Advertise on podcast: Secure Ventures with Kyle McNulty

Zain Rizavi is co-founder and CEO of Cimento. Cimento provides phishing simulation and security awareness training to protect the human workforce from falling for malicious attacks. Zain might be the first ex-VC I've interviewed on the podcast, as he spent the last four years of his career focused on cyber at Ridge Ventures and Pelion Venture Partners. Before his time in VC, he spent four years at Cloudflare. The inspiration is clear with the number of references he made to Cloudflare philosophy over the course of the conversation. In the episode we discuss everything from company structuring to beat the innovator's dilemma, the lessons he learned from his time in VC, and the nuance of the security awareness training market. Website: https://cimento.ai/

Karthik Kannan is Founder and CEO of Anvilogic. Anvilogic provides a multi-data platform SIEM that allows enterprise security operations centers to decouple their threat detection and analytics from where their data is actually stored, helping customers avoid vendor lock-in and high ingestion costs. Before founding the company in 2019, Karthik spent time at Splunk after the acquisition of Caspida, where he led business development. This gave him a front-row seat to the fundamental data challenges facing traditional security teams. Now, Anvilogic has raised over $85 million from investors including Evolution Equity Partners and Foundation Capital. In the episode, we discuss Karthik's transition from an industry incumbent to a startup founder, the shifting economics of security data, and how Anvilogic is helping defenders regain control of their infrastructure. anvilogic.com

Kibu is a digital trust layer providing infrastructure for identity verification for peer to peer connections. Using the Kibu app, individuals can assure themselves they are communicating with the intended party as opposed to an AI deepfake or a criminal impersonating someone. Before Kibu, Ari had a very atypical career for a cyber founder. He started a podcast called "Millennials don't Suck", and he leveraged that into a production company for other media. He then started a bootstrapped software company during COVID, and he is now hitting the cycle with a venture-backed cyber company, starting Kibu to improve trust for remote communications. In the episode we discuss everything from "serendipity-maxing" to how digital trust changes with AI. Website

Happy BlackHat to those who celebrate! Andy Smith is founder and CEO of Tracebit. Tracebit sells a cyber deception platform to lure attackers into targeting intentionally vulnerable targets, giving valuable information to defenders. Andy argues that as AI-driven attacks increase in exploit speed and complexity, deception will play more of a role than ever to provide early detection to defenders. Before Tracebit, Andy worked as a developer, including head of engineering at Tessian which was acquired by Proofpoint in 2022. In the episode we touch on his thesis for improved deception, his bike trip down the west coast of the US, his descent into cold outreach, including how he is successful, and more.

Gianni Cuozzo is founder and CEO at Exein. Exein is an OT and IoT security company providing enhanced endpoint monitoring, and the company has really hit its stride in the last couple of years having raised 100M euros in late 2025. As Gianni talks about in the episode, it’s been a long journey. He started his career in the intelligence community like some of the other OT security greats like the founders of Dragos, Claroty, and Armis. But when he started Exein in 2018, the market was not yet ready for his product. He knew that the adoption of new generation, more capable OT devices would present new security tooling opportunities, and he was willing to be patient for that moment. In the episode we discuss OT security dynamics, market timing, positioning as deep tech vs cyber, and more.

Project Discovery is an autonomous software testing platform with a focus on remediation rather than purely vulnerability identification. Before starting Project Discovery in 2021, Rishi worked as a security engineer for almost a decade, if you include the two years while he was still in high school where he was bringing in $50,000 a year from bug bounties. In the episode we discuss how Project Discovery emerged from an open-source labor of love, the wave of AI capabilities in software analysis, the future of bug bounties and penetration testing, the limitations of existing AI models (Mythos included), and more. https://projectdiscovery.io/

If you have any sort of connection to former congressman Barney Frank, please reach out to Graham! Graham Neray is CEO of Oso. Oso provides authorization, governance, and security for AI agents to help customers confidently control their agent footprint. The company was founded in 2019 for authorization-as-a-service more generally, and they have since found traction using their technology to secure AI adoption. The team has raised from some of the top investors in the world including Sequoia, Felicis, and Harpoon. Before Oso, Graham was at MongoDB where he started in product marketing before taking over as Chief of Staff in 2016. Over 7 years he helped the company grow revenue 250x and headcount 30x. In the episode we discuss the transformation of MongoDB over his tenure, the lessons that transferred (and the ones that didn't), the evolution of Oso, controversial takes on building in stealth and creating an open-core company, and a lot more.  https://www.osohq.com/

Raj Rajamani is co-founder and CEO of JetStream. JetStream sells an AI agent governance and identity platform designed to help organizations identify and control their sprawling AI footprint. In a crowded space, JetStream has emerged as a leader with a world-class team and $34 million seed round. Before JetStream, Raj has a storied career as a product leader at several of the most important EDR companies of the last 15 years. He served as a VP of Product at Cylance, CPO at SentinelOne, and CPO at CrowdStrike. In the episode, we talk about the lessons from the winners of the EDR battle, his personal character changes throughout, and how his experience has set him up to lead a startup in arguably the most important security category right now. https://jetstream.security/

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/

Kris Kamber is CEO of SPLX AI. SPLX performs security testing and red teaming for AI agents, helping organizations detect vulnerabilities in their constantly expanding agent deployments. Before SPLX, Kris worked a handful of sales jobs, starting in telecom before hustling his way into Zscaler. I enjoyed asking him about the specific lessons from working in sales such as setting metrics and compensation. He's the first person who has described to me a workplace filled with arrogant and cocky people and also illustrated why he was attracted to that environment. We also touched on how he met his co-founder through a conversation on a plane and what compelled him to build a company at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity given his background. SPLX Website

Mariano founded Onapsis back in 2009 to address the challenges securing a growing new class of technology: ERP systems. After working at CYBSEC for 5 years doing offensive security research, he discovered just how vulnerable SAP applications could be. Onapsis is sneakily a juggernaut, having raised a $55 million Series D in 2020. And while they started focused on SAP, they have since expanded into related tools such as Oracle. They have certainly established themselves as core to securing an often overlooked component of IT infrastructure. In the conversation we discuss the founding story, why SAP couldn't do this themselves, and how he has thought about growth opportunities over the last 16 years. Website