Inside the Network

In this RSAC special episode of Inside the Network, we sit down not with one, but two remarkable guests from the center of the cybersecurity world.

First, we’re joined by Andy Cao, COO of ProjectDiscovery, a company focused on open-source vulnerability management tools, which won the "Most Innovative Startup" award at the RSA Conference 2025 Innovation Sandbox. Andy shares how ProjectDiscovery is reimagining vulnerability management in an AI-driven world, what set their pitch apart in the Innovation Sandbox, and how their attacker-first mindset is reshaping how security teams discover and fix real-world exposures. With over 1 million us...

In this episode of Inside the Network, we sit down with Dug Song, the legendary co-founder and former CEO of Duo Security. Dug's journey is nothing short of iconic—he turned a side project into a cybersecurity powerhouse with over 50,000 customers and a $2.35 billion exit to Cisco. In a world obsessed with unicorn status and funding hype, Dug stands out as a founder who stayed grounded in values, culture, and customer empathy.

We explore Dug’s early years—from doing data entry in his father’s liquor store in West Baltimore to cutting his teeth at...

In this episode of Inside the Network, we sit down with Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. Jeetu previously led Cisco’s Security and Collaboration business units. Under his leadership, these divisions have become major growth engines fueled by AI-driven innovation, strategic acquisitions, and a renewed focus on user experience.

With a market cap of $250 billion and a security business generating $10 billion in revenue, Cisco is evolving into a different kind of startup, one that moves with speed and urgency. Jeetu shares why he joined Cisco to spearhead this tran...

Shlomo Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Cato Networks is a rare bird in the cybersecurity industry, having built three unicorns in his career. For many in the cybersecurity industry, Sholmo needs no introduction. One of the early pioneers in Israel’s cybersecurity startup ecosystem, what makes Shlomo remarkable is his ability to repeatedly build category-defining companies. He first co-founded Check Point, which pioneered the firewall category and today commands a $20 billion market cap. Then, seeing the shift to the cloud, he launched Imperva, focusing on web application security (WAF). That was his second IPO. Now with Cato Networks, he's cr...

In this holiday episode special, we’re joined by Hamza Fodderwala, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, where he leads cybersecurity equity coverage. He joined Morgan Stanley's software research team in early 2016 and leads coverage for public cybersecurity companies like Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Fortinet, SentinelOne, Okta, Zscaler, Cloudflare, Rapid7, Check Point, Qualys, Varonis and Tenable. Before Morgan Stanley, Hamza was an equity research associate at Susquehanna International Group covering the financial technology sector. Hamza graduated from New York University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics.

We dive into Hamza’s insights on the majo...

In this episode, we sit down with Kumar Saurabh, CEO and co-founder of AirMDR, which provides a new approach to managed detection and response with an AI-powered virtual security analyst. A serial entrepreneur, Kumar has been at it for two decades. Before AirMDR, he co-founded Sumo Logic, the first cloud-based SIEM, and LogicHub, one of the pioneers of SOAR.

Kumar’s journey as an immigrant founder offers a unique perspective on why immigrants often succeed as entrepreneurs and how institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have produced some of the world’s most...

In this special election episode, we sit down with Gov. Rick Snyder, an entrepreneur, a former VC, and a leader whose career is unique in depth and breadth, spanning both the public and private sectors. 

Rick Snyder initially made his mark as COO of Gateway, where he helped the company grow revenue from $600 million to $6 billion to IPO. He then co-founded venture firm Ardesta, which stands for “spark” in Greek. After two fund cycles, he transitioned from business to politics, serving two terms as Governor of Michigan. Post-governorship, Rick Snyder returned to the entrepreneurial world...

In this episode, we sit down with Slavik Markovich, CEO and co-founder of Descope, a low-code/no-code Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) platform. A serial entrepreneur, Slavik has been at it for two decades and over this time built three companies.

Before Descope, he was co-founder and CEO at Demisto, a leader in the SOAR industry that was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $560 million. Before co-founding Demisto, Slavik was VP & CTO of database technologies at McAfee (Intel Security). He joined McAfee via the acquisition of Sentrigo, a database security startup, where he was...

In this episode we have a special guest - Doug Merritt - who has shaped not a unicorn but a decacorn - a company valued at more than $10 billion. As the former CEO of Splunk, he steered this big data company to extraordinary heights. In just six years under Doug's leadership, Splunk's market cap soared past $25 billion, and its annual recurring revenue skyrocketed from $200 million to a staggering $3 billion. At its peak, over 50% of Splunk revenues came from security applications.

Doug's journey began as a coder and developer before transitioning to sales leadership and...

Our guest in this episode is Jon Gelsey. Jon was the first CEO of Auth0, a leading identity-as-a-service platform, which grew from 5 to 300 employees during his four years at the helm. Auth0 was acquired by Okta in February 2021 for $6.5B. After Auth0, Jon served as CEO of Xnor, a computer vision and machine learning spinoff of the Allen Institute. The company was acquired by Apple for ~$200M in January 2020. 

When Auth0 first started in 2013, there were already several authentication vendors in the market. Okta, ForgeRock, and OneLogin had all built considerable scale by the t...

In this episode, we sit down with Marty Roesch, founder of Sourcefire. Sourcefire led the intrusion detection and protection (IDS/IPS) wave, raised four rounds of financing from leading VCs like NEA, Sierra Ventures, and Sequoia, and went public, later to be acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion.

Founders often believe that their first few customers cannot be large enterprises. Marty took the contrarian path. Sourcefire’s first few customers were all six-figure deals - PWC, Intel, SAIC, and International Paper. In addition to that, Sourcefire was incredibly successful in working with industry research firms li...

Few cybersecurity companies have been able to bootstrap their way to success – Tenable stands above the rest in this category. The company raised its first round of funding after 10 years of operations. It had $90M of revenue at the time. In the venture world, “Tenable was the best cybersecurity business that nobody had ever heard of.” Today, it is the leading cyber exposure and vulnerability management company with $800M in revenue and over 44,000 customers globally.

In our second episode of ‘Inside the Network’ we sit down with Ron Gula, co-founder and former CEO of Tenable. We learn abou...

There are plenty of great startups solving impactful problems in security. Very few, however, ever grow to achieve the scale of CrowdStrike - a company that has rightfully become a household name in the industry. Today, CrowdStrike has a market cap of over $70 billion, making it one of the world's 300 most valuable companies. In the inaugural episode of ‘Inside the Network,’ we sit down with Dmitri Alperovitch, Co-Founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike, to discuss his journey before, during, and after building this iconic company. 

Dmitri walks us through his childhood, immigrating from Russia to the US, a...