Support my work - help 'Cyber for Builders' win the most prestigious award in the industry

My book 'Cyber for Builders' has been named a Top 5 Finalist for the 2024 SANS Difference Makers Awards in the category 'Book of the Year'. Please support my work and help me win the award.

To my friends and readers of Venture in Security,

I’m humbled and incredibly excited to share that my book ‘Cyber for Builders: The Essential Guide to Building a Cybersecurity Startup’ is one of the five finalists for the 2024 SANS Difference Makers Awards in the category ‘Article or Book of the Year’.

To win the award, I need your help. If you got value from Venture in Security, ‘Cyber for Builders’, or if you’re a fan of what I'm doing, I’d be very grateful for your vote here (it takes less than a minute):

There are all kinds of awards in the industry, but the SANS Difference Makers Awards is the only high-integrity recognition program that has a category for books. This is why it is so significant even to get selected as one of the finalists, and why I am so excited about this recognition.

It has been a long road to get here.

I came to cybersecurity after having led product in several other fields including retail, wholesale, e-commerce, and financial technology. Over the years as I was learning about the new for me industry, I ended up talking to hundreds of people - security practitioners, founders, angel investors, VCs, industry analysts, community leaders, and many others. I quickly fell in love with the people and security community as everyone was exhibiting so much passion and a sense of mission - something I hadn’t quite seen before. The energy was contagious and I got hooked.

There was also a lot of BS, unnecessary complexity, and buzzwords that took me too long to unravel (I’m still working on it). However, I saw that most people had their hearts in the right place, and that to me is what matters.

I realized that while there are many great sources about the technical side of the industry, there is little about how it works on a higher level. I started Venture in Security with a simple goal - to help cybersecurity practitioners, founders, and investors shape the future of the industry. At first, it was just a blog talking about the business side of cybersecurity, trends defining the direction of the industry, and how different components and actors fit together. Almost every week, I would share my thoughts and learnings covering everything from open source, security services, channel partners, venture capital, product-led growth, and much more.

What started as a blog has evolved into something bigger. At the epicenter of it is no longer my writing about the industry - it’s a community of people who share a passion for cybersecurity. A community of people who care. Many of us see the industry from different lenses - product, incident response, security engineering, strategy, investing, leadership, and so on. Sometimes, we disagree about the future outlook and who will dominate the space. But regardless of all that, we want to learn and grow together.

Last year, I finally found time to bring together years of learning into a single place. That is how ‘Cyber for Builders: The Essential Guide to Building a Cybersecurity Startup’ came to be. The book became an instant bestseller on Amazon, and nearly 3,500 copies have made it to the readers to date. Around 80 Amazon reviews later, the book has a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars (!) and earlier this year, I was humbled to see that it was recommended to be inducted to the Cybersecurity Canon Hall of Fame.

Despite all these accolades, the dilemma of self-publishing is that authors have to do the hard work to get in front of the readers themselves. Winning the most prestigious award any security author can dream about is arguably the best way to do it.

To help me get ‘Cyber for Builders’ into the hands of more people, please cast your vote for the book here (it takes less than a minute). Thank you for your continued support!