Secure Ventures with Kyle McNulty Descope | Co-founder Rishi Bhargava on Cybersecurity GTM
14 snips
Jul 15, 2025 
Rishi Bhargava, co-founder of Descope and a former leader at Demisto, McAfee, and Intel, shares his extensive knowledge on cybersecurity and customer identity. He discusses unique approaches to product team structures by embedding security research early, ensuring products meet market needs. Rishi reflects on his transition from acquisition critiques to founding Demisto, and emphasizes the importance of continuous customer discovery. He reveals Descope's mission to eliminate passwords and addresses customer identity's distinct needs compared to workforce IAM.
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Tech-First Mergers Often Miss Market Fit
- Tech-first acquisitions can fail without a customer or market-first strategy.
- Rishi grades the McAfee–Intel acquisition poorly because it lacked a market-focused approach.
Hire Researchers To Build Ready Playbooks
- Hire security researchers early to inform product and sales conversations.
- Turn their expertise into out-of-the-box playbooks and best-practice guidance for customers.
SOAR Became A Workbench, Not Just Automation
- Automation alone didn't define SOAR; collaboration and documentation mattered equally.
- Demisto added chat, ticketing, and collaboration to become a full incident response platform.