Benny Porat has been coming to RSAC for nearly a decade, but he never expected to make $5 million just for signing up.
Porat and nine other founders were awarded a combined $50 million as part of the marquee Innovation Sandbox contest, which looks to crown the year’s “Most Innovative Startup.” The prizes were funded by RSAC’s parent company, Crosspoint Capital Partners.
The investment is for Twine Security, Porat’s startup building digital AI employees to help close the cybersecurity talent gap. Though the money is nice, it was hardly on his mind back when he was just another regular attendee.
“In the end, you’re making friends,” he tells Vendelux from the main floor of the bustling Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.
“All the different friends that you’re building up over the years, they’re coming here. It’s a great opportunity for us to meet. We’re all traveling and busy all day, and it’s a really cool occasion when we’re all in the same city,” he says.
The Israeli native, 38, co-founded cybersecurity firm Claroty in 2014. He started attending the conference shortly after, going on to compete in the Innovation Sandbox battle with Claroty in 2017.
“So it’s like, I know it really well,” Porat said. “It was a really great validation for our technology.”
This year, Porat got an even bigger ego boost. Twine, his newest endeavor, was once again chosen as a finalist from among 200 applicants.
At the competition on Monday morning, Porat delivered his three-minute elevator pitch to an intimidating panel of six judges that included current and former executives from Morgan Stanley, Verizon and McAfee. Porat, smiling through his thick accent, came off a bit nervous under the lights.
The panel of judges ultimately went with ProjectDicovery. The San Francisco-based company’s top product, Nuclei, is an open-source vulnerability scanner that automates attack surface monitoring and vulnerability management.
“No, we didn’t get the top prize,” Porat said. “Someone told me that—and I didn’t check this—that we are the fastest company to play in the top finalists. Like, we are less than a year in and we are here with customers providing them great value.
“For us, the opportunity, the amount of exposure we get, the validation that our product is really working and really solving and providing great value to our customers, it’s powerful, because now it’s opened us to the rest of the market.”
Porat has now cashed in on his decade-long RSAC investment twice. Claroty is now worth a reported $2.5 billion, though Porat left the company after six years.
As the expo hall reached its peak Tuesday afternoon, Porat was once again focusing on fostering the connections that got him where he is today.
“We’ve got back-to-back meetings all day. Some are good friends from the old days, like CISOs that we worked with, clients, and of course, prospective partners,” he said. “We are here to increase the relationship.
“For me, the conference is mainly about increasing existing relationships rather than getting new ones. We already got very surprising, multiple new ones that look really good and feel good, but the main goal is to increase our relationships and go further with our customers.”
