Introducing Emiliano Berenbaum, Founder and CEO of Trustle

Sara:

I'm Sara Lindquist from Fuse. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the Fuse family to date.

Today, you'll hear from Emiliano Berenbaum. He's one of the founders and the CEO of Trustle. Join us as we fire through a few topics about the business, how it's been going and growing, and how he has assembled a killer team to build the next generation Okta.

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Emiliano, thank you so much for being here today.

Emiliano:

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here and share our journey with you.

Sara:

Awesome. Well, I'm excited to dive in and really appreciate you taking the time. So to kick things off, I think it would be great if we could start by having you share the quick overview of what Trustle is and how it's serving customers today.

Emiliano:

Really, why we built Trustle and what Trustle does is we go deeper into your applications. If you look at the landscape right now, a lot of identity, a lot of access is just getting people in the front door. What we do is we give you context. We tell you, "Are people using this? Who do these people work with? Do their team members have this access?" And we start risking out that access to figure out, "Is this person over-permissioned? Are they able to touch too many things that they shouldn't?" And that they get the right training and approvals to get there. And really, we pull that all together in a simple interface for you to work with.

Sara:

That's great. And so Emiliano, it would be helpful if you could share: How have people been doing it to date at organizations? Obviously, there's some tools out there, but it would be great if you could kind of paint that picture for us.

Emiliano:

In a lot of organizations, a lot of this stuff ends up being oral tradition. That's one of the things I like to say. It's just like stories that people tell one another. There was a storm a couple of years ago; we had to let people into the system. But that's institutional knowledge that gets lost, and we go from an oral tradition to a written tradition. We keep track of who's getting that access and why, who's approved it, but also what are they doing with it? I think that context is the critical part: that we help people make more intelligent decisions and really keep an organization up to date, because as companies are getting more and more SaaS apps, the amount of leakage, the amount of skew that there is, is just growing and growing.

Sara:

That totally makes sense, and I know organizations of all sizes could benefit from it. And so walk me back in time a little bit. You've obviously had a lot of experience in the space, your time at Okta. So I would love for you to explain: What was that key light bulb moment for you, where you said, "Okay, time for me to go and build Trustle"?

Emiliano:

My last company, Scytale, we sold to HPE, and I was working with a couple folks, and they were solving this problem tangentially. As I talked to them more and more, it really went off that this is something that IDM and identity vendors weren't really looking at. They didn't have that depth of integration into these platforms, and having worked with access control and identity for so long, I knew that if you look at how people do federation, how people look at things, it's a very light touch. It's just "I need to get into this system," and that's it.

And going deeper and getting that bigger understanding for these critical resources, it was just something that wasn't really being addressed by the market. And that's where the light bulb really went off: that if we could give people that context, that's what's really going to make the difference and give them that visibility that they're lacking right now.

Sara:

And so you've assembled a great team around you to build this, so I would love to hear more about the team and why you think that this group that you've assembled is the right group to do it.

Emiliano:

I've been lucky to work with the folks I've been working with. We have a couple of veterans here that have been around the Valley for a couple years, around Silicon Valley, and really have been at startups and built things from the ground up. Couple of folks that have really a lot of experience with design, because I think that's one of the critical things that I really look at, is how do we simplify this? How do we take all this complexity and data and really make it more usable and approachable for our customers? Because they're getting more responsibility, they're having to look into more things, and we have people that are very attuned to that.

A lot of times, you see that engineering tools built for engineers aren't the most fun, so we really take pride in putting our customer first in that experience, and we've built a team of folks that think about that all the time. We put ourselves in their shoes, in their seats, and we are definitely trying to make it as easy and as comfortable for them as possible. And that's what the team is. Day in, day out, we're living that reality.

Sara:

That's fantastic, and I have to ask: If there was one word or a few words to describe your team culture, what would it be?

Emiliano:

From my experience, it's more than a word, but what I really emphasize to everybody is that we're all working on the product. Every single person that is at Trustle is selling and working at this product. If your documentation is bad, and people can't figure out how to use your product, it doesn't matter if you have the best algorithm or the most brilliant way of solving something. If people can't turn it on or figure out how to find and interact with it, then your product is lacking.

So I think up and down, I emphasize that we're empowering everyone at Trustle to know that they have ownership of this company. They're responsible for it, but we're all working together. We're not siloing things off. We don't say, "This is more important than that." It's all important. If the colors are bad and people can't figure it out and there's bad contrast, then the whole thing is bad. So that's really important to me. I don't want to make people think that what they're doing and contributing to this company doesn't matter, because it all matters.

Sara:

It does. Oh, I love that, and I like the specific commentary about working directly on the product, because it is a direct skin in the game.

Emiliano:

Yeah.

Sara:

That's great.

Emiliano:

If someone's answering the phone and it doesn't represent the company well, that's our face to the world.

Sara:

Yes.

Emiliano:

That person is working on the product; everybody is. All interactions, everything, and I think that's critical, and you have to let people understand that and know that everyone's part of the team. There isn't a hierarchy here. There isn't this part that's more important than that part; it's all important.

Sara:

Okay, so my next question for you is about the startup journey at large. Obviously, this is not your first rodeo, so I would just love to hear about some of your key learnings along the way and also what keeps you going, especially when others might throw in the towel.

Emiliano:

For the journey, what I've always found is you have to be open with people. You don't want to have a culture or a workplace where you're not talking and explaining what's going on with the company, the good and the bad. Because my theory, having gone through this a couple of times, is that companies come and go, but people stay. What I always tell people is, "Look, are you going to learn, and are you going to grow as a person working here, that you're going to walk away with knowledge that will uplift your career and take it to the next level?"

Because if you're just going to come in and not learn anything and just chug away at it, that's not as valuable. What we could give someone when they come to work at a startup is exposure to more things that they might not see at other companies. So as we're going through finance and the pains, the ups and downs there, I share that with the team. Not exact, let's say nitty-gritty details, but they know that, "Hey, this is where we are. This is how much money we have left," because people need to know that. It's a respect thing, because these folks are dedicating themselves and time to the company we're building, and for me, it's critical that I share that with them, the states of things that are happening, the customers we're talking to, the requests that they're having, the issues they're having. I think that's always been a critical thing for me.

I've seen it in other organizations, where that's not being shared as openly. Then you have these mandates coming from high on up that say, "Hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z." My goal is that there should be no surprises. Like, "Hey, we're going to do these features. We're going to do these integrations, and it's because these are the customers that want it. Here's the data. Here's the issues we're having." And we're really building a roadmap and a product that people want to use and enjoy using it and have fun and delight out of it. I know it probably sounds weird thinking that for enterprise software!

Sara:

No, it doesn't at all!

Emiliano:

But we're touching these things all day. At least let's make it delightful!

Sara:

I mean, drop the mic right there, Emiliano. That's awesome, and it just really reflects strong leadership coming from you. So in closing here, I do have one final question for you. What would you say you need more of right now? How can anyone tuning in get involved or help?

Emiliano:

Everything.

Sara:

Yay, everything!

Emiliano:

If you're a sales engineer and you want to work in cutting-edge stuff, really redefining access and how we handle these security issues and compliance and governance, we need folks like that. We need sales folks that could really go out and understand the market. We're doing our marketing effort. Huge, huge, huge things there. We're doing product-led growth, really people that understand how to sell that, and I think that's something that's a little bit different than some other security companies: that we're not trying to do a top-down sales motion, but really try to get to the folks that have that issue and give them a solution they could start using within minutes.

Emiliano:

Which is something I learned from Okta: Make it simple; get them in there. And engineering: obviously, always, always, always engineers. That's always a talent: people that are committed and can build and have experience with Kubernetes. And I could go through our tech stack, but people that have built and integrated into things, definitely looking for those folks, also, because it all matters. We're all working on the product, and we need folks that could sell, that could market, that could build, that could do a lot of different roles at Trustle.

Sara:

And what's the best way to get in touch?

Emiliano:

You could reach out to us on the website. You could definitely ask us any question. Or just reach out to FUSE, and all the emails that go through the website, I see, so reach out to us there. And more than happy to interact and talk to folks.

Sara:

Perfect. Emiliano, thank you so much for sharing that story with us, and we'll certainly send all talent your way. But so grateful to be a part of the journey here at FUSE.

Emiliano:

My hat's off to the organization that you folks have built. I have to say , it's been an absolute pleasure working with the team, and I know that when we were looking through our pitch deck and I pitched to you at FUSE and you gave me feedback and really, really appreciate the input. You have stuck with us through the good times and through some of the bad times, and I think that really speaks measures about the character of your firm, that I could pick up the phone and talk to Kellan and the partners there, and they return my calls. I really love bouncing ideas off you all. I feel that FUSE is part of the Trustle team, and we really value your input and support. I can't wait to see what we do in the next coming years.

Sara:

Oh, well, thank you for that, and we can't wait, either, and the joy is all ours. It's really a lot of fun to get to work alongside you brilliant people who are changing the world. So thank YOU!

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Sara:

As Emiliano mentioned, be sure to check out their website for any open positions, or feel free to reach out directly to hello@trustle.com, if you or your company is interested in getting connected. Also, feel free to reach out to any of us at FUSE.

Thanks for listening! We'll see you on the next one.