Insight
To win developers in security, founders must build a devtool company
“If you want to get developers to use a security product, you have to build a developer tooling company not a security company.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
AI will shift software development from being code-centric to spec-centric
“So TESL, we believe that software in the AI world, software will move from being code-centric to being spec-centric.”
Insight
A VC-backed founder's worst case is getting stuck at $2M-$3M ARR
“The kind of worst case scenario is not to get to crash and burn with your company, but to get stuck, to get to a company that it's at two million RR, three million RR, growing 30% year on year. It's kind of enough that you don't really want to just cut loose a…”
Disclosure
a16z and others passed on Snyk's seed because it lacked revenue
“I got to, like, you know, ask me for the partner meeting, stay over the weekend in Andreessen Horowitz to sort of present to, and nobody converted. And everybody basically peeked behind the curtains, saw there's no revenue, says, oh, classic DevTool.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Snyk burned $4M to hit $100K ARR, reaching $19M 2.5 years later
“That was like two years and two months in, we were at a 100,000 ARR not awesome. And we burned four million dollars by that time. You know, four months later, we're at six 50. A year later, we're at four and a half million. A year later, we're at nineteen mill…”
Assertion Supported
75% of attacks target apps, but get under 25% of security budgets
“75% of the attacks and hacks happen at the application layer, but 25% of the budget or the investment happens over there, and that's probably generous.”
Insight
Reducing product difficulty drives adoption faster than increasing user motivation
“In every product you build, there's kind of, there's how much you care, and there's how hard it is, and you need to care more than it is hard, and you'll do it, and so one of your tools is to make someone care more, but that's a slow process. The other tool yo…”
Disclosure
Snyk abandoned automated micro-patching because developers feared it would break builds
“And we actually introduced an ability to patch. Sometimes you have a library that's vulnerable and doesn't have a fix. And we introduced, you know, we introduced an ability to patch because oftentimes it's like a line of code. So install the old version of the…”
Insight
Devtools win bottom-up because the minimum unit of value is one developer
“For security, it's governance. So it's probably like a business unit, minimum unit. But for developers, because of that single developer and because developers are more empowered, DevTools generally win bottom up. You have to win over the developer first.”
Assertion Supported
Snyk drove viral growth by automating fix PRs on open-source repos
“We reached out to open source libraries, and we got them to install it. And that was a big deal because it created this sort of viral loop of people seeing that this is possible. Every time you're You know, you open a fixed pull request on a repo that someone …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Developers outright refused to pay Snyk's $20 monthly subscription fee
“It took us a moment to realize they're not gonna pay. They're just not gonna pay. And the payment was like 20 dollars a month.”
Disclosure
Podjarny's new startup TESL raised a $25M Seed and $100M Series A
“We raised a hundred and twenty-five million dollars total, like a hundred million dollar A and the twenty-five million dollar seed, and we raised the last one back in September.”
Disclosure
TESL has practically all of its $125M funding still in the bank
“Practically the entirety of that amount by, like, Massive percentages is still in the bank”
Assertion Supported
Guy Podjarny: Akamai's web performance unit generated around $700M per year
“Akamai acquired us. So pretty quickly, within a couple of years, I got the chance to be the CTO of the web performance part of Akamai. It was about half of Akamai, seven hundred million dollar a year business.”
