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George Kurtz

Co-founder & CEO, CrowdStrike · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveauthorathlete@george_kurtz ↗LinkedIn ↗georgekurtz.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Kurtz co-founded the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike in 2011 after founding Foundstone and serving as worldwide Chief Technology Officer at McAfee. He co-authored the influential cybersecurity book Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions and also races competitively as an FIA Bronze-rated driver.

18statements → 10claims → 8claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 4.11/5average certainty → 2.11/5average debate potential → 49said about them ↓

6 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 8 assertions · 2 opinions · 3 insights · 2 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how George argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Kurtz: Enterprise customers spent heavily on legacy antivirus but remained vulnerable
“People were spending a lot of money on Mac and semantic and others, and they were still being breached.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 3:59 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
CrowdStrike was the third fastest-growing enterprise software company to IPO
“I think we were the third fastest growth company to ever IPO behind like Zoom and Salesforce.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 11:09 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
83% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

302 words/min while actually speaking · 0.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for George Kurtz: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to 5,512 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of George Kurtz is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything George Kurtz said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Kurtz calls competitor Cylance a one-trick pony, not a true platform
“A good example of that is silence. They shortcut it themselves to a better AV product, but they were one trick pony. They weren't a platform.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 17:44 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Supported
Kurtz: Enterprise customers spent heavily on legacy antivirus but remained vulnerable
“People were spending a lot of money on Mac and semantic and others, and they were still being breached.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 3:59 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Insight
George Kurtz: Cybersecurity platforms should focus on breach prevention, not malware
“Why focus on preventing malware, which is what most AV companies do? And why don't we focus on preventing a breach?”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 4:04 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
What-if
Kurtz wishes he took loans to buy more early CrowdStrike equity
“I probably would have took out as many loans as I could have and put as much money of my own money in the deal as early as possible.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 9:05 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kurtz: Equal equity split among six co-founders failed at Foundstone
“The first company was like six partners, you know, we're all even, and that, that didn't work out so well. Some people did more work than others.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 6:01 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Contradicted
CrowdStrike was the third fastest-growing enterprise software company to IPO
“I think we were the third fastest growth company to ever IPO behind like Zoom and Salesforce.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 11:09 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Prediction Held up
Kurtz predicts CrowdStrike will mirror Salesforce's platform and revenue trajectory
“I think the next five years probably look a lot like, you know, Salesforce trajectory where you continue to build out your platform, you continue to scale your revenue, your annual recurring revenue, additional geographic expansion.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 30:03 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Opinion
Kurtz: Legacy security resembled Siebel instead of cloud-native Salesforce
“Everything to me looked like Siebel, and I thought it should look like Salesforce.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 3:35 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Disclosure
Kurtz: CrowdStrike built early global remote workforce around top talent
“I focused on getting the top 20 people wherever they were in the world, and we didn't really care about having them in an office. And we really, I would say, pioneered a lot of, pioneered, maybe that's the wrong word, but we were ahead of the curve in terms of…”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 6:13 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Supported
Kurtz: CrowdStrike was the largest security company at IPO
“When we IPO'd, we were the largest security company at the time when we IPO'd.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 11:03 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Prediction Held up
Kurtz: CrowdStrike committed to never selling perpetual licenses
“When I recruited my CFO, I said, hey, we'll never have a perpetual license, and he gave me a hug.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 11:49 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Partly supported
Kurtz: CrowdStrike was unique in offering in-app platform trials
“Part of the secret sauce with CrowdStrike and selling is that the platform helps sell itself, and we've got in-app trials, nobody has that.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 12:35 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Insight
CEOs must accept delegation once employee count surpasses personal knowledge
“At some point there, it's, you have to trust you got the right people, because you haven't interviewed them. You have to accept that you're not going to know everybody. You're not going to know their names.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 20:58 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Insight
George Kurtz: Part ways immediately once you know an employee won't work out
“If you know the person is not going to work out, you know, you give them a hug and you part ways and you don't wait around.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 26:30 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Disclosure
Kurtz: CrowdStrike raised $25M Series A from Warburg Pincus off 25 slides
“I became an entrepreneur in residence at Warburg Pincus, got basically crown track off the ground, and wrote 25 slides, got twenty-five million bucks.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 7:24 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kurtz: CrowdStrike ran public-company operational systems years before its IPO
“We looked like a public company when we were many years Still private. And we ran it that way. You know, okers, management systems, like measurement of everything.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 14:30 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Supported
Kurtz met 100 global customers in 100 days post-CrowdStrike IPO
“On Monday, we're going to start the 100 by 100. We're taking one day off and we're doing the 100 by 100. He said, well, what is that? And I said, we're going to meet a hundred customers in a hundred days, wherever they are. I flew all over the world to meet a …”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 23:53 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Assertion Supported
CrowdStrike flew all global new hires to California pre-COVID
“Up until COVID, you know, we would actually, no matter where the person was hired, they could be in Australia, we would send them to California for one week of training.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 28:51 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?

The other half of the tape: George Kurtz's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 48 times in 7 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 23Sameer Gandhi 4Jason Lemkin 3Shardul Shah 1Saam Motamedi 1Miles Clements 1

Statements about George Kurtz, by other people (1)

Disclosure
Accel told CrowdStrike founder George Kurtz to shop their term sheet
“Why don't you take my offer, my term sheet, you have it in your back pocket. So when you have these other conversations, Go in knowing that your deal done already, and if someone comes along and offers you something much better, or you think they're additive t…”
Sameer Gandhi Sep 2, 2021 ▶ 24:56 20VC: The Crowdstrike Memo: Accel's Sameer Gandhi on Leading Multiple Internal Rounds for Crowdstrike, Telling George Kurtz to Go Shop His Term Sheet, How To Think Through Market Sizing & The Importance of Speed of Execution and Knowing When To Go Slow To

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00252503202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
023202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
00131.5253202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2024 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2021 42 mentions in 2 episodes 21 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire a Oct 14, 2021 21m
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