very interesting, you know, contradiction philosophies that you have in your mind. So first of all, failing or failure is definitely an option. And sometimes it's an obligation because if you won't fail, you won't learn. Think about the number of times that a toddler or a baby starts to stand or to walk and how many times they fall and they need to try again and again. And they need to learn how to do that and it takes them time before they learn how to run and they fall again. So that's the most obvious and known example and it is true. I think one of the tactics as an executive, as a manager, to be able to encourage such kind of culture for that is, first of all, to be able to admit your own mistakes and to embrace it in a way that you don't need to do. It's not a drama around it. And it's okay to do things that might not be okay because we need to learn, right? So if you're totally convinced that when we took the decision, that we took something that back then you thought to be right, it's okay. So you make mistake. The most important part with making mistake, and maybe that's a known cliche, is to make as many of them with the fastest time that you can. So... And obviously not to repeat the same one twice, although we're human, we're doing the same. Sometimes we do the same mistakes twice. It's bad, but it happens. I think that the sports way to look at failure is not an option. That's a different episode or a different theme. And I'll give you an example. When you're pitching investors, and that was the first time in which I really felt it in my body. The fear of failure, right? What's going to happen? I want to seed fund and we're like a team of three. We're going to seed fund this business. If we are failing, we would not be able to start the business. But then on the other hand, every meeting that we've had, It was clear, right? You're not going to hit the first investor, the second investor, that investor. Those are not going to say yes from the very first beginning. You need to craft the message. You need to listen for feedback, etc. So I pictured some kind of a punch card. I don't know what's the, I hope that's the name of it in English also, in which you punch it. And I said, you know, I'm going to punch this with whatever X number. That X number, I use different three cards with that X number. Now, I'm going to punch it and say, okay, I'm there. At least I've been there. We're going to listen for that feedback, regardless of their answer. If the answer will be no, I don't care, right? So, failure is an option, or let's say, failure as is, or decline is an option, but for the whole mission, failure was not an option. And so we're going to get to the end because at the end of it, within six months from now, we will fund the company. And, you know, and eventually that belief became reality. So this is basically the journey and how you balance it. I hope that I provided some of that taste because what you're talking about is completely real. It's a fantastic answer. Yeah,

Todd Gallina:

it's great. Basically, we already have a pull quote, which is failure isn't an option. It's an obligation. In a way. Yeah, in a way. And the way you broke it down with a bunch of little

Sandy Salty:

failures. Yeah, trial and error. But the mission at hand needs to be successful.

Oded Hareven:

It's okay to fill in the screens. If you want the t-shirts, then success is built out of hundreds of failures. So maybe this is the way to look at it.

Todd Gallina:

Did you, by any chances, you were going through your roadshow to fundraise, did you say to yourself, listen, we're most likely... A very good candidate to fund us is right here. So I would like to pitch to them seventh. What I'd really like to do is get the first five or six for ones that might have a low likelihood that they would fund us just to get a couple of pitches under our belt. Did you put it together that strategically or were you just taking the meetings as you could get them?

Oded Hareven:

To be very honest, seed funding, even for reputable entrepreneurs, and for me personally in the team, it was, for my friend and myself, it was the first time for us to actually have such a serious business, a true startup. Beforehand, I've done some other nonsense on my own with other stores that we can go if you'd like on another occasion. But basically, it was not that sophisticated. okay you can be very sophisticated and you know and programmatic and have your you know suggestions and start with those and then you know what always laugh you know make me laugh is that you know when you're on the first time I went to you know to consult with those you know reputable entrepreneurs and they were like organize your VCs in a way that you can create sense of urgency to the same week and don't make a And then you're off, you know, and you're out of the room or out of, you know, that meeting. And then you're telling to yourself, how on earth if I don't have the connections, I'm going to get the partners, the decision makers to meet me at the same week. And I'm going to order them seven firsts of the ones that I don't like because I'm going to improve the message so that at the eighth, I'm going to hit it, right? So what am I? Like, it sounds like, you know, you remember Ace Ventura and his parking, the way that he parks? Like, what's going on? So this is how, you know, in real life... It doesn't work like this. Obviously, on an A round, on a B round, on a C round, you have much better connections. Then you're able to do all kind of that stuff, and you'll speak differently, and you have much more confidence, and it's a completely different game. But for a seed, meet as many as you need, as many as you're able to meet. Get the feedback. And just get it running. All right. You know, if you're a pitiful one, if you have the ones and connections and then strategize, go ahead. Be my guest. You can do it. But if you don't, if you don't, if you don't have it, work with the knife between your teeth and just get the next meeting. That's it. I love the authenticity. Thank

Sandy Salty:

you for, for giving them the truth.

Oded Hareven:

Yeah. Thank you. Our truth about the hard things. Right. Yeah. This is it.

Todd Gallina:

Hey, so listen, this has been amazing, Oded. We've learned just a ton. So many new topics that we covered with you. Just one last thing before we wrap. I know that we talked about multiple things, but is there anything that we missed potentially that you'd like to share with future entrepreneurs?

Oded Hareven:

Yeah, the big famous sentence coming from Mike, just do it. Let's stop talking about it. If you really have the passion, if you have it inside and you feel like it's burning, so don't let tomorrow pass without doing anything. That would make you one step closer to that thing. That's basically my message.

Todd Gallina:

That's great. Thank you. Thanks a ton. I appreciate it. This has been amazing.

Sandy Salty:

It's been such a pleasure. So much good advice, Odit. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

Oded Hareven:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was nothing but fun. Thank you so much. And I hope to see you in person on other occasions. And thank you for everyone who listened.

Outro:

Trace3 is hyper-focused on helping IT leaders deliver business outcomes by providing a wide variety of data center solutions and consulting services. If you're looking for emerging technology to solve tried and true business problems, Trace3 is here to help. We believe all possibilities live in technology. You can learn more at trace3.com slash podcast. That's trace the number three dot com slash podcast. You've

Intro:

been listening to The Founder Formula, the podcast for all things startup from Silicon Valley to innovators across the country. If you wanna know what it takes to lead tomorrow's tech companies, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time.