I was brought in by the investors to drive the strategic direction of the company.
Before that I worked at a variety of networking and storage companies both startups and large companies.
My most recent position before joining Sqrrl was as Senior Vice President at F5 Networks.
What needs to change is that you should not wait to react to cyber-attacks.
You must be proactive to understand what is happening in your internet before it is too late.
The company founders and much of the development team came out of the NSA (National Security Agency).
It is a NoSQL database that is extremely scalable and provides very high performance.
In 2011 the core engine was released as open source software.
What can you tell me about your pricing model?
We make a run at keep is pretty simple and in the hands of the customer.
Thats a good question.
We are not really going after that market.
Most of our customers engage with us for ongoing infrastructure support.
However, we do have several partners who specialize in emergency incident responses that are using our tools.
What are the types of attacks that are easiest to hunt?
Which are the hardest?
We dont focus on the simple stuff.
Our software hunts for various Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
Our Security Advisor, David Bianco, uses a concept called thePyramid of Painto categorize IoCs.
Who is your specific target audience within that market?
We engage with companies across all vertical markets, including governments.
How many active customers do you have today?
Where they are mainly located?
We serve companies all across the world.
We currently have about 40 active customers, including ten Fortune 100 companies.
How would you describe your current typical customer?
Our typical deal size is $300K - $500K.
Our objective is to make Level 1 Security Analysts more productive and to make Level 3 analysts more proactive.
What methods do you normally use to attract and engage with new customers?
We dont spend a lot of time or effort on outbound marketing.
We focus instead on thought leadership and sharing high quality content on our web site.
This causes customers to come to us, so that more of our leads are inbound.
We are increasingly becoming top of mind in the security industry.
Who do you see as your main competitors?
How do you see your tools as different as and/or better than theirs?
The trend is shifting towards 40% prevention and 60% detection and response.
This is in recognition and admission of the fact that the bad guyswillget in.
A few more of my observations are:
What are your future plans for Sqrrl?
We plan to continue to be a market leader.
This is not easy the product roadmap never ends, because the attackers are always innovating.
What is the story behind the name Sqrrl?
This too stems from our NSA roots.
Secret Squirrel was a cartoon spy character in the 1960s.
How many employees do you have today?
Where are they located?
We currently have 50 employees, the majority of whom are located in our Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters.
We have expansion plans to grow rapidly in the second half of this year.
How many hours a day do you normally work?
What do you like to do when you are not working?
I spend most of my time thinking about how I can help customers protect themselves from cyber threats.
This can translate into long days at times.
It doesnt feel like that much, though, since the day flies by so quickly.
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