GreyNoise Principles

Our promises

The below values, as determined by each team, are how we make decisions. We encourage you to read more about our shared values and those specific to each team.

To our users:

We promise to provide a top tier professional quality product, at no cost. We will never intentionally neglect you, take advantage of your support, or violate your trust or privacy.

We ask that in return, if you have a good experience with us, that you speak highly of us to your colleagues, management, industry peers, etc.

To our customers:

You’ve trusted us to keep you and/or your customers safe over other vendors. We take this very seriously, and thank you for putting your trust, time, and money with us.

We promise we will always take your feedback into consideration and that our product will always pay for itself (whether that’s time or money, or both). We promise we will never attempt to make you afraid, uncertain, or doubtful of security threats to exploit you financially.

We take a lot of pride in our data being correct and if we are wrong about any of it (and notified) we’ll correct it immediately and ensure it does not happen again.

To our current and future investors:

If you are interested in investing in GreyNoise, it is required that we want the same things.

We promise that every year will always be better than the year before.

We promise you will never come before our customers or our users.

We promise we will be good stewards of your capital.

To our partners:

We understand that it takes a village to work in cyber security. Our philosophy is that partnerships only work if both sides are 100% committed.

We promise that we will stick to our commitments.

We promise that we will never have an adversarial partnership with any person or organization.

We promise to work to keep partnerships fruitful for both parties, and reevaluate partnerships if that is not possible.

To our employees:

GreyNoise should always be a place that you want to come to work. We cannot always promise the work will be exciting, but we can promise that you will be:

  • Safe and part of a compassionate work environment
  • Challenged
  • Encouraged to grow

Compassion and results are not zero-sum. Our belief is that people perform better and deliver better products when they have a good quality of life.

Diversity, equity & inclusion

GreyNoise culture is rooted in transparency, communication, and community. We believe these core tenets enable diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We also believe in leadership by example and delivering impact to the communities of which we are a part. As we grow and learn, we are focused on creating and maintaining an inclusive environment through our hiring, retention, and recognition processes for all GreyNoise employees.

Our values

Engineering (ENG)

Readability of code is judged by the reviewer, not the author.

Tech is cheap, don't be afraid to throw it away.

Write tests out of respect for your colleagues.

If you can't write a test, issue a proof-of-work in your pull request.

Distinguish internal customers from external customers.

Technical compromises are good.

Utility and adoption is factored into the success criteria of all prototypes.

Have empathy for your users both internal and external.

Ship fast, Ship often.

Accountability is shared across the team.

Serve as a mentor for your strengths and seek out a mentor for your weaknesses.

Prioritize communicating opinions through pull requests instead of pull request comments.

Research (R)

Honesty. Put your best understanding of the truth first in all that you do.

Decency. Treat yourself and others with respect.

Opinions. Frame opinions using data or experience; they are still opinions.

Computers. Computers are cool, that doesn’t mean you won’t hate them.

Products (PROD)

Usability is judged by the user, not the creator.

If you can't get someone to use something for free, you won't be able to get someone to pay for it.

If the customer has to write code to use the product, it isn't a product.

Never forget that the data we collect literally sprays around the entire Internet and anyone else can get access to it.

  • The raw data is not defensible. The story, brand, reputation, analytics, and integrations are defensible.

Practice solution reversal:

  • "We've discovered that people use our technology to do X..."
  • "What are other technical ways we can enable them to do X?"

Strive to understand the user’s problem before building the solution:

  • The obvious solution may not be the best (for other users, product strategy, business health).

Allow users to use the exact same product that they will be buying.

Creating value is hard, monetizing value is easy.

‍Capturing unoccupied market space is cheaper and easier than competing for contested market space

The people who steal your product most likely wouldn't buy it anyway.

Do not punish the user for using the product more.

Customer Experience (CX)

Customers should love working with us, and if they don’t, we need to understand why and do our best to improve.

Losing a customer:

  • Be clinical.
  • What can you learn?
  • Could it have been prevented?

Operations (OPS)

FinOps = Finance; StratOps = Strategy; PpOps = HR & People ; TechOps = IT/Security

(PpOps) Healthy metrics drive business. Fantastic people drive metrics. People are the core of value creation.

(PpOps) An exceptional employee experience is expected and mandatory. There are no two ways about it.

(PpOps) A great culture is a destination we should always be chasing.

(StratOps) Urgency without accountability and execution is urgency for urgency's sake.

(StratOps) Organizational chaos kills the finest of companies.

(StratOps) Build. Assess. Rebuild. At every stage of the company, we will build new processes, assess viability of existing ones, and rebuild broken ones.

(FinOps) Informed investors are better evangelists than uninformed investors.

(FinOps) Healthy balance sheets buy you sovereignty.

(FinOps) The size of the total addressable market only matters when you're raising money or approaching saturation.

Community Users (COMM)

Community users are first class citizens.

Happy, excited, free users are better than any sales and marketing team:

  • The team should continually focus on providing valuable research, events, and insights to the community.

Every security person is a GreyNoise community user who hasn't signed up yet:

  • Every GreyNoise community user is a potential customer in their next job.

Sales (S)

Pricing models need to be simple and transparent.

Be liberal about giving access to our bulk data for partners and customer.

We will do just about any deal for one year.

Consider giving that new thing away for free.

While we still have no competitors, it's important to acquire as many enterprise customers as humanly possible:

  • We can optimize for revenue maximization later.

We encourage creativity in deal negotiations.

Marketing (M)

Security practitioners absolutely hate being "sold" to.

  • Security practitioners also absolutely hate being "marketed" to.

Poor and mediocre quality swag is strictly forbidden.

All marketing communications to free users must include tactically useful information or something they can use for free.

Email blast campaigns are to be used extremely rarely with our free users.