TIETOJA TÄSTÄ JAKSOSTA
Andres Andreu sits on one of the richest datasets in cybersecurity — nearly 64 billion breached identities — and for years growth still stalled. The problem was never the data. It was who Constella was selling it to.
In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, Andres Andreu, CEO of Constella Intelligence, walks through the breach-data lake his company has amassed over 16-plus years and how it now feeds OEM cybersecurity vendors like Norton LifeLock and intelligence agencies across Europe, including Europol. You'll hear how a single ICP mistake — pitching CISOs who had no team to operationalize the data — held the company back, and how the shift to an OEM model drove 17% revenue growth in a single year. Andres also traces his arc from building federal law enforcement wiretap systems in the 1990s, to taking Bayshore Networks from employee number three to exit in 2021, to stepping into the CEO seat at Constella just six months after joining as COO. Along the way he shares the "fail fast" moment that forced his team to scrap part of their product and build a machine learning engine that earned an internationally granted patent — and saved the company.
If you're a founder or operator wrestling with product-market fit, ICP, or when to kill what you've built, this one is for you.
Chapters
00:00 What Constella Intelligence actually does
03:09 Why passwords barely change over 15 years
04:34 Inside the 24/7 breach-hunting program
05:18 Two ICPs: OEM vendors and intelligence agencies
05:47 From 90s federal wiretap systems to founding Bayshore Networks
09:20 The ICP mistake: selling to CISOs who couldn't use the data
10:25 OEM partners: Norton LifeLock, Europol, and beyond
13:07 "My vendor has 17 billion identities." "I have 64."
15:38 The fail-fast moment that led to a patent — and saved the company
19:13 What's driving growth now: customer-driven APIs and ICP focus
About the guest
Andres Andreu is the CEO of Constella Intelligence, a cyber-intelligence company operating one of the world's largest breach-data lakes. He brings 33 years in cybersecurity, from federal law enforcement to a 2021 startup exit with Bayshore Networks, and is the author of an internationally granted machine learning patent.
Connect with Andres: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresandreu/
Learn more about Constella Intelligence: https://constella.ai/
Subscribe to We Built It Because We Had To for new founder stories every Tuesday and Thursday. Hosted by Jonathan Buckley of The Artesian Network — fractional CMO guidance for early-stage tech founders. Learn more at https://www.artesiannetwork.com
