You are listening to the 10 minute entrepreneur podcast with host Sean Castrina.

Okay, we're going to learn something today. I have an established entrepreneur. He

bootstrapped a billion dollar cybersecurity company. He founded Relia Quest. I have Brian

Murphy with me here today. Brian, it's great to have you on the podcast.

Great to be with you Sean. How's it going? It's good. I love to talk to people who've done it and

I typically like to start with. When did you know you were an entrepreneur?

You know, I didn't know what entrepreneurship was.

Dad's a retire mechanic. My mom worked inside a grocery store but I was always

just fascinated with how things worked. It was even as a little kid just whether it was a movie this peak always just

f fascinated with how things worked. It was even as a little kid just whether it was a movie

this peak my interest or just figuring out how a construction project came

together. I loved manufacturing just how things were made and I think that

curiosity is when I started to realize I was wired a little bit differently

Now was Relia quest the first company ever started? It was first first time that I burned in the lifeboats and jumped out of the plane

Then I was in it always tinkered before and run other businesses on the side

But yeah first first one. Okay, now you bootstrap this you you know, for a decade, which is, you know, hard to do. That means he didn't take, you know, he didn't take venture capital. He didn't dig into any deep pockets and give away ownership for somebody else's money if for the audience that may not understand what that means so to tell our audience why you bootstrapped it what are the

some of these rhetorical questions for me but what is the huge upside of a bootstrapping it?

The big upside is one you retain control and you stay in the problem longer you have to really be solving a problem for a customer that's willing to pay you and if you structure your business to be created that way it makes you more resilient over time and when you do take capital you really have something to contribute and something to say it's not hey I have this idea will you fund it let me see if it works not that there's anything wrong with that and then part of the reason was when I started. You start in 2007,

the world kind of imploded in middle of 2008. It was a pretty murky world for two years after that.

And so it gave enough cover to really grind

and figure out what was the right fit for us

and what was the right market for us.

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