At a Tie event in Bay area

Yesterday night I went to an event organized by Tie. Tie, the Indus entrepreneur, network is a volunteer organization with 44 chapters across the globe. The focus was on security industry and how an entry to exit. “Software Security Entry to Exit - Decode the entrepreneurial code”.

The event was structured in three parts 1. networking 2. panel discussions and 3. Q&A. It was fun meeting folks at the networking, ofcourse some of the folks were really snobbish and some were just too good. I met few people one British embassy associate wanting to invite companies to setup offices in UK, A Chinese lady wanting to find clients, An American executive wanting to grow his company, an India sales manager hanging out, few entrepreneurs wanting to find opportunity and of course few vellas like me who just came to find whats happening.

Dinner was aweful, after eating food in India for six or so months, I don’t think I can eat India food anywhere in North America. It just does not compare in quality forget the cost. I’m side tracking …

So the panel started the discussion. Rob Owens, Vice President and Senior Research Analyst, Pacific Crest, was the moderator. He was the first one on the street to make the security as a group, an industry and cover it differently in 1997. Since than, he has covered the industry and considered an authority. The panel was Don canning, a sr. fellow from Microsoft’s emerging business team, Ashsih Chandna from greylock partners, Stephnie Fohn, CEO whitehat securities – a managed outsourcing company and Praveen jain EVP Mcafee.

Some of the key points from discussions were
 The industry is not saturated in terms of $$ the expected size is $120 billion and current industry size is $20 billion
 The industry does not have many big players
 The industry has seen few segments mature that are firewall and anti-virus.
 The industry does not have common standards and in the game theatric situation of not having one specially every one having MS and CISCO big brother in bed together
 The industry has not seen an ipo in last five years but trend may change with ipo for 3 to 5 players
 Mr. Praveen’s opinion was that the smaller company should not stay small, they should merge (hostile nature of big boys).

Question answers were boaring for me hence I came back.. Overall time well spent than watching TV/documentary 