20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
George Kurtz is the CEO and co-founder of CrowdStrike, a leading provider of next-generation endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and services. Prior to Crowdstrike's incredibly successful IPO in 2019, George raised funding from the likes of Accel, General Atlantic, CapitalG, IVP and Warburg Pincus to name a few. Before founding Crowdstrike, George spent close to 7 years at McAfee in roles such as Worldwide Chief Technology Officer and GM as well as EVP of Enterprise. Finally, before McAfee, George started Foundstone in 1999 leading them very successfully to their acquisition by McAfee in 2004.
In Today's Episode with George Kurtz You Will Learn:
1.) How George came to found Crowdstrike having been Worldwide CTO @ McAfee? How did the founding of his prior companies impact how George thought about the early days of Crowdstrike? What does George believe are the pros and cons of serial entrepreneurship?
2.) Funding: With the benefit of hindsight, how does George reflect on his approach to fundraising? How did what George needed from VCs change over time? How does George approach investor selection? Through what framework does George advise founders as the right way to construct their cap table? Where do many go wrong on investor selection?
3.) Talent Acquisition: What has enabled George to hire some of the best talent in the world? What is the right way to construct the hiring process to recruit the best? What does George mean when he says, "you cannot forget the spouse factor"? Why is cash a moat and important when it comes to talent acquisition?
4.) Leadership: How has George's style of leadership changed over time? What stage of leadership did George find the most challenging? How does George find being a public markets CEO? What elements does he enjoy the most? What does he enjoy the least? Why does George believe the company has been so well received by public markets?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with George Kurtz
George's Favourite Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 VC and welcome back. We have one very special founder joining us in the hot seat today. |
| 0:04.3 | It's also a very fun one as we did a 20 VC The Memo episode with Sam here at Excel last month, |
| 0:09.3 | discussing his investment thesis and rationale for leading multiple rounds into CrowdStrike. |
| 0:13.5 | And I'm so thrilled today to be joined by George Kurtz, founder and CEO at CrowdStrike, |
| 0:18.0 | a leading provider of next generation endpoint protection, threat |
| 0:21.2 | intelligence and services. |
| 0:22.9 | And prior to CrowdStrike's incredibly successful IPO in 2019, George raised funding from |
| 0:27.9 | some of the best, including Excel, General Atlantic, Capital G, IVP, and Warburg Pinkers, |
| 0:33.1 | to name a few. |
| 0:34.0 | And before founding CrowdStrike, George spent close to seven years at McAfee in roles such as |
| 0:38.2 | as CTO and GM as EVP of Enterprise. Finally, before McAfee, George started Foundstone in 1999, leading |
| 0:45.2 | them very successfully as founder and CEO to their acquisition by McAfee in 2004. I'd also want to say a |
| 0:50.7 | huge thank you to Samir at Excel and David George and Andreessen for some fantastic |
| 0:54.7 | questions today. Really did make such a difference. But before we dive into the show state, did you know that |
| 0:59.3 | more than 80% of US public stock is owned by just 10% of Americans? This divide is even greater in the |
| 1:05.1 | private markets. Carter makes it as easy to issue equity to your employees as it is to issue payroll. And |
| 1:10.7 | for employees, as easy to accept it too your employees as it is to issue payroll and for employees |
| 1:11.4 | as easy to accept it too more than 16,000 companies issue equity to their employees through |
| 1:16.9 | Carter whether you're just getting started or getting ready to go public the team at Carter can |
| 1:21.1 | help check them out at Carter.com and then another incredible product you have to introduce is |
| 1:26.2 | Secureframe secure frame helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC2 and ISO-271 compliance. |
| 1:34.1 | Secureframe allows companies to get compliant within weeks rather than the painful months that is today. |
... |
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