Amir’s Great Adventure: The Tale of AxoniusX and Axonius SaaS Management

What does it take to build something special?

Amir Ofek, CEO of AxoniusX, will tell you it takes passion, optimism, not accepting no for an answer, and most importantly — grit.

“I truly believe in grit. One shouldn't let any kind of challenges be a reason for not doing something, or quitting. You should always keep trying, no matter how hard and challenging things get,” Amir said. “And, when I hear no, it just makes me more ambitious to make that a yes.”

Prior to Axonius, Amir was the CEO of CyberInt and Alcide.                              Amir Ofek

So what brought him to Axonius?

Amir was looking for his next challenge after Alcide got acquired by Rapid7. It was during this time that Dean Sysman, CEO and co-founder of Axonius, reached out to him with an offer of building a new business unit within the company — dedicated to innovation, bringing new products to market, and providing more value to customers.

He consulted with his counterparts Roee Salomon and Chen Pipek to weigh in on the pros and cons of the offer to build his “own startup within Axonius”. Roee is now the chief technology officer at AxoniusX and Chen is the VP of product. 

“The more we thought about it, we actually couldn't find any minuses of doing that within Axonius. Amazing company, amazing culture fit! I have known Dean for many years, and I know we work together very well. I knew that we’d have the ability to be free to do whatever we want, without the hassle of going and trying to beg for money from investors, without the hassle of starting to build things from ground zero. Plus, the ability really to tap into the amazing 400 plus customers that Axonius has, and leveraging the amazing sales and marketing team that Axonius has,” Amir recalled.

Axonius announced the launch of AxoniusX in June last year. And in January this year, AxoniusX delivered its first product — Axonius SaaS Management. 

So how did Amir and his team decide on addressing the SaaS management challenges?

“When we started thinking about what that first product should be and the problem that we're going to solve, one dimension was actually to think about areas that are far away from the core of Axonius. The other was thinking about aspects more close to the core of Axonius, and how they can synergize with the existing offering. We decided to solve a problem that marries both IT and security together. And the way we went about it is actually leveraging the great Axonius customers,” Amir said. 

“We wanted to tap into a new market ... and that's how we thought of tackling the SaaS world and the many IT and security challenges that it brings for organizations. And it became clear to us from the discussions with Axonius customers that this is an area that we should actually address.”

Tune into this three-part audio experience to learn more about what went into actually building and launching the most game-changing product of Amir’s lifetime — and get a glimpse of the myriad experiences that shaped him into the person he is today.