Not Every Groundbreaking Idea Needs to Become a Startup
Ross Haleliuk
BSidesSF 2025 — Here Be Dragons · Day 2 · Main
The cybersecurity industry has convinced itself that venture-backed startups are the only path to solving security problems — and that assumption is quietly strangling hundreds of niche but important problems that will never fit the venture scale model. Ross Haleliuk, author, angel investor, and product leader, argues for a broader menu: bootstrapping, the "Silicon Valley small business" model, services companies, open source, conference talks, and standards bodies all have roles to play. ---
AI review
Haleliuk is right that the security industry has an unhealthy fixation on VC as the only viable company-building model, and the sub-venture-scale problem category is a real and underserved gap. But this is a conference talk, not a research paper, and it mostly systematizes common knowledge for an audience that could use the reminder. Not groundbreaking, but not wrong.