In this episode, Amir sits down with Brooke Motta, CEO and co-founder of RAD Security, to unpack her career pivot from sales leadership to becoming a founder in the cybersecurity space. Brooke shares how her go-to-market background shaped her approach to building RAD, the challenge of stepping into technical leadership, how she’s managing growth through hiring, and what’s ahead for security and AI. Whether you're a technical founder or commercial operator, this one’s packed with practical insight.
💡 Key Takeaways:
Sales Skills Scale: Brooke explains how her early career at Rapid7 taught her to build pipeline from scratch—skills that directly translated to startup leadership.
Learning to Lead Technically: She shares how non-technical founders can learn quickly by knowing how they learn, and surrounding themselves with customers and engineers.
Go-To-Market Meets CEO: Juggling the CRO and CEO hats requires recognizing when to zoom out, empower others, and avoid falling back into old comfort zones.
Security Needs Speed: RAD was born to solve the tension between engineering velocity and security friction.
AI for Security Efficiency: RAD’s new AI agentic layer is helping CISOs dramatically cut down GRC and risk reporting times.
⏱️ Timestamped Highlights:
00:37 – What RAD Security does: a CADR platform with an AI layer for better query and integration.
01:28 – Brooke’s sales journey at Rapid7 and how that shaped her operator mindset.
04:06 – CEO vs. sales mindset: learning when to stay in your lane and when to manage across functions.
06:09 – Becoming more technical by learning through founders, engineers, and users.
07:47 – Brooke’s early vision to lead, and why startup DNA suits her better than corporate environments.
09:19 – Building a "can-do" culture and why intangibles matter when hiring.
10:39 – Transitioning from doing the selling to hiring and enabling a sales team.
13:27 – The founding insight: helping security enable engineering speed, not block it.
15:31 – RAD's "do more with less" efficiency campaign for CISOs.
📣 Featured Quote:
“You need to make sure as the leader of your company that you understand the market, your buyers, how your product works—and how people actually use it.” — Brooke Motta