Co-founder. Operator.

BUILT IT.SOLD IT.

Suridata. From a market thesis nobody had validated to an enterprise product, a team, and an acquisition by Fortinet. I led product through all of it. Now I spend my time with founders who are about to find out what that actually costs.

Haviv Ohayon speaking into a microphone during a blue-lit panel discussion. — Founder conversation

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CO-FOUNDER & CPO, SURIDATA
IDEA → ENTERPRISE PRODUCT → EXIT
ACQUIRED BY FORTINET
LED PRODUCT AT FORTINET

Portrait of Haviv Ohayon in a white shirt with his arms crossed. — Haviv Ohayon

The short version.

KPMG taught me how buying decisions actually get made. Good technology loses to worse technology because nobody can get it through the organisation.

Then I co-founded Suridata. I thought I was there to build the product. That did not last. We had to pick a market before anyone could confirm it, price something that did not exist, and earn trust from buyers with no reason to give it.

Fortinet acquired us. I got plenty of it wrong, which is most of what I have to offer.

Company building
Product & market
Go-to-market
Enterprise sales
Cybersecurity

Six things I’ve stopped arguing about.

Learned the expensive way, not the theoretical way. These are what I come back to every time a company mistakes momentum for a machine.

TRACTION IS A SIGNAL, NOT YET A SYSTEM.
Early wins matter. The only question that matters next is which of them can repeat.
IT IS ALMOST NEVER JUST THE PRODUCT.
Roadmap, positioning, sales, customers, and hiring are the same decision wearing different clothes.
CUSTOMER EVIDENCE SHOULD CHANGE THE PLAN.
Repeated behavior beats internal confidence, and it beats the one loud request every time.
FOCUS IS A COMPANY DECISION.
Choosing a market means choosing what you will not sell, will not build, and will not hire for.
INTEREST IS NOT DEMAND.
Demand has urgency, budget, an owner, and a buyer willing to act. Everything else is a nice call.
THE NEXT ROUND IS NOT THE STRATEGY.
Build the company that deserves the round, not the story engineered to raise it.

Haviv Ohayon speaking on stage with a headset microphone. — On stage, on the same subject

IDEA.
ENTERPRISE PRODUCT.
EXIT.

Suridata
CO-FOUNDER & CPO
Co-founded Suridata and led product as CPO. Took it from a market thesis nobody had validated to an enterprise product, paying customers, a team, and an exit.
Suridata + Fortinet
ACQUIRED BY FORTINET
Fortinet acquired Suridata. The product, the team, and the customer value we built went into a global security platform.
Fortinet
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
Led product inside a global cybersecurity company: enterprise customers, product strategy, integrations, and AI-driven capabilities, at the scale most founders are building toward.
Now
INDEPENDENT
Working with founders and boards, and speaking about the part of company building nobody puts in the deck.
Before that
KPMG: BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, CYBERSECURITY
Led teams through enterprise and cybersecurity problems, and learned the thing most product people learn too late: how buying decisions actually get made, and how little of technology adoption is about the technology.