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Cybernomics Radio
#27 Startup Success in the Cyber World with Dov Yoran, CEO and Co-Founder @Command Zero
Dov Yoran, co-founder and CEO of Command Zero, shares his journey in the cybersecurity industry and the mission of his company. The conversation covers topics such as the category Command Zero falls into, the problem they are solving, the challenges of being an entrepreneur, and the importance of teamwork. Dov emphasizes the need to keep driving forward, not taking setbacks too seriously, and enjoying the journey. He also highlights the impact of their product on customers and the long-term focus of the company.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Key Takeaways
04:51 The Start of Dov Yoran's Entrepreneurial Journey
12:23 From Chemistry and Economics to Tech
17:49 Dealing with Doubt and Uncertainty
21:07 The Satisfaction of Solving Customer Problems
24:01 The Future of Command Zero
26:54 Advice for Entrepreneurs
28:48 Conclusion and Contact Information
There are no shortcuts in entrepreneurship; it requires hard work and perseverance.
Don't let setbacks discourage you; learn from them and keep moving forward.
Building a successful company is about the team and the unique technology they are developing."
Enjoy the journey and have fun along the way.
Success is not just about monetary gain; it's about making a positive impact and helping others.
Leverage the talent and creativity of your team to overcome challenges and drive the company forward.
Dov's LinkedIn
There's certainly no shortcuts. I mean, it's hard work, you know. Don't get bothered or slowed down by setbacks. Always keep driving forward, putting your head down, moving your legs, Don't stop. That's amazing. Don't take yourself too seriously. Try to enjoy it and have fun. You know you're building a team. It's never really about one person. It is about the team. It's really about the tech and how unique the tech is. It's about the team that's building the tech.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this episode of Founder Stories on Security Market Watch. I'm your host, Josh Bruning, and I'm here today with Dov Yoran, who is the co-founder and CEO at Command Zero. Dov, welcome to Security Market Watch. Thanks for taking your time to tell your story today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Josh. Thanks for having me Looking forward to it?
Speaker 2:What category do you guys occupy? You know Richard Steenan is a good friend of mine. He runs IT Harvest. Check out IT Harvest. Big shout out to Richard Steenan, good friend of the show, and he's the category guru and in cybersecurity and in tech and in data. There's so many categories that you know.
Speaker 1:I'm just curious what bucket do you fall into? That is a great question, because I'm curious. We're so early in our journey that I'm not exactly sure where that goes. You know there's overlap in security with so many different segments. We're helping the investigation teams give it a Tier 3 incident responder, give it a Tier 2 SOC analyst or somewhere in between helping them look at those last mile of investigations. How do they attack those problems in an effective way with more certain outcomes, and so I could see it in a lot of different ways, but I went Gartner pulled together where we should fit, exactly that's always.
Speaker 2:We always depend on Gartner to tell us who we are, and they're pretty good at it. Yeah, I mean it was kind of a tricky question and I know that usually, unless you're like a CrowdStrike or you've been around for ages, getting that category is tricky and they were categorized by Gartner as well, or a similar type of firm Gartner as well, or a similar type of firm. So you guys are playing sort of in this threat response and visibility into the pre-threat and the post-threat cleanup that's what it sounds like and reducing risk by reducing uncertainty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's actually almost similarly. The way I think about it is your pre-attack or your investigation, your detection elements? It's the investigation element and then it's the remediation element from the correctional. Actually, I like it more. We spend a lot of our energy in that middle section, the investigation part of it. How do you ask questions, a series of questions, how do you interrogate and probe the environment to understand the full capacity of what that incident is? Of our two, three years, we will provide additional corrective and remediation actions and also detection and pre-elements, which we started to evolve and expand upon. From our standpoint. We want to get that middle ground done in a very thorough way before we can have stealth the last few weeks.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. By the way, if we did this podcast a few weeks ago, I you know you'd be still you're flying under the radar, so I couldn't congratulate you so publicly, but now that you're out of stealth mode south mode I can say congratulations. That's a quite a milestone to achieve, now that we've gotten the product out of the way and I have a better understanding and we all have a better understanding of the problem that you're looking to solve, and I mean it really is a big problem. How bad is it? That's the question everybody's trying to ask. How bad is it when something happens, how bad is it and how do we prevent this from happening again?
Speaker 2:It sounds like you've got your finger on the pulse, but I want to dive in a little bit, and this is what the founder stories on Security Market Watch. This is what it's all about. It's all about how did you get from where you were maybe you know pre having this idea, this light bulb moment to where you are today, where you're coming out of stealth mode? Right, if we can understand a little bit about that, that would be time well spent, I would think. So. How did it all start? How did you like? What were the days before the light bulb went off and you went. You know what I want to start a company, you know? Or was it sort of like years of of looking at problems and trying to solve it, or was it something that just sort of hit you out of the blue? How did this all start?
Speaker 1:around the investigation space. So it's been an evolution and the same continuous, classic problem of how do you, you know, how do you look at the most important things, how do you maximize what people are doing with their daily activities and making sure that you know they're staying their time most effective and the most critical events that are affecting the? You know the airplanes. And so it's been, you know, an evolution and a cat and mouse game through, you know, through the years, through the decades, and and today is just the evolution of yesterday's problem. Right, it's this investigation bottleneck.
Speaker 1:Although teams are working tremendously hard, they're they're thrown in an impossible task in an impossible situation. Bottleneck although teams are working tremendously hard, they're thrown in an impossible task in an impossible situation. They have to do more with less, more complex environments, more things to cover, a wider attack surface that they must protect. It's just a really tough challenge for those teams to come out shining. We'd love to help bring them along with that journey and then, hopefully, what we do can help impact their lives and help sort of up-level the security and both lists of security, of what these enterprise teams are facing.
Speaker 2:What was your first job out of college, or did you go to college? I know that there's so many tech founders and CEOs at college. You're talking about college. It doesn't matter. They wear as a badge of honor that they didn't go to college. So I have to ask did you go to college and what did you do right after?
Speaker 1:I did go to college. I went to Tufts University as an undergrad. I did go to college. I went to Tufts University as an undergrad. I was a chemistry major, pre-med a minor in economics. It was a bunch of scientists coming from a small New England school up in Boston.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're from Boston.
Speaker 2:Okay fellow East Coaster. I'm in Brooklyn, new York, never visited Boston. Oh, you're from Boston. Okay, fellow East East coaster, I'm in Brooklyn, new York, never visited Boston, but okay, so what? What? What made you pivot from chemistry and economics, which is something. If you ever want to chat about economics like we can, I, we can go on forever. We won't do that here today, but all the people who are, you know, economics nerds, let's talk. But what was your? What took you from economics, interest and chemistry? I mean, it's a big pivot into tech. How did that? How did that happen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was always growing up a lot of sciences and so chemistry and pre-med were a natural area that I loved. I loved studying, experimenting and the whole line. It's funny, after graduating college I went to work at Accenture. That was my first job. I was an Anderson consultant at a town and it was a big decision. I got in, you know, get into medical school, go a bit later on and making a decision of going down the science route or going down the technology route and I really enjoyed, you know, the work at Accenture and working in technology and working through the on process and strategy types of engagements and it was just, it was really fascinating and, in particular, cidr was really captivating my children, the brothers also in the field, and you know, so just, it was always a really interesting topic around, you know, around the household table and it just kind of evolved from there.
Speaker 2:Can I ask you a personal question? Sure, it's going to get scary.
Speaker 1:Maybe. Yeah, you can ask.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I can answer Exactly you have the full right not to answer, but I'm noticing. Dov Yoran. What is your ethnic background?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm noticing. Dov Yoran, what is your ethnic background? Yeah, my parents, both my father and mother, were born and raised in Israel and then they moved to the US in the 60s and so my brothers and I were all born in the US, grew up and lived our entire lives here but gave in very Israeli names. I think the intent was they were going to move back someday and that never materialized.
Speaker 1:No, and funny enough, my Tolo brothers served in the US Army and US Air Force, so they went to school here and continued the journey of. But you sure we're here to put a long haul.
Speaker 2:That's what I assumed. I didn't want to make an assumption. You know what they say about assume it makes an ass out of you and me. If you spell it out, assume so. I try not to assume. And did that have any being Israeli or from an Israeli family? Was there any pressure to go into cybersecurity?
Speaker 1:Ah, you know, this predates a lot of that and I would say there's a couple of things I would say, probably more so the immigrants part and I guess the Jewish part, you know, in the immigrant they both kind of morphed together working hard, and the Jewish part part like studying hard.
Speaker 1:So those were two things that were always ingrained in us from a very young age. So always, always working around the house, always. You know the importance and the emphasis on education and continuously improving and those things have been a bit I think that's more of the immigrant story than you know something specific to the Middle East or to Israel.
Speaker 2:That is a theme that I see run through a lot of immigrant stories. I'm an immigrant myself I'm from Guyana and there is that drive Just for people to pick up from their old lives and make that journey to a new country. I think that it says a lot about your work ethic and just the way that you look at the world. You're not afraid to take up a challenge, because your parents started out with a challenge and my parents started out with a challenge, and when you're an immigrant you just have that mentality of you know. You have that drive to do better and to make something and to make your parents proud because they made that jump.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean. We are given so many more opportunities here in america and the united states than than in many other places around the world and to be able to, you know, a platform to take advantage of these opportunities. And, yeah, often hard work is a major factor for overcoming and you're right, being proud and having your parents proud of your successes. You gotta say I came all the way here for you to, in my case study English.
Speaker 2:So I had to go into tech because I couldn't just study English and become a non-published writer. You know, yeah, there you go, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:All right, so. So let's pivot into Command Zero. Or at least, when did you figure out that you want to become a founder, that you wanted to start your own company, that you were the person not anybody else who could solve this specific problem that you're looking to solve with Command Zero? Why you?
Speaker 1:problem that you're looking to solve with Command Zero, why you?
Speaker 1:You know well Command Zero is not my first startup, but a lot of times you know the Command Zero side like seeing this problem exacerbating and spending time really understanding you know not only the model environment and how teams are structured and how they are trying to address this problem.
Speaker 1:We had, you know, my co-founders and I had this sort of an unbound, unfettered ability to sort of be open and exploring and ask, you know, the curious questions and the dumb questions upon practitioners. So we spent the better part of a year and a half asking from CISOs down to practitioners, investigators, folks in the trenches, what were their biggest problems, what were their biggest challenges, how are they addressing it now, what are some easier, what are some hard things we could do to help them overcome some of these challenges. And it was great, it was a really unique way for me, you know, compared to the last talk, to do it this way, ron, where we can actually take the time to ask and really have a much deeper understanding of what the psyche is of the person that we're trying to help, and I think that's been a tremendous, tremendous benefit.
Speaker 2:So would you say it is. Is it a fair characterization to say that your curiosity, along with this corporate desire, with a few of the people that you work with, and that you know that curiosity, matched with just seeing that there is a problem to be solved and knowing that you're in the correct position to do it, is that a fair characterization of what spurred you to become an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well, absolutely, I mean sort of understanding the moving parts of the problem set intimately, from you know, from most of my career, to understanding sort of what it was into building a company or building a product and sort of how, you know there's lots of roads to success. There's lots of roads to success. But I've seen it a couple times and so I know what we need from me and the team and my colleagues. Those kinds of things like understanding the problem set, how to get there, how to solve it. They all kind of come together where it says, yeah, this is the right time and this makes a lot of sense. We can really have an outsized impact on the community, on users, on the industry as a whole, and so that's what really kind of makes sense. Yeah, this is something you should be doing. You throw caution to the wind and you jump in with both feet and you go running hard after it.
Speaker 2:Was there ever a moment when you thought I'm in over my head? I shouldn't have done this. There's no time to. I can't back out and you know I really don't want to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all the time. I mean, you know in all honesty, listen, everybody's working hard, right? No one? Well, whatever, I'm always going to work hard. So whether I'm doing it, you know, on my own role, or doing it as part of an aquatic company or as part of an organization or community effort, it's just in my dna, um, but that you know. That always creeps up. That that's life I. I've got young kids, I marry. There's always challenges on the time Boy, that you always have to keep your head down and driving forward and making sure you're taking the right steps forward, or it can be discouraging. There's always a lot of insurmountable objections ahead that seem daunting, but one step at a time, and you can get through them if you have the fortitude to keep driving.
Speaker 2:When you're young and there's more uncertainty, it's harder to take that step, obviously because you really don't know what the future is like.
Speaker 2:So when you first took that step into the entrepreneurial world where I don't know if you were married at the time, but oftentimes you have to explain to your wife hey, honey, this isn't going to be a steady paycheck for a while, but I think that this thing is going to work. And if you've got a supportive spouse which it sounds like you do have and a lot of us do then it makes the work a lot better and a lot more worth it. So she can be the wind in your sails and it sounds like she has been. But you still have some doubt because of the uncertainty of the future. And so when that doubt first started creeping up, at that moment, when you're young and you're trying to do something, what kept you going in those early days? What was it that you told yourself to say look, the future is uncertain, there isn't a steady paycheck, but I think this is worth doing. How did you deal with that?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, even before that, I think I've always had really great role models. I mean, my mom has always been very entrepreneurial and had started many different kinds of businesses. You know, she ran a shop for a decade, she ran an office, she had a fashion company company. So she's always been doing really and even gosh. As kids, when you're younger, we did really um aggressive projects around the house, you know, building a retaining wall and also some other thing.
Speaker 1:You grew up pretty far off in the woods, um so, and and to my brothers well, two older brothers who had a number of startups, so seeing them as role models firsthand, I mean, and and a lot of friends in the around industry, that you know it, it it is helpful to know that you're not in it alone, to see others, you know, facing that challenge and pushing it forward. You know that to me, I have two co-founders I'm lucky enough, they're both. We spend lots of time together throwing caution to the wind and jumping in as startups, right, so that's something that, um, uh, that I think has been very helpful in in, you know, sort of just foundational, like knowing it's always something and, honestly, a lot of it's also my personality just grinding it out, going after it, you know, knowing what you know, not always knowing to do, having a pretty good sense of what needs to be done. But it is like you said earlier. It is crazy hours.
Speaker 1:When my first startup, I was single and that was even crazier hours, but you could just live, eat, breathe and it just becomes so all-consuming and so I do have to learn now to, hey, let me take a break. You know, have good time and young people, three, four hours, you know, and when they get home until they go to bed, and then you're back on until midnight or one in the morning. So you know it's just reshifting, but it is uh, it does become all consuming and it is irrational and becomes addicting, and it's something that you know, it's just always been something. It's been a driver for me, you know, to help teams. How can you use help, help, help us drive forward what to your recollection?
Speaker 2:I mean, there probably there's so many successes that you can probably choose from, but maybe is there a notable thing where you went. This thing worked like we made it, we, we did what we set out to do. Do you remember a time like that where there was a moment where you thought success, eureka, we struck gold not in a monetary way, but in a way that we solved the problem.
Speaker 1:We pulled this off no, and I'm glad you said not a monster, because it rarely is a monetary driver. Yes, okay, again, there's, there's, there's a liquidity vendor next and that's awesome, but that, that's. That's something that's, you know, fleeting. To some extent it is. The drivers have never been, you know, truly monetary. I mean, even in the last startup, in my co-founder, we'd always talk about, hey, we want to build something cool, we're going to have a great culture, we're going to have a great team, we're going to build something that's going to be impactful and helpful. It doesn't matter what the outcome is. It totally doesn't matter. We're not looking at how it has to be X, y, z or it's not a success For us. It's a success if we can bring you know, bring power. You know, bring power and bring life and make someone's life easier and help those teams succeed.
Speaker 1:To me, I know the first few times when a customer you know you're on a customer call and they talk about the product that they're using and how it helped their day, and that's an awesome feeling. Then you're like, wow, that's so cool. You can't wait to share it back with the engineering team. Here's this widget that we worked on and this feature that we talked about and it worked and here's how we used it and how it banked and it saved their can and saved them hours of whatever it was they were doing. That, to me, is always the coolest part of what we're doing, like you actually see the impact of that and that never gets old. So you know, from small to big companies, that that's. That's really really special moment when those things happen that is amazing.
Speaker 2:I love it, I love it. I love those stories. That's what gets me out of bed. I love to hear those stories and I love to create those stories. If I can you know which is for me, it's can I give people the information that they need and have they used that piece of information to make their lives easier? Right, that's really what we're about here. So great, all right. So now that you're out of stealth mode, right, there's a lot of work that goes into that. I don't think. I don't think people understand the amount of work that goes and famously, I think it was um was it salesforce.
Speaker 2:I believe that you know they had a pretty long time when they were in stealth mode, or at least they weren't doing a whole lot publicly, and then when they came out of the gate they thought there were overnight success. But no, there were. There's a lot of work that went into Salesforce before they became Salesforce as they're known today. So now that you're out of stealth mode, what's next for Command Zero and are you looking to start another venture, or are you trying to go somewhere else in life?
Speaker 1:You know, travel the world, spend time with yourself no, no, no, no, no, it is complete focus. It's a complete focus. Yes, we're out of stealth, but in all honesty it doesn't change much of anything. I mean, a day or two before stealth and a day or two after stealth hits, the same mission, you know carrying forward, charlie Mike. You know, continue that mission, let's go. It is just adding a little bit more of a public persona, you know, so you can just talk about it a little bit more openly with clients and prospects and partners. But no, no, we have a long road ahead of us. This is something that we dreamed about pulling together. We've been two and a half years in sales, so I don't know how long Salesforce was, but it's quite a long time and you know it's just getting a team together understanding the problems, helping build a solution.
Speaker 1:It's 30 years in the making, what we're trying to address. It's not going to happen overnight, or even a year or two, so this is very much a long-term venture. We're partnering with our clients and our customers. We're helping them through, we're understanding their problems, we're helping them engineer out of it and help address so, so that that is something uh no, there's no troubles around the world anytime soon.
Speaker 2:For me, this is married uh, married to this problem, this venture for sure, it's like when you've been living with your boyfriend or your girlfriend and then you get married. It's like the next okay, we were living together before we married. We lived together after we're married. Nothing's changed the same problems carry over and the same successes carry over. So that's what it sounds it becomes even more.
Speaker 1:I don't know if addicting is right, but it just becomes more of a focal point, like as you spend more time and more energy and you see more successes and more challenges and bringing more people into the team and and so, you know, again addressing new challenges. As part of that it it all sort of like a self-fulfilling I don't say prophecy, but it's self-fulfilling level of effort that kind of keeps on building on itself. Like you know, the momentum wheel, the virtuous wheel, is what I was thinking that kind of spins faster the more, the more you spin it and kind of picking up at some momentum. But that absolutely is thought of life the virtuous wheel.
Speaker 2:I love it very deep. There's always something philosophical that comes out of these talks, and maybe today that's what your meditation for. Today, folks focus on the virtuous wheel that keeps on spinning. All right, so, yoran, sorry Dov, it looks like we're coming up on time here. Is there anything that you've learned over the years that you can distill into a couple sentences that would help others that are on the journey Either they're in the middle of it then maybe they are where you are, maybe they're at the beginning of it. Any words of advice that you can give to others who are in a similar position that you've been in and that you're in right now?
Speaker 1:There's certainly no shortcuts. I mean it's hard work. Don't get bothered or slowed down by setbacks. Understand them, making sure that you fully internalize them and adjust course as needed. But that is absolutely something that you have to always keep driving forward, putting your head down, moving your legs. Don't stop. That's a major thing, I don't know. Don't take yourself too seriously. Try to enjoy it and have fun. You're building a team.
Speaker 1:It's never really about one person. It is about the team. It's really about the tech and how unique the tech is. It's about the team that's building the tech and the team that's servicing and coming around. And so I'm always amazed by, you know, the talent that we have on the team and the creative things that we do to address customer issues and problems that we're attacking. And so, you know, leveraging your team, leveraging your teammates, you know it's not only you, you're all in this together and I think a lot of people sometimes don't really, you know, see that one through and through, enabling and working with the team to help drive the company forward, and that's very much a part of sort of our ethos here at Command Zero.
Speaker 2:Spoken like a true leader, dov Yorin, thank you so much for taking your time today to spend with us. And like a true leader, dov Yorin, thank you so much for taking your time today to spend with us. And is there? Where can people find you? Are you going to be at any conferences? Are you doing any talks? Would you prefer to connect with people online? How do you want people to contact you? We?
Speaker 1:do you know our Black Hat and Big Conferences? We're online commandzeroio. We are on LinkedIn. We have sort of the usual places, but you know we're always open to meeting folks and networking and just drop them an info at command0. Which you know we'd love if there's anything we can do to help make your life easier.
Speaker 2:We'd love to have the conversation and you guys don't know this, but Dove gave me his phone number before we started the show.
Speaker 1:it's five, five five, five, five, five, five, five, five.
Speaker 2:And he loves calls at 4 am, so show him some love all right, I actually have.
Speaker 1:I do turn off my phones at night. So, especially now you said travel and more global roles because you never know. You don't want to make it awkward on the person calling you or make it awkward on you answering the phone half a week. So I actually always turn my phone off when I go to sleep so no one ever has to worry about waking me up on a message or a prank call or a ring or anything of the sort call anytime.
Speaker 2:It's a black hole, you know. Just go in and you're sleeping soundly at night. All right, dov. Well, absolute pleasure talking to you, and anybody who wants to get a hold of me. You can reach me on LinkedIn. It's linkedincom slash joshbruning. Drop me a note or shoot me an email, josh at bruningcom, and I'm very grateful for our listeners and our viewers. Thank you so much and we'll see you in the next show. Thank you, bye.