Sagi Brody

In this episode, we chat with Sagi Brody, co-founder and CTO of Webair, the predecessor of the current Opti Tech.

Sagi talks about his over 20 years of IT experience and his journey from starting Webair in the late 90s, and how it grew to the point where it evolved to today’s Opti.

We talk about Sagi’s current projects, his role as a consultant, and how he overcame his imposter syndrome and managed to combine his skills with his early interests in aviation and space.

Join us on this journey into Sagi Brody’s world.

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Confidence plus saying “I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out”
I think those two things together are gold
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Sagi's Links: 

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• 10Forward

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Make it a great day.

Transcript

Machines made this, mistakes and all:

[00:00:00] Chris: Hello, and welcome to the imposter syndrome network podcast, where everyone belongs, especially if you think you don't, my name is Chris Grundemann, and we are unfortunately, once again, missing, uh, the fabulous Zoe Rose, she will join us again soon, but don't fear this is the Sigi Brody. Sowed, and I think you're gonna love it.

[00:00:28] Chris: Sagi was the co-founder and chief technology and product officer of Web Air, a leader in the managed hybrid cloud and disaster recovery space. Sge was responsible for all product development, r and d, software development and technical go-to market. Additionally, Sagi architected the backend infrastructure including multi-tenant compute and storage platforms.

[00:00:47] Chris: O-S-S-B-S-S-A single point of truth. And accounts receivable software in addition to a global network of data center deployments accompanying IP transit and transport networks and multiple layers of security protection. In 2021, he sold the company and subsequently merged two additional organizations into the platform.

[00:01:06] Chris: Which was eventually rebranded as Opti9 Tech, where he is still the CTO today. But Sagi's experience doesn't stop there. It extends out into the broader internet infrastructure community. He's been a member of groups such as the NYC CTO Club, the Avant Communications Security Council, and the HIMSS.

[00:01:23] Chris: Technology task force. Uh, he's additionally and has, and currently serves as a board member of organizations such as NYNOG, OpenIX, ListNet, and others. Lots of stuff to dig into today. In addition to that stuff, uh, Sagi also sits on advisory and director boards for multiple private companies.

[00:01:44] Chris: Hey Sagi, would you like to add anything or introduce yourself a bit further to the Imposter Syndrome Network? 

[00:01:49] Sagi: No, I think that was, um, a very great and fully inclusive intro. Um, you know, it's almost sounds like too much, but some of those things stay dormant for a while and then pop up and need your attention.

[00:02:01] Sagi: But yeah, that was great. Thanks, Chris. 

[00:02:02] Chris: Absolutely. One thing that always interests me, possibly because of its role in my own career, is, is volunteer experience. And when we share some of the same experiences here, as I mentioned just now, you have volunteered at OpenIX, uh, which is now OIX. And I believe you're still on the board of NYNOG, the New York Network Operators Group, which puts on quarterly meetings in New York City around networking technical topics.

[00:02:25] Chris: My question is twofold. Why and what? Why have you taken time away from your company and your family to help with these initiatives? And what have you gotten out of it? 

[00:02:34] Sagi: Yeah, I mean, I think, so one of the things that, that I love about really those two specific organizations and similar ones is that they are really sort of juxtaposed to the sort of normal ways that I would say people sort of get educated about technology.

[00:02:51] Sagi: Really academia, which I think is, is awesome. But you know, these two organizations and others, um, provide you with education from an operational perspective, people that have, you know, they have battle scars from being in the trenches, from dealing with outages and issues. And, you know, I just think it's like, it's like gold.

[00:03:10] Sagi: And when, when someone talks about their experience, maybe it was a problem that. If they had to deal with over the weekend or something that they learned, I mean, it's like you can't, you can't replicate these things when you just go in and take a course. And so for me, I'm very passionate about that because, you know, when I, when I co founded my business, you know, that was a long time ago in the late nineties and it was before.

[00:03:32] Sagi: Um, we had, you know, even things like Google and it was mostly open source technology and, um, there was no vendor support. And I can't tell you how many nights and weekends and events I missed because, you know, I just have to figure things out on my own. And once I started, you know, finding these, these sort of communities, um, like Nanog and, and similars, just being able to, to just pull the hive mind and say, has anyone seen this?

[00:03:58] Sagi: What did you do? What do you think about this? I mean, it's just, it's just amazing. So it's, it's near and dear to my heart. Um, I've lost a lot of sleep because of those things. And so I also think that just for today, they just give me so much context. You speak to people, you know, sometimes you get so pigeonholed, um, with what you're doing and what your immediate issues are, what your company's working on.

[00:04:21] Sagi: Just being able to, to hear other experiences from maybe someone who works in similar technologies, but within a different context, it just, it just helps you in so many ways. 

[00:04:30] Chris: That's awesome. And that definitely lines up with with my understanding, too. And we definitely hear this from other guests as well, right?

[00:04:36] Chris: This importance of community, especially for those of us of kind of our age, where, as you said, right, there was no YouTube. There was no tick tock. There wasn't a LinkedIn. Even Google search didn't exist at, you know, at this time. So finding that information really relied on relationships, which I think came from communities and then these kind of, you know, events and organizations that pull people together within the technical community.

[00:04:58] Chris: I think they're still just as important now. I mean, what do you think? I mean, these days, you know, does somebody have to go to Nanog to learn this stuff? Or can they just, you know, go check out YouTube and TikTok and pick up the same kind of information? 

[00:05:09] Sagi: Well, that's a good question. I think that, yeah, you can.

[00:05:13] Sagi: Your mileage may vary. And I've been frustrated by, but just sort of. Randomly searching and finding good quality answers to my questions because there's almost, there's almost too much content now and, you know, being able to sift through and finding exactly what you're looking for is difficult. So, you know, I really put those sorts of organizations and going to those conferences really in the same bucket as networking within the community.

[00:05:40] Sagi: Um, and as, as, you know, me building these relationships is just so important if you have, let's say. Issue with the network, you know, being able to skip the line and not have to open a ticket, go to a chat room or go to a friend who works at the company and just real quick, is something going on and be able to maybe cross that off your list of what potentially is causing your issue right away?

[00:06:02] Sagi: I mean, that's cool. And so absolutely. I do think it's, it's so important to be involved, to build these relationships on so many different levels. 

[00:06:11] Chris: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think you're absolutely right, right? The education still remains valid and relevant because it is focused. And obviously, if you're, if you corner somebody in the hallway and ask some questions, you can get, you can drill down a little bit more in ways that you can't if you're just consuming somebody's, you know, paper or blog post or, or video.

[00:06:28] Chris: And I definitely relate to the idea of there being too much content out there now. It is really hard to kind of figure out what's trustworthy, what's not, who's a reliable source. Obviously, if you've met this person or seen them on a stage somewhere, it's a little bit easier to kind of validate that and then, um, also just reiterating, you know, the idea of those connections and to be able to kind of reach across organization to organization or expert to expert to fill in your gaps and be able to ask questions or get help or, you know, Frank Martin was on recently, who LinkedIn for a long time.

[00:06:56] Chris: And talking about, you know, the idea that sure, there's these official channels you can go through if you're getting spam from some domain or some block of IP addresses, but it's a heck of a lot easier to just be able to pick up the phone and call somebody and be like, What's going on over there? Like, what is happening?

[00:07:08] Chris: Let's get this fixed. So yeah, all that makes sense to me. And I think you're right that these kind of communities and organizations are just as valid, just as useful now as they ever have been, I think, 

[00:07:17] Sagi: yeah. And you know, you're sort of gaining a few things at the same time with making these connections.

[00:07:22] Sagi: You know, you have these personal relationships. Yeah. And you also have the business relationship. You have a contact at a company that maybe you want to do something with them or ask them a question that you have a direct contact, you know, inevitably those people will leave and go to, you know, maybe new companies, but you can always set them up.

[00:07:38] Sagi: They'll always refer you back to someone there. And so I think, I think the business stuff is good. Um, but the personal relationships, uh, they last longer and they're probably more important. And I found that people that I've met through these communities, they are really interested in helping you when you ping them.

[00:07:56] Sagi: Like if you, like you said, if you saw someone on stage and you have a question about what they, what they presented, I don't think I've ever ran into a situation where someone was not happy to talk about it. Afterwards, or as a follow up, you know, three weeks later now on the flip side, if you try sending a random email, a cold call to someone like that, you're going to get a totally different, you know, experience and that's not their fault.

[00:08:19] Sagi: It's just the nature of the industry, but making those connections there in those communities. They will, it will last, you know, a long time. 

[00:08:26] Chris: Yeah, that's a really good point. I definitely see that quite a bit. You know, the kind of cold call, cold email, cold LinkedIn message. Um, it's, it's tough, right? And I think that for sure, these events where you can actually meet somebody in person, uh, ahead of time before you, you know, maybe ask them for their advice.

[00:08:40] Chris: Is, uh, or, or their business especially is, is crucial. 

[00:08:43] Sagi: Yeah. I, I, I've recently had that experience where I've started doing, um, and I invested and, and I'm consulting for, uh, a company called Cyviation, uh, really cool company. They're basically providing cybersecurity services for physical aircraft, which, um, you know, I've always been a, an aviation and, and space geek, and so.

[00:09:04] Sagi: Interesting when the world's collide something that you are personally interested in or hobby meets where you have some industry expertise or experience and so you know they asked me to go to some aviation conventions on their behalf and in the US and never been to any of those and so, you know, I tried sending some linkedin messages just to some random people who I saw will be at the show and, um.

[00:09:25] Sagi: You know, the, it's weird being on the other side of that and being the one to send the cold call message after like getting so upset at so many of them, you know, over the years, sure, it felt real strange. Um, I was actually surprised by the rate of adoption of people actually saying, yeah, I, I, I'll, I'll meet you and.

[00:09:44] Sagi: It makes me suspect maybe i'm just maybe i'm not open enough right when i get these random ones but you know it wasn't that you're talking about maybe a ten twenty percent but when i was at the shows and i started walking up to people in person and started talking to them. You know, what a different experience, the openness and the connections that I made, you know, on a personal level.

[00:10:05] Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Now I want to kind of dive back into that. You talked about, you know, your technical advisor for Cyvation, uh, which does sound interesting. This kind of aviation, cybersecurity and physical security sounds super interesting. And as you mentioned, that is a new industry for you anyway, right?

[00:10:19] Chris: I mean, you haven't worked in aviation before you've been working, right? You built WebAIR over, I guess, what was it, you know, 20 something years. Um, in kind of really data center, cloud DRAS, kind of, you know, that kind of internet infrastructure industry. So aviation is a little bit different, not too many data centers can fly, but, uh, it sounds like you're able to leverage that experience in this kind of new way.

[00:10:39] Chris: Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about that experience and kind of what that's like to find, you know, a use for your knowledge and in a new and different way. 

[00:10:46] Sagi: Yeah. So, you know, lately with web air, which turned into Opti9, you know, we've been focusing on ransomware, right. And how do we prevent ransomware?

[00:10:54] Sagi: Um, and what are, what is the workflows that the attackers are going through in order to, you know, attack an asset? And I was able to kind of just leverage the same sort of logical thinking to this sort of new industry. You know, aircraft is another type of valuable asset. How, you know, what are the entry points?

[00:11:11] Sagi: How are they getting in? And so. Um, I was actually, you know, I went to a convention and had no experience. Um, I did some, a little bit of research and I was able to hold conversations to an extent about this topic more successfully than I thought I would be. And I think it was just reminding myself that, Hey, this is, it's different, but it's the same.

[00:11:33] Sagi: And having confidence that like, Hey, over the course of my career. You know, I have dealt with cybersecurity and infrastructure in different facets and assets and context. And so why is it any different? So I think it was just leveraging the experience and, you know, learning the lingo a little bit, not being afraid to ask questions.

[00:11:50] Sagi: And, you know, I, I basically told people the truth, like, Hey, this is new to me. This is my first convention. You know, I come from this other world, but I've dealt with cyber, I've dealt with infrastructure and I'm really just interested in aviation. That's why I'm here. And so. I think people appreciate that because they are there too, to an extent, because they're probably also interested in aviation and who doesn't want to hear more about cyber security and, you know, planes being hacked.

[00:12:14] Sagi: So, you know, it's a little weird putting yourself out there, but I think you got to take risks in that sense. And it's, it's, it's okay. Years ago, I'm sure you had the same experience years ago, like when you, you know, getting into the, into computers and the internet in the late nineties, everyone just expected you to be, you know, you're into the computers, like you're a computer genius.

[00:12:33] Sagi: You must know everything about everything tech wise and listen for a short time that maybe like it maybe was the case that you knew of every tech company that existed. I mean, today, I'm sure, I don't know if you have the same experience, but like, how often do you hear about a billion dollar plus tech company that you didn't know about yesterday?

[00:12:51] Sagi: And you're like, how do I not know about this company? And it's like, Hey, it's okay. Like the industry has grown. There's no way that you're going to know everything. The sectors have matured. If anybody's out there who claims to like, just know about all these companies and all the technologies and all the lingo's like.

[00:13:06] Sagi: It's impossible and it's okay to say you don't know about this. 

[00:13:10] Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that ability to admit what you don't know, I don't know about you, but for me, I mean, in those early days, are you talking about kind of late 90s, maybe early 2000s as well for myself anyway, because network engineering, but just digital infrastructure in general is such a knowledge focused industry.

[00:13:25] Chris: And it was kind of based on those kind of early. You know, I know when, when I was a kid, right? Yeah. If you touch the computer at all, aunts and uncles and cousins were like, ah, yeah, you're a computer genius. Like, like you said, and that kind of got wound up in my identity a little bit. And so then being able to admit that I didn't know something or asking for help, you know, counterintuitively was hardest for me when I first started out.

[00:13:44] Chris: When I needed the most help, uh, it's wild. 

[00:13:46] Sagi: Yeah. And, and, you know, um, man, this is a really interesting topic. One of the experiences that I had when WebAir was growing and I had a co founder who was more on the sales and strategy side. I was the tech person, but at some point the company grew to a size where.

[00:14:03] Sagi: You know, I had to manage, um, more and, and sort of, I was less hands to keyboard and, you know, I think you're still more probably more technical than I am, I would say. Um, but we'll definitely, but with someone whose identity and, and sort of idea of their self worth as a contributor is all hands to keyboard, when you sort of shift over to maybe more managing, letting go of that is so incredibly difficult, you know, acknowledging that you have value.

[00:14:29] Sagi: As a contributor that is not hands to keyboard and making that leap of faith and letting go it is so difficult and I think a lot of people in the tech world, you know, struggle with that and at some point you have to let go. That was hard for me and it's, it's a, it's a confidence thing and you really have to be confident in your ability to contribute without being that way and took a long time.

[00:14:49] Chris: Yeah, yeah, it is tough. I mean, I don't know about you, but I mean, we even, I mean, maybe it's a little different from you cause it was, you know, you, you were building your company for most of these years, but from my side kind of coming up through the trenches through those same years, you know, not only was like being technical and being smart on the technology and being able to, you know, work the CLI and that kind of stuff or work the Linux CLI or the Juniper or whatever it was.

[00:15:07] Chris: Not only was that kind of tied to my identity, but I mean, we have, we joked right about managers who didn't know their stuff and salespeople and all these idiots out there who weren't, weren't technologists. And then of course, you know, as my career developed, I became one of those idiots in a lot of ways.

[00:15:20] Chris: Um, so it definitely is super interesting to, you know, that, and that I like that. I think confidence to me is a big part of a lot of this, right? Which is almost the opposite side of imposter syndrome in some ways, right? Just like believing you can do it knowing you have the right skills. That confidence, at least in yourself to be able to figure it out, maybe is one of the most important things I think of driving a career forward.

[00:15:41] Sagi: Yeah. And, you know, I think everybody has their journey. We all started somewhere. Um, some people took different paths, but at some point we knew nothing about whatever we're focused on now. You know, as someone who was working with, uh, so co founded a small company and we were competing with much larger companies, you got to fake it and make it sometimes.

[00:15:59] Sagi: And confidence does go a long way. Confidence plus saying, I don't know, or I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out. I think those two things together, you know, are gold. And you know, when I was walking up to random booths talking about aviation, cybersecurity, you know, knowing that I was talking to people that know that have worked in aviation for 20 plus years.

[00:16:20] Sagi: It was a little, it was a little scary, but I think confidence came a long way. The other thing I think, which really can help bridge the gap, especially talk, you know, this confidence topic, maybe working in new industries and also going from hands to keyboard to less of that. I think reminding yourself that it's not all about technical skills, soft skills go a long way.

[00:16:43] Sagi: And they transcend the shiny object of day. And this is, I think, an area where a lot of younger technicians get hung up. I think our industry has this sort of unhealthy need to sort of, you know, stack these new acronyms on your resume. There's always a new coding language, right? There's always new technologies, new routing protocol, whatever.

[00:17:04] Sagi: And, you know, I think there's this sort of unmentioned pressure that people feel like. I got to learn. I got to go and learn gen AI. I got to learn LLMs. I got to learn. I got to keep up with this and this and this, and that's fine, but it's not going to be fun anymore where you feel like this pressure that if you don't learn, you're going to lose your relevance.

[00:17:21] Sagi: And what I would, uh, what I would recommend people, you know, remind themselves of is. Along the journey, you've picked up a lot of soft skills that you don't even realize, you know, being a good troubleshooter is an extremely important standalone skill. You know, not a lot of people talk about it much. You don't go to college classes as to how to be a good troubleshooter.

[00:17:41] Sagi: But I mean, what an important thing and if you become good at it, it will stay with you regardless of the shiny object or the cool later of the day, being a good technical writer, being a good Googler, being, you know, being resourceful. Those are really good skills and they travel with you. And I think just reminding yourself of that allows you to switch industries and ramp up so much faster than the last one you were at.

[00:18:04] Chris: Yeah, I like that idea of, of those kind of softer skills being more transferable, right? That's a really interesting way to look at it. As you said, right, there's these kind of base things like, yeah, like the logical progression of figuring out how to troubleshoot things, um, the ability to sell ideas to your manager or, or convince your team, you know, what the right choice is.

[00:18:22] Chris: A lot of these things are just getting along and moving things forward aside from a particular technology. Cause. To your point also, right, these technology cycles do change. And so if you really tie yourself to, you know, if you were the best. 

[00:18:32] Sagi: Yeah, I mean, so Chris, I mean, I'm sure you've had experiences, right?

[00:18:35] Sagi: Like, and this is, these are always fun when maybe you're brought in and there's, there's a technician or a group of technicians that have been troubleshooting an issue for. X period of time you're brought in and much less context and, you know, intimate, um, knowledge of the issue, you figured it out. Right.

[00:18:51] Sagi: I mean, tell me that hasn't happened a ton of time. 

[00:18:54] Chris: Oh yeah, all the time for sure. I mean, going all the way back to, you know, one of the biggest networks I worked on was for Time Warner Telecom. And, you know, I was in kind of the top tier obstetrician. So even internal there, I mean, this wasn't kind of coming in totally blind, but just, you know, being that top tier escalation there, I'd get a call and be woken up at, you know, 2 AM.

[00:19:11] Chris: So coming out of rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and, uh, these people have been working on a problem for a few hours. And oftentimes with a few kind of questions, uh, even though I had no idea what was going on and was still half asleep, could kind of figure it out just through basic process of like, okay, let's go back to the very beginning.

[00:19:28] Chris: Let's start like, you know, can you ping the thing? Um, and some of these things that I think in, in the frenzy to figure out, especially in the, you know, height of a problem, people forget some of this basic tenants of troubleshooting and these kind of just first principles of like, okay, like let's not make it, let's not overcomplicate it.

[00:19:43] Chris: Right. Let's, let's get back to simple steps and look at the basics of what's going on here. Um, regardless of what type of device we're dealing with, uh, or specific software versions or all that stuff that people can get wound up in sometimes, of course, all that stuff matters in other cases as well, but sometimes you just don't have MPLS enabled on the interface, you know?

[00:19:59] Sagi: Yeah. And, you know, so I think it's both right. I think it's, uh, obviously if you have experience on those platforms, um, you know, you got to know the technology and your extent, but. Some people are just not as good as, as others as troubleshooting. Yeah. Um, and it can't be all hard skills and it can't be all soft skills.

[00:20:18] Sagi: It's gotta be an interesting combination. But I do think that people need to look at the big picture as well with some of these other skills for sure. 

[00:20:25] Chris: Absolutely. Now, you talked a little bit about kind of the influence of some of these, you know, community groups and things like that when you were, you know, early on, you had to figure it out all by yourself.

[00:20:34] Chris: And then you kind of found these groups. I wonder, you know, again, being kind of the leader of your own company for such a long time, were there folks who were kind of mentors to you? Did you find connections that helped you along the way? 

[00:20:45] Sagi: Yeah, I, I did, um, you know, that I was lucky and, and, you know, there's been ones in the kind of ebb and flow and come in and come out.

[00:20:53] Sagi: And depending on what you need, um, you go to different people, but, uh, there's always been folks that I found, you know, I found them all through these communities and that's your go to. I mean, you know, if you have an issue or you have something you want to build. Uh, certainly you're going to go to your friends, even if it's for a referral to someone else and getting a warm introduction, I think always goes so much further than just like, again, those cold calls are just, you know, making random inquiries.

[00:21:14] Sagi: And the problem is when you reach out to random companies on the internet, you know, who says, no, I mean, how rare is it that, that someone says, uh, Oh, sorry, we don't do that to be honest. When, when we started web air, this was sort of, you know, we were hosting company at the very beginning. And today you call us the cloud company.

[00:21:31] Sagi: Um, but the market wasn't very mature and I used to joke and say, you know, we didn't sell specific products or service. We just sold the word. Yes. Yeah. We can do that. You know? Yeah. And so like, you know, in this, you still see a lot of that. And at some point you got, you got to mature. And if you want to scale, you got to really be tough with yourself on that.

[00:21:47] Sagi: And obviously we productize and standardized, but, um, I think it's really important. To say no, as far as earning people's trust. And it's great when you say we don't do that. I mean, in a confident voice, uh, I, people love to hear that. 

[00:22:01] Chris: I agree that, yeah, it's, it's really powerful and on both sides of the coin, right?

[00:22:05] Chris: I mean, one, it doesn't gender that trust because you're obviously being honest about where the limitations are of the scope of, of whatever, you know, either you or your company or whatever you're representing. But at the same time, it's, it's a kind of a kindness to yourself and to your company. Uh, to not be always stretching to do, you know, weird, random things that somebody just happened to ask for.

[00:22:22] Sagi: Yeah. And you know, I mean, working and I found that sometimes I was afraid that it'd be annoying, you know, asking questions of people in my, in the communities I found on chats and you don't want to. Overstay your welcome. But I, for the most part, I found that, um, people are really happy to help. They, they like being asked and, you know, on the flip side, when I've, you know, just mentored some friends or people that were working for me, you know, the process of, of mentoring and helping, you always end up learning something, like just sometimes talking through things out loud.

[00:22:54] Sagi: The gears are turning in your head and sometimes you figure something out or sometimes it sort of weaves its way into your consciousness a week later and helps you and I had that experience of the day I was talking to someone who runs a huge podcast and he was telling me about a newsletter starting and I don't know like at the end of this like our conversation where he was asking me questions like I had a new vision of sort of the infrastructure world and what I want to do it was so unexpected.

[00:23:19] Sagi: And I've had that a lot, you know, being the mentor. And so I think there's, there's such a, there's so many benefits to these 

[00:23:25] Sagi: relationships.

[00:23:26] Chris: I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, as is often the case, we've exhausted our time before we've spent our energy. Uh, and it's about time to wrap this up. Sagi, do you have any projects or, or, or causes you want to let us know about?

[00:23:39] Chris: I know before we started recording, we were talking a little bit about, uh, data centers in space. I don't know if there's a specific project there or, or any, anything else you want to highlight for the imposter syndrome network. 

[00:23:48] Sagi: Yeah i mean i think what's when i'm excited about right now is you know i had a twenty plus a year career in data centers cloud connectivity and as i mentioned i'm into space i'm into aviation and i'm into space always been a geek there and i'm trying to figure out what i like to focus on in the future and what i noticed is there are almost a hundred companies.

[00:24:08] Sagi: Rebuilding everything that I worked on, but in space, space data center, space connectivity, um, space edge compute. And for me, that gets me really excited because, you know, I love watching Star Trek and maybe now I can take some of the experiences that I've had for the last 20 years and apply it to an area that I can geek out about.

[00:24:25] Sagi: And so, um, I think there's every time you think you're at the end of the runway, it just keeps going and going and that's just so exciting. 

[00:24:32] Chris: Yeah, that's awesome. So is that work you're doing with your 10 forward advisors, um, and kind of consulting work and diving into those areas? 

[00:24:39] Sagi: Yep. Yeah. I started a small consulting company doing chief technology product officer type consulting, and I'm also doing some investing.

[00:24:46] Sagi: I just invested into a company. Focused on, um, building digital infrastructure insists lunar orbit. Um, and it's literally the same industry that, you know, you've worked in the last 20 years, it's just like all the same challenges, you know, latency and transfer all this stuff, but, but apply to a completely new arena and market, which, which makes a difference.

[00:25:05] Sagi: So I love that stuff. 

[00:25:07] Chris: Yeah, that's neat. I mean, yeah, definitely taking away oxygen and gravity has to have, uh, some interesting consequences. Um, very cool. Thank you so much, Sagi, for sharing your story, uh, with the Impostor Syndrome Network. And thank you to all of our listeners, everybody out there hearing us right now for your time, your attention, and your support.

[00:25:23] Chris: As always, if you found this episode insightful or interesting or even just entertaining, please consider paying it forward. By letting others know about this show and the great guests we have on. One last thing before we close out, Sagi. I'm wondering, you know, the forethought of in 1998 to start an internet infrastructure company, right, to start doing hosting and have that be able to build that over 25 years.

[00:25:44] Chris: I mean, pretty amazing accomplishment what you've done with WebR and now Opti9. Through all of that, you know, is there one lesson that stands out that you've learned that you might want to share with with our audience? 

[00:25:53] Sagi: Um, I would say that the reason I ended up with that company or starting that company with what became a, you know, a very good friend of mine.

[00:26:03] Sagi: Um, it wasn't like, hey, let's go start a company for me. I was having so much fun just playing around with networks and, and Linux and Apache and. I didn't care about starting a company and care about making money. I was just having so much fun, like learning and building. And that's what I led with. And I was lucky enough to meet someone who had more of a business sense than I did.

[00:26:26] Sagi: And I was at the right place in my time. But, um, you gotta, you gotta love it. And I think start with fun, start with what makes you curious. And eventually I think you will stumble into how that translates into a career. 

[00:26:37] Chris: Awesome. I love that advice. And we'll be back next week.