It feels surreal that, this time last year, Bryan and I were still preparing for our first company kick-off. Back then we were still working out where we should focus our time, who we should hire, and creating a plan to bring a new technology to market rapidly.
Fast forward one year, and I’m excited that we can further accelerate this vision with $17.5M in Series A funding – bringing us up to $26 million in funding in a year.
I’ll use this opportunity to outline why I believe we have such a phenomenal opportunity here with Harmonic and our plans for the investment.
Right team. Right tempo.
They say that one of the biggest battles is hiring the right team and I am extraordinarily proud of what we have achieved here. Since October 2023, we have released our commercial offering and have grown our number of customers to be in double digits. We’ve been rapidly iterating on this initial release based on customer feedback.
We have grown to 30 employees across the US, UK, and Iceland – including a recent investment in our GTM team as we expand efforts. It helps that the majority of the team have worked together before, meaning that we can move at an incredible tempo. Regular company offsites have helped to give focus and cohesion to a globally distributed team.
I’m looking forward to seeing the team grow even further over the coming months!
Data privacy is still a key barrier to GenAI adoption
Microsoft and other providers have come a long way in terms of protecting some of the issues that GenAI has thrown up. The security of these models has dramatically improved, with new and improved safeguards against prompt injection and hallucinations.
However, what comes up time and time again is that security teams have virtually no control over what their employees are using or what sensitive data is being shared into GenAI and GenAI-enabled tools. Yet security teams are being told they need to block users, label all their data, and create complex, noisy regex rules. If we use the same tech to solve new problems, we cannot expect different outcomes. Expect more noise, more work, and more missed true positives.
If we use the same tech to solve new problems, we cannot expect different outcomes. Expect more noise, more work, and more missed true positives.
Striking the right chords with the community.
I’ve previously mentioned that we spoke to more than 50 security leaders before we wrote a line of code. This has helped us to stay as close to real pain points as possible, ensuring we build a solution best aligned to solving the biggest problems. In fact, the term “zero-touch data protection” was actually coined from one of these conversations!
The obvious benefit here is that when we show other security leaders what we’ve built (and what we’re building) they instantly get it and why it’s so unique. When people see what we’re building, they’re excited about the vision and want to be involved in our journey. To have CISOs like Lucas Moody shouting from the rooftops and getting excited about what we’re building is huge.
It’s also partly why we were nominated as RSA Innovation Sandbox finalists. I cannot overstate how important it is to have the backing of industry.
Our plans for the investment
We’re seeing some real urgency around this issue; security teams are under pressure to enable the company’s AI journey. We are uniquely positioned to solve these immediate challenges.
In the coming weeks, we’ll also be releasing more functionality – including our endpoint agent to monitor the usage of Microsoft Copilot for 365.
We must get the timing right to effectively bring our solution to market. I’m delighted to have already hired sales, demand gen, and recent hires in customer success. Next47, who led our Series A round, is the perfect partner to help expand these efforts.
While GenAI is the burning issue, we see this as something more foundational. It is abundantly clear that security teams are craving a new take on an old problem.
If the problems we’re solving resonate with you, I’d love to chat with you. You can get in touch here to learn more: https://www.harmonic.security/get-demo.
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