The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders

The Decibel Podcast brings together founders from diverse backgrounds to share their personal journeys, words of wisdom, and lessons learned from the earliest years of their now successful startups. Creating something out of nothing is always a hard and messy process, and we demystify the most thrilling and challenging phase of every startup’s life: the very beginning.Hosted by Jon Sakoda, Founding Partner of Decibel, we go deep on how every founder survives the moments of crisis that kill others, overcomes personal challenges and adversity, and ultimately finds their way through the twists and turns on the winding road of a startup’s journey. Along the way, we debunk conventional wisdom about the VC and tech industry for first time founders. This podcast is produced by Decibel, an independent venture capital firm created in partnership with Cisco to push the conventional boundaries of early stage investing. Decibel combines the speed, agility, and independent risk-taking traditional

The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders is a business podcast hosted by Jon Sakoda, with 26 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Jon Sakoda hosts The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders, a business show with 26 episodes published.

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  The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders

  Casey Ellis, Founder of BugCrowd: When Known Vulnerabilities are Life or Death

  Aug 13, 202544 minS0

  <p>Casey Ellis is the founder of BugCrowd, the first open marketplace for vulnerability disclosure and commercial bug bounties. On today’s episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Casey on the early economics of paying people to hack companies, why ethical hackers are an amazing source of criminal creativity, and why every founder needs to ultimately fix their known vulnerabilities:</p>Why the Economics of Bug Bounties are 20x the Status Quo  [11:23-14:42] - Casey had global access to talent around the world and saw that there was a huge opportunity to empower the best and brightest hackers to be paid for...

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  The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders

  Yaron Singer, Founder and CEO of Robust Intelligence: The Inconvenient Truth of AI

  Mar 4, 202529 minS0

  <p>Yaron Singer is the Founder and CEO of Robust Intelligence, the early leader in AI security that was recently acquired by Cisco. On today’s episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Yaron on how academics need to decide on the right time to start a company, why the capabilities and risks of AI for many industries need to be approached end to end, and why startups should seek to dispel many of the myths of being acquired:</p>Why Skateboarding Prepared Me Well for Entrepreneurship  [4:10 - 5:45] - Yaron early on picked up skateboarding as one of his first hobbies. He rea...

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  The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders

  Dmitri Alperovitch, Co-Founder and Former CTO of Crowdstrike: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

  Sep 10, 202456 minS0

  <p>Dmitri Alperovitch is the Co-Founder and former CTO of Crowdstrike, one of the most valuable cybersecurity companies founded in the modern era that defined the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category. On today’s episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Dmitri on why email security was one of the best places to learn cybersecurity, the hardest parts of finding product-market fit in a new category, and how all of his learnings inside of larger companies ultimately inspired him to start Crowdstrike:</p>Why E-Mail Security Was the Best Place to Learn About Adversaries  [7:15 - 14:32] - Dmitri’s early career at Ciphe...

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  The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders

  Chris Wysopal, Founder and CTO of Veracode: How Hackers Became the Celebrities of Cybersecurity

  Apr 16, 202435 minS0

  <p>Chris Wysopal is the Founder and CTO of Veracode, a $2.5 billion software supply chain security company that pioneered the field of application security and was one of the first companies to embrace software as a service. On today’s episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Chris on his early fame as a cybersecurity researcher and the highs and lows of building Veracode across three decades:</p>How a Hacking Group Became Celebrities  [11:50 - 15:35] - Chris was a member of the famous “L0pht” hacker group who became famous for discovering vulnerabilities in Lotus and Microsoft software. Shining a light on the iss...

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  The Decibel Podcast: Founders Helping Founders

  Kevin Mandia, Founder and CEO of Mandiant: Creating the Navy Seals of Cybersecurity Software

  Jan 16, 202453 minS0

  <p>Kevin Mandia is the Founder and CEO of Mandiant, the widely recognized leader in cybersecurity incident response which was recently acquired by Google for $5.4 Billion. On today’s episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Kevin on why he founded Mandiant, and his personal journey to create a company to defend companies against cyber surveillance advanced persistent threats from Russia, China, and North Korea:</p>Seeing the Future of Inevitable Breaches  [15:32- 16:05] - Kevin started Mandiant after seeing the most advanced cyber surveillance attacks against this country. His big bet was that even the very best companies would struggle to protect the...

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