Joining Skyflow
When I joined TrueData in 2018, it was a small, scrappy startup that was partnering with mobile app publishers to aggregate mobile data for mobile advertising and analytics. Only a few months later, the EU enacted GDPR which introduced strict consumer data privacy guidelines for businesses. While this had an indirect impact on our business, given that we only operated in the US, the writing was on the wall that eventually the US would likely release something similar, which they eventually did in CCPA.
I spent a lot of time at TrueData thinking of ways to help our mobile app publisher partners comply with GDPR and other data privacy regulations. I even spent close to a year building one of the first natively-mobile consent management platforms (CMPs) that streamlined the consent collection and management process for mobile apps. In parallel, I started spending more time participating in industry working groups in order to get a head start on what the GDPR guidelines would mean for our industry and how it would impact our business. As I spent more time in these groups and talking to customers and others in the industry, two things became clear:
Data privacy regulations were fragmented, confusing and difficult for businesses to adopt.
Given the increasing number of data breaches, businesses needed a better, more secure way to protect themselves and safeguard their users’ data.
I figured, where there are challenges, there are also opportunities. The regulation adoption problem was already a big market with well-funded incumbents such as OneTrust, BigID, Piwik, Quantcast, Cookiebot and others. While there could have been space for another entrant, it would likely be a tough road ahead. The data security problem was interesting and at the time, I had only heard of Evervault taking on that problem and decided to bookmark it for later.
Coincidently during this time, I was finishing up my MBA at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and was offered a Venture Capital internship at Foundation Capital as an MBA Associate. My first day at Foundation Capital in Palo Alto, all of the seed stage companies that Foundation Capital had invested in, came in and presented their business plans and progress. That day, the Skyflow co-founders, Anshu and Prakash, presented their vision that sensitive data should be encrypted and stored in a secure data vault that is governed with access control policies and tokenization in order to limit exposure and reduce the chances of a data breach - a “Zero Trust Approach” they called it. Immediately, I thought back to the data security opportunity I had been thinking about and knew I had to find a way to join forces.
It would take a few more months but eventually Skyflow had a need to bring someone onto the team who could lead Product GTM and luckily, I was able to connect with co-founders, Anshu and Prakash. After only a few conversations, I knew the team that they had assembled was special and their approach was unique and differentiated. In addition to the strong team and technical vision, Anshu and Prakash’s experience as serial entrepreneurs sealed the deal. Plus, Prakash is a Patriots fan and any chance I can get to spread the Belicheck-ian “Do your job” way, I’ll always jump on.
While it’s never easy leaving a place that felt more like a family than a company, I’m looking forward to this new adventure and the opportunity to work with some amazing people and bring to market a unique product that revolutionizes the data privacy and security landscape. Onwards and upwards!
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