High performing teams are rare. Everyone references Tuckman's 5 stages, but not enough research has been conducted on how long it actually takes to get teams to perform before it is time to adjourn. A study from 2007 showed that only 2% of teams completed all five stages upon completing the group goal, which indicates that complete synergy development is rare within a single project lifecycle.
Harmony takes years to build! Yet, most high performing teams stay together only briefly, like a restaurant crew in NYC on the road to winning their first star. You build something great, then life moves on.
But every now and then, you seize the rare chance to do it again with the right people, on the right problem. Gwen and I started Maro with that in mind.
We've worked together for years; first at Komand, then through the Rapid7 acquisition. At first, our skillsets were mutually exclusive and complementary: marketing vs sales, engineering vs UX. But we quickly evolved to fill in for each other when in a tight spot. After all, that's what real partnership looks like.
As one of the first SOAR companies, Komand helped teams automate away thousands of hours of tedious and manual labor in the SOC. But when Gwen and I look back on the most successful use cases, there is one that stands above all else: distributed alerting. Why? Because the best thing Komand ever did for security teams was enable direct connectivity between knowledge workers and the security team members who defended them.
Still today, we see a massive gap in the market where users exhibit maladaptive behaviors and make risky decisions until a suspected incident forces the SOC to investigate. At that point, it’s usually too late.
We started Maro to solve that asymmetry between technical and human controls. To build something new for security teams who are tired of duct-taping policy and security awareness and hoping it sticks. We knew we needed a paradigm-shifting approach and the right people to bring it to life. (Read more about it: What is cognitive security?)
So today, I’m incredibly proud to share that Jen Andre is joining Maro as our CTO.
If you've been around cybersecurity startups, you know Jen's name. She founded Komand (where Gwen was hire no. 2), co-founded Threat Stack (where I started my career as an intern), and has spent her entire career at the intersection of security operations and product innovation. She knows what it takes to go from zero to one and from idea to impact.
But what makes this moment special isn't just Jen's resume, it’s the history we share.
At Komand, we were a scrappy team who built fast, had fun while doing it, and deeply committed to the people we were building for. Some of my favorite memories come from those early days: late nights fixing bugs and eating Bonchon, endless debates that somehow made us closer (like does a blondie bar count as a cookie? you decide), and the feeling that we were genuinely on to something great.
Now, we get to do it again!
We’re taking everything we've learned about product, about scale, about the psychological aspects of cybersecurity, and we’re bringing it to Maro. We're building a cognitive security platform that gives companies behavior-level visibility, guidance, and governance. A platform that helps security teams actually shape risk instead of just reporting on it.
There’s a lot more to come. We'll be sharing details on our roadmap, our raise, and the team we’re bringing together soon. But today’s a big one for us.
The Jenpire is back, and we’re just getting started.
LFG,
Jadon