Emre Baran's is today the co-founder and CEO of Cerbos, a developer-focused authorization solution, but how he got there is via a mix of entrepreneurial initiative, technological innovation, and a deep understanding of business needs. From growing up in his parents' factory in Turkey to leading multiple successful tech startups, Baran's story is one of constant evolution and adaptation.
"Both my parents were entrepreneurs," Baran recalls. "I grew up in my parents' factory in a sense. So I would always go there whenever there was nobody home to take care of me, and my elementary school was literally four blocks away from their office."
This early exposure to business operations would prove invaluable in Baran's future endeavors. "I grew up in the two floors of the factory. One floor was basically my mother’s studio, she was a fashion designer and the top floor was the office where my father ran a lot of the business and all of the accounting."
While Baran didn't initially set out to be a tech entrepreneur, his background laid the foundation for his future career. "I didn't even know what a startup was, especially a technology startup," he admits. However, the entrepreneurial spirit ran deep thanks to his family history.
Baran's path to tech entrepreneurship specifically began during his university years, though. Initially studying economics, he discovered his passion for technology during summer internships at investment banks. "I found myself writing Excel macros to automate the repetitive parts of the job I had to do," he recalls. This experience led him to switch his focus to computer science, setting up his future in software development.
After graduation, Baran's career took him through various roles in IT consulting and software development. However, it was the emergence of early social networks like Friendster and MySpace that sparked his entrepreneurial journey in tech.
"My brother said, 'This is going to be huge. Let's go build Friendster for Europe,'" Baran remembers. This led to the creation of Yonja, a social network that quickly gained traction.
"We launched it with 300 of our friends, high school and university friends. Little did we know social networks actually grow around the initial group of people. So that 300 became 20,000 by the end of February – and that 20,000 became half a million by the end of the year," Baran says, describing the rapid growth of Yonja.
The experience of scaling Yonja provided Baran with valuable insights into the challenges of growing a tech startup. "We had to order servers every week... we had close to 100 servers. We had to build our own CDN, and various other thing that today you’d just spin up as a service" he recalls. This hands-on experience with scaling technology infrastructure would prove invaluable in his future ventures.
After successfully exiting Yonja, Baran's career took him to Google, where he worked as a product manager in the ads group. "One of the products that I built made about $2 billion for Google in two years," he notes. However, Baran's entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found Qubit, a company focused on helping online retailers implement personalization.
"Whenever my mom asked me, 'What do you do?' Conversion rate optimization, AB testing, product... none of those made sense to her. The way that I explained it is, think about Amazon, all the cool things they do, we enable all the other retailers to do that," Baran explains. This venture allowed him to combine his tech expertise with the retail knowledge he gained from his childhood experiences in his mother's shops.
Qubit's success led to significant growth, with the company expanding to over 300 employees and serving major retailers. However, this growth also revealed new challenges, particularly in managing access and permissions for large teams.
"We used to have these retail companies – they at most had 10, 15 people in their own digital departments, e-commerce departments, et cetera. And then as we expanded in the US, we managed to sign Lenovo and Staples where they have 4,000 people in a department or 10,000 people in marketing. Suddenly like you couldn't shoehorn all those 10,000 people into three roles," Baran explains.
These challenges in managing permissions and access control would eventually lead Baran to his current venture, Cerbos. "When I left Qubit, I was looking for what previous challenges I’d had that still weren't solved," he says. This led to the creation of Cerbos, a developer-focused authorization solution.
Baran's approach to building Cerbos reflects his deep understanding of both technology and business needs. "I respect a lot of these B2B companies where nobody really knows the business unless they actually interview the operator," he explains. "But whenever you come to a fork, and you need to make a gut call, you can't if you don't know anything about the problem area. So at least in a domain you’re deeply familiar with, you know that you have instincts that you can start with and then later on verify."
The journey of building Cerbos has presented its own unique challenges, particularly in terms of market adoption. Baran likens the challenge to what he calls "the wedding dress problem." "If I walk on the street and ask every woman, 'Would you like a wedding dress?' The success rate will probably be about 1% because it's so hard to time it from outside," he explains. "But as soon as they get engaged, they need a wedding dress."
This analogy highlights the challenge of timing in B2B software sales, particularly for a product like Cerbos. "The consideration cycle for a new authorization layer in your software is not every day," Baran notes. This has led to a shift in marketing strategy, focusing more on inbound leads and educating the market about the need for external authorization solutions.
One of the key challenges Baran and his team face is educating developers about the benefits of using an external authorization solution. "Software developers aren't aware this is a solved problem," he explains. "The default reaction of a software developer is like, 'Oh, I can build that.'" This has led to a focus on evangelism and education in Cerbos' marketing efforts.
Despite these challenges, Baran sees a significant opportunity in the market. "At the end of the day, any B2B software, any software where you have multiple users in different roles who need to work together to complete their workflow, needs roles and permissions implementation," he points out. This includes not just obvious enterprise software, but also B2C applications with complex back-office operations.
Cerbos has found particular traction in regulated industries such as fintech, healthtech, and insurtech, where robust authorization is not just a nice-to-have but a critical part of the minimum viable product. "The moment confidentiality, data, privacy, financials come into play, it's very much earlier stages [in these industries]. So and it's a must-have of that thing," Baran explains.
Reflecting on his journey from his parents' factory floor to leading multiple tech startups, Baran sees each experience as unique and valuable. "Yes, there are very broad strokes similarities, but I think they all are completely different depending on the domain," he says of his various ventures. This perspective has helped him adapt to the different challenges and rhythms of each business.
Baran's drive to make a tangible impact is evident in his approach to entrepreneurship. "At the end of the day, I knew I wanted to work on things that are going to make an impact," he says. This desire for immediate feedback and impact is reflected not just in his business ventures but also in his personal pursuits, including his passion for competitive Olympic trap shooting.
As Baran continues to lead Cerbos, he remains focused on solving real problems for developers and businesses. His journey from a child in his parents' factory to a serial tech entrepreneur exemplifies the power of combining domain knowledge, technical expertise, and an entrepreneurial spirit. With Cerbos, Baran is not just building a product, but working to change how developers think about authorization and access control in software development.
