Aimei Wei is the founder and CTO of Stellar Cyber. She has over 20 years of experience building successful products and leading teams in data networking and telecommunications. She has extensive working experience for both early-stage startups including Nuera, SS8 Networks, and Kineto Wireless as well as with well-established companies like Nortel, Ciena, and Cisco. Prior to founding Stellar Cyber, she was actively developing Software Defined Networks solutions at Cisco.
Please tell us a little bit about your business – what is Stellar Cyber all about?
Stellar Cyber is a cybersecurity software company that enables small and midsized companies with lean security teams of any skill level to achieve world-class security. Every business needs cybersecurity to protect itself from hackers, but many companies can’t afford to implement all of the security tools needed for full protection.
Stellar Cyber’s security platform combines the most used security tools and integrates with most third-party tools to deliver full visibility into a company’s networks. It also uses AI to evaluate the data it receives from those tools and to identify and prioritize security incidents so analysts at any skill level can find and manage them.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I grew up in China. When I was young, I was interested in science and math. I got interested in computers as I entered college at Tsinghua University and desktop computers were a very new idea at the time. I studied Computer Science, and I came to Canada for a master’s degree at Queen’s University in Kingston and arrived with less than $500.
I have always had a passion and desire to work in a startup even though I had a good career at Cisco Systems. With my kids grown up, I saw my husband launch Aerohive Networks and I thought I should take my turn and try this myself.
While at Cisco, I saw the industry move from a perimeter-based model to now an “anywhere is an attach point” model. I saw security becoming more and more important, and I realized that most security tools required a lot of work for very little reward – there were thousands of alerts issued by a tool, but only a few of them really mattered, and analysts spent their days chasing alerts and often not discovering complex attacks for weeks or even months. My inspiration for starting Stellar Cyber was to simplify and unify cybersecurity so analysts could get direct, actionable advice about which threats to chase and when.
What are your plans for the future, and how do you plan to grow this company?
Our goal is to democratize security – any organization large or small needs to have the same level of protection against hackers, but only the largest companies can afford it. Most companies have to make do with a limited set of security tools and a lean analyst team to use them. Our passion is to build a single intelligent security platform, an umbrella security operating platform for all security needs: data aggregation, threat detection, triage, investigation, hunting, and response that anyone can use. We do this by using AI to parse data from security tools and present it in a simplified way that analysts can immediately act on.
In the future, we will add more and more AI for automated detection and correlation so that we can see more and more complex attacks faster than any other tool, to ensure that customers get maximum protection from cyberattacks wherever their data and applications reside.
Our product category is still emerging. We have more than two years of exciting product roadmap ahead of us which will set our product even more apart from our competitors in the market.
How have the pandemic and Lockdown affected you or your new business?
Stellar Cyber’s platform was seen as a key enabler throughout 2020. Many organizations had to do more with less while seeing a dramatic increase in attacks, especially to unprepared remote workers and COVID-19-related phishing emails. Stellar Cyber was designed to simplify operations and improve productivity through AI, and deliver improved accuracy and intelligence that reduces resolution time from days to real-time correlations – giving hackers less time in the network infrastructure.
Another impact was that with Stellar Cyber, our customers can hire security analysts from a broader talent pool – including analysts with smaller skill sets. This makes it easier to fill jobs at a time when there’s a nationwide shortage of cybersecurity professionals.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We are the only company that brings world-class security to companies with lean analyst teams. Ours is the only open XDR platform that seamlessly works with the security tools and telemetry our customers already have. Other XDR platform vendors lead with proprietary, closed solutions. Stellar Cyber bucks this trend head-on by first improving the fidelity of the tools customers already have—regardless of vendor—and then enriching and correlating data with other security tools and augmenting these inputs with its own sensors to address any gaps in security visibility.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- First as an engineer at heart, I did not understand the value of or functions of marketing, sales, operations. So my first mistake was I needed to open my eyes earlier – it took me 1 year.
- Second, not to try to do everything myself, I should have hired experts in these areas to build a core team.
- Third, I realized everyone does not want my product at every minute of the day, selling infrastructure means you need to understand their business, when they are ready to buy and how to ensure you are shortlisted when they are.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Security is about building trust – that is hard to get.
We have found working with our customers as true partners, they become strong believers and help us by producing videos, testimonial quotes, and case studies. We also have a core group of advisory customers that we build around in their city – helping their friends meet us – and along the way, we become trusted by them as well.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
- XDR is a crowded market, and we are only a startup.
- It’s hard to stand out and it’s our biggest challenge — even spending our way out would lead to a dilution to our investors.
- We are still working on this one, but our thesis is that instead of trying to explain why our Open XDR is the best XDR, rather we speak to their challenges as lean security teams that are proud to get done what they can with what they have. We help them be successful, and our product truly is ideal for what we can the mid-market – 1000 to 10000 PCs. they are typically mid-maturity and know they need a solution that was packaged for them – speaking to how we help lean teams of any skill be successful will help us attract the right customers.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
My first business idea was what became Stellar Cyber, my current company. I had worked in security for several tech companies, and I saw that there were gaps in most security operations as well as a severe shortage of qualified analysts to work in those operations. My idea was to unify discrete security tools already in place so that data from all of them could be presented in an intuitive dashboard that analysts at any skill level could use.
If you started your business again, what things would you do differently?
As I alluded to before, I would have hired a core team of people to help me sooner
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Salesforce – we treat it as our single source of truth for leads, deals, customers, partners, renewal details and our business metrics– revenue in particular.
- WordPress – our website which is our front door to the world. We get great leads from our web, 50% convert to opps in the 1st call. WordPress is a good platform and easy to support with our web team
- Google adwords – We are very focused on digital branding. It allows us to be very specific – think demographics, who to target, which company. It helps us brand and build demand very cost-effectively
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would spend it talking to prospects and ensuring I really understand what they want. It took me a while to realize my idea was correct, but the way customers would use it was not well-understood until we got well into our 2nd year of shipping code. Talking to more users up front would really help.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
I love to solve problems. It’s that simple.
What is your definition of success?
Believe in your passion and don’t give up.
How do you personally overcome fear?
What’s the worst that can happen? I failed. Get used to failure, then you realize it’s just part of the process.
How can readers get in touch with you?
You can visit the Stellar Cyber website, connect on LinkedIn or contact sales @stellarcyber.ai.
