That opportunity became Horangi, a cloud security company Hadjy founded to fix frustrations he carried as a CISO. “As a senior security leader, it was often difficult to secure the resources and executive support needed to address pressing challenges,” he says. “When I started my own company, I wanted to ensure that security would never be treated as an afterthought.”
From the outset, Hadjy made security a core part of Horangi’s culture. Everyone shared responsibility, and every individual was treated as a potential target. Security, he emphasized, wasn’t only about protection, it was also about building customer trust. “In many businesses, security is still not viewed as a sales enabler, which was a constant frustration for me,” Hadjy says. At Horangi, he flipped that thinking and grounded the business in the belief that visible, robust security practices could create the trust needed to drive revenue. “We recognized early that demonstrating strong security practices builds trust, especially with enterprise customers. Protecting both company and customer data provides confidence and ultimately becomes a competitive advantage.”
Lessons learned from a CISO building a cloud security business
The transition from CISO to founder required a new mindset. The toughest mental shift wasn’t about technology or markets. Rather, it was about ruthless prioritization. Limited resources forced constant trade-offs, and Horangi often had to invent its own ways to overcome them. In 2016, with SaaS still emerging, the company for instance had to rely on its own platform and custom processes, built by its engineering and services teams, to secure its environment. “That experience reinforced the importance of adaptability and innovation when building from the ground up.”
