← The SaaSiest Podcast
The SaaSiest Podcast
205. Roeland Delrue, Co-Founder of Aikido Security - Why joining the buyer’s journey beats forcing MEDDICC-style sales processes
00:55:23
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- [00:03]
A
You are listening to the Sassiest podcast in the world. Born in the Nordics. Democratizing B2B SaaS knowledge everywhere. Hi, I'm Daniel.
- [00:12]
B
And I'm Thomas. And we are experienced SaaS professionals that are curious about how other successful SaaS companies go to market scale, build winning teams and great products.
- [00:22]
A
Join us on our journey as we speak to SaaS leaders trying to get hold of their secret sauce.
- [00:26]
B
And today's guest is Roland delaure, co founder at Akaido Security.
- [00:31]
C
A lot of this round is focused on becoming unregnurable. We don't want to hear it again that they didn't know who we are or that we missed out on a deal because when we're in it, most of the times we win it. And so it's not about conversions, it's about getting in the deal.
- [00:51]
D
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- [01:35]
B
Hello there and welcome to another episode of the Sassy podcast. Glad that you choose to spend an hour with us again. Well, if you have listened to it before, it's again, otherwise happy to see you. Welcome to the Cessies podcast.
- [01:48]
A
Welcome to your very, very first episode. And this is a good one. This is a good one, Thomas. Like every episode is a good one, but this is a little bit fresh off the press. The guest we have here, just last week, they announced their last round and they're officially a unicorn.
- [02:03]
B
We usually don't care about that. But what's interesting here, that they have, you know, grown really fast and there's a lot of things that we can learn from that.
- [02:12]
A
So yeah, this, this is all done in three and a half years. Like three and a half years ago, these guys didn't exist.
- [02:17]
B
No.
- [02:18]
A
And they have grown so fast. And I think what's the most impressive is that they just keep to accelerating. So for every million, they add the time to the next million. ARR. Is just shorter and shorter and shorter. It's like amazing to find follow their journey. So let's see how fast they can become Belgium's next Decacorn.
- [02:39]
B
Wow.
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A
All right, let's open up the doors and welcome in Roland.
- [02:49]
B
Today we are super excited to have no other than Roland Delauroux, the co founder at Aikido Security, here as a guest in the Sassiest podcast. Welcome, Roland.
- [02:59]
C
Hey. Thank you for having me. Hello.
- [03:00]
A
Hey. Super excited to have you here. And I know that you are, at least compared to Thomas. You and I are in the same type of time zone. I'm in the southern part of Sweden. You are in Belgium, in Ghent. So you and I are experiencing a little bit of a grayness right now. What do you do during this time of the year to bring some sunlight, some rays of shine into your life?
- [03:25]
C
Well, most of the time I'm at the office. And the office does a really good job of not noticing too much what the weather is outside. So when I sometimes I'm surprised how sunny and warm it is, and then sometimes I'm surprised how cold and gray it is. But we've created this neutral environment over here, let's put it that way.
- [03:48]
A
Okay.
- [03:48]
B
I was about to ask you, how's your office? What is your sort of thing?
- [03:53]
C
Yeah, we have an in office culture here in Ghent. And so most of the people are actually located in Belgium and most of them in Ghent. And so we have two floors in a building over here and we're about a hundred people in the office and have capacity to grow to 200 over here. And yeah, we've really put a lot of effort and time and making it a cozy and a nice and a productive place. And it really helps. We really like it. And magic can happen when people get together in a room and think of something new.
- [04:28]
A
Amen. I'm a big proponent of in person work environments, and I think that's why
- [04:34]
B
we all work remote.
- [04:35]
A
Daniel, Our Little organization is 100% remote. But that's. It was like that by design. It's difficult to change it and given the fact where we have the talent. But I think there's something about the power of meeting in person. Like, our business is built on atomos. That's why we have these events.
- [04:49]
B
But what do you do when you're not cozy in your office, Roland?
- [04:52]
C
Sleeping.
- [04:53]
A
Oh, good one. Like, do you have one of these aura rings and you track how well you slept and like oxygen you intakes and whatnot?
- [05:01]
C
No, no, I don't. I wa up I go to work and then I go back to bed. That's, that's pretty much it. It's not that glorious of a life. Maybe it looks like it on the outside, but on the, on the inside it's just hard work.
- [05:16]
A
Let me, let me ask you this. There was a time before you co founded Aikido, like how did you end up here? Like what happened earlier on in your career, in your years? Like, how did you end up in the situation you are right now?
- [05:29]
C
Yeah, like, long story short, I studied here in Ghent, then I moved to San Francisco and I did another master's degree there. And then I did an internship at a SaaS company and that's like the first time that I got exposed directly to, you know, working for, at a software business. And then I basically stuck, stuck around there and I started working for a Belgian startup that had an office there called Showpad and they're originally also from Ghent here. And then I spent another few years there in SaaS and software and then Silicon Valley and all of that good stuff. And I guess I kind of never really, really left or at least the mindset or the industry. I did move back to Belgium in the meantime and then kept on working in Belgium for Chopad and then did a few contracting assignments with a couple of other software companies and then moved on to start Aikido, which is now three years and a half ago roughly.
- [06:29]
A
And you guys have been moving really, really fast with Akiro. So first of all, I want to congratulate you in case there's somebody that doesn't know just recently. I mean, we're talking like this is fresh off the press. You guys raised some money and the valuation was, you're officially now a unicorn. Congratulations. In three and a half years. That's really fast.
- [06:48]
C
Yes.
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A
How does that feel or does that make you feel anything to be a unicorn?
- [06:53]
C
I'm still getting used to it, to be honest. I mean, you're working and you're growing also. I've known this news for a while now, right. Because you sign a term sheet and then all of the follow up steps happen and then finally you can break the news. But by then you're kind of like used to the idea. But I'm still getting used to the public recognition of it, let me put it that way.
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, but what do you guys do that is so valuable for the world?
- [07:24]
C
Yes, we do software security. So to put it simply, we sell to companies that do software building or that have developers and we will connect our product to their code Base, often in a GitHub or a GitLab, we will connect to their cloud, often AWS or an Azure cloud. And then we will also connect to container registries, web apps, API endpoints, basically everything needed or around your applications and your clouds. And we will scan them, we will protect them, we will ethically attack them. And so basically we, we increase or help you increase the security posture and the hardening of your, of your applications and clouds.
- [08:11]
A
Okay, and how does this work in practice? Because I'm a non technical person. So does that mean that like the platform, your piece of software in your system, it scans it and I'm assuming now it can identify and somewhere flag like in red or in whatever color is that here's some risks and so on. And then when you do you do some ethical hacking, is there a group of ethical hackers or is it agents or somehow automated process that hacks this or tries to hack the system to show for vulnerability. How does that work in practice?
- [08:46]
C
So it's all automated and some of these things are regular scans like they run nightly, every night they'll scan your code base. But then there's also agent driven flows with in the shape of a pen test or a penetration test which traditionally is performed by human beings with tools. But we use agents for it. We unleash about 200 agents at your application. We do have humans here as well that will come up with new techniques. We have full time bug bounty hunters, we have full time penetration testing people here.
- [09:20]
A
That sounds like a fun job.
- [09:21]
C
Yeah, it is. But they're not necessarily put their skills to work directly at the customer. It's more to train the models, to train the agents, to train and improve the techniques and steer the agents. Basically.
- [09:36]
A
Okay, gotcha.
- [09:37]
B
And what kind of companies buys this? What's your target audience?
- [09:42]
C
Most of them do software development as like a main activity. So the majority of our customers are software businesses. But then there's a good minority where the main business activity is maybe not writing software like a bank, the main activity is money related activities. Or we have a couple of harbor companies that literally move containers and ships. That's their main activity. But they're so big and they're so modern and interconnected that they also have their own software, especially banks. Right. They have lots of developers and so we also sell to those businesses.
- [10:20]
A
Yeah, so you have to be of a certain size of business and operations for this to work. If I'm a startup, I have my five engineers and we're building a platform. Do I still go to you guys or am I too small for you?
- [10:35]
C
No, no, no, very much. You can very much come to us. We actually started selling in the beginning mostly to startups and scale ups because we were kind of scratching our own itch if you will having you know, been around in the industry and having built software for the last 12, 15 years, we were on the other side of like using all these tools and making your software secure and we didn't like the tools and the processes and all of what we had to do and so we figured we could do a better job and so we created Aikido. And so in a way initially we were built for startups and we still are built for startups but then ever since we started we, we went up market and it's like a layer upon layer upon layer. So every month, every quarter we have a set of new biggest customers and we go up market that way.
- [11:29]
A
I mean that's exciting. And again, once again congratulations on the great progress you guys have done in three and a half years and hopefully here at the end of this call you're going to tell us like what we can expect in the next three and a half years.
- [11:40]
C
Yes.
- [11:41]
A
And I just listening to you, I had this meta thought and in my head I was saying like Daniel, don't say it, don't say it but I can't help it. So are you using your own platform to stress test your own platform?
- [11:54]
C
Yeah, of course. You drink your own champagne or you eat your own dog food or one tells it a little bit more nicely than the other. Yeah, no for sure we 100% do but even next to our own product we have like a bug bounty program with external pen tests happening.
- [12:10]
A
Of course.
- [12:12]
C
Yeah, just in case.
- [12:13]
A
Yes, yes, yes. Let's put some numbers on the business here. Like like we said unicorn valuation. Now like what is your are right now? How fast are you guys growing? What can you tell us about amount of customers that you have around the world here? Which are, which are the key regions GEOs that you sell into?
- [12:30]
C
Yeah, we roughly are like 5050 between like North America and the rest of the world. A little bit more in the US than it's by far country number one. And then right now we're well north of 20 million in ARR. We started last year around like 5ish, so we went times 4, times 5 depending a little bit on how you count and we're about 180 people in total right now we have people in 19 or 20 countries. I counted it the other day we have customers in about 40 different countries, so that's kind of roughly the Geos and all of that.
- [13:15]
A
Yeah. And you have raised a few rounds right now. We also are always curious when we have co founders here, like do you still have a stake and how big is your stake in other co founders right now? The reason why we ask that we want to understand how much of a power to steer this ship do you still have in this exercise?
- [13:35]
B
Yeah.
- [13:35]
C
No, no. It's a fair question. Right. Every round is a little bit of dilution. Right. This round was not too bad. It was a relatively low amount compared to the valuation. So in terms of percentages, this round was not too impactful in dilution. But the biggest dilution is your co founder. Right. That's where it all starts. And so we were three co founders and so it makes a big difference. Co founders, 3, 4. And the way you divvy it up. And so it all starts there. And then we've been able to, we still have things under control, we have the majority of the board, we're still the biggest shareholder, so we're still in a good, strong position.
- [14:22]
A
You're in a very good spot.
- [14:23]
C
Yeah. We haven't had to sell our soul or do crazy things. I don't have hard benchmarks, but I think we would probably be up there in the more well structured.
- [14:34]
A
And what are you going to do with the recently raised funds? Like, you know, what was the driving force there? Other than that? You just could. Because we've heard the rumors here that there was a lot of people that want to get in on your journey. So it felt like you could pick and choose a little bit. Like, what are you using the funds for? Specifically?
- [14:49]
C
The theme of this Series B round was to become unignorable. And what I mean by that is unignorable.
- [14:57]
A
I like that.
- [14:57]
C
Unignorable, yes. Too often and still a little bit today we hear this prospect saying, oh my God, your product is amazing. It's a lot better than everything I've ever used before. How is it possible that I've never heard about you guys? And like, I've heard that sentence a little too often last year and we, we grew a lot more confident in our capability in our products and the results were there. And I think in theory we can grow 10 times as fast, but we need the top of funnel for it. And so a lot of this round is focused on becoming unrecognizable. We don't want to hear it again that they didn't know who we are, or that we missed out on a deal, because when we're in it, most of the times we win it. And so it's not about conversions, it's about getting in the deal.
- [15:50]
A
Gotcha.
- [15:51]
B
And of course, we are now very curious about what we can learn from this, what we can steal from your journey and your experience and so on. And one thing that I know that you have said is that revenue is the only thing that counts and you have to have brutal focus. So what does that mean?
- [16:08]
C
I think unless you're working on some deep, deep, deep tech, like some biotech or some cancer medicine or something that really takes incredible amounts of ip, if you're not in such a business and you're more in a regular industry than revenue is almost the only thing that counts. It's what drives investors, it's what allows you to raise money. People say they will care about the other stuff, but by the end of the day they're going to look at your numbers, they're going to put it in an Excel. Then there's green, orange and red flags. Then we can now throw all the buzzwords of acv, nrr, ARR, C, ARR. And then the model will say green, orange or red. And then people will ask what are you going to do to get from orange to green? Or what have you done to be in the green and how are you going to keep on being in the green? And so by the end of the day, that's mostly what if you execute on that and you do grow in revenue, a lot is possible because everything's moving, everybody's happy, money can flow, people can get paid, people can be promoted, more people can be hired. And so it's the flywheel of many of the things and the positivity and it allows you to get a great valuation. And it's by the end of the day what a lot of investors just look at.
- [17:40]
B
So prioritizing revenue in that way, how has that affected your product development, how you select product features and so on?
- [17:49]
A
Yeah, and I guess also, if I may add to that, there's probably, probably in my mind at least, I'm thinking like there's some short term decisions versus long term decisions that you maybe have to balance here to come to some kind of effect for affecting the revenue.
- [18:03]
C
One of the things that we've always enjoyed at Aikido is to have like a continuous stream of customer acquisition. And it also keeps the morale high because you have that continuous dopamine shot. And I mean, there's nothing wrong about Being purely in the enterprise and only in the enterprise. But if your whole year is hinging on these three deals that have been dragging on for months and sometimes years, and then it doesn't come true in Q4, then all of a sudden the year is broken, investors are unhappy, and all of that good stuff. We've always tried and have managed to have a very healthy balance between a continuous stream of smaller companies, a lot of them startups, while also working on some really nice mid market deals and a couple of juicy enterprise deals and like having them fall and come in on different cadences. But if you combine the different cadences, you get nice growth in revenue month over month. There's not like these highs and lows over the quarters, like it's all. And so to be able to do that, you, you need also a feature set that allows to cater both to the small companies that those can keep on rolling, but also feature set that allows you to be competitive, more upmarket. And with Aikido, a lot where we play in is brownfield, I often call it, meaning that almost all of our customers already use something or they have been using other products. And so typically when people switch away from whatever product they're using, they want to switch to something that is better and hopefully cheaper. And if it's only 10% better and 10% cheaper, you're not going to move away. It needs to be a lot better and a little bit cheaper or significantly more affordable to what it was before. And so we spend a lot of time and focus on building a feature set that allows us to have parity with a lot of these players out there to then go and win renewals. And if and when they do, things typically go smooth. Because when you are moving or turning away from a product, that means you know that you need it, there's a budget for it, there's a place for it, there's workflows in place and they typically have a deadline then as well. Right. The renewal is coming up, let's say end of March. That means by end of February I need to select a new vendor. We're now January, so I need to be in my POC right now. And there's a good cadence that can be kept in a lot of these deals.
- [20:47]
B
So keep the dopamine flowing. I really like that. Get the momentum all the time and that brings positive things. And does that also mean when you're hiring people, are you looking for certain? I mean, what's a good fit and a bad fit for you?
- [21:04]
C
I think at AIKIDO at almost every department, there's like a dual stream going on. Like you have your quick wins, you move, you move, you move, you ship, you ship, you ship, you sell, you sell, you sell and you get these short term wins, but at the same time you're also working on a couple of more longer term projects. And finding the balance between those two is something that we see in all of the departments and something that I tell new hires as well, where I'm like, look, let's get a win, let's get a win soon. Let's get you. Whether it's a feature shipped in the first week that you're here, the first day that you're here, or a first sale, it will create that dopamine, it will create that happiness. It's like something. And then sure, you can work on the bigger feature, you can work on the bigger deal as well. But even enterprise account executives, I allow them to do smaller deals in the beginning just to get going, get a win under your belt. Nothing is more demotivating than you're nine months in the job, haven't closed a single deal, haven't been paid for three quarters in a row then at least in commission. And so it's very demotivating and we do not want to have that basically.
- [22:19]
A
Yeah, totally understand also from a fellow sales leader here from back in the days, but obviously you're much more successful at it than I ever was. I'm a little bit curious here in this brutal focus on the only thing that matters is revenue. Has there been some painful sacrifices? Like looking back at over the last three and a half years, has there been some things that have been difficult to get past, difficult to tell people? Like, I know it's important, but it's not for us right now. Like what does those trade offs been?
- [22:55]
C
Sure, I think there's a couple of big deals back in the day that we, we were at that mental crossroads thing where okay, are we going to sell our soul to the enterprise or are we going to say no and keep at the SMB and the mid market layer by layer by layer. And I mean it's not fun to say no to a juicy six figure or even low seven figure deal. But I think we took the right decisions to not desperately following into that and sticking to our course or just
- [23:31]
A
running after the biggest shiny object there was.
- [23:34]
C
Yeah, security. The cyber world is like very much dominated by a lot of acronyms. Sast, dast, aspm, cspm. People that are not in the industry that will be Chinese to them. But a lot of these categories are invented by research firms, and we feel like a lot of products out there abide by that. They kind of follow the rules set out by other people. And we feel like by the end of the day, when you're writing software, you just want to have a secure app. And whether you call it Sast or DAST or ASPM or CSPM or like, by the end of the day, you don't want to get hacked, and your customers expect you to be safeguarding their data and all of that good stuff. And the point that I'm trying to make is that throughout our product development, it's also sometimes enticing or easy to maybe follow a path that a competitor has done before or something that a research firm has set out, but where you inherently know this is not the way. This has been invented by somebody who is not really, really, really at the job. And they did an attempt at it. It was a good shot. But this is not how you secure something. But now you have all of these vendors that lean into this supposed way of doing where we strongly believe it's not the right way. But then sometimes buyers will also follow that same route because they've heard the research firm say it, they've heard the vendors say it, and then we say, no, that's not how you do it. And then you come on this also psychological path of, like, how much do you lean into category expectations from the market.
- [25:26]
A
Right.
- [25:26]
C
While steering your own course? And I think we've also done a good job, and we've lost some deals over that as well in the past where they expected us to check certain boxes, where we said, those are stupid boxes, and checking them doesn't even make sense. And then if the customer is not convinced of that, then you'll lose them. But I feel like the dividends of that are definitely already paying off. Staying on the right track, you got
- [25:53]
A
to stay true to your guns and, and stick to your beliefs, so to say. So, I mean, I'm curious a little bit, like, we want your secrets now. Like, what is the secret sauce? Because you went from 5 million to 20 million. And if I would be a guessing man, that 20 million will be a lot more here if we, if we sit, you know, to talk a year, just a year from now on. And you've previously mentioned that it's not about imposing sales cycle on people. Like, here's how we run our sales process. It's more about embracing their buying journey. Like, how has this looked? Or how does this look in Your world. What does this mean?
- [26:32]
C
I've done sales for quite a while. I've seen a lot of methodologies pass by.
- [26:38]
A
So you're not a fan of Bunt and medic and.
- [26:41]
C
Yeah, there's so many out there, right? And sure they all have some truths, right, and some lessons and nuggets, but a lot of them stem from this. You need to be in control. It's your process and you make the buyer undergo your journey and it's your discovery call and it's your demo and it's your. And they cannot see a demo unless you qualify them. And I think a lot of the methodologies are egocentric towards the seller so that the seller can be in the best position. But if you're on the other side as a buyer, it kind of sucks. I never really understood the half an hour discovery meeting. So you gotta imagine a buyer comes on and then it's like a one way stream of questions and I'm the seller and for half an hour I ask you questions and then the buyer needs to answer them. And then after that half an hour the buyer has gotten close to zero for value out of that meeting. If they didn't say enough right answers, they're at risk of being qualified out and then they might not even get to the stage of a demo. And I think it's very unfair for the buyer and I think it needs to be like a continuous give and get. And actually you should join the buying cycle of the buyer or join the journey that they're on. It's kind of arrogant, kind of to push a journey on them because you don't know them yet. Maybe that journey doesn't make sense to them. And so we by default join the buying cycle of the customer. If they never ever want to talk to us, they will never ever have to talk to us. They can try out the product, they can put in their credit cards, we can send them a quote via email. And if that's the only thing they want to do, then fine by us. If they want Us to jump 10 hoops because they're a bank and they need NDAs, legal procurement, pre negotiated MSAs, TPAs, ISO, SOC2 POCs, requirements, RFPs, RF. And if sure we're not going to do that for a 5k deal, but the companies that do that don't do that for a 5k deal. And then if that's what they need us to do, assuming it's not like incredibly ridiculous, then we will join them on that journey. And I think that has worked Incredibly well for us so far.
- [29:15]
A
Yeah. I mean, and this is like, amen, hallelujah for this look, because I 100% agree with you and sometimes I've felt that. And I have been imposing some of these methodologies on my teams, you know, whether it's Bant or medic and so on. And it almost felt like looking back at it now, we were slaves to our CRM.
- [29:36]
C
Yeah.
- [29:36]
A
Like, because in the CRM we have now logged five steps because it helps us predict where we are in the deals. And like you said, like, you know, first we do the disco call. And if there's no disco call, there is no demo. Yeah, God forbid you do a demo in your first call and so on. But we came to realize that, like you said, like, some people, like, they're, they're well aware and they feel like I'm going to come into this call like, I already have something in place, I know what I need, show it to me. Don't ask me a thousand questions and then that would interrupt our flow. But like you said, there's a value into getting people to understand this is how buyers buy. My question to you is that you have lots of customers also from different industries, different customers buy in a different way. How do you prepare your internal folks to manage this so you as a sales leader can have a predictable way of still understanding. While we're running all these kinds of different buying cycles, supporting them, I still need to have an idea of like, where we are in the cycles, where we are in the pipe here, what's coming in, what's not coming in. I think that's what a lot of people are afraid of.
- [30:41]
C
Yes.
- [30:42]
A
That's why they stick to this rigid process.
- [30:44]
C
When I say that we join the buying cycle and we don't make it mandatory to talk to us, we really mean that. But the sales cycles that we're engaged in, they're also in our CRM. Right. So we're not slaves of our CRM. But when you're in a deal with a bank and you're there in the middle of their POC and you've jumped already a couple of hoops, you're in stage three, stage four, whatever's most appropriate. And then we do have a sense of the amount of the deal, we do have a sense of when this could potentially close. Typically they have a deadline. Typically it's a renewal of the tool that they're using. And so that does allow you to predict or have a view on the pipeline. What is a little bit harder to have a view on is the pure plg, the self service. We have some obviously we have historic data on if we have 1000 signups on average, X will convert after one month. But because you haven't actually identified them, they're not in the CRM with an opportunity attached to them. Then all of the sudden they might like sign up or appear or put in the credit card and so those are then pleasant surprises. And we try to not like over index it because it's very hard to forecast deals where you don't even know where they're going to come from. But that's basically how we look at it.
- [32:13]
A
And as long as you have the volume, if you are, what did you say here in the beginning? Unignorable. There's enough volume coming in top of funnel, it will sort itself out.
- [32:22]
C
Yes, typically, yes. We fall back on the product very heavily. So in the startup scene it's almost going to be entirely the product that is going to do the selling because it's a CTO, 5 devs CTO just wants to try it out. If it works great, if it doesn't work, not great and then they'll move on. But all of the investments that we've done for having at this point multiple self signups a day, that's the result of a thousand increments of making the flows better, making the UX better, improving the help center, improving the wizards, the guidance and that has led to a continuous stream of self signups. But that also pays dividends up market because when that customer comes along and they're trying it out, it makes that we do not have an army of sales engineers for example, where at other companies the ratio of like AES sales engineers, I think we have like four or five, six times less of that ratio. Gotcha. Because the product does a lot of the the selling and so we want to put the product forward as much as we can. 99.9% of our customers try the product before they buy. That's also a reason why our churn is incredibly low. Because there's not a lot of surprises when you buy Aikido. It's like an arbitrary point in time almost where okay, we're ready to pay for it now, but it's already implemented, you're already using it and and basically people are like okay, let's start paying for it now. That's how we typically do sales.
- [34:07]
B
So one thing that I'm sitting here thinking about is when you're getting in touch with a potential customer, how do you understand what their buying journey looks like.
- [34:18]
C
Well, typically we will just straight up ask them like, hey, why are you here? Without trying to get too deep or trying to make them say things that they're maybe not comfortable saying. People will typically say like, hey, I'm using vendor X and we're not happy because of ABC and we're exploring options. Or I'm here because we're working towards compliance, PCI, SoC2, whatever their standard is in their industry. And for Haltech, it could be HIPAA and HyTrust. In fintech, it could be PCI. And then we know that those compliance standards will mandate that they use certain scanners and pen testing and all of that good stuff. And then we kind of know already the differences between industries. Like, for example, a startup will be very loose and not strict on merging new codes versus a health tech that is creating a medical device. They're going to be super strict. They're going to put super strict gates. And so that we already know when it's a haltech, we will demo all of the gating features and all of the controls that they can put in place. Versus when you talk to a startup, it's all about like, oh, look how easy it is. And it connects with your GitHub and it logs in Slack and you can ignore things from Slack and then whatever they care more most about. So you do tailrad and we.
- [35:49]
B
Absolutely. But if you ask me, you know what it looks like and I tell you that we are looking at some different options. What comes next? What do you say then to me?
- [36:01]
C
Because we do code security, cloud security, pen testing, I do need to get a little bit of a sense, like, are you here for the whole shebang or are you here for just that part? And then if they say I'm just for here, that part, I'll be like, all right, let's talk it through. If I feel like they're reserved, I feel like, okay, I'll give them something now and then we go into a demo.
- [36:21]
B
Yeah. And if you get that, you know, I might have got on my table to sort of discover what kind of vendors is out there. And then. Yeah, so I'm in that phase. You know, maybe I just saw that. Yeah, this company, they just became a new incorn, so maybe I should check them out as well. Here I have them on my list. So how. So yeah, how do you make sure that you don't lose me?
- [36:47]
C
I think we never want to offend the buyer or be annoying salespeople, so to say. And so we will always respect boundaries. And so when I feel like they're there against their will or where they had to throw another one in the rfp, I will be very hands off and be like, look, this is what we do. Tell me where to go next. And I will be pretty obedient, if you want to call it like that, and take him around the journey. And typically I always try to not push, but propose that, hey, try it out, proof the pudding is in the eating. That's where conviction is built. And then you never have to talk to me again.
- [37:33]
B
And if I say that I want to do a PoC with three different companies here, just to get the sense
- [37:39]
C
I love it, it's better when they do POC with three because then it becomes very clear that we're the best option.
- [37:45]
A
Yeah, cool. Roland, I also wanted to ask you because you said here a couple of times that most of your customer journeys like at some point before they have signed a piece of paper, they have seen the product, many of them have tried the product. And I was curious about how your approach is that when somebody signs up for a test account, if you may, like, we have seen many examples that people use the PLG as a Trojan horse. Like, oh yes, somebody signed up. The salespeople are all over that account. Like, what happens on your end? Like, do you also have, do you just throw salespeople on it? Or is it another type of process that takes place?
- [38:22]
C
Yes, we do have people actively reaching out. Often those are BDRs, SDRs or more junior or inside sales type of account executives. But we will always go and present a menu card. So to say, like, we will never. We do not have an active push to like, you need to get them in a meeting. Like, if they sign up, like a PQL is as good as an SQL. Meaning if they sign up for the product, they connect their repos, they connect their cloud, they connect their slack. They're doing incredibly well. They don't need to be bombarded by a salesperson at that point. And we will reach out and we will say, hey, we're here. This is me. I can help you with X, Y and Z. If you're fine by yourself, by all means, we are not here to pester you. But if for whatever reason you have a question, you want a quote, you want to, before you maybe connect your production accounts to Aikido, have a conversation with us. We're here. That is everywhere in Aikido. If you come to the website, it will say start for free or book a Demo, you choose what you want. If you want to do the demo, great. If you don't want to do demo, you don't have to. And so we do want it to be that if at any point throughout the journey, you raise your hand and you decide that you want to get help, we'll be there for you, and we want you to know that that will be there for you. But we will not force you into a meeting. We haven't forced anyone in a meeting.
- [39:57]
A
I bet you there's a lot of leaders here listening into this and they feel like, gosh, I want to know what his number one tactic or trick or if he has a magical wand that got him from 5 million to 20 million. So looking back at that journey, like, what was the main driving force that helped you get to that number?
- [40:21]
B
The 15 million euro deal.
- [40:24]
C
That one doesn't. We have more than 2,000 paying customers now, but I think this year has been more scaling it. The question is more relevant for last year, where you go from 500 to 5 million, because that's where the foundations are being laid to which you continue on this year and the year after this one. But early on, what has allowed us to scale or grow fast is having an incredibly short feedback loop with the customer. And so we're very adamant about understanding what they want and why they move forward or don't move forward. And so definitely in the beginning, I would be obsessed with why somebody wouldn't move forward with Aikido or choose another vendor over us. And getting to the core of why that is and doing it in a way that they are willing to share that, that's immensely powerful because then you can make decisions quite quickly. And so we try to chat with our customers as often and as frequent as we can, whether it's through the product, chat inside the app itself, or setting up a Slack channel or a teams channel that has proven to be immensely powerful and approaching it in a humble way, literally, especially at the beginning, I would say, hey, give me your brutally honest feedback and I promise you I won't try to bring it back or try to sell to you or use it against you. I just want to help a broader out and let me learn from this. The moment that people feel and see that that is a genuine thing, they are typically open to share why they didn't or took a certain decision in a certain direction. And yeah, that I would say is one of the key reasons that we were able to grow fast.
- [42:29]
A
That makes a lot of sense.
- [42:30]
B
We always ask our guests what Is the future for you? And I mean, you went from 500 to 5, then 5 to 20. What is your biggest challenges to continue to scale your operation?
- [42:44]
C
Would you say we will grow massively this year? We already have a look on our pipeline. We know our engines by now. So we can.
- [42:50]
A
What does that mean? Massively? Give us a number.
- [42:52]
C
Just like as a teaser, minimum, double, triple. That is already in the cards. But with raising a Series B with a hefty valuation, then you're putting the bar yourself, right? The expectations that you put on yourself, the expectations that the investors will put on you. Now, for this to be like a home run success for everybody involved, this needs to go to a $10 billion company, right.
- [43:23]
A
Decacorn here we can have. Is there a Decacorn from Belgium? Is Culibra a Decacorn? Culibra is the biggest software company out there. Right.
- [43:35]
C
By this point in time, perhaps. Odoo.
- [43:38]
A
Odoo, that's right. Yes, yes.
- [43:40]
C
They did a secondary transaction that leaked, or maybe it wasn't even leaking. In the news that now it's at 7 or 8 billion valuation.
- [43:51]
A
I think I read that as well. It was the first time the founder took some money off the table.
- [43:57]
C
The founder has been known to be very adamant about reinvesting, not doing secondaries and growing as much on their own as much as they can. But yes.
- [44:09]
A
Okay, exciting. Okay, so how long time until this is a Decacorn?
- [44:16]
C
It depends on the. Well, two things. Right. The revenue and the growth rate and the multiple.
- [44:21]
B
Right, Yeah.
- [44:22]
C
I was just about to say we can do some calculations with multiples. Right? Like if you count back from 10 billion, what would the multiple be? And the bigger you become, slowly but steadily the multiples start to shrink a little bit. Right. So I guess you could do some back of the napkin reverse engineering on what it would take. But obviously we need to get to 100 million in ARR. That's like a North Star. We need to get there as fast as possible. Then we need to scale beyond that. And then we need to basically tap out on 2, 3, 400 million, which a lot of these companies in the industry do. And not only cyber, but just developer tooling and adjacent businesses. And so it has like that S curve, right? Where in the beginning it's a hockey stick, but then the hockey stick slowly starts flattening out again.
- [45:16]
A
You got to start the next S curve before the first S curve flattens out. This multi product offering or whatever it is.
- [45:21]
C
Exactly, exactly. So that is the game plan, right?
- [45:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [45:25]
B
So if you could make one higher, what would that be?
- [45:28]
C
I would choose between either a celebrity for the sake of becoming unignorable.
- [45:36]
A
I mean, sure, I'd hire who's top of the list on the celebrity list for you.
- [45:43]
C
I do not have an, like, I don't have such a list. I don't have a readily available answer, but, you know, whatever is a mega industry veteran that everybody knows, and that is a vote of confidence.
- [46:01]
A
So it's like a business professional influencer. It's not like mark Wahlberg or LeBron James.
- [46:08]
C
No, but it could be like a tech entrepreneur that has reached kind of celebrity status. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, they're celebrities. Right. So, I don't know, something along those lines.
- [46:23]
B
We'll think about it. We'll think about it. Roland, is there anyone that you should think we should bring to the show here as a guest?
- [46:31]
C
You might have a hard time, but I think Fabien, the CEO of Odoo, he has quite a story to tell. I mean, I'm not thinking of him because we just talked about it, but sure. I mean, I think.
- [46:44]
B
Do you know him?
- [46:45]
C
Not really. I haven't met him in person. We only exchanged an email very briefly once. They are very. They're in the French part of Belgium, so they're not in Ghentword in different cities.
- [46:57]
A
Okay.
- [46:57]
B
Yeah, but you have his email address.
- [46:59]
C
Yeah, I have his email address. But you can tell that they're a very focused company as well, and they're very much on their own track.
- [47:06]
A
Let's see, Thomas, we're going to have to do some work on our own here. We're going to find him at a weak moment in time and then maybe he will join us here.
- [47:16]
B
We put him on our celebrity list and see if we can get him on the show. But on that note, it was great having you on the show, Roland. And you know, as you are progressing with your company, you're going to be a celebrity yourself, I'm sure.
- [47:33]
C
So that's not a goal on its own. But if that's the result of being a Deca Cornell, I'll take it.
- [47:39]
A
It's a nice byproduct. It's a nice byproduct. And sometimes, you know, like, there's something nice about having these types of stories in smaller countries as well. With all due respect to all the great companies that are already coming out of, especially the Ghent region, and we know the Chopad folks rather well, I think each region, each country needs these types of Stories. Because that kind of somehow feeds confidence into all of the other up and comers to see. Look, somebody else from my little country here, 10 million people or however many you are, is dominating the world. I can do it as well. We need these success stories. I think it feeds success down there.
- [48:19]
B
Yeah. And you have all the dopamine hungry people that you have sort of brought up in your company that will probably start other companies eventually as well.
- [48:27]
C
That is what, for me, success looks like. Call it Decacorn, sure, it's like a nice buzzword. But if this company can reach some type of exit that is beneficial for everybody and we can unleash a lot of that in the ecosystem, whether it's through another financing round or IPO or eventually getting bought, like, those are options that we don't even think about today. It doesn't make sense. We just need to grow and then hopefully have the luxury position where all of it is hopefully an option, but then doing it in a way that it strengthens this local. This local. I want to be careful with the word ecosystem. I think it's a little bit hollow that. But yes, that would mean a lot to us as founders in general.
- [49:11]
A
Yeah, for sure. Well, more power to you. We're surely going to be here to follow your journey up close. And then we'll have to bring you back here at some point and see how this double or triple or quadruple journey. First of all, the journey to 100 million. Let's see how fast we can get there. So we're here cheering for you.
- [49:29]
C
You. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
- [49:31]
A
All right, thank you for joining the show. Take care now.
- [49:33]
C
Bye bye.
- [49:33]
A
Bye, bye bye. That's an impressive journey, Thomas, that they're on. Are you a little bit jealous? We're not quite on a similar journey. We grow quite fast. We have many members.
- [49:46]
B
We have a lot of fun.
- [49:47]
A
We have a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun. We probably don't have as cool of an office as they have.
- [49:52]
B
I mean, I don't know if their office is that cool. They said it was kind of neutral but cozy. I don't know.
- [49:57]
A
Okay.
- [49:58]
B
They at least have an office. We don't have an office.
- [50:00]
A
Yeah, exactly. I have a neon sign and you have a pinball machine in yours. So. Yeah, there's always something. But, like listening to this, like, did you have any aha moments here?
- [50:10]
B
I think you know what I'm gonna say.
- [50:12]
A
Say it anyway.
- [50:14]
B
No, but I really liked what he said about make sure that you always get Wins that you get, you know, that dopamine flowing because that puts you in a positive spiral. You do all of these small things but then also you get more energy to win the big deals or the longer cycles or whatever it is. So keeping that positive momentum. And we try to find a win each day when we work. Yeah, most days we have something to call a win at least. And I think that's a good perspective and you should celebrate, you know, even the small, small wins every day.
- [50:56]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:57]
B
And this is a win. I think this episode in itself was a win for me.
- [51:01]
A
Yeah, like for us all. Like it was really nice. Like we, we didn't know each other too well not too long ago and we booked this session and so happy we could have this conversation. I think for, for me, you know what I'm going to say. I always love folks that truly understand the customer and the way the customer wants to purchase whatever it is you're selling. I think there's too many folks out there, too many companies out there that are a little bit too rigid into like this is how we sell and if the buyer doesn't comply with how we sell, well then fm. But I, I think the real winners here are the ones that can you support your buyer or the buying committee, whomever is involved on the other side so they can check your boxes? If you can help them check your boxes, then they will automatically check your boxes. Because I think sometimes people tend to forget that there's a massive risk in acquiring and buying software. Like in this case, like, like, you know, like he said, nine out of 10 customers, they already have something in place. Are you going to put your neck on the line and be like hey everybody in my office here in the company, I'm going to rip this thing out that existed in our business and has worked okay for the past five years. I'm going to like say like no to that now and I'm going to bring in these new guys that we've never worked with and you're just going to have, have to take my word for it that this is the right way to do it because they're cooler. They have these agents that going to pen test our solution. Maybe they're a little bit more affordable. I mean there's a significant risk there and if you don't understand that and just stick to what you need, I think you're not, you're not going to have long term success. So understanding the buyer and their cycles and being able to plug in to that, if you can do that 10 times out of 10 times you're going to win unless your product is.
- [52:55]
B
Amen to that.
- [52:56]
A
Amen to that.
- [52:57]
B
And today we, we're having a great day, actually. We're going to spend the full day together with 60 CEOs from the Celsius CEO network. And yeah, full day full of workshops, roundtable discussions, networking, and a nice dinner and an ice bar as well up in Stockholm. So we're having a lot of fun today. And next week the CEO Network and the Executive Network start the Ordinary Network sessions. So we do online sessions 250 times a year where people learn from each other, sharing experiences, reflections, recommendations, and the members, they can bring out their use cases and the things that they want to discuss or get some input on. So looking forward to that a lot. Is there anything else to look forward to this year, Daniel?
- [53:53]
A
No. I heard you say ice bar. And I'm thinking, like, I know that everything in the ice bar, I read the memo, it's made out of ice, including the glass. I wonder what drink I'm going to have there. Like, what is best consumed in an ice bar. So if you've been. I've never been to an ice bar myself. So if you're listening to this, you've been to an ice bar. I think it's really, really cold because I understand that they're giving us these like coats and beanies and whatnot. Tell me what I should order in the bar there to maximize my experience.
- [54:26]
B
Can I get the Fernet?
- [54:27]
A
I mean, I don't know. I've never been there. Like, maybe you can.
- [54:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. I was asking for your permission. But anyway, so I think this is a it for. For this episode. See you around. And don't shy away. If you want to get in touch with us for any, any reason, that's fine. So, yeah, until next time.
- [54:47]
A
See you around. Oh, no.
- [54:54]
B
What happened?
- [54:55]
A
I don't see Roland anymore.
- [54:58]
B
Wait, I think actually Roland, I didn't
- [55:02]
C
touch or do anything. But I was backstage somehow.
- [55:05]
B
No, no, no, it was me. I wanted to have you big. I double tapped and I put you backstage.
- [55:11]
A
Well, this goes into the blooper section, Thomas. All right, just for the fun of it, let's start from the beginning. Thomas. So we get into the flow.
- [55:20]
B
All right.
- [55:20]
A
Yes.
- [55:20]
B
Cool. Take two.