We Hack Purple Podcast 14 with Shira Shamban

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'.

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Hack Purple Podcast

We Hack Purple Podcast 14 with Shira Shamban

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