In this episode our host Tanya Janca (also known as SheHacksPurple), talks to our guest Shira Shamban of Solvo, to learn what it's like to be a founder and CEO of a rapidly growing cloud security product company in Israel. She tells of us her military service, what it's like to start a company, and when you know your company is 'real'.
This episode sponsored by Thread Fix!
Buy Tanya's new book on Application Security: Alice and Bob learn Application Security https://www.amazon.com/Alice-Bob-Learn-Application-Security/dp/1119687357
Don’t forget to check out #WeHackPurple Academy’s NEW courses, #AppSec Foundations taught by Tanya Janca! https://academy.wehackpurple.com/
Join our Cyber Security community: https://community.wehackpurple.com/
A Safe place to learn and share your knowledge with other professionals in the field.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://newsletter.wehackpurple.com/
For corporate virtual training contact info@wehackpurple.com
In this episode our host Tanya Janca (also known as SheHacksPurple), talks to our guest Shira Shamban of Solvo, to learn what it's like to be a founder and CEO of a rapidly growing cloud security product company in Israel. She tells of us her military service, what it's like to start a company, and when you know your company is 'real'.
This episode sponsored by Thread Fix!
Buy Tanya's new book on Application Security: Alice and Bob learn Application Security https://www.amazon.com/Alice-Bob-Learn-Application-Security/dp/1119687357
Don’t forget to check out #WeHackPurple Academy’s NEW courses, #AppSec Foundations taught by Tanya Janca! https://academy.wehackpurple.com/
Join our Cyber Security community: https://community.wehackpurple.com/
A Safe place to learn and share your knowledge with other professionals in the field.
Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://newsletter.wehackpurple.com/
For corporate virtual training contact info@wehackpurple.com
welcome to the we hack purple podcast
where each week we interview a different
member of the information security
industry
to learn what it's like to do all sorts
of different types of jobs
we are taking an inside sneak peek at
all sorts of interesting types of jobs
people backgrounds and basically
experiences
we want to build you up so that you can
have an amazing career in information
security
as you well know i am tanya janca your
host and
we hack purple is a training academy and
community and if you go to
wehackpurple.com you can visit it
this week we have our guest shira
shamban who is the ceo of solvo ,a brand
new and very exciting startup out of
israel
and our amazing wonderful repeat sponsor
threadfix powered by denim group and
because i cannot help myself i have made
a slide
to show you my book and so i'm going to
reveal the image of my book to you
which is now a bestseller so alice and
bob learn
application security has now hit
bestseller on amazon.com and amazon.ca
and you can get it from wiley indigo
chapters etc
if you want to have the most beautiful
of the security
books it has the prettiest cover you can
get alice and bob learn appsec but
i know what you're waiting for same
thing as me you want to meet shira
okay so here she is and boom
hello hey tanya it's so good to be here
and congratulations for
for the great achievement with the book
it was so nice to read
written so well anyone can learn out of
it anyone who is interested any junior
even seniors in the cyber security
industry
so i highly recommend everyone to go
ahead and get their digital copy
thank you thank you so much for those
that don't know
shira and i are friends and i think
she's totally amazing and so i'm so
so so excited and actually some of the
other
members if we hack purple have heard of
you and they're like oh my gosh this
week
i'm like i know i know it's happening
it's happening
yes finally finally um
what did we do your show is so popular i
had to wait a few months to get my slot
i know when i when i it like started
inviting people i honestly
never realized that most the people
would say yes i feel so honored we just
booked
six more guests for may and april of
2021. i'm just
absolutely astounded at the amazing
humans that have been saying
yes okay but without further ado
let's talk about you and if you could
please
introduce yourself and tell us what your
job title is and then describe your
job sure so
my name is shira and i'm the ceo of
solvo
solvo is a relatively new startup
we we officially
[Music]
founded in april of 2020 with you
you know this year has been so crazy so
why not do
just another crazy thing um
even though i knew i'm gonna start the
company a long time before
um having my own company was
was kind of a dream or it kind of felt
like the only
thing that made sense to me in in
career-wise or
job-wise it really made sense and i was
only waiting for
for the right timing we could probably
talk about it more later
so so solvo is
uh solving a problem in the cloud
security world
where software developers when they get
you know credentials to their aws
account or
any other cloud vendor they have a lot
of power
and uh along the process of
creating an application in the cloud the
developer also has
to give security permissions to the
cloud services they're using and
provisioning
but software developers don't always
have enough knowledge about that
so they use a lot of wild cards or
a permission that someone else created
for them or something
something that aws created for them but
it's never you know
the best uh thing for your specific
application because
every application is unique and
different so when they
go for a general a kind of
permission something very generic very
often it includes
excessive permissions and these
excessive permissions
are sometimes exploitable or they're
just redundant
why keep them if they're unnecessary
right so what we do is tell developers
listen
we know that you have a hard time with
this just don't do it
solvo is getting into your ci cd
pipeline
and giving by creating and giving those
permissions
specifically for your application
uniquely created for you
don't worry about it we got your back so
this is
what we do um and
you know it came out of a real need
uh it wasn't like i had a dream about it
and
it made sense we went to talk to
you know different personas in different
organizations from developers to the cso
and everyone in between to hear about
their pains
now you asked about my average day
[Music]
it really changes but as the ceo
you do a little bit of everything
especially
today when we are a small startup so we
don't have you know
vp sales vp marketing uh
we use a lot of contractors and at the
end of the day i
sometimes feel like a conductor like i
stand above and
kind of make sure it all plays well
um and at the at the beginning and at
the end of the day
it's my responsibility i'm the boss
i am on top of the pyramid so i have to
make sure that everything
works perfectly or works the best we can
and it's my responsibility more than
anyone else
um this is the way i see my job
no one day is you know identical to the
other
i come in the morning around 10 a.m
i will usually be back home anywhere
between
uh 7 to nine pm depends on
how busy the day was i really like the
the later hours just because they're
more quiet
and more calm so i can do you know
things with myself on the computer
throughout the day i have a lot of
zoom meetings with this and that about
our website
and about the that customer and
something legal
uh so i get to look at a lot of things i
learned a lot from our legal team
just about you know life um
so yeah yes it's very
very very interesting i told my lawyer
that maybe after
we're done with salvo he will hire me as
you know as an intern just because it
was so interesting
and just interesting to work with him um
so yeah so
so yeah do you feel as the ceo that
you're that person that kind of knows
how to do every other person's job
but no one knows how to do your job so
you can't like really
call in sick absolutely not
i i don't think that i need to know
as much as anyone else about their job
i think that it's my job to hire the
best people
who are definitely smarter than me and
are more capable than me
in something for example in marketing so
i have like the idea of how i think we
should do marketing like
generally talk to these people generally
do these things yeah seo for example
um you know making sure you come up on
google yeah
make sure we have to do it right yeah
but now go ahead and do the research
around
the best words and and how to use them
so you need to bring in professional to
do that
and you know i sit in the same room with
our developers uh
am i you know the best person to talk to
about design absolutely not
no absolutely nothing
i hear what you're saying i like that
though that sounds like a really smart
ceo move
to know that i don't do everyone's job i
just have to make sure
everyone gets taken care of like you're
you're leading you're kind of like
steering the ship
yep absolutely so
someone in the chat um ahmed says
congratulations on salvo
thank you and if anyone wants to ask
questions to shikha in the chat just put
it in there
and if you are listening later to this
or watching later then you are going to
have to catch her on twitter
and i'm going to put her twitter handle
down below but i'm going to say it
so that people can hear it and so it's
shamban
i t so it's s h a m
b a n and then i t like information
technology
so it should exactly last name and then
i t
because there are there a lot of cham
bands out there
and am i saying that correctly you're
you're saying it perfectly
and it's only like every shamban we're
all
from the same clan we just have to
figure out how exactly are we
related but all of us are
are from the same ancestors
uh cool yeah it's a unique name
very cool like mine there are not very
many
jankas out there for better or worse
um so so i have a question that i wanted
to add to this
is how did you know when you had a
company
like what moment clicked
this is a great um question because
there wasn't a single moment
um every day or every week
i have like this you know light bulb
like in the cartoons that says like
wow it's like it's real i have to pinch
myself and say
it's not a dream this is really really
happening so
i remember when i you know i quit my job
so here i am
jobless uh so that was the first moment
when it was
real and uh when i came up with a name
and bought the domain and kind of had
the idea of
what we're gonna do but and and then you
know
i wanted to pitch about the idea and i
was like i can't believe they're
buying this i mean i mean it's just an
idea and some slides
you're very convincing they were
listening yeah they were listening
um and and then
one moment was when we officially you
know opened
a company legally opened the company and
i remember the day when we
signed the papers for our investment i
was
sitting here at home alone telling
myself listen
you can still back out of this i mean no
this is your moment they believed you
about the pitch but but this is you
taking a lot of money right now i mean
do you want to reconsider you there is
no pressure no one is going to be
angry with you if you decide not to take
the money
i had that moment but good for you for
going
just going on anyway being like i got
this
yeah and then you know every week
something
happens that makes it more real our
first office
our first employee uh our first product
our first customer our first paying
customer
so everything is happening for the first
time so every week we have a happy hour
in the office
and every week i'm like listen you know
what happened this week
it's it's amazing and and i get that
feeling every week
it's really real it's it's not a dream
it's something that they dreamed about
and then
executed oh it's so exciting this is our
chance to tell
the audience no one is going to come to
you and say hey here's the ceo position
please take it i mean unless you're
super super super
uh experienced in being a ceo but you
always have your first time
what is going to be your first time when
you decide it's your first time
oh my gosh is so true
i would like to note that bravery is
when you're
scared but you go and do the right thing
anyway
i like it you never know
if it's the right thing or not you just
know
that it burns in you that you have to do
it
that's the only thing that's gonna you
know that's the only indication that
you're going to have
um yeah yeah i agree
okay so that totally leads me into the
next question which is
what types of personality traits or or
maybe aptitudes does a person need to
have
to make for a good ceo
um that's an excellent question and i
guess
uh there isn't a uh one answer
um you know like like everything
you've met some successful ceos who seem
to be
they're still successful for
some reason
so i think that there are
two main ideas that are leading me okay
the first
is that i'm here to build a successful
company
and how can we tell if a company is
successful by you know
saying how much money are they making or
how much money are they worth
how much money is someone willing to pay
for it this is how we know a company is
successful
and how many people you're helping too
because if you have
tons and tons of customers that's a good
sign
yeah the impact that you're creating you
have customers
you're saving their time you're making
them more secured
absolutely and then the other uh vector
is uh the impact that you're making on
your
team and your employees and i know that
some people neglect
that but for me these are these two
pillars are
equally important i want my team to come
to the office
and feel like they came to their second
home or their second family
and and feel good where they are feel
feel good get a good feeling get the
feeling that we care about them
we care about their personal involvement
um we care that they feel important
that they feel valuable um
and and i think as a ceo you need to
make sure that you're using all the
tools
to make all of that work uh
and orchestrate well um so
so you need to be very empathetic
to your team and to your customers you
have to be half a psychologist like
listen to them
yeah you have problems in your cloud
yeah it's so unique no one is having
these problems
tell me more
you you have to listen and smile
and say that you understand that it is
very very difficult what you're facing
we're here to help you um and you are
and you are there to help them yes yes
yes i'm not uh sarcastic
it sounded a little sarcastic but it's
real it's very real
um so i think that
you know a lot of people say yeah i'm
not the best engineer and this is a
security company or this is a technology
company so
i'm not a good quali i'm not qualified
to be the ceo
and i don't think that's true you don't
have to be the best engineer you don't
have to be the best
marketing person you don't have to be
the best sales person
you just need to be responsible and
understand that
this is a good time to bring a
salesperson i'm going to hire
the best fit for the company and the
best sales person i can
i can get this is your job as the ceo
someone someone just put in the chat oh
my gosh i hope
she shira and tyrone are friends because
we had someone else named tyrone who was
a ceo
and he's the ceo of a cyber security
training company
but they teach different stuff than we
hack purple does
and um just so many things that you said
are like
bringing memories back of the interview
with tyrone where he basically like it's
like your words
are coming out of his mouth or vice
versa
wow yeah i'll have a chat with him
interest later nice absolutely
so so this so first of all um if you are
watching or listening to this later
please click the thumbs up button or
write us a review
and tell us how great you think this
show is
okay now onto real questions so
do you feel that someone needs to have
technical skills
to become the ceo of a cyber security or
cloud security company and if so
what are they so
i definitely think you need skills that
are relevant
to the cyber security domain that you're
in
i mean i i don't have any reverse
engineering
capabilities and that's okay because i'm
not in the
reverse engineering business so i think
the the more solid background that you
have
in your domain you will be perceived as
a relevant person to solve this problem
um and again i you know i don't have
30 years of experience in security
and the cloud has only been around for
for this many years
he's going to say wow shira before it
even existed
amazing yes you know i was me and jeff
we're sitting together i was five years
old
[Laughter]
but you don't the more solid background
and
the more professional you are in that
domain the more seriously people
will take you and and how do you
create that you know that experience
first of all you need to learn and you
you need to learn all the time i still
explore
in my demo aws account well how does
this work
let's connect this what's going to
happen with this um i
i still try out things when when i have
some time
um and yeah when i go and talk to
a potential customer or or a colleague
or whatever
i know what i'm talking about i know
that when i talk about aws
and and misconfiguration i know i
i speak in their language they know they
can talk to me
and i will understand and maybe i will
even have a good advice for them
um and no matter in which domain you
want to start a company
you need to to make sure that you can
have an intelligent conversation
with the person in front of you um
and and it has to be good enough and
you will never be you know the best in
all domains
but i mean you have to to at least try
to to understand a little bit so that
you can talk about them and don't forget
to write notes about you know
something new that you heard today and
need to go
and take a to to read a little bit or
watch a youtube movie and learn more
about it so
that's always keep learning that's a
good tip
speaking of your experience so
i am from canada and uh
you are from israel and you have a very
interesting career path or i find it
very interesting would you be open to
sharing some of that
of course of course um so
as some of you may know in israel we
have a mandatory
military service men and women both have
to go to the military for a period
yeah for a period of
two to three years basically that's the
mandatory service
you can't choose uh where you want to
serve
you just you take some tests and then
you get notified where they chose to
to put you so
um i had no idea what am i going to do i
got to intelligence
i didn't know that's going to happen um
and and one thing led to worse as i said
before i was always you know the person
who does a little
extra um just because not because
someone told me to
so i know i'm gonna go i'm gonna take
officers training
just because you know i am the kind of
person who sees something is done
in a weird way and i'm like instead of
just complaining about
oh how long the line is wait let's just
uh
work it in a different way and and make
sure it goes faster
like i don't wait for someone to do it
and just go ahead and say let's do it
differently yeah
so sometimes you need your ranks to to
do things differently
just like sometimes you need to be the
ceo to do things differently yes
so i just you know took the officers
training just to make things
differently um and
one thing led to another and i stayed in
the military for 13 years
uh so that's a little more than the two
mandatory years a little bit more
yeah and and during that time i got to
do
many different and interesting things
uh that has to do with cyber security
with intelligence with the
counterterrorism
um many different domains
that are technology related and are
intelligence related
so that was a fascinating time and it
really opened my mind
about this world and about how you know
when when you connect to the internet
you can be
anywhere you want from the comfort of
your living room
that it's that amazing uh i think it's
great and it's a great enabler for us
but also as everyone knows it's also
dangerous and people sometimes exploit
it
so that was that and after
13 years i felt like i'm not sure
i want to do this until i retire
so maybe it's a good time to take a
break
and see the real life uh
and you know when you're in the military
i didn't have a linkedin account i
didn't have a twitter account no one
knew me
i'm like what is this linkedin thing and
why do i have to be connected
to people so i had to start from scratch
from absolutely nothing i had to build
a network and i started just yeah
i just started talking to people like
asking them for coffee
and this is actually a very good tip for
anyone listening to us right now
ask people for to grab coffee with them
and and get their thoughts about
something
i rarely got to know
rarely what's the worst thing that's
going to happen
right someone is going to say sorry i
don't have time today with zoom
people are just going to say yeah let's
do it over zoom
so don't be afraid to just find an
interesting person
and and ask them for 30 minutes of their
time people
really like to be asked to help
so took a lot of coffees with different
people
and figured that maybe a product manager
position is going to be
the best thing for me um
during that time i also met another uh
friend
who was a ceo of another startup a
rather successful startup and talking to
you about
what kind of roles there are in in in
the real world like a product manager
or a sales engineer or customer success
the more we talked i was like yeah you
know i feel like i
i need to sit in your chair um
like it made the best sense and he's
like
you can't sit in my chair you need to
start your own company if you want to be
a ceo
and of course i didn't literally mean
his chair like i'm gonna like get up
that way i was like listen after
everything you told me like it feels
the right thing to the right position
for me to be at
something yeah okay okay i'll have to
start my own company then
uh and you know i i still
knew that since you know i'm just coming
out of military which is a very
different
um you know organization i
have to to take a detour and stop in
another company just to learn a little
bit
about how it works and this is how i got
to do9
and really at the beginning i came as a
product manager
for a new product that does intrusion
detection in the cloud
but very soon i found that i was doing
many other things and not just products
first of all i
opened the research team so here i am
doing some security
and and in addition to that i was
working
closely with marketing
sales sales engineers all the other
personas in the organization
and no one told me to work with them or
here is an important task for you to do
no i just
felt that i cared so much about the
product that i wanted to talk with
everyone involved
to make sure that you know they position
it the right way they sell it the right
way
they on board users the right way so
you know if you care enough you will
just be exposed
to more personas in the organization and
and this builds you this prepares you
because you learn about you know sales
processes which i had no idea about
it's like it's a transparent process for
me as
as an employee of a company we just you
know i sit write
code and somehow we have new users i
have no idea how it happened
it just happened yeah it's not really
working that way
so i worked domedine i was
so happy there i got to learn so many
things meet so many
cool people and then uh the best
and worst thing happened and dominate
got acquired yeah
uh it's the best because you know every
startup wants to be acquired
but also it wasn't the best thing
because i was so happy there
so for my own personal you know
reason i did not i was not happy about
the acquisition but you know only not
you can't complain about that
yeah um so i just knew that this is
like this is the right timing for me and
by the way i would also say to our
audience that
um you never know that it's the right
timing
so i just you know i always try to talk
to as many
as smart people as i can just get their
thoughts
and i asked uh if they think that
it's it's a good thing it's the right
thing for me right now and i
i heard all the answers you can think of
i heard about
yeah you you have the right personality
and now is the best time go and do it
and i heard maybe you should go to
another startup and get some more
experience
i heard that as well so
it's really up to you yeah to to know
and maybe you will never know but you
have to just you know
jump in and
do what you believe in if you think that
it's yours
it's yours even when it's hard even when
you have a bad day
even when you get a no i get i got like
a million no's
it doesn't mean anything at the end of
the day i got yes
i got a yes from our investors i got a
yes from our customers i got a yes from
our employees
but i also got a million no's so don't
let it bring you down
you will always have a no that's so good
of you to share because i find like a
lot of people they're like i'm so
successful everyone says yes to me and
it's like no
actually people say no all day long to
us
and then it's the ones that say yes that
make our companies work or come be our
employees etc
yeah you just need one yes out of all
the million knows
and don't let a no bring you down or
break you
or oh maybe it's not a good idea maybe
i'm not good enough no
you and the other investor are not a
good match
that's the only thing that it means okay
i will have another investor that i
would have a good match with that's fine
yes and if you don't make a sale to a
customer now you might make a sale to
them in six months or you might make a
sale to them next year
or because you were truthful and you
honored what their needs are
if you say honestly like listen like
that's not what is
worth selling but here are some
recommendations for you of really good
places that could help you with what
you're actually looking for
that person might go off into the world
and say yeah i didn't buy from them but
they do this and i think they're right
for you and then send you a customer
later
but you have to keep asking you can't
run away if you hear
no that's the best advice in a long time
you also gave a good advice keep honest
yeah don't tell something if it's not
solving the problem
um and yeah there for example in our
industry
there are so many open source tools that
are pretty good
and you know i mentioned my competitors
very often in in a good way i say hey
they created this really cool open
source tool and i think that
for the problem that you're describing
you can use it
it's good i mean i you can pay me money
but
you have this tool that is solving
exactly the problem that you described
that's fine i know that they will
appreciate my my honest opinion and my
honest feedback
and my my integrity and my company's
integrity is
very very important yes oh i could not
agree more
one of the values of we hack purple is
integrity
and uh we we had this meeting with a
person we were thinking of making an
affiliate recently and
it turned out he was also a recruiter
and so he was planning to tell people
they kind of had to take our courses so
then he could get a cut and we're like
no we're not open to that
we're not open to anything that puts
first of all that puts like undue
pressure on people
and also we're like that doesn't feel
honest so we politely declined
i'm just like that's not how we want to
make sales and
yeah integrity definitely you might
think oh i'm losing out on
a little sale now but it's really big
sales later that you will miss out on
and big opportunities you'll miss out on
if you are not trustworthy
oh so good sheriff absolutely
so i have more questions for you but
first i want to thank our sponsor
thread fix powered by denim group the
most
stupendous vulnerability management
system
this side of the galaxy
yes thank you so much they have been our
sponsor from the very beginning
and i really appreciate it okay so
now i want to ask you more things so
this is a question that so we've had a
couple of startup founders on the show
so far
does your job pay well in your opinion
okay that's important question and
people need to know that
when you're entrepreneur uh
and you want to start a software company
of any kind uh you have to assume
that you will work for some time without
a salary
at all and you have to be prepared for
that you have to you know have your
savings
or or find another source of
you know income yeah that is not a
another job because as an entrepreneur
i personally i don't think you can have
a
day job and start your own company you
can
do it for some time on the weekend and
at night
but you know at some point you have to
be full
in yeah to make it accelerate and work
so so you have to assume i assumed one
year of no salary so i had savings for
one year and i knew that when i hit
a year i will have to stop what i'm
doing and find
a job so you have to be prepared for
that
um and then you go ahead and raise some
capital hopefully
a lot of million dollars yeah and
and then as a ceo you can start
not as a ceo just as like just like any
other employee in the company
you can have a salary and then you ask
okay but what is going to be the salary
and there are a few approaches one is
let's take
a relatively low salary now
and have a bigger like a much bigger
salary later
and david my co-founder and i decided to
be
in the middle like to have a a decent
salary but it's not
a very big salary but we can definitely
live
uh out of it and you know have
as an entrepreneur your investors as
well
want you not to worry about
stuff but to be focused on the company
yeah so it's also
their interest that um you will not be
worried about
oh am i going to have enough money to to
buy a new fridge
they want to make sure that i mean your
life is is okay
and and you can pay for other people to
solve some of your problems so that you
can focus on the startup
so i get paid i think i get paid like
fine it's good for what i do and
um it's okay
i think that we have a scale that we
tend to use
and so i guess i said this on the first
podcast and now
and so people are asking how much cheese
can you buy
so when i first could afford to buy
two types of cheese at the grocery store
i was like oh my gosh i've really made
it as a software developer
because i know like i'm not like
scripting and saving and i was like
there's two types of
cheese and i really want both and i was
like oh my god i can afford that
and that was like this light turned on
in my 20s and so
um the audience is asking how much
cheese can you buy
and i think the answer is she's allowed
as much cheese as she wants
so i can go to the big
supermarket the one that is not a
high-end supermarket and i can get
the expensive cheese as well and every
now and then i can go to
the really special french cheese
store and and buy you know a couple
pieces
um nice nice i like it i don't know how
cheese became
our measurement but it's just i like it
thank you but i i also like that
the way that you worded it how you know
your investors don't want you worrying
if you can like make your rent or your
mortgage or not they don't want you
panicking
that the lights are going to be turned
off but they're also not
investing in your company so you can
like roll around in money and you're
like i'm just getting paper cuts from
all these hundred dollar bills
um yeah exactly
exactly uh so i've never had someone
explain that to me before and
i love that definitely um i have
yeah that's really good it puts a lot of
things in perspective for me too
i just started getting my own salary
from my own company
uh two fridays ago yes it's
a big move this is a big thing yeah
maybe
one day you will interview yourself
we have a plan for if a guest stands me
up there's another
person in my city who's gonna be my
guest and then the backup backup is for
me to interview myself
um which is it's very silly but some
i'll probably just ask a guest to come
on and interview me
but um i'm hoping that most of our
guests can make it because we have like
really awesome guests planned but anyway
okay i want to hear more about you so
like
let's say someone's someone is like you
years ago
where they saw the person you know
they see you now in the ceo chair and
they're like oh
that's amazing i want to do that someday
do you have any sort of ideas on like a
learning path or like way they could try
to train themselves or
experience they could try to get to get
themselves there
[Music]
yeah the experience should be as diverse
as possible
and it doesn't necessarily mean that you
will switch
jobs constantly but it means that
wherever you are
a big corporate a small startup wherever
you are
you should grab lunch or coffee or
virtual coffee
with anyone and ask them to hear about
how how does the sale process really
works how does it work
do everyone reach out to you do you have
to
uh reach out to people and just make
them hear your pit
how does this really work and then how
do we create the messaging for our
company why did you choose
to use you know this slogan for example
like try to talk to as many people just
hear their perspective
this will give you a lot of perspective
especially hearing from people
what didn't work for them is very
helpful
it doesn't mean that if it didn't work
for them it's not going to work for you
but if you hear their answers like
it didn't work because the market wasn't
ready or because our
customers were this kind of person
as long as you hear and ask them
why didn't it work or why did you choose
this
this will expand your horizons
and this is the best thing you can do as
a ceo
you have to be a little bit of
everything and you know i don't have
i never worked as a salesperson or as a
marketing person
but watching and talking to these kind
of people gave me
some skills to at least be the first
sales person in my company
until i hire a professional person to do
that
same same goes for everything else
except for writing code i'm not allowed
to write code
just because we want it to work in
production
only because we want the code to work
otherwise they would let her write it
most honest comment ever
um so would you say that there's lots of
opportunities
in your field and so that's a hard
question because you basically made your
own opportunity
but would you say there is
i think that we have so many
problems in the world right it doesn't
necessarily have to be in cyber security
in cyber we have plenty of problems
plenty of startups and
we still see new startups every day so i
guess we have that many problems
um but i think that if you find a
problem
again it doesn't matter if you're a a
gym trainer
and you find a problem you can either
say to yourself
okay it's just just the way it works
it's let's accept it
or we can think about a way to solve it
and if other people have that problem we
can
scale our solution create a software
that will solve it for everyone and sell
it and
and you know feel like we changed the
world and we solved the problem for
someone
so i think that there is an opportunity
as long as you find
a need um so yeah
no yeah i mean it's really up to you to
find the need
i think then and you you said something
really important there that a lot of
people don't realize
so the reason why her company is working
is because she's solving a problem
and she's solving a problem that people
are willing to pay money to have
solved and there are
i have met people where they're like i
want to be a ceo and i want to do a
startup and they're like
i made this cool tech thing it's like
what problem does it solve no but it's
really cool i'm like well
go build a blockchain because that's
where all those people are hanging out
yeah so and the more personal
and relevant the problem is to your life
the more compelling it's going to sound
to other people because you really speak
from your own experience and from your
own pain
it sounds uh real
so yes and i just realized that i've
been flashing
your url on the screen but that a lot of
the people
that listen to the podcast aren't going
to be able to see that so i want to
explain to everyone
if you want to go check out shira's
company you should go to solvo.cloud so
that's
s o l v like victor o
dot cloud like you know those gorgeous
things in the sky or
also the things that amazon google and
microsoft
make for us to have awesome
infrastructure on demand
you know one or the other
so what do you like best
about your job um
we talked before about the fact that
every week i feel like
um the company is more real
and whenever something uh
satisfying happens like i sit in my
chair and i'm like
yeah we we have our first paying
customer
[Music]
or listen we we had this really awesome
person
uh starting to work for us the fact that
someone
is willing to quit their job
and come work with me i'm like what
did you really do that yes i mean for me
i mean you believe in my idea you think
we can do it together
you think you can change the world you
think you can create some software
we can we can use on scale wow
i mean people are buying this what
it's amazing so and i have that moment
a few times a week because everything is
new for me everything is happening for
the first time
it's it's mind-blowing every time
and i appreciate it i appreciate these
moments i appreciate these milestones
and i celebrate with my colleagues we
celebrate
the first user we celebrate the first pr
we celebrate these milestones because
they're so important for us
they're so meaningful yes they are and i
love the way you worded that like it's
just so
amazing to have someone believe in you
and your idea so much
that they will leave this other thing or
this other opportunity and they're
like i'm on board let's do this i'm on
your team
i love it yeah
it touches me every time yeah
my my employees have started calling it
purple team they're like you know for
team purple
and they call it purple work it's just
it just really i'm just like i'm never
good it's never gonna get old
yeah and and you know this is them
creating
a culture of we hack purple this is your
dna exactly
these are the small things that make it
fun to work with you
yeah we need t-shirts like your t-shirt
your t-shirt's really cute i like it
the salvo t-shirts okay with the cloud
and the brackets in between we got this
yes and our
slogan in the back let us take care of
cloud security for you just code
oh i love it so
just code we got this i like that yeah
so i have a difficult question for you
now
what do you like the least about your
job
um saying no to people
or having awkward interactions with them
i can give an example uh one of my
this is some this is a real story that
happened yesterday
okay one of my investors introduced me
um to to a to a guy who has
um an outsourced company and he claims
uh he can also do sourcing first like
find employees to come work for us
so we signed a contract with him and
he only sent us like a couple of like
just a few
cvs and they were not relevant he wasn't
you know
really trying to be well at what they do
i have other companies sending me more
relevant employees which obviously i
hired
and then this one day the guy emails me
saying that as an indirect
stakeholder he would like to recommend
me about
these steps or telling me that we took
a bad approach in hiring and we are
too harsh with the candidates and like
like saying a bunch of stuff i'm like
what
i mean you are a vendor
and if you have
like if you feel like we're not working
well together so you can
you know give me a call and talk about
how we can work
better together but like emailing me
in a pretentious way and claiming that
you know better than me even though
you really proved that you're not you
know
well at what you do um
where do you have the the nerves or the
attitude
to email me this list of things that
allegedly
me and my co-founder are doing wrong
this is so rude
and you're not only a vendor you are a
friend of
one of our investors does this make any
sense to you
would you send this kind of email to
another client of yours
that was so rude and i was like
so option number one sending a
totally angry email or like proving him
wrong what if it was like a
picture of you just flipping the bird do
you think that would have got the
message across
um listen so i was like
like shira of three years ago
would send the harshest email
back yeah like proving him wrong on
every point that he came up with
and telling him who the hell do you
think you are and
i mean because really who the hell do
you think you are you are a vendor
and you are here to send me a bunch of
cvs
and make sure i have lots of
engineering's writing code this
is your like this is what you were hired
for yeah
um so i was like so i shearer of three
years ago would have
written you know a very harsh email back
but i took a deep breath
and held myself and asked
what is the best outcome or what do i
want to make out of this
because yeah i could send that email but
except for you know a relief for 30
seconds
what what good is going to come out of
it
so i wrote a very polite
email that regardless if i agree
or disagree with what you wrote here
i don't appreciate this aggressiveness
from any vendor or partner i work with
and maybe in the future we will have
more relevant
projects to work on and that's it
for me that guy is history
yeah and we will never work together
never
ever i'm not gonna shame them out in
public but if anyone asks me about them
i will say that company's name and i
will
highly recommend not to work with him
you are so i i have i have this mo sorry
i i have these kind of moment moments or
or
incidents it's not often but when it
happens and
and i have to control the monster in me
that's that's hard that's hard but as a
ceo you are the face of your company
so you can't let that monster out
anytime you want
you have to be careful and not to
release it
um so that that's as for for you know
the
least uh fun moments i have in my
company
i will not let anyone hurt the company
hurt my employees heard anything hurt my
customers or
or or harmed them so this is like me
being the lioness in the front uh
you know taking the fire and making sure
everyone else doesn't see that or
doesn't feel that
it's so true it's so true i
so i have found that i have had to
stand up for myself constantly
i actually had a company talk about how
they wanted to do like a collaboration
with my company and then during the
meeting
they told me to stop making training and
just sell their product and put my name
on it
and like and i i was just like so let me
just stop you for a second sometimes
canadians
were very polite so i politely said no
in the canadian way a bunch of times and
i'm like
we're not going to change our business
model for you just to be clear
stop asking the answer will always be no
and just so you know it's very
disrespectful
so that conversation's over however if
you want to buy our services
here are services we can offer for you
and and he's like but i'm like nope
you're done now and they're just like
well we could i'm like no
so would you like to buy our services
we'll send you a brochure
and you can let us know later and i have
to do this
at least a few times a week
at least a few times a month for sure
but at least once every week i have to
just
say okay so i know you want you said
you'd like to collaborate with us but
really you want me to blindly endorse
your weird product that i've never heard
of before
and so oh and you want to give us you
want to give me zero dollars for doing
that wow
you can see how that's a very attractive
offer for me right no it's not
so thanks for wasting 30 minutes of my
time
the answer is no so i've had to learn
that phrase the answer is no
because being canadian we're very gentle
and we kind of dance around the word no
but i have had to learn to say it
and it's hard have you have you found
that heard
yes saying no because in a way we try to
please other people
all the time so saying no is
is not easy and you have to learn to
focus listen
everyone has 24 hours a day all of us
and you have to decide how to spread
them
or how to divide them who
who can who do i want to share some of
this
a precious resource with and sometimes
you just have to say
no because this is not the top priority
and this is a time waster
it's not going to build anything this is
this
these 30 minutes are not an investment
that will return itself no it doesn't
matter if it's with money or with
anything else so
you have to be very very responsible
with your time and sometimes
you have to say no as an israeli
it's more common to be blunt about stuff
and then some very often i interact with
north american kind of people who really
go around
saying or thank you but no or like maybe
later or just ignore your emails
so so you have to adapt but it's very
you know it's unnatural for me like i
try to to
speak to walk the talk but it's not
natural
i hear what you're saying i think you do
a great job just for the record
because we get along really well
and you totally tolerate my um dancing
around of the no
santa you never say no to me i know it's
true
okay i have two last questions
and then we have to go because we are
reaching the one hour mark
so the first question is what is one
actionable step that you would suggest
for someone who wants to one day become
a ceo i know you already said like you
should network with every single person
so i'm going to be a jerk and say do you
have another actionable step
um i think that uh
one of the most important things is uh
to learn to control your time
uh i wake up in the morning usually
around six a.m um
because i know that uh
these you know extra two hours before
things are
getting becoming a mess are very
important to do some reading
or to work out like to do something that
is very important for my mental health
and you need to to respect yourselves
uh and it actually brings me to a more
important
uh thing and this is the fact that you
have to
learn all the time new things
uh and you need to adapt and create
yourself the ability
to to learn by yourself new things
it's like school is over university is
over
this is the real life and if you
are unable to you know google
a new topic and read a couple blogs
and then choose the right youtube video
oh it's not the right let's take another
one
and then just go ahead and create
something
open a console and write some code go
to your aws console and connect some
components together like
you have to go and do it uh you have to
um have real experience in your hands
you don't have to be
you know the best um a devops engineer
but you definitely
need to to try and you know work with
with the real materials
um you need to have that capability it
doesn't matter if you want to be in
security or
in you know cake baking you need real
experience yeah
but no one is going to to do that for
you this is your responsibility
yes oh my gosh that's such good advice
okay so the last thing i need to ask you
about is
if someone wants to know more about you
or they want to
follow you do you have any website or
events or links to share so i've already
shared
salvo.cloud and shambanit
on twitter are there other ways that
people can follow up with you
are there events
um so twitter is the best place to
follow and
if i have other events that i
participate in you can
i will try to tweet them so you can you
can check them out
i have some videos on youtube so you can
google my name
and see them right away um you can
connect with me on linkedin
uh and and see more about what i do
because i try to publish over there as
well
uh and feel free to to dm uh
and i will do my best to answer everyone
and you know be as helpful as i can
thank you so much for being on the show
that was a great
all of your answers were fantastic that
was awesome
thank you so much are there any last
things that you want to say
before i wrap up the weehack purple
podcast
uh so thank you so much for having me
and thank you for your wonderful
audience
for for being here with us today and
i feel very honored to say that you're
my friend
and i'm very thankful for that you know
infosec
industry because this is what got us
together that
the conferences and the culture around
it
is what made us friends and even the
distance
cannot separate us um so i'm very very
thankful for having you in my life
uh and i can't wait uh for one of us to
be able to fly anywhere in the world and
oh my gosh me too i totally miss you so
much this whole pandemic sucks for 100
reasons and that is in the top 10.
thank you again for being on the show
and now i'm going to do that part where
i
say goodbye to everyone so thank you
so much to everyone who is listening to
the wehack purple podcast
i want to thank our sponsor again
threadfix
you guys are the best i really
appreciate you supporting us
and i want to thank the entire wehack
purple team for all the things that you
do
that make our academy run well i'm very
excited how we are going to be opening
the community again for the public in a
few weeks
and i wanted to just briefly for just
one second
read a podcast review because we are
getting so many of them
and i wanted you to know that if you do
a podcast review for
us we will send you stickers yes that's
right
stickers it is a really good deal and um
anyway thank you so much to everyone
please write
podcast reviews for us please tell your
friends about how much fun our podcast
is
and basically thank you so much to shira
for being on
and okay one more podcast review
and no never mind it's somewhere i know
i'm supposed to have them ready
but sometimes that's life again this is
the we hack purple podcast and we will
see you
next week