Kit Rodgers, Ben Jun, and Paul Kocher (Cryptography Research, Inc.) - Complementary Co-Founders in Cryptography
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)
Stanford eCorner
4.5 • 740 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stanford alumni Kit Rodgers, Paul Kocher, and Ben Jun co-founded Cryptography Research, Inc. (CRI), where they built and deployed some of the world’s most impactful security technologies. CRI was acquired by Rambus in 2011 for $342 million. Kocher is a cryptography and data security researcher best known as a co-author of the SSL 3.0/TLS 1.0 protocols. Jun is an engineer who most recently served as the vice president of livestream and video at Diamond Kinetics, which acquired his company sidelineHD, a livestreaming platform for sports. Rodgers is the senior vice president of technology partnerships and corporate development at Rambus. In this conversation, Kocher, Jun, and Rodgers discuss how CRI’s business model evolved and how they built their uncommon level of trust in each other throughout the process.
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at the Stanford School of Engineering, and published on eCorner by STVP. STVP empowers aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, |
| 0:03.0 | brought to you by Stanford E-Corner and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi everyone, my name is Emily Ma and I'm an adjunct lecturer for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, |
| 0:13.0 | which is part of the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University. |
| 0:17.0 | Last week we had Brendan Foodie join us. |
| 0:20.0 | You know, as a 23-year-old, he has two roommates, |
| 0:22.6 | and then collectively they built a $10 billion company in 20 months. |
| 0:26.6 | It was pretty amazing. |
| 0:27.6 | So he talked about how coming together was really important, |
| 0:30.6 | building community, having deep friendships. |
| 0:32.6 | It's really important to building a company. |
| 0:35.6 | So let's see what that looks like, 30 years out. |
| 0:38.3 | It is my honor and pleasure, truly, to bring alumni back, three amazing alumni. |
| 0:47.3 | Kit, Paul, and Ben are going to tell you the story of what they did in the late 90s, early 2000s, |
| 0:53.3 | building the Merckor of that era and what happened |
| 0:57.0 | since then. So I'm going to quickly read their bios, and then I'm going to literally hand it over to the three of them to self-moderate, which is a bit of an experiment. |
| 1:04.0 | But I believe it's going to be quite enjoyable because they have spent their lives together building amazing things. |
| 1:10.0 | All right, without further ado, Paul Coacher is a distinguished entrepreneur and researcher |
| 1:14.6 | who has profoundly shaped the landscape of modern cryptography and data security, |
| 1:19.6 | most notably as a co-author of the SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0 protocols. |
| 1:26.6 | After founding Cryptography Research Inc., he led the discovery of differential |
| 1:30.4 | power analysis, DPA, and the development of security architectures now utilized in over |
... |
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