025: Unlocking CEO Skills: Emiliano’s Journey from Developer to CEO

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:00:00]:

You got to take care of people, right? I think that's a big thing. You have to make sure that it depends what the circumstances are for the acquisition. But I think first and foremost, am I taking care of my folks when they leave and they're done? Are they going to be like, you know, Emiliano was a jerk, he screwed me over, right? Or like, look, we did the best with what we had, and I landed somewhere, and then we kind of went from there, and I did XYZ. Right? And again, I don't know. Maybe I'm stupid, right? I'm trying to be nice, maybe I'm too nice, or I'm being naive, or I'm trying to make sure that the folks are being taken care of and the team is good because the world is small. It's a small, very small world, right? Especially in tech. I think people don't realize that that's a big thing. Don't burn bridges.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:00:47]:

Don't be that jerk. Because with LinkedIn, everybody knows somebody that knows that person.

Christopher Nelson [00:00:52]:

True.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:00:53]:

Everybody's back channeling. Everyone's asking. So I want people to say I treated them right.

Christopher Nelson [00:01:05]:

Welcome to Tech Careers and Money Talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years, and after climbing my way to the C Suite, working for three companies that have been through IPO and investing my way to financial independence, I'm here to share with you everything that I've learned and also introduce you to people that can help you along the way. Today I'm excited to introduce you to my good friend Emiliano Barrenbaum. Emiliano is a founder of two different companies, one that he sold for acquisition and the other one that he's scaling today. It's important that when we trade our time and talent for equity, sometimes we're doing that as a W2-employee working for another large corporation or sometimes we're building. I really want to dig into Emiliano's story today of how he took his career from an engineer to an architect and then to a founder and CEO. What were the things that he had to learn? What were the skills that he had to build? In addition to that, we're going to spend the second half of the show really digging into what is building a software company for acquisition.

Christopher Nelson [00:02:12]:

What does that look like? He's done it already. He may be doing it again, but he has a lot of insight and lessons learned from having been there and done that. I'm excited to share that with you today. Let's go talk to Emiliano right now. Okay. Welcome to this episode of Tech Careers and Money Talk. Excited to introduce everyone to my friend Emiliano Barrenbaum. Emiliano has spent his whole career working on enterprise products, from database security solutions to network monitoring.

Christopher Nelson [00:02:39]:

He was the first non-founder employee at Okta and a key architect in pioneering cloud single sign-on in user management solutions. Emiliano was a co-founder and CTO of Scytale.io that was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He helped to develop the standards for Spiffy and the CNF adopted a standard for workload identity. Presently, today, he's the CEO of Trustle that provides access control to critical cloud systems. Couldn't be happier to introduce Emiliano. How are you doing, man?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:03:12]:

How's it going, Chris? Great to be here with you.

Christopher Nelson [00:03:16]:

Well, thanks so much. I think there's so much that people can learn from your story, and I love starting in the origin and for you. When I go and you look at your LinkedIn, you see that you did a lot of work at a lot of different companies as an engineer before you really found yourself in this cloud identity access space. Help us understand a little bit of how you find yourself in tech?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:03:45]:

Yeah, so if we go to the beginning, when I was applying for college, right? This is in the I guess I entered in 91, which was kind of an incredible time, right. It says the web browsers and the Internet Mozilla were coming out, and it was like this whole brand new thing, right. And it was kind of on the cusp. Right. I mean, we were still doing everything through terminals, and I was slightly into computers. When I was young, I had my Commodore 64, and I did a little bit of programming, but not to the level that I've known people, right. That they were, like, such savants. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:04:29]:

But I was applying, and I got into an engineering program. I got into a program between NYU and a little college in New Jersey called Stevens. So it was a dual degree. Right. I ended up doing electrical engineering and CS, but I had no idea. Right. So I started getting into that, and it clicked. A lot of the stuff that we were learning, I really found my sweet spot.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:05:01]:

Right. I think a lot of people, when they're kind of going into school and trying to figure out what they're going to study and do, it's hard for them to figure out, like, hey, what really excites me? What do I like learning about and doing? And I loved it. It was really great learning. I would go above and beyond what we have to do. Right. And I never really thought of it as work, in a way, which is kind of right. You want to do something that you love. And something that really helped me is that when I got over, because I'd spent three years at NYU and then two years at Stevens, and Hoboken is known, Stevens had a big co-op department, and I decided to co op, which ended up adding more time to my graduation.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:05:56]:

But it's funny because I ended up co op just at one place for my whole time, which was Belcore. So I don't know if you know about Belcore, what that is, but a lot of people don't now, which is.

Christopher Nelson [00:06:11]:

Kind of well, I know about Bell Labs. Bell Labs at one point, I think the C programming language, I believe came out of.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:06:19]:

No, no, it was great because At T was broken up by the government and split into the baby people. I don't know if people even remember that. So you had, like, Bell, Atlantic Bell Pacific.

Christopher Nelson [00:06:39]:

You had Southern Bell. I remember SBC.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:06:41]:

Southern Bell. Right. So all these companies broke up into regionals and AT & T got to keep the long distance business and then the seven Baby Bells got to keep the local land, the local business. And that's what Verizon became. Right. Verizon was New York and I think they merged with now, you could kind of look at the history how the Baby Bells kind of emerged again.

Christopher Nelson [00:07:11]:

Into the two bigger it's Verizon.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:07:12]:

And so I was working at Bellcore, which not only did they split the Baby Bells, they split Bell Labs. Right. So there was Bell Labs that at&T owned. And Bell Corps was the R D arm for the baby Bells. And it was just an incredible place.

Christopher Nelson [00:07:37]:

Wow.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:07:38]:

It was just amazing to work there with people that were world famous, and had invented so many things. We would always be one of the I shouldn't say this, but one of the guys that was in the cafeteria, I don't know if people know, there's this language called AWK. Right, right. And it's basically the initials of the people that came up with that language. And one of the first ones, A, is Aho, and he wrote a compiler book. So we studied that in school. It was a great thing. And I would see him in the cafeteria and it was just, you know, like just being like a little nerd fanboy about that kind of well, yeah.

Christopher Nelson [00:08:24]:

And I think it gets overlooked today. But there was. I just remember. Bell Labs. Bell Core Xerox Parc. Xerox park was out west, but these were these epicenters and when you think about the timeline that you were in and you were in telecom , you think about how everything is on mobile today. That was the birthplace back then. It was computer science.

Christopher Nelson [00:08:50]:

Wasn't all of these applications and all this application level programming, I mean, you really had to sit at a layer that was between hardware that was between software that wasn't that mature at that point. So there was a lot of hard science back then.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:09:06]:

Oh, yeah, it was amazing. Right. Because I shared an office with one of the folks that came up with oh, God, I'm forgetting the standard. I don't think it was Sonnet, but one of the telephone standards. And what we were doing is that see, it's kind of funny. It's all coming back to me. The way that it worked, the divestiture was that Bell Core could come up with the science, could come up with the standards and everything, but they couldn't manufacture products and switches or anything like that. So the group that I worked with was the group that came up with ISDN, which was kind of like the old technology that would go in and it was like two wires, I forgot how many bits it was.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:10:04]:

But what we were doing is we wrote software to test and make sure that the switches were compliant, right? So you would have these companies like Fujitsu and some of the German companies, American companies, that would make the switches, we would get them in the lab and test them out. So I was writing software to look at the switches, to basically talk to them and send them messages. And it was like this whole standard which kind of got adopted by SNMP that stuff, sure, but just learning all of that, actually working with real stuff. As I was a junior and senior in college, I learned more about working there than I ever did, than I did in school. It was an amazing experience, right, that.

Christopher Nelson [00:11:01]:

Helped translate everything from this theoretical to now you're in there doing it. And I just also think that at that point in time, it was so new and the community was so small that you're right. You could just walk in in a company like that, an experience like that, and just get knowledge dropped on you. That was amazing.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:11:20]:

Yeah, no, it was great. And everybody that worked there, it was like such an incredible experience because they were all brilliant, all ready to teach and I learned so much. It was just an incredible time, right? I could go into it a lot more, but I got into this language, we wrote a lot of the front end in this thing called Tcl Tk Tickle Tk, which the gentleman who wrote it ended up going and working at sun and I kind of followed it because I loved it. And then I started hearing about this other language that they were working on called Java, kind of before it even hit. But it was just crazy, like just being part of that and seeing that it was just an incredible time. And everything was happening so quickly back then, even now, but it was incredible. But like you were saying, right, it was a lot of how do you go from the telco stuff now into the world that we are in now, right? It was pretty fascinating.

Christopher Nelson [00:12:25]:

So now you're in this very cohesive environment where you're getting a lot of teaching, you're learning very rapidly, then you exit and you start going out into different businesses. And I'm sure at that point it had to be very different, right? You were probably walking in, having a ton of experience with these guys, very new technology, I think, trying to understand. How did you then start moving towards or moving forward as an engineer and then falling into this whole position as architect?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:13:00]:

Yeah, no, it was right after college. I went to work at IBM because I was on the East Coast and looking around at different jobs. I kind of have a funny story about that. Like looking at a lot of the banks and a lot of jobs in New York City was all banking. That was before there were any tech companies in New York. This is before the right. So if you wanted to work in tech or programming or anything like that with computers, you were basically working at a bank. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:13:35]:

There were few software firms like here and there. Right. There were a couple, but not like it is now. Right. There was no Google or anything like that. And I talked to one of the banks and I don't want to say who or anything, but they were asking me the question like, hey, what's your work environment like? And I started describing Belcor. Right. I was like, hey look, it's this kind of collegiate environment.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:14:01]:

You can bounce ideas off each area. It's kind of pushing and all of this and you have luminaries and you could learn and grow and understand the field and really capture that. And they had like a great library and I would check out books and read it and there were two of the guys interviewing me and then one of them turned to me and he said, well, I just want to tell you, at this company we do real work so we don't do that stuff.

Christopher Nelson [00:14:32]:

Like what? Real work?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:14:35]:

That's what he told me. And I don't think I've ever been rejected from a job faster because somehow I think I had gotten home from the interview and they'd already called me and told me not to bother. Like they didn't keep on talking to me. But it was just funny. Right. It was like seeing how this was a little bit between how it was East Coast West Coast philosophy. Because I think Belcor was even though they were in. I look fondly back on those days, it had a little bit of you kind of see how a lot of these companies out here in California have become. Because what you find out is a lot of the talent there ended up at Google and other places.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:15:18]:

Which is really interesting, which is funny because I think when we talk about Spiffy and all that kind of stuff, it kind of connects back. So I love that, how it loops back into labs. Right.

Christopher Nelson [00:15:31]:

And your experience there. So then at what point in this transition did you start working in security and access?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:15:40]:

Not at that point. But it's funny because I did a couple of projects so I was at IBM for a couple of years. Eventually I did my.com stint. So I worked at a Latin American web portal called Star Media. That was a while ago, so that was crazy. New York during the but the stuff that I worked on there was their email and the system. That was kind of like their version of GeoCities, if you remember that one, where you could publish your own web page. Yeah.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:16:23]:

So just working on how to identify and how to log into that and it was crazy, right? It was the Wild West.

Christopher Nelson [00:16:30]:

Right. There were no protocols. All the frameworks we have today weren't there.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:16:35]:

So I'm sure nothing existed. Yeah, because we were kind of doing it's funny because we would give people space to put it almost like a disk online, which is kind of crazy when you look at the drop boxes and boxes of the world. Right. We were giving people I forgot how much space at this point because whatever number I say, it's going to sound so tiny, like, I don't know, 50 megs or something.

Christopher Nelson [00:17:01]:

Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:17:02]:

And they could put up their little website and we would display it. But then hackers would go in and create Bazillion accounts and then strip content or wares across that, and you could download and we were trying to take those accounts down, and it was like, how were they authenticating? Trying to put CAPTCHAs and all of that. So it would be kind of even back then. And this is like in the 90s, it was like this warfare with people trying to exploit things and get in there and use our services for something else. Right. So it was pretty interesting, and I don't want to get more into it, but it was fascinating to see that at that point. Yeah.

Christopher Nelson [00:17:45]:

As you're growing your career, you start identifying, okay, security access. You also start moving from just being an engineer to being an architect. I'm curious, what drew you? I mean, was it these experiences like seeing the Wild West? Did you see was it an opportunity that you saw or was it really the fact that, no, I enjoy solving this problem, I enjoy trying to create this line of defense. And then what were additional soft skills and things that you were building that helped you position yourself from an engineer towards an architect?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:18:21]:

Yeah. I think an important thing is how do you bridge what's there to be able to explain it and put it together and kind of explain, look, here's where we're trying to go, and here's the technology that we're trying to use to do that with certain understanding. Right. I think from how I look at things now and back then, one of the problems is, like, your ego that you think you could do everything. But an important thing, a lesson from now is like, hey, look, I know up to here, here's where it ends. How do I get the right folks to work with me and kind of figure out the nitty gritty details? But the architecture role is kind of sort of like the next step. Right. Because you end up having something that's persistent that's talking to a database.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:19:17]:

Right. So how do you start scaling this out? I think it also comes into what I would say, you know, the difference between computer science and software engineering is it's kind of like an assembly line, right. Because when you think about chemistry, it's like, hey, how do I combine these chemicals to do this? And chemical engineering is like, okay, well, how do I do this? How do I make a million pills or a million of this at scale, right. And then all of a sudden have to worry about heat and getting the materials there on time. So it's the same thing with I would say computer engineering and product, right? Like how do I push this out, how does it scale? What's the methodology for reporting bugs or logging or performance and all these things? So understanding that and how those things have evolved has been amazing up to now. Where we have when I started, people would have point releases of products that were shrink, ramped and running in a computer, right. And now you kind of have the model is SaaS where things are getting updated all the time and sometimes certain companies update all the time anytime.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:20:35]:

Right. But you have to build it in a way that you could do that and compare it to before where it was like, well, we're going to big bang this every year or every right. Yeah, it's on your disk. Yeah. So understanding that and all those mechanics, that's where you start getting into the architect part, right. To understand a lot of that stuff. Right. And then you start moving beyond that.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:21:02]:

And I think that's where you start looking at companies and other parts that you could move into as taking a higher role beyond the architect role.

Christopher Nelson [00:21:12]:

Wow. So I really like that analogy and I want to just read that back because I think that makes complete sense in the sense that computer science is this area, the arena that we're talking about engineering, software engineering is how do you now create these things at scale. And so for yourself, as you go in there, as a computer scientist, working in a lab, understanding a lot of things, you get fascinated by how you build and scale these things. Also as the industry is changing too, right, as we're moving from these smaller releases from on premise solutions, from client server, you're activating all these terminals to now you're actually living in the cloud, then your mind starts expanding as an engineer to becoming an architect and how this works together. And then I think what you slid in there right at the last minute is then you started thinking, well, how do companies work? How do I actually go and put companies together? And this is on the career side of this conversation that we're having today. I want to understand at what point did you start realizing because when I think about your career, you then get this architect position at Okta and you grow and scale that company. Then ultimately you wind up at Splunk helping us with our cloud solution in figuring out how we make sure and secure that as we're scaling it. Then you say, I'm going to start my own company.

Christopher Nelson [00:22:51]:

What was going on, what were you seeing and what were the skills and confidence that you had to know that it was time to go do that? Or was it the subject matter expertise? I think there's a little bit of.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:23:03]:

Both in I mean, look, I think what started happening is I did a couple of startups back in New York in the East Coast and that was really eye opening. Right. But then moved out to California and by pure Craziness, I got to meet Tod and Freddie, which were the two co-founders of Okta. And Todd had just left salesforce and was starting Okta, which at that point it was called Seshure. But then the funny thing is, if it was his wife or somebody who told them, you should never have an ass in a company name.

Christopher Nelson [00:23:51]:

Just take that out, those shouldn't be there.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:23:53]:

Yeah, take that. Then, you know, eventually we landed with Okta, which was a pretty interesting story. But the great thing there was learning from those people, learning from Tod and Freddie and everybody they hired. Right. Because I wasn't really an architect, I was just working there. Right. Like wearing a lot of different hats, but able to pull in an amazing now, really impressed by everybody that I worked with at Know and we were kind of building this together. It was an interesting time.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:24:33]:

Kind of a little bit similar like now where it was like 2008, you'd had the market crash, a lot of layoffs, right. A lot of people looked around and we built the whole company in San Francisco. Right. So everybody was hired there. But just so many lessons, so much stuff learned there on what was going right. And it really kind of inspires you. Right. And I think that's what ends up happening.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:25:06]:

You see certain companies or certain institutions where founders come out of and they almost become like petri dishes for this kind of you know, there's a lot of people that started companies that came out of salesforce. Yes, very true. Right. And out of Okta now, I've seen a lot of people that have come out of Okta that have started companies and for me, being early on there with that team, you really see a lot of the different aspects. Right. I think if you kind of look at yourself, hey, I'm working at IBM and I'm working at a fast growing startup, you kind of start seeing a lot of different parts of the industry that you never saw before. I was never talking to customers, but all of a sudden you're out there, you're developing the code, but you're also talking to customers and trying to figure out requirements like, hey, what does this guy need? What is the exact problem we're trying to solve for this person? Yes. And then how do we do that? In a quick way, right? Or how do we do that? But then iterate on it, right? I mean, that's the important thing.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:26:18]:

But you start seeing that, right? You start seeing those different parts when I think there is a big difference with okta. One of the big things there was one of the early employees, too, was a gentleman called Brian, Brian Hanson. And he was a designer, right. And I'd never really worked with a designer before. Right. And I think that was a big thing that Tod saw. Right. I think that seeing things like Facebook in 2008 and all these things, a lot of times, SaaS products or enterprise products were written by engineers, for engineers, so it just looked like crap.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:27:03]:

It was just so hard to work with and so hard to figure out. And I even see that now, right. I'll see certain products, and it's just so convoluted, right. And it's almost a model where you need a sales engineer to work with you, and the deployment takes so long. But one of the advantages that Brian had was Brian was so good it really made our product simple and easy to use and approachable, right. Because now they're calling that PLG motion product like growth, right? But it really means, can I, as an individual, go into your product, start setting it up, understand, is there sufficient documentation? Am I self reliant? And I don't need somebody to hold my hand and put this all together, right? And I think that's critical, which kind of, like, gets into one of my mantras to have my company now. Like, some of the things that I believe and taking that lesson, one of the big things that I always tell everybody is like, hey, look, if you're working at Trussell, you're working here. Everybody here works on the product.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:28:23]:

There isn't anything here that isn't a product. If your documentation sucks and nobody could figure out how your product works, your product sucks.

Christopher Nelson [00:28:33]:

Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:28:34]:

It doesn't matter if you're the most brilliant computer scientist and you figured out the best algorithm, but if nobody could get to that or use it or unlock the value, then unlock the value, then it's worthless. Right? And I think that everybody there is contributing to the effort. Like, if the documentation sucks, if the interface sucks, if I have to do like, 50 clicks, is there an API that's simple to use, that's documented, right? Connect to that's the critical thing. And I think that's how your career starts to grow, right, when you kind of see that. Because if you're just, like, in a box writing code and you don't see this a lot of times, I've always heard it throughout my career, right, where people will say the product manager will come in and say, like, hey, it's not working. The person doesn't get it. And then the engineers will be like, well, that guy's stupid.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:29:30]:

It's like, well, no, it's not clear. Right? We need good concise error messages. We need to have a good explanation. What does this do? Do we have too many buttons? Should we have less buttons on top of everything else? Right? And I think that's how you start kind of like to grow and see that, right? As you were saying, career path. You're starting out like I'm writing something that's talking to a Fujitsu switch that I'm using in a lab, right? And then eventually you're coming in somewhere and you're like, hey, I'm writing this so you could connect your users and we could kind of see usage and who's over entitled, and how do I show all this information in a nice, clean way? And then how do I export that data to Splunk so then you could alert on it, right? So that's something we're doing now. But it's like understanding that path, right? How a lot of the stuff has morphed and changed.

Christopher Nelson [00:30:29]:

Well, what I heard you say that I think is so important for people to understand from a career perspective is we start off and we want to do our piece very well, and then it's understanding how do all of those pieces connect together? And sometimes it can be in. You're doing a subroutine that's part of a larger piece of development. But ultimately what I heard you say is and I don't know what the trussell mantra is or your mantra is, but everybody is supporting the product. And if we can't make the product clean and simple for our users, then we're not doing our job as a company. And that's one of the things that I talk about, is we as tech employees have to be focused on, ultimately the results that the company is trying to accomplish. We want to make a piece of software or an application that's solving a specific problem. We want it easy to use, easy for people to understand. So you have to understand how everything is going to intersect and ultimately help make that absolutely right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:31:36]:

I think that when you kind of look at this, there's a certain experience. Let's say if you sit in a new car, what's the smell when I open the door? How are the controls? What could I see? Right? And people study this, the ergonomics of it, right? Like, where are the buttons? Where are the switches? How do I interact with this stuff? How big are they? What do the lights look like, the colors? To make the best experience, right? So when you look at consumer products, people just study this all the time, right? But it's the same thing with enterprise software, right. And a lot of companies don't believe it. That I've seen so many products that look like spreadsheets, and you're like, well, why don't I just use a spreadsheet? Why do I have to use this?

Christopher Nelson [00:32:26]:

There's a big question there, right?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:32:28]:

Yeah, but you're right, but it's everything, right? And that's how you kind of start growing, is that, hey, look, the subroutine still needs to work, right? That's the thing, right? The function still needs to work. We need monitoring. We need logging. We need all of that. You need all the pieces, right? I mean, that's why it's hard to succeed, right? Because there's so many pieces to this, right? It's not, hey, do I have the right product? Is it going to be stable? Right? What happens if I get a million users? Is this thing going to keel over? Right? Has it been architectured correctly? Does it scale? Also? Is it easy to use? Is there documentation? And that's not even getting into sales and marketing, right? Which is in my role. Now, that's the part where you're like, oh, wait, I have to explain this to somebody in three sentences. Or how do I say what I do with five bullet points? Not only that, it's valuable to you and compelling for you to have a conversation with me, but I'm also differentiating with the other five companies that are trying to do what we're doing or are similar and there's overlap. Plus the three other companies that are pretty big, but they're kind of missing this, but they kind of do this, but not perfectly.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:33:43]:

How do I tell that story? How do I make it compelling for you to pick up the phone or pick up the phone, get on a Zoom call with me and talk about it and convey the value, right? So then we could kind of move on and then move on to a demo. Move on to a POC. Was my demo compelling enough? Did I answer all your questions? What's the POC process for you to try this out in your environment? And then how do we then get to a contract? Negotiate? That is all of those steps. As an engineer being stuck, I'm back in New Jersey talking to a Fujitsu switch. That's the part that you end up realizing, like, hey, look, if I can't sell this, if I can't sell this product or get people to use it, I don't have anything. It doesn't matter what I wrote, right? I think that's what a lot of people miss, right?

Christopher Nelson [00:34:38]:

And they forget about at what point. I really enjoyed the Octesh story. I think what I heard from you is that was the moment where you saw the pieces come together, you saw everything happening, how it was done, and you'd obviously had other experiences. I think that things do change when people see it done, right? Or when they see it work, when they see it finally work, you're like, oh, this is how it all comes. It and that's where I think success breeds success. You see, salesforce opened up. There were a lot of founders that came from salesforce then. Now, Okta, saw success. People come from that company.

Christopher Nelson [00:35:21]:

So at some point then I know you did go to Splunk, you got experience there at some point, though, you said, I'm now ready to go find my own company. What was that moment for you? Because you left security, you left a lot of, I'm sure some RSUs and things on the table, but you knew, and I'm trying to understand, was the drive really that you wanted to solve problems for customers? You saw real opportunity in the market. I really want to build something on my own. What was the big driver and motivator for you?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:35:56]:

Yeah, there's a lot of psychology. Right. I think there's ego. Right. I'm smart, I know how to do this, I'll figure this out. Right. So you kind of believe in yourself, which any person that wants to do this, I would say, don't do it. You just hear the good stories, everybody hears the successes, everybody's like, Well, I do this, I'm going to become a Google or something.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:36:34]:

Those are like astronomical ODDS with incredibly like everything came together. Right. It's just like a perfect thing. Right. And you do a company and you get a couple of pivots and you could run out of cash. Right. I think that's the big thing. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:36:55]:

What made me want to do it is that I thought I could. Right. I saw other people do it. And I think that's the funny thing about being in the Valley and you were here for a very long time if you see it all the time. That's right. So I think that for people in other places that don't see it and don't see that kind of space or understand the industry of how you raise money, how do people take a chance on you? They're not exposed to that, so they don't kind of think about that for software. Right. And SaaS things that we're talking about.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:37:35]:

Right. I mean, people start businesses all the time. Right. So there is that also, my father, he was a shoe wholesaler, so I saw him in his business, right. I helped him out a lot. I would go with him to trade shows and I would travel with him to factories, to source materials and things like that. So I kind of had that a little bit of my DNA also, and I want to try it out. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:38:04]:

I think that mentally and ego wise, you think like, hey, I could do this, I could try it out, but I had no idea what I was getting into and all the details that go into it. But you think that I've built a better mousetrap or we could figure this out and here's a niche that we could kind of dive into and we have a solution for it. And you're kind of playing out your thesis, right? So you're a builder, right. I think primarily you want to build things, and it's in a way, I think of it as almost like I like Lego. I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm nerdy in that sense, but you end up trying to do harder and harder sets. Right? So to me, it's like you're like, okay, I did this. I solved this problem. Now I have solved this problem.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:39:00]:

Now here's a bigger problem, right? I want to build this. I want to understand this. You need to have a curiosity and a desire to kind of go into it and understand it because you're taken out of your comfort zone. As an engineer, if now my number one concern is sales and getting customers, right? That's it, right? Everything else comes out of that, but everything else has to work and be there. But it really is like, how do I tell my story? Right? How am I a storyteller? And that's kind of like the eye opening moment, right? Do you kind of realize what are the other facets that you have to do and understand? Right?

Christopher Nelson [00:39:48]:

I really enjoy this because it seems like you're constantly learning and you essentially keep moving in this engineering mindset of, now that I figured this out, how do I solve the next problem? How do I solve the next problem? And you have then this infusion of an entrepreneurial father who you see him building and owning his own thing. You think, okay, I can do it. I heard you say at one point you had the confidence, you knew you were ready, so you decided to do mean coming out of Okta. And I know you had the access and security focus for our cloud product. When we were at Splunk, was there something like you were building this momentum inside of that space that said, I want to build in that? Or did you see problems to solve that you'd sort of been seeing all along from even your early days? What helped you focus on that security space and access?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:40:52]:

Yeah, no, definitely. People do go about this in different ways, right? They're working on a problem internally and they're like, hey, you know what? This is real, right? This is a tool that we're writing internally, but this could be a product, and I think we could build something around that which is kind of like Trussell, right? That's what that is. With Scytale.io, it was kind of the growth of Meshes and Kubernetes as we kind of saw that, right? So Sitel, it was open source. We came up with a standard and an implementation of it, but it was kind of understanding, like, hey, and it's funny because in a way, it is security. And it's almost the same when I think about, like, our thesis. Like, there's no more firewall, right? Like, people are you know, you have no so you know, Scytale.io is really like, how do I give this thing a piece of right? And that being a certificate that's being rotated. And now I could have MTLs everywhere, right? Like all traffic encrypted, right? And the interesting thing about that is a lot of those theories my co-founders were from, right? And internally for there's, there's something similar that they use. And the funny thing is you start tracing the history of some of this technology.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:42:33]:

It came from some of the folks, and I hate that I'm forgetting the names that had joined Google Engineering and Google Engineering Leadership out of Labs. And there was an incident, and the way they were doing identity at that point was and a lot of companies were doing identity was like, hey, this port on this machine coming out of this switch, that's the database and this is the application. But as they started getting more and more workloads in virtual environments, it just couldn't keep up. So they took something out of a project called Inferno, which was the next generation of Unix that they were building there. And there was something called Plan Nine. And you start looking at all the white papers, you're going back to like there was a project called Factotum, which I love that name also. So they took that and they kind of incorporated that into their systems and we kind of borrowed it from that. So it's kind of funny when you start tracing things back, right? Everyone's all like, oh, this is brand new stuff.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:43:51]:

It's like, look, this thing has a lineage going back to New Jersey.

Christopher Nelson [00:43:58]:

You want to keep somebody out, you go to Jersey.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:44:01]:

Yeah, you want a certificate? Talk to you then.

Christopher Nelson [00:44:11]:

So you had the experience, but then you decided to go do it again. Let's go back after you had your exit, what was then the decision that said, you know, what? Was that another idea? Was it the fact that you saw how you did it? You think, okay, now I can go do it again. Get a better repetition?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:44:33]:

Yes, I was working with somebody helping out, and he was solving a problem, and I was like, you know what, this makes a lot of sense. I see this, right? And really what we're looking at is that and it's funny because we've iterated on this so much and we're going to keep on iterating on it. But a lot of companies, they don't realize how many people have access and to what that's true, right? We're calling it an over entitlement tax that everybody's paying. But it's not only that you're paying an over entitlement tax because maybe you have more seats than you need, right? But there are some companies that do cost efficiency. But for the people that we're talking about, and we call these folks citizen developers, right? Where it's not your DevOps, it's not your SEC ops. It's also like your data engineers, your sales engineers. That's right. If you look at the access that they have into all these different applications, all these different SaaS apps that are holding your family jewels, they don't need it all the time.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:45:50]:

So really, the way we think about it is there's this attack surface, which is the access that people have, right. And just doing some simple math. If you're using this application or you have access to this application, let's say production, you're exposed to 8700 hours a year, let's just say, right?

Christopher Nelson [00:46:14]:

Yeah.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:46:15]:

That's your exposure. Right. And are you using that all the time? And this isn't like your email or things like this.

Christopher Nelson [00:46:23]:

These are critical things, critical environments that if you are a publicly traded company, some of those could be compliance. I mean it's important.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:46:34]:

Yep. Yeah. Then if you look now, I hate to say it's a hack, right? Like, the first thing that happens is they're looking at LinkedIn. They're looking like this guy is a senior infrastructure engineer. They pop his account, they make a lateral move to the IDP. This guy has access to everything in production. That's it. You're done.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:46:56]:

That's what's happening. That's today. Right? That's the active attack vector. And what we're doing is like, hey, let me show you who has that 8700 hours. And, hey, we could maybe put a multiplier on that with risk. If we calculate risk for you, it's bigger. What's his utilization rate? He's only used it 100 hours in a year. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:47:21]:

So he's over-permissioned. Right. And his utilization rate is like, he's only using this, let's say, at 0.5%. How do we make those numbers shorter? Right? Like, how do we start squeezing that? So we could say, interesting, hey, look, if we start putting your working hours in or, look, he's not using it when he's sleeping, right. But if he needs it, we could give it to him easily. Right. So that's a big thing that we've done. You could request access, and you get it, and there's a whole workflow against it.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:47:53]:

And if you have permissioning or if you're on call, we take that all into account. But we want to make it simple, because what ends up happening is, in a lot of companies, when people request access, it takes a long time. Right. And once somebody gets access, they never want to give it up. Right. So we'll go in. Yeah. We'll scan, and it's like, hey, this guy's not even here anymore.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:48:15]:

This person's a contractor, or is this a system? Is this a customer? Right. And access isn't in a lot of these applications. You can't tell if that account is being used by another SaaS system that's pulling in data. Or a customer that has to access some data or push some files to you, or a contractor or an employee. Right. So this is kind of like the world that and this is like the problem set, and the world that I'm in right now, that to me, it's fascinating. I think there's just so many ways to look at this and really help people understand, give them the visibility so they could really understand, like, hey, what is my risk exposure for this department or this job title or this team? Right. And how do I help clean that up and manage that in a better way?

Christopher Nelson [00:49:08]:

100%. Well, I want to take a quick break where I hear I want to come back and I want to talk about company acquisitions, startups a little bit more, but some of the strategies of how you built it so that you made sure that whatever type of exit you had, it was clean. So we'll be right back here in just a moment. We're back here for part number two, Emiliano Baronbaum. So we want to talk. It's so believable, you know, here tech careers and money talk. You want to trade your time and talent for equity, and sometimes that's going to work for a corporate company, or sometimes it's building your own, and you have the opportunity to exit your company for an acquisition. And I think it's so interesting the strategies that are involved in that. When you're building a startup company, how do you keep it clean and position it for whatever kind of exit that may be in front of you?

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:50:08]:

Yeah, no, I think that and again, this is kind of like learning more, right. The stuff that you never know about. And the critical part is to have that CFO or a fractional CFO. I'm super lucky. I work with a woman named Betty Katen. We've been working together now. It's crazy. Like six years at this point, which is nuts.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:50:40]:

But you need someone that understands the law. Right. That's the hard part. Right. Because one of the things that you're going to see when you start getting into that executive role is, like, all the contracts, all the stuff that happens, and having that clean paperwork, and it is vital. Right. Do you have all the right signatures? Did everybody sign their offer letters? Right? Do we have everyone's stock issuance? Is that all signed? Right? Like little things like that? Are the contracts clean? Right, like incorporation papers, all of this stuff? Having somebody that understands that and could work with you is critical. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:51:34]:

Because if it's messed up, then you kind of have to go back and redo it. Or sometimes you can't. Right. Like, I've seen situations where I don't want to say names or companies or anything, right? But usually if you're hiring somebody, you want to put a cliff on their shares. Right. Usually that's a standard deal. Right. Like, hey, you have to work here for a year, and then you get a year tested per month.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:52:15]:

Right. And that's usually how a lot of the contracts are, even for founders. Right. Like, I have that, right. But I've seen it where that wasn't in place and somebody leaves and the contract says, like, hey, this guy's getting X percent of the company. And you're like, well, what do we do now? Right? But it was not my experience, just like stuff that I've seen, but that's the kind of stuff that some folks don't think about. But it could sink a company before you even get started, right? And sometimes they have to go bankrupt and redo it and buy the assets on bankruptcy. It's crazy, right? It could get really messy.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:52:54]:

So having somebody that understands that process and then when you're raising money, it even gets crazier, right? What's the joke, right? If you're dealing with venture or anybody like that, how many of these deals have they done? They've done 100 or 1000 or whatever. How many have I done? One. Right? So you need someone that's going to be able to translate that for you because otherwise you could sign stuff or not even realize what you're negotiating, right? So having somebody to help you with that is critical, right? Having that kind of a source that could help you do that is very important.

Christopher Nelson [00:53:37]:

I think this is so important in many things that you're doing if you want to build the right team around you. So it sounds like getting on a clear footing when you're getting your startup off the ground, ensuring that you have somebody that can handle finance and legal. And it sounded like your fractional CFO was overseeing the legal and could actually bring in resources to address that if necessary.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:54:00]:

Absolutely, yeah, no, it's great, right? Because what do I know, right? I know the code. I'm a code guy. It's like, oh, network traffic, I could look at packets, right? But it's like, wait a minute, did we structure this right? Does it have the right clauses, right? If we break the contract, how do we break the contract? What happens there, right? What do we owe? How many days notice, how many days afterwards? All of this stuff I've told people, right? Sometimes I've had discussions and we go back and forth on the contract. I'm like, look, we want this to be the toughest discussion we have, right? Because if something happens then and I don't want anything to happen, look, it's written down, right? It's nothing like he said, she said, right? It's all written down. We understand each other and we're starting from the right footing, right? And I like to be crystal clear with people and you don't want to be straight with them. And it's just better to say, like, look, this is what it is, this is how the contract works, or this is how our employment works, this is the equity you're going to receive and this is the price, all of that stuff, right? Because I've seen people that are dishonest and liars, right? And whatever it is, I don't want someone to call me that, right? Right. I want to be straightforward and all of that. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:55:29]:

And the reason you're doing this is for the equity, right? If you're doing a startup, which is funny, right? I shouldn't be saying this, right? A lot of people always have this argument all the time, right? Especially being here where we are, right? Like, you're raising this capital, it's precious, right? And you have people coming out of some big companies and we're like, Well, I was making X at the company, can you match that? And it's like, no, I can't. I cannot. Right? What I could give you here is autonomy. You'll be able to build faster. There's no committees, we're moving fast, we're learning. You're going to do a lot of stuff and you're going to get this equity piece. But if you want X amount of dollars, stay where you are. We can't do that because why would you go to a startup if you want the same money or more at.

Christopher Nelson [00:56:20]:

An early stage, the same cash, right? This is why we created this podcast, is to be able to have this conversation, because ultimately equity will be more valuable, and is more scalable than the cash. And that's the risk.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:56:40]:

Right?

Christopher Nelson [00:56:40]:

You're taking the risk because there's more upside, 100%.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:56:44]:

Yeah. Have you talked about 83 B elections and stuff like that in your podcast?

Christopher Nelson [00:56:49]:

No, I'm actually looking to get a guest to talk about that, but I would love to, I mean, talk about 83 B. Let's bring it up.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:56:56]:

I'm curious, QSBS. Have you talked about QSBS also?

Christopher Nelson [00:57:01]:

No.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:57:01]:

Okay, well, that's really the 83 B election. If your company offers it and you're joining a startup, that's the first question I would have. If you have 83 B election, which basically means that let's say I get 100 shares for a penny, right? So it's a dollar. Let's say it's a dollar. What you want to do is you want to buy those shares the second you go, the second you join the company whenever you can, because that starts the clock, right? Because the way options work is that you have to exercise them and then you could sell them, right? But if you exercise, you have to hold it for a year for that to be long term capital gain. That's right. So if you have, like, we would get our RSUs, they would just take it away, right? But if you had options at a public company, the second they vest, the second you hit that one year cliff and you say like, okay, I got 25% of my shares. I got 25 shares.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:58:06]:

You'd have to sell them that next day. You would have to exercise them and sell them to cover the tax cost. Right, but with 83 B election, you're able to do that now at a penny, let's say, because if you go into a startup, the shares and options are worth very little, right, and it gets the clock ticking.

Christopher Nelson [00:58:24]:

Well, it gets the clock ticking and then, to your point, the fact that there's no spread between the strike price and then the fair market value of the company, that means that you're not going to be exposed to that additional tax.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:58:37]:

Right. Because let's say that penny goes to a dollar and you exercise at a dollar. You have to pay taxes on $0.99 on that spread that you're talking about. So I think understanding that is huge. And then QSBS is if you join before a company has a certain number of employees and a certain number of revenue, and you hold the shares for five years or more, then there's a federal exemption from those. It's not even taxed at long term gains right. Up to, I think, $10 million. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:59:21]:

Which is a home run. Right. Like, if you're doing that, it's a huge thing. But it's like these little details that I talk to, a lot of people, they just don't understand it. And it's like, what are you doing here? You're joining an early stage company. You need to kind of understand the tax consequences of what you're getting into. Right. And then how to do that.

Emiliano Berenbaum [00:59:42]:

And people say it's unfair. Right. It's like, oh, that's not fair. But it's like, look, I don't know, one out of ten of these work, right? That means that 90% of these are sold or everybody gets fired. Right. Plus, what would my salary be on the open market? Right. I bet you it's a lot more than I'm making now, I think. Well, sure, right.

Christopher Nelson [01:00:11]:

100%. I've seen those numbers, right? Yes.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:00:14]:

So everybody is taking a thing for a 10% chance or a 5% chance that you might hit it. So those are kind of the incentives that are out right now that might change. Right. But as of today, that's where we are with that stuff. So I think that understanding that and explaining it to the people that work for you. Right. I always tell them, look, this is how this works, right. Look, give me a check for $10.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:00:44]:

And that's what it is. Right. It's not like that's not going to happen and then the thing is, if you leave before that, you get the money back. Right. Whatever you did, invest well, and that's.

Christopher Nelson [01:00:52]:

The thing is then there's also the opportunity you put in a year or two, maybe you've already taken half off the table. Now you have that in the bank, right? Yeah.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:01:04]:

Because part of the contracts, too, is if you leave and you haven't invested or you haven't exercised any stocks, any options sorry. I think there's usually a time limit and they go away.

Christopher Nelson [01:01:16]:

That's right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:01:17]:

So I think a lot of people don't understand that either, right? Or they don't read it. So they don't know that, like, hey, look, if I didn't exercise this and I leave, if I don't exercise for 90 days, it's just poof. It all goes back into the company.

Christopher Nelson [01:01:34]:

Coffers go back into the pool. Yes, I definitely have seen that trend where many people want to go to work for equity, but they don't take the time to understand the nuance of it or what it means because it's an asset in and of itself that has nuance and understanding depending on absolutely. Company.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:01:52]:

Yeah. If you're doing something with a tax expert on 83 B elections and stuff like that, especially when you get outside and I hate to you know, when you get outside the Bay Area, a lot of people just don't even I'm always surprised, right, when I bring these things up and they're like, what is that?

Christopher Nelson [01:02:07]:

I don't get and I was even in the Bay Area, same thing. I was very big on educating people on what the stock was, what it meant, because sometimes there'd be people who came from consulting or other companies where they had maybe employee share purchase programs, but they'd never gotten RSUs or they'd never gotten ISOs. And so you have to break down and explain to them what it is.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:02:31]:

Right. And those are different from company shares. I mean, then company options that you're getting at a startup.

Christopher Nelson [01:02:37]:

Right, right. It's a whole gambit. Yeah. But that's a great idea. I do have some great tax guys that we covered some of this stuff before, but they're phenomenal. That'd be a great episode. So thanks for that idea.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:02:52]:

Yeah. And I'd even get into preferred shares and stuff like that, right. Which is what the VCs get. Right. So there's a whole stack of preference and all the crazy laws. And as a founder, that's the kind of stuff that you need to understand. Right. Plus, the code has to work, right?

Christopher Nelson [01:03:11]:

Well, yeah, the code has but it's the two sides of it, right, is like you're building the business because, again, you want the equity. You want to be able to get to the point where you can realize those things. So you have to understand that. And it's not an or, right? You're doing it right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:03:29]:

Yeah. The other thing is, I try to be I don't know. I don't know how other founders do it or what they do, and maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I am super transparent, right? And I tell everybody, like, look, this is what we're doing. If we get here, if we get to this point that it's a wash, right? These things are worth nothing. But that's why you're here. Right. Can this thing go up to a certain point, right? Can the equity be worth X and X is 100 times a penny or whatever it is, or 1000 times? Or am I learning too? Right? A lot of people always tell people, look, it's careers come and go, right? Companies come and go. Right? There's people that like, you and I work together, right? And we're still connected.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:04:28]:

And I talk to a lot of people that have worked with me or for me. And some people don't want to talk to me, some do. Right. But it's critical that you educate people and they kind of get exposed to this because it's like what I say to them is like, look, this is you on day one, right? When you leave Trustlel, are you going to be better? Are you going to be more informed? Are you going to be more worldly? Are you going to see like, hey, look, this is how we sell to the customers, this is how we talk at conferences, this is how I present this, right. Like, what exposure can I give people? And it's funny because one of the proudest things that I have about my last company, Scytale, I mean, we were small, right. We weren't even 20 people. There's already two companies being formed from the alumni wow.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:05:22]:

Right. That they've started their own companies. And it's amazing. I love that. That's great. Yeah. Because you kind of want to see that, right? Because it's how you build these networks of people. And that's a critical part, too.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:05:39]:

Right. I think it's like those soft skills that you have to have, right?

Christopher Nelson [01:05:45]:

Well, it is. And then I just love seeing I just know for myself, I remember at a point in my career where I was helping people get to a director level, and I love seeing them get to a director level. And while I went and was a Chief Information Officer for a moment in my career, there's people that now I help get to director level that are now VPs chief Information Officers and are running and doing impactful things at larger companies. And it's the fact that you're right, you're running an organization for a moment in time that's educating and skilling people up so that they can realize their true potential, so that they can actually do things and make more of an impact in this world of technology that we're in.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:06:33]:

Yeah. And it's funny because I think I know some of the people you're talking about also, they're doing great. And it's sort of like, what is your role? Right? You're part mentor. You're trying to grow people, you're trying to give back. Right. I had people throughout my career that helped me. I remember sitting in the office of the gentleman that ran the department at Bell Corps. I only met him like, once or twice, and his name was Stuart personic, I think was his name.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:07:19]:

Right. But he told me, like, look, tech's always changing. It is always moving. And you want to be in the vanguard. You want to be the tip of the spear because, like, two, three years, the stuff will leave you behind. Right. If you're not grown with it and moving with it, with your career, you're going to be left behind. Seriously, for a 22 year old me, that was great advice.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:07:41]:

Right. And I've always tried to be on the vanguard, right? Because this stuff moves fast. Right. Ironically, I think now if you're a cobalt programmer, you're probably making a killing.

Christopher Nelson [01:07:51]:

Because nobody knows that anymore. The two that are left. Yeah. So I do want to try and wrap up on this side, just talk a little bit more of you obviously went through an acquisition before. What are some strategies or tips as we talk about? You obviously had to prepare the team. You had to prepare the company for acquisition. What are just a couple of strategies and tips that you would give to other founders, other employees around that process?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:08:25]:

You got to take care of people, right? I think that's a big thing. You have to make sure that it depends what the circumstances are for the acquisition. But I think first and foremost, am I taking care of my folks when they leave and they're done? Are they going to be like, Emiliano was a jerk, he screwed me over, or like, look, we did the best with what we had, and I landed somewhere, and then we kind of went from there, and I did XYZ, right. And again, I don't know, maybe I'm stupid, right? I'm trying to be nice , maybe I'm too nice, or I'm being naive, or I'm trying to make sure that the folks are being taken care of and the team is good because the world is small. It's a small world, right? Especially in tech. I think people don't realize that. I think that's a big thing. Don't burn bridges.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:09:23]:

Don't be that jerk, because with LinkedIn, everybody knows somebody that knows that person, and everybody's back channeling everyone's asking. I want people to say I treated them right. I think that's one big thing. A big thing on the legal end, like I said, going back to the beginning, you got to make sure everything is super tight on the legal end, right? Do I have all my signatures? Is everything there? Right? And sometimes what happens is when the acquirer comes in, they come in and they look at your employment contracts, and they're like, well, we want to change XYZ, right? Oh, wow. That happens, right? I mean, it could go either way, right? I mean, it depends on what it is, from what I've heard from people. And you got to go back and sell it to your team, and then you gotta tell them, like, hey, look, we got to do this, right? They want us to come in and do this, and what's it going to do just to make sure that's a big reason you want to take care of them, right? Because you'll have key players, and what ends up happening is we got to make sure the key players come along, right? Because otherwise, what are we buying? It also depends how big the company is at that point. We were small when we were acquired, but I think if it's bigger, it's definitely a different set of questions that you'd ask at that point, like your sales list and all that kind of stuff, and your customers and how they're going to transition and all of that. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:10:58]:

But that's also what you're selling, right. What's my revenue stream? What are the folks that I have? What are my deals, my deal size? A lot of that is critical. I can't even imagine the splunk deal that just happened.

Christopher Nelson [01:11:15]:

Right. I was mind boggled, too. Like, there's a whole team of people that are managing yeah.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:11:21]:

That are legal bill there. I would love to see that. I think that's going to be over seven figures in fees, I'm sure.

Christopher Nelson [01:11:29]:

Oh, easily. If not eight.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:11:31]:

Yeah. That's going to be just dealing with what we did for our little company. I just can't even imagine that stuff. It's crazy. Yeah. But I mean, that's a critical thing, right? Having good hygiene on your paperwork and all your contracts. It's super critical. It sounds like even when you're raising money, that's what they want to see your books.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:11:57]:

Right. And if your books look like crap, then it's not a good sign.

Christopher Nelson [01:12:02]:

Not at all.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:12:03]:

Yeah.

Christopher Nelson [01:12:05]:

Well, I want to thank you for the time today. We always wrap up with a fire round of five questions. And so number one is what's the worst career advice you ever received?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:12:20]:

What's the worst career advice that I ever received? I think it was from myself. Right. I think that I've learned this the hard way. I think the worst career advice that I received was when I left certain companies when I shouldn't have, right. Because of my ego and me not being able to play well with others. Right. So I've made that mistake. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:12:44]:

I've left places a little bit too early, and I shouldn't have left, and I should have stuck it out a little bit more. Right. So I think that's if you're going to exit a company, you want to do it on your own terms at the right time and don't let your emotions get the best of you. And I've made that mistake, so that was me. And it's funny because I've given people that same advice. Well, I was like, don't leave. You got to wait. See, that everything's, right? I know you don't like it, but wait for the situation or there's a vesting period coming, and with options, you want to hit a certain cliff.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:13:24]:

So wait for that. Right? That's right.

Christopher Nelson [01:13:28]:

Patience. Because sometimes it's the waiting. As hard as it is, it's going to realize all of the value of the time that you've already put in. I mean, we are playing a different game here. This is the equity game. And it's all about making sure that's.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:13:43]:

The game you're playing. If that's the game you're playing, if.

Christopher Nelson [01:13:45]:

That is 100%, how do you keep learning?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:13:52]:

I keep learning, reading, and trying to keep up on things. I definitely have a couple of Google queries that come and send me articles on certain topics that I want to see. I'm not on every board. I know some people stay up on that pretty on some of the security boards, but definitely reading the trends. Right. I mean, there's so much happening, right. So much volume. But being in the open source world for a while, it's kind of understanding what are the big projects coming up and how people are solving things. Because another one of my mantras is, don't do meta work.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:14:37]:

Right. Where I've seen people are like, hey, we want to write our own database. It's like, Why would you want to do that? Just grab one off the shelf. Yeah. And for a lot of stuff like that, there's something already that solves your problem. Let's look into that. And that research and understanding. I think that's important.

Christopher Nelson [01:14:53]:

Right. To understand where there are some good, steady solutions out there that you don't have to reinvent?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:14:58]:

And talking to people, too. That's a big thing. Right. Reaching out when you don't know, that's a way to keep educated, too huge, yeah.

Christopher Nelson [01:15:07]:

What do you do to recharge?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:15:09]:

To recharge? I'll take time to go to the gym, and it's kind of like a way for me to Zen out. Right. I feel that I used to do yoga, but I think it's important to do something physical where you're not thinking and you're kind of detaching your mind. I know that sounds very New Agey coming from a guy that grew up in Long Island, but I think it's important to kind of take yourself out of the moment and then go back into it. I don't do meditation, but I'm willing to try.

Christopher Nelson [01:15:47]:

Hey, open your mind. You never know.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:15:50]:

You never know what's going to get in there.

Christopher Nelson [01:15:52]:

What's the advice you'd give your younger self working in tech?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:15:58]:

What's the advice? Well, buy more Apple shares and don't sell them when they double. That would have been my advice. And keep on to the Microsoft shares and never sell them. That's the advice I would give myself.

Christopher Nelson [01:16:12]:

That's the advice you give your younger self. That's great advice.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:16:16]:

My younger self? Yeah. That's the best advice I could give, yeah. Don't sell it like the month after Steve Jobs comes. Just hold on to it.

Christopher Nelson [01:16:26]:

Just hold on just a little bit more.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:16:28]:

Yeah, just a little bit longer. Yes.

Christopher Nelson [01:16:31]:

What soft skill do you think has helped your career the most?

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:16:37]:

I think listening. Right. And I think that's something that I try to work on all the time. Right. So I want to give people, I think, one big thing, and if I mess this up, I'm sorry to the people I work with. But you're wrong a lot of times. Right. What is it? There's a couple of sayings, right? One of them is, if you're the smartest person in the room, go to another room.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:17:10]:

Right. And people that work with me, they're better at a lot of stuff. Right. So I want to understand, like, hey, look, this is how we want to go about this. What do you think? Why do you think this is a bad idea? Right. And then we kind of go back and forth and just give people space and respect for their opinion and what we need to do. Right. I think that's critical, because a lot of times in my career and as I've gotten up the ladder right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:17:41]:

It's funny. I worked at one company where I hired a lot of co ops, and I still talk to those folks. Right. It's crazy, right? Like, 20 years later, there's a couple of people I still talk to. They had amazing ideas, right. And great insights, and you're learning from everyone. And those people, I think, listening and learning and just trying to make them comfortable that you're approachable and you could talk to. Right.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:18:09]:

Because if you're a jerk and nobody wants to talk to you, it's just I don't know. That's not my vibe.

Christopher Nelson [01:18:16]:

Well, I just think yeah. It doesn't align with your values, and at some point, I think it's going to be hard for them to scale, to be honest.

Emiliano Berenbaum [01:18:24]:

Yeah. Right. Because you want to scale. Right. It's just like, I can't do all of this. Right. I want to be surrounded by people that could help me not hold them back. Right.

Christopher Nelson [01:18:34]:

100%. Well, Emiliano, that's it for us. I can't thank you so much for your time. I'll make sure that people can find out about Trussell down below. I'll put the website, the link in there, but thanks for your time. Thanks for joining us today on this interview with Emiliano Berenbaum around building and growing your career from a developer to an architect to a CEO, and then also having your companies be acquired in building equity and not just trading your time and talent for it. I think there were a few takeaways that I just want to tease out. It's obvious to me that Emiliano was able to develop his skills.

Christopher Nelson [01:19:13]:

He had deep technical skills that he got working for Bellcorp, and then he was able to translate that into a specialization around security that he's still leveraging today. You can also hear in his story how he continued to look for different opportunities to solve bigger problems that led him to that developer, to the architect, to the chief technology officer of his previous company, and now the CEO of this one. Always looking to solve bigger problems, led him to solving problems that created larger impact. I think, from the other side, when it talks about building equity, you heard very clearly how important it is to make sure that you get your paperwork straight, that you have somebody that can complement your skills that you're trying to build, that you're leaning into. As he was from understanding product development, sales, he wanted somebody that could help him drive the paperwork, the details, the nuance, so that he could focus on what was most important for him. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I would ask you one thing. If you're enjoying tech careers and money Talk, please leave us a review.

Christopher Nelson [01:20:22]:

We do need reviews to let other people know how well we're doing. Helps the podcast tremendously. Please let us know what you think and leave us a review. Thank you very much. See you in the next episode.