Taher Elgamal On Building And Exiting A Cybersecurity Company, Delivering 5x Returns To Investors, And Now Co-Managing A $2 Billion Fund Supporting Startups

When you think of the pioneers in cryptography and cybersecurity, one name that stands out is Dr. Taher Elgamal. He has had an incredible journey spanning decades of innovation, from growing up in Cairo and studying at Stanford to building and selling companies.

Today, Taher is an investor in Evolution Equity Partners, a $2B operation deploying capital to upcoming companies like Torq, Protect AI, Cytactic, and Anvilogic.

In this episode, you will learn:

Taher Elgamal’s early love for numbers and engineering shaped his innovative career in cryptography and technology.
Taher’s experience at Stanford, under Dr. Martin Hellman, introduced him to public key cryptography and opened doors in the tech world.
Building prototypes before understanding product-market fit was a critical lesson from his first startup.
A chance encounter with Jim Clark led Taher to join Netscape and work on transformative projects like SSL.
Understanding customer needs and real-world problems is essential for building impactful products, a key insight from his work at Netscape and Securify.
Success in hypergrowth companies depends on surrounding yourself with the right team and building strong relationships.
Learning from Marc Benioff at Salesforce, Taher emphasized that transparent leadership inspires employees to improve the company, not just do their jobs.

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About Taher Elgamal:

Dr. Taher Elgamal is an Egyptian cryptographer and entrepreneur. He has served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Security at Salesforce since 2013.

Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Securify and the director of engineering at RSA Security. From 1995 to 1998, he was the chief scientist at Netscape Communications.

He is recognized as the “father of SSL” for his work in computer security while at Netscape and for his 1985 paper, “A Public Key Cryptosystem and A Signature Scheme Based on Discrete Logarithms.”

In this paper, Taher proposed the design of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and of the ElGamal signature scheme, which later became the basis for the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS).

Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1955, he initially came to the United States to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. In reference to his early passion and interest in mathematics, he said that “cryptography was the most beautiful use of math he’d ever seen.”

Elgamal earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Cairo University in 1977 and a Masters and Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1981 and 1984.

Among his many recognitions, Elgamal is a recipient of the RSA Conference 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award; he is most often recognized as the “father of SSL, the Internet security standard Secure Sockets Layer.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Dr. Taher Elgamal is an Egyptian cryptographer and entrepreneur. He has served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Security at Salesforce since 2013. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Securify and the director of engineering at RSA Security. From 1995 to 1998, he was the chief scientist at Netscape Communications.

He is recognized as the “father of SSL” for his work in computer security while at Netscape, and for his 1985 paper, “A Public Key Cryptosystem and A Signature Scheme Based on Discrete Logarithms” in which he proposed the design of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and of the ElGamal signature scheme, which later became the basis for Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) adopted by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS).

Born in Cairo, Egypt in 1955, he initially came to the United States to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, he said that “cryptography was the most beautiful use of math he’d ever seen” in reference to his early passion and interest in mathematics.

Elgamal earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Cairo University in 1977, and Masters and Doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1981 and 1984. Among his many recognitions, Elgamal is a recipient of the RSA Conference 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award, he is most often recognized as the “father of SSL, the Internet security standard Secure Sockets Layer.

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