A cybersecurity leader shares three pieces of advice for founders: stay emotionally balanced through the ups and downs, build a "better together" narrative that shows acquirers your unique value rather than begging to be bought, and share bad news with investors faster than good news to make them true partners in solving problems.
Most of the folks here are cybersecurity entrepreneurs or, say, aspiring entrepreneurs, and I would like to ask you to provide them 3 pieces of advice. One from your experience as an entrepreneur, one from your experience as the CEO of one of the largest security vendors in the world, and one as a venture capitalist.
Being an entrepreneur is hard. You know, you have a lot of doubts about something. You kind of sometimes doubt, will you be successful? And so, one of the things that I think helped me in my second startup was I realized that the lows aren't really that low and the highs aren't really that high. What do I mean by that? It's never as bad as you think it is and sometimes It's probably not as good as you think it is. And so, you just gotta be balanced. You know, you gotta persevere and, you know, you lose— I remember, you know, you lose a talented employee and you feel like, "Oh my gosh, you know, I lost that talented person. It's a problem." And then you win a big customer. And so, again, you just gotta— for the entrepreneurs, perseverance. It's not a straight line to success. And the highs— are important, but the lows really aren't usually that bad. As CEO of Symantec, we bought, in the 19 years, we probably bought over 40 companies. I would say the companies are bought, not sold. So if you're thinking about potentially being a part of a bigger company, The best thing is for the company to understand the better together story. Meaning, why will I make a big difference to them? But it's that they understand that, not that you are telling them. Right? So, it's really about the bigger company knowing the real value from their perspective. And not you saying, "You should buy us." That's the second— that's what I would say from— being the CEO of a big company. And then as a VC, what I would say is the following. You know, for you entrepreneurs, I like the idea that bad news should travel faster than good news. See, a lot of times you wanna just tell people what the good stuff is. [Speaker:JASON] I think that's good. You should tell 'em. But when something isn't working, when you're having a struggle, you're trying to think through how you're gonna make your company successful, talk about that. And don't feel bad about it. And make— because the more you're being transparent early, I actually think it will pull people in and you'll all be in the same team. You'll all be working together to solve the problem. And so I would say— From the venture side, we want to be involved. We want to be involved early. We want to feel like you see us as a trusted partner, not as just a funding source.
