Q

When was Perception Point Founded?

A

“Perception Point was started in 2015 by three 3 young entrepreneurs, out of the IDF, and I was called in in 2017 by investors to run the venture,” said Yoram Salinger, Perception Point’s CEO. “They had a brilliant technology proof of concept. My job was to turn it into a product and take it to market. In 2017-18, we built out a service, and the middle of 2019 was our first engagement with the market.” In 2020, they tripled their recurring revenue from the previous year.

Q

Perception Point is a cyber as-a-service company – although it didn’t start out that way, did it?

A

“The company started off with a product that was a box, and that is what it was when I came in,” Salinger said. “Our core technology is a very efficient dynamic detonation of files, which is where we started. We had the ability to do in less than 10 seconds a dynamic scan for a file that takes a traditional sandbox 7-10 minutes. We realized that this was best provided as a service. And while we initially started out just protecting email, we realized that email protection alone was not sufficient. We needed to cover all channels.”

Q

Can you explain about your go-to-market strategy when launching the product?

A

“We target the enterprise, and direct does the vast majority of deals we currently have,” Salinger indicated. “However, in the middle of 2020, we started to be approached by MSPs and MSSPs who asked if they could take us to market. We were hesitant. We didn’t want to deal with SMBs. But we gave it a try, and initially signed with some smaller MSSPs in the U.S. and Canada. To our pleasant surprise, we found that we are also relevant to these smaller enterprises.”

Q

What’s it like to be in a market that many people say is overcrowded? How do you stand out?

A

“When you aim to rip and replace very well-known incumbents, you have to be 110% ready for prime time when you show up,” he said. “You can’t win business if you aren’t knocking them down. We have over 70 customers today. Over 90% are replacing incumbents. Sometimes we go into a deployment where a competitor is present, but eventually we are a rip and replace. We switch out incumbents, sometimes more than one.”

Q

What are your current challenges?

A

“The challenge is to get an enterprise to test something new, with a company that they may not know,” Salinger said. “We managed to get into the Gartner Report. Our biggest task for 2021 is to build brand and create lead generation by spreading the word. While CISOs make the final decisions, the security teams and soft teams test solutions, and we would be looking to have a broad reach just on the testing phase. Cyber spend is huge, and this is why we raised a lot of money.”