Bootstrapping an AI-Powered Security Startup to $10M+ in Revenue: Osprey Security CEO Rohit Anabheri (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you, and what was the trajectory? How many customers did you work with in the beginning? As you started to productize, what was the timeline?

Rohit Anabheri: The first year is always a struggle. It was completely bootstrapped by me and my co-founder.

Sramana Mitra: You guys have had exits before with your services businesses, so you had a bit of money as well.

Rohit Anabheri: That’s right. We didn’t want to carry the money from the previous successes. We were extremely disciplined.

Sramana Mitra: That’s great. Otherwise, you’ll lose all your money.

Rohit Anabheri: It’s funny. Me and my co-founder started writing a book which never got published. It’s about how to bootstrap a startup with $10,000. Something of that nature. We leveraged all the resources that we had. We leveraged Angel.co for job postings. We were able to sell our vision to the talent that we wanted. The talent that we wanted were extremely competitive by nature. We couldn’t have swayed them with money. The way we were able to compel them is with our passion and the problem that we were solving.

Sramana Mitra: Where were you recruiting?

Rohit Anabheri: Across the globe.

Sramana Mitra: You have a virtual company?

Rohit Anabheri: Yes. We wanted to get the best talent. We didn’t want to limit ourselves. We found talent in remote places. We found remote talent in Tunisia. We found talent in France, London, and India. It was all different timezones that we were working with.

Sramana Mitra: How many people are we talking about?

Rohit Anabheri: Around 10 people. We were hustling on getting our council set up. For anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, this is extremely important. Having your idea is fantastic, but have an impeccable council that can protect you and your interest as a company.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about the specifics of 2016 to 2018. We’re talking about how you built this company. It’s a case study.

Rohit Anabheri: While we were building the product, we didn’t want to burn our cash. Based on our expertise in the domain, we were doing some consulting. Product is all capex dollars. To enable those dollars, we wanted to create a revenue stream.

Sramana Mitra: How many of those services contracts did you have? Was it from the same customers that you wanted to do the product with?

Rohit Anabheri: We had about three initial engagements to begin with in terms of doing some cybersecurity consulting.

Sramana Mitra: But this has nothing to do with the product you were going to build?

Rohit Anabheri: Yes. The product took about a good 10 to 11 months to get to the MVP state. Our first year was completely spent on building the team together and getting the legal documentation.

Sramana Mitra: How many people are we talking?

Rohit Anabheri: Seven to eight people. At the same time, we had support in getting our IP. We were hiring a lawyer in the IP space. We were documenting the NDAs.

Sramana Mitra: For the product, the advisory board was validating the product that you were building.

Rohit Anabheri: That’s right. To be able to pay the resources, we did the consulting work.

Sramana Mitra: The customer advisory board that has helped you validate, are they taking the MVP and using them?

Rohit Anabheri: Absolutely.

Sramana Mitra: How many?

Rohit Anabheri: One insurance company and one financial company.

Sramana Mitra: These are enterprise customers?

Rohit Anabheri: Yes. We took what they wanted and not just the problem they want solved. For them, it was just using one product versus four products. As soon as we were ready with our MVP, they were ready to pilot.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping an AI-Powered Security Startup to $10M+ in Revenue: Osprey Security CEO Rohit Anabheri
1 2 3 4