Master of his identity: Sachin Nayyar

At the age of 28, Sachin Nayyar found himself in a position most can only dream of. He had just signed over Vaau, the startup identity management company he had founded only a few years earlier, to Sun Microsystems. The transaction had made him a millionaire overnight.

Yet the thought that kept running through his mind was, ‘What do I do now?’

"The only answer I could come up with was, ‘Just don’t mess it up,’" Nayyar tells The CEO Magazine.

With a young family, Nayyar’s whole life stretched ahead of him. Yet suddenly he felt bereft of direction. "I actually fell into a fairly deep depression because I didn’t know how to live with that money," he explains.

"I had worked so hard to build my company, working 16-to-18 hour days, always on the phone with customers or team members, and all of a sudden that ended but I had this money, with which I could go and buy anything."

He had also found himself drifting apart from his best friend, who had been Vaau’s CTO.

With no role models to guide him in the next steps, he turned to a course at Stanford University on living with wealth. A few of his classmates were first-generation entrepreneurs like him; the majority had inherited family wealth.

One student, in particular, stood out – a 20 year old who had been handed wealth on a platter. "This kid had never worked a day in his life and would wake up every day to hundreds of thousands of dollars of interest because his grandmother had invested all her money with Warren Buffet in the early days, and then later Apple," he says.

"This kid had no motivation. He would ask everybody else in the class what they thought he should do."

In a short space of time, Nayyar had learned about what generations of wealth can do to people — and how money can push people apart.

The right mindset

With a renewed focus, Nayyar threw himself back into business, first as Chief Identity Strategist at Sun Microsystems, followed by President at Brinqa. But the call of entrepreneurship once again beckoned, and less than three years after selling Vaau, Nayyar had founded not one, but two new companies in the identity and cybersecurity space: Securonix and Saviynt.

Yet managing two companies simultaneously as CEO is easier said than done. "It took a major toll on my body and mind," he says.

He was also able to recognize the familiar fog of depression. "I knew I wasn’t waking up as excited as I should have been about the companies and the work we were doing," he says.

Nayyar stepped away from the CEO role at Saviynt in 2018 to serve as Executive Chairman. In 2022 – after juggling the commute between Dallas, where Securonix was based, and Los Angeles, his home and Saviynt headquarters – he orchestrated a successful exit at Securonix to focus wholly on Saviynt, to which he returned as CEO in 2023.

He also knew that it was time to prioritize his health and turned to holistic health, meditation and yoga. He has also started a company in holistic health.

"I started out in business so early and my mind became accustomed to these incredible highs," he says. "As I went on to building larger companies, there were highs and lows. Some quarters were good, some quarters weren’t good.

"I would have very high highs and very deep lows. It would hurt me from inside when a customer had an issue or if someone said something negative about the company or our products."

Now, he has turned to a healthier lifestyle and light meditation to block out distractions and focus on controlling his mind.

"I’m calmer and I focus on the right things, which helps put everything into perspective," he says. "It has also given me and the company longevity so that we can actually go the distance and run the marathon at a high speed without burning out."

A clear path

Trusted by enterprise partners, including AWS, IBM, PWC, KPMG, Accenture and Ernst & Young, Deloitte and Guidepoint to help manage digital identities, access privileges and compliance requirements across their IT ecosystems, it’s exactly the mindset needed as the company accelerates toward its goal of becoming the number one identity security company in the world.

"Saviynt is on a great journey right now," Nayyar says. "We can clearly see our path and we are executing on it."

After a period where he says the company grew too fast and fell into the trap of becoming a little too reactive, Nayyar explains that it is back on track in terms of proactiveness: in customer support, customer value and, crucially, innovation.

"Saviynt will have about 50 percent more capabilities and products to ship in the next 18 months than what we have done in the last 12 years," he says.

Nayyar adds that much of Saviynt’s growth can be attributed to its proprietary security innovations.

"We have built every piece of product ourselves," he says. "We haven’t turned to acquisitions to buy products."

It also means that the company culture has been built from the ground up.

"Our culture is our secret sauce," he explains. "There are no egos in the company and working toward a common goal to create something that we are all proud of is at the core and propels us forward."

Protecting their clients’ abilities to do mission critical jobs is that common goal. "For many companies, cybersecurity is a core capability to run their business, otherwise they risk being paralyzed," he says.

With a presence in over 20 countries, he is grateful that Saviynt is now in a position to address security from an identity perspective at scale across the world.

Moving the needle

For someone who has made identity their business, Nayyar is also finally in a position where he knows who he is – and what he wants his legacy to be.

"It’s very important for me, when I hang up my shoes, that I have helped move the needle on cybersecurity for my customers," he says.

He knows the leading role cybersecurity has played in the ever-evolving technology landscape, but in an industry as fast changing as his, he also knows there’s little time to reflect on past achievements – only to look forward.

"Without cybersecurity, no company would have moved to the cloud or towards AI," he says.

Yet as businesses gravitate toward these new technologies, he also cautions that old, on-premise identity security products are no longer enough. "The cybersecurity defense has to change," he says.

This is the moment for organizations to transform identity management into a true security control, he adds.

"Don’t put identity management into the silo of compliance. If you think it should be, you’re not getting the value for your money. Use it as a key security pillar, move it to the cloud and let it help you with your security," he says, signing off the interview with gratitude toward his company, his team and, most importantly, his wife, his two boys, his dad, his sisters, his extended family and his friends.