In case you missed it, 2022 has been off to an exciting start for the team here at Obsidian Security. Our company celebrated its fifth anniversary and raised a $90 million Series C to help us grow our organization and cement our position as the leader in SaaS security. Our world-class leadership team became even stronger with the addition of Xinran Wang, an industry veteran with over 20 years of cybersecurity experience. Of course, we’ve continued to improve our platform with major updates including support for ServiceNow security. Today, we’re keeping the excitement going by sharing that Obsidian Security has officially received its certification as a Great Place to Work!
So what exactly does it mean to be a “great place to work?” Across the board, 95% of employees say that Obsidian Security is a great place to work—that’s compared to an average of 57% at typical US-based companies. We’re passionate about delivering the first truly comprehensive SaaS security solution in a time where protecting applications is more important than ever, and the numbers reflect that. Every single respondent to the Great Place to Work survey indicated that they are proud to deliver what they feel is an excellent service.
Just as we work to build the best, most robust SaaS security solution on the market, we also aim to foster a company culture that is—among other things—collaborative, caring, innovative, and always striving for excellence. The good news is that we’re already doing a great job; according to the survey, a hundred percent of Obsidian employees feel genuinely cared for and think that people here avoid politicking or backstabbing to get ahead. But building and maintaining this culture as we continue to grow is no easy feat. To understand how, after five years of expansion and evolution, Obsidian continues to champion a positive company culture, we should reflect on the vision from which we started and the CODE at our center.
Building the Obsidian CODE
The Obsidian CODE is more than a singular mission statement—it’s an acronym representing four core principles that guide our organization as a whole:
- Customers Win, We Win: Relentless focus on delivering customer value.
- One Obsidian, One Score: Ownership mindset grounded in accountability and fairness.
- Do Great Things Together: Top talent and strong collaboration enable excellence.
- Everyone is a Pioneer: Bias to action in pursuit of innovative solutions.
With SaaS applications entrusted with an unprecedented amount of sensitive data, Obsidian’s mission is more critical than ever. By building the first and only SaaS security platform, we’re helping protect businesses, governments, nonprofits, and ultimately, the people that rely on these services. That’s why we’re never satisfied until our customers are winning.
Internally, we recognize the importance of accomplishing our goals together. If another team is struggling, we don’t point fingers or cast blame. Instead, we’re called to ask how we can help each other succeed because at the end of the day, our greater objectives cannot be accomplished without working together.
The pioneer mindset calls every person at Obsidian to question the status quo and never settle for average. You don’t need to be on a dedicated innovation team to push the envelope and look for a better way of doing things. After all, how can we build a truly cutting-edge solution without pursuing innovation ourselves?
With several founders and early employees whose previous roles include intelligence agencies, governmental organizations, and military service, it’s probably no surprise to see strong guiding principles at the heart of Obsidian. Our co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Ben Johnson reflected on his own experiences building strong teams at his previous organizations such as Carbon Black in a VentureBeat article published back in 2017 where he shares three fundamental values to build around: passion, capacity, and humility.
For Ben, the Obsidian CODE builds on these values and helps every team within our company stay aligned as we continue to grow. “One of the hardest things in growing a company is consistency. We need to put a flag in the ground and say, ‘Here’s what we stand for. Here’s what we look for in candidates, what we look for when we evaluate individual and team performance. Here’s what we rally around.’” (Plus, how could you forget something as catchy as “CODE?”) It helps us build a company which any employee would be proud to refer a friend to.
And it just so happens that we’re always hiring!