Why Dane Meah at MyCISO has set his sights on the US market

The CEO of the Aussie cyber vendor has recently expanded his business into the US market.

For the past three months, Dane Meah, CEO at Aussie cybersecurity software vendor, MyCISO has been expanding his business into the US.

The move began more than a year and a half ago, after the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reached out to Meah and his team about the MyCISO platform.

What was originally planned as a 2027 project, it was brought forward due to the interest from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Speaking to CRN Australia, Meah said, “It's such a huge opportunity to grow the business in a more exponential way.”

As MyCISO is already a global platform working with the likes of Domino’s Pizza and 7/11, they don’t need to change their business model.

"It's just a wider audience,” he noted.

“What I've found engaging with the US and other markets is that each market operates slightly differently.”

In April this year, MyCISO signed a deal with US-based distributor Carahsoft, which is one of the biggest channel partners to the US federal government.

This deal allows for the MyCISO SecurityOS platform to be bought by US federal, state, local, education and healthcare agencies.

Meah said, “When we met with [Carahsoft], it was all the pieces of falling into place. Through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, we've acquired a few partners as well, resellers. We have kind of that structure already in place.”

They are currently in conversations to hire someone in the US, according to Meah this is to help continue building relationships between MyCISO and its partners in the US with boots on the ground.

“He's been there for about six months, and fortuitous caught up with him. Turns out he's would be a great fit for what we need. Sales background, but channel,” he said.

According to Meah, they are reaching out to customers first focusing on building their footprint in the country.

“We have a good partner Carahsoft who have a slightly different model to what we do here in Australia. They sell to direct customers as well,” he said.

He explained that the partnership with Carahsoft can help the cyber vendor expand across the United States.

“If we wanted to cover all states with a reseller, we'd probably need 25 to 30 partners, because they're very regional,” he said.

“Whereas Carahsoft, they can introduce us to partner in every state. But, that's too much to do in one at once.

“We can transact with wherever we get opportunities through Carahsoft, and then down the track, bring on partners where we're starting to see the most traction or potentially move the business through that two tier approach.”

In a year’s time, Meah said the objective is to win five government departments over the next year.

“It's not knock your lights out ambitious,” he said.

“Success for me would be five Texas or government agencies and the sprinkling of others maybe inbound from partners.

He ended, “That's highly achievable, that could well into seven figures, depending on the size and the profile, but that gives us a platform to then build a bigger team and continue expanding.”