The Provocative Statement That Built Knox - Irina Denisenko - Knox Systems - #EP113

David Politis: Our tagline is FedRAMP in 90 days for 90% off. And it's very ⁓ provocative. It's a very small club of companies that reach this standard. Today's guest is Irina Denisenko. Her company, Nox Systems, solves maybe the most painful process in enterprise software, becoming FedRAMP certified. Nox Systems gets you FedRAMP certified in 90 days. It's a managed, pre-authorized cloud environment that software companies move into instead of building from scratch. Two years in, they've raised north of thirty million dollars and have customers like Adobe, Armis, OutSystems, and many more that actually just crossed a hundred customers. Where did you get your first 10 customers from? In Knox's case, we are a TAM expander for our customers. We enable our customers to now serve an entire market that they previously either were completely shut out of or it was very, very challenging for them to get into. I'm gonna unlock something for you. That is a whole new revenue stream for you. I'd say the biggest objection that we heard was who cares about this market? Like who cares about the US government? Today's guest is Irina Denisenko. Her company, Knox System, solves maybe the most painful process in enterprise software, becoming FedRamp certified. Before starting Knox, she was the COO of Class Technologies, a business that scaled very quickly, raised over $100 million, and is now doing over $100 million in revenue. Along the way, they needed FedRAMP authorization to sell to the federal government. It was so slow, so expensive, and so opaque that they ended up acquiring an already authorized company just to get through it. Most founders file that away as a war story. She turned into a business. Knox systems get you FedRA gets you FedRamp certified in 90 days. It's a managed, pre-authorized cloud environment that software companies move into instead of building from scratch. Two years in, they've raised north of thirty million dollars and have customers like Adobe, Armis, Out Systems, and many more. They actually just crossed 100 customers. Irina Denisenko, welcome to not another CO podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm very excited to do this and thank you for doing it in person. I was serious. ⁓ my God. Me too. Me too. All right. First question. What is the one thing that you've done, big or small, at NOx system that's had the biggest impact that you would do again if you're CEO of another company in the future? Yeah. ⁓ well, if if I may, I'll g I'll give you two. I'll give you a more kind of tactical one and then ⁓ a a more strategic one. So ⁓ so tactically, ⁓ our tagline is FedRamp in ninety days. For 90% off. And it's very ⁓ provocative. ⁓ FedRAMP, for those who are listening who don't know, is the very, very intense ⁓ and ⁓ and and ⁓ and high level of cybersecurity that you need to meet and compliance that you need to meet as a technology company in order to serve the US government, the Pentagon, et cetera. It's very hard to do. There's only a few hundred apps that have it. ⁓ now a hundred more because Knox exists. But the point is it's a very small club of companies that reach this standard. And so And a very painful. I mean happened And it's and it's a multi-year process, multi millions of dollars. ⁓ it's it's it and it's a pretty low rate of success. Folks embark on this Mount Everest and many don't finish because the either the project runs out of funding, they can't find a federal sponsor or the or a Pentagon sponsor. Lots of things go go wrong. So for me to come out to the market and say FedRAMP in 90 days, when, you know, again, typically any any CISO, any CEO worth their salt knows it should actually take three years at least. ⁓ you know, it sounds ⁓ it sounds insane. It's very provocative. It sounds insane. It sounds not just too good to be true. It's almost like insulting their intelligence of like, but what could you how could you possibly do that? And ⁓ I got a lot of pushback or initially from advisors and investors to st ⁓ you know, to make that our leading pitch, if you will, whether you put it up on a on a billboard, you put it up on at a at a trade show as the, you know, the big signage. ⁓ and ⁓ and even just in kind of outbound that I was doing because I was the sales team for a while. And ⁓ long story short, ⁓ the feedback was that's too niche. Yes, it's provocative, but it's too niche and like you you should you know and I know by the way the whole world is talking about AI. Why the there's no AI in that statement. You gotta you gotta be doing something different. And I said, listen, I know my market. I I lived this problem, as you said. I I I got into this world because I actually literally had to get my prior company FedRamp and end up acquiring a business ⁓ in order to do it. I I know exactly the problem I'm solving. ⁓ if you you know, if you trust me for anything, ⁓ you should trust that, you know, if I'm running this company, I probably know the hopefully I know the problem solving. I understand the pain point, I understand why my solution is valuable, and I know what's gonna resonate. And long story short, it ⁓ you know, the results speak for themselves. It has ⁓ been a a very, very ⁓ almost like a growth hack to be able to come out to the market and just just say it, you know, and and and say it in a in a very direct way. ⁓ it and it's almost like a a i a a magic ⁓ statement because immediately folks are either qualified in or qualified out. If you don't know what FedRIMP is, ⁓ it's probably not an issue for you. So we probably shouldn't be talking anyway. And if you know what it is, you know how hard it is, you're at least intrigued. You might be insulted by how how bold of a claim it is, you know, now a hundred customers later we've proven it over and over and over again. So it's, you know, not not ⁓ not something that ⁓ is ⁓ unbelievable anymore. But long story short, sticking to my guns and just saying, No, I know this market. I I know what's gonna resonate, ⁓ was very helpful. You're probably one of the only people that didn't include AI in I know, it was wild. Serious. They were the people were like, but but you have to and I ⁓ you know, whether and by the way, that was to all audiences, you know, it w obviously you need to know your audience. And so, you know, when you're out in the market talking to CEOs and CTOs and CISOs, you wanna have one message and if if I'm speaking to investors, you know, you obviously have a different one. But but I think it was a ⁓ or or a you know, relevant to that audience message. But at the end of the day I think it's important to, you know, keep things simple and just say what it is, say what you're doing in in any context. So that would be my ⁓ you know, tactical thing that I did. It ended up being quite strategic, but it was very tactical and it was, you know, not a lot of people were on board with it. ⁓ but again, I it's almost like a barometer of, you know, do you know your market or not? Yeah. You know? And if you know your market, then you should know how to talk to them. And if you don't know your market, then you go figure out your market first before you try to, you know, really invest a lot of time, energy, et cetera, into ⁓ into into playing in that market. ⁓ the other thing I did totally different ⁓ was we very early on ⁓ made it a point that ⁓ we were gonna build our company as we added folks in offices, in office, in person. ⁓ we are across DC, New York, and Denver primarily. Doesn't mean we don't have some folks scattered here and there, right? That's the end of the day talent. ⁓ you know, I'm going after the best people I can find. Full stop. However, ⁓ it is A c you know, y you said it earlier, it's a competitive advantage to be in person ⁓ and it it compounds and having the ability to riff off each other, not every second of every day, but having the ability to to have your colleagues there and for them to feed off your energy and you f to feed off their energy, no no matter the industry. ⁓ I you know, even in government cloud security where w where I play, it makes a huge difference. Do you Do you think it is harder to find people because it's has imp in person culture? To be honest with you, no. I have not ⁓ we've not run into, you know, a darth of candidates trying to, you know, ⁓ th that apply for positions and so on. And the other thing I'll say is ⁓ maybe this is a an another piece of this I think when you're building a company that is ⁓ growing qu very quickly like we are, but also deals in very high stakes anything, whether it in my case it's security, you know, I I would argue that, you know, if you're not building a company that's doing something high stakes for its clients and customers, then ⁓ you know, the the the value is questionable, right? Like it should be really important what they're paying you to do, you know? ⁓ in our case it's high very, very high stakes, right? They're putting their application into our environment. We're hosting it. We're securing it. And then the US Army is consuming out of that environment. I mean, it couldn't be h higher stakes. In our case, what that means for hiring is that at least at this stage of the company, we're not really hiring any, you know, too many junior folks. We're hiring senior level folks. We're hiring folks that have been, you know, in their careers for a while. Basically, you know, the way I I talk about it internally is like I'm hiring Delta Force, you know, and you don't get to go to Delta Force, you know, first day, you know, at the academy. ⁓ you spend four years in the academy, then you go to Ranger School, then you go, you so and so on, and then you're on Delta Force. And that is that's I think part of the secret sauce of what we why we've been able to execute so well and so quickly and scale so quickly is because I'm hiring folks who know exactly what they're doing. They're not learning everything new on the job. They're coming in and they're able to hit go. And so and those folks tend to be in and around ⁓ certain geographies anyway. So back to your question, has it been hard to find people I mean, I'm always competing for the best talent, don't get me wrong. Right. But ⁓ has it been hard when I've said, you know, hey, we're primarily in office? Yeah. Yeah. I I feel that there is definitely like the pendulum is swinging back. Yeah. Where I'm interviewing more people who are begging to go into an office so companies. I mean it's hard to to work from home. You got kids, you got the dog, you got and just in general, like I mean we all went through COVID. We all ⁓ many of us, you know, for extended periods of time had to do that. And it's it's some I think there's a the psychological cost to not having a literal physical separation. You know? So Yeah. I I I mean, I everyone know anyone who knows me knows like I am so about being in person and I I do think it's a competitive advantage. I think that you there's just things that you you you find out and do to get like you just you learn stuff, you come up with ideas that you would literally never ⁓ never I'm not gonna set up the Zoom call to do the meeting to just brainstorm something that just is passing through my head versus just walking by my chair or walk by someone's office. So ⁓ yeah I anyway, I I I'm a big believer in that. I so talking about people, like you you have yeah from what I understand, I mean you're gonna get to a point. You're you're one of the more efficient companies that I've had so far on the show in terms of revenue Yeah. Per employee. And it's gonna cost probably a million dollars at some point, sounds like soon. Yeah, in in the next quarter. Which is amazing. Yeah. Is that because of what you said about the Delta Force people that you're hiring? Is that because this is using AI to do something crazy that, you know, is automating all the work? Like how how are you getting to that level of efficiency? Yeah. Well, let me first say that, you know, it's ⁓ look I'm I'm traditional and old school in the sense that look, I do believe a business should make money. ⁓ I think ⁓ it doesn't have to be right away. ⁓ and that's no disrespect to the, you know, there's obviously massive industries right now, particularly in the AI space that, you know, are are are burning. But then you look at s was some of the most shiny examples of ⁓ you know, anthropic most recently, right, released a bunch of results and they're they've got an operating profit, right? So I I don't think it's it's that controversial even in that industry that yeah, you've you've got to be able to prove that ⁓ you know, at the end of the day that this is a real business. And ⁓ the way I we think about it at Knox is, and the way certainly I think about it just in general about any company is number one, ⁓ yes, there is absolutely ⁓ some of it comes from the fact that, you know, we've got, you know, Delta Force. That said, Delta Force costs more. Let's just be very honest, right? Like I'm going after the best of the best of the best, and I pay them accordingly. Like I I am I don't lose on salary ⁓ negotiations. I just don't. That's not to me, it it ⁓ the value of having that elite individual on the team is so much higher than any extra whatever, fifty, hundred K, whatever they're they're, you know, I'm I'm putting on the table for them that it it pays itself back in days. So I I that's that's just my general philosophy. ⁓ I I need to be very convinced that they're the person and every single time I've ⁓ I've gone after that that person and I've been advised, hey, you're overpaying for this talent, ⁓ every single time I I would have done it all over again. So that's number one. So it's not so it's it's less about it but but of course they're there's so much more efficient. So that's certainly one of it. Two is, you know, I've built companies not in the age of AI. I've built now I'm building a company in the age of AI. It is not one particular thing, but it is kind of across the board that yes, we now as builders have tools. that are just themselves more efficient. Like I mean, I I'll take a very pig you know, very boring example of a CRM, you know, and it used to be, ⁓ not very long ago, like literally I remember as recently as three, four, five years ago, where you get to a certain size, call it twenty million in revenue, you absolutely need to be spending quite a lot of money on not just the CRM, but also the consultants to make the CRM work, whether it's Salesforce or, you know, pick your traditional CRM. ⁓ now there's like fifty different options for you that are all AI native. You don't have to, you know, staple something onto it that all of a sudden it can just do things. And I don't need to ask seven different people who I'm paying, you know, whatever X retainer a month to like help me generate a report. Yeah. Or you know, something silly like that. You know, and it just it moves, it allows decisions to be made faster. it allows ⁓ you know, just it it just it just it reduces entropy, ⁓ 'cause you have just fewer like pings and so on. And ⁓ and yeah, it's it's cheaper to do stuff that way, right? So and you and you and you scale that across ⁓ every function, right? Whether it's operations, sales and marketing, ⁓ certainly engineering. I mean, I certainly don't have to tell your audience ⁓ you know, how how much ⁓ efficiency engineering has gained out of out of building in the age of AI. And ⁓ all of a sudden you, you know, it's again, it's not a it's ne it's never been a cost saving type of mentality. It's just been a let's be let's run really fast. And nowadays, to run really fast, you actually end up running with ⁓ you know, just more efficiently. The that that example of the CRM is such a good it's such a Like in the weeds tactical example, but it's such We've all lived it. You know, doesn't matter what business you're in, you've lived this. I can literally like prompt it into the C you know, I just ask the CRM, Hey, what's my, you know, L T V to CAC for the last quarter? Like it's just not that you know ⁓ Of and by the way, that's not to dismiss like there are professionals who are like cleaning the state like we have that too. But, you know, it's just it is it it like you you you would your head you would be, you know, head in the sand type of, you know, ludite if you didn't acknowledge that like this is real, you know, and and for companies that aren't building, you know, I I'm I get the advantage of, you know, we we started Knox at the end of twenty twenty four. So it's a you don't have any of the debt. I don't have the debt. You know. I fully respect and can appreciate and have empathy for. Well, shoot, I'm five years old, I'm ten years old, I'm fifteen years old as a company. Like I do have the debt. ⁓ but at least from what I can see, ⁓ there are ⁓ pretty low, you know, there's a lot of low hanging fruit that again just makes ⁓ makes for a a very ⁓ very you know, you i it if if you're not taking advantage of all of this, ⁓ that's on you. Yeah. You know. ⁓ l I wanna talk about the Delta Force people because I think people are gonna listen to this and say, I want those same Delta Force people. How do you determine if they're you know, how d in the interview process, like is that is the process crazy, you know, are they going through ten rounds on site for six hours doing extra I I'm trying to get a sense like how are you assessing to It's a great question. You know, it it so depends on obviously the role. Right. So so but what I'll say in general is and and again, I realize this is not going to scale to tens of thousands of employees or anything like that. So I'm speaking to the folks here who are going from, you know, one to five hundred, let's say in that range of of ⁓ of of people. ⁓ a lot of it first and foremost is ⁓ you know, we need to have like like I need to have heard about you. You know what I mean? You're not coming in cold and ⁓ you know, we're learning about you cold and you're learning about us cold. We need to have been connected through the ecosystem, if you will, somehow, some way. Now I perhaps have a slightly ⁓ slight advantage on this. It it it's it's a bit of a disadvanta you know, I know at some point we'll talk about kind of fundraising and TAM and so on. In some ways it's a disadvantage because in some ways I work in a pretty niche market. I mean like FedRAM, you know, like and so on. So and and even, you know, you can expand it a little bit to, you know, sake like kind of government contracting, but it's still niche relative to the whole world of cybersecurity or the whole world of enterprise sales or, you know, whatever. So ⁓ so in some ways, you know, people say all the time, DC is a small town, especially if you're in technology, et cetera. And obviously we do a lot of work in DC. So so some of it is is specific to my market. But the point is, ⁓ I don't I just don't believe I don't care how much time you spend with someone through an interview process. To answer your question, no, we don't do ten rounds of interviews. But I I would argue that even if you did spend ten rounds of interviews with someone, ⁓ what, at best you're gonna spend ten hours with them? Like, what are you gonna learn about someone in ten hours? Now, first impressions matter, all that matters, but you really don't know a person until you have worked with them for a a few quarters. You know, like that's that's really how you're gonna know. So Long story short, reputation matters a lot. I j I I was just scrolling LinkedIn and I saw a Gilly Ron ⁓ from Cyber Starts he put something like ⁓ you know access is b is better than capacity. And he was talking about when you're hiring sellers, ⁓ you know, I don't care how many AEs you can hire, ⁓ if they can't get to the buyer that you're trying to get to, Like yes, there's ⁓ there's simple, you know, B C or P E or even CEO quota math where you're like, Okay, well if I need to go sell ten million dollars of stuff, I'm I ten reps 'cause they each have a quota of a million and bada bing, bada boom. Like that's and it's like, okay, well, my approach is I'd actually rather have ⁓ four Delta Force people who I am gonna rip out of the hands of my competitors. I'm gonna rip out of the hands of, you know adjacent companies, like I'm gonna go after them and snipe them. I'm gonna I'm gonna pay for recruiters. I'm a big believer in in working with elite recruiters. I I think it's crazy when when I hear folks tell me, Irina, you're spending so much money on recruiting fees. I'm like, yeah, and you see the kind of talent I'm getting on the team, I would have never been able to get to that level of talent without the help of those guys. So I'm a big believer in ⁓ you gotta invest to go get Delta Force. And again, it's it it's it's dead and it's dead on arrival if there's not some sort of connection that, you know, I can go back channel and go find out more about this person from other people I trust is is the long or the short of it. Ten rounds of interviews is gonna do nothing for me. So frankly, my interview processes are probably some of the most efficient. It's like they talk to me, depending on again, where they sit. ⁓ They if if i if the p if the person sits with me, they're probably a pretty senior person on the team. You would think for an S V P or whatever, I'd have, you know, six rounds of interviews. No, it's me. It's ⁓ you know, I I I really believe in the power of advisors. And what I mean by that is I'm gonna go get someone that I I can't afford. They won't work for me type of thing, but they're the, you know, former ⁓ you know, from a government perspective, you know, we have Carrie Lee who's the former CIO of Veterans Affairs. Really big eff and deal, you know. ⁓ when when we were bringing in and we have ⁓ John Zingardi, who's the former ⁓ Department of War, Department of Defense ⁓ CIO, when we were bringing in our CISO, I first of all I called them to say, Who do we know? And second of all, ⁓ you know, they he spoke to me, he spoke to Zingardi, spoke to another one of our advisors, Epperson, and ⁓ That was it. That was the interview process. You know what I mean? Like it's not it's it's about I want to find ⁓ folks who ⁓ you you want as much as you can, my recommendation is have folks in your corner who ⁓ have have have seen it all before, know what excellent looks like, even if you don't know what excellent looks like, have them be a ⁓ your your your sounding board. And then the other thing is, you know, you bring folks in, you hire fast, you fire fast. You know, like I'm a huge believer in that. And and it's not malicious and it's not ⁓ you know, like if it's not working out, you're no one's doing anyone any favors by keeping everyone in the same boat. Mm-hmm. And so you part ways with folks professionally, you do it again in a way where ⁓ you know, folks are landing on their feet, the whole thing. But if it's not working out, ⁓ it there's no point enforcing it, and that's at any level, by the way. It's just not worth it. Yeah. I was telling you before when you walked in out my my kids wanted to interview me for the podcast. And I think by the time we publish this that the their episode will be live. And one of their questions to me was, Have you ever had to fire a friend of yours? And ⁓ and I told them basically exactly what you just said, which I said the answer yes, many multiple times. Yep. And and but my belief is that if they're not being successful, especially if there's someone most human beings want to be successful. And they're not being successful and won't be, it's actually the right thing to it's the right thing to do to say, Hey, you won't you're not being successful, you won't be. You have to make sure you do it in the right way. But ⁓ I think that that a lot of first time founders, it takes them a long time to to build that fire fast muscle 'cause it is it's still a human it's a hard thing to do, you know. Yeah. I I lose sleep over it even, you know, I've had to do it recently. And ⁓ it yet it's n it it doesn't necessarily get easier from a like you brought a friend on and now you have to tell them, sorry, it's not working out. ⁓ and by the way, it's especially hard, you know, I've had to do it both in you know, this is not my first company. I've I've lived through situations where the company isn't doing well, you know, and it for one reason or another, or the the market is tanking and y et cetera. In some ways it's almost easier to do it in those situations 'cause you're like It's not you, it's not me, it's the market, we have to downsize, you know, there's that conversation. I would argue that a conversation's actually easier than the conversation where it's like, We're ripping. We we have so many gaps we need to fill and folks we need to hire and yet you're not working out and you know, and so on. That's obviously not how I yeah, deliver that news. But, you know, the point being like that that's it doesn't make it any any easier. ⁓ but, you know, at the end of the day, ⁓ You are responsible. You know, you've been entrusted as the CEO with ⁓ your customers trust, your ⁓ your investors, if you have investors, your employees. ⁓ and again, y you know, if it's gotten to the point where it's clearly not working out for one reason or another, you're letting all of those guys down by not making the hard decisions that you have to make somewhere else. And and again, it's that is your job. as CEO. I mean you you ha like, you know, I I I always say like the job of the CEO is pretty simple. It's ⁓ make sure the company doesn't run out money and hire. And just, you know, make sure the right people are in the right roles and they're unblocked to do their thing. But like that's it. That's your whole job. prioritize accordingly. The I want to talk more of about the Delta Force and paying these people. Yes. I I it took me actually probably I I believed it during Better Cloud, but maybe afterwards even more so of like the value of the best people. The best people I I think I could have paid my best people the best five percent, 10%. I probably could have paid them double what they were getting paid. Yeah. And still the ROI would have been 20 X, 100 Because those people they attract other good people. Yes. They work on a project. Everyone gets energized by that. You know that project's getting done. They're gonna come up with ideas that you'll never come up with or no one else like those people, but ⁓ for a lot of founders, especially early, especially early ⁓ man, but I'm gonna try to get them for, you know, fifty thousand less than what their market rate would be. That's a good idea. Now, of course that person comes in and starts thinking to themselves, Well, I'm crushing it. And I'm getting recruiters because obviously I'm great. The people before I work, you know, and and I think it's hard. I actually it's it's a very hard thing to to overpay. And then people like, well, this is not fair because this person's in the same role as this person, but this person gets paid fifty percent more than this person. Right, right. And and now looking back, yeah, it was so stupid. Like I it's like pennywise pound from the and so when you describe it, I love that that approach of just now again, you have to know that they're great. Or if they're not let go of them quickly because if you're paying that much, you know, it's it's expensive. But but having a team like that It's also the mentality of like go big or go home, you know, and I mean that in a responsible way, right? There's there's the ⁓ you know, the twenty twenty, twenty twenty one go big or go home kind of venture capital world of like money is free, everyone's raising seven hundred million dollars. It's we we might be adding that again, you know, and and so I that's that's not what I mean. ⁓ But but I do mean like like you you gotta under I mean, like I'm I'm a big believer in the whole, you know, paranoia mentality, right? It's not, you know, I'm I'm I have ⁓ many things in my brain, very optimistic ⁓ approaches to to lots of things, but I also in the same breath am also paranoid of whether it's competition or just market changes or it w whatever it might be, right? Like you gotta have a healthy amount of paranoia to build a business, a successful business. And ⁓ and and ⁓ back to the point on getting those absolute A plus superstar Delta Force people, They do two things. They enable you to hit all the optimistic and and and and go after the the mission and the vision and the and the targets and the and the goals. ⁓ but, you know, they're also if they're with you, that means they're not with your competitors. ⁓ that also means that, you know, they yeah, like you you gotta you you you gotta think about their or or or not even forget competition. They're just they're they're applying their superpower brain to the problem that yeah you wanna solve and ⁓ and their and their energy and their talents and so on. Yeah, I I look that said, am I Mark Zuckerberg giving out hundred million dollar salaries? I can't. I I can't. But if I was in Zuck's shoes and I absolutely, you know, ⁓ you know, for him it's a rounding error, I think he's doing the exact right thing. You know, I think ⁓ get you Just money alone is never gonna be enough for people like that. That's Like that's what you gotta remember. If they're the best, like they got plenty of offers. They could go work in a much bigger company and make a lot of mm you know, be w be a lot more liquid immediately. Like, you know what I mean? So at the end of the day, like the the the the the salary negoti and and comp negotiation you're gonna have with them is ⁓ only gonna come after them actually being bought in. Yeah, yeah, you know, and if you've got that level of person bought in, then, you know, again, there's there is a limit, of course, you know. Yeah. But ⁓ but I like this philosophy. But but they but by the way, they're not gonna ask, you know, understanding the stage you're at, maybe you're at, you know, at this revenue point, at this revenue point, at this revenue point, right? Like again, if you're what one way to tell if they really are as good as, you know, you think they are and they you're getting feedback that they are and so on and their reputation tell says they're they are is, you know, they're not gonna a if you're a fifty millionaire or a company, they're not gonna ask you for a hundred million dollar salary, right? Because then they're like off their rocker. Right. You know, like they're they understand what the maximum kind of within the real realm of reasonable is. And ⁓ and so yeah, long story short, the like the the the pennywise pound foolish mentality is, you know, way more expensive than get the very best people you can that you can afford. Push as hard as you can to Define what forward means and then go get after it. ⁓ You know? And then everyone, you know, really makes their, you know, at the end of the day, like, what are you all in for this for? It's, you know, it's it's growing the company. Hopefully everyone's got equity. Like that's really where the value comes in anyway. Right. Right. So you want them bought in. Right. I I wanna go to the very beginning. I wanna ask you, where did you get your first ten customers from? Because I ask a lot of guests this, but in your case To your point about how mission critical this is for a startup to get ten people to trust them to run their environment. Like how how did you do that? Yes. Well, number one, in our particular case, we were not starting with a an idea and a PowerPoint deck and a, hey, trust us, take this leap of faith, right? The the origin story of Knox is that I had this problem at a prior company that I co founded, Class.com. ⁓ I literally bought a company that was already doing this very mission critical, you know, running the FedRamp environment for ⁓ Adobe. So it kind of came plugged in with that level of customer. And it wasn't, you know, just for a year or two. At by the point I bought them, they had already been serving Adobe for twelve, thirteen years continuously. So then that rolled into class. We did it for class. That was phenomenal. Few few ⁓ quarters later, You know, it was very clear that hey, this is probably useful for others. And so we spun this out as a its own entity, bought the IP, et cetera. So so I will say, you know, from a trust perspective, going to the first ten customers, ⁓ having my first, you know, fifty conversations, I could already point to the fact that yes, we're a very young company as Knox, but just to be clear, this environment is actually very mature. Battle tested. Battle tested, very mature. And by the way, you know, in our case in particular, FedRAMP is ⁓ it's an annually audited ⁓ environment. It's a monthly monitored environment by the US government. So, you know, long story short, it's like I have like ten years of tax returns basically to show you like this is legit, you know. That said, even with all of that under our belt, the biggest question was actually not, you know, can you do this for Adobe? It was can you actually do this for us. We're not Adobe. Yeah, you guys know Adobe. It don't it almost started working against us because it was like, well, you guys know that environment so well. Of course you can handle it. But we're a brand new customer and you don't know our environment. And how could you possibly run it securely? ⁓ you don't know anything about us. And so ⁓ where I think we were able to cross the, you know, where did we get our first 10 customers? Number one, it's, you know, look, if you're starting a business, like you i I mean you you have to n network wherever you can, you know. And for me that meant I was calling up a lot of my, you know, fellow you know, friends who run companies. Some are in the kind of twenty million to fifty million range, some are a little bigger. But the point is you you can't be ⁓ shy to ⁓ you know, it's not building and they will come. Like you gotta go get ⁓ And so I c you know, I called up a bunch of ⁓ ⁓ friends who ⁓ again are either running companies, they're the CEO, or they are in leadership positions across those companies and said, Hey, you know, are you guys doing anything in in in federal or have tried to or whatever? And ⁓ and that hit rate was probably, I don't know, five percent, something like that. The other thing that I'll say is never be ⁓ you know, particular you know, th y I I we don't I've never used this term, but Silicon Valley loves this term, you know, design partners. ⁓ I I think it's a great idea. I think I think, you know, it you it doesn't mean you have to give someone something for free. ⁓ in fact I I think it's important to charge. Otherwise you're just, you know, you're getting ⁓ you know, Brett Taylor calls these folks AI tourists, you know. ⁓ when, you know, folks try to call Sierra AI and and and, you know, kick the tires and he's like, That's why we charge for pilots. It's not like we need your your money. It's just like Don't waste our time, you know. So I think it is important to charge. But long story short, ⁓ you you you want to ⁓ meet them where they're at. That's number one. ⁓ meaning in our case, that meant my CTO and my chief architect were on all of the original calls. It wasn't just me. And that might be overkill and you might think, ⁓ well, why are you bring you know, why are you wasting the technical team's time on this? I don't believe in that. Like when it's early days, like you gotta get, you know, like particularly in our industry, getting that trust, well, a lot of it was actually my chief architect, ⁓ Casey and my CTO CJ, them being so knowledgeable on this because they were literally the guys that have been running this environment since day one, since twenty eleven. ⁓ just talking to them as a CISO or a s a VP of security or whatever who's kind of like FedRIP in nine days, no way. You have a half hour conversation with either one of them. And it's like, ⁓ shit, this person really knows everything about this. Like like I've never met anyone more knowledgeable about this. And ⁓ by the way, they actually run this. It's not that just they're talking. So so, you know, that's the other thing I'll say that's maybe a little bit more generalizable, which is, you know, don't I I I would not take an approach of like, well, you know, the business people do the business stuff and the tech people do the tech stuff. Like at the beginning you're you're in survival mode and you gotta get, you know. And then the last thing is, meaning no no ⁓ No meeting is to is b beneath anyone, you know? And then the last thing is I'm a big, big believer in in in in using the power of ⁓ you know, driving urgency, ⁓ with external events that ⁓ just create a momentum around deal. And ⁓ I in our case that was early on. It was we we we got two customers across the finish line, ⁓ literally because the RSA conference was coming up and and I was like, Well guys, it would be a really great place for you to announce that you're Fed ramped at the RSA conference because there's a lot of relevant buyers, not just the government, but also, hey, if you're Fed ramped, like you're that means you're really secure. ⁓ it's a really nice place to say I'm really secure at one of the top security conferences on the planet out of the year. and that stuff people get it and it works. And and the power of a press release, the power of ⁓ of of of using those types of forcing functions above and beyond a hey, it's the end of the quarter and your discount, you know, ⁓ you know, ⁓ expires on April one, that works too, by the way. Don't don't get me wrong. But especially early on, that's not what your that's not your leverage. Your leverage is not, ⁓ I'm so I'm so amazing. I'll give you a discount if you sign by this date because they're like, Why d why am I even signing? You know, you you n you need to show them, you know, what's in it for them. The other piece that I will the you know, the last piece I'll say is this is more this is not about the first ten customers so much, but it is about at least where I have found just in general, if if you can if whatever service product that you're selling, ⁓ in Knox's case, we are a TAM expander for our customers. We enable our customers to now serve an entire market that they previously either were completely shut out of or it was very, very challenging for them to get into because they had to, you know, deploy their software on premise. And that's, you know, I don't need to tell you about like there is a reason SAS has taken off in the last twenty five years. It's a little bit easier than for everyone than ⁓ than than on prem rack deployments. So ⁓ not every business is gonna have that ability. I get that and I've been in the in in the other side of it. But as much as you can get away from, hey, I'm just here to save you money to do a thing you're already doing, but better but a little better and a little cheaper to I'm gonna unlock something for you that is a a whole new revenue stream for you, that is always going to go over better, ⁓ assuming you can actually deliver. And two, you are now all of a sudden not dealing with a cost center owner within your buyer set, right? Within a buyer set, you could have, you know, the CEO, you could have someone who owns the PNL, or you could have someone who owns a cost center like a CISO. Well now all of a sudden I've elevated the discussion from a CISO to the CEO who is a P N L owner and, you know, can can appreciate the the upside. That completely changes the game. And it's interesting 'cause th that I've seen now totally not my industry, but I see it with my customers, outcome based pricing. You know, I know Palantir was doing this, you know, early days, but they were kind of alone very much. And now I see a lot of the AI companies are ⁓ the application layer AI companies, you know, Sierra AI. They charge for resolved ticket, you know, and and everything, all the other stuff, they're not you you pay nothing, you know, it outcome based pricing is is ⁓ You it's a little bit of both, right? Cost saving and and upside. But ⁓ and then of course there's, you know, true ⁓ outcomes based and and and kind of sharing in the what we unlocked for you type of pricing that again I think Palantir is very good at, ⁓ but there's ⁓ more and more companies that are doing that now. Very interesting. And I think it comes back to exactly that. If you can be a on the revenue side rather than on the cost saving side. getting whether it's the first 10 customers or the next hundred is a very different ballgame. Yeah. So because when I when I said, you know, what what are the how'd you get your first 10 customers, you said I reached out to friends who ran companies. And it's actually a non-intuitive answer to the type of product that you when you say that, it's like that's kind of interesting. I would expect you to say that you went to all the CISOs you know. That's right. That's not what you said. And and then you just explain that which to me even when we first met and you told me this, I was like, that is not who I expect the buyer to be. But then when you talk about it as TAM expansion, it makes a million percent sense that the the CEO is sitting there saying we have this this all this opportunity, this white space that we literally cannot go service. Correct. And in our strategy sessions we keep saying, Well, having been through it, we'll do that when we're bigger, when we can deal with the That's right all of that stuff. And now someone shows up and says, You want access to all of that? Yeah. I'm gonna go over the hurdle. Yeah. From a complexity perspective, I'm not gonna lower the hurdle from a cybersecurity perspective, but I'm gonna lower the hurdle from a complexity and compliance perspective. And now all of a sudden you can go you can go you can go hunt in that in that ⁓ in that environment. Yeah, it's it's very interesting to folks. Yeah. Now of course, by the way, that's not to discount the CISO, right? The CISO gets involved. Right? Like that. You know, so they're they are that's why, you know, we were at RSA and we're at Black Hat and you know, all the CEO can make a much faster decision on spending that money and and ⁓ Absolutely. Every every single time. Every single time. And that's why, you know, it's an I I still spend a lot of my time with investors, even though I'm not actively raising, etcetera. ⁓ because I find investors are like my best referral interest ⁓ you know, ⁓ network, right? I You know, if if a fund hasn't heard of us, ⁓ you know, I'm like, hey, ⁓ by the way, I'm probably already serving someone in your portfolio company, so go call them. ⁓ you know, they're probably a customer of mine already. ⁓ but even if they're not, ⁓ you know, the amount of conversations I have with investors, whether they're private equity folks, growth equity folks, or even, you know, tr more traditional ⁓ VCs, ⁓ who are like, Wait, this is fascinating. I need to go introduce you to like two or three companies. 'Cause you I look I feel I I feel for VCs. ⁓ my husband actually runs a fund, ⁓ very successful deep tech fund. And ⁓ you know, I see it all the time. Like, there is a ⁓ you know what did Travis Kalanick just say, like, I don't know, last week? He's like, Look, like VCs it it's hard for them to be legitimately helpful above and beyond, you know, the check they write. Because how could know, you live this every day all the time. You you you're in this market 'cause you probably lived this problem years before you even started the business, like and they have, you know, a portfolio of co like, it's irrational for them to be like legitimately helpful to you all the time, every quarter type of thing. So it that's a that's an insane expectation of them. So if you if if I, Irena, as CEO of NOx, can can, you know, whisper it in investors' ear and be like, just FYI, next time you hear FedRAMP and someone just writes it off during a board meeting. you should at least pipe up and say, well, actually there's a bunch of companies who have gotten Fed ramped super fast for, you know, way cheaper. This company Knox does it. You should at least call them. The amount of ti the I I don't there's probably twenty or thirty companies that are customers of ours that were came were introduced that way. So it's it is a very it is highly compelling because when this when the investor says that to the CEO, well that's that's a massive unlock for them. That's like, whoa, you just legitimately solved my problem investor. rather than we pontificated in a strategy session and like maybe it was helpful, maybe it wasn't. You know what I mean? Yeah. So ⁓ yeah. But all different go to markets than I would have ass you know, totally I would never honestly I wouldn't have ever guessed that this would be the that this would be the path. But it makes when you say it, it that makes complete sense. Yeah. So it's ⁓ and and yeah, I I ⁓ encourage ⁓ But this goes right terms about really understanding Your customer understanding where the value is here. Exactly. And in many ways I am my customer. I've been my customer. I am my I understand how my customer thinks, right? Which is, you know, s very like Jerry Maguire, like show me the money. Right. You know, like what why why am I investing in this? Okay, well if there's real opportunity ⁓ to to to go after this market, then great. Or or if there's a halo effect, right? Like particularly again, i I can only speak to my business. Half of my customers, ⁓ they're not getting Fed ramped just so that they could serve the US government and the Pentagon and so on. They're doing it so they could be more competitive when they're going after RFPs ⁓ to serve JP Morgan, to serve Kaiser Permanente, to serve ⁓ Coca Cola, et cetera. What what do all of those have to do with one another? They're all big. There are ⁓ in some are more regulated than others. ⁓ but at the end of the day, they care a lot about security. They have a lot to lose. They have inf information that people want to go get and data people want to go get, whether it's a bank, a hospital system, or just a big enterprise ⁓ company, pharma company, whatever, right? And ⁓ and and people are hacking them all the time. And if you can come in with whatever you sell, cyber solution, ⁓ a business productivity solution, a ⁓ whatever at point solution, if you can come in and say, ⁓ by the way, ⁓ Of course, through our procurement process we're gonna have to do a cyber review of my solution, that's understood. ⁓ but FYI, my solution has actually already been diligenced by the US Air Force and by the DHS and by the Treasury Department of the United States, ⁓ which runs a tiny little thing called the IRS. ⁓ they care a lot about data security over there. just FYI. So when you're doing your diligence, again, kick the tires, do all the things, but also know that this has already been pre diligenced. It makes a big difference in that sales process. Of course it would, right? Of course it would. Because all of a sudden the counterparty, whether it's again Kaiser Permanente or JP Morgan or Coca-Cola CISO is sitting there saying, Well, that just seems like a safer place to put mm stuff just common sense wise. Right. You know? So ⁓ it w I we we you know, y you gotta understand your customer. Yeah. Given all of this, given that you were the customer before, like you mentioned, given all Was it very easy to fundraise? ⁓ I would say I I I would not say it was easy, you know, I and and and and I'll put into the easy bucket, ⁓ you know I mean there's like a million memes on the internet about like if you were you know, y you can leave open AI if you're at open AI or anthropic or whatever today, you can like, you know, just you know, be a Stanford dropout, have worked at open AI for, you know, two quarters, leave, put a deck together And immediately someone will give you a hundred million dollars. I think before you put the deck together. Before you even put the deck together. Just have that resume and see. That and and and CEOs and so on that, you know, just on the idea of someone s or s just on pro on someone's profile, ⁓ long story short, the fundraise takes, you know, a few weeks at most. That was not our case. Our case, in our case we took about six months to raise the seed round and ⁓ we took probably three months to raise the A. So, you know, it wasn't so I'd say we were kind of average maybe. ⁓ I would say the biggest objection that we heard was ⁓ who cares about this market? Like who cares about the US government? Who cares about you know, we're we're certainly in like a little bit of a defense tech bubble. Right. Maybe bubble, maybe not bubble, but you there's certain defense tech is having a moment. ⁓ you know, we are v decidedly very much not defense tech, right? Like if you if you listen to the customers I'm rattling off, very few of my customers are pure play defense tech companies. ⁓ now we're very honored to serve some f that are very like specific to law enforcement and so on. There's Vandar Labs, peregrate, wonderful, wonderful companies. The vast majority of the folks we serve have very robust commercial businesses. whether it's in healthcare or just enterprise in general, and they're saying, Hey, I have such a great product, battle tested in the wonderful world of capitalist commercial world, that I would also like to bring to the US government, which is exactly our mission. Our mission is to unlock access to cutting edge technology for the US government. ⁓ you know, it doesn't need to be a defense tech ERP. It should just be the best ERP and then, you know, the VA should have access to it, you know, stuff like that. So, ⁓ so Long story short, the feedback from investors was ⁓ you know, we don't understand the TAM, we don't understand like is this really a big enough problem. And again, a lot of it is because yeah, we we started very niche and ⁓ or or you know, it's it's a very niche until it isn't, you know, and and you know, you you as a as as someone you know, as as someone as a CEO you d and as just a team that starts a company, ⁓ you have kind of You know, Brett Taylor said this, like you have kind of two options. You could either go after a really big TAM that everyone knows is a big TAM, ⁓ but the downside is you're gonna have a lot of competition because everyone knows it's a big TAM. So everyone's gonna go after it. and ⁓ you know, may the best provider win, ⁓ or providers. And, you know, he said that about Sierra, because obviously Sierra's in a huge total addressable market, you know, like every call center on the planet is his target market. And then some. ⁓ and ⁓ and and indeed, I mean, they are the leaders in their space, but it is a very competitive market. You know, there's probably ten ⁓ players that I could think of off the top of my head that have like over a hundred million in a errors in that market. or you could go super niche and ⁓ and no one believes that it's a huge market again until you prove and and show that it is. ⁓ at the end of the day, you know, you you you only need one. that, you know, investor to pull the trigger and kind of you know, facilitate the round. And, you know, I'm very grateful that in both both of those fundraises we we we had options and we ended up ⁓ you know choosing ⁓ in some cases ⁓ actually in both cases not necessarily the highest valuation either. ⁓ it was very much, you know, working with right people with with the right, you know, muscles ⁓ that their firms and and and the partners themselves could bring to the table and you know I wouldn't change anything about it. But ⁓ you know, long story short, e the grass is always greener, you know, it's like, ⁓ I w you know, you could wish like, ⁓ I was in a much bigger TAM, but you know, yeah, it's just gonna be more competitive, you know. So which which which devil do you wanna fight? That's such a good that's such a good claw. And I wanna underline the taking the term sheets and taking the investors that maybe, you know, in this case sounds like didn't have the the highest valuation and ⁓ Th this is something I just I ⁓ so many you know, you talk to Y Combinator founders and they just their self worth is tied to what is the valuation I can how how can I maximize the valuation of what I raise? And I have s there's just a the valuation hangover is real, friends. It's very real. Very real. And you don't when you're in it, when you're in it, you're like, ⁓ d they'll give me that valuation. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna take that. And then of course, all those people from twenty one, you know, now we're seeing it. And we're gonna see the same thing probably three, four years from today where people are gonna go, ⁓ man, when I was doing three million, I should not have raised it a billion. That was probably not a good idea. That was yeah, there was a little bit of a mismatch there. Exactly. Yeah. But when you're in it, you know, you ⁓ no, I wasn't this is I lived through twenty twenty one. I I, you know, I that this is this is obviously not about that experience, but I literally did exactly that. You know, like basically, you know, almost those numbers to the T. And ⁓ and yeah, that that that valuation hangover is real. Where it's you know, it's hard to hit those targets because you sign up for totally insane, you know, multiples that, you know, you the you know, the thing that you gotta remember when you do that is like you don't control the mul the you know, ARR multiple or the EBITDA multi I usually it's on ARR, ⁓ that is gonna be in the market a few years from now. Like that's completely market driven and so you you know, you gotta be careful because if you are gonna need more money and it's two year two to two to three years from now, now if you have a path to profitability, totally different animal. But if you if you're gonna need more money, and you know, the market swings and now, you know, no one wants to come in at two billion. Yeah. Right. You know, it's it's ⁓ like you you you are loo you're giving up a lot of control and for what? You know, I think it's actually a very it's a l an underrated superpower to actually have a low valuation. 'Cause ⁓ by the way, you know, we we talked about hiring folks. ⁓ there's a hell of a story to be told in terms of, you know, recruiting folks and and you know, look, at the end of the day, again, I can't pay Google salaries and I can't but when I tell folks like, Hey, you know, you're getting equity that was issued at, you know, when we were ten X smaller, no matter what happens in the market, we are just by definition worth more than what that looks bringing. You're in the money. You're in the ⁓ you're you are you are in the money no matter what happens. ⁓ unfortunately most people don't maybe the Delta Force people understand it. I would say the vast majority That's right. No, I executives, you know, even executives. And you start explaining and they're like, no, but they're worth fifteen billion. I'm like, I understand. Actually that's bad for you. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. You're not yeah, ha yeah, can you ten X from this? You know, like Whereas I'm telling you, you're coming in, you're already up s ten. Like it's pretty good. You know, like so it's ⁓ yeah, it's a ⁓ it's it's it's very real. Now that's said again, depending on the industry, you know, ⁓ like I I think the like ⁓ soft bank mentality, ⁓ it's probably not only soft bank anymore, but I just know it from twenty twenty, twenty twenty one mentality of like, you know, even like Travis Kalanick at Uber, like he talked in a lot about this, which is, you know, my competitive advantage at Uber for a while is just I had more money than everyone else. And I could, you know, like literally the VCs were funding all of our ten dollar Uber rides. Now I haven't seen a ten dollar Uber ride in years. But ⁓ you know, the point being you you just outraise your competitors and you kind of crush ⁓ with insane economics and then figure it out later type of thing after you hit critical mass and you've annihilated all the competition. It works in some cases, for sure. Clearly, Uber is a great example of that. ⁓ so I'm not saying it's ⁓ for everyone that it works in it. But for every for every scenario that it works. You're ex you're exactly right. Like there's there's a ton of There's the DoorDashes, there's the Ubers, there's these stories that but there's so many, you know, that they've outlasted that we're Literally trying do the same totally the same thing. I mean, look at the delivery market, right? The Go Puffs and so on to the world, like that that's a really tough business. And so ⁓ or it's a tough strategy. Yeah, yeah. To to you know, to ⁓ again, I am not a like I don't have a personal dog in the fight on the AI, like true AI race, at least from what I can tell, ⁓ there is th the lessons have been learned from twenty twenty one. Mm-hmm. And folks are as much as possible going to you know, there there is outcome based pricing. There is you know, there are these other pricing models as opposed to just it's a it's a race to the bottom. The way the labs are doing it, you know, we'll we'll see if ⁓ if they can sustain it. But anyway, point being it is a the valuation game is ⁓ it's you are playing you're you're basically you're driving a car very, very fast at that point and you have no room for air. Exactly. You know, and you are Going up the winding roads of, you know, whatever, you know, the capri, ⁓ and and and like you better know what you're doing because and and hope that literally nothing goes wrong. Otherwise, like that is just gonna it's it's just really tough to to raise at those valuations. Yes. ⁓ What is the biggest challenge you face? I know it's only been a short period of time, but what's the biggest challenge you've faced since starting Knox and how have you overcome it if if you have? Well certainly, you know, getting getting great people. is ⁓ but we've talked plenty about that. ⁓ some of the other bigger challenges. You know, I'll take this in a slightly different direction, which is ⁓ you know, we had a thesis ⁓ early on at Knox around just pure technology, ⁓ that is ⁓ AI specific, which was that, you know, we should, you know, we we we can kind of throw everything into these models. ⁓ and specifically for us it's around remediation. So just to kind of boil it down into plain English, you know, what is FedRAMP? What what is it it doesn't even matter what baseline. Like at the end of the day, it's about keeping government data secure. Like that's that's what we do all day long. And ⁓ the way you keep something secure is you hopefully you built it secure by design. But then ⁓ of course you're gonna, you know, e even stuff you used ⁓ is going to be vulnerable. at some point in the future because someone has figured out a way to break into it. And so what you do is you continuously monitor an environment, you scan for vulnerabilities, et cetera, and then you have to fix them. And you have to fix them quickly because the time between ⁓ I mean we've seen it ever s even since ⁓ you and I last caught up, ⁓ OpenAI has hacked Hugging Face and and you know, Anthropic has I don't think they've yet disclosed in three other companies, they've they've, you know, autonomously hacked. The point is ⁓ in the cybersecurity world, it is now ⁓ you know, everyone knows we've gone from, you know, forty-five days on average to get to a zero day to hours. And that means that as so that's on the attacker side. So on the defender side, that means I have minutes to close a gap because the attackers come in very, very fast. We took we had a thesis at the beginning of Knox, which was okay. We obviously, as this environment grows, assuming we're even moderately successful, we are gonna have a lot of fixes that need to be patched all the time for vulnerabilities that we're finding. And the way we should do that is we should, of course, leverage AI and we should use the state-of-the-art techniques that were around in early 2025 and mid-2025 as they relate to using the models to, you know, basically. create agents that will do things, whether that's push a patch or whatever. Long story short, again, not to get into all the technicals, also because I my CTO would be in a much better position to to articulate the technical ⁓ reasons. But long story short, it was it was the wrong technique to leverage these AI models. Also, I don't have to tell anyone listening, between mid-2025 and even end of twenty twenty five, let alone everything that's happened this year, ⁓ the way in which you can build with ⁓ with AI, the way in which you can lower the amount of hallucinations and take them to zero, the way in which you can have AI check AI's work, all all of these things, you know, the how much harnesses have evolved, all of these pieces of the technology have evolved dramatically. So long story short, what that meant from a just a pure ⁓ you know, developing like building out an Ox is we basically have to blow up the ⁓ the first iteration of our auto remediation platform, Nox AI, and basically rebuild it in twenty twenty-six with everything that's that A, we've learned and also B that, you know, where the industry has gone. And ⁓ you know, ⁓ I I'd be lying if to if I said that wasn't a challenge, you know, like who who who wants to hear, ⁓ hey, all the stuff you invested in all of last year, ⁓ just kill it, you know. No and and and there's, you know, there's always like the the it's like a classic ⁓ you know, tale as old as time. You know, engineering always wants to refactor everything. And the business, you know, the CEO is always like, stop it. Like, stop re you know, redo like just, you know, put put a little bit into tech debt and just keep moving. You know, we gotta keep moving forward. And ⁓ you know, long story short, it was there wasn't like one necessarily kind of come to Jesus moment that, you know, me and the CTO had. But ⁓ but it was over the course of, you know, probably a quarter where it just became very clear that, you know, w we're throwing good money after bad, if you will, if we keep going down this path that is is clearly just the inferior technology roadmap. ⁓ and that that, you know, that takes a lot of trust and it takes ⁓ You know, you just you gotta like ⁓ you know, eat your vegetables type of like you just gotta like suck it up and do it. And I think at the end of the day, what what ⁓ what I took away from it was ⁓ if you're gonna do something that's such a a hard pivot or, you know, a a a hard decision, an expensive decision, ⁓ you as much as possible need to ⁓ validate that the new one is actually working. I mean it sounds really basic and common sense, but I believe many ⁓ very insightful things are actually just come back to like basics and and common sense, which is okay, fine, we're gonna try this new approach. let's make sure that as early as possible, whatever we can do, whatever thing we can measure, whatever, you know, MVP we can we can test it out here whatever that is, let's let's invest the extra time, dollars, people, whatever, to build those out now so that, you know, long story short, I don't wanna get you know, if I'm flying a plane, I don't wanna get halfway across the country only to know that I was going the wrong way the whole time. Like I I let me buy the instruments now to tell me where the heck I'm going so that I can course correct sooner, faster ⁓ this second time around. And ⁓ and that that served us well. So ⁓ that that would I would say was one of the more, you know, unexpected turns we had to take. But I'm glad we did it. And we're still learning. And by the way, that you know, we're not immune to this happening all over again. Right. Right, of course. You know, especially when you're leveraging state of the art tech. Right. You know. ⁓ but at least now we also have a muscle as a leadership team and as a management team and as a company that okay, if this happens, fine, but there are things that don't change, which is how are we validating that the new thing is working again, h h how do we get more comfort faster or kill it faster? Let's you know, and and and again we we learned a lot about how to how to do that. ⁓ I wanna transition to your background ⁓ and did did you when you were growing up, did you know that you wanted to be a founder, an entrepreneur, a CEO, a leader? ⁓ no. I ⁓ I was certainly I I first of I didn't know what entrepreneur meant. I the cer the you know founder and c like Now it's like just like cool and like people know what it is and that it's like even a job that you can like pe like kids know that that's a job. ⁓ this was not the case ⁓ when I was growing up. You know, I mean you probably tell by my name, I'm an immigrant. ⁓ and ⁓ you know, I come from, you know, Eastern Europe and ⁓ you know, as from from, you know, the former Soviet Union and ⁓ you know, both my parents are engineers and ⁓ I kinda thought that, you know whatever I do, it's gotta be like rooted in math and science and 'cause those jobs tend to be forever type of jobs. So at least have a good foundation in them. Even if you don't end up being a developer or whatever, like have a strong foundation in that. ⁓ but sp but but yeah, I mean running a company was was totally foreign to me. 'Cause again, Soviet Union's you know socialism Yes. You know, the birth of socialism, you know, the the no ownership of anything. ⁓ is kinda kind of a crazy crazy thing now. You think you think of there's there was a whole period of seventy years when there was no private enterprise in one of the biggest landmass countries on earth. It's crazy. No wonder it failed. ⁓ Spectacularly. But ⁓ for me I think ⁓ two things really opened my eyes to it. One, I ⁓ I ⁓ went to I didn't even know this was a thing. I just thought I was going to a good school and this was a good program to go to, but but I ⁓ I did a a dual degree undergrad program at U Penn and ⁓ one of the degrees was a business degree, a finan I ended up doing doing the finance version of it, but at Wharton. And ⁓ I mean when I tell you like I again I don't I I don't come from a family of finance background at all. I remember sitting in my freshman year class And someone said, ⁓ the i banking interviews are happening. And this was right around the time when the iPhone was coming out. And I was like, ⁓ it must be like an iPhone thing. Again, I just I just didn't know. I very quickly learned what i banking was, ⁓ especially at Wharton. It's a very strong funnel from ⁓ straight from the graduation post into, you know, Goldman and Morgan Stanley and so on. But, you know, l long story short, like I really didn't know any of it. But what it what it did open my eyes to was just like you know, the capital markets, ⁓ that companies get you know, that there's this whole thing of like running companies, operating companies, et cetera. ⁓ so and and I ended up after college going into management consulting to learn whatever one learns in management consulting about running a company. At the very least it taught me how to make some slides. I would say it taught me a lot more than that. ⁓ and and a very, very good foundation, at least just to you know learn to be an adult in a room type of thing. ⁓ but then I I would say the the other pieces ⁓ is is, you know, certainly the the the the world in the United States at least has changed in that obviously there's has been a lot more over the last fifteen, pen, fifteen years, you know, again, just the culture has changed that, you know, there is this incredible double, triple, 10Xing down on there's a real capital market here that will invest in people's ideas and ⁓ and see what happens. And and, you know, you could see it with obviously the number of venture back startups. You could see it with the s the growth of the venture industry, the growth of the ⁓ you know, just private investment in general industry and ⁓ and and and I ⁓ I'm I'm in many ways I'm a product of, you know, kind of growing up during that time where I just was able to see Especially how technology has has ⁓ enabled folks to start businesses, et cetera. So, ⁓ and I would say, you know, it's it's it's it has been ex you know, ex certainly it wasn't planned this way, but I'm I'm, you know, the the ⁓ I don't know, kismet, maybe you could call it the of of of what ended up being the company that I'm running. You know, going back to the whole immigrant piece, you know, what one thing that being an immigrant does for you is ⁓ at least I can say for myself, is, you know, I certainly am never going to compete on patriotism to this country with our, you know, armed services men and women and our veterans and so on. But I would say, I I would venture to I would posit that ⁓ immigrants are like right below the level of patriotism, you know, after our armed service men and women because we know what it's like not to live here, you know, and ⁓ we're not confused about like what country did did we You know, what's the best place on earth to to to just live, you know, and to have opportunity and economic opportunity and all of it. Like we're not confused. It's here. It's like full stop. It's not literally anywhere else. It's not in Europe. It's not in Australia. It's not in Asia. It's here. And so ⁓ you know, again, this was not necessarily why I started Knox, but certainly the mission of Knox to me is actually very personal because it's like, Hey, we're here to unlock access to cutting edge technology for the US government. I think it's insane that the US government that is not the sole reason why the US is, you know, such a capital capital magnet and innovation magnet and talent magnet and all of it. ⁓ but it's certainly, you know, it's the sinequan on, the that without which not. You know what I mean? Like you you couldn't have ⁓ the legal system we have, the capital market system we have, the just all of what we has. Well you couldn't have Silicon Valley if it wasn't for the US government. And ⁓ and the fact that that government doesn't have access to the stuff that's invented in Silicon Valley and then developed and grown across the United States. And then of course, you know, there's lots of what companies that come here to grow their you know, whether they're founded in Israel or Europe or Asia or whatever. You know, like story first, the fact that like they don't have access to that is is wild to me. So it did kind come full circle a little bit from a personal perspective. But ⁓ but but that is ⁓ yeah, a little bit of of what what gives me even more personal connection to like I I want this to succeed on a number of levels for a number of reasons, you know? Did you in your career have you had a mentor or some someone, you know, that's kind of helped you you know, through this journey, maybe just the journey you're in on now with Knox, even before, like have you had someone for sure that ⁓ lots of people. ⁓ certainly some more than others. You know, I worked for ten years. I worked ⁓ under the same CEO, guy named Michael Chasen, who was CEO of the first technology company I worked at, ⁓ Precision Hawk, where I was on the leadership team, ⁓ worked very closely with him. We grew that from zero to thirty, AR, and then we co founded class dot com together. And he's a super seasoned entrepreneur. He he founded the Blackboard back in the days. So like SAS one point ⁓ you know, grew that to Yeah, right. I I was like, ⁓ I literally use that in college. ⁓ you know, ⁓ grew that to, you know, multiple hundreds of millions of revenue, sold that, took it public, t ⁓ took it private with private equity. So, you know, long story short, you know, that's to me that was such a gift to work under him for so long because ⁓ you know, he ⁓ is just a seasoned operator, you know, and and I learned so much from like how do you really you know, get stuff done and how do you really grow a business and how do you be aggressive and you know, a lot of my my philosophy around, you know, being ⁓ you know not being penny wise pound foolish really comes from him because he he was always like, you know, 'cause, you know, he, you know, I very much had a little bit of a shortcut of like, I didn't have to like make these mistakes myself. I could just kind of, ⁓ you know, see it live in front of me where he was you know, I'd be like, we're overpaying and he'd be like, you don't understand. Like you are not going to regret. paying top dollar and then some for an acquisition, a person, a whatever. Cause if it's going to absolutely change the trajectory of this company, who cares about an extra whatever. You know? So anyway, so that's certainly one ⁓ I would say, you know, equally so my husband actually. So he's on the venture side. And so he sees the totally different, you know, aspect of ⁓ how to grow companies. And, you know, it's interesting, right? V VCs, they invest. And ⁓ and then generally, ⁓ people are either calling them 'cause something really amazing is happening or something is absolutely blowing up. Like it is you are in firefighting mode all the time or you're in opportunity chasing mode. Like it is a very high intensity job. And ⁓ you know, just kind of learning through him about companies big and small and what they've gone through and how they've solved it and and and he himself is is brilliant at navigating all that. ⁓ I have leveraged, you know, his guidance and his expertise a a ton. ⁓ you know, more more than anyone, really. ⁓ so I would say those two. ⁓ and then in general I'm just a big I love reading and ⁓ well mainly audio booking because I don't have like the patience to sit down and read. But I don't know, I g I pick up like a little bit from from from all sorts of certainly like business biographies are great, but you I like right now I'm reading, you know, Lyndon Johnson's biography. Like he was not a business guy, but that guy knew how to get stuff done in a you know, especially in D C where, you I'm s I'm having to get some stuff done in D C and I'm learning a lot, even though, you know, he was whatever, s seventy years ago that he was doing his thing. ⁓ you know, human nature doesn't change that much. So it's ⁓ I don't know, I think I th maybe not everyone agrees, but I I think there's a lot of like very practical no no shit advice that you can and and learnings you can get from that kind of stuff. ⁓ meaning like from reading biographies, ⁓ rather than ⁓ and and certainly even like I just finished ⁓ Michael Dell's biography. I thought that was great, you know, and well Really well done and really cool to get into his brain. You know, he stuff's like twenty bucks and you got some pretty cool wisdom out of it on your own time, you know. And you didn't even have to like figure out a way to get into the r a room with Michael Dell. You know, I don't know. It's pretty cool. So yeah, that's how Awesome. ⁓ last question for you. Knowing everything you know today, all the experiences you've had, what is the one piece of advice you go back and give yourself before you started your first job ever? I would just double down on ⁓ You know like don't give up even ⁓ when it's really ⁓ like like it's it will never be easy no matter what you do. It's never gonna be easy. Push through, find a way. ⁓ I I've as I as I keep going, I've I just believe it more and more. Just just find a way, push through. And the other thing I'll say is like, you know, integrity is everything. Like it's it's ⁓ you know, you're you're not doing it right if you haven't been ⁓ in situations where folks are gonna ask you to compromise your integrity for business deal, whatever. and that's when you like that's when you get tested and ⁓ you know, make sure you you choose right every single time. ⁓ and and and you treat people with integrity, you you you display integrity, you treat people with integrity. You expect integrity of others. You know, that like at the end of the day, if you're if you're a CEO, you're in business, it it's a relationship thing. At the end like it is a people thing through and through. ⁓ you you will not go very far if ⁓ if you compromise on that. Irena, thank you very much. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this and ⁓ we probably could have gone for a couple of hours, but you know Well, I appreciate you having me. Thank very much. And for those listening and watching, I hope you enjoyed. 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