The DTC Enterprise Tech Podcast · Dell Technologies Capital

Twine Security CEO Benny Porat on Hiring & Building in the Earliest Days

·29 min·2 clips

Benny Porat reveals why founders must treat company crises like parenting—don't panic, keep perspective.

This episode features investor Deepak Jivrajani interviewing Benny Porat, CEO of Twine Security and former co-founder of cybersecurity unicorn Clarity. Porat shares his transition from Clarity to founding Twine, focusing on lessons in hiring, product development, and navigating the current market. He explains that a convergence of factors, including the AI wave and Clarity's maturity, prompted his return to entrepreneurship. The conversation contrasts the startup environments of a decade ago with today, noting there is now more capital and faster exits but also more market noise. Porat details his criteria for selecting investors, emphasizing personal admiration and a balanced working relationship. He argues that achieving revenue milestones like one million dollars no longer guarantees true product-market fit due to customer experimentation. A key leadership lesson is maintaining perspective, comparing company-building to raising children where early crises feel monumental but are often forgotten. Porat stresses building a trusted team with specific "go-to" individuals for different crisis areas. He advises never making organizational decisions based solely on people rather than company needs. His hiring philosophy is to never compromise on talent or cultural fit, viewing a company as a "party" where every hire should make it more attractive. Twine developed a "startup program" for recruiting, creating long lists of candidates and only approaching those vouched for by two separate team members. Porat spoke with about 100 CISOs before launching, relying on his network to access them, and discovered identity and access management was their top priority. Twine's core product is an AI digital employee named Alex, with a current company goal for Alex to save 2,000 hours per week for users. Porat's long-term vision is for security leaders to define strategy without worrying about execution, enabled by AI. His final advice for founders is simple resilience, and for CISOs, he urges them to let their objectives dictate tool usage, not the other way around. The tone is conversational and advisory, blending personal anecdote with tactical business strategy. This episode is ideal for early-stage founders, especially in enterprise tech or cybersecurity, seeking practical hiring and product philosophy. Listeners looking for highly produced narrative or debate might find it less engaging.

As heard by us

Hiring early is less about brilliance than trust, culture fit, and keeping the company objective first.

Benny Porat treats the earliest stage of a security company as a test of judgment: who gets hired, what gets built, and how much structure the company can absorb before it hardens too soon.

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Why you'd press play

If you are making early team and product calls in enterprise security, this is the one to hear.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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