Secure Ventures with Kyle McNulty

In this episode I talk to Jack Austin, founder of surf forecasting company Duune.

If you are only interested in hearing from cyber founders, this episode is not for you.

However, Jack works in cybersecurity full-time at F5 Networks, and this is very much a passion project in an industry he cares deeply about.

We discuss his decision to start a company outside of cybersecurity, his tactics for taking on a large incumbent such as hyperlocalization, his marketing strategy reliant on community building with a social-first footprint, and more.

We had fun with it, so I hope that comes through for the audience!

If you live in LA and want access to the best local surf forecasts available, check out the website or download the mobile app.

https://duunecrew.com/

With me in this episode is Henry Comfort, Co-founder and CEO of Geordie. Geordie is an AI observability and risk management platform designed to help organizations confidently and securely deploy AI models and agents. They raised a $6.5 million seed round last fall from General Catalyst and 1011 and were just announced as a finalist in the RSA Innovation Sandbox competition. Before Geordie, Henry worked as an executive at Darktrace, which was acquired by Thoma Bravo for over $5 billion in 2024. His career before Darktrace is even more unique. In the episode we discuss everything from security analogies for toxic gases in coal mines, enabling vs. controlling AI, the AI security buyer profile today, and more.

https://www.geordie.ai/

With me in this episode is Ed Bellis, co-founder and CEO of Empirical Security. Empirical uses a scoring system informed by customer data to create tailored risk prioritization models. Ed started Empirical in 2024 after leaving Cisco, three years after they acquired his previous company Kenna. Kenna was a vulnerability management and prioritization tool that aggregated data from an organization's scanners and enriched that data with threat intelligence to better prioritize risk. In many ways, Kenna helped lead the way in modern vulnerability management by creating an abstraction layer over the scanners themselves. Empirical is now further pushing the bounds following advances in machine learning and AI to go beyond Kenna's limitations. In the episode we discuss the alluring sales pitfalls for new founders, the importance of a "fast no", Cisco's acquisition strategy and execution, modern VM in light of AI penetration testing, and more.

Empirical Website

Andrew Rubin is co-founder and CEO of Illumio. Illumio is a breach containment and network segmentation company that has become a mainstay in the cybersecurity market over the last decade. Illumio was last valued at almost $3 billion dollars and is now on the verge of going public as we discuss in the episode. Before Illumio, Andrew grew his career in sales at VoiceNet in the late 90s and early 2000s before moving to Cymtec, where he was VP of Sales for two years before taking over as CEO. That led him to love the CEO role and then start Illumio. In the episode, we discuss everything from redefining sales goals, meeting a co-founder (spoiler: in Andrew's case it was a lot of luck), preparing to IPO, including why the "IPO window" concept is silly, and more.

Website

With me in this episode is John Ackerly, co-founder and CEO of Virtru. John started Virtru with his brother Will over a decade ago to make data security more pervasive across mediums such as emails and files. Virtru has raised over $150 million to this point from investors such as ICONIQ and Bessemer and built a very healthy business on one of the core pillars of cybersecurity. John has an atypical background in business well-complemented by his brother's technical experience at NSA. One of my favorite lines from the episode: he always thought he would start a business with his other brother. In the episode we discuss pricing strategy, which is certainly not all science, the founder outlook when starting a company, founding with family, and more.

Website: https://www.virtru.com/