Her Journey: Sales Leader to Cybersecurity CEO

In this episode, Amir sits down with Brooke Motta, CEO and co-founder of RAD Security, to unpack her career pivot from sales leadership to becoming a founder in the cybersecurity space. Brooke shares how her go-to-market background shaped her approach to building RAD, the challenge of stepping into technical leadership, how she’s managing growth through hiring, and what’s ahead for security and AI. Whether you're a technical founder or commercial operator, this one’s packed with practical insight.

💡 Key Takeaways:

Sales Skills Scale: Brooke explains how her early career at Rapid7 taught her to build pipeline from scratch—skills that directly translated to startup leadership.

Learning to Lead Technically: She shares how non-technical founders can learn quickly by knowing how they learn, and surrounding themselves with customers and engineers.

Go-To-Market Meets CEO: Juggling the CRO and CEO hats requires recognizing when to zoom out, empower others, and avoid falling back into old comfort zones.

Security Needs Speed: RAD was born to solve the tension between engineering velocity and security friction.

AI for Security Efficiency: RAD’s new AI agentic layer is helping CISOs dramatically cut down GRC and risk reporting times.

⏱️ Timestamped Highlights:

00:37 – What RAD Security does: a CADR platform with an AI layer for better query and integration.

01:28 – Brooke’s sales journey at Rapid7 and how that shaped her operator mindset.

04:06 – CEO vs. sales mindset: learning when to stay in your lane and when to manage across functions.

06:09 – Becoming more technical by learning through founders, engineers, and users.

07:47 – Brooke’s early vision to lead, and why startup DNA suits her better than corporate environments.

09:19 – Building a "can-do" culture and why intangibles matter when hiring.

10:39 – Transitioning from doing the selling to hiring and enabling a sales team.

13:27 – The founding insight: helping security enable engineering speed, not block it.

15:31 – RAD's "do more with less" efficiency campaign for CISOs.

📣 Featured Quote:

“You need to make sure as the leader of your company that you understand the market, your buyers, how your product works—and how people actually use it.” — Brooke Motta