S12 E13: The Death of Legacy VDI: Ditching Costly Virtual Desktops to Secure Enterprise BYOD Laptops Locally with David Matalon, Founder & CEO of Venn

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm most focused on scalable product design and making sure that the blue border is something that can be installed on hundreds of thousands or millions of computers out there and really deliver on its promise.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are working every day, honestly, to make that possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not only tech, too, but you've got to make sure that your code is high-quality and is going to work out there in the field that release it properly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also a service dimension, too, of helping customers and being there to support them.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Dave Madeline, founder and CEO of Ed.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Noel Labhart, and today, how David Matalon, has built the secure work space for remote work, so your team can be YOD securely without VDI.

[SPEAKER_00]: David Madeleine grew up in great neck outside of New York City.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's always been interested in tech way back in the early days of PC's, DOS, Windows, and even Novel.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he was the high school kid with an IT consulting business on the side.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he wore a beeper to school.

[SPEAKER_00]: He graduated from NYU and started his first company, Ophics.

[SPEAKER_00]: But outside of tech, he's married with four kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: When asked about what he does for fun, he says that he enjoys the all-encompassing nature of work and family life.

[SPEAKER_00]: David's whole career has been centered around helping companies deliver distributed applications.

[SPEAKER_00]: In most of recent history, virtual desktops or VDI has been the de facto solution for businesses with lots of issues and pains baked in.

[SPEAKER_00]: David and his team heard the cries of their customers and decided to build a better solution, one with a blue border.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the creation story of Vin.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then is really all about remote work and distributed work forces and the way companies built teams today.

[SPEAKER_01]: what we do is securely enable remote work for any user, any device, any location, and any workflow.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what that does is give IT teams the ability to get it out of shipping laptops to people when they join companies or get out of virtual desktop.

[SPEAKER_01]: Though our customers are security conscious, they have to protect sensitive data, and typically the way that was done is by issuing your people a company laptop, or forcing them to use a virtual desktop or similar technology.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we invented a totally new way of doing that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's called the Blue Boarder.

[SPEAKER_01]: And essentially, one of those is it creates a secure on-clays on your PC or Mac, and that computer could be personally on, it could be company on, it could be third party, it doesn't really matter.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it creates a secure space in which you do work.

[SPEAKER_01]: and your organization, your employer can control that data and make sure it's safe and secure and they're compliant.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you can do that any device, anywhere you could be a contract, you could be an offshore worker, anywhere in the world, you could be someone working home.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, we invented the Blue Warner three years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: My whole career has been helping companies securely deliver applications and typically to a distributed workforce.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, a first company that I started out of college office was essentially in that business before it was called cloud before SAS.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I have 20 years of experience and I'd say some of many lessons learned in lots of worst stories in that space.

[SPEAKER_01]: The product really came from finding an alternative to VDI.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, you know, how many of your listeners know a lot about virtual desktop.

[SPEAKER_01]: But essentially, if you were an organization, you have to protect your data.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you did not want to ship laptops to hundreds or thousands of people everywhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's only a couple ways to protect that data, to containerize that work on computers that the organization doesn't own or control.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to log in to a remotely running computer somewhere in the cloud.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to work on applications that are not really running on your machine.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's very often late and see heavy.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're running on a mat, it's going to be really foreign.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's lots of issues, it's complex, it's hard to support, it's expensive, and we knew that technology well because we used it ourselves for a long time.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think the biggest push for us was just hearing our customers say, hey, we hate this technology, we want to find a better way.

[SPEAKER_01]: We want to run the applications on a machine.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have a Mac.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to run native software.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to run this stuff when a virtual desktop somewhere else in the cloud and have my keystrokes go through the internet each time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the innovation came from listening to our customers tell us that they weren't happy with the status quo.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive into the MVP of Ben.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then that first version, maybe it's first version of the blue border, or even there was a, maybe if there's a version before that, or a first step before that, you decide, but I'm curious about what you would consider the MVP.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what sort of tools you're using to bring it to life and how long it took you to get it in the customer's hand.

[SPEAKER_01]: The predecessor of the blueboarder was a secure workspace again designed for that security conscious compliance driven organization with the distributed workforce.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were in business, we had many customers, lots of bigger financial services firms with voyages and fidelity and guardian.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were pretty entrenched in these industries where protecting data was taken very seriously and we had a predecessor product.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we wanted to do something new and truly unique, which was allow the user to just use like outlook on their machine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Use Excel that's loaded on your computer.

[SPEAKER_01]: It used zoom and slack just the way you'd install it natively.

[SPEAKER_01]: And again, that was all stuff you couldn't do in this world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Automation that was in owned and controlled by the company because until then, it wasn't secure.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the NDP was the first time we saw the blue border around a locally installed application protecting that data.

[SPEAKER_01]: The story is that we woke up really in 2020 during COVID and realized that our strategy as a business was flawed, just given this new world that all of us were a part of.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our product was prime more relevant than ever, but a lot of our selling was

[SPEAKER_01]: conferences and trade shows and visiting customers and getting on airplanes and doing pistol proposals in conference rooms.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in April of 2020, May 2020, it became really obvious.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's just not going to work anymore.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we also recognize some of the flaws in that product then.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was really in 2020 that summer that we envisioned a world with a lot more remote work, obviously, a lot more expansive teams.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we envisioned a world that was going to be normal.

[SPEAKER_01]: That you wouldn't build teams across the globe.

[SPEAKER_01]: You wouldn't embrace remote work as a go-forward constant.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in that world, did you want to ship laptops?

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to be relying on

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we envisioned a world where you could just use your computer, the way that you wanted to, and you could use work applications, and it would isolate and protect those work applications from the rest of your machine, but in a new kind of modern way.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that MVP was probably in 21 when we first saw

[SPEAKER_01]: to get the product really into production for early customers and we launched commercially with a good market strategy and really began growing that new customer base early in 23.

[SPEAKER_01]: About two and a half years now I would say from really just making that leap in the summer of 2020 to late 22 early 23 when we really started selling it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious then how, since that point where you started selling it, you're getting the traction, you're hearing the feedback from the users.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious about maturation.

[SPEAKER_00]: How did you progress and mature the product?

[SPEAKER_00]: And, to wrap in a box a little bit, I'm curious about how you build your roadmap.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you go about deciding that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is the next most important thing to build or to address with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is that you don't have what choice early on.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're just trying to get this thing to work.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're just trying to make those first customer successful.

[SPEAKER_01]: You are really forced by the customers that you pick, to sell this to.

[SPEAKER_01]: And whether that's various strategic and consciously made and chosen, or just happens to be the first 10 or 20 customers that buy this from you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whichever way that happens, it's really going to be satisfying those early customers.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to be making, so for us, the blue border work.

[SPEAKER_01]: But certain customers say, we use these applications or we use Google Drive this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we are an engineering firm and we use AutoCAD.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think what I would say simply is that for us, if we had amazing ideas about what to do, road map wise, a lot of that gets pushed aside for the immediate need to satisfy, prove the tech, and have those early customers succeed and want to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious about team David.

[SPEAKER_00]: How'd you go about building your team?

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to have the right people to go, basically remove the need for VDI.

[SPEAKER_00]: How did you go about choosing that team?

[SPEAKER_00]: Would you look for in those people to indicate that they were the winning horses to join you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Team is everything, no, it's all about working with the right people that are motivated, people that have a high level of care, people that can execute, and deliver work and high quality, and just mesh with each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it couldn't be more important.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: One part obviously is just making sure that the culture of your team, the team you have today is strong and healthy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then making sure that the people that you add to that team are the right fit.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to have the right higher in crosses.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have to onboard them properly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we also have been a remote work company ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: We use our product every day.

[SPEAKER_01]: We live by these values.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have our remote and your distributed workforce too.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think there are certain things about running and organization like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the type of culture, the type of trust, the type of empowerment that you want to place in people, the type of respect, for privacy.

[SPEAKER_01]: What's nice about Van is that we're selling a product that delivers a promise that we live to as an organization.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's super cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's move into scalability.

[SPEAKER_00]: This will be interesting to hear how you approach this, from the beginning, and scale can be people and company can be technology.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, really curious where it applies for you, and how you approach them beginning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's been interesting areas, we've had to fight scale as you've grown.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, look, scaling the organization is always a challenge.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really first and foremost and we are working every day

[SPEAKER_01]: You

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not only tech, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to make sure that your code is high quality and is going to work out there in the field that release it properly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also a service dimension, too, of helping customers and being there to support that.

[SPEAKER_01]: These distributed workforces and think about a new employee somewhere, joining a firm and that firm uses the blue border and what that experience is like, and how many times a day that's happening out there

[SPEAKER_01]: New user joined in the firm installing van, opening the blue boarder for the first time, wanting to get to work, having that experience be positive, smooth.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a challenging thing that we're trying to figure out because these end users are anywhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're on any computer.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're in different countries.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're in different networks.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the nature of the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a hard one.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the blue border really has to deliver on this promise of kind of the first day of work that user installing it for the first time having this new experience they've tried to ever heard of the blue border.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a new concept, a new paradigm where we're going to have a workspace on their machine that's not going to interfere with their personal space.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm really laser-focused on seeing that experience being something that we can confidently expect to happen again thousands of times, hopefully a day in the future.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's probably my number one scale challenge today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so David, as you step out on the balcony and you look across all that you've built within specifically, what are you most proud of?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm super proud of our team, no, no question.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think what this team has done over the last couple of years of really innovating and bringing tomorrow get something that's never been done before.

[SPEAKER_01]: Something truly novel and new.

[SPEAKER_01]: We get to demo this for IT leaders and security leaders every day.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's really fun to show people a new paradigm.

[SPEAKER_01]: a new product.

[SPEAKER_01]: The new technology they've really never seen before.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they'll ask questions like, hey, is this virtualization?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this really running somewhere else?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this just VDI with a blueboarder around it?

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're telling them no, this is totally new.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is just local software racked with the blueboarder and kind of creates this later protection and they're just blown away.

[SPEAKER_01]: By the possibilities of I am most proud that in my 20 plus year career that I've led a team and that the vent team has just brought to the world and brought to the market something new and special that's so relevant today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's flip the script a little bit, tell me about a mistake you made and how you and your team responded to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, mistakes get made every day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I'll share a mistake, but I think most important is just having a culture that admits mistakes and makes people comfortable talking about their mistakes and what they've learned.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's super, super important.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think our whole origin story and our whole reason for being is because of them as because of a mistake, and when we woke up in 2020, we didn't change immediately.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were trying to continue to sell in a new world and...

[SPEAKER_01]: It became obvious pretty quickly, but we were still trying it, and that was a mistake, and recognizing the mistakes there are key.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so there are so many times I think about my own career and I think about this company.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think what's most important is just being able to admit mistakes openly, talk about them, and change course.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's all been about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think our entire success as an organization has been somehow tied to exactly that.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, well, let's move into the future then.

[SPEAKER_00]: This will be fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me what the future looks like for then for what you've built, what you're offering today, the team, the product, where you're taking it, all the things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that all of us that work, that are part of workforce, that are part of organizations, there's a lot of change going on right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: When we focus on remote work forces, distributed work forces, obviously there's a huge push for AI adoption, highly rapid change, where work forces in terms of their composition, their geographic footprints, how we work,

[SPEAKER_01]: It's all rapidly changing today.

[SPEAKER_01]: For us, it's really helping our customers not say no to innovation, but you have a lot of leaders that are really trying to shield the organization from AI because they're concerned about security and because it's new and the challenge is there.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we have to say yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really think it's unrealistic and almost ridiculous for organizations

[SPEAKER_01]: people and from adopting new technologies and new tools.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I see us very much trying to equip our customers and I see to be able to say yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really embrace the agility.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the flexibility that workforce is need, the tools, what type of workers and contractors and the type of tools and where all this happens.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think another big one is just the company laptop.

[SPEAKER_01]: This idea that you start at a company in the first day, it give you a laptop and tell you to work on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's gonna be the exception in a very big way.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really only gonna be,

[SPEAKER_01]: that's only going to be the practice for a few roles.

[SPEAKER_01]: The rest of us are just going to be able to use whatever device we have and get to work and use the tools that we think are best to do the job.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's incredibly exciting times where leaders are really redrawing so many aspects of how we work and we're a part of that shift.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're a part of that exploration and that evolution

[SPEAKER_00]: Well David, let's watch the you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who influences the way that you work?

[SPEAKER_00]: Am I a person or many persons or something?

[SPEAKER_00]: You look up to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I was young, I really looked up to the tech CEOs guys like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs as a kid they made a really outsized impact on me and what I've wanted to do with my career.

[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of that still has stuck with me, but I think these days it's...

[SPEAKER_01]: a bit more grounded than that and really just trying to learn, grow with my team and I take inspiration every day from the people I work with and yeah it's gone from like pie in the sky and dreamy to more just trying to be a better version of myself, push my company my team to be better versions

[SPEAKER_00]: Last question, so you're getting on a plane and you're sitting next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're jazz about it that can't we show it off to the world and can't we show it off to you right there on the plane?

[SPEAKER_00]: What advice do you give that person having on down this road a bit in several different capacities?

[SPEAKER_01]: I find myself often giving advice to founders that focus on funding and raising capital.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's easy for entrepreneurs to get caught off in raising capital and financing the business and getting a headline about how much money was ejected in their business.

[SPEAKER_01]: My lesson.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my experience of the last 20 years is beware of that and be really careful with raising capital and try to start more humbly, more grass roots, find a customer, put it out in the MVP, have that customer buy that MVP, work on it with them, build the business before raising capital.

[SPEAKER_01]: get that customer, get that product working, go as far as you can without injecting institutional capital into the business.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many points for advice I would give, but again, I find myself in that conversation pretty often these days.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic advice, couldn't agree more.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well David, thank you for being on the show today and thank you for telling the creation story of

[SPEAKER_00]: and this concludes another chapter of Code Story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhardt.

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