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Welcome to Founder-Led, featuring founders scaling 7 and 8 figure companies who share the strategies and mindset driving real growth.
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Rohan
Welcome to Founder Lead, where we sit down with some of the sharpest founder operators to learn what's working in their business today.
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Rohan
This episode is brought to you by Frontier Studio,
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Rohan
a revenue minded content partner
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Rohan
helping founders grow their visibility,
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Rohan
authority
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Rohan
ultimately their business from LinkedIn.
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Rohan
So if you're ready to join over 30 businesses
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Rohan
are turning conversations like this into real demand,
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Rohan
comment frontier below and someone from our team will reach out.
00:00:29:16 - 00:00:31:16
Rohan
Now let's get to today's episode.
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Rohan
Today we're joined by Greg Fitzgerald, CEO of Artificial by Design and chairman of cyber for security. Over the past three decades, Greg has helped build and scale cybersecurity and infrastructure companies including Fortinet, silence and CVO security, which is recently acquired by Arctic Wolf. He's built his career as a translator, turning complex technology into clear market value.
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Rohan
And this conversation, we get into that skill, the growth of silence and what excites him today about building at the infrastructure layer with artificial by Design. Greg, welcome to the show.
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Greg
Thank you very much, Ryan. Glad to be here.
00:01:15:09 - 00:01:38:02
Rohan
Greg, you know something that stood out when we spoke last week is this idea of being a translator. And that seems to be, you know, the kind of through line with all the businesses that you've led over the years. So I would love if you can start off by sharing the highlights of your founder journey and what that translator journey look like for you.
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Greg
Thank you. It's an exciting journey. For the past 27 years. Before that, I was in banking
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Greg
out of college and I realized, you know, that translation was pretty simple. It's math and it's just trying to make money whether it's going up or down. However, that wasn't fulfilling. What was really fulfilling was actually solving real problems. And what's fascinating about my particular journey is I'm not technical in nature, but I am analytical.
00:02:04:05 - 00:02:25:12
Greg
And part of that is identifying what is out there that needs to be solved. And there's some very smart people in this world who are solving those problems. However, a lot of times those aren't translated to saying, I've got the fix and the other person's like, I don't understand what you have, right? And so it goes back to out of a graduate school.
00:02:25:12 - 00:02:42:15
Greg
I did a couple of graduate schools, and I really learned there's just a there are two types of people in this world that really are the creators and the ones that can promote it and explain it, right. Some people, there's a rare group that can do the same, but when you're building a business, you kind of got to focus on what your strengths are.
00:02:42:15 - 00:03:08:13
Greg
And so that's where I kind of started out back in, in the 90s, in the, the compact computers, where I realized when I went through an only engineering interview process and didn't think I was going to get the job. But at the end, I got the job. And the gentleman who hired me said, the reason is that you were able to explain the key technical value in a very simple way that people could understand, and vice versa.
00:03:08:13 - 00:03:19:02
Greg
You can understand the market problems. Back to the technical gentleman to solve it, but without telling them what to do. And they love you for that. And so that's been my career for the past 27 years.
00:03:19:07 - 00:03:25:00
Rohan
Okay. Now fast forward, I'd love if you can share, you know, the kind of quick story
00:03:25:05 - 00:03:27:18
Rohan
with your, you know, recent acquisition
00:03:27:20 - 00:03:34:18
Rohan
and the exit of your company. I know you did it in about six years or so. It started in the Starbucks in the domain in North Austin. So
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Rohan
what was the story there in terms of the gap you saw in the market, and how were you able to build so much momentum so quickly to, you know, what turned out a pretty significant, meaningful exit to Arctic Wolf?
00:03:45:16 - 00:04:02:18
Greg
Well great question. So first of all, that particular business was looking at kind of a series of my past and my co-founders past when we realized we were creating products that were solving a specific problem. And at the time
00:04:02:21 - 00:04:10:01
Greg
when we started this, which is in literally in 2020, the Covid was announced the week after we started the business.
00:04:10:01 - 00:04:11:07
Greg
So we were going, okay,
00:04:11:07 - 00:04:20:06
Greg
I guess we're I guess we're out of business. People even started and realized from the from our board of directors, they're like, no, no, it's going to take you a year to build this product. By then, Covid should be over.
00:04:20:08 - 00:04:30:07
Greg
So we do right back into it. And the the the item was solving one problem, which is the visibility okay, visibility within it.
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Greg
So everything that we had created up to that time frame were problems that were very vertical in nature. And those particular technologies did not talk to one another. And so the challenge was, how do I really know what's protected, what needs to be updated, who's using what with what from where? Well, the the information exists, but it's not aggregated at a higher level.
00:04:53:14 - 00:04:55:16
Greg
And so we were solving the one problem.
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Greg
And so with that I'm going to emphasize as a as a founder. And for all of those that are working on a business, one of the key elements of success that I have forever been leaning on actually originates from a 1991 movie, City Slickers. For anyone that remembers that. And there was a gentleman in there that curly who said, it's the one thing
00:05:16:20 - 00:05:23:20
Greg
you got to find out what that one thing is and stick to it, and everything else will will work out well.
00:05:23:20 - 00:05:49:20
Greg
And that has been repetitive over eight different companies that I have done this particular exercise with. When I walk in and I go, what's the one thing that you do? The one use case that you can defend vehemently and know that your competition may say they can do it, but in reality, when they're pushed or they're tried or they're tested, they won't do it as well as you can.
00:05:50:01 - 00:06:10:05
Greg
And so with that, that's how these companies win. And so in our particular case with security, what's the name of the company we focused on ease of use for getting the quickest visibility in the shortest amount of time. And hence the value was quick time to value. And at a time where people were not, they were taking a long time to get to some sort of value.
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Greg
And technology was very troublesome,
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Greg
but we hit the market at the right time. So timing has everything to do with these startups to say the least. No matter if it's a great product, if you're too early, you can run out of money, you're too late, you miss the market, but if you hit it right and you have that one thing, then you just catapult.
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Greg
And that's what we did it.
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Greg
And that was been a great ride. Even through a rocky economy,
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Greg
we became a much more strategic component to lots of vendors that were bigger than we were, especially Arctic Wolf, which we happen to focus on. The same customer segment, which is the mid-tier type, customer base of the enterprises. For those people that don't have enough personnel in their organization to provide those visibility, and yet they would benefit the greatest from it.
00:06:51:23 - 00:07:11:12
Rohan
Okay. Would you see that one thing, that kind of that killer narrative is, did that hold consistent from the beginning of the company through to its adoption and traction, or did it evolve and change a bit based on the market's feedback and what you're hearing from customers, and what the true market value and value prop ended up being?
00:07:11:17 - 00:07:15:05
Greg
Very good question. Because in this particular case,
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Greg
it did shift. So we had a premise when we started the business
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Greg
and that was it. And cybersecurity were coming together, and that because they had been siloed and they were coming together,
00:07:27:23 - 00:07:40:18
Greg
we saw examples of that with Pfizer and big companies who had taken their security person and made them in charge of of all of it and security, and vice versa, that cyber cybersecurity was becoming much more of a board of directors issue.
00:07:40:18 - 00:08:06:21
Greg
And because of the risk and the compliance issues that were legally binding the board of directors. And so with a number of these premises, we found that one visibility being universal. Interesting to your question. In 2023, when the economy went kind of sideways, interest rates spiked. Customers that we had in prospects kind of reverted back to their old ways of business where they they didn't come together.
00:08:06:22 - 00:08:28:00
Greg
They kind of sat in their little siloed. And so the value proposition for us on visibility had to actually instead of being universal between it and cyber, we had to shift dramatically and quickly to only the cybersecurity value proposition for two reasons. One, that was what the entire team knew the most and best of. Plus, it was a very, very acute problem.
00:08:28:00 - 00:08:44:06
Greg
There were on the IT side, visibility wasn't the important value proposition, it was availability and performance. So knowing what the motivators were, again, pick the one thing that we're going to have the best visibility of cyber. And that really, you know, continue that that push.
00:08:44:11 - 00:08:53:19
Greg
So that was the example of security. Go back to one more that my biggest hit was a company called Silence and Silence was 2012 through 2019.
00:08:53:20 - 00:08:56:12
Greg
And it was an industry that started
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Greg
with antivirus, and it was the first AI ML
00:09:00:09 - 00:09:21:02
Greg
back in the day of cybersecurity. It was just one machine learning was coming out. What was fascinating is there were 60 vendors in the space, McAfee semantic, Trend Micro companies that have been around for a long time industry, elephants, I mean, just huge gorillas that were there as well in that, that just would block the little guys out.
00:09:21:03 - 00:09:42:07
Greg
But the fascinating piece was we captured the market at a time where we flipped the entire value proposition on its head, which is, why do you have to stop? I mean, see the attack to turn around and create some sort of prevention, to then inject that to, to then stop it after you've already seen it. And our value proposition was
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Greg
stop the attack before it starts,
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Greg
right.
00:09:45:21 - 00:09:51:11
Greg
Simple value. People understood it. It was a translation between an ungodly,
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Greg
technology
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Greg
at that time especially. But to the use case and the value proposition of the buyer and that simple value proposition being translated just hit the market hard. And it was a differentiator, which I said when we picked one thing and that was we were going to focus on executable.
00:10:11:19 - 00:10:32:13
Greg
So in the tech world, executables down on your normal executable word dot PowerPoints, you know, that kind of stuff. We expand out over time for more. But that was the most poignant value proposition. And boy, that just once we could prove that we could do that. The complex for the buyer side took off. And then the company went.
00:10:32:14 - 00:10:46:07
Greg
I mean, we went from an idea in the fall of 2012 to being acquired for 1.4 billion in 20 1819 by BlackBerry. And we grew. We were one of the fastest growing companies at the time,
00:10:46:07 - 00:10:55:03
Greg
as by raided by Nasdaq, where we've gone from 0 to 100 million in two years of getting out of the product. And again, this is a infrastructure product, right?
00:10:55:03 - 00:11:09:16
Greg
This is it takes a lot of time to deploy. And everything else was very different than what we're seeing today. When you're looking at, you know, SaaS based companies and things that are like, oh, I can get there in 90 days. I'm like, okay, that's great. But technology was a little different back in 2012 to 2019.
00:11:09:20 - 00:11:23:22
Rohan
Okay, okay. And so are you saying like the McAfee's and the elephants of that time, they were not doing preventative security. It was more reactive. And what prevented them from seeing your growth and coming in and kind of taking over that value prop given their scale?
00:11:24:03 - 00:11:26:13
Greg
Well, great question, because they were
00:11:26:16 - 00:11:44:21
Greg
the technology that they had, frankly, they'd be kind of resting on their laurels in the sense. Right? A lot of these big companies create momentum and then they just have inertia. I mean, the best way to analogy is look at a battleship. Like that thing just does not turn quickly and it takes a while to get it rolling.
00:11:44:21 - 00:11:57:17
Greg
But once it gets rolling, man, you're not going to stop it. Well that's great. But now it's a massive entity going in one direction. And so when technology, newer technology comes out, they have a choice. They can either buy it, which they didn't.
00:11:57:20 - 00:12:00:18
Greg
They could try to build it, which they weren't very good at because
00:12:00:21 - 00:12:03:05
Greg
even the people inside the organization,
00:12:03:09 - 00:12:07:13
Greg
realistically they're not that driven for change.
00:12:07:13 - 00:12:24:18
Greg
And then the organizational structure isn't really that driven for change. Why? Because they've got margins. They've been talking to the Wall Street. They've got ways they do process in business. You know, they just are comfortable with. And so change is so, so hard in those organizations. And so we were able to take full advantage of that at that time.
00:12:24:18 - 00:12:27:14
Greg
So I love I'm a David and Goliath kind of Cai
00:12:27:17 - 00:12:49:11
Greg
because I'm a small guy anyway. And so the way I win and small companies win, in my opinion, is that they zig when the others are zagging, right. And also moving so quickly and being able, I don't want to call it pivot because pivots are very dramatic move for any organization to ship even in ours was set security where we shifted from IT and security to just security.
00:12:49:12 - 00:13:14:12
Greg
That wasn't a pivot. That was just a readjustment of focus for some of the feature capabilities that that particular audience needed. So that is one of the key elements of success is just being able to one anticipate and then make the changes that are necessary in the organization so that you can move faster. You know, hustle and speed is paramount in the success of David and Goliath type models.
00:13:14:14 - 00:13:22:20
Rohan
Yeah, I think that's such a good point, especially with the rise of 2026 AI and the year of the agent and autonomous agents,
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Rohan
because now anyone can build a prototype and a working
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Rohan
application, and there's this kind of recursive learning model that they can use to make sure that there's so much iteration and improvement once they get this client feedback.
00:13:36:13 - 00:13:43:14
Rohan
I heard the term small batch software, and I like that because now you can find that wedge. And
00:13:43:17 - 00:13:46:17
Rohan
again like larger incumbents, they may need to like
00:13:46:22 - 00:13:50:11
Rohan
there might be much slower to adopt and change. And
00:13:50:17 - 00:14:01:18
Rohan
given how fast you can build something and reach customers and iterate and improve based on customer feedback, that can be a real value prop for these smaller teams to get going and get their first initial set of customers.
00:14:01:18 - 00:14:16:05
Rohan
So I love that story because, you know, you found this wedge and what might have been considered a highly competitive space and sounds like you and your team just like ran after that. And you had that adoption. And obviously, like the exit itself speaks for itself.
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Greg
Yeah. It's funny when you kind of, you know, like everything, you got to have a strategy of where you want to go. So our CEO, Stuart McClure was like, this is going to be a $50 million. This is going to be a $50 stock. I mean,
00:14:26:21 - 00:14:29:18
Greg
we hadn't even been created yet. And we're going to be a $50 stock.
00:14:29:19 - 00:14:33:02
Greg
Okay. And so having that kind of way out there,
00:14:33:02 - 00:14:40:12
Greg
reach for the stars. Right. Even if you hit the moon you're going to do well. But that was kind of a vision mission goal.
00:14:40:14 - 00:14:52:13
Greg
I will go into kind of passion. Right. The the purpose of that was really about protecting the planet. Like we walked into silence and it was like, you're here to help protect the planet.
00:14:52:14 - 00:14:56:20
Greg
And you go, wow, I've got a reason for being here, right? A mission.
00:14:56:20 - 00:15:13:09
Greg
And that really helped drive and keep all the people focused. And it was a very simple one. Again, translate that. I was like, what does that mean? You can translate down to each person. They can start to interpret my purpose here, whether I am the janitor or somebody else is related to protecting the planet and is doing that.
00:15:13:09 - 00:15:16:03
Greg
So that's a why, right? I love the whole assignments and
00:15:16:08 - 00:15:30:18
Greg
why how what why? Here we go. You know, how are we going to do this is through through the cybersecurity and input security in particular. And then what is it. We got this product called Silence Protect. And it's freaking cool. And it stops the attack before it starts.
00:15:30:20 - 00:15:47:15
Greg
We got the whole thing out in less than what 20s. That was the entire company. And everybody resonated that. And all the way down we had 2500 people and they were you could ask anybody from the top to the bottom, and they pretty much said the exact same thing about who are you? Why do you exist and what your value.
00:15:47:15 - 00:16:00:22
Greg
And so I think that's one of the the leadership challenges when you're into an organization. But it's also one where you, you know, you're not just a great tech. If you don't mind, I'll, I'll expand upon your statement about today's AI.
00:16:01:01 - 00:16:14:23
Greg
It is so cool. It moves so fast. But think about this. You know, Claude, I think I just read something that Claude has had like 72 versions and like 54 days or something crazy like that, while we as the tech folks can't even keep up with that.
00:16:14:23 - 00:16:16:07
Greg
So imagine
00:16:16:12 - 00:16:37:07
Greg
we can't keep up in development. What is the customer thinking, right? They like, dude, this change is so fast. Now I'm scared. Like it moves so fast. I'm going to hold off until this thing settles down, right? I don't need it that badly, right? So it might be unique and different. So what I think AI companies are gonna have to focus on.
00:16:37:11 - 00:17:03:09
Greg
Yeah, relative to the big companies, is that customer intimacy, to your point, is really understanding the true value proposition of what is one thing it can do a lot of things. What's the one thing this thing can do that's going to get you the wedge into solving a real problem that actually is tactical in nature. So many companies, especially in the cybersecurity world today,
00:17:03:12 - 00:17:05:10
Greg
are like, oh, we can do all these things.
00:17:05:11 - 00:17:27:02
Greg
Well, that's great, but I actually only need you to solve one damn thing. Right? So now I'm missing the message where I can do all these things. But again, that's coming at it bluntly, right. You're coming out of the blunt market. Get in with the sharpest point you can get. And then once you get in, then wedge yourself broader and broader to make your value proposition stick.
00:17:27:02 - 00:17:52:16
Greg
And so there are a lot of models to go do that. But a lot of it is just get it. You know, people are confused today and they're overwhelmed with technology in general. And all these saying, I can solve these problems. And it's like again. Help! Help me translate what I can have confidence in. And you're one staying power that what you created and going to get out ripped by somebody else you know because of the same technology speed.
00:17:52:17 - 00:18:07:06
Greg
So it's an interesting time in our lives, to say the least, for efficiency and effectiveness. And then to make sure that that's how staying power and those companies that are creating these really neat things are able to sustain themselves over time.
00:18:07:09 - 00:18:35:10
Rohan
Yeah, I think that's such a good point. The importance of building trusted relationships with with human beings in a a sea of information, knowledge and intelligence now where everything is so abundant, what what is truly scarce anymore. Right? And it sounds like, you know, trust that human connection and people wanting to know that, you know, when they buy from you or buy your product, there is going to be a like some result on the other side of that.
00:18:35:10 - 00:18:41:19
Rohan
And they feel that trust and the people that they're speaking to and like you're just reducing that,
00:18:41:22 - 00:18:51:20
Rohan
that level of uncertainty for them, right, given so many changes that are underway. So I think that's such a good point. And so, you know, you have such a career as a technology leader.
00:18:51:20 - 00:18:59:04
Rohan
Where do you see things going now where people and decision makers and buyers making their decisions?
00:18:59:04 - 00:19:02:21
Rohan
Where does trust, clarity, human connection
00:19:02:21 - 00:19:09:12
Rohan
fit in alongside finding like differentiation in a product or service that you're delivering?
00:19:09:16 - 00:19:13:05
Greg
Very good question. In 2012.
00:19:13:05 - 00:19:17:19
Greg
Well, not 2009 2012. I was teaching an MBA school
00:19:17:19 - 00:19:18:16
Greg
class
00:19:18:16 - 00:19:23:19
Greg
at school called Acton MBA for entrepreneurship through Hard and Simmons University, and
00:19:23:22 - 00:19:37:09
Greg
the class was focused on the fact that people do business with people. So if you focus on people, everything else will come about to your point about trust. Trust us. Actually a mathematical calculation, right?
00:19:37:10 - 00:19:39:18
Greg
It's performance over time.
00:19:39:23 - 00:19:40:10
Greg
Right
00:19:40:10 - 00:20:08:10
Greg
is equal to trust. So if you can trust that performance over time, you realize at time can be compressed for sure. And but you're having a relationship and people typically forget mostly in the technology world, that buying is an emotional behavior. It is not logical. Yeah, right. I love psychology for anybody that's, you know, in the tech world in particular, or even just doing business.
00:20:08:11 - 00:20:14:02
Greg
If you can understand some of the psychological elements of buy your behavior, read some books.
00:20:14:02 - 00:20:27:17
Greg
That's one of the one of the best books is Al Rice and Trout called Positioning Old Book. Right. Advertisers from the early days. But that book has not wavered in 40 years. I mean, these guys were spot on, on the way your brain things.
00:20:27:17 - 00:20:31:18
Greg
And if you can think about that, that will really help build that trust
00:20:31:18 - 00:20:43:21
Greg
for what people need to see and know and do. And a lot of us just forget about it because we're so busy and we presume that, hey, this value is so big, it's going to it's going to speak for itself. Well, those days did exist, I'm not going to lie.
00:20:43:22 - 00:20:45:12
Greg
It did exist in the
00:20:45:16 - 00:20:49:00
Greg
early 2000 and the teens for sure. Today.
00:20:49:03 - 00:20:49:22
Greg
People were
00:20:49:22 - 00:21:06:06
Greg
very skeptical. And they should be right because one, there've been a lot of promises. So that's a problem that are broken. How do you fix a broken promise? Trust, which is what time over behavior is like? I can I can trust in people's reputations as
00:21:06:06 - 00:21:06:22
Greg
paramount.
00:21:06:23 - 00:21:22:04
Greg
Now, unfortunately, for a lot of people, reputation is not built immediately. It's over time. Right. So where now someone talks about you and they go, hey, Ryan, what a smart guy. He's so generous. He's so good at working with people and he's
00:21:22:04 - 00:21:26:14
Greg
willing to give everything that is what you want. Translated where before you even show up,
00:21:26:19 - 00:21:31:07
Greg
your perception is already been perceived right?
00:21:31:07 - 00:21:38:06
Greg
Because you show up like that guy is. I wouldn't trust him for $0.02. You know, you're like, you're you're coming out of it. So my point being is
00:21:38:06 - 00:21:51:16
Greg
going back to the products companies things is people need to really focus on the problem, their solving and the people that they're working with. And that has to translate inside the company because you have one sour apple, I'm telling you, that'll take you sideways.
00:21:51:16 - 00:21:58:00
Greg
And unfortunately, the people don't really react quickly because everybody hates firing people. But man,
00:21:58:04 - 00:22:01:00
Greg
having gone through 11 total companies like this.
00:22:01:00 - 00:22:12:05
Greg
I've learned the hard way. Even if there's good worker, did you got to get them out? Because if they're a sourpuss that translates out vice versa. Your customers as well building that relationship. Because
00:22:12:09 - 00:22:15:14
Greg
going back to our success, it was fantastic.
00:22:15:14 - 00:22:44:00
Greg
We had about 8 to 9 testimonials that the that the users and the believers in us voluntarily put themselves on video and espouse the value of what we provide and why it was necessary. We didn't compensate them. They were not advisors. They had no stock. They had no money. They did not need to do this right. But the point was, is that they believed in it, and they were the trust and the confidence in what we were doing.
00:22:44:00 - 00:22:52:04
Greg
And then that testimony is what we leaned on heavily to say, you don't have to listen to a sales guy, right? Or the founders
00:22:52:07 - 00:23:08:09
Greg
look at the customers like, go to the website. You can hear it from their voice. Why would they ever put their reputation on the line if they didn't fundamentally believe? And the way they expressed it in a way that was like, this is, again, that one thing that curly said that you got to find out, this is the one thing that I believe in.
00:23:08:09 - 00:23:13:06
Greg
So that's that is one of the the opportunities and the challenges in today's world.
00:23:13:09 - 00:23:36:14
Rohan
Yeah. I mean, you're speaking my language. This is why I just love running this podcast. It's because I get to speak to founders and really uncover their stories and the results. They've driven, the performance they've driven over time, the trust they've built and help bring that online because they feel so often, you know, a lot of these stories are really available or online or might not live online.
00:23:36:14 - 00:23:40:04
Rohan
And I think, like what you're saying is a really good point where
00:23:40:07 - 00:23:55:14
Rohan
today, where there's so much noise and a lot of people that might be pitching or selling without actual demonstrated results, people are more discerning. It takes more touchpoints before someone makes a buying decision. But the opportunity is again real.
00:23:55:17 - 00:24:02:07
Rohan
Operators who have demonstrated value, who have have a track record when they bring that online,
00:24:02:10 - 00:24:07:11
Rohan
bring those client testimonials online, they do it in a consistent way.
00:24:07:11 - 00:24:09:20
Rohan
So that exposure effect is there.
00:24:09:20 - 00:24:12:21
Rohan
Again, to borrow another book, Robert Cialdini talks about priest,
00:24:13:01 - 00:24:31:03
Rohan
right where it's how can we bring enough of our reputation before that first conversation has had so that that can do a lot of the heavy lifting in the pre selling? And I think what you're saying is exactly right, where there's so much of this goodwill and this latent.
00:24:31:05 - 00:24:47:17
Rohan
Yeah, goodwill that's been built up. And when we kind of showcase that in the right way, that can be really powerful to cut through the noise and ultimately grow the surface area for people to discover you, to want to make a decision and ultimately want to work with you and buy from your business.
00:24:47:21 - 00:24:50:07
Rohan
Great. Well, Greg, as we wrap it up here,
00:24:50:07 - 00:24:54:19
Rohan
where can folks learn more about you if they want to
00:24:54:23 - 00:25:00:01
Rohan
follow you and learn more about what you're building today, what's the best place for them to reach you?
00:25:00:03 - 00:25:03:18
Greg
They can go. I have my LinkedIn, which is Gregory S Fitzgerald
00:25:03:18 - 00:25:05:20
Greg
at LinkedIn as my personal
00:25:05:20 - 00:25:10:09
Greg
they can reach me at my one company, which is called Cyber Force Security. As it mentioned.
00:25:10:09 - 00:25:12:17
Greg
That's G. Fitzgerald at Cyber Security
00:25:12:17 - 00:25:23:01
Greg
Go website. That's specific. That's a that's a my purpose project started at ten years ago, which was a focus on providing cyber security for the masses.
00:25:23:01 - 00:25:47:17
Greg
So again biggest problem big companies have great technologies. They ignore the small guys. And again, Dave and Goliath, small guys deserve the same quality and also not get ripped off by the price because they're small. Right. So I created this business and model that was there. So cyber security helped small medium businesses get the cybersecurity protection that they need at a very affordable cost and with first quality support.
00:25:47:17 - 00:26:03:06
Greg
Because again, you go to the big guys, you just a number. You might even get a computer here. You're going to get Cathy, you're going to get, you know, Sally, you're going to get Miles, you're going to get Mark. And they're going to be like, hey, how can I help you? The second one is again, artificial by design, brand new company starting in.
00:26:03:07 - 00:26:11:05
Greg
It's been around for a year, but they just asked me to come in and help be the CEO. And this is a game changer. And I AI infrastructure,
00:26:11:07 - 00:26:28:00
Greg
this is focused on data centers in particular. And that's a passion because again, just like protecting the planet, I want to now power the planet because there's not enough compute infrastructure to allow all of this AI that everybody is so excited about to actually function.
00:26:28:00 - 00:26:58:00
Greg
And the reason is, is it's is completely dependent right now on the 90% market shareholder of Nvidia. Nothing wrong with that. That's perfect. However, there's still AMD, Intel, Apple, Google, ARM, all these other chip providers that are available. The problem is nobody's built on it. So yeah, artificial by design is created a hypervisor software layer that will allow the translation circle comes all the way back translation of applications under high processing to any chip set so that they don't have to worry.
00:26:58:01 - 00:27:18:05
Greg
The application provider just builds what they build and then host it by the hosting providers without the without any sort of issue between what the hardware is and what the software is. Same thing happened, you know, back with VMware when it's an application separated from the operating system. So with that one you can go with Greg at Artificial by Design.
00:27:18:09 - 00:27:19:05
Greg
And
00:27:19:05 - 00:27:21:18
Greg
you got those two and that'll that'll be great.
00:27:21:21 - 00:27:34:10
Rohan
Okay. And for Artificial by design who are the core buyers or the people that you know you or your sales team might be engaging. So so that if you know, folks are looking to learn more, they really know that, you know, they should be in touch with you.
00:27:34:13 - 00:27:56:07
Greg
Great. There's actually three there's hyperscalers, which are like the big open AI guys. And we have a sales lady that's really driving that one. There's data centers themselves who are challenged with, again, buying compute power and realizing they can't get access to the video chipsets that they need and and can get to the others. However, their customers don't necessarily use it.
00:27:56:07 - 00:28:07:01
Greg
And they would like to say, how do I get how do I use artificial by design to to allow my customers to use other platforms? And then the third one is actually direct enterprises. Many, many companies of course, are are
00:28:07:04 - 00:28:14:04
Greg
building AI apps inside themselves. And ironically, they too they do. They want to spend $350,000 on a particular chipset or,
00:28:14:04 - 00:28:20:14
Greg
or do they want to actually spend 50 grand, which is completely viable and probably more useful for what they need?
00:28:20:18 - 00:28:31:14
Greg
But again, they built it under this application stack and they need it translated over here without performance issues or modifications. So those those three groups can get in touch with me.
00:28:31:19 - 00:28:39:09
Rohan
Okay. Beautiful. Well we'll include all of those links in the show notes. Greg, thank you for joining and sharing your insights and stories
00:28:39:13 - 00:28:42:12
Rohan
on the pod today. Really enjoy the conversation. Thank you.
00:28:42:14 - 00:28:44:17
Greg
Thank you I appreciate it. Thank you for the time.
00:28:44:18 - 00:28:45:13
Rohan
Thank you.