and chasing a sector that seemed limitless In 2021, Anjuna Security was growing fast, hiring aggressively. By the end of that year, the venture-backed cybersecurity organization had scaled to around 75 employees, building out sales, customer success, and support teams in anticipation of continued hypergrowth.

Then 2022 hit.

As the industry turned, enterprise clients became harder to land. Like many startups building at that time, Anjuna was overextended and underfunded. So the firm was forced to build a difficult decision and laid off a portion of its staff, then conducted another round of layoffs months later. 

Cutting costs was only part of the challenge. The harder question was how to rebound and keep the remaining team members motivated. 

Ayal Yogev, the CEO and co-founder of Anjuna, joined Isabelle Johannessen on TechCrunch’s Build Mode to discuss how the enterprise survived the volatile economy by acting quickly, making cuts with compassion, and learning from early missteps. This also touches on aspects of user interface.

One of the reasons Anjuna was able to endure two rounds of layoffs was that the business had already put in the time to build a strong internal culture, anchored in a simple idea. “We have only one word when it comes to culture, and that’s care,” Yogev remarked. “We care about our employees. We care about our customers.”

Rather than treating culture as a set of abstract values, the firm focused on consistent behavior. Internally, that meant transparency and communicating clearly about what was happening and why. Externally, it meant supporting departing employees beyond severance, from sharing job opportunities through investor networks to ensuring continued access to benefits like healthcare.

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Crucially, the business avoided common pitfalls that erode trust during layoffs like prolonged uncertainty, impersonal processes, or silence from leadership. Instead, decisions were made quickly, and conversations were handled directly. 

Even so, the impact was real. A second round of layoffs made rebuilding trust more difficult. But the culture that was already established shaped how the remaining team responded. Rather than focusing on blame, the emphasis was on learning: what went wrong, and how to avoid repeating it.

“There’s kind of two things individuals do, like the kind of worst companies are looking for somebody to blame and that always ends up creating a culture of the public are just trying to not produce mistakes,” Yogev remarked. “Just creates a culture of blaming, which is just completely counterproductive, right?”

Today, Anjuna is rebuilding with a different approach. Hiring is more deliberate. Sales growth is tied closely to actual demand. And recent tools, including AI, are helping the team operate more efficiently without overexpanding.

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Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.

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