Hello from the other side…
I am Morgane and am usually the one reading blog posts discreetly, not writing one — but hoping this is the first of many!
In 2017, after more than 4 years in investment banking, I joined Tessian (then still called CheckRecipient!) as employee #10 and one of the first sales hires. Coming from a formal world of blue suits, countless PowerPoints and Excel models, I could hardly contain my excitement joining the founding team on the adventure.
The company had raised a seed round and I joined the team as a Business Development Manager (BDM). Back then, CheckRecipient was a small but promising company with a very ambitious mission: preventing misdirected emails. I know what you’re thinking and you’re right: four years ago, who had misdirected emails top of mind in their cyber strategy? There was indeed some work to be done to make CheckRecipient the №1 security priority for every CISO, and we were more than ready for it!
Fast forward 4 years and Tessian now has nearly 200 passionate employees and leads the way in Human Layer Security, a category we created from scratch that even our competitors now refer to. And a couple of weeks ago, the company announced a $65m Series C adding March Capital to our existing blue-chip investor base of Sequoia, Accel, Balderton, Localglobe and of course Crane. The deal was even announced on the Nasdaq building’s outdoor screen — hopefully, a precursor to the ultimate bell ringing announcement inside the building in due course .
From the outside, it probably looks like a smooth, comfortable ride where each day is spent celebrating the various wins. Well let me tell you that it was NOT! And my ride from BDM to Sales Director has been a roller coaster with all the adrenaline that comes with it! As crazy as it may sound, this is what I enjoyed the most about my past 4 years — navigating and riding the bumps.
This winter, as I reflected on my time at Tessian during another quarantine at home, it took me literally 5 minutes to realise that my most favourite time had been in the earliest days, or as I like to call it, the first mile — when everything is still to be built, when every single achievement is celebrated (even when you get a new egg boiler in the office, yes a contraption that boils many eggs at the same time), after every single customer win when the sound of the gong is still a brand new experience that makes everyone smile. Each piece of news energises the (tiny) crowd in the (tiny) office. Every single employee stamps their DNA on the company culture. This first mile is what gets me out of bed in the morning to support founders on their own journey.
It was through travelling this first mile that I got to know Crane and today, I am so happy to say that I am now part of the Crane team — the exact same team who believed in us before everyone else did. This feels like a natural move to make, afterall we share the same mission in supporting founders building products for the enterprise at the very beginning of their journeys. I am excited to be working alongside other professionals who have helped scale some pretty iconic software companies including Ironport, Pivotal, Slack, SignalFx, Zendesk and many more.
If you’re going through this first mile yourself or simply want to chat, you know where to find me!
Morgane
morgane@crane.vc
