As Symbiotic closes out a transformative first year, co-founder Edouard Viot sat down for a candid conversation about the journey so far — the wins, the challenges, the learning curve, and the vision for what comes next.
Edouard Viot: I would say I’m most proud of releasing the AI remediation feature. It’s probably a bit biased because it’s the most recent thing we shipped, but I believe it’s one of our strongest plays. It empowers developers by being educational and offering an immediate way to remediate vulnerabilities. It was a technically demanding feature — and a meaningful one.
Edouard Viot: I’ll always feel like we’re not fast or structured enough. That’s just how I’m wired. But stepping back, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. Compared to big players like Wiz, we’re just getting started — but we’ve made real progress. As a founder, you need two mindsets: one for setting a fast tempo, and another for pausing to celebrate.
Edouard Viot: Surprisingly, the core vision hasn’t changed. We’re still focused on being educational, empowering developers, and acting as a coach, not a cop. What’s evolved is our execution — particularly our AI and data strategy. Data is fueling AI, and existing AI are reaching a quality plateau because they’re primarily learning from public sources. We knew coming into this how important reinforcement learning was to maintain quality remediation and training for our clients, but we’ve doubled down on it.
Edouard Viot: I’d say the most unexpected challenge has come from the hiring process. In my career I’ve been known to scale big teams with great impact, but those first 20 hires are so important and impactful because they help shape the culture and standards of the company. I spoke with over 160 candidates to hire eight people. It took time, but my goal was to learn something in each conversation and make sure I made the right decision.
Edouard Viot: I’ve often found the small gestures from the team to be very rewarding. Sometimes, as a founder, your job is to keep problems away from your team and solve them on your own, which can sometimes feel like you’re carrying a lot on your shoulders. When that gets recognized in a small way, it’s very rewarding.
Building something from scratch is also incredibly rewarding. Everything you do crafts a part of the culture; I hear someone say something that I’ve said, apply something that I’ve taught, it really gives a sense of the impact you have. Seeing your values reflected in your team, knowing your past successes and failures are helping shape something new.
And, to be honest, the fact that you have no routine, for me, is really rewarding. You change your job every week because you’re addressing one problem, then another, then another. You need to always be sharp and alert, and I really connect with that.
Edouard Viot: It’s now about prioritization - you can’t be everywhere all at once. Well, you can, but the work will suffer, so you focus on what’s important. One week the priority could be compliance because of the business impact, the next could be hiring, etc. I used to have some routines from my past, but now I take on one major challenge per week and make sure what I build is sustainable before moving on. Lean philosophy has influenced me a lot — define standards, fix what’s broken, and improve iteratively.
Edouard Viot: There’s actually one bad piece of advice that’s really stayed with me. Once, someone told me, “When you enter a room, people should fear you.” That’s not me. I believe in leading with empathy, not fear.
Edouard Viot: For me, I try to be empathetic. No one is perfect, so I try not to dwell on things or over-analyze. I also want to set a high standard and lead by example.
In terms of what I look for in others, it’s about being genuinely curious, caring about the work, and being willing to grow.
Edouard Viot: The DevOps Rex 2024 exhibition in Europe stands out. Without sales or marketing support in the office, the engineering team stepped up. They designed the t-shirts, helped with the booth, and pitched the product. This was really out of their comfort zone, and wasn’t part of their job description, but they said yes without hesitation. It was inspiring.
And their involvement was far beyond what I was expecting, especially with the design of the shirt, the stickers, everything. They had an opinion and were passionate about what they were doing. It’s really the type of team I want to be a part of.
Edouard Viot: Really positively. Our focus on developer adoption — being a coach, not a cop — resonates with both CTOs and security teams. They’ve seen tools that “shift left” but fail due to poor adoption and we’re solving for that. The feedback from early design partners has been invaluable - and so fun, since they’ll sit and brainstorm with you. That part I really enjoy.
Edouard Viot: Absolutely. Looking at trends, the industry is moving in the same direction we are. It started with products taking every alert and every log from a security solution to try and help you prioritize because you don’t have time to solve them all. Then it evolved to detection rates, because you can’t solve what you can’t see, which evolved into remediation. Today it’s about remediation and prevention at scale, which is exactly what we are solving at Symbiotic. Our AI capabilities and developer-first approach put us in a strong position.
Edouard Viot: The vision hasn’t changed, but we’ve leaned even more into being data-driven. AI is a means, not an end — and the more we learn, the more we see the value in owning the right data, the right way.
Edouard Viot: It’s a daily effort. Jérôme and I are aligned on values, which helps. We’ve embedded product focus and a data-driven mindset into everything. But maintaining culture takes constant work — from how we onboard people to how we lead by example.
Edouard Viot: Learning is something that is really important to me. Having a passion to learn is what drives our people, and it’s what powers our product. Passionate people will figure things out — and that mindset is critical, especially in a fast-moving startup.
Edouard Viot: Definitely the bowling night in Brooklyn. Early on, after two intense weeks of fundraising, Jerome and I went bowling with our families and had such a great time. To then do it again with a different family, our employee family, was really fun. It wasn’t about bowling itself — I like bowling, though I’m certainly not an avid bowler - it was about that shared experience. I also love the spontaneous micro-events we do in the office in France as well, they create great memories.
Edouard Viot: First, reaching product-market fit — 10 to 20 customers. That first goal for me will always be a business goal. Second is being ready to scale. That means building sustainable processes now so that when we grow, we grow well.
Edouard Viot: That’s a good question, and a difficult one. I hope we’ve scaled while keeping our sense of purpose. I imagine lots of smaller, outcome-driven squads — and each one still feeling that they matter. Avoiding bureaucracy and staying lean will be key.
Edouard Viot: Take a mental snapshot of the early days. You’ll want those memories. And do a real introspection — understand your own purpose before building a company. If the company aligns with who you are, it’ll be that much stronger.
Edouard Viot: No, fortunately I have no big regrets. Sure, I’d love to be sharper on a few technical decisions here and there, but we caught those fast and minimized impact. Mistakes are okay — they’re part of the lean way of working. So no, nothing I’d do differently.
Edouard Viot: It’s been intense — but it’s just the beginning. I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved, and I’m so excited for what’s next. Creating Symbiotic has been the best professional decision of my life.
Interview by Vincent Cannone. Edited for clarity and flow.
