Software Supply Chain Security Startup Endor Labs Launches Partner Program

Endor Labs, a startup that helps address software supply chain security, will sell and deliver its services exclusively through partners. The company, which emerged from stealth last fall, introduced its Hyperdrive partner program on Wednesday.

Endor Labs offers a Dependency Lifecycle Management platform that discovers critical vulnerabilities in open-source software. Notably, it detects leading indicators of risk to help developers and solution builders protect against software supply chain attacks. Backed with $25 million in funding, Endor Labs said it planned to launch a channel program from the outset.

Endor Labs’ decision to launch with a 100% channel go-to-market sales and delivery model may seem unique for a startup. But it worked for the last company Endor Labs’ founder and CEO Varun Badhwar led — RedLock. Palo Alto Networks acquired that cloud threat defense provider in 2018 for $173 million. The deal provided the foundation of Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Cloud.

Several RedLock and Palo Alto Networks officials have since joined Badhwar at Endor Labs. Among them is Andrew Davidson, who joined Endor Labs in January as VP of business development and alliances. Dickerson leads the company’s new partner program.

Endor Labs’ Andrew Davidson

“We saw a really high success ratio when we did this over at RedLock,” Davidson said, referring to its 100% channel sales and delivery model. “We want to make a very similar motion around going 100% channel with Endor Labs.” He added: “We see this as a long-term partnership with our partners. [And] we want to make sure that it’s a mutual value at the end of the day.”

No Direct Sales or Service Delivery

Davidson emphasized that Endor Labs does not plan to sell directly to customers. Endor Labs also will not deliver services.

“Our sellers are comp-neutral, so there’s no incentive to go direct versus indirect,” he said. “They actually have a higher incentive to work with our partners. And we see it as a value-add. If our partners can go out there and provide value to their customers and bring us into a sales cycle, it is going to help accelerate the motion for us. That’s what we want to invest in.”

Endor Labs has signed on about 12 partners. Among them, Endor Labs is announcing CleverBits, Fortifire, Grant Thornton, Intuitive Cloud, TachTech, Tevora and Zinfinity. Davidson also said Google and GitHub are alliance partners.

According to Davidson, Endor Labs’ Dependency Lifecycle Management platform can replace traditional software composition analysis (SCA) tools. He said existing tools don’t offer an efficient way of tracking open-source software dependencies at scale.

Endor Labs is qualifying partners who have application security practices.

“They have the technical resources to understand the problem at hand,” he said. “The services opportunity is hands-down the biggest around the building and implementing an OSS governance program for the customer.”