RW244 NIRA’s $24M Remote Pivot:From Search Tool to Trust Engine

Welcome to the Remote Work Live Podcast, spotlighting the leaders and location-independent entrepreneurs shaping the future of work. I'm your host, Alex Wilson Campbell. Now, we talk a lot about freedom, flexibility, and hiring without borders, but there's another side to remote work that rarely gets airtime, and that's trust. And today's story is about NIRA, a remote company founded by Hit and Shah and Marie Prokopetz, gets right to the heart of that. They started out trying to make document search faster, but ended up creating one of the most important security tools for the distributed workplace. Now, Nira's story began like many great startups with a pivot born out of curiosity. Shahr and Prokopetz, both serial entrepreneurs, launched NIRA around 2019 as a document search app. Think Google for cloud files. But during a customer demo, something unexpected happened. A client ran their software and suddenly realized that dozens of former employees still had access to sensitive company documents. That single moment completely changed NIR's direction. They realized the bigger problem wasn't finding documents, it was who could still see them. From that point, NIRA became a data access governance platform. It offered visibility into who had access to what across Google Drive, Slack, Box, and other tools, and allowed companies to revoke permissions instantly. Built as a fully remote company from day one, NIRA grew rapidly and raised more than$24 million before being acquired by Dropbox in 2024. But their real achievement wasn't just building a product, it was redefining what digital trust means in a world where teams and data are everywhere. What I like about NIRA's story is that it started with humility. Instead of clinging to their original idea, Sha and Procopets listened. They really listened to what their users were telling them. That's something that I've seen time and time again amongst some of the best remote founders. They're curious. They don't just sell, they observe. When that client panicked about unauthorized access, Nira's team didn't push it off. They stayed up all night thinking about what it meant. And by the next day, they were no longer in the search business. They were in the security business. Now, as somebody who studied remote teams for years, I see a deeper lesson here. In a distributed world, clarity replaces proximity. When you can't rely on quick chats or office oversight, visibility becomes your trust system. Ten Sha often talks about documentation being the backbone of remote work. He said words to the effect of, when you're remote, hallway conversations don't happen. You need process and documentation. Now that principle applied not just inside NIRA, but to what they were building for others. Their platform didn't just tighten security, it mirrored the same transparency and structure that make remote teams thrive. And that's the real takeaway. When your systems are clear, your people can be trusted. Whether you're sharing code, financials or family photos from your phone, trust is the currency of remote work. And companies like NIRA are showing us how to build it one layer of visibility at a time. So what can we learn from NIRA's journey? First, don't assume you know your customer's biggest problem. Ask, observe, and stay flexible. Second, in remote teams, trust isn't just cultural, it's technical. The more distributed we become, the more vital it is to know who has access to what. Not control people, but to protect collaboration. And finally, remember documentation isn't bureaucracy, it's empathy. It's how you give people freedom and accountability. That's it for today's episode of the Remote Work Live Podcast. I'm Alex Wilson Campbell. Join me for the next episode.