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How We Went from Zero Buyers to One of the Fastest-Growing B2B StartupsㅣTranscend, Ben Brook

EO10:30Added Aug 31, 2026

Ben Brook is Co-Founder and CEO of Transcend, a privacy infrastructure company helping businesses automate data privacy and governance. With over $90 million...

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  1. Intro

  2. 00:00throw out a big number, see what
  3. 00:01happens. If somebody bulks at it and
  4. 00:03says that's way too high, you know,
  5. 00:04you've at least done the right thing and
  6. 00:06figured out what the top of the market
  7. 00:07might be. Most founders are shocked at
  8. 00:10the market uh will pay for their
  9. 00:11product. And especially if you're a
  10. 00:13first-time founder, you almost feel like
  11. 00:15guilty or greedy asking for certain
  12. 00:18numbers, but ultimately for pricing, you
  13. 00:20really have to understand the business
  14. 00:23value that a company is getting by using
  15. 00:25your product.
  16. 00:30So, I'm Ben Brookke. I'm the co-founder
  17. 00:32and CEO of Transcend. We are a data
  18. 00:34privacy infrastructure company. We help
  19. 00:36other businesses uh encode privacy rules
  20. 00:39across all of their technology. We're
  21. 00:41helping them comply with privacy laws
  22. 00:44and really adopting the spirit of
  23. 00:46privacy and giving consumers far better
  24. 00:48control over their personal data. We're
  25. 00:50backed by uh Excel Index. We're now a
  26. 00:53series B startup.

  27. From the First 10 Customers to 100

  28. 00:58I think the biggest challenge for us um
  29. 01:01like many founders were finding that
  30. 01:03first product market fit. As a founder
  31. 01:06in the weeds, you're like so excited
  32. 01:08about this thing and you think like
  33. 01:09we've got it. This is going to land.
  34. 01:11People are going to love it. Nobody
  35. 01:12wants to buy it. And then like really
  36. 01:15kind of learning to trust the data and
  37. 01:19test understand what the customer really
  38. 01:21needs. like you can't stress enough when
  39. 01:24you're building a product to like really
  40. 01:25understand your customer. What we ended
  41. 01:27up doing was we found a few early
  42. 01:31customers. We basically just said like
  43. 01:33what if we just automated this for you?
  44. 01:34We'll be like your extended privacy
  45. 01:36engineering team. Let us build the
  46. 01:39solution and kind of just like help us
  47. 01:41understand every aspect of it. It was
  48. 01:43actually a fairly consultative
  49. 01:45engagement with the first two or three
  50. 01:47customers and we made sure that like
  51. 01:50they were aligned to the fact that yes
  52. 01:52we are going to build a product here but
  53. 01:53that was how we approached it. So
  54. 01:54especially when it's in I think like a
  55. 01:57little bit more toward like the
  56. 01:58enterprise software motion I think
  57. 02:00that's like absolutely a path you can
  58. 02:01take where you just kind of let
  59. 02:03customers vent their problems and offer
  60. 02:06to just find a way to fix them. As for
  61. 02:08scaling from you know 10 to 100
  62. 02:10customers in enterprise this is when you
  63. 02:13need to have your first sellers.
  64. 02:16Typically, you can do founderled sales
  65. 02:17for the first call it 20, 30 customers,
  66. 02:21but not only should you start handing
  67. 02:24that off, but also like it's an
  68. 02:25important part of proving that you're
  69. 02:27able to scale the business past yourself
  70. 02:29who knows every nook and cranny of the
  71. 02:31product and you've been thinking about
  72. 02:32this problem for like, you know, 5 years
  73. 02:34or whatever. To be able to have a seller
  74. 02:36become successful in selling your
  75. 02:38product is an important first milestone.
  76. 02:40And we we really spent the time to find
  77. 02:43that right sort of first seller. And the
  78. 02:45first seller is completely different
  79. 02:47from like the latest stage seller where
  80. 02:49they're super creative. They kind of do
  81. 02:51every sales role alone which includes
  82. 02:54generating pipeline, you know, actually
  83. 02:57running the deal with as an account
  84. 02:59executive would and then even a lot of
  85. 03:00like sales engineering in some cases
  86. 03:03probably contracting all of the sort of
  87. 03:05the full endto-end sales process. And we
  88. 03:08found somebody who's just incredible at
  89. 03:10this. I I really believe there's nothing
  90. 03:12more important than like finding the
  91. 03:13best hire. If you need to slow down to
  92. 03:15get it right, it's 100% worth it. And
  93. 03:18then after that, depending on what your
  94. 03:20sort of AR is at around 100 customers,
  95. 03:22you either need to scale your sales team
  96. 03:24or you probably like if it's way up
  97. 03:26market, you probably already have. But
  98. 03:28in any case, being able to scale a sales
  99. 03:30team really is about if you don't have a
  100. 03:32sales background, like you should find a
  101. 03:34sales leader. It is such a huge subject
  102. 03:37with so much expertise that it is one of
  103. 03:39the things where you just you need to
  104. 03:41find a great leader who can do all of
  105. 03:43the right pieces of like building
  106. 03:45playbooks, breaking out the sales
  107. 03:47process with like uh sales development
  108. 03:49representatives, account executives,
  109. 03:51sales engineering, revenue operations
  110. 03:53and so forth. There's a whole
  111. 03:54organization and that sort of meta
  112. 03:56process is very playooked but not
  113. 03:58something a founder should do. They
  114. 03:59should absolutely find the the best
  115. 04:02leader that they can. That's really the
  116. 04:04sort of like 0 to 10, 10 to 100 and

  117. Make Your Pricing Super Iterative

  118. 04:11beyond. There's a few things I'll say
  119. 04:13about pricing. The first is make it
  120. 04:14super iterative. You really need to
  121. 04:16adapt it and change it until you find
  122. 04:18your price point. Even then, like it's
  123. 04:21only going to last for maybe a year, a
  124. 04:22year and a half before you have gotten
  125. 04:24enough data to say certain parts of this
  126. 04:26are stupid. We need to change it. The
  127. 04:28second is you should start as high as
  128. 04:29pro possible because most founders are
  129. 04:32shocked at the market uh will pay for
  130. 04:34their product and especially if you're a
  131. 04:36first-time founder you almost feel like
  132. 04:38guilty or greedy asking for certain
  133. 04:41numbers but ultimately for pricing you
  134. 04:44really have to understand the business
  135. 04:47value that a company is getting by using
  136. 04:50your product. And it kind of sounds like
  137. 04:53just corporate jargon, but this is
  138. 04:56actually how companies buy. And so if
  139. 04:58you're not articulating the actual
  140. 05:00dollar value of your product or if you
  141. 05:02have no idea how to even start, the
  142. 05:03person who's buying your product is
  143. 05:05going to try to create that assessment
  144. 05:07themselves so that they can take it to
  145. 05:09the CFO and get it approved. And so it's
  146. 05:11the the real answer is like, do you want
  147. 05:13to be involved in that process or do you
  148. 05:14not? If it's going to get approved, you
  149. 05:16better be involved in that process. So
  150. 05:17you actually do have to articulate if
  151. 05:19you're going to drive revenue in the
  152. 05:20company, how much can you drive? If
  153. 05:22you're going to decrease cost, how much
  154. 05:23can you decrease cost? Can you actually
  155. 05:25articulate what we call value drivers
  156. 05:27and educate the person who's trying to
  157. 05:29buy your product who's interested in it
  158. 05:31and work with them to sort of build this
  159. 05:32value case together? And then whatever
  160. 05:34that value is, your price should be
  161. 05:36about a quarter, two or one/3 of that so
  162. 05:39that they get the ROI number on top for
  163. 05:41the remaining three quarters.

  164. Your Next Steps Until Closing Series B

  165. 05:45The real sort of key to our series B was
  166. 05:48proving that we could repeatably switch
  167. 05:51customers off of the status quo in
  168. 05:54privacy, which is incredibly manual
  169. 05:57operational work where data owners are
  170. 06:00consistently being interviewed, asked to
  171. 06:02manually operate on one individual's
  172. 06:05data when that individual asks to be
  173. 06:07deleted. And that is the status quo sort
  174. 06:10of encoded by legacy incumbent software.
  175. 06:13The real bet at our series A was like,
  176. 06:15can we repeatably show that we can take
  177. 06:18market share? Is there a long-term
  178. 06:20outcome where transcend takes that sort
  179. 06:22of top spot in the market? And so our
  180. 06:24series A to our series B was really all
  181. 06:27about building our sales team, scaling
  182. 06:29up marketing operation, and really like
  183. 06:31delivering a customer experience that
  184. 06:33customers would be happy to sort of like
  185. 06:36do case studies and and sort of shout
  186. 06:38shout about us from the rooftops and
  187. 06:39tell their friends to switch as well.
  188. 06:41And so we we we really tracked like
  189. 06:43milestones around like uh our win rate
  190. 06:45against uh the incumbent competitor and
  191. 06:48if we could get it to a certain number
  192. 06:49we thought that would be really critical
  193. 06:50for our series B story and ultimately
  194. 06:53kind of like help unstick the market
  195. 06:54that felt like it was kind of like
  196. 06:56turning into a bit of a cottage industry
  197. 06:58around this this sort of status quo way
  198. 07:00of doing things. And so we we really
  199. 07:02kind of like had a metric driven process
  200. 07:05against that and just executed really
  201. 07:08really well on that plan. So that at the
  202. 07:10series B we could tell the full story of
  203. 07:12customers are making this like mass
  204. 07:15migration

  205. Current Privacy Trends in the AI Era

  206. 07:19switch. The current trend in privacy
  207. 07:22right now is first governance of AI
  208. 07:26systems. There is a sort of mad dash
  209. 07:29inside every business right now to adopt
  210. 07:31AI and part of that is uh compiling all
  211. 07:35of the data into a format uh that can be
  212. 07:38leveraged for the purpose of AI for the
  213. 07:40those who are technical these are like
  214. 07:42vector databases and building embeddings
  215. 07:44but there are very few guard rails
  216. 07:47around any of these systems and the way
  217. 07:50that you know perhaps personal
  218. 07:51information may be processed on one hand
  219. 07:54there's the way that personal data is
  220. 07:57being used uh in AI systems and then on
  221. 08:00the other there's the way that AI
  222. 08:02systems may be impacting individuals so
  223. 08:05like bias and harm fairness uh
  224. 08:08particularly when AI systems are being
  225. 08:10used for decision-m and so the most
  226. 08:12recent kind of landmark regulation was
  227. 08:16the AI act in Europe many businesses are
  228. 08:19trying to understand how they're using
  229. 08:21AI put processes in place around
  230. 08:24ensuring that the guard rails are in
  231. 08:26place or that they've appropriately
  232. 08:29assessed the impacts of using that AI.
  233. 08:32And so that's certainly a current trend
  234. 08:34in uh privacy today. And one of the
  235. 08:37effects of that a lot of the people who
  236. 08:40became like the chief privacy officer
  237. 08:42are going through a title change uh and
  238. 08:45sort of role and scope change to also be
  239. 08:48the owner of AI governance. Uh and a lot
  240. 08:52of companies are saying kind of like
  241. 08:53while we're at it, let's make it like
  242. 08:55everything digital governance, all
  243. 08:57regulatory policy, all governance of our
  244. 09:00systems short of security. And that has
  245. 09:04been like a big sort of industry shift.
  246. 09:06The customers and the buyer, the the
  247. 09:08people that we sell to are undergoing
  248. 09:10just a massive sort of change in scope.
  249. 09:12And so that's that's a really important
  250. 09:13trend right now. And then like every day
  251. 09:16there's something with in privacy that's
  252. 09:19like wow that's a really creepy thing
  253. 09:21and like or there'll be a data breach or
  254. 09:22there'll be you know something that is
  255. 09:24like always driving the news you know
  256. 09:26the news meta sunglasses for example um
  257. 09:30it took about like 3 days for someone at
  258. 09:32uh some two kids at Harvard uh turn that
  259. 09:35into a system which can like literally
  260. 09:37just tell like find people's online
  261. 09:40profiles as you walk down the street.
  262. 09:41it's just like overlaying their like
  263. 09:43name, LinkedIn, job title, just by
  264. 09:45facial recognition. So there's like all
  265. 09:47kinds of crazy stuff um just like in the
  266. 09:50the the daily news. But categorically
  267. 09:52the shift toward u AI governance and
  268. 09:56this broadening sort of supererset of
  269. 09:58privacy.
  270. 10:00[Music]
  271. 10:18What's up?
  272. 10:19[Music]