11 years ago today, frustrated with the state of AppSec, I told my co-founder Matt Tesauro, “If you give me the chance, I could write a tool to fix all of this.”
That was the spark that led to the platform that would transform how people approach AppSec and security at large. I was an intern. An intern, who had only one professional programming project under my belt.
Today we have 38M+ downloads, 80K views a month, and multiple Fortune 50 companies as customers. The mission to be a force for good in security by making scalable, open-source security a reality resonated. We’re fortunate to be that cornerstone and have such an incredible and vibrant community.
I pitched Dojo for close to half a decade, trying to get VCs to see that the need for scalable security was an inevitable reality, and that DefectDojo was the platform to lead that charge. If we’re keeping score, I’m likely in the running for most rejections for a single pitch.
No VC believed that the market would blossom, and they largely disliked our approach to open-source. I regularly got feedback that the open-source version was “too good”, but we refused to do anything that would harm the open-source version or community.
We were stubborn and determined. We went to market as a 4-person company with zero funding and booked $715K in our first two months of having a commercial edition. We used that as our seed money to scale and double our size.
Shortly thereafter, we were being crushed by demand and desperately needed funding to keep up.Finding the right VC was key to make sure we could protect what made Dojo special.
We closed our first round of funding and scaled to a nearly 20-person company.
Some days it’s still hard for me to comprehend how quickly things changed. The thing that I’m most grateful for is our courageous team members who have joined us on this journey. Opportunity is inconsequential without execution, and execute we have.
Here’s to 11 years and 11 more. We’re just getting warmed up.
Thank you all.
–Greg
June 17, 2024
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