Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Greg Enriquez, CEO of TrapX (Part 1)

CISOs are flooded with Cyber Security Vendors trying to sell them solutions. What are they looking for?

This and other topics are kicked around in this insightful interview.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as TrapX.

Greg Enriquez: I’m the CEO of TrapX Security. TrapX is a security technology provider and services. We provide deception technology and assist enterprises in providing a duplicate of their real network. We provide a shadow network or deception technology in their environment so they can fool attackers and protect themselves from threats in the cyber environment. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How has your revenue ramped from the 2007 time frame to 2015? Where are you now?

Chris Grandi: We’re growing over 50% per year. In year one, we started our revenue with less than a million dollars. You grow a 100% when your revenue is smaller. Our revenue is significantly bigger now but we’re still growing at more than 50%.  I actually don’t think that we can grow this company at greater than 50% because of the service levels that we have to provide. I will be very pleased if we continue to grow at 50%.

Sramana Mitra: You’re still doing it as a self-financed business? >>>

Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do in the Valley?

Andrew Rubin: In every sense of the word, people talk about luck, timing, and fate being not everything, but an important part of the story.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a very big thing.

Andrew Rubin: It’s an incredibly important part of the story in my case. While I was at Cymtec, I was coming out to California for conferences and to visit colleagues. On one of those trips before I moved out here, I was introduced to PJ Kirner who is the co-founder and CTO of Illumio. We were introduced by a mutual colleague who thought that we might enjoy talking about security and talking about views of the world that he believed we shared in common. PJ and I got together and had lunch. That started a conversation that, in a lot of ways, lasted a year and a half and led to the formation of Illumio. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is it about the hedge fund space in terms of work flows or virtualization? What specifically is different in that space versus other verticals?

Chris Grandi: There are really two things that make the hedge fund space different. One is the level of service. Because of what hedge fund managers do and how active they trade, everything has to work all the time. We all know that in technology, that’s not necessarily feasible, but the service level demand of giving them the best technology and the best service around that technology is higher than in any other industry I’ve ever been a part of. Correspondingly, because they’re hedge funds, their economic model is great. Their willingness to pay is higher. From the standpoint of just service levels, it’s very unique to hedge funds. If trading systems go down for 20 seconds, they could lose millions of dollars. You really have to prioritize building not only enterprise class technology, but also the various other redundancies. >>>

Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Andrew Rubin: It was in 1998 that I graduated from university.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you work in the first job?

Andrew Rubin: I stayed in my first job for under five years.

Sramana Mitra: This brings us to about 2003 then?

Andrew Rubin: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What happens then? >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was going to be the new company? What did you find that warrants doing another company?

Chris Grandi: This is one thing that I always tell the entrepreneurs I speak to. You always hear about entrepreneurs who start a company when they’re super young and don’t have a lot of experience, and they’re successful. That happens but ultimately, I’ve always believed that if you do something long enough, you get smart in it and get domain experience. Your risk of success is much greater.

I saw a better technical solution to the previous company. I believed that the company who does this 10 years from now is going to be bigger than any of the companies in the space. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Brian Morin, SVP of Marketing, Condusiv (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Is this a venture-funded company? Is it a self-financed company? What is the financial structure of the company?

Brian Morin: Another interesting case about us as a 34-year-old company is that the founder was able to get into the space where there were very low barriers to entry. He’s been able to maintain ownership of the company. There is no private equity backing the company. There is no VC backing. This is a privately-owned company owned by the founder. That’s just not something that you would ever see again in this day and age. The barriers to entry are just way too high for someone to accomplish that. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Brian Morin, SVP of Marketing, Condusiv (Part 4)

Brian Morin: Where we align with that trend is we leverage server-side DRAM so organizations can get more application performance. It’s not just a dedicated PCIE or dedicated SSD. Even within the server, that’s one layer below what we’re doing. We’re actually at the DRAM layer within the server. You can’t get any closer to the processor than using server-side DRAM. We do see that trend eventually evolving.

Sramana Mitra: What are some open problems in your space? If you were to start a company today, what would you be looking at? >>>