Ron Gula On Building A $5 Billion Business And Now Investing In Companies That Protect The Nation’s Cyberspace

Ron Gula built a multi-billion dollar business that went public. Now he is helping other founders make their startups succeed as an investor. His venture, Gula Tech Ventures, has invested in companies like Second Front Systems, North American Wave Engine Corporation, Cybrary, and ShardSecure.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What Ron looks for in fundable startups
• Product versus services companies
• The state of cybersecurity
• His top advice when starting a company
• Planning for success

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About Ron Gula:

Frequently sought out by media such as the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Forbes, Ron Gula is one of the leading cybersecurity thinkers in the industry.

Ron started his career in information security at the National Security Agency, conducting penetration tests of government networks and performing advanced vulnerability research. He was also the original author of the Dragon Intrusion Detection System and CTO of Network Security Wizards, acquired by Enterasys Networks.

At Enterasys, Ron helped many financial, government, service providers, and commercial companies to enhance their network security monitoring. He also served as Director of Risk Mitigation for USinternetworking. While working for BBN and GTE Internetworking, Ron helped to develop one of the first commercial network honeypots and developed security policies for large carrier-class networks.

Since co-founding Tenable Network Security in 2002, Ron has served as CEO. Under his leadership, the company has become the leader in continuous network monitoring and is relied upon by more than 20,000 organizations worldwide to identify vulnerabilities, reduce risk, and ensure compliance.

As a community leader and a passionate advocate for education and scientific research, Ron serves on the Advisory Board for the University of Maryland Cybersecurity Center.

He was also appointed to the National Cybersecurity Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Advisory Board as part of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE).

Ron has received special awards for leadership from both The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun and was named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 for defense and security.

He has authored three patents, speaks regularly at industry conferences, and is often quoted on topics related to security. Ron holds a BS from Clarkson University and an MSEE from the University of Southern Illinois.

Connect with Ron Gula:

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show. So I’m very excited about the founder and also investor that we have joining us today I mean he’s built a remarkable company. He’s also invested in tons of entrepreneurs and we’re gonna be learning quite a bit and I’m sure that you’re gonna find. His journey very inspiring so without fartherdo. Let’s welcome our guest today wrong gula welcome to the dealmakerr show so give us a little of a walk through memory lane so you were born in Syracuse New York so how was life growing up.

Ron Gula: Hi there Thanks for having me how’s it going.

Ron Gula: Yeah, so I grew up in Syracuse New York ah my father worked for Ibm he was a field engineer and I got exposed to mainframe computers and pcs at at a very young age.

Alejandro Cremades: And also you know when he came to resolving problems engineer I mean obviously that’s something that you ended up studying So what got you into the whole problem solving thing.

Ron Gula: It was always interesting I always like playing computer games building my own computers and whatnot. Ah my dad was also in the air force I ended up going into air force r o tc and attended Clarkson University in Upstate New York I really just liked solving problems. The the engineer and me. You know whether it’s a puzzle an engineering design or how do you handle an algorithm I’ve always approached life like that.

Alejandro Cremades: And in your case, you ended up a you know giving it a shot to um to to going like really to becoming eventually a fighter a fighter pilot. But then you know it sounds like you had a problem with he with high ges. So what happened there.

Ron Gula: That’s true. So when you go into the air force and you get a pilot slot typically you have to go to your flight school class and if you’re the first or second you might get an F16 or f 22 that sort of thing and I was lucky enough to compete and get accepted to something called euronnado joint jet pilot training where. Even if you were the last in your class, you still got a ah fighter aircraft turns out when I went to school I did not handle hygies very well I little little had the tunnel vision and all that that kind of stuff but what that really helped me learn is as we got into cyber security and information security. I could speak pilot I could speak military I could speak command and control and that later became a very very useful skill for me.

Alejandro Cremades: So so what happened with it with with a hi gs I mean for the people that are that are listening what what is that about I mean probably the people that are listening that have seen the movie top gun and and how they do like this crazy stuff and and what that puts the body through I mean what? what? what were you experiencing with it. Why Why couldn’t you take it.

Ron Gula: So when you’re when you’re on a roller coast bureau you might be hitting 3 gs maybe maybe three and a half or 4 and you know that’s what the general public feels when you’re in ah, an airplane like that you might be hitting 6 7 eight g’s I was actually only doing something really low like four and a half five G’s and I was experiencing the tunnel vision now unlike a rollercoaster where you might go down and do a turn It’s a quick turn if you’re actually turning aircraft around. You might be pulling gees for 5 seconds 10 seconds 20 seconds long and that’s what causes the tunnel vision where you lose vision in the eyes and what really what’s happening is the blood’s draining from your brain.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow! So um, as they say one door closes and another one opens and the one that opened for you is one that you know really played a ah massive role in your career because that’s you know, Basically what you have dedicated yourself to which is Cyber Security. So. How do you all of a sudden enter the Cybersecurity world.

Ron Gula: It was. It was a couple steps so when you leave the flight program. You know the air force wants to make sure you land somewhere good and I was and like an electrical engineer so I got involved in communications I got to learn a lot about how telephones work. How computer networks work. How how the internet would work. This was really when the birth of the internet was happening websites didn’t exist when I was doing this in the early early 90 s and whatnot and I had a couple tours in the air force and my last tour was at the national security agency. Where I had read the puzzle palace and I had read the the cuckoo’s egg from Klitskol and there were various groups mentioned at the and nsa I sought out a post to work there and I eventually became a penetration tester where my job was to test the security. Of ah various classified and unclassified government and Dod networks.

Alejandro Cremades: And that was the immediate step for you to take a leap of faith and enter the world of Entrepreneurship. So Why were they triggering events for you to say you know what I’m going to start this thing and also starting it. With who is your wife So I mean quite ah quite a journey.

Ron Gula: that’s that’s ah that’s well said so when I got out of the the service I took a job with with bbnbbn is credited for you know, creating the the internet as we know it and it was really in a government services role which I’m based in Maryland this is a very popular thing around Dc where technical consultants you know provide software services mission support to various government agencies and while I was there I was rapidly developing all sorts of technology precursors to intrusion detection work precursors to a wide variety of stuff. While there I got recruited to work for a cloud startup called us interneting I worked there for just just just under 2 years and while there my job was to defend the network from attackers and I was working with some leading intrusion detection technology. It was internet security systems. And these attackers were bypassing it and I came home one day and I asked Cindy my wife could we start a company where I was able to develop a next generation intrusion detection system and we ended up founding network security wizards together and running it as a husband and wife actually I worked for her for that company.

Alejandro Cremades: And 1 thing that is say really incredible. There is that you guys were pushing that for about a year fully bootstrapped and then you ended up getting the company Ac acquiredre I guess before we go into the into that process of of getting the the company Ac acquired I want to ask you 1 thing here that that comes to mind and. You know there is this book called the founder’s dilemma and on that book the the author talks about you know what? it’s like to work with family members and sometimes you know people becoming ineffective in that relationship because they don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings. Obviously in this case, you guys you know have been very successful working together. So what would you say are the ingredients behind that success I mean is it like some level of communication that you use at the office and at the home or or how do you go about that.

Ron Gula: So a lot of communication I mean any marriage I think you have to have continual effort to you know it’s not it’s not easy you got to keep putting stuff into it and then when you’re doing work together. It’s the same thing you have to have that communication. How do you resolve problems. In our case, we like cigars we like wine. And ah, you know that kind of grew into you know, being able to talk out different types of things whether it’s life goals like when we want to do with this company or should we hire 1 more person and spend you know some money and take risks together. So. Ah, really believe that that is something that we we need to talk about more about now it is a risk for companies. It is a risk for that. Ah that you know people do fall out of favor and love with each other and but whether it’s a husband and wife team a father son team 2 twin brothers. I’ve seen a wide variety of family relationships and you know the ones that work great tend to work really great and I’m really lucky to be within it.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing now now obviously for you guys you know, fantastic outcome. You know in the double digit millions and they fully bootstrap I guess what was that process like of of going through a transaction because this was your first company to first company first exit you know is is remarkable. So what was that process like.

Ron Gula: Well, there, there’s a couple lessons we learned from that. So. So first all we didn’t raise any outside capital and I didn’t know we were supposed to do that I thought you know you’re supposed to make a product sell the product you know exchange that product for for capital from your from your customers and. Reinvest that in the company right? That’s kind of what I thought was was supposed to happen so we never really raised any outside capital and then you know we started looking at various economic development things and it just wasn’t Maryland wasn’t set up for that like it is now because the internet was something very new cybersecurity was something ah very very new. So we started getting offers from like name brand you know leading companies. We. We had a competitive product and we ended up taking a deal with and terra’ networks and it was sort of like a competitor to Cisco. It was ah a spin out of the cableron. Ah ah, route switch company for. People who are study internet technology history and whatnot and I always felt that network security should be part of your network and that was one of the big reasons that that we went with that even though we had offers from like antivirus companies and ah you know, newer star ups at in the in the area that had raised more money.

Alejandro Cremades: So what kind of disability. Do you think that gave you into the full cycle of starting building scaling and exiting a business.

Ron Gula: At the time in terrac’ networks I believe it had maybe a couple thousand employees but it was sophisticated enough to have things like 2 wo-tiered channel just twotiered channel support on 2 wo-tiered support ah selling through the channel. You know, ah things like ah you know help desk in Ireland so we were exposed to what I felt was a fairly sophisticated type of company that wasn’t necessarily 100000 behemoth person like ah like a Cisco or a Microsoft so we got to observe kind of what for our tastes worked really well. And what? what didn’t and I would kind of tell you if there’s one secret to to my success I’ve always I’ve had so much opportunity to kind of learn from different people and kind of take different things that I liked or didn’t like from ah situations that I was in so there’s a lot of stuff that interraes did that I was really really happy about and. Actually brought a lot of those things to tenable.

Alejandro Cremades: So Then let’s talk about tenable because you did your as they say in ah in a fun way. The vesting and resting right completing the acquisition the integration and then as they say an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur. So at what point do you realize hey I think it’s time and I think that this problem is. Meaningful enough for me to to go at it.

Ron Gula: So the the problem we solved at network security wizards was detecting attackers on the network and we would just report hey you had an attacker and maybe it’s in server 32 and you need to go fix it and respond to it tenable. We wanted to start a company that would be a lot more proactive. That it would scan all of your assets all of your computers all of your websites and give you a list of all of your potential problems whether it was a compliance problem whether it was ah a hacker whether it was a vulnerability and whatnot and it turns out that the person who led the acquisition from terraces to buy network secure to wizards his name was Jack Huffard so we developed ah a really good working relationship and we had a number of conversations and we decided to start tenable network security and tenable means obtainable and defendable and who wouldn’t want obtainable and defendable network security and for folks who aren’t necessarily in cyber security. Is a big problem. People will kind of patch all the computers. Ah, you know, maybe secure the network and then they go and they do their business and maybe six months later six days later 6 hours later something makes a change and your network is now vulnerable so you know this concept of having a. You know, obtainable and defendable network security was something that was really really popular from day 1.

Alejandro Cremades: So how were you guys making money at tenable.

Ron Gula: So when we started out we had with 3 founders of myself. There’s Jack Hoppper and Renat Darris and Renat was the founder of an open source project called nessus nesa had a fairly large user community and nesus was focused on the practitioner. Could show you how to plug nesses into a network do a scan get a report and it’s all about you if you want to take that data and bring it to the boardroom. You need a whole variety of other things you need compliance framework’s reporting. Maybe you want to do this in a continuous manner. Maybe there’s foreign language support. So we built a commercial company basically around the concept of using nessis to do the detecting and scanning tenable calls it cyber exposure these days because now it means phones and cloud and many many other things. And so day one we started making money by having management software for Nasa and a wide variety of ah commercial support for it.

Alejandro Cremades: I Mean in this case, you guys say did it the right way you know versus you know one thing that we’ve seen now in in the market is companiess that we’re doing very well then they ended up being pushed to raising a bunch of money and then now when this macro environment kicks in then all of a sudden. The ones that were good companies. They’re and they’re not so good anymore right? and it’s now back to the cash flow side of things. It sounds like you guys were you know, very good on the cash flow side of things and and you push that you know very nicely. So How did you guys have that in mind you know as us. As part of the way of of the execution and and yeah, tell us a little bit more about that.

Ron Gula: Yeah, so we started this in the early two thousand s and for your listeners today. The concept of buying software and and and owning that software is a very foreign thing right? Everything subscription now. But back in the early 2000 you sold basically a perpetual license. And you had a residual maintenance of this concept of software as a service just really hadn’t caught on yet so we started getting fairly large um ah contracts from government agencies, commercial agencies and we were able to to by the time we did our first fundraise we were able to actually have $50,000,000 in bank when we did our first fifty million dollars investment from excel partners and the main reason we did that is because we were kind of getting categorized as this like East Coast government services type of solution. What in fact, we were an international. You know we are actually on every continent believe it or not including Antarctica there’s people down there scanning you know networks and in the snow and ice and whatnot. But you know we wanted to really kind of break out of that plus where we were based out in Maryland we had an issue that we couldn’t attract talent to come work for us. Typical entrepreneur working for the and nsa working for the social security administration working for Northrop Ruman look working for you know Lockhe Martin they’re not going to believe and go join a 50 person company. They’re going to view that as a very very risky type of thing. So one of the reasons we did. The fundraise was to look a little bit more.

Ron Gula: Ah, support to to take some of that risk of joining us off Anyway, we did that and we were really really happy with the outcome and the relationship we have with excel partners.

Alejandro Cremades: Because all in all, ah prior to going public. How much did the company raise.

Ron Gula: We we raised a little bit of friends and family. You know we had. You know you’re talking less than a few million dollars I I don’t have the numbers in front me, but it wasn’t a whole lot. 1 of the benefits that we had is that from selling network security wizards early on. We were able to kind of fund the company when we you know when we hit a bumper here. We had some cash flow issues that sort of thing a modern company might have a line of credit possibly from Silicon Valley bank you know that sort of thing today but but in the early two thousand s you know we were kind of floating that.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, oh yeah.

Ron Gula: And then once we got cash flow positive It gave it. You know gives really really the discipline to kind of think about every expense and whatnot.

Alejandro Cremades: So So so for you guys too. I mean it was really incredible that the most of the money that that that he was Raised. You know it was ultimately mostly secondary so tell us about you know, especially for the people that are listening what is secondary and. Why did you guys do so much. Secondary.

Ron Gula: Yeah, so they without raising a whole lot of money typical. Typically if you if you’re not going to go start a company today. We have an idea and maybe it takes 10 engineers and 2 years to build this. We might go raise $10000000 build the product and before day one you know we’ve we’ve already got $10000000 on the books. And um, you know there’s some valuation. Maybe we haven’t even sold it at at that point so that’s a direct investment where the company issues stock now secondary is is different secondary is when you take the stock that you already have and you sell it to somebody you literally give them the stock. The company doesn’t issue any new stock. Now they might pay more than what your stock is worth on paper and that might give your company a much higher valuation but that also might take some of your employees and allow them to sell stock to buy a home to buy a car to pay off college. And we had that moment where we pulled all of our employees together. We kind of told them what was going on and we basically said look if you want to you can sell a secondary stock and we actually created some millionaires that day and you know and that was a very interesting time and it’s something I would tell anybody who’s an entrepreneur or founder. They should be aspiring to do. That create a company. That’s so good that um, you know your employees are going to benefit directly from it.

Alejandro Cremades: And also what was the what was the process. You know that journey of going public I’m sure that was say you know quite a quite an amazing journey for you too.

Ron Gula: Yeah, so to be specific I I left when I was ceo ummit uran took over he was previously coming from ah the Rsa corporation and going back to network security wizards he had run a company called riptech that managed the dragon intrusion detection system. They had a long history together. And you know, ah ummit was hired to basically grow the company and take it took it public I got to be right there when we were ringing the bell on the Nasdaq which was kind of cool but a lot of the hard work of going public like that you know there’s a lot of different compliance regulations a lot of road shows you got to do I didn’t participate in that. So you know Steve Vince the cfo of the company Jack Hoffer the rest of the board they take it. They take a lot of the credit for for doing that but setting up the company all the work that we did you know over the past sixteen years while was Ceo Cto was really built the platform to make that happen.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in your case, you were Ceo and Ceo for 16 years I mean typically people would break those into 2 different buckets and have you know other people coming in and and taking that robot in your case doing both. I mean that sounds like a lot of work and also like complete different work. So why did you take that on upon yourself.

Ron Gula: Well I had a lot I had a lot of help and I think you know the cto position in many ways is a very public facing ah position and you know the technical brains of tenable was renot Darris and Renat did a great job. Not only keeping Nasa at the leading edge. Of ah, you know whether it’s ah a windows laptop a mac laptop your iphone. You know some server that you just bought from Google and Google cloud Nessus was always like a year or two ahead of what the market needed and a lot of that was renot’s reaut’s vision of execution of what we would fund. Even like like different types of research projects of that. So my point there is like I had the titles and it was pretty cool to go to a bank or like the dod and and and talk fairly technically about what they were doing and understand their feedback and those titles really allowed me to kind of have. Direct meetings with potential clients that are both technical and nature but also with the procurement people who are like okay, if we’re going to spend money with with tenable what is tenemo going to do for us over the next couple you know couple years and whatnot so I liked having both of those titles now a lot of times if you have a technical founder. They’re not necessarily super good at the business side of things pricing things marketing things and I think over to the 16 years I was I was at the Helm at tenable we had plenty of opportunities that you know I’ll just say that I learned from when it comes to like naming products or you know, bringing things to market and whatnot.

Ron Gula: But it was really unique to have both of those titles but I couldn’t have done it without everybody else who was working accountable.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. That’s incredible now Tenable you know I believe that right now the market copy is around 5,000,000,000 So what? an incredible journey. What? ah. An amazing. You know feeling to be able to look back and to know that you’ve created that incredible amount of Value. You know all those employees that they have been successful to in their own way and their own nature and tell us about you know at that point where it’s time to turn page and you know switch chapters.

Ron Gula: So I always wanted to do investing I was very enamored with the process that we fundraised at tenable so we raised from excel partners and insight and you know I was very impressed with their operations and what they did. But there’s this concept of seed investing. Where you maybe invest a little bit. You give a little bit of advice and we got series a’s and series b’s and whatnot. We did a few investments while I was Ceo at tenable and you know 2 of them did not go well we lost money on them and one of them was was threat. It was actually ah I meet uran’s brother doug. And we had invested in that we actually had made more return on that because they were acquired by ah by Cisco and we said look we can this is something I think we can do full-time and so Cindy and I said let’s we’re going to start a company. We come up with gula tech adventures not not ventures. But basically we are doing primarily investing under ragula tech adventures a little bit of philanthropy. We run these million dollar competitive grant competitions in cybersecurity and we do a lot of I just think we’re available to do a lot of policy work. We don’t have full. Ah, um. Ah, policy thing or think tank but we get we get to participate in a wide variety of state and Washington Dc level interactions about cyber policy and Cybertech technology.

Alejandro Cremades: Why say the Cyber world So important to you run.

Ron Gula: Well cybers cyrus very interesting I it’s it’s I don’t think we’re done yet like if if we were done with tenable. We couldn’t retire didn’t have to kind of there’s so much that we have to do as a society to fix cybersecurity. There’s a couple things. 1 the average person still doesn’t understand how the internet works how computers work how their phones work if they don’t understand that certainly our politicians don’t understand that and we live in a free society so we have these other societies out there China and Russia that are not free societies. I think we actually have a huge potential to have big problems in cyber security. Whether it comes down to like election fraud or personal privacy or you know our foreign governments going to be wherever you are on these types of policies and technology arguments. Typically you’re not in the trenches so we have these big problems that are out there so we want to be very very active with this. We call this broader concept of cybersecurity. We call it data care and we call it data care because I think the average person can understand how healthcare works. Probably have life insurance. they’ probably been to a clinic. They probably get some sort of medication but they also know that if they break their leg. They have to go to the emergency room. We don’t have any of those type of things when it comes to the cyber side. So if you’re thinking about going to a job in cyber security, you’re thinking you know what is the right thing to do at a board level.

Ron Gula: For cyphership the average person just doesn’t deal with all these different things we’re trying to make it a little bit more personal and a little bit easier for the average citizen to understand their role in this in this technology struggle.

Alejandro Cremades: And and going back to Goa Tech Adventures I mean how how much how much investments have you guys done today. So.

Ron Gula: So we’ve done right now we have about 30 active investments. We’ve had about 1516 I think exits that have happened and actively involved with with a wide variety of companies were only and I think one company where they were like they’re the only investor usually raco investsting. Some of the leading cybersec security funds that are out there but we’re very very active and we tend to invest in companies that we feel give you a secure by design outcome or bring what I consider traditional cyber security hygiene and hunting to new markets like s and b and small. You know small business. Managed service providers that type of thing.

Alejandro Cremades: So what does an active investor mean especially for the people listening.

Ron Gula: We we ask people 5 questions we ask them. You know what problem do you solve and how do you solve it a lot of times you know people confuse those 2 answers but they’re 2 separate answers. We want to see you know what some sort of proof that that they know what they’re talking about. We want to see some sort of plan if they’re asking us for money for engagement. You know what? what are they going to get for for that. But the fit thing we ask them is is what what kind of outcome. Do they want and this is really hard for people to do because if it’s your first time at bat if it’s your first time as an entrepreneur hey great. You might want to go change the world. Um, that that might be not hum humble enough. You know for some of the stars on the other hand people could be very not aggressive. Say oh you know I want to grow a company and sell it the first chance I get you know so trying to find a balance where a founder is working on a problem that not only can we help but their vision of success. Is something that we want to support that’s that’s really really hard and you know a lot of the founders. We’re working with have visions like that and we try to work with them every day.

Alejandro Cremades: So I’m sure that there’s a lot of people listening right? now you know the other day. For example I was speaking with someone and he was like oh my god you know I I was listening to your show with this a guest and that inspired me to start my own company. You know and and right now I mean the guy has raised over one hundred millions I mean it. It was incredible to hear that. So without a doubt. There’s people right now listening to us Ron that are thinking about starting their own company. So for those people that are perhaps you know having some thoughts you know around around this what kind of tips would you give them around. You know how to think about starting a company and ah, what should that be.

Ron Gula: Yeah, a couple couple tips. So the first thing if it’s going to be some sort of technology or software company. You have to kind of decide. Are you going to do a services company where you going to do some sort of product technology company now. The services company you’re typically typically selling people.

Alejandro Cremades: Or what could that be.

Ron Gula: Consulting maybe a retainer but your company is ultimately going to be driven based on the number of employees you have not the number of customers. You have the number of employees you have because people are hard to find you know good people are hard to find then you will be in demand on the other hand. If you go to a technology company where you have to develop this company. You have some some costs and you need to kind of bring a technology to market. You have this risk that you need to develop your technology before you go all the way out. So I tell a lot of people especially on the East Coast who have done services business. If you’re comfortable with the mechanics of running a business take a chance. You know, try to work on a technology or some sort of problem that people are willing to pay for and do that because if you do that you will be rewarded much much much more further versus services companies most services companies are acquired for. 2 x to 3 x of the revenue whereas product and technology companies can be acquired for much much more more than that.

Alejandro Cremades: Now Imagine if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world. You know where were you and Andindy your wife you know, wake up in a world where the vision of Gula take adventures is fully realized what does that world look like.

Ron Gula: Wow I think it would look like a lot like star trek where you really don’t see cyberurity issues in Startrek unless it’s a plot device right? Picard never loses hiss password or everything is voice place identified and and and whatnot and that’s kind of the future I think we need to be building. I kind of think we’re heading in the right direction I still think we have a lot more threats to our success right now than than going you know, right? now we recently had ah the Biden administration put out the national cyccber security strategy. It’s a good strategy I I kind of describe it as. You know we’re the Titanic heading towards an iceberg and we’re starting to turn right now. Is it going to be enough. We’ll see because every time we kind of do something right? We kind of bring more technology that that compensates it and past twenty years of my my history working with with the government. We’re always like 5 years too late you know only a framework about securing computers. It doesn’t mention phones. You know if you read the the cyber security strategy. There’s a lot of stuff in there. It doesn’t talk about and you know these are things that are growing really really fast. For example, artificial intelligence. So. I don’t think we’re ever going to get to the state where things are solved things are getting better but it’s really hard to count those things. So it’s good thing good thought exercise but I don’t I don’t think I’m going to wake up anytime soon and the visions can be realized. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Sounds like a lot of work ahead. Run. so so I guess same imagine if I was to put you now into a time machine so we were talking about the future now we’re gonna talk about the past but with a lens of reflection I’m able to put you into a time machine and I’m able to bring you back in time perhaps to the late 90 s where you were. You know, thinking about how exciting you know this whole cyber world is ah but you know that moment where you were thinking you know about doing something of your own. So if you were to go back in time and be able to have a chat with that younger wrong. And giving that younger Ron one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Ron Gula: So I don’t have a whole lot of regrets for the the career that I’ve been lucky enough to have so if I was going to go back in time I’ve read enough science fiction. My my thing would be don’t don’t mess it up right? like I don’t think there’s there’s probably you know ways it could have been done things quicker better probably been nicer to people. You know, but but I don’t really have a whole lot of stuff I would try to not do so I would I would say hey look enjoy it more. You know there’s there’s a lot of successes that that are going to be coming if you’re successful so make sure to remember you know everybody helped you remember all that that type of stuff and. This is something I try to tell them a lot of entrepreneurs people don’t plan for success often enough they think it’s Hubris. They think it might be presumptuous and I don’t know how people can reverse engineer malware and and and find zero day vulnerabilities which is amazing stuff that I can’t really do yet. They can’t think about their finances for their family. You know four or five years while they’re founding a company to do these amazing things. So I would just try to tell people you know, plan for success and and make it make it a reality.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. So run for the people that are listening especially perhaps you know those founders doing stuff around Cyber security. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

Ron Gula: So we’re really active on Linkedin so ro gula g ua our websites gula.techtech we got a lot of different ways to contact us for for fundraising but the best way to hit us up is is over social media on Linkedin.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well hey Ron thank you so much for being on the deal maker show. It has been an honor to have you with us today.

Ron Gula: Thanks for the opportunity to chat about what we’ve done in the past and I hope everybody enjoys staying safe in cyberspace.

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