By Brian Warehime, CPO at Morado
When you’re building a product in the world of cybersecurity, especially in threat intelligence, you’re constantly straddling two opposing forces: the need to move fast and the need to preserve context.
At Morado, our platform Threatnote helps CTI (Cyber Threat Intelligence) teams track intelligence requirements, collect findings, and produce actionable insights. But one thing that’s become crystal clear over time is this: intel without context becomes noise. And the same is true for product decisions.
Why we built Threatnote
Threat analysts don’t just need to know what happened. They need to know why it matters, who it connects to, and how that fits into broader trends. They’re trained to document findings, cite sources, and leave trails others can follow. It’s a discipline built around maintaining context. That mindset has shaped how we built Threatnote, since we need to build thinking like an analyst and how they would utilize that context.
In the early days, we moved fast, shipping features weekly and iterating in real time with users. But we learned the hard way that velocity without structure creates fragility. Features would get built, but a month later, nobody remembered the reason behind the decision. Worse, we risked breaking workflows that depended on assumptions long forgotten.
So we adapted. Now we treat product decisions like intelligence reports.
We document the rationale behind changes, not just the tickets.
We tag features back to customer problems or intelligence workflows.
We close the loop by revisiting what we shipped and measuring whether it solved what we thought it would.
We still move fast, but now we leave a trail. That has made all the difference as our product scales and more people join the team.
If you’re building something complex, especially in a space like security or enterprise SaaS, preserving context is your multiplier. It helps your team build trust, stay aligned, and evolve the product without losing your compass.
This shift in mindset didn’t just affect how we build, it changed how we communicate across the team. We started asking different questions during planning:
What’s the underlying problem this solves?
Who will care about this in six months?
What assumptions are we making that might not hold?
These questions help us avoid building features that are technically impressive but practically irrelevant. Context isn’t just a tool for analysts; it’s a safeguard for product teams against short-sighted decisions.
It also forced us to rethink how we handle onboarding and knowledge transfer. As new engineers joined the team we realized that documentation wasn’t just for the sake of compliance, but for continuity. We started maintaining internal playbooks that explain not only how something works, but why it works that way. This helps new team members get up to speed faster and contribute meaningfully without fear of stepping on invisible landmines.
Customer Trust is Paramount
Above all, we’ve seen how preserving context impacts customer trust. When users report bugs or ask for changes, we can point to the decisions behind a feature and explain our reasoning. Sometimes that results in better solutions. Sometimes it builds empathy. Either way, it shows that we’re listening, thinking, and evolving with purpose. And in a space like cybersecurity, where trust is everything, that matters more than you might think.
This approach also influences how we think about technical debt. In cybersecurity, shortcuts can lead to blind spots. The same goes for product development. When we move quickly without preserving the reasoning behind a decision, we accumulate decision debt. That debt compounds over time, making it harder to pivot or scale without unintended consequences. By documenting not just what we built but why, we reduce that debt and make our product more resilient to change.
Ultimately, building a product for intelligence teams means operating with a higher bar for clarity and accountability. Analysts are trained to challenge assumptions and seek evidence. That same discipline should guide product strategy. It’s not always about building faster, it’s about building with purpose, maintaining traceability, and ensuring your team has the context they need to make confident decisions. That’s what keeps us grounded as we keep moving forward.