Leo Lax, Author at The Sociable

Leo Lax

Leo Lax is the Executive Managing Director at L-SPARK -- the destination for Canada’s startup and tech ecosystem to learn, share, plan, execute, measure, adjust, scale and succeed.

Business

A lesson on resilience: What the Canadian SaaS industry learned during the pandemic

Leo Lax2 years ago

4.16K

The pandemic hit Canadian SaaS funding hard. SaaS companies have raised one fifth of 2019 numbers so far this year,...

Business

How Canadian SaaS is proving its resilience in the face of COVID-19

Leo Lax3 years ago

5.88K

L-SPARK’s annual 2019 SaaS report found that the Canadian SaaS sector was worth $5.1 billion, up from $1.6 billion in...

Brains Byte Back

Brains Byte Back interviews startups and industry leaders that tap into how our brains work. Together with our guests, we explore how knowledge & technology intersect to build a better, more sustainable future for humanity. If you’re interested in ideas that push the needle, and future-proofing for the new information age, join us every other Friday on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

Episode Description below⬇️

Leave an iTunes review here – https://apple.co/3i60XWu

Subscribe on Youtube here – https://bit.ly/3o1M4Z3

Find out more about our sponsor Publicize here – https://bit.ly/3BqDUxc

One week before the pandemic hit, unaware of what was about to take place worldwide, Taylor Hersom quit his job as a Chief Information Security Officer for a local firm in Austin, Texas in the hopes of finding a similar position elsewhere.

Between working at Deloitte where he advised Fortune 500 companies on compliance and security tactics, and his more recent position at the local firm, Hersom didn’t anticipate finding a new job to be a difficult feat.

However, as the pandemic set in, his interview offers dried up, and he turned to UpWork in pursuit of a job. In the beginning, he applied for as many posts as he could find in order to build up his review score.

He began taking on clients and quickly realized that startups needed a lot of help with security and compliance, and he knew this could become a genuine business for him. But what he didn’t realize was just how in demand his services would be.

As time went on, Hersom moved away from UpWork and took on staff to build a team in order to meet demand. Shortly after this, on January 1, 2021, his new company Eden Data was born.

In today’s episode of the Brains Byte Back podcast, Hersom, CEO and Founder of Eden Data, shares how the team has grown in such a short period of time by taking a positive approach to security instead of the traditional fear-based approach.

In other words, instead of securing customers using fears tactics such as telling prospects if they get hacked they will be fined, receive bad PR, or be hated, Hersom advocates that strong security can show prospects that you care about them and their data, which can successfully close more deals.

Hersom also shares how their subscription approach to security and compliance has helped them stand out in this market, allowing them to scale alongside the startups they work with.