Founding Cybersecurity Product Scale Adviser

The mandate

The board keeps returning to whether the startup is building a defensible cloud-workload security product or financing a series of founder-led custom deployments. Reference customers value the threat research, but installation variance, services effort, proof quality and roadmap exceptions make renewal economics and international scale difficult to judge.

The adviser will commit three days monthly: one founder working session, one product or customer-evidence review, and preparation for periodic board challenge. Four board meetings are included, and urgent pricing, product or partnership questions receive a response within two business days; live incident response and direct selling are excluded.

The appointment lasts twelve months and closes after the annual product and capital plan. Any further six-month term requires product-committee recommendation and full board approval based on an unresolved strategic question, not missed management delivery or automatic option continuation.

The adviser has influence only, with no line authority, signing right or executive responsibility for releases, hiring, customer commitments, security findings or expenditure. Founders retain operating decisions and must record whether advice is adopted; the adviser cannot present themselves to prospects or staff as a company officer.

Two other non-competing appointments are permitted after disclosure. A retainer, board role, material holding or paid advocacy involving a direct cloud-security competitor, a shortlisted channel partner, an assurance firm reviewing the product or an investor negotiating with the company may require recusal or termination.

Why the board wants this voice

The founders have deep technical conviction and early customer access, but none has scaled a cyber product through repeatable deployment, renewal and channel discipline. Current board debate overweights logo growth while underexamining services leakage and security evidence. An operator who has made that transition can challenge both premature expansion and defensive over-customisation.

What you will own

• Press the founders to define the narrow security outcome the product will own and the adjacent customer requests it will decline.
• Test deployment repeatability through environment variance, integration effort, time-to-first finding, false-positive burden and customer operating change.
• Challenge proof claims by tracing detection, prevention and remediation outcomes to reproducible product evidence rather than analyst narrative.
• Shape enterprise-readiness gates covering tenant isolation, access controls, release integrity, vulnerability response, support escalation and contractual evidence.
• Probe pricing and gross-margin assumptions for hidden solution-engineering, threat-research, onboarding, cloud and customer-success effort.
• Evaluate direct, cloud-marketplace, managed-service and channel paths against buyer trust, implementation ownership, economics and product feedback quality.
• Frame the milestone evidence governing the next investment tranche and option vesting without taking the board's allocation decision.

Candidate qualifications

• Scaled a cybersecurity software product from founder-led early sales to repeatable enterprise deployment and renewal across at least two regions.
• Reduced custom implementation burden while preserving customer security outcomes, with measured improvement in time-to-value or contribution margin.
• Led product decisions involving cloud workload, runtime, application, identity or data security and can challenge underlying technical evidence.
• Built enterprise trust through demonstrable product-security, assurance, support and incident practices rather than relying primarily on certifications.
• Chosen and corrected a cyber go-to-market route involving direct sales, cloud marketplaces, managed providers or specialist channels.
• Served a startup board or founder team under an equity arrangement with transparent conflicts, milestone evidence and clear separation from executive authority.

Non-negotiables

• Available for three days monthly, all four Bengaluru board meetings and one quarterly customer or partner visit.
• Will disclose competing cyber roles, investments, expert-network engagements, channel economics and relationships with prospective investors.
• Has scaled a product business; leadership of a security service, consulting practice or enterprise cyber function alone is insufficient.
• Accepts option dilution, milestone vesting and board approval with no promise of liquidity or protection outside the governing plan.

1. 49 words maximum. Which current advisory, investment or channel relationships could conflict with this cloud-security company?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe the custom feature you stopped during a cyber product scale-up and the renewal or margin evidence supporting that decision.
3. 49 words maximum. Confirm your Bengaluru cadence and identify which three measurable milestones you would test before accepting option vesting.