DataBahn’s Series B Powers an Agentic Data Pipeline

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Techstrong TV. I want to introduce you to my next guest.

It's his first time on, so let's welcome Nanda Santana. ai. Nanda, welcome.

Thanks for coming on here. Thank you, Alan. Thanks for inviting me.

Really appreciate it. Happy to be here. I'm happy to have you.

Thank you. Nanda, before we jump into Databan and some of the recent news, people want to know who's this guy they're watching, who are they listening to? I mentioned you're the co-founder, CEO, so obviously you have strong feelings about Databan and its mission.

But let's hear about your journey. How did you come to co-found Databan? Not a very big, strong story behind.

I came to this country with two suitcases to do my master's in University of Southern California. I did my master's in systems engineering, and I was about to make a mistake of doing PhD, and I realized that was not for me. And back then I joined a startup with my mentor, Sachin, at a company called Value.

I was a founding engineer. We sold that business to Sun Microsystems. So when you are young and you come out, and your very first thing is a startup, a high-paced startup, it almost feels like the sharks have smelled the blood in the water, right?

And so that got me hooked into a startup space. And what I loved about startup is, there is customer problems and there is just solutions. It's a race against how do we solve that problem, right?

So I really enjoy that. And then I went on to start a company, co-found a company called Securonix with Sachin again. We sold that to a private equity.

That was in a security incident and event management, otherwise known as SIEM space. Mm-hmm. That's my background.

I associate myself as a New Yorker, though I live in Dallas right now. So I go back and forth between Dallas and New York. I have two beautiful kids, a great family, and a very big support system here.

Good for you, man. So fellow New Yorker here, though I moved out of New York 23 years ago now, but I still only feel home when I land on the runway in LaGuardia or Kennedy or even Newark, sometimes Newark. But I always will be a New Yorker, and I get that for sure.

And of course, Nanda, I know Sachin, right? And we followed Securonix and his latest company and ones before that as well. So what a great...

And I know Sachin surrounded himself with a-- And there's a lesson here for everyone out there, right? Sachin has probably done three, four, maybe more now, startups. But he identifies a problem, he identifies an issue, he does the research to verify this is a problem, this is something worth doing.

But then he has a team of people that he works with time and time again, right? That's right. And they go after this new issue, this new problem with a new solution.

Yeah. It's a great model. That's something that we are all very fortunate.

The way we look at it is we get excited with problems. We don't look at problems as problems, we actually look at them as opportunities. So it's been, again, very humbling.

A couple of startups behind our belt and that's how we started Databan. It's like a three-part movie. One always led to another.

Mm-hmm. We went down the identity and access management. From there, we went to security analytics, and then I took a different direction.

He went on to solving IAM problems. I took a different direction. I just felt there is just so much data, Alan.

There is just so much data. Everybody's trying to build an analytics layer on top, but if you don't have your foundation right, you're not going to have your analytics right. I think to security operations team, what I always say is we all are tuned towards reacting to a problem.

" But when you have a very good, healthy foundation, like having your data problem solved, it's like taking vitamins. And I think the world needs more preventive than more reactive. And so that's how Databan started.

But again- I love it ... it's been a good experience. Thanks for opening the kimono to give us a little insight into it, right?

And look, the other thing to recognize is people always say, "Oh, I'd love to start a company. " Right? There's never a right time, right?

Especially in security. " Right? " Well, we're living in historic times right now, right?

" Right? In terms of how we do things. I'm not saying we throw out history, right?

Because those who don't learn the lessons from history are bound to repeat it. And we build on what came before. But there's so much opportunity right now for someone like you, Nanda, who comes from this team of entrepreneurial wealth.

And I don't mean dollar wealth, I mean entrepreneurial spirit, passion. It's a great time. It seems like there's so much to build on.

There's so much opportunity. There's so much change coming. How did you triangulate, and you gave us a little bit to say, "Okay, Databan, this mission, this is what I want to go forward on.

This is what I want to build a company around"? Yeah. Thank you, Alan, for great question.

See, when I was done with Securonix, I really did contemplate retirement, right? I was obsessing over my kids not eating blueberries, and my family saw a little too much of a husband and a dad overnight, right? Mm-hmm.

But then what I started to see is I kept in touch with a lot of thought-provoking cyber leaders, and I speak to them every day. I started to see a pattern, and the pattern was more around, I'm struggling to get visibility. I'm struggling with the cost, the SIEM economics, or storage, or data economics, or my observability economics.

It's not making a lot of sense because mind you, in the last four years, the data growth has been catering close to 30 to 40%, right? But the CIOs, CTOs, and CSOs budgets aren't. " And it was so funny because I was in Switzerland, when my co-founder, Aditya, called me, and he said, "Nanda, we should think about data highway.

" And I was in Lauterbrunnen, I think, back then. And I saw the way the cable car came down, the train was connected, everything was ban, ban, ban. I had an aha moment.

I'm like, "We need to have a data connected tissue," like how everything is so beautifully connected very well together. That's how Databan was born. So long story short, I think we want to build something that solves today's problems.

" I want to solve a very simple data problem. I want to articulate a clear value that I can get to my C-suites who are buying this product. That's how DataBand was born, Alan.

I love it. From one entrepreneur to another, I relate. And I love hearing these stories because it does my heart good.

Good stuff. Let's fast-forward a little bit now, though, Nanda. You guys recently announced that you closed a Series B.

That's right. Right. And more important than the money...

Well, a lot of people tell you there's nothing more important, but there is more important than the money. Right. That's right.

What are you doing to help realize the vision, to help further the mission here now with DataBand? Absolutely. So first, we did our Series A with Forgepoint Capital last year.

In less than 10 months, we had a very overwhelming response from the industry. A couple of investors who really wanted to invest in us, including our board, one of the existing investors. But we really felt a connection with Insight Partners, we raised the money.

And the reason for us to raise the money in less than 10 months after we did Series A is because the growth has been phenomenal, Alan. I sincerely thank all my customers and my partners who've been helping us, and my team here, who's been helping us grow this company to this state. The growth has been spectacular.

But what we also saw was an opportunity again. So we solved the first mile problem for a lot of our customers. Now these customers have freedom because we have created a very smart data pipeline, and that data pipeline helps them connect to their new technologies.

If they want to move away from a new technology to another technology, it's like the best analogy I can give is we've created a phenomenal foundational pipeline that goes behind your house. If you want to change your kitchen faucet, you just unscrew the old one, screw the new one in. So we've created that flexibility, that freedom.

And then our customers who started to use us, the largest airlines, one of the largest banks, the largest healthcare, pharmaceuticals, they started to drive more requirements to us. They are like, "I would like to now feed some of this data directly into my coworker, my AI agents. I want to now figure out how do I do some in-stream processing.

" Because there is a lot of data gravity. Folks want to keep their own data in their own institution, not ship bulks of data to a third-party solution, so to speak. When you see data gravity, when you see in-stream processing, more data connectivity towards AI agents, this felt like it was the right progressive next step for us to get some more fuel in our rocket.

And what we have already started to do is we are now spending 80% of that proceeds towards R&D. And with that, we have already launched two new products that has taken over a pretty phenomenal response from the industry. So I'm not a big fan of raise a lot of money and throw huge conferences.

I'm just not a big fan of that mindset. I believe in doing the right thing to our customers. I believe in innovation.

And if there is two things that we are really focused on with the money raise, there's actually, if I turn the laptop around, you'll see big statements on the wall here. I would say is customers and innovation. We are straddling between those two, and all our proceeds are going towards those two.

That's great. Like you, I've been in security 25, 30 years, before we called it cyber. And I came back from Vegas summer camp, Black Hat in August, and I was exhilarated and discouraged.

Because Black Hat has become a spectacle. It was always a bit of a spectacle, but the spectacle used to be the research we were doing. The spectacle was Barnaby Jack making the ATM machine chunk money out.

The spectacle was the vulnerabilities that were being announced that people were hacking into governments and everything with. That's not the spectacle of Black Hat anymore. The spectacle of Black Hat now is that show floor, that company's paying a quarter of a million dollars and more for space and booths and lights and barkers with megaphones.

" And they're all saying relatively the same things. "We're going to help you with agentic AI security this year. " And it was discouraging that we're raising all this money.

Let's use it to solve things. Let's use it to build things. Let's use it to change things.

Not a three-ring circus, which is what I felt it kind of was this year. That's right. You know?

I think it's just because folks are finding ways to stand out in the crowd, so I'm not here to judge anybody. Everybody has their own journey. The journey that I chose, thanks to my mentors in the past, the journey that I chose is I want to make sure that we have a very innovative products.

We solve real problems for our customer. And just to put things into perspective, Alan, up until summer of last year, we were self-funded. And the growth that we've had, my biggest sales machine has been my existing customers, and I'm very humbled for that.

Mm-hmm. Really extremely grateful to my customers, and that's why I always say my loyalty is to my customers. This time, there is crazy amount of customer obsession just because it's just not that they would give us a reference call.

" And I'm humbled by that. I'm really humbled by that. And so for me, I think that is the best marketing that you can't buy, you can't spend.

You've got to work hard to earn it. And I'm enjoying this journey just because of that. And if I get a call from one of my team members, "Hey, this is what happened in an engagement," and they got so and so value, and they got promotions, that really excites me a lot.

At this stage in my career, that really excites me a lot. But Insight was very different because they connected with us, and they didn't push a lot of fund down us. " And the amount of guidance that I'm getting from my current board, I have never seen a board that works so hard for us like Forgepoint, S3, and Insight the way they have.

And they're working so hard for us, guiding us through our innovation, figuring out should we be doing this. To your point, right now I see a trend, Alan. I digress a little bit.

One, there is so much of let me secure your AI. And then there is another trend. Everybody wakes up saying that I'm a SIEM right now.

You're a SIEM. You are a SIEM. Everybody's a SIEM.

And you know why? Because no one's ever got it right. " This is an old story, and you know, you've been in this space a long time.

I'll go back to when Hewlett Packard bought ArcSight. Yes. And that was going to be the end of SIEMs.

Now we finally got it right. That's right. Here we are.

15 years later, something like that, maybe more. Yeah. It is.

You're right. It's crazy. And I think, Alan, you know what that is?

It's not that the SIEMs didn't get it right. I feel the customers are not solving the... Cybersecurity is a big data problem with high volume, high velocity, and high variety.

It's a big data with a three V challenge. Rather than solving a data problem, we keep shuffling around the SIEMs And now everybody thinks, "Oh, the SIEM is not working. " If you had a SIEM, I've been trying to fix and build the product for the last 10 years, and what am I then, right?

Right. I feel if you saw, we have a lot of customers today, they're getting a ton of value with their existing SIEM, and it's because they have solved the data problem. You solve the data problem, you're going to get a lot of value out of your SIEM.

If you don't have your foundation right, and you feel that your top floor is shaky, and you want to keep breaking your top floor and rebuilding it, that is not the approach. You got to fix the foundation right. Absolutely.

It's only as good as the information you put into it. And you put a lot of garbage in it. And you get garbage out.

It's hard. That's an old story. Very true.

Garbage in, garbage out. And I'll say this, we did a study early last year. When you send 100% of the data to high analytical tiers like your SIEM or your observability platforms, you start looking at the data, 60% of the data is utter rubbish.

So you put that 60% and now you have an AI layer for reasoning, for actioning, and AI can't figure out what is what, right? So if you now pump all of that stuff in there, it just doesn't work. You're spending more tokens, and you're getting garbage out.

So I think that's how- Agreed ... Databan, and that's been our journey. Nanda, I promised you 15 minutes, I think we're over 20.

But we'll have to continue the conversation another time. I apologize. We had a lot to talk about.

But let me first of all congratulate you. Thank you. I love talking to founders and CEOs, especially CEO founders, because I believe startups, the mother's milk of startups is the passion of its founder.

Because there's a transition period where the company has to grow beyond the passion of the founder, but certainly, it starts by feeding off the passion of its founder. And your passion comes through loud and clear, and I appreciate that. I wish you a lot of success with Databan.

Come back, we'll continue this conversation. I wanted to jump more into control planes and all of these things. I promise you we'll do a deeper dive technically next time.

All right. First of all, thank you so much. It was a lot of fun chatting with you.

Looking forward to coming back again. All righty. ai.

We're going to take a break on TechShrub TV. We'll be back with more. Thank you.