From a Security VAR to a $10 Million ARR SaaS Product Business: Andrew Plato, CEO of Anitian (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing service contracts basically?

Andrew Plato: Yes. I did technical writing. I did a little bit of software development and website design. In 1999, I switched my company and became a security service provider. I was reselling other people’s security tech.

Then the company pivoted and pivoted. Today we have a security platform that automates the process of building, securing, and monitoring cloud infrastructure.

Our platform is like a pre-built, pre-engineered security platform. If you need security and you need it in the cloud, and it needs rigorous security specifications, that’s what we build. We build these pre-built platforms so that application companies can deploy applications more quickly without sacrificing security and compliance. 

Sramana Mitra: Help me with the journey a little bit. In 1999, you were doing security services. How does the story progress from 1999 to here?

Andrew Plato: In 1999, the company did security services and we sold security products. We were a VAR. Around about 2011 after running a VAR for a decade, I came to the realization that I wanted out. I couldn’t stand that business anymore.

The primary reason for that is, I really hated what being a VAR was doing to me as a person. The VAR business is a business where your integrity is constantly getting questioned. The only way you can succeed is to have no integrity.

It’s a little too much like the used car salesman. You can never really be open and honest with people. That wore me down. It’s also a really difficult business to scale and keep going. I got sick of the business and wanted out of it.

I pivoted the company strictly into security services focusing exclusively on security consulting services, penetration testing, and other things, which the company had been doing. I just got rid of the VAR side and I kept the professional services and the managed services side of the business.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. That VAR business that I hated so much would ultimately become the defining thing as to why I was able to pivot to the next level. In 2016, I had been doing professional services for a few years. We were profitable and we were successful. 

Sramana Mitra: How big is the professional services business?

Andrew Plato: We were doing around $5 million a year.

Sramana Mitra: Was this mostly in the Seattle area?

Andrew Plato: Majority of our customers were in the Pacific Northwest. We were a regional professional services provider, but we had customers all over the country. We even had a few in Europe. We were one among several smaller regional security services companies.

We started working with AWS. They, of course, were a big win. We started doing a lot of work with them. We got to know the cloud. We had done a lot of business with cloud companies. Our experience and knowledge in the cloud started to grow.

There was this growing movement within AWS around automating security. How do you build these platforms? We were interested in it. Some companies like Netflix were building their own security platforms. We spent a lot of time analyzing Netflix’s business. It’s fascinating when you dig into how they did it. I got interested in this. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : From a Security VAR to a $10 Million ARR SaaS Product Business: Andrew Plato, CEO of Anitian
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