Noon: Cybersecurity incumbents acquire startups because early-stage efficacy is unpredictable
Ryan Noon · No Priors Ep. 38 | With Material Security Co-Founder Ryan Noon · Oct 26, 2023 · at 21:15
Ryan Noon (co-founder of Material Security) discusses enterprise cybersecurity economics with Elad Gil, explaining why large incumbents rely on acquiring proven startups rather than building internal R&D.
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“There's a, you know, like a truism that all cybersecurity products are just, you know, complex insurance policies or whatever, right? But the point is like that, that mushiness exists. And so what has resulted in, in, in the free market here is these incredible distribution machines, right? You have, you know, think like Cisco or Palo Alto networks, or even, you know, Microsoft and Google to an extent, right? Where they just, They have the sales force. They have, you know, the bundle they have, you know, the big conference with all the glitzy stuff or whatever. Right. But they don't really know, like if you ask the product manager at that company or whatever, like, and they're being honest, like they don't know what bad guys are going to be doing in five years, any better than anybody else does. Right. And they don't know what's going to be effective. So why would they plant seeds from scratch when they could just go harvest crops that are already growing and transplant them into their yard and water them with all these salespeople and all this bundling and all this market power.”
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