Cris Neckar on the early days of securing Chrome, chasing browser exploits

April 11th, 2024  |  54 mins 36 secs

chrome, investments, pwn2own, supply chain, venture capital

Episode sponsors:

• Binarly, the supply chain security experts (https://binarly.io)
• XZ.fail backdoor detector (https://xz.fail)

Cris Neckar is a veteran security researcher now working as a partner at Two Bear Capital. In this episode, he reminisces on the early days of hacking at Neohapsis, his time on the Google Chrome security team, shenanigans at Pwn2Own/Pwnium and the cat-and-mouse battle for browser exploit chains. We also discuss the zero-day exploit marketplace, the hype and promise of AI, and his mission to help highly technical founders bring products to market.

Seth Spergel on venture capital bets in cybersecurity

November 21st, 2023  |  28 mins 56 secs

artificial intelligence, investments, merlin ventures, venture capital

Episode sponsors:

• Binarly, the firmware security experts (https://binarly.io)
• FwHunt (https://fwhunt.run)

Seth Spergel is managing partner at Merlin Ventures, where he is responsible for identifying cutting-edge companies for Merlin to partner with and invest in. In this episode, Seth talks about helping startups target US federal markets, the current state of deal sizes and valuations, and the red-hot sectors in cybersecurity ripe for venture investment.

Dan Lorenc on fixing the 'crappy' CVE ecosystem

November 14th, 2023  |  41 mins 45 secs

chainguard, cve, sboms, supply chain, venture capital

Episode sponsors:

• Binarly, the firmware security experts (https://binarly.io)
• FwHunt (https://fwhunt.run)

Dan Lorenc is CEO and co-founder of Chainguard, a company that raised $116 million in less than two years to tackle open source supply chain security problems. In this episode, Dan joins Ryan to chat about the demands of building a "growth mode" startup, massive funding rounds and VC expectations, fixing the "crappy" CVE and CVSS ecosystems, managing expectations around SBOMs, and how politicians and lobbyists are framing cybersecurity issues in strange ways.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort dishes on VC investments and cyber uncertainties

February 15th, 2023  |  31 mins

data security, investments, venture capital

Episode sponsors:

• Binarly (https://binarly.io)
• FwHunt (https://fwhunt.run)

Munich Re Ventures investment principal Sidra Ahmed Lefort joins Ryan for a frank discussion on the state of VC funding in cybersecurity, the rise (and coming fall?) of 'unicorns', the massive early-stage funding rounds and what they mean, layoffs and contractions, and the areas in security still ripe for innovation.

Haroon Meer on the business of cybersecurity

March 19th, 2022  |  1 hr 15 mins

breach detection, canaries, startup, thinkst, venture capital

Thinkst founder and CEO Haroon Meer joins Ryan Naraine on the show to talk about building a successful cybersecurity company without venture capital investment, fast-moving attack surfaces and the never-ending battle to mitigate memory corruption issues.

Fahmida Rashid, Executive Editor, VentureBeat

April 9th, 2021  |  37 mins 2 secs

investments, journalism, news gathering, story-telling, venture capital, writing

Newly appointed Executive Editor at VentureBeat Fahmida Rashid joins the show to talk about her introduction to computer networking in school, her winding path into cybersecurity journalism, the security stories worth telling, the venture capital ecosystem, and the surge in unicorn cybersecurity startups.