Balaji Parimi, Founder and CEO of CloudKnox, shares his experiences building the company from inception to its recent exciting acquisition by Microsoft. CloudKnox is a cybersecurity startup which has essentially defined its tech category, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), which involves refining how enterprises protect critical cloud resources from insider threats, whether malicious or accidental.

In this conversation with Biplab, Balaji talks through his journey of initially identifying the problem and validating its significance, to then finding the right team as well as investors needed to build and scale a company solving this problem. Throughout the conversation, he shares his thought process and rationale for making key decisions, recruiting a team, and finding investors.

“Being fairly technical, I spent a couple of months writing all kinds of scripts… to get answers to my questions, but when I looked at the answers…there was no easy way to address that risk because there are literally thousands and thousands of actions that are possible within these cloud infrastructures” - Balaji describing his research to validate the existence of the market need for a CIEM solution 

Key Takeaways: 

• Balaji’s experiences at VMware and other SaaS startups led him to identify the security issues that can arise in hybrid cloud environments. He validated the existence of the issue among his peers at other companies and searched the market for an existing solution but found nothing. He knew these issues would only grow larger as time passed, which gave him the confidence to found CloudKnox.   
• In the early days of CloudKnox, having knowledgeable, experienced investors and mentors helped alleviate many of the initial uncertainties they faced. These investors were able to guide on key milestones the company should hit, and how to approach as well as think about different phases of building the business.
• Balaji and his team didn’t set out to build a new category (CIEM). They were patient in their expectations around educating the market, customers and even investors. They knew they initially didn’t have the resources or creditability to tell the world about this new problem, but they were confident high-profile issues would arise and help bring their solution into the spotlight.
• Founders should figure out the value-add they are looking for in investors. Particularly now, when it’s easy to raise money, founders should be thoughtful about what purpose an investor can serve both immediately and as the company matures. For CloudKnox, early investors were helpful in educating the market, while later investors were helpful in go-to-market and acquiring customers.