From Hacker to Serial Entrepreneur

do you remember when we met I remember we met for coffee so it was gov kaan gov - oh this was 2009 and there was such an overflow to the conference that some of us had to go sit in another conference room and I was tweeting but I didn't have my picture on my Twitter profile and there was someone else who was tweeting and we both thought each other was doing some really good commenting about the conference and we said and this person said you don't have your picture on your profile so I don't know how to talk to you and so I then automatically changed my profile and he was sitting right next to me so

what's interesting it's absolutely wonderful to network over Twitter but you do have to actually meet people face to face because in the end the people that you work with you're going to work with face to face and as I've watched Matt's career I was just totally blown away with all of the different ventures he's done the entrepreneurial ventures he's done and when we started higher ground it was about doing a combo between people who wanted to start out on their own and people starting their careers so I figured as we go into our next stage of higher ground that Matt would be the perfect one to kick it off so Matt typical question to start us off

how would you summarize your career and what are some of the highlights and lowlights I mean everyone sees entrepreneurs with their really great cars and they get to vacation in Hawaii and work for two hours and it's always so easy and you know that's what being an entrepreneur is all about right no it is not highlights I definitely think you know the nice thing about being an entrepreneur is that if you have a passion or vision that you see in the market space you actually get to experiment and try and execute against that vision right to see whether that market exists to offer that service the the low-light of that you know is the fact that you are actually putting

yourself at great risk in the process all of the companies that I've started individually as a founder or bootstraps it was my own money it was me paying myself out of my savings paying other employees you know putting myself at great risk to start those companies to prove out a thesis that I had about an opportunity in the market space or that we could do something so so the highlights are definitely being successful in saying I have an idea I can execute against that and build value around that particular idea the the lowlights are you you have to deal with the struggles of building a company and it's not easy right there's the ups and

the downs and the the nervousness of a spouse you know and I started my first company solo and I told my wife I was quitting my nice corporate job and was going to work out of the basement we had just gotten pregnant and we're getting ready to have our first child so not an easy you look good for being pregnant you look good for being pregnant yes so starting off as a young family now I haven't been able to keep up you've had three ventures four ventures what are your ventures been yeah I've had numerous over the years the the first that was kind of truly my company was a company called the Terrorism Research Center started in 1996 that was

based on in passion that I had around issues in in terrorism and the linkage that we saw between terrorism related issues and InfoSec related issues made the start of my career was at that intersection of national security and cyber security and there really was no career path back then I mean I understand the struggles associated with finding a job in today's day and age and that last talk was very helpful but if you can rewind to you know the early 90s there were no jobs out there that said cyber security there was you know not a lot of believers this was a real issue so the Terrorism Research Center was kind of a combination of you know

looking at that we had a cybersecurity component way to conventional terrorism aspect to it and we built that up over the course of a decade and was you know an incredibly valuable experience the second that was kind of truly my own company was a company called fusion act so I started in 2010 and that was a red teaming entity where we wanted to kind of change the nature of how red teaming was being done in the market again I had a thesis around a problem area that I saw and thought that I could deliver a solution that was better and built that out over the years I've been very involved I was a founding member of the IEEE defense team if

you're familiar with AI defense or acquired by Verisign a few years after I left and interestingly when I was at Accenture a couple years ago I actually acquired I defense into Accenture so that was like a full circle was there at the founding of the company 20 years ago before and then wound up acquiring a company that I had helped start was also early days that I site partner is helping them out and at a company called security design international which not a lot of people remember abilities some pretty kick-ass stuff back in the cult you know that like 1997-98 timeframe so many folks in the room and watching offline are frustrated with their careers and want to go out on their own

what would you say to these folks about their current careers and their future as an entrepreneur so you know do you just sort of say I'm tired with my career and I'm just going to go off on my own what should someone sort of look in the mirror and say to themselves before they do that yeah it's you have to find that that balance that is right for you right it can be very disruptive and hard to just say I am going to quit and I'm gonna go and find a completely new job a very close friend of mine actually did that just a couple weeks ago he got frustrated and said I'm done I quit it hadn't updated his resume

hadn't looked for a new job yet but just reached that point where wanted to branch out and he ended up going to work for a start-up just this this week actually but then also balancing that with that you have a family to feed that you need income coming in that you don't you know how long it would take you know to start your company or to get off the ground so I'm also a big proponent a kind of the side hustle piece right is there an element of what you want to do that is not a conflict of interest with your current employer when we started the Terrorism Research Center I was a full-time employee of SAIC if you're

familiar with SAIC but they were not interested in that mission space they were not interested in any of the ideas actually got a letter signed by Bob Meister the CEO at the time that said I could work on this project nights and weekends as long as it didn't interfere with my SAIC work and that that gave me an outlet for my passion to go and do research and collaborate and we did a lot of cool things and that laid the groundwork for when I decided to say well I think there's enough business your momentum that I can make this money a full-time job I was wrong I couldn't make it my full-time job I ended up having to draw down on savings

we took a lot of risk but it was the the right decision at the time to kind of give it the full-time focus so obviously there are some hard lessons to learn being an entrepreneur what are one or two hard lessons to learn being an entrepreneur yeah I think the the hardest lessons to learn how to make sure that you have the passion and that you are attracting the people that you want to work with I have a big proponent of recognizing that you don't work for companies you work with people so I've always made it about who are the types of people that I want to work with to go and try and accomplish this mission I

think too often people get emotionally invested in their brand they get emotionally invested in just the startup for the startups sake and they forget about the fact that this is a people driven pursuit right that you need folks to work with so I think recognizing that early on is very very important I've seen a lot and I've done it myself where you get incredibly emotionally attached to the brand it prevents you from making decisions that are in the best interest it forces you to be overly competitive instead of collaborative I think that's another approach that I see especially in the InfoSec industry like it's fun to be a little boisterous and think that your team is better than the next team

but these problems that we're facing are bigger than any one company is going to solve they're bigger than any 10 companies are going to solve or 20 companies we need to be collaborating and partnering and sharing within the community which is why I love events like this so those are two you know common things and I think I encounter where people get it's a people centric aspect of it and then they feel like they need to be the best and it's as highly competitive when they should be much more collaboratively so you're talking about collaboration being a really important skill what are some of the other important skills that an entrepreneur needs because you know

we talk about skills and skill sets when we talk about career tracking and what are the skills that people need to learn are there skills that you can learn being an entrepreneur or are there some innate skills that you need to have as an entrepreneur you you have to learn a whole set of skills I like the joke and building the Terrorism Research Center that I got the school of hard knocks MBA I got the school of hard knocks law degree because you know I had to review the contracts myself and research because at the time I couldn't afford to pay the legal fees associated with like a real legal review right so there are

skills that you pick up and some risks that you take but I think the most important aspects are the passion is definitely if you're not waking up and feeling that this is it right then it just becomes like any other job being genuine right I think is is not something that you learn it is just something that you are I think I've been successful in business because I approach everything that I do with a very genuine nature I'm very honest I tell people I had a conversation last night at the bar with a person who'd probably consider themselves to have been a competitor of my old company and I was just sharing all the secrets all

the lessons learned because I want other people to be successful right I want to be able to share that experience so coming at it with passion being true to who you are finding balance I mean I'll be honest in the early days or the startup perspective I swung the pendulum way too far and the kind of work-life balance right so I think recognizing that you need to find that balance in life and that it can't be a hundred percent about work or even 95 percent about work you have to have other things you have to draw in other passions and family and things of that sort so you've gone from one venture to the next and a

lot of times when I've talked to entrepreneurs they just have one idea and they run with it and that's the rest of their career but you've been very successful going from one on two Nouriel venture to the next how do you sort of keep that momentum going do you always have ideas on the horizon are you collaborating with people how do you keep the energy up to constantly go from one to the next yeah I'm uh I'm high energy to begin with you know I haven't had enough caffeine today but I think just intellectually always curious I read a lot I interact with peers a lot I expose myself to a lot of new ideas

I don't formally journal but I keep a very long list of things that I think are interesting ideas and at times they are and other times I revisit the list and think oh man what was I thinking in other times I revisit the list and somebody else got there first which is okay right it kind of proves the market so when I found myself in those situations where I'm transitioning out of one entity and looking for the next piece of it what the next opportunity is I revisit that list and I think about what it what am i passionate about where do I think I could put the most energy forward and feel really good about what

I'm doing and then the other piece of it is I also listen to the market so when I was getting ready to start fusion X I actually had a whiteboard in my home office and I had three ideas on the whiteboard and those were three companies that I wanted to start and then my phone started ringing and the phone was ringing from executives and companies that I had worked with in the past friends in the InfoSec community that all wanted help around one of the ideas that was on my whiteboard so and I looked at it I said okay have a lot of passion I think I can do this and the market is also speaking to me like this

is a problem that exists that people are clamoring for a solution so that was actually helped me in the selection process with regards do you know I've got three things that I want to pursue which one where do I apply my energy that let the market speak to me in that instance as well so talking about reading you put out a reading list frequently don't you I do yeah I do a top 10 in books of every year that tend to be business technology security books sometimes I'll throw in a taught in a science fiction I also put out a newsletter every Sunday that was actually something I started over a decade ago as a way to provide feedback

to analysts and employees that were working with me it was basically what are the five to ten things that I think happened this week that are the most significant and it might be like the indicator of a small you know trend line or it might be something big that broke but it's kind of what do I think people should be paying attention to and I made the commitment early on in that newsletter to include a book reviews so every week I put out a book review of a book and sometimes I cheat last week you know getting ready to come out here on Sunday I want a review of a book that I read a

couple years ago but hadn't reviewed yet you know kind of pushed that out to the audience but I use that you the part prior the speaker talked about staying current and understanding the world around you I use that as my level set to make sure that I'm paying attention to what's happening in the world because it becomes very easy to kind of ignore get in the trend space but committing to putting out a newsletter and identifying five to ten stories means I need to be thinking about it all week every Sunday morning I need to take the time to sit down and say of the things I've encountered that I've bookmarked that I've added to my to-do list which are

the ones that I really think are the most important and then kind of push that out so when you look at the cybersecurity landscape it's very interesting because you tend to be tend to see a lot of the big names why do you feel entrepreneurship is important to this community entrepreneurs can innovate at a much rapper much more rapid pace than a big company and I've lived in both so I've seen it firsthand right entrepreneurs can take risks that a lot of big companies can't take from a risk perspective they can have that kind of you know application of energy you can funnel energy if you hire twenty really smart talented you know a players

into your organization you've got all of that energy that's channeled toward solving you know your particular problem that you've approached in the market a big organization is not that there aren't a ton of smart people and big organizations but you also carry a lot of dead weight you carry a lot of bureaucracy you carry a lot of overhead so a start-up is kind of unencumbered by that so so I see entrepreneurship as essential because it's a great way for new ideas to kind of manifest and accelerate in the market so when someone is considering a career should they consider working excuse me let me backtrack when someone's considering going to become an entrepreneur should they go and work in a start-up first to

see what it's like or should they just go out on their own I think you could go either way I mean working in a start-up I think is fun and gives you that kind of shared experience you learn the things that you don't want to do as an entrepreneur I mean before I branched out on my own and I worked in a startup and I saw the good bad and the ugly and the ugly was the stuff that I committed to myself that I would never do as an entrepreneur right and I encountered those where another CEO was making those mistakes or doing those things that you know allowed me to see okay those these

are mistakes and I'm witnessing that I want to make sure that I never repeat and committed to doing that or you can go out and learn those mistakes as well right just on your own so I think either pathway is valid it's just if there's a start-up that's aligned with your passion and there's an opportunity there that's a great environment to learn a lot about how startups are built so cybersecurity demands on the now excuse me I don't have my glasses on so it's always interesting cybersecurity demands the now how do you balance a need for urgently urgent projects when you have to have time to you know develop your project so we're talking about

cybersecurity and everyone wants to do it now but if you have the idea and you have to develop it and have it mature and you know how do you have that balance that's really hard I am a big proponent of focus right I had a quote that my employees actually put on the wall which is kind of a humbling experience before I said distractions are free but they sure do cost a lot I think too often in startups I've done this myself you chase the next revenue stream you agree to do something that is really kind of outside the area that you want to be working in because a customer has asked so it's that power of focus

that power of saying no that power of not distracting yourself I think becomes critical Eve if it creates a little bit more stress right you're not accepting the revenue stream so you have to you know draw down on the bank account or you have to go another week without paying yourself or whatever it may be but the benefits of not you know having the collateral damage to your focus and your momentum and what you're really trying to do are key so the demands on Cisco's today have created an environment where they are integrating many tools and data sources into their operations how do you recommend an entrepreneur approach bringing an innovation forward when they may not have the resources to have all

of the tools how do you bring an idea forward again I think that's part of the focus right when you go and talk to people you need to make sure that you are addressing demand that exists in the market if you have something that is addressing a current problem that the CISOs are facing even despite how hard it is to get their attention you are going to establish some momentum using your network to identify early advocates right when we were starting infusion acts I went to someone who I'd known from the work I've done back in the Department of Defense who was at a big bank and I said listen I know that we're a startup we've got no past performance

but can you take a risk can we will you be willing to have this be kind of a joint thesis and he did and it turned out that he loved us and became you know retainer based client and was one of our biggest clients over the years right so just having the the requisite to go and approach folks and say I understand and you have to really understand the problem that they're facing I understand the problem and here's the solution and I'm willing to work hard to demonstrate how our product or how our solution will satisfy that right so there's also a kind of a courage element on that I guess which I also think is probably

important from an entrepreneur perspective I am primarily an introvert I like events like this because it's kind of my tribe and I've been coming to hacker conferences since 1995 so how many deaf cons have you gone to I have been to over you know it's probably right around 20 there are a couple I missed when I had children and my wife they want me to try because the children were too young but I've been coming religiously over the years for many many years going back into the 90s but the courage aspect of it I think if I look back at the lessons learned where I had opportunities where it was the courage to go ask somebody to

take a risk with me the courage to go ask somebody to listen to what I was saying the courage to go and introduce myself to someone in the early early stages of my career when I was a graduate student studying this topic and no one in the world was interested it seemed like I actually had proposed to do my thesis on the topic of information security and the risks to national security and it was denied so I'm being how many years ago was that this was 1993 so 25 years ago I'm saying this is an important issue I want to do a graduate thesis on this and the chair of the department says no it's not valid

why don't you go look at the national security implications of NAFTA and free trade but I continued to reach out I reached out to a conference computers freedom and privacy I think is CFP number two or three in Chicago and asked to speak and send a copy my paper and they said no the agenda is full but we'd like to there was this new organization that had stood up that had scholarships to attend it was actually the EF F so I'm a big advocate of the F F not just for their work but so they paid for me to go to the conference and there was a guy that was on stage and he was a

former CIA guy had been in the CIA for 20-something years got out was now in the private security space and he said something that at the time was very risque said hackers are a national security resource I had a paper I had written it had a chapter entitled to use hackers as a national resource so I went up and introduced myself to this guy and gave him a business card and got his business card and said can I please send you a copy of this paper said sure send him a copy of the paper didn't think anything of it went into my department I was about six weeks later and the receptionist says what did you do what

did you do what do you mean what did I do she's like I got 300 phone calls for you yesterday we can't get any any business done you did something like what are they asking or they're asking for a copy of this paper that you wrote okay then the letters started coming in from the guy who is the CIO at the Department of Defense best-selling authors etc it turns out unbeknownst to me this CIA guy had a newsletter that was an actual Xerox newsletter that he printed and mailed about 3,000 people and he put a recommendation that people read my paper in that newsletter so because I had the courage to go and say I would love for you to read my paper

gave him the business card followed up sent the paper he generated all this exposure for my ideas and that actually was a catalyst for the chair of the department pulling me in and saying what was it that you wanted to do your thesis on again and I explained it to him and he apologized for being short-sighted and let me do my thesis right and we are very thankful that he did yeah so that one you know having the courage as a small Vermont you know small-town Vermont boy to go interact with that person had a huge impact on my career so collaboration courage these are some of the things that you would highly recommend as an entrepreneur anything

else any other big skills that you think you know risk risk-taking how obviously curiosity curiosity definitely you know you have to be if you're gonna find in solutions to bring to the market you have to be curious about the world you have to be curious around innovation that exists out there curiosity about how other innovators have achieved things in other domains outside cyber okay I went on a kick a couple of years ago I was gonna read about all sorts of people that were innovators in their space that were non in cybersecurity was gonna read any cybersecurity books because I wanted to see how did other folks overcome some of these barriers to innovation how were

they inspired it that was incredibly insightful for me right adolescence from kind of studying the experiences of these folks that had innovated in other domains that weren't cybersecurity early do you ever read back to da Vinci or any of the the major innovators I haven't gone that far back never been more curious about kind of the last 50 200 so Tesla maybe or Tesla stuff you know I can't remember the name you know I read the book about the guy who basically re-envisioned marketing and the storefront windows and the famous architect that did the fair I mean they're just kind of a whole slew of books that I went through saying you know what can I study about other

innovators that I can maybe bring back into this space so what I'm hearing is that as an entrepreneur it's not just having a really great idea and running out and doing it and having the courage to do it but actually doing a little bit of the research to make sure that someone else hasn't already done it or how other people have gotten over that yeah or applying it to your own domain I remember I was struggling for a way when I was running at centers cyber-defence practice of kind of articulating the state of the practice you know which I had 15 or 16 different areas within there or the cloud security mobile security red teaming or book gaming

veloute anything I was kind of a hot mess of the services that lived in there and I was reading a book I think about McKinsey associates the big consulting firm and the formation there and there was a like a matrix that they had found her had invented in the 1960s I think and I looked at that and I said this is exactly the problem that I'm trying to solve so I put my information into that format and it actually gave us a great way to visualize what our capabilities were where we were trying to get them and it was an old technique you know here I was banging my head against the wall and somebody had

already thought through these issues in a general business context that was very applicable to what I was trying to do yeah I'm amazed in marketing how many times I have to share with people what a SWOT analysis is and I'm like okay strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats you know just sort of a basic thing so let's sort of flip over you know we deal with a lot of conspiracies in our community how as an entrepreneur do you find people to work with that you trust can we can we hold the conversations in the back of room down a little bit please okay so so that's probably another mistake that you'll make as an entrepreneur is sure you're

gonna get burned and I've been burned there are people that I have trusted that I've taken kind of on their bona fides that have taken on their promises you to develop a natural instinct around that I learned to focus on what motivates people right and that kind of speaks to intent I've learned to use the network right when I built fusion X we did it almost entirely within Network it was you bring on board the first few people that I know and then it's who do they know and then who do those people know and kind of using that as a way to expand things being honest around and where you encounter situations where people violate that trust

right we're tend to tend to silence the negative experiences that we have where I've always been very vocal if somebody calls me and they say what was your experience working with X Y Z and they burned me I'm gonna give you the honest answer I'm always gonna get I'm not going to sugarcoat it I'm not gonna hope that it doesn't get back to me I'm always gonna be a hundred percent honest and transparent so I think if you if you follow that and you are very genuine you will find trusted people to work with but you have to prepare for the fact that you are going to get burned I've had my trust violated in very

significant ways over the years and you can't I'm very stoic about it you can't let it take you down you just get a view it as something that you have to overcome and then file it away so you touched on this a little bit earlier having sort of the side project and I always find it interesting because people think that they can be an entrepreneur or they can be a full-time employee or they can be one or the other can you sort of touch on the the side project a little bit more you were really great about going to your boss and asking permission and I also think that you know entrepreneurial skills you can actually bring into a

career if you're not willing or in a position to be able to take that risk what are some of those entrepreneurial skills that you can use within your own you know career yeah I think I mean the side hustle piece I think is is appealing because it lets you go out and kind of pursue that passion or experiment in the market finding the time finding a way to do that even if it's just writing I'll often encourage folks go out and and write about things that you're interested in and make risky predictions right if there's something that you believe or an issue that you feel passionately about be transparent and talk and write and be

out in the community demonstrating that passion or demonstrating that thesis I think that becomes incredibly important as well being transparent you know that you talked about with SAIC I went and talked with them and actually got permission it worked out in their benefit because when I left and went and started you know working full-time at the Terrorism Research Center and then we eventually grew over time I actually by way of you know kind of catch-22 ended up subcontracting probably like ten million dollars worth of business back to SAIC and my team and my old partners so them allowing me to be entrepreneurial and being pursuing that passion on the side and then transitioning to it actually worked out

for the company and I always was very proud of the fact that Bob beyster when he wrote his book about employee owned entities that he listed the Terrorism Research Center and the fusion acts as examples of people that learned the lessons of that SAIC experience and went on to become entrepreneurs so you can I mean I think that what's interesting is that a lot of people think that they need to be when they go out to be an entrepreneur they need to go out on their own and that they it doesn't have to be and it's also what's interesting is that they feel that they need to hold this back from their current employer and as Matt just shared being able to be

transparent and actually talk to your current employer about hey what you know I want to do this how can you support me through it know you will probably get some noes and that's fine because after every knows there are going to be some yeses that come through but being able to sort of create your own incubator within your current employment situation can help you sort of you know not have to take that big of a risk and a lot of us don't go to business school don't go to law school you know that's what Matt was saying earlier is that he had to learn the school of hard knocks he had to be his own business person he had to

be his own lawyer but if you have the resources of a large corporation and have accountants and they have finance people and they have HR people and they have lawyers they may be they may I'm not gonna say they are but they may be willing to sort of say hey let's sort of give you some advice and you know that is advice that's paid for on another dime rather than your own would you agree with any of that yeah don't be afraid to ask I mean that's the one thing and I think that's one thing that's great about this community is that there's a there's a lot of community karma right with regards to taking the time to talk to

people to answer questions to give advice you know whatever it may be I taught at Georgetown for 14 years the cyber the most popular cybersecurity class I cycle about 600 students through I will always take the time to go have lunch with a former student to give advice to write a letter recommendation or a resume same with with folks in the hacker community right get them to reach out to me ask for advice run an idea by you right sometimes you just need a sounding board and I've done that with my friends as well where it's like hey I have an idea I've done that for other friends I mean I was around the table if

anybody knows the company carbon black I was around the table cuz they were buddies of mine when they said hey we have this idea what do you think and I gave my advice or when Nick lanta was trying to spin net witness out of man tech right to be able to provide that advice just for free and put it put it in the the Karma Bank I mean one thing I also big piece of advice that I give to folks is don't be overly transactional in your relationships with others don't always expect that you're gonna get something in return if you give something of yourself right the natural order of things is that will kind of

balance out you know on its own but there is a lot of asymmetry you might provide advice to somebody and you never get anything out of that other than knowing that you provided advice and you helped move somebody's career forward too often I see a lot of quid pro quo where it's like well I'll help you with this if you help me with that like go into it where you are you know offering help or providing advice or taking the time to meet with somebody without any expectation that there's anything in it for you in the future I would definitely echo that and it's interesting because my day job is very transactional and I'll have lots of people who will

reach out to me and they'll say can you you know thank you for connecting with me on Twitter or LinkedIn and by the way can you review my resume and get me a job right now I this is a perfect example because I had no need to interact with somebody like Kathleen perfectly right but I liked her as a person and so we met and we had coffee and one of the things that we talked about when we had coffee was that there are a lot of job opportunities especially in the US government for InfoSec professionals that weren't being filled and we had all of these veterans of our military service that were transitioning out that

might be good candidates for those jobs but had no exposure to the community whatsoever and she actually challenged me and said you're on the blackhat board like what can you do about that let's get these people integrated in the community let's create opportunities so myself and a couple other blackhat board members they give us free passes every year we just coughed up our free passes and we posted on Twitter and Kathleen amplified it and said if you're a veteran trans that wants to transition in the InfoSec space let us know and that first year we brought two out if you remember the picture just popped up on my facebook feed we brought two out one of them was a weatherman he had been

in the Air Force for a decade was a weatherman but it turned out that at being a weatherman he was maintaining hundreds of Linux systems and in doing that he was learning how to secure them how to attack them was teaching himself stuff at night so we brought him out with another guy they are both gainfully employed in the cybersecurity community now the next year we brought four people out they are all gainfully employed in the cyber community the next year we brought one out who actually started a company who's very successful now blackhat actually supports it as an official program and we bring ten transitioning veterans to blackhat for free every year that was because we had

coffee right we met at this government 2.0 conference and we took the time to go and get to know each other and created this thing that you know from a pea forward perspective is very valuable in the community it also brought her into events like this right in rooms like this that wouldn't exist if not for the volunteers that are spending two days inside this room doing this work so that's a great example of meeting with people and not being transactional and just looking for opportunities to collaborate and I made her cry it yeah you made me cry thanks Matt no that's it's it's a passion of mine and garland you want to raise your hand so garland is the first

pea-sized las vegas transitioning veteran who's part of the program that Matt and I talked about over coffee several years ago so we're we're now doing that here at besides Las Vegas but yeah I I can only echo that it's karma it is the golden rule within this community it may seem like it's extremely transactional if you're helping someone because you expect to get something back right away don't do it because you will carry that chip on your shoulder for a long time until that person pays you back I can't tell you I've been burned several times in this community I've been burned several times by people that I thought would not ever burn me and you'll you'll be shocked and

that to me is a great segue to a question because I need to fix my makeup over here how do you stay positive in a pessimistic industry this is this is a Bobby simply question yeah hey I mentioned this the stoicism I mean I have a very positive outlook just in general right that I feel like we can you can find solutions especially if you're collaborating especially if you're being focused on them operating in the counterterrorism space I can tell you for a while it was difficult to be positive because we were confronted every day we had a 24 by 7 global intelligence team and it was everyday people being killed and the things that

were happening and the folks seeking to do harm but just recognizing that there is a pathway for making things better right and in reading books anybody read the book fact fulness caused it by its Honda's and I can't remember his last name but he just recently passed away but it's just a book called acta fulness I would recommend that especially on kind of maintaining the positive outlook because he goes and shows that the world is actually getting better right our news media focuses on the negative we have a broader reach we have social media so we get exposed to a lot of things that are happening that we didn't get exposed to but from a general

trend perspective education eradication of disease poverty the world is becoming a better place right so recognizing that you have the power to go do your little part in that and it might be solving for a particular cybersecurity issue it could be something that's at a much grander scale my latest career transition was about me seeing the skillsets that I had acquired over the past 20 years and you've seen me talk about this you know I decided to do walk the walk where I said I think that the principles that we employ in the hacker and InfoSec community have broader application and shame on us if we don't find in some ways or some of us don't go

out and figure out how to apply those same principles the intellectual curiosity the taking things apart the making things better around other problem sets that exist out in the world and last November I decided to transition and start doing that I'm looking at much broader problem sets still as an entrepreneur but not solely focused on cybersecurity because I felt like there was great value to that mindset that approach that could be applied to lots of others issues that exist out there so see challenges as opportunities that's kind of the basic of Stoicism do your part to be positive in it be around positive people one thing that I've had a very low tolerance for is just that the negative energy

around you whether it's in the organization or who you're collaborating with may find people who share that positive outlook and excitement and use that as your network that you're interacting with so my final question before I will open it up to the audience you have some amazing family members you are just so very much a great parent and a great spouse how do you be that and an entrepreneur at the same time it's that finding balance you know definitely a piece of it my wife has been a great partner over the years where she calls on me a lot I will say I I guess I'll make my husband get an entrepreneur so I can call

on him all the time on maintaining that balance right just saying like no you can't go on this trip because we have something else right or you know you talk about opportunity I was a hockey player I didn't get a hockey player out of my caps yes go cap caps we're in Vegas think I'd be careful oh sorry the second child wasn't interested in hockey third was interested in hockey I ended up leaving Georgetown it was very bizarre circumstances that you can read about online with like unionization of adjuncts and just all sorts of craziness but I ended up leaving and it was Monday nights where like a boy like it was very hard for me I saw it as like oh my gosh

I'm no longer teaching and it just happened that my son's practices were on Monday nights and I was able to become a hockey coach right so like the world found something for me to do with that excess time that I had I think the other piece of it is letting your children be true to themselves I've never tried to force them down in one path I've never tried to say you're the hacker child or you're this or you're that I've just kind of let their personalities develop I did get one hacker out of the group as well so my middle child does opiate roots asylum he does Thank You shout-out I don't see any of them in the room but

shout out to the b-sides Nova back in Virginia that run a middle school these are volunteers at every Sunday show up at 9:30 a.m. with bagels and they teach a hacking class feed the kids pizza until 2:30 in the afternoon and they put together their own capture-the-flag right so something like that these are people in the community that said I want to pay back I want to do something they didn't need to go and have a side hustle or be an entrepreneur they created this program it's incredibly valuable I mean they graduated like 15 or 16 kids through it so letting them kind of pursue their own passions and find their own balance it was also so I'm going to

put a little plug for another presentation that's happening tomorrow at the end of the day you know if you're thinking of being an entrepreneur but you don't quite know if you can go out on your own or work with people that you don't quite know do consider volunteering at a con volunteer as you know hey am I going to be able to get that your funding well go and volunteer at a conference and get the sponsorship you know what is it like to go out and get money are you a person that can manage a lot of different people well volunteer management it's really great when you're working with staff that have to show up when you can

pay them but volunteers you know and they didn't want to show up that day or you know are you really good at the subject matter that you think you are being able to volunteer for the proposal review process or the CFP being able to read other proposals from the community you might find out that and that idea you had might not be as good so Matt is here for a few more minutes do we have any questions from the audience please don't be shy come on courage courage okay you're gonna have to stand up and yell over these people I'm gonna repeat the question and you're gonna let me thumbs down thumbs up if I did it so

every entrepreneur has certain strengths but an entrepreneur also needs to know what their weaknesses are and do you actively go and find people that are strong in those weak parts is that it okay I would say yes you have to understand your weaknesses right and for me I think overcoming that I was a red teamer right so I wanted to view everything in the world from that red team perspective which is a very skeptical perspective you know by nature so learning to balance and say I'm engaging the red team inside of my brain because I'm red teaming right now but as it relates to how I'm interacting with people or how I'm viewing this opportunity it's okay to introduce some

of that skepticism but you can't let that be the guide for for your decision-making solely right recognising the need to learn from others I think especially when you're young in your career I talked about being humble you have this perspective that you know it all right or I had some great mentors that were not cyber folks you know on the red teaming side I get to work with general Van Riper is a famous military red teamer conventional red teamer kind of learned the lessons there and recognizing that and then recognizing your weaknesses and finding that team I can tell you when I when I put fusion X together I had to confront myself that I was no longer a real

highly technical red team guy because I had been doing management I've been consulting I was still deploying with my teams you know it started once a month and once a quarter I was on the black hat review board which I still am right so there's you know technical prominence teaching at Georgetown and I had to confront the fact that I am no longer an A Team hacker right that was a from a technical perspective that was a huge barrier to overcome you know from ego wrecking so when I started fusion X I had to go find that a team hacker that I trusted that could fill that gap and that was critical I couldn't have build

she's next without Tom Parker who was that a team hacker still had the technical skills and was a good balance I understood what he was doing but I recognized that me going out and saying that I was that guy would not be honest in the market because I wasn't that person anymore so also recognizing and accepting that your careers are going to transition over time I have friends who have may have been incredibly highly technical and still are you know now in their 40s I have friends that have transitioned to management running large teams becoming entrepreneurs right there's a there's a natural progression you need to pursue what makes you happy if it's always the

technical piece I'm learning stuff now from my 13 year old that if you'd asked Matt DeVoe 15 years ago and I said there's no way I'll ever learn anything from a 13 year old so that you do have to recognize that you have to be true about yourself and your capabilities and and be okay with the fact that the things change and that you do transition an age out you notice maybe it's a good way to say professional sports is maybe a good analogy you're not going to be the star quarterback for the entirety of your life and recognizing that you can you'll be the coach or they'll be the GM and bring in those folks and still be part

of a really great team and accomplish great things and I would just echo about one that's a really great question because I think a lot of us think that we're good at everything and I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls that we have not only in our career but also as an entrepreneur is that we believe that we're a good accountant and we're a good finance person and you know I'm a really great idea person but is everyone on my team knows I am horrible at implementation I can think of the great idea but me getting it down on the floor forget about it now when I started in my career I had to do that all now I can at

least be and say okay I can pass this off to everyone and everyone's much happier when we do that we have time for one more question come on somebody's got a question there's there's got to be a burning question out there okay well can we give this guy can we give this guy in front of you instead since you got to ask a question thank you hello this working sorry I came in a wee bit late so I might have missed if you've already covered this but I was wondering when did he know it was the right time to transition from permanent employment to doing what you're doing now you know branching out you know a

lot of people I know who have done what you're doing there is a strong negative motivator pushing them out of their current job like they just didn't want to do it so they're like all right I'm gonna go freelance contracting but sometimes you know you could be quite happy at your current company but you're wondering or what if I could do this you you know like it sounds like a good adventure yeah it I would say the key piece is intuition right it's that kind of trusting that that gut instinct that the timing is right that was the case with starting the Terrorism Research Center there was the case with few as well as a few other things that I've

done over the years even with my career transition back in November I was not looking to leave I had built this team we had been through the acquisition I was running this you know global portfolio I hadn't updated a resume or you know talked to recruiters but I got exposed to an opportunity and my gut intuition told me like hey if I don't go do this I'm gonna regret it and be I think the timing is right right I think that the you know the time to test this thesis it was appropriate sometimes you're too early I mean terrorism research center I mean in all honesty 1996 starting an entity called the Terrorism Research Center I

have a stack of denied proposals you know that I'd submitted to the US government that would astonish you I have rejection letters from people that have very senior executive positions in the Department of Homeland Security today that literally said terrorism is not a domestic United States problem right so we worked hard and built value and did things but it was very small and then September 11th happens right and that was obviously a catalyst for our thesis around the problem you know that we were focused on was correct but it took multiple years to manifest itself and a lot of hard work had we not put that hard work in no I would have just looked like an

opportunistic you know person who is saying oh something bad happened I'm gonna go see if I can make money off it as a result of having been working for so many years advancing these issues having all of these ideas you know working with a lot of local law enforcement and first responders we had the credibility to be a very viable partner and looking at a lot of those issues moving forward so it's it's intuition it's you know that sense of the market having a problem that you're trying to solve for feeling that the pieces are coming together but I will say that if you have to overly deliberate on it then it's probably the not the right time or you need to teach

yourself some sort of coping mechanism to not talk yourself into transition-- remorse or you know buyer's remorse whatever it may be before it happens I've always liked the adage of the samurai adage at any decision worth making should be done in seven breaths so if you're taking a week and you know or two weeks or a month and you're agonizing over it it's probably not the right time if you feel it and it's it's there it's like with my transition in November it's like I knit the minute that I talked to the person about forming this company I knew I was like this is it like this is the time it's been inkling in the back guy mind

around the opportunity space I'll regret it if I don't do it so it's time to make that change in transition so it's a little wishy-washy but you have to trust yourself trust your gut and you have to feel it strongly right in order to be able to move forward or the passion that you need Matt thank you for sharing sharing your business card with me in 2009 and having coffee with me in 2015 and let's thank Matt DeVoe for coming over to his first b-sides and sharing entrepreneur um [Applause]