The Spiro Circle and Forbes: How AI Agents Are Transforming API Security - #0030, Roey Eliyahu

[MUSIC] Hi folks, James Byro here. And today I'm talking to Roy Eliahu, co-founder and CEO of Salt Security. In 2016, Roy saw something that no one else did, that API security would be a pillar of cybersecurity. Fast forward nine years in 2025, and the company is worth $1.4 billion, achieving unicorn status. We spoke today about his upbringing in Israel, his journey to Silicon Valley and how he settled in New York, and what it means to not just join an industry, but help define a new category within it. We also spoke about how he relaxes out of work, and some of the things to look forward to in the future. I hope you enjoy. Roy, thank you. Are you taking the time? Thank you for having me. I want to start off, please, by offering some context for those watching or listening about salt security. Founded in 2016, you alongside Michael Nicosea, total funding, 270 million. So actually, actually, we've come wrong. Yeah. Yeah. 2000, I'll tell you the story, but technically 2018, but the journey started 2016. Okay. I'll give you, I'll get into it. We'll get into it. Definitely plenty of time to correct me here. 1.4 billion dollar valuation. Yes. Investors, Sequoia Capital, Y-combinator, capital G, Alphabet's Independent Growth Fund. You won Best in API Security in 2021. You were named Best API Security Solution at the 2023 SC Awards. And you were Forbes 30 under 30, not once, but twice, in Israel and America. Yes. Okay. That's a loss. Yeah. There is a few more, but I, you know, I will not be petty. Yeah. None of them are the company. I figured that was a generous intro for the context. I want to understand what convinced you back then, almost a decade ago, to found salt security. What was something that you saw that no one else saw? Yeah. So it's taken me a little bit to, maybe a little bit about my background. So I go up, I originally came from a very technical world. Right. So I started programming when I was roughly nine years old. I started to do freelance work when I was 11 at web development and website development at the time. Then I was recruited to the IDF to the elite cyber security unit. And I was in charge there of building cyber security systems from the ground up. So we build a hardware, the firmware, the software. We protected all layer of communication. And as you know, API, application, programming, interface that essentially connects every mobile app, every web app, anything we see on a screen and we, you know, how we pay, how we send messages, everything, essentially, the majority of the internet is API-based. It was a huge challenge, as much as I can say, in the Army days. Was it as connected and as prominent back then as it is now? So we went through a major evolution ever since from 2015-16 until today. So this is exactly the point I was getting to that when I was released from the Army, I saw a distinct call the APIs. And back then, I'm taking you kind of like a quick journey to the past. The SaaS was very early, very new. Like this trend that was in the, you know, in different outlets you can hear about SaaS and the model. And it was very new. And SaaS equal a lot of APIs. And I looked at that and I looked at a technology called Kubernetes, which was a revolutionary technology just came out of kind of building microservices and how microservices communicates with APIs. And then I thought, we are seeing the beginning of an explosion of the amount of APIs we will have because everything becomes indigital. If you, everything you can do today, that you couldn't do 10 years ago through your mobile app of your bank or of anything you, you use it's essentially another API. So I foresee that, if I've seen that you have a major growth of APIs. So the needs of securing those is going to be changing because not only going to have 100x more APIs than what you have at the time, they're going to change very frequently, which creating a huge attack surface that is also dynamically changing all the time. So it kind of begs the question, okay, is the solution that we have today is going to fit with the needs of the future. And I had the thesis that it's not going to happen. And I never even imagine like what's going on with the gentica that we can talk about it, but that's even exploding that space even more. Yeah, well the world has, I mean, API aside, the world is changing so much. And so there's so much more focus on the threats that are out there and the companies that need to adopt and attack those threats or battle those threats. So you secured funding, more funding, more funding, more funding. Talk to me about the start of your journey. So you got on a plane, you flew to Silicon Valley, you met a Mr Sam Altman. But I'm sure they're a bumps along the way. So talk me through what inspired you to chase that. Wow, so if I take a step back is, I've always, inside of me like I was always in a Chopin or I started different initiatives. When I was 10, 11, 12 years old, different websites, I tried to monetize them and I knew always that I want to create something. I didn't know it's called a Chopin or a ship. Whenever it was very young, but I knew I wanted to create something. So I was very good to start something. So as soon as I was released to the Army, I was looking for an idea or something that can make a huge impact in the world and kind of long story short got to the APIs and I started a big opportunity. I saw that the solutions in the market were a solution that their concept, their approach was invented 20 years, like in the early 2000. So I thought, already today it's not a good fit. So it's only going to get worse as APIs explode and change and be much more dynamic. So I had this thesis that how you can build with big data in a mail, like a mobile bus solution that can address these needs. And with that, I said, okay, how can I validate? This is true. I think it sounds perfect to me. It's a security professional. So I said, we're actually customers or we're investors in the Silicon Valley. So I'm after the Army, I have a few thousand sub-lars in my back-and-counter because we don't make good money in the Army. And I just took one way ticket. And basically, I found a place on Airbnb that I basically asked them very nicely or asked like, probably 20 for sleeping in their living room for like a reduced rate. And one of them, after like a campaign, I agreed for like, I think like a tenth of the price that I'll bring my own air bed and I'll sleep in the living room. And that's what I did for three months. And while I was there, I was in a conference of Israeli startups. And I spoke to one individual. I didn't know who he is, but I just told everyone in the story and like the idea. And he said, that sounds very fascinating. You know, he said, I'm a part of a white combinator. You should apply. And I knew why I see. And I thought, you know, the chances of getting in, it's about 0.0 something percent. And at the time, there was only two Israeli companies in the history of YC that were accepted. So I said, it's going to be like, I don't have time to waste on application. It's a huge application. But he said, you should really apply in your three days. And I thought, you know what, I'll take the entire Saturday Sunday and I'll work it over the weekend. And I applied. And after a week or so, I got an email saying that I was passed to the interview stage. So that's after 90% being kind of qualified out essentially. And I see who's the interviewer. I see Sam Altman. Now at the time, nobody, like a lot of folks know him the second valley, but nobody knew him like, is today, you know, the CEO of OpenAI. So I didn't know who he is. And I started to read and I see this 29 years old guy that somehow get a lot of respect in YC. And I came to the interview and he asked me probably in 10 minutes, more than 30, 40 questions, including a quick demo of the product. I don't know how it's possible, but it was like a quick holocaust error. And same day, what they do is if you pass the person that interview, Sam in that case, we'll call you to let you know that he wants to invest. YC and him wants to invest. And if not, you get an email. So the entire day, I'm kind of refreshing my email. And then like I see like a call on the screen for unknown number. I pick up the phone and say like, this is Sam. We really excited about what you're doing. We want to invest. And as a fun fact, I still have this recording of that call. It's fun. That's cool. So you kind of knew that it was good news because it was a phone call not an email. Yeah. So we had like this, you know, this app that shows you like undentified colors. So I see like a new number that it's not saving my context. And it's like thinking, thinking, then Sam out my pop up on the screen, which was like, I was shocked. If you hear the recording, you'll be like, what? Like I did understand what's going on. And it's been an amazing journey. And ever since, you know, still in good touch with Sam, he's with with all his fame and, you know, doing that really true evolution in the world. He's still always responsive, always a good friend. Every time I ask him for something. So yeah, I was very fortunate to work with him. Absolutely, and he must have seen something in new folks that was relevant for what he was building, right, in chat GPT and Agenda Gale. So that was before that. It's interesting. So the timeline is that we met him in 2016. So that was, you asked me like, when you saw the company earlier. So I'll tell you the story. Because we really got a true funding, like a VCC down in September 2018. The first years was a market kind of we built the initial IP and we had like YC and backers, but we understood that we are rarely from the market and I can discuss it a little bit and how it's evolved. But similar time just initiated OpenAI's non-profit and it was a collaboration of him and Elon Musk and so forth. He told me before it was even like published that. Hey, we have this idea of an on-profit that can have AI accessible to companies and not only big companies, but he wasn't like it's probably six years before chat GPT even was created. So he just saw the explosion like, natural like everyone else. He saw that APIs are going to drive every business in the world. Every business is going to become a digital business regardless if it's even traditional industries. And all of our digital services are supported by APIs. So if you're hack the API, that's going to be the biggest risk for a company. If you're in a bank, you're doing all the payments to APIs. If you are social media, everything you see every message every post is API based. If you are tech like Doldash, it doesn't matter. Everything is API based. In fact, there is a stat that over 90% of the internet traffic is API traffic. So just understand the magnitude of 90% of the pie that calls internet is API traffic. And it makes sense to him that you need to secure this and you need a different approach, more novel approach. And to you, you know, they made sense to both of you. It's probably how you are connected. Yeah, and I think the second part is which why they always speak public about it, they focus on the people. They believe that they always tell you we accept the people and entrepreneurs. And if you want to change your idea, we invested in you and not the idea. So he was very explicit, although we thought it's a great idea and he helped along the other round of funding on the road. How has the how has the landscape changed since those early days, the threat landscape 90% of the internet's on runs through API. The internet's different now than it was a decade ago or five years ago or two years ago. So where does salt play into that? Yeah, so we are a term when we call about APIs, we call it API fabric. How the API fabric of companies has changed means like the interconnectivity between the different APIs in a company. So if you look at early 2000 was only very limited web apps. You can remember like if you ask you how did you access your bank online in the early 2000, it's barely like a very basic website that shows you cannot do anything. Then we have the 2010, we have the iPhone like 2008 iPhone came out, but then over the next two to three years, a lot of mobile apps came. So the fabrics grew. And this was web too, right? Yeah, that's kind of yeah. And then you have 2015, 16 Kubernetes came, microservices. So the fabric expanded even more. And that's when we went to let it just give you numbers. If a company in the early 2000 had 10 APIs in 2010, probably they have like 500 to 1000 APIs, 2016 become like 5000 APIs. Today with their agents, we see it like literally every month is growing. I expect that by end of next year every company depends on their size, but the same company that 5000 will have probably 50,000. So essentially agents and you can talk more in depth about it, but there are essentially an API super users. They talk, they communicate, they do actions through APIs that they're the buttons they can push. So it's just creating a huge urgency to create more and more APIs so we can have AI agents that are more powerful. Wow. How did you, because salt security, you didn't join a market, you kind of defined it, right? The API security, you identified a gap and you went in there to great success. How did you go about marketing that to people that may not know that that area existed or that needed attention? What was that initial climb looking like? Yeah, that's a great question. When I started it, I had no idea. I was very naive about how to approach the market because I said, security professional, I said, there is a big problem that has a huge impact and there is not the right solution in the market. There are four people who understand why they need a new solution as I got into it and learn more about how people buy it. I realized that that's not how it works. There is a very small percentage of the market that will buy just based on understanding of the full problem, not following certain patterns. The majority of the market follows analysts like Gartner, organization like OASP. That's the open kind of application security nonprofit that kind of defines what's the top 10 threats in different domains. I realized that there is a lot of attacks I'm talking about. There don't have a name and people need a name. It's very hard to describe something without giving it terminology. That's why it's a gap between the same Altman investment and YC to the seed fund because we realized that we need to create a market. He got in there very early. There was no category. There was no company saying we were doing APS security. We came basically and said we're doing something that is not grounded in any existing category. It can be an evolution of perhaps some category of a laugh at the time, but it wasn't even that because we say it's different. You don't need to replace it. I did. Back then is I partnered with the OASP, which is the biggest organ in the world for Abseq. It's an nonprofit that helps to define the top 10 threats. I partnered back then with checkmarks which their founder is actually also was in my unit. We knew each other really well. We led the creation of the OASP API top 10. We knew every organization is following OASP and we said there is no API top 10 threats. We created that and it took 18 months, but after 18 months it was released. Then it was funny because now every organization I talked to says are you solving for the OASP API top 10? Are you solving for it? I was laughing because I'm naming these attacks and it's funny how it became their criteria to what we needed in solution. That was one thing. Of course, I spent a lot of time educating analysts that defining the categories the industries about what is API security, why it's a different category. I spent probably every two weeks at a conversation with a different analyst. For example, one with Gartner, which is the biggest analyst firm. You see how they get into emerging categories or emerging trends. It was a long evolution that I think from 2016 to 2020 until it was actually created. Once it was actually created, then I saw a lot of companies jump into the space trying to compete. Once you are the first one and you open that path, others will follow and other great VCs investing in other companies that eventually got acquired. We are the last one that the significant one that stayed and continued to innovate there. Others got acquired at a nice exit. One for half a billion and one for almost a billion. We are just looking for getting much bigger than that. That was going to be my next question or question eventually. Talk me through your decision to scale and grow and the challenges that come with that because you're not going to. You haven't been acquired. You have, I imagine, something you're probably not going to say today, but you probably have a roadmap of where you want the company to go and how you see it happening. What are the challenges that come with that, either in an industry space or a talent space or a market space? What are some of the ways that you have to navigate that growth and that scalability? That's an excellent question. I think there is a lot of myth when it comes to what it's working for a company in our stage, our size. People look for them outside. They have a lot of assumptions of, "Oh, they are unicorn already." That's probably already a big company or what's going to be my upside if I'm an employee. One of the reasons great employees joined SANA because they want to make a big impact. They want to have both impact on the company. They want a small company that can move very fast and they can make an impact. Second, they want to have a big financial potential impact. If everything goes well, I don't know that I can leave my mark in on the industry and get financially rewarded for that. Two things that I think kind of break the myth, I think one is specific of assault. For us, we kept it still relatively small and we are working in a very flat organization and very accessible organization means a developer can speak to anyone in the company, including myself, including the VP of CSVP sales. We really encourage culture of a Chopanoshit. Every employee in the company can be in Chopanor. For example, we did a hackathon recently, AI hackathon. One of the teams from R&D had an idea about how we can create the engine using one of our capabilities at salt. They created the idea. A month there, we all decided to work on it and marketing started to implement that. Anyone can bring an idea. It doesn't matter your seniority, it doesn't matter how hard senior you are in the company or how long have you been with the company. If you have a great idea, we encourage people like, we are going to judge based on the merit of the idea, the quality, not about anything else. How many are you now? We are roughly 151, 16 employees, more or less. In both. About 100 in Israel, I think 90 to 100 in Israel, about 50 to 60. Most in the US, but you have Europe, you have Brazil, we have a bunch. But again, we kept it very small, very nimble, very fast in location. That is quite small. Considering the value and the size of the, like the value of the company, that's quite a small number. Yeah, I believe that, you know, as we scale, we realize that you can, and like more people, doesn't mean that it's easier. It's actually more complex, because you need to make a decision quickly, you know, suddenly, we have the same, like different responsibilities across different people. So it's just make everything kind of more complex. So we try, it's not always possible, but we try to really understand where we need to scale, where not. And especially with AI and agents and so on, so far, you can automate a lot of the work that nobody wants to do really. It's all the tedious work. So we try to make it much more smoother. I think we did a really good job at that. So I think that's kind of part of the employees and working in install. I think if somebody works, like what I get always for employees, that sometimes they tell me, hey, you know, that I feel like we are moving faster than what we moved when we were 67 employees, which is really surprising to hear. But just because of a lot of the changes we made and how we are operating in our cultural values and so on and so forth. I think the other part, if I may, is just one thing that I'm constantly get questions on. And I feel like it's one of the biggest myths in the Israeli tech, people saying, oh, these in this company are unicorn. So what's the upside? They need to be solved for like three X-dare evaluation to make money or two X or whatever it is. And I want to say to everyone out there listening that what it matters, it's not the evaluation, it's actually what's called the exercise price. Essentially, how much you pay for your share? And most companies, and depends which ones, example, insults, I'll talk about ourselves. We give our employees in about 80% to 90% discount or our evaluation. So essentially, it doesn't matter for them the evaluation of the company besides it's an indication to the, it's worth. Because what you pay for your shares, it's actually a fraction of that price, which means any exit below or above the evaluation you make a lot of money. So anyway, just something that I feel like it's a common confusion and it's important that employees understand kind of the dynamics and how it actually works, not what sometimes they think. Why do you think there's such a confusion there? Because you immediately hear, oh, the reason that evaluation, let's say in our case, 1.4 billion. So that means that anything after 1.4 billion, that's the delta and that's the upside. But the reality, it's not, you know, it's just, it's the, I don't think enough people experience an exit in a unicorn level because this is from the last three to four years. So they don't, it's just a matter of experience. I think in five years, like this will be common knowledge in the market, but we are now in the phase that they need to learn how it works. So that's why like, understanding like the discount and how much you pay for a share versus the worth of the company, it's different, it's a different numbers. And if a company maintain a very high discount and it's possible, like in our case, so then it just means that you got less they looted. That's all, you got better terms, but, but it should not affect you. I want to talk now a bit about some other things that you've mentioned. One was that one was that they invested in you as a person, not in the company per se or the tech per se. Another one was that you drew on your IDF experience. Talk to me about, talk to me a bit about what that experience does to entrepreneurship and to leadership and to building something and fixing problems. Most people go to the IDF in Israel. It's not so rare. And then people get out of the IDF and they, many of them enter start out nation or tech. Talk me through about some of those skills that you learn in the army that prepare you for that. And I'll say that the army is helped me a lot in terms of it. And you can talk about it on my, of course, my sub-acritic expertise, like hands down the biggest sleep I've made. I did a lot of like cyber and hacking before the army, but it was nothing compared to what I learned. And you did it and that's what you focused on in the army. The army, that's what I focused on on defense systems and from cyber attacks and skill communication, so on so forth, encryption and many other things. But I think if you ask me about skills and, you know, if it's management skills, leadership skills and so on so forth, I'm not sure there is definitely an army contribute to that. And it can tell some of the, you know, kind of how it helped me kind of, you know, coming to the Silicon Valley, no money and sleep on an imagine. The Hutzpah, right? Yeah. Exactly because in the armies, you have, you know, that's part of it. Like you are very, I was like scrappy, very frugal. You're living on a salary of a hundred bucks a month. So you learn how to like manage your day to day with almost no money. So that's why I was not afraid coming to the valley and like, like, tackled for a dollar every day and going to Costco, by like a whole chicken for five dollars and then you can last for two, two, three days. So and you're not spoiled at all. I think so. The army teach you how not to be spoiled, how to get things done and how the impossible can be possible. And I think that's something I really like, I like the army. But there was a lot of life experiences that I went through that I think in addition to the arm that helped me prepare a little bit better for the role. And if you ask me kind of what's the biggest thing I think that helped me evolve over the years of salt is mostly my, my, like, the ability to learn quickly. So I will never like, I will never make the same mistake twice. So I'll do it once and I'll like, literally the day after you will not seem to repeat that in the cycle of to be able to learn adapt, learn adapt, learn adapt very quickly. It's critical because your challenge is changing every six to 12 months. So you have to adapt yourself. I think the second part is having no ego. I came and the reason why I met Michael, Michael founder because I said I know nothing about enterprise cells. And that's my assumption. Even I knew I knew some, but I knew nothing. I want to learn, I want to absorb as much as I can. So who are the best leaders in enterprise cells? Can you tell more a bit about that story of how you connected with Michael because for those who don't know, it's a very blue and white story. Yeah, it's very interesting. It's a, by the way, very unique in the ecosystem. Most companies in Israel cyber companies, you'll see a couple or two or three people serving the same unit in the idea of kind of starting a company. Right. And Michael for the ones who don't know, he's, he's actually originally Italian, but American most of his life and very different age gap and, you know, big different age gap. So people ask me what's the story. So the story was when I flew to the valley. It was not only to validate the idea is I, I realized what the skills are missing. I never sold enterprise cells in cyber. I never market it. I never, so I want it like my, my approach was, I want to absorb as much as knowledge as I can as fast as I can. And I want to learn from the best. So I said, who is the best in selling in the early days like the first customer and scale it? And at the time, I'm taking you back to 2016. Alon was just, Alon was the previous companies of the WIS co-founders. And it was, it was sold to Microsoft at the time. And it was a big exit for Israel at the time. And it was very successful exit with a lot of customers. And I looked who was their VP of sales. And I see a guy named Michael Nicosia, which was from the very, like I saw him like if the company said 2000, I think in 11 or 12, he was there from the very beginning. And it's all the way to Microsoft. And I said, I got to meet this guy. And then I met a staff in a cyber conference, I'll say conference. And I talked with him about it. And he's like, yeah, you know, Michael helped me and blah, blah, blah. And he talked about it. And he asked him to get connected. And he bought a little because I have no patience. I started to look for other ways about how I get connected. So what I had ended up is that a staff introduced me and also another ex employee of Michael, introduced me. And he said, yeah, exactly. And I came to the Microsoft office in Sanibillion, California. And I met Michael just after the exit to Microsoft. And I spoke with him and I told him, here's the idea about API security. And he's like, wow, that sounds amazing. Let me let me get you connected with some customers that I had in our long just to get their reaction. And he started to help me kind of validate the idea and work through it. And and we worked very closely. We still not partners at that time. And Michael even put some money in initially. And it was and we found ourselves talking from weekly to daily coming to investor meeting together. And about a year and a half afterwards, we formally kind of like became co founders. And six months after we raised our CDO. Yeah, that's September 2018. So I always say that the date we installed was really founded. Yes, we started a journey in 2016. But where it really found it, I think it's the time it's like I'll be specific. It's like April 2018. And that's the time that we officially kind of Michael and I like co founded the company joined forces. We named the company salt. We had a different name before that and and six months after we did our seed round. And this is where I feel like the really the stunning of salt before that I felt like it's yes, we built IP, yes, we did market research and evangelism about the market. But that's like the point. point that it's really started to take shape and become a company, not just an idea. You became a seasoned company, if I were, part of the pun. Where did the name sold come from? Wow. I always get that question. It's an interesting question because before that we had a name, I will not even mention it because I don't like the name. But we did what most companies do initially. We said, "Let's take two words, combine them and create something that nobody understands that you need to explain it." But it's good for the domain. Yeah. It's easy. But then we said, "Okay, we need to change it." When Michael found it, we said we're going to launch the company officially, so why is salt? We said, "What's that tribute of salt?" Not salt, of APIs in the world. It's something that exists everywhere. 90% of the internet traffic is APIs, but you cannot see it. It's very abstract. And we thought what has such an abundance in the physical world, same in the digital world, that can be a good analogy for APIs. And we said, "What's everywhere?" And you cannot see it. There is a longer version of that story. But basically, we thought about salt. There's something that exists also in our body, in our food, in the water, that comes out most of the world, like it's everywhere. But it's not something you can see. And we thought it's a really good analogy to APIs and how much they're abundance in the world. And also how much we want salt security to be everywhere and protect every API out there. And the bonus was that we didn't want to name that was another cyber-something, size-something, protect-something. It sounds pretty cliche. We want to check. Exactly. We said, "No, we're going to make it much more memorable." So salt for us was perfect. Yeah, that's great. I've never heard that story before. That's pretty cool. I love hearing those things. Israeli-bounded, sorry, Israeli-born, unraised, went to Silicon Valley. Now you live in New York. What was that change like going from Tel Aviv cyber IDF to Silicon Valley, now New York? What are some of the biggest surprises you've seen? Yeah, so initially I moved to California immediately and I, what happened mostly for most entrepreneurs, they started in Israel, there is money for them in Israeli VC and that's how they started the journey. So they went to the US, they all did their back. I did kind of the reverse. I went first all to the valley and I said, "Why is the approach of saying, if you want to sell to the US market, you need to be in the US." So we encourage you to move to Silicon Valley. And it was very explicit about it and we all removed. Michael was living there already, so it was easy to be in Silicon Valley, still to date he's living there for the last, I don't know, 40 plus years. So I stayed there for two to three years and then COVID hit in early 2020 and if you remember, there was a lot of unknown and it's the end of the world and all these things that happened in the initial in COVID. So I decided that I cannot be so far away from employees from our most of our employees at the time. Still today, but at the time it was even bigger in terms of the percentage of the company. So I told Michael, "We will need to divide and conquer. I will go back to Israel. I want to be close to everyone and you'll work with the folks in the US and I'll work just until my 2am one and whatever it is. I got used to it and I worked for Israel and I doing COVID for about three years and when the flight started to open up and flights got to a schedule I started to fly more and I was basically living on a suitcase and then I said, "Okay, I cannot work like that anymore. I'm working from 90m to 1 to 8am regularly every day. I have to move and I don't want to go back to California because California was great but first of all, the 10 hours difference, it's pretty tough with Israel and also it's a great place. I think when you have families with kids and so on and so forth and I'm used to living Tel Aviv. I didn't go up in Tel Aviv but I love Tel Aviv. So I wanted something similar in the vibe in New York was the perfect opportunity to say when I go back I want to go back to a different city and I decided on New York and it's worked perfectly because of the time zone difference and it's like Tel Aviv on steroids minus the beach unfortunately. But it's also got a very healthy Israeli ecosystem, a lot of healthy companies that have been founded by Israeli so I'm sure you're in good company there completely. By the way, I didn't realize that how many had the same thought process and many of the second time founders actually that did their first company in Silicon Valley now doing it in New York and the percentage of founders in specific cyber security but I know in general cyber security if in 2016 2017 was for every founder in New York you will have 20 founders in the Silicon Valley. Now I feel like it's pretty even if not even New York is greater. So I see a lot of companies in New York a lot of these companies in New York. Is that going to continue that trend? Because you hear a lot of people moving from New York to Florida or California to Texas. You know there's there's migration so I think definitely we're going to see the trend in the East Coast. I don't know if only in New York because you're either is Florida or there is Miami but I think New York is the biggest one. I think for one like for two reasons right the time zone it's so much easier. When you wake up at kind of 8 a.m. in California it's all the 6 p.m. in Israel so you need to wake up 5 a.m. to have at least 2 to 3 hours 4 hours of overlap with Israel and it's very tough to do that for a long time. In New York your 8 a.m. it's 3 p.m. So it's a it's a like you may say it's only 3 hours but it's a critical 3 hours. The flights are easier and I think most people again coming from Israel New York is much closer like it's you know it's a city that never sleeps and you have like art and shows and it's like food and all of that Silicon Valley it's great. I think for people coming with a very like looking for education for the kids like nature hiking good weather yeah Silicon Valley is perfect but the time zone difference is very hard. Yeah now I do it from calls here when someone's in New York it's fair enough I can do my afternoon but the evening calls with California at half and I lived in New York for a couple years in my youth so I definitely remember that the city didn't ever sleeps is a very appealing draw which brings me to my next kind of question for you which is your hobbies and interests outside of unicorn companies and API security and all that what do you do to unwind? Yeah so I have a bunch of things and you have to create kind of your own hobbies or habits of how to because you have to in order to cope with all the stress then everything you're going through in the day to day so for me one of the things that I fell in love with a few years ago it's free diving so for the ones don't know free diving I like scuba diving is you have no oxygen tanks it just you dive in you just take a very deep breath and you dive in and so I think I did like a course like three four years ago I think how far do you go? my I'm not trying to beat my record but my record is around in meters it will be 26 to 27 meters in feet I think it's like what a hundred ninety feet something like that? Yeah oh you're gonna challenge me now I think you times it by three and a third or something yeah exactly yeah exactly something like that so that's that's cool yeah and I think like for me it's like a very different than scuba diving it's like meditation because in order to do that you have to really relax your body you have to lower your heart rate and once you dive in I like scuba diving that that you kind of feel like you're not really fully present because you are like you know you're getting air in like and in free diving just pure silence you go in and the word like just go on mute and you go in and you see the water and like you're in a big aquarium you can stay there for two three minutes or sunny like in the most peaceful place ever and it's magical so for me if I have a really rough day and if I'm in Israel in New York it's harder I cannot do that there I need to fly but in Israel if I have a rough day or something I want to relax is going to the beach and swim like 200-300 meters in sometimes alone or many times with a friend mostly for safety and then just doing a few sessions of like diving in line on the bottom of the sea like if it's like 10 meters in or like 30 feet something like that and just to lie in there and you relax and it's very very helpful so I highly recommend to anyone that I've not tried it it sounds scary but but it's not it's actually really good are you a calm person in general yeah I think I'm pretty calm you know and I think the life of the startup teach you that like the same incident that happened to me like some bad news I'm getting you know investors saying no whatever in the early days whatever I will take it very harshly initially but you kind of you know you you develop like a thicker skin and now it's gonna be it's not going to have to our mission our vision you know and have you have much more belief and confidence over the like you go it over the years so I think over time I'm getting more and more used to cope with, like bad things are happening because they're going to happen every time. It's like every company in the world, even in Vida, the biggest company in the world. Just yesterday one of our investors was in Sequoia when they invested in Vida. So think about how many years ago and even talked about how in Vida got to a place that I don't want to imagine that. That had the gents in the CEO put a sign on the wall in their lobby, their worthy eat and the kitchen. We have money until the end of the month. Like we have money for one more salary. That's it. So everything was depending on their big chip that they were developing. But the place that the company like in Vida that worth today over four trillion dollars were in a time that they had only money of funds for one more month. Think about that, the disconnect of how the most amazing company in the world as of now can be in such difficult crisis. So just teach you a lot of resiliency that you have to keep pushing, you have to keep going. And I think YC had the same message. They always brought the Chappanurs of Airbnb, of Twitch, of many others. And the main focus that they talked about is I know from the outside it looks all rosy, but the road is like really like for the ones listening, it's like spikes and you have up and down. And everybody says that in sounds like a cliche, but then when you give you heard the examples of Airbnb of, of an area, you don't believe how hard is their downs and their crisis. Like to the point that in Airbnb, they split up and one of them moved to Boston says I'm leaving the company and his wife is saying if you're going to continue with that, you trifle tourists, it's failing. I'm going to leave you and they separated like you're here like a lot of like on the verge of this company would not be existed and they kept pushing for it. And eventually you see how amazing they did. It reminds me of an expression and I'll use, I'll use nicer language for it, but it's success is like pregnancy. Everyone sees it, but no one knows how many times you get screwed beforehand. So I sanitized the expression of it, but it's the same sentiment. It's no one thinks about those things. Completely. I'm approaching the end of the conversation, but I do have a quick fire round, which I like to do. Okay. I have a couple of questions here. Shortest answers possible just to get a bit more knowledge and wisdom out of you. First tech gadget you ever fell in love with. iPhone. Like smartphone. Coffee order. Simple or complicated? Simple. Is it espresso? Nice. Not sure. Early bird or night owl? Night owl. The app that you check way too often. Email. A founder you admire. Israeli or otherwise. Wow. Sam Altman. A security risk that's overrated. Oh, well, overrated and then underrated. Okay. Overrated. Sorry. Almost misspoke. Wow. That's a tough one. I think I will skip this one just because I want to offend anyone. No problem. I'll take it. So one that's underrated. Underrated, like, I know I'm coming from a biased position, but I'll say I think APS security is highly underrated, especially with the AI agents and how it's all powered by APIs. I think people should pay more and more attention to the thing that drives their business. What's one book or podcast you recommend most? Book or podcast. So for a trip or a restaurant or a company, I always say like read, "Crossing the Casm," I think it's a great book. And a podcast is, hmm, there's so many, like so many good ones. I typically actually choose like specific episodes from different podcasts that I think are really authentic. I always like to hear, listen to the authentic podcast, not the things that everybody tried to picture, something is all Aussie. But I'll go with the "Crossing the Casm" on the book. Okay. Final question. And then you'll free to go. If you weren't in cybersecurity, what would you be doing? Wow. It's tough questions, you know. What I'll be doing, probably things that are impacting our country and Israel, anything that can improve the quality of life here for everyone. Non-Sely politics, but something that essentially going to move or change rules or non-profit, so anything that can make life better here in Israel for everyone. That's it. I'm at the end. I'm at the end of my page and at the end of our clock. Roy, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It was a true pleasure. Thank you. Pleasure was all mine.