Marty Roesch: Scaling Sourcefire and creating a new way to monetize open source security software

Episode 3 of the Inside the Network Podcast where Sid Trivedi, Ross Haleliuk, and Mahendra Ramsinghani bring you the best founders, operators, and investors building the future of cybersecurity.

In this episode, we sit down with Marty Roesch, founder of Sourcefire. Sourcefire led the intrusion detection and protection (IDS/IPS) wave, raised four rounds of financing from leading VCs like NEA, Sierra Ventures, and Sequoia, and went public, later to be acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion.

Founders often believe that their first few customers cannot be large enterprises. Marty took the contrarian path. Sourcefire’s first few customers were all six-figure deals - PWC, Intel, SAIC, and International Paper. In addition to that, Sourcefire was incredibly successful in working with industry research firms like Gartner and organizations like SANS in developing a new category. In this podcast, Marty shares what happened behind the scenes and provides founders with advice on how to work with enterprises and gain the interest of industry analysts.

Almost two decades after starting Sourcefire, Marty has gone back full circle to being the CEO of Netography, a network security startup. Marty shares stories from both his Sourcefire and Netography journeys, discusses how he navigated the M&A landscape and explains where we should be excited about AI in security, and where it’s wise to be cautious.