Anitian CEO on going from services to product and what happens with $55M

Armed with an infusion of capital from a $55 million funding round, the team at Anitian has big plans for 2022.

Plan No. 1: build out its product line to dive deeper into the security side of the compliance and security market.

To do this, the company intends to hire across the board, said CEO Rakesh Narasimhan. It'll initially target product and engineering staffers, then go-to-market roles.

The company employs around 85 workers, up from around 50 when Narasimhan joined in 2020. He expects to end the year around 120 to 130 team members.

While the hiring will continue at the company’s Beaverton headquarters, Narasimhan is also building out sites in Seattle and across the country. Like other companies, Anitian has hired staffers where they live, rather than seek workers in specific cities.

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Anitian makes software that helps customers create secure and compliant cloud environments, within which they can build their own applications. The platform works with AWS and Azure and is preconfigured to security standards such as FEDRAMP and PCI.

When Narasimhan joined, he sought to expand the customer base, which at the time included a handful of companies. That made the software vet nervous: If one customer pulled out, it would have an outsized impact.

Today, the company counts 50 customers who are a who's who of tech companies, including Smartsheet, Orion Health and SAP Concur.

Narasimhan’s career, in software and product development, gives him expertise in what's valuable to customers' businesses. He brought that mindset to Anitian, which, when he joined, was shifting from a services consulting business to a product business.

The company has successfully moved its business model from a one-off contract basis to one with annual recurring revenue. Narasimhan has also retooled two levels of management, including his executive team, which largely consulted with customers, a different skill than building software products.

Anitian’s platform, called Secure Cloud Compliance, helps customers get into new verticals by shortening the time and reducing the complexity of making their own applications compliant with several standards. Those barometers include PCI, used by the payments industry, and FEDRAMP, required for anyone who does business with the government.

“That is the value proposition. It’s speed. Within a quarter we take their software and make it available in a new vertical. Their salespeople can now go sell and earn revenue,” he said.

Success with that product not only led to the company raising this latest round — Narasimhan, who calls himself old fashioned when it comes to business, likes to prove he can achieve something before seeking capital — but also the new security product.

That offering, called Secured Cloud Enterprise, targets business-to-business companies moving to the cloud who want pre-engineered environments that meet needed protective standards.

Essentially, compliance customers asked for the company to do the same thing but with security.

“I wanted to end 2021 getting to a place to show grown revenue and margins and (show) a path to a great business for delivering value to customers,” he said. With that accomplished, talking to investors for the latest round became easier.

That round came together quickly, starting around the end of November and concluding in early January. Narasimhan credits the company’s execution and focused value proposition.

Narasimhan doesn't expect to walk on the venture capital treadmill. Company CFO Julie Crawford has a plan for the company to take this round and get to breakeven or profitability points, Narasimhan said. Either way, by executing and proving the company's value, he expects to have options when it comes to time to make funding decisions.