Alex Yampolskiy
Co-Founder and CEO, SecurityScorecard. On 1 show, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Dr. Aleksandr (Alex) Yampolskiy is the co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity risk rating company SecurityScorecard, having previously served as CISO at Gilt Groupe. A Yale-educated cryptographer, he authored The Perfect Scorecard and invests as an angel in privacy and cybersecurity startups.
1shows
5appearances
60statements
2resolved
1supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
Everything Alex Yampolskiy said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Yampolskiy: The best investors won't help you; founders are on their own
“The best investors are not going to bother you. They're not going to help you. Nobody's going to help you. You're in by yourself, no matter who promises what to you, but the worst investors will actually give you better advice and really create more headache f…”
Yampolskiy: 50/50 founder equity splits are a huge mistake
“And then I do think it's actually a huge mistake to have a fifty-fifty split with your founder when you start a company, because even if it's 51, 49, somebody needs to be in charge and control the board.”
Yampolskiy: Founders Should Ignore Advice from Investors Who Never Operated
“Do not listen for advice from people who've not done your job. That's my number one advice. It doesn't matter if you have a Investor from Sequoia or Andreessen. We've taken money from top investors, including Sequoia. It doesn't matter if you are a board membe…”
Yampolskiy: Startups under $10M ARR probably lack product-market fit
“Like, I mean, I think if you're under ten million in ARR, you actually probably did not reach your product market fit yet.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard grows over 50% while competitor BitSight barely grows at 20%
“We're consistently exceeding 50% plus growth rate much faster than our direct competitor. Direct competitor is barely growing at 20% rate. Nathan Latka: Who is your direct competitor? Alex Yampolskiy: Bitsite is our primary direct competitor.”
Yampolskiy: BitSight generates ~$100M ARR, growing at barely 20%
“Those guys are going to do about a hundred million in ARR, and they're growing kind of barely at 20%.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard beats BitSight 70% of the time in bake-offs
“Well, look, we beat them. We beat them. 70% of the time in a big off.”
SecurityScorecard: Valuation will triple or quadruple within 18 to 24 months
“We believe that within the next. 18 to 24 months, again, we're going to triple or quadruple evaluation of a company or more.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's Worst Hires Were Polished Amazon and Google Execs
“My worst hires were polished executives with Amazon, Google. They would come in, I start micromanaging, they would tell me, I'm a terrible CEO. And then I leave them alone for three months, and they fuck everything up. And then I have to fire them, and I get m…”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard Uses Former Jobs Coach to Screen VP Hires
“We actually have a psychologist who interviews, he used to be a coach to Steve Jobs, actually, and Larry Ellison, but he interviews every VP higher and above, and I get a forty-page report on what is a person like, not like, culture, curiosity”
Yampolskiy: Current IPO revenue threshold is $300M to $400M
“Well, you're not going to go, well, right now, if you look at threshold for IPO, you're at like three, four hundred million.”
Yampolskiy: Impactful Chief Security Officers inevitably draw complaints from employees
“Kevin's response was, I don't hear enough people complaining about you. If you were making enough difference as a chief security officer, I'd hear more people complaining about you.”
Yampolskiy: 90% of multi-month tech and marketing projects fail
“People are gonna say, oh, I got this two-month project to build a marketing campaign or website, or it's gonna take me a month to ship a feature. And then you do it and you don't even know if it works, 90% of the time. You think it does, but then at the end it…”
Yampolskiy: Companies with bad ratings are 7x more breach-prone
“We've demonstrated historically that companies with a bad score have a seven times higher likelihood than companies with a good score to suffer a data breach.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard will easily surpass $100M ARR in 2022
“Next year we plan to continue the same growth rate. So we're going, and more. So we're going to by far surpass, you know, the hundred plus next year and beyond. We actually anticipate to be able to grow faster next year.”
Yampolsky: Great marketing cannot save bad tech, but great tech overcomes weak sales
“Half of our company is dedicated to product and engineering because we believe that ultimately, I mean, if you have crappy technology and really good sales and marketing team that's only going to last you so long. If you have an amazing technology and crappy s…”
Yampolskiy: 70% of Fortune 100 are paying SecurityScorecard customers
“Today, where 70% of the Fortune 100 uses us. Nathan Latka: As a paying customer. Aleksandr Yampolskiy: As a paying customer, about 500 employees, 70% of Fortune 100”
Yampolskiy: 65% of data breaches result from third-party negligence
“65% of data breaches today happen due to negligence of third parties, which are not even within your control.”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard topped $100M ARR, expects 50%+ growth in 2023
“We exceeded a hundred million run rate last year, and we're gonna probably grow by at least 50% this year.”
Yampolskiy: 5x5x5 artificial constraint framework forces creative product testing
“I'm a huge fan of this five by five by five framework by Mike Schrag, who's an advisor and a friend, professor at Harvard, but he came up with this framework and said, imagine you have five people, five days, 5000 dollars, and it's an artificial constraint, an…”
Yampolskiy: A startup's deadliest competitor is customer inaction, not rivals
“The deadliest competition is actually not competitors and not your adjacent solutions, but it's doing nothing.”
Yampolskiy fired an executive for failing to speak with customers
“I parted ways with an executive who was a smart, talented executive about a month ago, and it caused a big turnover in a team. I asked her, how many customers have you talked to? She showed the calendar, not many. I said, okay, next week when I talk to you, I …”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's moat is historical breach calibration data, not code
“Even if I gave you all our source code, all our architecture, all of our 25 plus patterns, and said, go compete with us, you're not going to have this historical dataset where we calibrate what datasets map more accurately to likelihood of a breach, and the mo…”
Yampolskiy: SecurityScorecard's data resale model has zero marginal cost per customer
“If I charge you to monitor Lotka magazine, right? And I charge 20 other people to monitor Lotka magazine, I don't incur any additional costs because I recompute the scorecards once a day, and then I just resell the data. It doesn't cost me anything more to, yo…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Alex's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, SecurityScorecard | 5 | 60 | 50% 1/2 | full record on Top Founders → |