It’s been nearly two months since the previous issue of Venture in Security, and since I posted much on LinkedIn. I didn’t plan for this break. Part of this was life, and the fact that building a company tends to consume all available time and mental capacity. But a much bigger part was that I needed some time and space to figure out what Venture in Security should be in this new world, a world that looks very different from the one in which I started writing it.
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Today, I am going to share how I think about writing a blog in the age of AI, what problems I see in the cyber media space, and how I am thinking about the future of Venture in Security.
How Venture in Security became what it is today
Venture in Security came to be because it was needed, not because it was planned. In the early 2020s, I came to realize that while our industry has many amazing resources to learn about the technical side of security, there was almost nothing about the industry as a whole, the ecosystem, how different players fit together, how startups are built, and so on. I am not talking about stuff like “which category is hot” (there is plenty of that out there), but rather perspectives about industry trends, the mechanics of how cyber works, and how the business side of the ecosystem functions.
The first article I wrote was a piece about product-led growth in cyber. After I shared it on LinkedIn, a bunch of people reached out saying that they found it pretty useful. And so I wrote another one. And then another one. And then another one. After a few months, I started writing on Substack. What started as me sharing some of my learnings became a weekly blog that has since been read by an incredible number of people in the industry, from CISOs and security practitioners to public company CEOs, marketers, sellers, investors, founders, software engineers, and everyone in between.
Why I had to take some time away from writing
Earlier this year, I woke up to the simple realization that I am drowning in AI slop. Every single comment under my LinkedIn post is some AI-generated crap that summarizes my post in 3 sentences and ends with a question. Every article on Substack also has a bunch of comments that are also generated by AI. It got so bad that it made me wonder - what’s the point of even writing?
The fact that you can now turn one thought into a LinkedIn post, a blog article, ten tweets, and a podcast episode is truly amazing, but my question is: who is the consumer? Who are these people who are supposed to listen to these podcasts and read these articles? If I don’t enjoy reading all this AI slop, and if none of my friends do, who are these readers for whom this was written? Not sure.
At some point earlier this year, I found myself scrolling through LinkedIn and feeling like I was reading the same post over and over and over again. Every smart-sounding “framework” and “lesson” is just a rephrased and repackaged version of something else. Worse yet, it became really hard to tell if I was reading something somebody had actually spent a week thinking about or something generated 30 seconds before it was posted. Or, maybe it no longer matters?
I realized I didn’t want Venture in Security to become another contributor to all that noise. There is so much happening in our industry that I would like to talk about, but I had to step back and figure out what my blog and my social media presence should be in this new world, and if I should even bother saying something.
Venture in Security is back: my commitment to you and to the industry
Taking the step back made me realize that Venture in Security is needed today more than ever before.
In 2026, there is more happening in cyber than ever before. AI is changing how we build products, how attackers operate, how security teams do their jobs, and most definitely what the future of our industry will look like. It’s not just the AI agents that lead to all the changes, but also what we as an industry do about it, what kinds of companies get funded and who struggles to get traction, and so on. The second- and third-order consequences of AI are incredibly powerful.
When I started Venture in Security, the gap was about the lack of information. There were very few people talking about the business of cyber; there was no thoughtful writing about startups, venture funds, and the cyber ecosystem overall. It was hard to understand where the industry is moving, what security teams should be doing, how cyber categories are evolving, and what cyber founders should do to build enduring companies.
Today, it feels like we have the opposite problem, but if you look closer, it’s just a different form of the same. Today, everyone is writing something, everyone is doing podcasts, everyone is publishing books (sure, it now takes 3 minutes to “write” one)... And yet, we have even less understanding than ever. There is more noise and less insight than ever. The problems of what to pay attention to and whom to trust didn’t really go away, they just changed.
In today’s world, we don’t need more “content”. What we need is actual insight, judgment, and perspective. It takes talking to people and thinking to notice something before it becomes obvious. It takes experience to be able to say that everyone seems to be excited about something, but it doesn’t really matter, or to point out something that people aren’t paying attention to but they probably should.
Most importantly, what’s lacking today is having a point of view that actually belongs to a person. I want to write fewer things that could have been written by anyone, and more things that come from my own conversations, my own observations, my own experiences, and inevitably, my own mistakes.
There is one more thing that matters to me, and it’s about staying authentic. As Venture in Security evolved, I realized that the only way to stay relevant for a long time is to keep a clear separation between what I genuinely found interesting and what someone might be willing to pay for me to say. While there is nothing inherently wrong with writing content to feature different companies, I always believed that this business model has a short shelf life. And because I never depended on Venture in Security to make money, I had the luxury of setting my own rules and protecting the independence of my voice. We haven’t sold our point of view to vendors, and we’re not going to do that now.
This doesn’t mean I don’t have my own biases. I am a founder, I have done a number of angel investments to support friends, and I know many of the people and companies I mention in my writing. My perspective is to a large degree shaped by all these things. But, I have always been and will continue to be honest and transparent about these things. I am never going to be a neutral observer, but you also won’t see a report funded by some vendor.
We need more authentic voices in security
In the world of AI, I honestly don’t think we need more people to talk about what they think, but we surely do need more people to talk about what they actually think. We need more lived experiences, more disagreements, and less “content”. We need more CISOs and security practitioners talking about what’s actually working, we need more founders talking about what’s not working, and we need more investors talking about something that isn’t already a consensus.
Two months away gave me some time to think about what role Venture in Security should play in all of that, and I know that the answer isn’t to fight AI slop. It is to continue to focus on value. You have my commitment to do exactly that:
In the world of noise, you can expect clarity and structured insights from me every 2 or so weeks on Venture in Security, and daily on LinkedIn
In the world where everyone is using AI to generate “content”, I am doubling down on human perspective, human voice, and human insight
Venture in Security was there helping people make sense of the cybersecurity mess in the world of scarce insight, and it will continue to be there in this new world of noise.
I want to read anything you write, because it's your voice — although I stopped writing for AuthZ.substack.com because I owed myself a more sustainable way to study and share, and I haven't found an "IDE for writing" yet that makes it easier to get smarter, faster, together... Best wishes for juggling writing and building at the same time! I trust fortnightly may be more sustainable.
(Actual human here) Thanks for deciding to continue writing, Ross. Your perspectives and insights are read with great interest and are much appreciated!