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Case study · Cybersecurity · North America entry

The educated early follower wins North America. How cyan Digial Security built a $5–7M staged investment case — and the three 90-day gates that decide commit, scope, or defer.

CEO Testimonial
"We hired AI Amplifier for our North America market entry. What we finally got exceeded the planned scope - a working commercial plan grounded in primary interviews with North American telco buyers, plus the harder conversations we'd been postponing: competitive positioning, product benchmarking, value articulation, and internal readiness to execute. Robert leads with senior executive judgment, and his orchestration of AI agents combined with deep understanding of the Telecom market is what gives that judgment reach. It also changed how we use AI ourselves. A rare combination, and one I'd recommend to any CEO facing a fundamental strategic decision."
— Markus Cserna, CEO, cyan AG

6–8 weeks

Engagement Duration

10

Executive Operator Interviews

3

90-Day Decision Gates

$M+

Accessible Revenue · Bottom-up

Situation & Complication
A capital raise was on the table — but only behind a highly operational, believable entry case.

cyan Digial Security, a profitable European cybersecurity scale-up with proven Tier-1 telco footprint at home — eight-figure EBITDA base, sovereign-vendor tailwind in EU. The board asked one question: is North America the next leg of growth, or should this capital go to RoW expansion? The CEO needed a yes / no with the operational sequence underneath — not a maybe with options.

Resolution & Deliverables
Ten conversations with the people who actually decide. One framework the board could underwrite.
Double-digit $M
Year-5 growth potential, bottom-up. Growth potential sized bottom-up across 55 mobile and 41 fixed operators; company-capturable revenue modeled at the operator level, with attach, pricing and rev-share assumptions stress-tested.
Executive-level interviews
Heads of product, security and VAS at Tier-1 and Tier-2 operators across Canada and the US — plus an independent advisor. Not analysts. The people who own the purchase order.

3 × 90 days — Conditional commitment framework

Three explicit gates — RFP engagement, partner LOI, US compliance readiness. Each one tested before the next dollar leaves the board.

The Diagnostic Underneath
Independent judgment, free of internal bias — and a US-grade plan.
Key buying factors
Heat-mapped — 13 KBFs tested against ten primary interviews and a competitive bench. The result split three ways — and two of those ways the client had not seen.
Aligned with self-assessment
Buying factors where the client’s own read matched the operator evidence.
Real gaps, under-weighted
Factors the board had been discounting — surfaced as material risk to the entry case.
Emerging moats
Advantages the client did not yet know they owned — now part of the positioning.
Scaling maturity analysis
A scaling-maturity analysis turned the client's own scaling machine into a clear capability plan — the build-out the organization needed to execute the entry successfully.
Measurable outcomes
A position, not a menu. Conditional on tests the board can read.
Recommendation: Phased entry plan across North America · staged $5–7M envelope · breakeven Y4.
Partner shortlist: four named US / Canada candidates scored on motivation, fit and time-to-Tier-1.
Geography-mode matrix: 12 entry archetypes scored; one dominant choice fell out cleanly.
Three 90-day gates: three operational maturity gates with explicit pass / fail criteria to guide the decision making and capital deployement.
Readiness: US SOC 2 Type II clock started, Delaware entity scoped, OFAC / CCPA / COPPA pre-flight defined.
The Rigor Behind the Recommendation
  • Bottom-up TAM / SAM / SOM at operator level
  • 13 KBF heat-map
  • Model A / B / C deployment analysis
  • 5-year EBITDA case with peak-invest envelope
  • Partner motivation scorecard
  • 90-day gate framework with explicit pass / fail criteria
The Case to Defer
What we deliberately built first — tested before the case to enter.

Three legitimate defer arguments tested in full: vendor recognition gap, EU capital opportunity cost, and unresolved product gaps. Each was addressable in two quarters, not twelve. The decision to enter is only defensible because the case against it was tested first.

Operator names, partner shortlist identities, and granular financial projections are held under NDA. Full case materials available on request.

What We Deliberately Did Not Do
Operator ownership over consultant theatre. theatre.
No scenario decks — The board needed a position, conditional on tests — not five futures.
No three-horizon frameworks — The clock was 18 months to first Tier-1 contract, not a decade.
No optionality matrices — Every gate is binary: hit it or down-scope.
No analyst-only desk research — The empirical backbone is ten operator conversations, on the record under Chatham House rules.

A "go" of this size, made on top-down sizing and analyst reports, would burn multi-million capital against legacy assumptions about who actually buys consumer security at US Tier-1 carriers.

Closing

Considering North America? This is what the North America Entry Sprint produces — a board-grade position with the tests built in. Not "options to explore."

See the Sprint → Talk to Robert →
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