#091 Simbian | The Importance of Intellectual Honesty

Show Notes

What if AI could make cybercrime too expensive for hackers to pursue?

In this episode of the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast, Ambuj Kumar, co-founder, and CEO of Simbian AI, discusses the power of intellectual honesty, innovation, and AI-driven cybersecurity in building scalable, impactful solutions. He emphasizes that true innovation comes from open challenges and discussions rather than blind loyalty, which is crucial for building meaningful solutions. Ambuj shares how Simbian is developing AI-powered cybersecurity agents to address the global shortage of security professionals by automating tasks at a fraction of the cost, ultimately aiming to make cybercrime economically unviable. He explains that their go-to-market strategy focuses on solving real customer problems, constantly improving through feedback, and scaling a strong, value-driven sales culture. Lastly, Ambuj highlights the importance of hypothesis-driven decision-making at all levels, ensuring continuous adaptation and avoiding stagnation as the company grows.

Join us as Ambuj Kumar shares how Simbian is revolutionizing cybersecurity with AI-powered agents, tackling industry challenges, and building a trillion-dollar vision.!

Guest Ambuj Kumar:

Ambuj Kumar is co-founder and CEO of Simbian, the Gen AI fuelled security company whose mission is to solve security with AI. Ambuj is a recognized leader in the cryptography space, with more than 30 patents in the field—and multiple successful startups. Ambuj was also the lead architect at Cryptography Research Inc. where he led and developed many of the company's security technologies that go into millions of devices every year. Previously, he worked for NVIDIA, where he designed the world's most advanced computer chips, including the world's fastest memory controller.

Things You’ll Learn:

• Embracing open challenges and intellectual honesty in leadership fosters a culture where ideas can evolve, and the best solutions are found, enabling breakthrough innovations.

• By using AI-powered digital workers, Simbian aims to address the global cybersecurity talent shortage while making security tools more cost-effective and efficient.

• Sales should focus on genuinely solving customer problems and improving their experience, building trust rather than simply pushing products.

• A company’s culture must be built around shared values and respect, ensuring that all employees, from junior to senior, are aligned and motivated to contribute to long-term success.

• Successful growth requires continuously testing assumptions, learning from feedback, and adapting strategies. This allows the company to scale efficiently and overcome growth challenges.

Transcript

Ambuj Kumar: So give them all the tools to make them successful. And, at that time, I'm like, My goal is to make my salesperson successful, and if he's successful, then I'm successful, and my customers are happy.

Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Midstage Startup Momentum podcast. Each week, we interview up-and-coming founders of some of the fastest-growing mid-stage startups across the world. Your host is Roland Siebelink, who will share some of his own experience helping startups scale from 10 to 1000 people in a few years. Here is Roland.

Roland Siebelink: Hello and welcome to the Midstage Startup Momentum podcast. My name is Roland Siebelink, dialing in today from San Francisco, California. And today, we have a repeat guest. I love those, the best people come back on the show. And it's Ambuj Kumar, who is the founder and CEO of Simbian. Hello, Ambuj. Good to have you again.

Ambuj Kumar: It's my pleasure.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent. Where are you dialing in from today?

Ambuj Kumar: I'm calling from South Bay. So, a few miles south of yours.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent. But of course, for everyone who doesn't live in the Bay area these days, everything takes place over Zoom meetings. Even if you're, like, in two houses, like half a mile apart or half a kilometer apart, right? So we've really embraced the technology as much as we can since the pandemic. And it's never I've never looked back, I would say, right? Has that been your experience as well?

Ambuj Kumar: Yes. And because post-pandemic, traffic problems have continued to increase while the networking speed is still the same. So, you know.

Roland Siebelink: If not increasing, right?

Ambuj Kumar: It's not increasing. Exactly.

Roland Siebelink: Exactly, exactly. Very good, very good. Okay, cool. Well, Ambuj, I invited you here to talk about your new company, Simbian, but before we do that, let's talk a little bit about your journey, right? We talked about Fortanix a few years ago, and of course, you have a longer history behind you. So tell us about Ambuj Kumar, the amazing founder.

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. So, I graduated from India's number one engineering college in 2002. I was the number one student of my graduating class, and therefore, I got a very exciting job at a not-that-well-known American company where I worked for eight years, built some of the most amazing hardware ever called GPUs, and company was Nvidia, so.

Roland Siebelink: Oh, no.

Ambuj Kumar: When I joined Nvidia it was a small company sub $1 billion market cap.

Roland Siebelink: Wow.

Ambuj Kumar: Work closely with Jensen. So, you know, like what an amazing leader founder he was and witnessed growth of Nvidia from that to multi-billion dollar or tens of billions of market cap, and kind of was smitten by the startup bug there, because I saw power of a small group of technologists who were passionate, knew what they were doing, and given the right culture, they could create something amazing. So after that, I took my pathway, made my pathway towards startups, and ever since has been doing that.

Roland Siebelink: That's excellent. Okay. And what a great history. As Nvidia famously, I think a little bit like Apple struggled for quite a long time in really breaking through. And, of course has had its major breakthroughs now in the first bitcoin with crypto area and then afterwards much bigger even in generative AI, right? So I'm sure that if you were there in the early days, you're already covered for life, right?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. I mean, we are, you know, like immigrants. When I came to us, I had $425 in my pocket, not enough to buy a return ticket if something were to go wrong. So I was covered for life from the very beginning, I will say. All the upside here. But Nvidia did teach us, you know, lots of great things that have contributed to my success so far.

Roland Siebelink: What was the first thing that comes to mind, like, what you really learned at Nvidia that helped you so much as a founder now?

Ambuj Kumar: You know, like number one thing I will say is intellectual honesty.

Roland Siebelink: Yeah.

Ambuj Kumar: And believe it or not, like every other sentence from Jensen was about intellectual honesty. And back then it's like, you know, when you were growing up, you take what you see as normal. So I thought every founder, every leader, every CEO, every company is like that. Where it's common for people to challenge each other, it's common for somebody who could not speak proper English and was a new college grad like me to challenge CEO in open email company-wide that, hey, this idea doesn't make sense, but Nvidia really took pride in finding out truth. There was no, you know, like hierarchy. Nobody was pulling ranks on anyone. And company worked very hard to always surface the best ideas from the group. That is something that I internalize really deeply. Ever since all my companies, we have very open culture. We love to debate. Vigorous debate. Passionate. You know, like if you didn't know, you think that or these people were fighting. And it should be like that, right? If I'm going to spend my life freelance time on pursuing an idea, and I expect you to do the same, and I expect you to work day and night and prioritize this over everything in your life, and then you are not passionate, and you do something because I asked you to do. I mean, that doesn't make sense. So, we need to really believe in what we are doing. We need to vigorously debate and then do what has the best chance of success.

For example, if I cannot convince my coworker, who is spending maybe 16 hours a day with me, that my idea is right, how am I going to convince customers, and partners, and investors, right? And, you know, new employees? So, if the idea is not good. It's like, you know, Darwinism, right? You want it to die, right? If you have a better idea, I want you to tell me. And then, you know, I will collectively figure out, and we'll do the best thing. I think what many people are uncomfortable because they are insecure, or they feel that, you know, if somebody is attacking their idea, they are attacking them, and therefore, they acquired short-term pain or so-called conflict, only to build something that market does not need or only to do something that has been done a hundred times and and it does not have good outcomes. So, therefore, intellectual honesty is very critical. And surprisingly, it's in the real supply. But the companies who embrace it, well, I think they do well.

Roland Siebelink: Across the 50-odd startups that I've coached, some of them through unicorn status. I do see that type of culture where it's like a lot of debate, intellectual honesty, like often a bit of an engineering culture of like really getting to the truth together, as you describe, right? And then there's the culture, which is more like, I would say, founder-led. The founder is positioning maybe a little bit more like a visionary leader, maybe a little bit more like a god, you could say, right? And that's often linked also to the fake it till you make it kind of statement, right? Where the founder says, well, just trust me, I know what I'm doing, and we'll get there. You'll see it soon. Just don't challenge me all the time because it just slows us down. What would you say to a founder that's in that mindset?

Ambuj Kumar: You know, like, what they call that. If you are looking to control somebody by force or rank, you will get people who will be controlled by force and rank. So you will find your set of prisoners.

Roland Siebelink: You get what you pay for, in a sense.

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah, you get what you pay for. So if you are looking for somebody, a group of, you know, people who will follow you blindly and will not challenge you, you will find those people, but you know, what good does it do to you or to the world or to your investors? So, if you are really certain that your approach is better, then there is no reason for you to avoid discussion or challenge. And if you are not then you should rather embrace it. So, I think it comes down to what your end goals are. So my end goal for example, is to build $1 trillion security company that will create all kinds of security problems. And this would be my last company, and I'll work here for next 15 years. So, as a result, I do not care for how much success I have next year.

Roland Siebelink: Right.

Ambuj Kumar: I only care for, that I'm successful next year so that I can be successful year after and year after.

Roland Siebelink: Okay, let's get back to that. Once we start talking about how you're scaling the company. But let's also first talk about Simbian, right? Like what did you found? What is different from the companies you did before, and how are you going to turn that into $1 trillion company by next year?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. So, Simbian, we are building AI agents for cybersecurity, okay? And cybersecurity is fascinating, right? Because like health, like privacy, like, you know, feeling welcomed by your spouse at home. It's so deep to us. We want to feel secure in our home, in our digital ecosystems. So therefore long, long, long time in the future, cybersecurity will still be a big business. And the flip side of that is that, like bad guys are attacking hospitals. People are dying because CT scan machines were held hostage by ransomware gangs, right? They are poisoning, you know, water wells and like, you know, these like most of these organizations, they don't have money. They do not have talent. They do not have tools to respond. And even like most, you know, like well-funded companies or organizations, they can't find enough people. So, there is shortage of millions of people working in cybersecurity just in the US. So that's what got us going on Simbian. Our plan is very simple. We will write software that works better than a normal average security professional, and every year, it will get smarter, and we will provide it at one-tenth of the cost of, you know, like what is available today. And in that process, we will build what we are calling cybersecurity general intelligence: CGI. And CGI is a state where I can solve any security problem at one-tenth of the cost that an attacker needs to create it, so go at it, right? If you are a hacker going after hospital, you will put $1 to create an attack. Simbian will diffuse that problem with $0.10. And so therefore. 

Roland Siebelink: That's interesting, so you kind of bake in the return on investment upfront.

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah, it's economical for our buyer, but also, it will solve this cybersecurity menace for once and all because in long-term it will not be economically viable for criminals to come after organizations because the vast majority of the cybersecurity crimes, they are not philosophical or, you know, like on moral principles, they are simply looking for to make money.

Roland Siebelink: And there are business people in their own area, right?

Ambuj Kumar: That's right.

Roland Siebelink: And what you're saying it sounds like, Ambuj, is that they have been exploiting this, basically economical disincentive of companies because, to them, it's often much cheaper to just pay the ransom than it is to actually fix the security hole.

Ambuj Kumar: That's right. And, you know, it's really, you know, like unique and feeling to be responsible for security of a company. And then, you know, like you get this nasty email from somebody asking for money. And I'm sure, you know, like those people, you know, have lots of things going on, right? They want to secure the environment. They want to not shut down the business. They have their board or CEO to respond to. And so it's like, you know, they are victim on one hand, but, you know, like they can't openly disclose either that, hey, I got, you know, ransomware, right? But you know, like so they need to go through proper channels to report it. And many of them, I mean, like, you know, as you said, right? They don't have the skills to fix it. So they're like, okay. I mean, like, I will live to fight another day, and they pay their ransom, and the story repeats.

Roland Siebelink: How far are you with Simbian at the moment, Ambuj? How has it been going? What are some of the milestones you've reached already?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. So, we raised our first round of funding about $10 million earlier in the year. We have about 30 employees, double-digit number of customers. So it's early but amazing.

Roland Siebelink: We which were the investors that were involved in the round, if I may ask?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah, it was all the people who I worked in past. I loved working with them. So my previous backers: Kotak Capital, Amit Singh, Icon Ventures, Rain Capital, Secure Octane, Firebolt Ventures. 

Roland Siebelink: Some really great names there, yeah.

Ambuj Kumar: And a bunch of, you know, security leaders and executives that, you know, I love enjoying, you know, I love spending time with.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent. Going to more to go-to-market side, right? We've talked about the product but I understand the go-to-market side and security. Cybersecurity is very peculiar. Can you tell the people who have not heard about this a little bit how that operates?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah, so it's really interesting. Security is like healthcare. So when you are healthy, everything is fine. But you know, like when you get a problem, it could be one of, you know, like 100 or 1000 things, right? You might have pain in your finger, or you might have flu or you might have something else. So similarly, security is very fragmented. There are thousands and thousands of products and tens of thousands of companies. And everybody is fixing one problem. And as a buyer, you have to, you know, like it's nightmare, right? Just trying to find out best-in-breed for all of these things. And it's weird because, let's say, I'm a DLP seller, data loss prevention product. There is if there is a breach related to DLP, everybody wants to spend money on DLP. But you know, as a whole, right? Money is limited, so you cannot like spend that much. So if you are spending more on one then you have to spend less on others. But if you just because you are spending money on DLP does not make your network more secure. So you have to take care of both of them. Just like health, right? You cannot just, you know, build your muscle. You also need to keep your heart healthy so it leads to all kinds of dynamic go to market insecurity. And there are two thoughts I'll break down that for your audience. One is that you buy best-of-breed products in each of these categories, and that has its challenge because, as a buyer, not only you need to select them, but also you need to integrate and operate them, right? Pretty hard. So other approaches, you know, like platform where you go to a big one of top ten security companies and try to buy everything from there, right? And that has shortcoming that they may not have the best-of-breed product in individual categories. And many times actually, these large companies have acquired the smaller companies, so they are not as integrated as you thought they were. So you are for some surprise. But approach that Simbian is taking is really unique. We are saying that, hey, you can take anyone's product from any of these vendors. Our software will operate that for you. So, we are a provider of digital workers for your security. It doesn't really matter whether you have firewall from one company, cloud security from some other company, identity management from some other company, we'll operate all that for you.

Roland Siebelink: So it's really a new definition of platform as a service in a way.

Ambuj Kumar: Exactly.

Roland Siebelink: That's excellent. Okay. So, talking about the go-to-market, I'm assuming your key buyers are CISOs, right? So, chief information security officers. How do you persuade them to, first, how do you get to know them if not from experience? How do they get the meeting? How do they buy into this product? What's your go-to-market there? To the degree you can divulge, of course.

Ambuj Kumar: Sure. So I believe in providing real service to customers. So, going back to our intellectual honesty, my goal is to create a product that makes your life better. And as a result, I will say that, hey, you know, it makes your life easier. Therefore, give me some money so that I can build the next version, which will be even better. So I approach sales with that mindset. And so when I meet CISOs, I tell them that, hey, these are the problems you have. This is my solution. This is how it makes your life better. And it goes in a few different ways, right? They may most times they're like, oh, this is amazing. We have this problem. You know, glad that you have this solution. You know, let's see a demo and engage. So that's the good outcome. But in some cases they're like, you know, like we do not have this problem, right? Or they say that, you know, like we have this problem, but your solution is not good enough for it. And for me, those are also, you know, great conversations because I would like to understand why don't you have this problem. And I learned something that maybe companies like this or with this kind of tools, they don't have that problem. So next time I will not approach them, or I will, they say that, you know, something is lacking in my product. So that's free education for me. And so, with every interaction, either I'm making a sale or I'm making my product better. And ... is only one way where, you know, like they feel respected, they feel that they are contributing something to the community or making their company better. And, you know, like my product is getting better every day.

Roland Siebelink: Exactly. And of course, as a founder, you have the privilege of being able to pick up that product feedback and almost make decisions right on the spot, like, okay, we can deliver that for you, especially in the early stages, as you grow to the scale of like, you know, your previous companies or even like in Nvidia or something. Is there a big a big difference, then, between how you approach sales as a founder versus how you try and teach your sales team how to approach their target customers?

Ambuj Kumar: That's right. I mean, a bunch of things. So, as they say, culture is the only thing that scales.

Roland Siebelink: Yes.

Ambuj Kumar: So even my salespeople, they are very responsive. They are very customer obsessed. So we take customer satisfaction really, really seriously. So, for example, I'm very proud that almost no customer has ever churned from me.

Roland Siebelink: Oh, excellent.

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. I'm very proud that everybody I sold to you can ask them about their experience with us, and they will only have good things to say. So those are the things that I want my salespeople to continue, right? But at the same time, sales team are, you know, like more business-focused. They are not product people. They are not technologists. So we give them a playbook that companies with maybe 1,000 to 5,000 or 10,000 employees. This title here is the price. Here is the discounting. Here is like in this geography. Go direct in this geography. Take this partner in here. Take the marketplace. So give them all the tools to make them successful. And at that time I'm like, my goal is to make my salesperson successful.

Roland Siebelink: Yes, of course. Yeah.

Ambuj Kumar: And if he's successful, then I'm successful, and my customers are happy.

Roland Siebelink: I'd love to double click a little bit on what you just said. Culture is the only thing that scales very, very good learning out of. I'm sure you're many years in the different startups, right? Like, how did you learn this? What were some of the maybe the bad lessons that you saw? This part doesn't scale or I should have focused more on culture. Like how did you get to this insight and how do you apply it today?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. So I mean, I'm a big believer in empowering everybody. And you know, like treating everybody with respect and being treated with respect. So, therefore, right, if when I'm not around, right? When I'm not monitoring a deal, or I'm not in a meeting, I want my people to be as productive or even more productive than when I'm there. So only way that can happen is if you have shared values.

Roland Siebelink: And like you say, culture is what happens when the founder's not in the room.

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah, exactly. Or how people treat each other rather than how they say they treat each other. And just like individuals, companies also have culture, personality, right? So, and I'm very upfront, for example, my goal is to really, you know, assemble world's best people who are passionate, who care about this work. And they feel that if we work hard and some of the stars are aligned our ways, then we can be a $1 trillion company. And whether we are not or we are, you know, only God knows. But my job is to, you know, work and work towards that. So if people do really believe in that, right, then it attracts a certain kind of talent, certain kind of individuals. And so then things are aligned and work. 

Roland Siebelink: One last topic I wanted to bring up. Ambuj, if that chimes with you, is I found that many of the fast-growing startups, they seem to get some initial success, and then, often, they get kind of stuck in that. It's almost like a success trap, you know, like you stick too much with what happened there, and then, you fail to see that there's a next level you need to reach, and that requires new thinking as well. Have you experienced some of that in either your own companies or companies you are close to, and what have you found is done to overcome that?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah, I'm a great question. Yeah, I have seen plenty of times with companies I advise or I'm close to. So one of the companies, for example, security company, they're doing really well. And then they were not. The founder told me that the reason was all their early deals were through board introductions. So yes, you know, like it worked until it did not. So those kind of situations, I firmly believe that, you know, life is too short to not build a great product. So if your product does not stand on its own, you know, like don't ask any other question, just build it.

Roland Siebelink: Well, this has been lovely, Ambuj. What does Simbian need the most at this point in time? What are you looking for? Do you want people to go visit a website, or like how do they get in touch? Whatever you can use from the audience.

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. So Simbian is mainly for cybersecurity. If you know any CISO, any application security person, anybody in SOC, please send them to our website, Simbian.AI. It's a new way of doing security and hopefully in a few years this will be the only way of doing security because everything else will seem like so outdated, so out of touch that, you know, autonomous security will be the norm. So, yeah, join this revolution.

Roland Siebelink: Excellent. And are you hiring at the moment?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. We are hiring everywhere for all kinds of roles. Please check out our website. 

Roland Siebelink: When you say everywhere, does that mean including remote?

Ambuj Kumar: Yeah. It does.

Roland Siebelink: Okay, great. Excellent. A lot of demand for remote jobs, as I understand. Okay. So everyone, visit Simbian, S I M B I A N .ai. Of course, I'll put it in the show notes as well. And if you want an intro to Ambuj, I'm happy to provide. Please be in touch. Thank you, Ambuj Kumar, founder and CEO of Simbian for a repeat performance even better than the first one, so much appreciate coming on to the Midstage Startup Momentum podcast.

Ambuj Kumar: Thank you.

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