Tan Xiang, CEO of Kechuang Pyla Software: The essence of zero trust is digital security, and To B also needs to deeply study the mind of users

Tan Xiang Founder and CEO of Parasoft
More than 20 years of experience in digitalization and information security, more than 10 years of work experience in IBM and CA, the first batch of information security & digitalization experts in China, and won many honors such as the pacesetter in the software industry in Shanghai.
In 2008, he founded Pyla Software, deeply cultivated in the field of zero trust and digitalization, and took the lead in leading the team to realize the product development and application of integrated zero trust and security.

—
Text | babayage
Edit | Laugh Laugh

In November 2021, Parasoft announced the completion of a series D financing of hundreds of millions of yuan.
In April 2022, the epidemic situation in Shanghai was fierce. On the day of the interview, Tan Xiang had been quarantined at home for three weeks. In the video, he looks energetic and has no sense of homelessness, but he smiled and said that his hair was too long, "My English name is Tony, and I'm going to give myself a haircut."
After 14 years of business, Tan Xiang and Pyla Software have been able to traverse countless hurdles and hurdles, and it is inseparable from this laughter's philosophical view of all accidents.

2001-2008 IBM
The multi-faceted growth of a generalist Outsiders commented on Tan Xiang: gentle and elegant.
Tan Xiang commented on Tan Xiang: rebellious and restless.
In 1997, Tan Xiang graduated with a bachelor's degree in communication engineering. Most of his classmates and friends have entered companies such as telecommunications and Huawei, but Tan Xiang "doesn't want to go to the telecommunications industry, and is more interested in computers", so he joined a system integration company.
There is no excuse for being lazy if you choose to love. "I never pick jobs. I have done many types of work since graduating from college, from hardware, network, database, application software to project management." From Microsoft's system software engineer, Cisco's network technology expert to Oracle database optimization expert, Paterin's BI, CA's system management software and cross-domain system knowledge have become his learning goals, and one by one. In 2001, IBM China's basic software architecture department needed experts with a wide range and solid foundation to join. Tan Xiang joined IBM's software department under the recommendation of a headhunter. "Companies like Microsoft and IBM are like temples in the hearts of those computer practitioners around 2000." Tan Xiang paused, probably recalling his excitement and longing.
Subsequently, the IBM China Software Department decided to build a professional service department in addition to the "partner delivery" model, which requires a generalist who understands customer needs and has hands-on ability. Tan Xiang naturally became the IBM China Software Service (Software Service) department. First employee of Infrastructure Software.
Tan Xiang traversed different positions in IBM, and also got the opportunity to contact a large number of new technologies and new products, covering data center management, cloud computing platform, and information security series software.
In 2008, Tan Xiang decided to leave his job and start a business, "I don't like certainty, and I don't like the ease of lack of change."

2008-2011 Three years of exploration and continuous subtraction from the establishment of Pyla "When IBM was at IBM, a large number of customer needs were raised to the US R&D department, but they never cared." The reason for this strange appearance is because of the value contribution of the Chinese market On the low side, for the same data center management software, the unit price of AT&T in the United States is 55 million US dollars, and the unit price of China Mobile is 2 million US dollars, and the latter's business scale far exceeds the former.
"There are many complaints from customers. Can we do something in this case?"
Recalling the early days of Pyla's establishment, Tan Xiang mocked himself and said that in the first three years, he repeatedly wrote the five words "the ignorant are fearless": for the whole three years, the team was in a state of "lame", and the four technical backgrounds The founder does not have a full-time salesperson; because he does not understand sales, he has taken on a lot of work in order to survive for the company...
As a result of the intertwining of multiple factors, the team has lived the life that it hates the most: knowledgeable but not good, cloud computing, system monitoring, performance management, security, disaster recovery... "covering the entire IT infrastructure without real focus".
After a painful start-up period, the Pyla software core team reached two consensuses: first, in the next few years, the team should focus on business; second, identity security became the core product line that was initially identified.

2012-2018
Focus on identity security and survive the three-board calamity

It is only in recent years that Pyra has become the darling of capital. In the first 10 years, the intersection of Pyra and the capital market was not frequent, but each time was a major development node.
In 2011, because of an accidental opportunity, Parasoft won a cloud computing consulting bid. Unexpectedly, because of this project, the team was recognized by the customer, and thus obtained the first financing.
With the blessing of financing, Parasoft cut off some surrounding non-core businesses and began to focus on product development and service of identity management products with independent intellectual property rights.
Rational and accurate strategic positioning allows Pyra to rush forward on the identity security track. In the next 4 years, Pyra has always maintained an annual growth rate of 80% to 100%.
Everything looks good, but the unexpected came from an unexpected place: In 2014, Pyla decided to respond to the call of the country and Zhangjiang Park to list on the New Third Board, and raised a sum of money in 2015. However, in 2016, the Pyla team has grown to 150 people, and the liquidity pressure is huge in the middle of the year (To B returns are mostly concentrated at the end of the year), and the New Third Board, which is seriously insufficient in market liquidity, has become the biggest stumbling block for the development of the company, and even appeared for a time. The strange scene of "the book capital is greater than the market value after the payment is received at the end of the year".
Recalling the development of Pyla Software, Tan Xiang has many people to thank, and the B round investor Dongfang Fuhai is one of them. In the view of Dongfang Fuhai, who has been focusing on the To B field for a long time, the quality of customers is high (70% share of domestic first-tier auto companies, leading companies in medicine, new energy and other industries with great potential), revenue is about to exceed 100 million, and the valuation is seriously low The Pyla software has very great development potential, and the two sides hit it off.
The wisdom of Dongfang Fuhai has not only helped Pyla Software to solve the siege of the New Third Board, but also provided strong resource support for Pyla's further strategic upgrade.
From 2018 to now, take the "zero trust" Dongfeng to create a new digital security curve

In recent years, most of Parasoft's public appearances have been accompanied by the concept of "zero trust", but in the opinion of long-distance runner Tan Xiang, Parasoft's strategic curve in the third stage is more accurately expressed as: digital security, " Zero trust is one of the more popular terms. It is a technical security architecture that everyone currently recognizes. The technology will continue to iterate. It may not be called zero trust in a few years, but we will always build new products and services around digital security. To deal with various new problems in the field of security".
Kechuang people: The concept of zero trust has been proposed for more than 10 years. Why has it only become the evolution trend of security products in recent years?
Tan Xiang: In the past, the company's data was basically internal, so traditional security products were deployed on the border and built a firewall. However, with the development of the Internet today, cloud computing and mobile computing are inevitable trends, and it is becoming more and more unrealistic to protect data by means of isolation; on the other hand, in recent years, the trend of To B of network attacks has intensified, and attack technologies have been continuously upgraded to break through boundaries. It can be said to be a breeze.
After the technical concept is proposed, it is simple to use technology to realize it, but the difficulty is to be recognized by the market and become a healthy industry. Only after the business scenario changes, do technical solutions need to undergo profound changes. Therefore, it is not a short time before most of the predictions of technology trends actually become commercial facts.
Of course, forward-looking teams will deploy in advance. Pyra overthrew the original architecture around 2018, transitioned to a microservice architecture, containerized deployment, and introduced big data and algorithm technologies. In the new era, there must be new technical methods, and we cannot use old maps to find new continents. Similar technological innovations have also been incubated by Pyla, but we are very restrained in the process of productization. To make technical reserves, we must also be sufficiently aware of the changing trends of the market.
Kechuang people: On the track of zero trust, what differentiating advantages does Pyra have?
Tan Xiang: Most people focus on technical differentiation, but Pyra believes that differentiation is reflected in all aspects, including technical capabilities, brand capabilities, business capabilities and service capabilities. My point of view is that you cannot be sure of winning every project, but the stronger the technology research and development strength, the greater the brand awareness, the more convincing the customer case, and the more professional the service personnel, the greater the probability of winning.

To B also talks about user mental safety products X digital products √

Tan Xiang's strong brand awareness and firm concept are rare among CEOs of To B companies, "To B's brand is not like To C, where an advertiser pays for an advertiser, To B's brand influence is mainly reflected in Benchmark customers, market reputation".
He is very concerned about the customer's understanding of Pyra. In his view, more and more customers define Pyla as a digital security service provider rather than a traditional security provider after learning about Pyla's products and services.
Kechuang people: The Nth curve of an enterprise often conflicts with the original value image of the enterprise. How does Pyra manage the expectations of new customers corresponding to new products and new values?
Tan Xiang: This is indeed a practical issue, especially the digital transformation itself is beyond the definition of the original "field".
We encountered an interesting phenomenon: when contacting customers with the image of "security products", the other party will give priority to the procurement process of software security products by default, and they are often referred to the security department of the data center, and this department wants to purchase Firewall, intrusion detection products, the ultimate consequence is that the progress is not smooth, and even the project can not be established.
The current security department's support for the business is not enough, but Parasoft's solutions are very closely integrated with digitalization, which requires CEO-level attention and value recognition. Their understanding of Pira is "digital security and digital foundation", which is to use digital means to solve the problem of business security. Taking identity management as an example, it is difficult for the security department to promote, because it needs to be connected with all business systems in the enterprise, and even needs to change the structure of some network deployments and authorization management processes such as application access authorization.
This is why Pyra's new positioning is "digital security". We need to cut into the minds of customers more accurately to avoid waste caused by misunderstandings.
Kechuangren: Can you share some effective methods accumulated over the past 14 years in opening up the customer procurement decision-making chain?
Tan Xiang: It is not fundamentally different from To C. It is to find the value points that the other party attaches great importance to. However, the decision-making chain of ToB is relatively long, and we need to implant our own value into it. For example, at present, digitalization is relatively popular. We must let digitalization leaders know that digital security is not only the responsibility of the security department, but the responsibility of business leaders. Only by establishing this awareness can we promote it.
Then there is the popularization of knowledge, data leakage, malicious deletion or ransomware. These are all security issues related to identity and authorization. It is difficult for the security department to really solve them. It requires a change in the concept of high-level customers. education market.
In the final analysis, it is the big truth of To B: the higher the level of promotion, the greater the value (laughs).

The new darling of the capital market, the stable middle-level team copes with the pressure of expansion

Kechuang people: I have been in business for more than 10 years, and suddenly one day I found that I have become the darling of the capital market. As soon as I opened the door, a team of investors was waiting at the door. What kind of experience is this?
Tan Xiang: At the beginning of the C round, we really took the initiative. If we want to talk about our feelings, we should catch up with the good times. In the current financing environment, everyone pays more attention to To B, and we have spent enough time to prove ourselves.
I think this is more of a spur. I mentioned my original intention to start a business. I hope that Chinese software will one day become the first choice in the global market. Even today, there are still many products from companies with complex functions and every item. If you don't do it well, there are even more vulnerabilities in security products than in the customer's business system.
With more resources and greater responsibilities, I hope that even if we have more abundant funds, we will still focus on subdivided fields and make in-depth efforts. The goal is to open up the global market one day, instead of doing more than a dozen directions. Half-pull product.
Kechuang people: Pyra has nearly 600 employees now. What time period is the expansion mainly concentrated in? Have you experienced pressure from management?
Tan Xiang: In the past three years, the capital market has developed relatively smoothly, and the team has expanded rapidly. The expansion of the team size is one aspect. The proportion of employees born in the 1990s is increasing, which does bring new challenges in management.
What I am proud of is that Pyra has a stable and strong middle management team, most of whom have worked in the company for more than 5 years. They have strongly supported the expansion of the team. In addition, we are also constantly exploring more specialized and more divisional remote delivery. In the model, young people are more housebound and are reluctant to go to the scene to deliver (laughs).

Long-distance running enthusiast Tan Xiang:
To B is a long run

As a long-distance runner, Tan Xiang never ran more than 1,000 meters before starting his business, "because the university exam is only 1,000 meters." At the beginning of the business, the company was placed next to Century Park. Watching others run, the founding team was collectively itchy and decided to try it together.
As a result, "5 kilometers in a lap can't run down at all".
In the past 14 years, from "trying to run a full marathon" to running more than 5 full marathons in one year, the Pyla team has accumulated enough amazing progress without haste.
"I'm very persistent in running, but I'm not persistent. When I see the beautiful flowers blooming on the roadside, I will stop and take a photo." The goal is clear, firm and not persistent, Tan Xiang is the case, Parasoft If so.