Tines is a company that offers the only workflow platform that delivers powerful automation and orchestration straight into the hands of any member of your organization. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Tines founder Eoin Hinchy.
Eoin Hinchy’s Background
What is Eoin Hinchy’s background? Hinchy said:
“I began my career as a software engineer on Deloitte’s security team before going on to lead eBay and DocuSign’s European security teams – this is where I personally faced a significant data breach affecting 145M user records stolen. My co-founder and CCO Thomas Kinsella also held prominent cybersecurity roles at Deloitte, eBay, and DocuSign, where he rose to senior director of security operations.”
Formation Of Tines
How did the idea for Tines come together? Hinchy shared:
“The idea for Tines stemmed from our frustrations with the lack of flexibility, the complexity, and the brittleness of other cybersecurity workflow solutions. We decided to build a platform that is flexible, lightweight, robust, and easy to use. Having experienced being in our customers’ shoes, we are intimately aware of the pain points felt within security teams – too much work, not enough staff, and inevitable incidents. These pain points were the driving force behind Tines’ mission to power the world’s most important workflows.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Hinchy explained:
“Tines offers a smart, secure workflow automation and orchestration platform for enterprise teams. It’s the only platform that bypasses the need for programming skills, delivering powerful automation straight into the hands of every team.”
“Our platform connects to any technology via APIs and offers a unique solution that doesn’t force users to choose between usability and robustness when handling complex processes.”
“We designed Tines to be fast, seamless, and reliable, breaking down silos and enabling teams to collaborate across a company’s technology stack to achieve shared goals. The platform provides teams with complete control, empowering users to work more efficiently and offering telemetry that promotes consistency, improves auditability, and reduces inaccuracies.”
“In 2023, we introduced more than 170 new features, including valuable capabilities for building apps, case management, and cross-workflow analysis. Recently, we’ve also launched Workbench, a secure and private AI chat interface that empowers users to incorporate data from across their stack and take real-time action from a single place. The excitement surrounding fully autonomous agents is palpable, but it’s essential to recognize that most organizations aren’t yet ready for this leap. Our primary focus is workflow automation. By seamlessly connecting workflows with proprietary business data through platforms like Slack, Tines Workbench offers immediate value. Our platform also has two AI-powered features, making it easier for non-technical employees to automate important processes and create significant value for their organizations.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Hinchy and the team faced in building the company? Hinchy acknowledged:
“Cyber attacks are on the rise, leading to increased pressure on organizations. This has resulted in high levels of burnout among security professionals, prompting some to switch companies. Our annual ‘Voice of the SOC’ report, based on a survey of 900 security decision-makers and practitioners, reveals that growing workloads, shrinking budgets, and a skills shortage are hindering the pursuit of high-impact work. As a former security professional, I understand these challenges firsthand and aim to provide practical solutions to alleviate burnout and empower security teams to perform at their best.”
Evolution Of Tines’ Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Hinchy noted:
“Our technology has evolved significantly since we launched in 2018. Initially built for security teams, Tines is now being used by various teams within organizations. In September 2023, we expanded the platform’s scope to include engineering, IT, infrastructure, and product teams. Leveraging our success in the security sector, our platform empowers organizations of all sizes to optimize their investments in people and systems. Facilitating real time action and collaboration in a safe and secure way is only becoming more important. By extending Tines’ powerful workflow capabilities to all departments, leading companies around the world are operating more efficiently and effectively.”
“The latest in a series of high-value capabilities we have introduced over the last year includes Workbench, an AI chat interface powered by Tines workflows for taking real-time action on proprietary data, and two AI-powered features to enhance our core platform’s usability. These products and features, all of which are secure and private by design, will help extend our platform’s industry-recognized usability by expanding how customers can leverage their data and monitor that data across their workflows with records and dashboards. The specific features include automatic transform, for building complex data transformations, and an AI Action, the first new action type since the company was founded, which I’m really excited to get into the hands of our customers.”
“Our AI Action allows users to interact with an LLM at any point in the workflow privately and securely, with no logging, which is one of the many ways we ensure security and privacy are key tenets of our product and operations.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Hinchy cited:
“We’ve always measured our success by our customers’ success. Instead of one major accomplishment, we take pride in the consistent value our team provides to customers on a daily basis. This culture is evident through our partnerships with industry leaders such as Guidepoint, Optiv, and Trace3. In 2023, we doubled the total number of partners in our community to 200, leading to the launch of Tines’ official partner program in April 2024 which has continued to grow tremendously. “We power more than 26,000 unique workflowsfor approximately 35,000 users and carry out over 50 million daily automated actions on behalf of those customers. These numbers are growing every single day, resulting in reduced risk, more time to focus on meaningful work, and happier, more engaged teams. This is what we are most proud of.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Hinchy about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We are a value-driven organization that actively seeks feedback from our customers to guide Tines’ innovation roadmap and advance our mission. Our customers have experienced incredible achievements that add real value to their businesses.”
“For example, Mars, one of the largest food manufacturers, implemented 79 automated workflows with Tines and achieved coverage of 80-90% of sources for true positives in just weeks. They also onboarded five teams to Tines within six months, which is a testament to our platform’s rapid integration and effectiveness.”
“Elastic, a search analytics company, saves over 750 days of security analysts’ time annually by using Tines. Similarly, Snowflake, a search-powered solution platform, automated 92% of their previously manual alerts using Tines. This saves Snowflakes’ security teams about 10 hours per day with alert correlation and enrichment. Another really cool, unexpected benefit for Snowflake using Tines is that the organization is now able to onboard junior colleagues faster than before.”
“Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the renowned federal research institution, utilizes Tines to implement its zero-trust framework, expanding its team’s capacity, which is a game-changer when active-duty colleagues go on deployment for long periods.”
Funding
When asking Hinchy about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“In March, we completed a $50 million extension to our Series B funding round led by Accel and Felicis Ventures with participation from Addition, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and SVCI, all of whom were existing investors in the company. Our total total capital raised to date is $146.2 million.”
“In fiscal year 2024, our Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) grew by over 100%, an increase of more than 200 percent since the company’s last funding round in October 2022 with a 30% increase in employee headcount.”
“What this additional funding allows us to do is double down on our investment in product, community, customers, and our people. You’ll see us grow and expand the team in all areas from R&D to support. And most critically, we’ll continue to build products that add value for our customers, whether that’s usability improvements, investments in scalability, product features that facilitate collaboration across teams, or new AI-powered features.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Hinchy affirmed:
“We are focused on building a company that will have a long-lasting impact and transform businesses for decades to come. Our opportunity continues to grow each year, and we are taking all the necessary steps and making investments to ensure our presence for the next 20 or 30 years. We attract a wide range of incredible customers for several reasons.”
“Our product is built with genuine love and craftsmanship. However, what sets us apart most is our customer-driven approach. This reflects our commitment to serving diverse industries while prioritizing usability. Our customer base includes technical and security teams in companies of all sizes, with recent significant growth in large enterprises.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Hinchy concluded:
“I’m more excited about the future of Tines than I have ever been before. We have so many unique product innovations that have been crafted with such incredible focus and care. We just can’t wait to get them into the hands of our customers and community. Our strategic vision for the next 12 months focuses on five key areas: scaling mission-critical and enterprise automation, enhancing our usability through improved integration and AI capabilities, fostering collaboration across teams, broadening our reach to accommodate more users, and investing significantly in AI to continue to enhance platform performance and provide greater value to customers.
