Our guest in this episode is Rob Lee, co-founder and CEO of Dragos. Two weeks ago, Accenture agreed to acquire a majority stake in Dragos as part of the massive, over $4 billion transaction that also included the acquisitions of runZero and NetRise. As luck would have it, we recorded this conversation just a few weeks before the announcement. Massive congratulations to Rob and to the entire teams of Dragos, runZero, and NetRise!

When Rob started Dragos, most investors didn't believe critical infrastructure security was a venture-scale opportunity. Despite getting more than 100 rejections from investors, Rob stayed committed to his mission. Today, Dragos protects critical infrastructure around the world and has become one of the defining companies in industrial cybersecurity.

This episode isn't simply about building a unicorn or leading a company to a massive exit. It's about building a company around a mission. Rob explains why Dragos exists to "safeguard civilization," why protecting critical infrastructure is fundamentally different from protecting enterprise IT, and why cybersecurity in operational technology is ultimately a public safety problem, not just a business problem.

Throughout the conversation, Rob shares candid lessons from building Dragos over the past ten years. We discuss choosing investors, surviving VC rejections, scaling from three founders to more than 600 employees, building a founder-led culture, making difficult executive hiring decisions, expanding internationally, and why Rob believes founders should optimize for long-term mission rather than short-term valuation.

We also dive deep into the future of critical infrastructure security. Rob explains how AI is changing operational technology, why cyber warfare is increasingly targeting civilian infrastructure, what keeps him awake at night as geopolitical tensions continue to rise, and why he believes the next generation of cybersecurity founders should pay far more attention to industrial systems than they do today.

It’s a fascinating story about a founder who decided to build a mission-driven company instead of trying to optimize for an exit or the next funding round. By doing that, not only has he succeeded in building something lasting, but he also achieved a massive financial outcome.