Amir Ben-Efraim On Selling A Company To Juniper For Over $100 Million And Raising $260 Million To Make Internet Browsing Safe From Threats

In this insightful conversation, Amir Ben-Efraim takes us on a journey through his remarkable career in cybersecurity, from growing up in Silicon Valley to building and scaling two successful ventures—Altor Networks and Menlo Security.

Menlo Security has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Vista Equity Partners, Neuberger Berman, General Catalyst, American Express Ventures, and Ericsson Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Amir’s tech journey began early, when he moved from Israel to Silicon Valley, which sparked his passion for engineering and innovation.
• His time at Amdahl Computers taught Amir that successful tech products need both innovation and strong market fit.
• Seeing the rise of virtual environments, Amir founded Altor Networks to secure “East-West” data flow within virtual servers, later acquired by Juniper Networks.
• At Menlo Security, Amir leveraged cloud-native cybersecurity to transform browser security and protect against online threats.
• With over $260M raised and renowned customers, Amir emphasizes the importance of backing from trusted, long-term investors.
• Menlo aims to set the standard for enterprise browser security, potentially extending this protection to consumers in the future.
• Amir highlights the importance of aligning with committed investors and choosing co-founders and team members who share a long-term vision.

 

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About Amir Ben-Efraim:

Amir Ben­-Efraim is co-­founder and CEO of Menlo Security. Previously, Amir was VP of cloud security at Juniper Networks where he helped define the company’s strategy to secure the virtualized data center, public and private clouds.

Amir joined Juniper via its acquisition of Altor Networks, which he led as founder and CEO. Prior to Altor, he was an executive at Check Point Software, a pioneer in Internet security. He holds an MBA from UCLA, an MSEE from Stanford University and a BSEE from UC Berkeley.

Connect with Amir Ben-Efraim:

• LinkedIn
• Bloomberg
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today we have a really amazing ah guest that is going to be joining us. ah We’re going to be talking about building, scaling, financing. you know In this case, we’re going to be talking about like starting with a big idea, you know which is something that they’re doing now.

Alejandro Cremades: They raised over $260 million, over 500 employees. And before, he also started another company that got acquired, you know and also they had a really nice exit, which it was actually reported for over 100 million.

Alejandro Cremades: But again, a very inspiring conversation that we have in front of us.

Alejandro Cremades: So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Amir Benifraim, welcome to the show.

Amir Ben-Efraim: thank you very much, Alejandro.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Israel, but you came here to the U.S. quite early. You know, you were 12. So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, as you can imagine, as a 12-year-old, it’s a bit disruptive to move across the world. I didn’t speak a whole lot of English. I thought I did, ah but people didn’t understand me when I came over. So it took a while to just kind of get used to new circumstances and figure my way around.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We moved straight to Silicon Valley. You can imagine back then, you know, ah companies like Apple were just getting started. So very exciting to be here from a tech perspective ah once we got going.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So, yeah, exciting time to move over to the Bay Area and to get accustomed to a new life.

Alejandro Cremades: So engineering and problem solving, you know, out of all things, how did you get into into the whole problem solving engineering?

Amir Ben-Efraim: Again, um you move into the Bay Area at age of 12 and that’s, you know, the golden era, if you will. I guess that golden era has stuck with us for a while. Silicon Valley continues to kind of be a place that attracts technical minds from all over the world and we continue to innovate here.

Amir Ben-Efraim: But you know back then, I referenced Apple. We moved to Cupertino. So Apple was just around the corner and you know all these Apple buildings popping up.

Amir Ben-Efraim: I had an Apple II and started programming as a kid, you know, just this new ba machine called a PC and, you know, having fun with it and kind of he became very natural from doing that to ended up going to UC Berkeley, enrolled in, um you know, in EE or, you know, electrical engineering, computer science.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And I guess it was for me a fairly natural continuity of just the stuff that’s exciting around me was what i wanted to study

Alejandro Cremades: you. So then tell us about you know how you got into you know the whole engineering you know arena, but then transitioning from the engineering side to really think that maybe there’s something on the business side that was worth exploring actually was MBA.

Amir Ben-Efraim: yeah so first job out of berkeley um i joined um company that was, I guess, um on its, at the time I didn’t know, sort of final phases of of developing mainframe machines.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So it was a company called Amdahl Computers. And as we know, mainframes had its sort of golden day, if you will. I was hired for software programming, building simulation programs to kind of help ah simulate new CPU subsystems and actually quite advanced capabilities that mainframes were doing better than anybody else in the world.

Amir Ben-Efraim: But despite some great product innovation that we’re developing, all the projects I was on kept getting canceled.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And that’s because mainframes were on a decline and people were looking at both personal computers as well at the time, Sun microsystems, workstations and so forth as a replacement for mainframes.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And I felt as an engineer, while I can develop great technology, if I’m not involved in the market side of it, it kind of doesn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, like you you have to have market impact or the great products that you’re designing will never see the light of day.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So that’s kind of that caused a mind shift for me. And I wanted to be more exposed to the business side, decided to go get my MBA to be more market facing. To me, that combination of understanding technology, but also understanding markets became very important um so that led me to getting my my degree in business

Alejandro Cremades: Was it a tough transition going from the engineering side to the business side you know when you landed at checkpoint

Amir Ben-Efraim: um not so much even starting with business school i feel like engineering has a lot of rigor and um and develops a very quantitative mindset um that is quite helpful in the business administration.

Amir Ben-Efraim: There’s, once again, more of a quantitative mindset associated with business. um And I felt that that transition actually was was quite straightforward for me.

Alejandro Cremades: business side, you know, when you landed at Checkpoint?

Amir Ben-Efraim: um and and And I was seeking it, right? I wanted the broader exposure to the marketplace. So, you know, following attaining my degree, I looked for jobs that, you know, would would still be in the tech field, but had that business exposure and ended up landing a Checkpoint software doing business development.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So again, kind of creating a technology ecosystems for how different people work with Checkpoint. The time Checkpoint was kind of the leading innovator, if you will, in the emerging field of cybersecurity, having pioneered the first sort of commercially successful firewall.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So, um yeah, being on the business development side was was quite enriching.

Amir Ben-Efraim: It allowed us to form an ecosystem and not only see Checkpoint, but all of the innovation around the cyber industry of people who wanted to partner with Checkpoint. So it was a terrific position to get a lot of market exposure which is what i wanted

Alejandro Cremades: So then in this case, you know, what happened, you know, for you to be like, hey, maybe maybe i can I can get going and start a business on my own. you know What triggered that?

Amir Ben-Efraim: um market exposure, which is what I wanted. Maybe kind of family history. My father, the reason we moved to Silicon Valley in the first place was my dad is an entrepreneur and came over here to um start his own company.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So, again, not having had that that track record of having done that before, you know, we’ve we’ve seen that story now play out many times. As you go back, it wasn’t so common back then.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah So having watched my father do it, I guess, kind of inspired me to think, gosh, it’s it’s possible. um So I saw a lot of innovation coming in the cyber area and a lot of good ideas.

Amir Ben-Efraim: um When you work inside of a company that has its own agenda like Checkpoint, it’s not always possible to exercise those new ideas because ah the CEO has their own ideas of what they want to do and what their priorities are.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And the company has its own constraints in terms of areas that it wants to pursue. So it kind of felt like, gosh, I have you know the these various you know ideas that are innovative and things I want to pursue.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And it’s not possible to do it within the constructs of a larger company, someone else’s company, if you will. So why not start my own?

Alejandro Cremades: So then tell us about Altar Networks, which was your first baby. what they What ended up being the business model there?

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, I mean, we’re we’re going back quite a ways. So hopefully the audience can kind of let’s let’s go back a little over 10 years ah or maybe as we start Altor, go back 15 years, right?

Amir Ben-Efraim: This is the rise of VMware. And you can think specifically of VMware ah with server virtualization. Actually, folks may forget that VMware started as a desktop virtualization company to give developers the ability to run both window Windows and Linux on a single machine.

Amir Ben-Efraim: That’s the origin of VMware. But what made VMware famous was server virtualization, the idea that we could run and multiple servers on a given piece of physical hardware really revolutionized the whole industry and and frankly, you know, is the enabler behind cloud computing that we have today.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So at the time, VMware was really taken off and server virtualization was becoming the new standard for the data center. As a cyber person, I kind of looked at that and said, OK, all of the protections, the cyber protections and network border, if you will, is outside of the physical machine.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Kind of we’re looking at everything coming in and out of the physical machine. But the physical machine itself has this new world of virtual machines that are talking and exchanging data and network flows and everything. There are switches ah built right into the virtual machine world itself, right into VMware.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And wherever there’s a switch and wherever there’s communication between different machines, there ought to be security. And there was zero security inside the box. So I looked at that as a gap and said, you know, we ought to be bringing kind of the best ideas of cybersecurity into the virtual world.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And that was a genesis for Altar Networks. Let’s build a virtual firewall and bring that to protect us from VM to VM or East-West communication.

Alejandro Cremades: And how was the journey there of raising money and going through the cycles too?

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, it was my my first time to, you know, kind of get some established venture capital. um You know, we’re fortunate to find some great investors. We ended up with Excel, a very famous venture capital fund and foundation as our two um original Series A investors.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We managed to form a partnership with VMware um that was also looking at the cybersecurity problem as a potential ah inhibitor, if you will, of growth for themselves. So they wanted to create more of a cyber ecosystem and, you know, were able to to get into that cyber ecosystem um and, you know, kind of off to the races from there.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So, I mean, they had some good investors and backers behind us that brought a degree of professionalism and experience with them. It was a great partnership to you know help us grow the company.

Alejandro Cremades: So So then there’s a couple of questions. talk to us about the acquisition tool from Juniper Networks. I mean, first company, first exit, you know, quite the quite a success there.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, I think that, you know, like always timing and sort of market evolution, everything else plays a big role. um we We were correct, if you will, in the bet that we’ve made that cybersecurity would matter in the virtual world and had the, at the time, the world’s leading virtual firewall implemented.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah Juniper, as we if we go back to that era, there were really sort of three major firewall companies in the world. There was Checkpoint, my alma mater. ah There was Juniper and there was Cisco.

Amir Ben-Efraim: They were kind of the three big firewall vendors.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And Juniper had recognized that it did not have any um capabilities in the virtual world. where Juniper did not have a ah virtual firewall. they They had very, very um nascent capabilities when it came to virtualization.

Amir Ben-Efraim: They wanted to kind of pick up a team that had that expertise. We started as an OEM with Juniper um because they were interested to supplement their physical firewalls with a virtual firewall.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah And then OEM became strategic for them. And you know again, fairly early into the life of the journey, we’re only less than four years in, they showed up with a ah term sheet to acquire us.

Alejandro Cremades: so So what was that like? You know, that moment where the term sheet is signed and, you know, a deal for over a hundred million, you know, your first day transaction, you know, really seeing it, you know, from start to finish. I mean, how how was that you know for you

Amir Ben-Efraim: I mean, obviously very exciting. Altour at the time was quite small. We’re about 40 employees and had only raised around $20 million. So we’re kind of fairly early in our market adoption or company growth journey.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And here comes a ah giant at the time. I think Juniper’s market cap is around $20 billion dollars ah with an attractive term sheet. So exciting. um The process itself, if I don’t know any of the folks have lived through it is, you know, is is quite a ah blur.

Alejandro Cremades: was that, you know, for you?

Amir Ben-Efraim: There’s just as you go through diligence and the drama of kind of like, you know, will this deal happen type situation and, you know, all of the planning um can can be, you know, for sure a blur as you go back and and kind of look at it.

A lot of things happen very, very fast. So an exciting journey. um But, you know, certainly, as you mentioned, kind of ah a great outcome for essentially a first time entrepreneur to kind of score a big hit ah and and have this market success fairly early in my career.

Alejandro Cremades: And you. then tell us about the the um integration part because you were with Juniper for quite a ah little bit too. So how was that the integration like you know for you

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, we came on to essentially develop Juniper’s own virtual firewall. So we became the genesis for kind of the virtual version of of Juniper’s physical firewalls.

Amir Ben-Efraim: On the product side, I’d say it was fairly smooth. They kind of left us alone and and let us do the the product side. um And we delivered um nicely on that front.

Amir Ben-Efraim: From a business perspective, it was a bit disappointing.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Juniper was going through its own disruptions at the moment. The security business unit, prior to acquiring us, and had had a good run. They introduced a new product to the world called SRX.

Amir Ben-Efraim: It was a big chassis firewall with sort of the highest speeds and feeds out in the industry. And Juniper has some very, very big customers. um The AT and&T and Verizon, I think, still you know remain Juniper’s largest customers.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So they’d bought quite a lot of this super high-end firewall and and security was kind of you know off to the races, if you will, inside of Juniper as a business unit.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And then the thought was, well, let’s take this winning product out to the enterprise world. And right around the time of the acquisition, feedback started coming back that the product fit in the enterprise world was quite difficult.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So it ended up essentially kind of creating a ah real lack of fit for Juniper’s products as they gambled on a segment ah with the enterprise and and built a brand new product that just ended up ultimately not being a very good fit for the enterprise.

So um deep we were a very little component, if you will, in a larger Juniper security business unit. But a lot of the you know integration thesis capabilities of we would ride a particular integration alongside this you know ah greatly successful Juniper firewall never came to fruition because that that flagship, if you will, was struggling so badly.

And of course, with these struggles come layoffs and reorgs and everything else. So it became quite disruptive to be inside of Juniper at that time.

Alejandro Cremades: So then, obviously, as they say, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. So at what point does Menlo Security come knocking?

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, so yeah you never stop thinking, as I think is probably the case for many of your listeners. I guess I pride myself in always kind of looking out at the market and identifying gaps and sort of thinking about what’s being done right and where opportunities may lie.

Amir Ben-Efraim: At the time, now we’re kind of going back to around 11 years ago when we started Menlo in 2013. Cloud computing was just starting to take off. So AWS, if you will, was still very young, but starting to take off.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And cybersecurity in general was still being delivered as physical appliances into corporate data centers.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So 99.9% of cybersecurity was being delivered as physical appliances. Cloud computing, AWS in particular, was taking off. So we thought, gosh, here’s an opportunity with the cloud emerging to deliver a cloud-based solution for security.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And when I say cloud-based solution, you know let’s not kind of take exactly what we’re doing in the physical world and just transform that into the cloud and do a form factor shift. But let’s really think from the ground up and say the cloud offers us infinite CPU, infinite network, infinite storage.

Amir Ben-Efraim: With all of these resources available, can we rethink how security is going to be delivered via the cloud versus kind of doing it the same again? So that that was a construct for Menlo.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Can we have it be cloud delivered, but also really pioneered some brand new innovation in terms of what we do inside that security layer to completely transform the the outcome from a security perspective.

Alejandro Cremades: So then what ended up being the um the you know that moment where you were like, OK, I think that they were into something here with Melo.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Yeah, I mean, ah the onset for us was security has and continues to be this frustrating game where the problem is never over. So people call it defense in depth.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Well, why do you need defense in depth? Because I guess the layers you’re using today aren’t working and you need to have more layers because the layers you have today have failed you. And it’s kind of a, I don’t know, well understood and almost accepted standard out in the industry where chief security officers are always implementing defense in depth because whatever it is they deploy can’t really solve the problem they’d set out to solve.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We wanted to challenge that notion and say, you know what, at least when it comes to us, let’s be able to turn around and kind of guarantee 100% that, you know, you will be safe.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So we focused on the browser and we said, look, the browser at the end of the day is how people connect to the outside world, the internet. And if we can turn off malware and ransomware specifically from the internet, um we’re adding a tremendous amount of value.

Amir Ben-Efraim: You know, you can think of it as any sort of browser born or web born malware and ransomware. We felt we had the idea, kind of again, with this cloud-delivered security construct that we’re creating to kind of turn that malware and ransomware off.

Amir Ben-Efraim: That got us very excited. and We felt we’re on to something as we’re having conversations with early customers, potential alpha sites, and so on. We saw the excitement in them and some use cases emerge for that.

Amir Ben-Efraim: and that kind of made us feel, yeah where it seems like we’re on something

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us here too about raising money because you guys have raised about $260 million, you know obviously quite a bit more than with your last company. you know How did you guys think about perhaps raising money here in a different way and and how did you think about the partners to that you on boarded to ah helping a journey

Amir Ben-Efraim: i think that the early stage call it the seed and the series a and all of that was was pretty similar to the process we went through with the prior company alour in a sense that you’re you really don’t have

Amir Ben-Efraim: you’re you’re kind of out there selling an idea and a vision, especially in the world of of enterprise, right?

Alejandro Cremades: too that you onboarded to help in the journey?

Amir Ben-Efraim: Enterprise software takes a while to kind of build to maturity and takes that initial investment to grow a team and deliver a product and put that product into enterprise users’ hands and get some feedback.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So investors need to kind of take a ah risk, if you will, to fund a team on the basis of a vision and the quality of that particular team.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So I think we’re able to project that vision out that I just described nicely. And, you know, it turned out that, you know, that it convinced people there’s a real market opportunity here.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah Again, ransomware, malware, they continue to be big problems to this day. So you can imagine that um there’s not a shortage of market size. And um perhaps what was a bit easier this time around was as a repeat entrepreneur with a success under my belt, ah the the process became a bit easier.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Valuations became higher um because people are willing to kind of give the team more credit since the team has already produced a win. So so that was the only part that got a little bit easier as a repeat entrepreneur that’s had a success under their belt.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah and And we sort of formed a founding team that many of them came from Altor. So we kind of worked together before that that packaged of the management team, if you will, or the entrepreneurial team was stronger in terms of experience than what i had at all

Alejandro Cremades: So then talk to us too about the motions of scaling the business, because I mean, obviously you see here you’ve been at it for quite a little bit over, you know, the the decade, you know, part of things, which is a long time in in in pushing a business. But how has it been to going through the process of scaling it and and and now having you know over four five hundred employees

Amir Ben-Efraim: stronger in terms of experience than what I had at Altor. Yeah, I think that every phase of the journey is different and comes with its own sets of challenges, right? So um you never stop running ah and and the challenges just change.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So maybe in the early phase, it’s, you know, a dream, right? A vision. And no one knows if it’ll work. You know, you sell that vision to your investors and they’re hoping that you can build it and they’re hoping that somebody will actually write you a check for it one day.

Alejandro Cremades: process of scaling it and now having over 500 employees?

Amir Ben-Efraim: But the reality is no one knows. And and quite a lot of companies fail at that Series A level and aren’t able to raise their Series B because they are not able to produce the product they envision or lack the fit and they can’t really ever turn that around into getting customers, right?

Amir Ben-Efraim: So that first phase is all about product market fit.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Can you deliver a product and will anyone write you a check for it? So, I mean, it was very rewarding to, you know, get our first customers and so forth. um I guess the story I’d like to share is, you know, typically you start with these small customers and so on.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We did too. We had some, I think, private local high schools in the Bay Area that were getting hit by ransomware and said, gosh, your product seems great. Let’s try to use it. So we’d sold a deal for, I don’t know, a few tens of thousands of dollars to kind of a local school.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah But then we’re introduced through a connection I’d made with a prior company, the JP Morgan’s ah tech innovation team. And they connected us and JP Morgan had a use case where um they were blocking a lot of the web because they were, you know, for good reason, afraid of the badness that’s out there, but had a very loud subset of end users saying, I need to access the web to do my job.

Amir Ben-Efraim: hu and And they were really struggling. kind of How do I open up the web to enable people to do their job, but at the same time do so safely?

Amir Ben-Efraim: So the timing was very good. We got connected, kind of showed them a way to do that safely. They beat our product up pretty good, became convinced that it actually does work. And very early on in our life, J.P.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Morgan became a customer, ultimately also an investor in Menlo. ah They’ve participated in our Series B and subsequently in every series. So they became a strategic investor in Menlo. But um we’re fortunate kind of very early on to get the largest of the large as a Menlo customer using our product in production.

Amir Ben-Efraim: It’s super exciting to get there. Something that I was not able to do in the prior company. We never never ended up getting JP Morgan as a customer at Altor. So yeah, again, timing, circumstances, you know, kind of worked out.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And then obviously that that tremendous logo helped us break into the financial industry. We now have eight out of the largest 10 banks in the world using Menlo every day.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So, you know, that that aura of some big famous customer like that helps you break into verticals and

Amir Ben-Efraim: really helps you scale the company

Alejandro Cremades: So then I know that the investors obviously, you know, and and also employees, they bet on on a big vision. So when we’re thinking about the vision for Menlo Security, you know, if if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision is fully realized, Tamir, what does that world look like?

Amir Ben-Efraim: so we call what we do browser security or secure enterprise browser and you know we really build these you know, additional layers into the browser that stop malware and ransomware on the way in, stop data loss on the way out. We added AI recently to our browser footprint to be able to recognize scams and phishing and impersonation attacks. So you can think about kind of all the risks that you bear via the browser as you connect to the outside world um and just how important it is to protect that browsing layer.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We do so by enriching or you know hardening the existing browsers in partnership with, say, Chrome and Edge and so forth.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We’re not like our competition. competition It’s in this area of secure enterprise browsers. It’s advocating for a replacement browser. Let’s use a new browser, if you will. We don’t believe that’s going to ultimately fly.

Amir Ben-Efraim: We’d rather partners with the Googles and Microsoft in the world rather than kind of take a head on fight with them on browsing, which is, you know, an area of particular strength for them. So having said all that, the the kind of big vision where I’d feel like fully realized is if we become the standard, if people take their Chromes and edges and, you know, harden them with Menlo and that becomes the standard for how enterprises access the world, you know, how how enterprise users access the internet, that ah that’s the dream is that that becomes the standard.

Amir Ben-Efraim: um I’d like to take it even further than that. I feel that consumers at home have these exact same problems. There isn’t a tremendous difference between being an enterprise user and falling for scams or being a consumer and falling for scams.

Amir Ben-Efraim: The scams might be different. The data loss might be different, but it’s the same problem.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And I feel that kind of having cracked that code and you know delivering very effective solutions against these problems, ah I’d love to also protect consumers all around the world, not just enterprises.

Amir Ben-Efraim: But of course, the focus for Menlo enterprise.

Alejandro Cremades: So, then let’s talk about the past. Now that we’ve been talking about the future, I want to talk about the past, that but with a lens of reflection. If I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time, I bring you back in time, you know, perhaps to that moment where you were thinking about making, you know, a difference and starting something of your own while you were at checkpoint. And let’s say you’re able to grab that younger self that is coming out after giving the the the notice you know to to get going on your own, and you’re able to give that younger Amir one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Amir Ben-Efraim: I mean, it’s it’s two journeys if I go back all the way to Checkpoint. I think, you know, you continue to learn every day. um I think super important, pick the right investors.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So um oftentimes as entrepreneurs, we find ourselves just really being in output mode and and trying to convince every investor that we meet with of why, you know, our vision is so compelling and they ought to invest in us.

Amir Ben-Efraim: But it’s just as important to understand who you’re getting in bed with. Because these are long journeys. We’re in year 11 here at at Menlo. And, you know, you want investors to share your, you know, objectives and have that long term mindset.

Amir Ben-Efraim: You know, we still have one of our Series A investors, General Catalyst, with us. And to continue to be extremely supportive and, you know, share the vision for how big Menlo can become, continuing on a go forward basis.

Amir Ben-Efraim: And that that’s pretty rare that investors are in it with you for the long haul and share the vision and kind of really become partners in your business. There’s a lot of investors who have a much shorter mindset and perhaps then start to place pressure upon the business and upon you to do unnatural acts or perhaps you know sell out at inconvenient times when you have a grander vision.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So I think kind of picking the right investors is critical and and ought to be something that entrepreneurs really interview their investors and and do their diligence checking out the investors, just like investors do their diligence checking us out.

Amir Ben-Efraim: ah So that’s maybe advice number one. and Advice number two is is pick the right co-founders. These are long journeys. So you want to work with people that you enjoy working with, can trust and, you know, and really kind of share the load.

Amir Ben-Efraim: You know, there’s quite a lot of drama, if you will, in between founders and and teams and so forth. And that usually can be quite distracting.

Amir Ben-Efraim: So I think picking the right um you know the the right people for the journey, both from the team and the investor side and so forth, is maybe the number one advice I’d give people.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it, Amir. So for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi. what is the best way for them to do so

Amir Ben-Efraim: can always email me. So it’s ABE at MenloSecurity dot.com. So, you know, that’s the best way to connect or find me on LinkedIn. You know, shouldn’t be hard to find.

Amir Ben-Efraim: Message me there. um Either way would be great. And, you know, would love to connect if I can be of help to anybody.

Alejandro Cremades: amazing well hey amir thank you so much for being on the dealmakerr show today it has been an absolute honor to have you with us

Amir Ben-Efraim: all right thank you very much alejandder appreciate the opportunity

*****

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