How Did You Get Your Start?

My story goes back a pretty long way. I was 11 or 12, learning software development – trying to figure out what all the hype was around coding.

I went to a cybersecurity conference in D.C. and learned about honeypots, which is the ability to put something online to lure hackers. I thought it was the coolest thing, and went home to build one.

I made a fake NSA login portal and got hackers from China and Russia hacking it.

After that, I figured I’d go speak at a conference. I spoke at DerbyConn in 2015, and then gave 3 talks the next year on cyber and the US energy sector. As a result of one of the talks, I got my first job at ThreatConnect when I was 14 doing research.

I ended up getting into UVA when I was 16, and bounced around 4 startups part-time. Towards the end of my fourth year, ChatGPT came out and I did a lot of research on how adversaries could use it to stage more advanced cybersecurity hacks, and spoke at the RSA Conference (one of the biggest cyber conferences in the U.S.).

I then took a full time role at a company called Cyberreason, and also began mulling over Validia and how deep fakes could be used negatively.

I spent 6 months to a year working on the product, raised some money last year, went full time, and now Validia is set to raise another round here soon.