Building a security startup as an outsider
Kabir Mathur
BSides NYC 2025 (0x05) · Day 1 · Entrepreneur
In a candid and insightful talk at BSides NYC, Kabir Mathur, CEO and co-founder of Lean, shared the unconventional journey of building a cybersecurity startup from the ground up, despite having virtually no prior experience in the industry. Titled "Building a security startup as an outsider," Mathur's presentation challenged the traditional notions of expertise and credentials, arguing that an outsider's perspective and raw curiosity can be a significant advantage in an often insular and jargon-heavy field. Lean's mission is to create a **unified API for security data**, aiming to normalize disparate data from various security solutions into common schemas, making it easier for security teams and other vendors to correlate and action critical information.
AI review
A competent founder story about building a security data integration startup with no prior industry background. Lean's unified API angle is a real problem worth solving, but this talk lives entirely in the entrepreneurial-journey lane — there's nothing here that a BSides audience couldn't get from a decent Medium post or a 20-minute podcast episode.