How We Hatched: Luigi Lenguito, Founder & CEO of BforeAI

Speaker A: Welcome to the PEAR program from HatchPad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad. And I'm your other host, Mike Gruen. Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth. Welcome to the PEAR program. This is another bonus episode, uh, of a miniseries that we call How We Hatched. Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Luigi Langueto. Am I spelling saying that correctly? Luigi?

Speaker B: Correct. Very well.

Speaker A: Uh, awesome. Uh, the CEO and co founder of B4AI, a, uh, company that's pioneering predictive cybersecurity. Uh, Luigi's journey spans over two decades in global tech leadership. Uh, from building massive P Ls at Dell to integrating multimillion dollar acquisitions, and now building a startup that's flipping, uh, cybersecurity on its head. And ah, a fun fact I have to mention, uh, he's a former Formula 3 race car driver, so I could officially say that is a first on the podcast. Luigi, excited to have you on the podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you very much for the invites. Really appreciate, uh, the opportunity. Thank you.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Now, before we, uh, unpack, uh, your journey in the mission at before AI, let's start with, uh, you know, something a little bit lighter. What did Luigi Lingue have for breakfast this morning?

Speaker B: Uh, just a coffee, actually. Um, you know, I'm, uh, I'm in the hotel and so I took it very quick because I had a few calls. You know, I'm in San Francisco today, so I call the east coast and with with Europe to do so, not much time to jump on.

Speaker A: Full breakfast, uh, the coffee, the meal of startup entrepreneurs. Uh, that's right.

Speaker B: Yeah. And me being Italian is actually even more embedded, uh, in the DNA.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. All right, well, uh, in true how we hatch fashion, before we get into the innovative tech that you're building up before AI, we like to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about the entrepreneur that's building the startup. Uh, where did you grow up and what were some of the early experiences that pulled you towards technology?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I guess my name and my accent has already given it away. I'm Italian, uh, born in the south of Italy, moved to France 25 years ago. Because of the passion that I have for it. Um, my father put me in front of a, uh, first IBM PC in the south of Italy when I was four years Old. And I still use the keyboard, you know, the clicky mechanical keyboard that that PC had 43 years later at the

Speaker A: exact same, working with Ms. DOS config,

Speaker B: Ms. DOS 1.0, imm C and all the other stuff.

Speaker A: I love it.

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So basically, you know, uh, learned by doing, uh, you know, spent probably 80% of my life in front of a screen, uh, and uh, very passionate about the it. And then when I moved to France, it's because I got hired by Dell Computer. So I work at the first in tech support. I stayed at Dell for nearly 20 years. So very long career in this large company with, you know, very good entrepreneurial mindset and uh, you know, did many different roles from marketing to sales, product development, product management, merger and acquisition, software sales. Uh, and then, you know, maybe now what is five years ago I was celebrating, uh, um, actually seven years ago I was celebrating 40 years old. I always had dream to retire at that age. So I left and uh, I went back to that passion that you mentioned, right. Speed and the cars. And so I went back on track literally for a couple of years, enjoying all the different circuits in Europe. And as I was doing that, I was thinking, okay, what I'm going to do next. And cybersecurity startup was kind of the, you know, what I wanted to do. I wanted to create my own thing. And I was very lucky that I got invited by a, uh, research program that they were doing research to startup Exchange in terms of, uh, technologies where I also met my co founders and then the rest is history, as they say.

Speaker A: Very cool. Uh, what was the name of the research program?

Speaker B: The research program is a Qatar computing research institute. Research to startup. So it was in Qatar, in Doha, uh, that I had been maybe five or seven years earlier when I was doing my executive mba. And so I really went there mostly to enjoy, you know, another trip to Doha and the dune bashing and you know, the great food there. Um, but, you know, eventually found the right technology and decided to start the company with it. Yeah.

Speaker A: That's awesome. I mean I feel like that, uh, the need for speed, right, from uh, from your racing, uh, career, uh, translates well into startup building.

Speaker B: Yeah. And even more so on this specific product that we do that is all about, you know, predicting and disrupting attacks before it happens or really, um, you know, I couldn't find a mission that was more aligned to my own passions.

Speaker A: Yeah. Anticipating every, every curve, every turn. Um, you know, as an entrepreneur, um, is that something that, you know, runs in the family, uh, any of your uh, your parents or anything? Uh, you know, were they entrepreneurs?

Speaker B: Yeah. So my grandfather used to have factory making, um, mechanical pieces for cars and satellites that then my father inherited. Uh, and so I, you know, definitely I looked at them at the time as entrepreneurs, but then, you know, this, uh, my father factory actually went bankrupt for, you know, a crisis in Italy at the time. Uh, and, and then they said, you know, that's definitely not something I want to do because it's too painful what, uh, happened after. And so it kind of, uh, I was, uh, away from it for many, many years. But obviously the bug must be in the DNA, like the coffee.

Speaker A: Uh, we run a lot of episodes, uh, that speak with startup founders that came from big tech. And we always love to hear what are some of those things that they, uh, brought with them. Uh, but what are some of those things that they had to kind of leave behind or, you know, forget about? Um, uh, talk to me a little bit about that. You know, after spending 20 years between, you know, Dell and Quest, um, what were some of the things that you felt were beneficial to you, uh, in starting up something, uh, new? And then what were the things that you felt that, you know, you need to kind of unlearn?

Speaker B: I would, yeah, I would say that first of all, having been so many years in such a successful company, very well structured company, great culture. Um, you know, for me it was a school, basically a school of business, like I don't think any other. So I think one of the pieces that uh, I brought with me is what good look likes. Right. So, um, you know how you set up a sales team. I know you know, how very sophisticated sales team can get run, how Marketing. Right. Uh, because we were doing very sophisticated marketing and so on and so forth. So is that kind of, you're not in search for, you know, the best, you know, what the best look like. So you know how to get there. Uh, I would say on the contrary, on the other side of this coin, there is obviously the fact that you have to do it with, uh, you know, minimal resources, is your own cash, is this crappiness. And the lean approach that, you know, even in a, in a large company so cost focused as Dell was, I would say that, you know, it is a completely different dimension. So you have to, uh, rethink how you do the things. Maybe not the why and the what, but the how definitely is different. Um, you know, one other thing that I definitely would not, and I do not regret, um, kind of leaving way was PowerPoint slide creation. I was very Good at it, but, you know, it's one of those things where you're great at it but you don't want to do as much as it is. That's right. And then on the other side of the. On the other side. But on. I do have the executive communication skill that I think greatly facilitated, you know, me raising funds or, you know, managing the board since the very first, uh, meetings in a more professional way. And that's a feedback I got from our board, uh, members. So I think, you know, a long story short, there's a lot you can bring from corporate into small companies. Uh, but you have to be very intentional on what you leave behind because definitely not everything can be translated.

Speaker A: Yeah, the resource constraints is the biggest common theme that we hear from folks of. No longer do you have that, uh, support engineering testing team of 20, 30, 40 people. Uh, you kind of have to help navigate that, uh, with a much limited team. Um, one thing that does come to mind too though, is the relationships that were built along that 20 year journey leading up to, you know, before AI. Were some of those relationships, did they kind of help solidify some early customer wins? Uh, you know, in the early days of before AI? Yeah.

Speaker B: So I have to say, um, yes and no. So no from the perspective that, you know, I never operated in the cybersecurity space when I was Adele. So I don't necessarily have that, um, type of contact with CISOs and the like that would have been useful. Uh, and in fact all our customers, we found them from scratch basically. Not, not any relationship with them. But I definitely have leaned on some people from my past, uh, careers for as we were setting up the company to get help, I've actually hired a few of them, uh, in the company as well. I think about maybe 10% of the company that was like ex Dell people because I did appreciate some of the cultural elements and of course the people that I've known and I do have a roaster, another 50 people that are allowed to hire at some point in time when we have the means or the need. Uh, they come from that experience. Uh, so I would say definitely, uh, a great asset, uh, that career for the development of before AI as well.

Speaker A: Very cool. Yeah, tapping that alumni, uh, network for recruiting is invaluable, uh, when, you know, early stages, you're doing most of the recruiting as the, the co founding team. Um, all right, yeah, let's, let's talk about before AI. You know, for those that, you know, maybe haven't heard about you before, um, give us the Quick rundown. You know what, what is uh, you know, this predictive cyber security and how does your platform stop attacks before they happen?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's important to see where this started, you know, when five years ago. Uh, what I was seeing is an industry that was going toward uh, extreme detection and response. That means basically having system that identify in real time cyber attacks to then remediate them. Unfortunately nowadays you uh, know that has gone to me to too much of an extreme. Uh, when you do detection and response you accept to be a victim first and foremost. Because to detect an attack it means the attack is happening. And I don't like to be a victim. I don't think victimhood is a good mindset to approach technology, uh, resilience. And so at the time my thought was okay, four or five year times that it will take to build the company. You know, probably the industry will be seeking for something different than this full reactivity. So let's work on something before the attack. Hence the name of the company. And so what do we do? And the technology I was mentioning earlier we got from that research institute, it's very similar to a weather forecast but for the Internet. So instead of seeking humidity and temperature and wind speed, we look for uh, naming, addressing, routing information on the network to identify behaviors of infrastructures that we can then uh, map to malicious behaviors that the criminal used to set their own infrastructures. Today pre crime, that is the name of the product, uh, is able to identify sources of cyber attacks median three weeks before the attack happened up uh, to nine months in advance. For more sophisticated infrastructures, uh, with a accuracy of 99, 95% of the time is so accurate in fact that we can guarantee uh, our prediction. So if a customer get hit by an attack because we missed doing a prediction properly, we'll uh, pay them back our contract ten times. Uh, and this is Munichre, the largest insurer in the world that validated our technology in such a way that they know that they will not have to pay because the likelihood of such event will be so low. And um, the technology is used either for protecting networks and as what we call a predictive attack intelligence feed where we send a signal about the future attack directly into the security systems that our customer have, like firewall, email filters, CM Solar and so on. Or it can be used as a technology for protecting from future impersonation attacks. This is mostly for brands, executive uh, products where the criminals use the trust that a brand has to trick someone into a fraud or into leaking credentials or leaking Information that can then lead to an account to take over. In this case of brand protection, we not only identify the future attack, we are able to disrupt it and block it in minutes, uh, so that no victims is made. And I'm happy to report that today we run at about 25 million people saved from, from fraud and scams daily thanks to before AI and thanks to the customer that trust us in delivering this technology.

Speaker A: That's really cool. Yeah, we see it quite a bit um, in the recruiting space actually. Uh, you know, a lot of this fraud impersonation of being a representative of the company, uh, getting applicants to submit confidential information, Social Security numbers, what have you. Um, and uh, it's a big common problem. You see it more and more on companies career pages where they will say any contact that doesn't come from us directly, we want to make sure that you're privy to it and report it.

Speaker B: One of our customers, Atlassian, the global software company doing Jira, Trello Loom and Confluence and that's exactly the use case that we protect them from is hiring scams. Uh, you know, big, big um, waves of this type of campaigns of this type of attacks are ongoing since a couple of years and we help them m. And you know, avoided their, you know, potential candidates, uh, are victim of these frauds that then obviously impact the reputation of the brand. Because when you're a victim of a fraud, the first thing that you think is you know, why didn't they protect themselves better so that I could, I wouldn't become that victim. Right. So nowadays very, very important, in fact I'm here in San Francisco to attend an event on brand uh, safety. Uh, and one of the panels that I'll be animating is about uh, you know, a new surge of uh, scams where the store associates of luxury brands are being impersonated to steal money from the customers that they know so well, you know, regular customer to the shops and so on. So ah, it's definitely a plague that the criminal keep innovating on. Yeah.

Speaker A: And with the uh, uh, surgeons of deepfakes, right. Um, we had a guest on um previously that is uh, all about trying to uh, work towards stopping deepfakes. And the ramifications, it's getting very scary. If you think about some of the technology stemming from China, uh, specifically from bytedance, uh it's pretty impressive and it's terrifying at the same time.

Speaker B: It is. You know, and first of all we have to recognize that the technique of the scam is not new. Right. It's impersonation it's romance scam, um, big butchering and all these things. Uh, they worked maybe 100 years ago on a letter or in person. Then more recently, email and social media have been the most common, uh, way to spread this kind of campaign. Now we have deep fake. The challenge, I would say deep fake videos deepfake especially creates is that the human brain trusts the eyes more than any other, you know, function just because of our legacy instincts. Right. Of having to survive in the jungle and stuff like that. And so the challenge is that deepfake override most of the logic controls that the brain has. Ah, I want to open, you know, that's kind of my um, maybe positive uh, energy, um, that because these deepfakes are becoming more and more, uh, widespread and because we see the power of these technologies that then maybe that level of trust that we have toward online media will start to reduce. Maybe it's gone too far. Right. You know, nowadays everybody trusts everything that they see online and we know that most of it shouldn't be right. So, so probably we have to go a little bit, you know, uh, back in time where you know, in fact actually if we, if there is a measure that is very interesting when you look at the rate of fraud, you know, we always think to elderly people being a victim of frauds. But in fact the stats shows the young people are more victim in percentage. Of course elderly people, experienced people will lose more money because they have more money to lose. But from a rate of falling into the prey of the attack young people because they are digital native trust digital uh, sources more, are much more victims of it.

Speaker A: Yeah, they're hooked on social media so they believe what any sort of influencer might tell them.

Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, definitely. And unfortunately not just influencer. Now, you know, this fake uh, investor for crypto scams and then financial transactions, uh, yeah, fake uh, celebrities selling tickets or asking for help. You know, a story of a lady losing all her savings, you know, more than $800,000 triggered by a deep fake of I think Brad Pitt on the, in an hospital bed asking her help. Yeah, unfortunately these criminals are pretty good with their techniques. And you know, often people think, oh, this only applied to stupid and you know, ignorant people that become victim. It's not true. You know, uh, there are, you know, bank directors, finance experts, cybersecurity experts. Everybody can become victims. And we should not blame the victim, we should blame the criminals. Right. They are unfortunately ill intended, very good at what they do, very focused. Anyone can become victim very easily. And I often give As a recommendation to people I know to always change medium. So if you get a communication through WhatsApp or call back that person on a phone number that you have in your contact list. If you receive a message through text, well, write them through email to confirm whatever they are asking for. If you receive a message through email, Perhaps respond via WhatsApp. Again, you choose the next medium. It's unlikely the criminal have control to more than one medium uh, of that person. And so that actually, you know, this dispel plus it introduce a little bit of lag. The biggest risk with scam and fraud is the sense of urgency that the criminal put right to say, um, I'm the CEO, I'm writing you because I need the gift card to pay this supplier. Right, yeah. Is that kind of authority and urgency that try to trick the people in making fraudulent transactions?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really helpful feedback to um, switch up the medium from whatever they're originally contacting you with.

Speaker B: It's an easy one that everybody can implement. Right. Another one, uh, it's to have at least with the very close people like your relatives or your family, uh, a secret word that you can use to validate a word that doesn't have to be easily to guess, of course it has to be related maybe to some event in your past that nobody knows about and so on and so forth. So this way if you want to validate, you just ask that word. And this is a very common security measure that can be again I'm very passionate about technology and you know, we build technology for preventing fraud and helping uh, against scams. But we should also recognize that it's not only technology that will fix the problem. It's a mix of technology, people and process. So people is about awareness and training and you know, again the level of trust that they put in these things. And then process is about having some techniques like simple techniques like these ones that we mentioned or maybe more sophisticated one like in a small business you may want to have controls on how payments are made so that you know, if there is a request for payment is not automatically authorized, it doesn't go through in less than 24 hours. There is check and balance where maybe some people outside of the finance team has to validate it or you have a PO number that you need to put and so on and so forth. Right. So it's very important to have this multi layered people plus process tools approach to protection because it's again, otherwise the criminal will too easily go through.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Something that I, I discovered, uh, Doing some research on, on your profile on, on LinkedIn, something that you, you mentioned, uh, was firefighting breaches is a waste. Uh, I just thought that was a, a bold take, but a refreshing one because you know, in this space it's, it's always been an industry obsessed with response and detection. Um, and so I really loved your.

Speaker B: The industry of cyber come from network security mostly before even being infosecurity. So that means it comes from IT infrastructure in general. IT infrastructure is a very reactive type industry because you don't want to touch something that works right? So you stay there waiting for something breaking and then you want to make sure that there's redundancy, there is resilience and all of that. But today attacks with their speed, with their variety, with their volume, uh, you know, growing also because of the use of technology like AI now also from the criminals. Well, doing just detection, response is not enough. You still have to, should we should just stop doing it? It's very important. So you know, if there is a fire, of course you have to fight it, but it's so expensive to find that fire and fight it that we should put as much energy as we can. In fact, I, uh, have a ratio that I think is valid is you want to invest 10 times in prevention and preemption. What you invest in detection and response. Because the cost of a breach is 10 times. I mean it's the cost of uh, doing detection and response is 10 times more than preventing for the same attack. Right. So there is a balance you want to achieve. And you definitely don't want to be 100% detection, response or 100%, um, prevention and preemption. So you have to find the right uh, balance for the specific company and risk profile of your organization. Uh, but definitely, I think the future, it's more left or boom than right or boom.

Speaker A: Yeah. You know, we spoke with a founder who's building a startup, a cyber startup, um, you know, combining AI to empower, you know, soc analyst, um, and one of the things that we kind of really talked about was employee fatigue.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: You know, some of these analysts are, you know, just run through the ground and they're, you know, they're working, uh, the hours that nobody's, nobody's uh, working. Uh, and there's a, there is a, ah, shortage of cybersecurity talent, uh, globally. And so you know, trying to uh, get in front of things before it even gets to that level is super, um, super impressive and, and super needed.

Speaker B: So yeah, it's, I think it's uh, you know, I draw. My mother um, is a cardiologist. She used to work in hospitals in emergency room and all of that. And to me there is a lot of similarities between the medical profession and emergency room and hospitals and, and in general the entire healthcare industry and cyber security. Right. And, and so what you're mentioning about the vocation that you need to have to join this industry, the stress you need to be able to bear, the responsibilities that sits on you, the burnout that you risk, these are very, very relevant concerns. Uh, I think it is true that there is a shortage. I think the shortage of professional is unfortunately always I uh, think misunderstood. It is not much into the line 1 narcissists in a few aren't that there is shortage. In fact, I think there's a lot of people that have come up to school bootcamps and whatnot in the last couple of years, uh, that there's actually plenty of this shortage in that mid range, highly technical expertise, you know, background knowledge of systems that is very hard to gain through study. It's something that you gain either through pure curiosity, a bit like what I've done in my 40 years of configuring computers and debugging blue screens, or you get it through experience, right. By working closely with people that have that competence and have gone through the, through the, through the learning. Unfortunately the industry doesn't do a good job of building this apprenticeship type, uh, kind of path. Right. So we expect everybody coming in an organization fully trained, fully capable. You know, we, we don't want to spend any uh, investment on, on their training. And I think that's where you know, often actually if you want to have a kind of a counterpoint to this is if you look at Israel, right, In Israel, why do we have all this cyber security company, why the, you know, the country has so many experts is because there is a military service where a good portion of them go through Those units like 8, 200, 8100 and so on than to train the people. So it's the state that is training people on cybersecurity skills at scale, right? Because they do tens of thousands of people every year thanks to their policy of uh, mandatory service. Lately I was having a similar conversation with the European Union Commission and saying we should consider reinstating in Europe a civil service to protect Europe from cyber attacks in which we provide training. Right. So you would get, I don't know, 18 year old, 20 years old people out of school and you put them through a uh, nine months service where the first Three months is all training about cyber. And the other six months they deliver this service to the community. You know, that would definitely provide true capable people that the industry then want to learn, they want to hire. Sorry. Um, of course, you know I was looked at in a very strange way when I propose all of that. But uh, you know, maybe one day,

Speaker A: I mean it makes sense, you know, I mean cyber warfare is, is equally as dangerous as you know, uh, military warfare. Um, and so when you think about the investment we put into, you know speaking in the, in the States anyways, our Department of Defense, you know it is a uh, huge focal point, um, where we lack is somebody could easily go and uh, you know, infiltrate ah, a critical uh, infrastructure, uh, you know, company here that you know, puts the power out, you know, across even without

Speaker B: going to this type of extreme. You know, I think even in this industry we kind of are too romantic about this concept of the state actors and the state threat persistent actors. If you look just a scam and fraud. Right. So um, this is ah, some Reports like FBI IC3 and similar report tens of billions of losses to scam and frauds in the US alone. Now we also know that people reporting to such things are a very small percentage of the one affected. Depending on the stat you use it is between 3 and 5%. So now we are looking at the actual industry of the scum. And fraud is probably 100 billion plus. And this is like an attack to the country, economic attack to the country. Because this money then land into gangs in the east of Asia where they use this money to produce drugs, invest in other type of crime, maybe found, find uh, bad states like North Korea that is recognized being funded by cyber, cybercrime and so on. So you know to me is, is uh, yes, cyber warfare. But it goes beyond the pure, you know, legacy definition of war. It is more a societal attack that is economic in nature but it also create a lot of people losses. Many people uh, are suicidal after uh, you know, being victim of such a crime because they get touched in their own uh, self um confidence. They start thinking that you have been stupid and you're being taken around by these criminals and whatnot. Especially in romance scam and what they call big butchering. This is very, very, very very uh, impactful on people. And part of it is also because unfortunately the community tend to blame the victim rather than the criminals.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I think that's a big, a big change of mindset that we should all push especially in our industry and even you know, I'm looking You know, we are in these days in which in, in UK you're having all these attacks again, retail um, chains, right. This last week and you see a lot of chatter in cybersecurity experts blaming, you know, they were not ready and they didn't invest enough, uh, and these and that and so on. I think that's, that's very just pointing the finger. Yeah, yeah. First of all, these people, you know, these teams are in the middle of the trenches fighting the attack as we speak. The last thing we they need is finger pointing at them, seeing that they weren't good enough. The second piece is you are, you have no idea what's going on. So how do you can possibly even, you know, measure it? I hate you know, this kind of uh, ambulance, uh, chasing if you want. Right. That happen in this industry more often than not. And so up uh, to us to kind of inspire in a different way. Not talk about this from the angle of the victim, but rather what can we do to deter the criminals, how we can disrupt their activities, uh, how we can take down that infrastructure, how uh, we can defense actively. I think that's the future for me. And also because all the AI and other technologies we need to move from the pure defense and prevention into this concept of preemption where you target specific attack and active defense. You know, a little bit like an iron dome. Right. If you don't get attacked in Tel Aviv, the iron dome doesn't move. The first rocket that starts the atom dome destroyed in the air to save people in the city. Right. So I think that's the concept. It's not a hack back, fight back or anything like that. It's more of a, that middle ground of having a response in case of attack that stop the attack before the attack hits. I think that's, that's the future of our industry.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's great perspective. Um, you recently closed, you know, a $10 million Series B round. Congrats. Uh, what were some of the keys to, you know, getting investors buy in around, you know, this, this unique approach to cyber defense?

Speaker B: I think first of all there is a market trend. Um, Gartner last year came up with this um, category called preemptive defense, uh, which obviously we are part of. They gave us the cool vendor. I think what I was seeing five years ago about the industry guardrail to guardrail, now we are in the bounce back type period is uh, happening. That's the first thing our investors are specialists in, in security. Both Syn Venture and Titanium that were part of these last two Rounds and uh, so they know that the market is evolving in this direction. Of course we have attraction and great customers. So we proved that not only we know what should be done but we actually doing it and we're getting recognition by very sophisticated uh, customer. You can find on our website that this technology actually impact. And then I think as an investor the team and the quality of the people does the rest. And um, I'm not trying to brag about ourselves but definitely we have a very strong team with my co founders, with all the team we have hired in the last few years, uh, that uh, is definitely breaking new grounds with this concept of using prediction models for apply to the whole Internet to provide future attack information.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean we encourage humble brags uh, on this podcast. So no worries on that front. Um, you know, what, what, what are you anticipating uh, from a scale perspective at this point and maybe just paint a little bit of a picture in terms of you know, because you have a global presence and, and ah, a lot of that is I think based in Europe. Uh, is there um, uh, plans to maybe expand in the US or what, what are you anticipating in terms of how some of this is going to fuel scale?

Speaker B: We have uh, I've been inspired and we follow pretty much the root of the Israeli companies. So we have indeed R and D, uh, you could say offshore, it's in France, is in Argentina where you know, where the company started, uh, because my co founders are there and I was in France. But 90% plus of our revenue and business and go to market team is here in the U.S. and I spend easily 80% of my time here in the U.S. nowadays. So our business is the U.S. the most competitive, the most um, important cybersecurity market out there. We do have customer in other parts of the globe that we're very proud of. The team itself is spread, uh, we are fully distributed. We have no physical office technically. So we are, the team is in 26 different countries at the moment. And that is really something that we have, you know, we have kind of enabled through the culture of the company, the system of the company. Because I'm a big believer that multiculturalism and diversity is a superpower in this industry in general, in business, in this industry more specifically because we have um, adversaries that are indeed not diverse. Right. You know, the rate of women in criminal groups is very, very small. The rate of non white Caucasian people in criminal group is relatively small depending on obviously which criminal group you. So they tend to be very homogeneous as groups and so that Multicultural is actually give a different perspective on the problem and helps fighting in a, in a better way.

Speaker A: For um, in kind of a, in a, in a closing kind of question here, you know, for, for others. Um, um, you know we get a lot of early stage founders that are building that tune into this podcast. Um, so for those that are solving you know, tough problems in cyber security, you know, what are, you know, maybe a lesson, a major lesson that you've learned that you wish you, someone may have told you earlier, uh, in your career.

Speaker B: Yeah. First of all, two books that I highly recommend and I wish they were there the first day I started, uh, first, first run from um, uh, Ross Haleluk that is Cyber Security Ventures and he speaks about the market builder. Sorry. Uh, it speaks about how to build a company if you have to build the company on the first place. You know, not everything deserve having a company, much less venture back. So it goes into great details and law process is uh, really, really passionate about the industry and, and in the startup world it's cybersecurity. So great, great advice. In the book. The second one is called the battle for your computer from Alan Arvatz. Alon is the founder, uh, of uh, Insight now, uh, part of Rapid7. And he writes this book where basically he tells the story of why Israel is such a superpower in cybersecurity company creation. Right. And so there is obviously the individuals and the ecosystem but there's a lot of the seeding and the concept that enable cybersecurity company in Israel to start and thrive. Uh, so that's definitely, I would say two books to read and to keep very close, uh, and read multiple times because there's a lot of uh, good stuff and cross definitely also as a substack and to fall off or new content. And then from something I've learned that I would suggest is there is a superpower in the founder selling that cannot be underestimated. I think uh, as a founder if you're not selling, if you're not in front of prospects, you're making a disservice to your company that the passion you have, the unique knowledge, the unique angle that you have on the problem that you're solving is unmatched. Nobody else does much of it. And so uh, it is something that I suspected because it kind of something that you hear a lot right. That you want. Founder selling and founder sales is actually a book even uh, about that. But I think it's, it's much, much um, underestimated how big this superpower really Is, uh, and you know, it's obviously a balance, you know, depending on your profile and your background, it may be more natural to you. Less natural.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Maybe it's something that as the company grows, you get distracted by other more corporate type of things. Uh, but you need to make, I think as a founder, you know, a strong effort to spend as much time as you can selling to your customers, selling to your prospect, to other employees. Of course you're hiring potential VCs if you want to raise funding from them. Uh, uh, uh, it's a critical thing not to, um, deviate from.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. That's uh, incredibly helpful feedback. I know as an entrepreneur myself growing a business for 14 years now, um, I've never not been selling. It's always kind of been founder led sales growth. Um, but the beauty of that is once you've established that healthy client base, um, and you deliver quality solutions, then it becomes referral based, you know, uh, sales, you know, you get, you get your customers vouching for you and that can't be understated. But you know, for those first, yes, several years, you know, having the founders at the forefront of the sales team is critical. I couldn't agree more. Um, all right, Luigi, uh, we are going to uh, wrap with a final segment here. We call it the five second scramble. It's, it's pretty simple. It's, it's a little bit of rapid fire Q and A kind of give us the first thing that comes to mind and try to keep it within five seconds. Uh, you ready to rock and roll? Okay. Um, if, uh, before AI were a race car, what kind would it be?

Speaker B: It'd uh, be a Formula one. Something that we keep tuning M for maximum speed. Uh, not necessarily the cheapest, but definitely the fastest. The more precise, the more competitive.

Speaker A: That's great. We might need to update the sales collateral just for that alone. That was good. Um, what's your favorite part about the culture at before AI?

Speaker B: Um, I think we have a culture that is really about inclusiveness, about grow together in a, uh, in a positive way. Uh, we have something called the assume positive intent. Uh, I think that's very strong. It makes an environment where you want to be part of because everybody's growing toward progress and not trying to finger point and blame and stuff like that.

Speaker A: Very good. Uh, what would you say is a trait that defines a great cyber founder?

Speaker B: Um, I would say stamina. You know, it's very hard market, extremely hard buying process, very demanding customers. Um, and no rule of other market Applies straight to it, you know, from other B2B enterprise, for example, and so on. So it does require, you know, a lot of stamina from the entrepreneur to push. And I think it does work. And it happens because it's a very purposeful industry. Right. You ultimately are protecting people, protecting assets, fighting the bad. And I think that is what helped. You know, if you have that motivation, that passion for this purpose, then you'll

Speaker A: make it very nice. We have a lot of um, technologists, uh, that tune in. Uh, what kind of tech roles would you say that you're going to be hiring for over the next six to 12 months?

Speaker B: Um, always the same. Data scientists, Data engineers, um, SREs, outside reliability engineers, software developers, um, um, you know that, that's, that's core. Albeit you know the, the news make you think that AI will take over, but I just don't see it yet. Definitely, uh, the quality of the co generated by AI is far, far, far, far from what humans can generate at the moment. And uh, and so I think for some, for, for very long time, anyone that can touch data as, as uh, definitely uh, you know, a job to find easily and these would be all,

Speaker A: and these are remote, um, across the globe we distribute.

Speaker B: Yeah. We have no office so they can be anywhere.

Speaker A: Very nice. What's your go to espresso order? Cappuccino.

Speaker B: Ah, cappuccino, yes. Because otherwise there's too much water inside.

Speaker A: What, what's the most uh, memorable race that you ever competed in?

Speaker B: Uh, so, uh, probably um, one where I had one of my best results was a European championship uh, for go karting and I was second and the third was Jensen Button would then become Formula one champion with uh, bar. And so I can say that I beat the Formula one champion on track.

Speaker A: Right, that's fantastic. Um, what would you say is one of the underrated cities globally for really impressive, tech talented.

Speaker B: Oh, for tech talent. Um, Istanbul. Mhm. I would say it's a great city by the way to visit as well. But they have fantastic university, the people are really, really skilled and um, fun to work with as well. Uh, uh, Turkish. Um, yeah. And I think underestimated, um, uh, ecosystem as well. I've been invited a couple of times to what they call the takeoff event, uh, where you know, it's kind of a software web summit but for, for Turkey. And I was very impressed by the technology, the you know, the passion of the people, the smiles and uh, of course the food that I love there.

Speaker A: Yeah, very interesting. All right, and the last question, uh, and I might already know the answer to this, uh, based on your story, but what was your dream job as a kid?

Speaker B: Uh, well, definitely, you know more than, you know, Formula one driver, uh, for sure I haven't. And, you know, with an objective, becoming Formula one champion that I've not, um, abandoned yet only, you know, my focus now is in buying a Formula one team to become Formula one champion with the team that will be, uh, you know, the next venture. Once before AI is in. In better hands. Um, but, you know, still far, far away, you know, dreams better. It's. Sometimes dreams you have to have them. You will probably never reach them. Right? So.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, we'll be keeping tabs on that, uh, on that dream team that you'll. You'll form at one point.

Speaker B: Um, but good competition is George cuts at, uh, CrowdStrike and a few others that also race. Maybe one day we'll do a full cybersecurity seal track race, and we'll see who's fastest on track. We know who's faster than the on the technology already.

Speaker A: Well, send me the link to whatever race has got coming up. I'd love to. I'd love to participate and as a viewer, um, but, Luigi, this has been awesome. You know, I wanted to thank you again for joining us. And, you know, you're building a company that's reimagining, you know, what defense in the digital age looks like, and I think that's super important. So we're cheering for everything that you and the Before AI team are building and thank, uh, you for joining us on the pair program.

Speaker B: Thank you very much, and I really enjoyed the conversation. SA.