CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2025 | Daniel Bernard, CrowdStrike & CJ Moses, Amazon & Shahar Peled, Terra Security

Clips
More from CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2025

Daniel Bernard

Chief Business Officer

CrowdStrike

CM

CJ Moses

CISO & VP Security Engineering

Amazon

Shahar Peled

Co-Founder & CEO

Terra Security

play_circle_outline Introduction to CrowdStrike's Fal.Con 2025 and theCUBE's live coverage.

play_circle_outline Advancing Cybersecurity Innovation: The Genesis and Purpose of the Accelerator Program by Daniel Bernard, AWS, and NVIDIA

play_circle_outline Bridging the Gap: How Collaboration between Large and Small Tech Firms Fuels Innovation and Growth in the Industry

play_circle_outline Recognition of the value of being part of a strong ecosystem with industry giants.

play_circle_outline Shahar highlights Terra's success in achieving product-market fit and closing deals.

Info
Transcript

Daniel Bernard, CrowdStrike & CJ Moses, Amazon & Shahar Peled, Terra Security

Daniel Bernard

Chief Business Officer CrowdStrike

CM

CJ Moses

CISO & VP Security Engineering Amazon

Shahar Peled

Co-Founder & CEO Terra Security

Get ready for a powerhouse conversation straight from Las Vegas. In this Fal.Con 2025 interview, theCUBE’s Dave Vellante sits down with Daniel Bernard, Chief Business Officer at CrowdStrike, CJ Moses, Chief Information Security Officer and VP of Security Engineering at Amazon, and Shahar Peled, co-founder of Terra Security. Together they unpack the vision behind CrowdStrike’s startup accelerator and how AWS, CrowdStrike and NVIDIA are fueling a new wave of cybersecurity innovation.

The discussion highlights why agentic AI is a breakthrough for offens... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What is the topic and context of the event being covered? add

What is the Accelerator program, and how did it originate? add

What is the significance of AWS collaborating with smaller companies like CrowdStrike? add

What factors contribute to the successful scaling and market entry of the discussed company? add

What evidence is there to suggest that the company is experiencing product market fit and growth opportunities in the current market? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Daniel Bernard, CrowdStrike & CJ Moses, Amazon & Shahar Peled, Terra Security

search

Dave Vellante

>> Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Las Vegas. You're watching theCUBE's live coverage of Fal.Con 2025 CrowdStrike's big customer event. This is theCUBE's fourth year doing this event that we've seen the explosion of the ecosystem and the innovation. I'm super excited about this next segment. We're going to be talking about the Accelerator program, and one of the hottest startups on the planet that you may not have heard of, but you will know after this conversation. Daniel Bernard, DB is here. He's going to be my co-host de facto.

Daniel Bernard

>> Great to be here.

Dave Vellante

>> Great to see you again, Daniel.

Daniel Bernard

>> CJ Moses, who's the CISO and VP of Security Engineering at Amazon, good to see you again, sir.

>> Thank you.

Dave Vellante

>> Thanks for coming on. Shahar Peled, we're going to need to give you an SP, I guess we'll call you. We got DB, CJ, and SP from Terra Security.

Shahar Peled

>> I'll take it. Usually people call me Sean. It's my Starbucks name .

Dave Vellante

>> There you go. Perhaps the hottest startup in the industry right now. Gentlemen, welcome.

Shahar Peled

>> Thank you.

Dave Vellante

>> Congratulations. Great to have you on theCUBE, really appreciate it.

Daniel Bernard

>> It's good to see both of you here at Fal.Con 2025.

Shahar Peled

>> Thank you. Great to be here.

Dave Vellante

>> We have to be here.

Daniel Bernard

>> It's the place to be now.

>> Exactly.

Dave Vellante

>> It is a place to be. It's like this is the happening. I think we are black hat this year. This is rivaling the size of black hat.

>> Oh, it's there.

Dave Vellante

>> It's pretty impressive.

Daniel Bernard

>> You look at the floor, over 115 vendors here, partners here, technology companies here. Cybersecurity is here. This is the ecosystem.

Dave Vellante

>> And you guys understand well the power of ecosystem, and we're going to get into some of that. But before we do, Daniel, explain the Accelerator program. What was the genesis? What's it all about?

Daniel Bernard

>> Sure. It all came out of a conversation. I was at an AWS event, a startup AWS event in Israel actually. And we put our heads together with some AWS folks and said, "How can our companies partner to create the next wave of innovation in cybersecurity?" And that's what came out of it. We brought NVIDIA into the fold. It is a program. We have applicants. We choose who the finalists are. There's about 35 finalists. Last year we had close to 1,000 applicants for this program. It's a global program. NVIDIA joined as well. And together, we have content that helps these founding teams learn what it takes to succeed in building a company. They hear from execs from all the companies. They hear from CJ, they hear from George, we're all in on this thing. AWS really helps us operate the program. They have a great startups program. We give them benefits in terms of product from all of our companies in addition to the education. And then at RSA, we have at a CrowdStrike event, they actually position and pitch the top ones. It's just like Shark Tank where they pitch their companies and we narrow it down to a winner, and we're here with the winner right here.

Dave Vellante

>> Amazing. I love that you guys are doing this. By the way, I love big companies. I love working with big companies. There's such texture in them. But, you guys, I think well understand that it's not just about large companies, that you've got to keep feeding the innovation with the next generation of players. CJ, why is it so important to collaborate as a hyperscaler with a company like CrowdStrike, also a very large company, not quite as large as-

>> We're working on it....

Dave Vellante

>> AWS, you're getting there, keep growing. You guys have probably grown about the same rate, which is quite remarkable. AWS, it's incredible what you guys are doing. But, why is it important for you, AWS to work with companies like CrowdStrike?

>> I think the best thing about it is, is actually that when CrowdStrike was a small company, there's a few hundred people there, CrowdStrike being built in the cloud, and on AWS. And the partnership that we had from that helped them to grow, and also helped AWS to grow. And we learned from that, and created an ecosystem of many other partners that run in the cloud and on our marketplace. And what we're very understanding is that just because we're big doesn't mean that we shouldn't be humble and understand that there's a lot of innovation that's still happening out there. It needs to happen, especially with all the different changes that go on in the world, AI being the most recent, that those startups are the ones that have those great ideas that they can actually germinate from that. And that's one of the things that CrowdStrike and AWS working together, we have a great partnership, and we want to bring others in to that partnership over time. And the best way to do so is through our partnership, and into our marketplaces, and ultimately, in some cases into our companies, because before there was this cybersecurity startup Accelerator, we would actually take trips over to Israel, or go to Silicon Valley, and interview, do a day of interview of 30 or something like that startups. It's even better to be able to do it with partners that take thousands, and nail it down to 10 or 20 that we then do the actual final day at the RSA.

Daniel Bernard

>> And now they come to us, and they bring them to us.

Dave Vellante

>> Exactly right. And Shahar, it's taken for granted. I remember when I did my first startup, we were racking and stacking white box servers, and what a waste of our talents. Today we take that for granted now that you could do that.

>> You can't get money these days from a VC to do that. You have to use the cloud.

Daniel Bernard

>> Right, they throw you out of the room.

>> I'd like to spend money on a rack of equipment.

Daniel Bernard

>> It's just impressive how many startups build on AWS. Just look, that's what CrowdStrike did, and I'm sure that's what Terra's doing as well.

>> Yep.

Dave Vellante

>> All right, so let's talk about Terra. Amazing story, Shahar. You came out of I think in April. You've raised, I think, close to almost $40 million, 38 million I think in both seed, and that's a nice big chunky A round as well. Why did you start the company? Let's start there.

Shahar Peled

>> Yeah, so my partner and I, when we started a company about a year ago, we had a personal pain that we felt in our previous positions. Me as a VP of go-to-market in an application security company, and my partner is a director of engineering in a data security company, we both knew that everything around offensive security, pen testing, red teaming, ethical hacking, should be one of the most effective security capabilities. Being the one that can show us what adversaries can really do, what's exploitable, not just vulnerable, but it was broken for all the right reasons. You just needed the best talent out there to be able to really mimic adversaries. And this by default is manual. But, lately, there were so many changes both in the risks because of AI and how fast we can develop and change the attack surface, but also how adversaries are adopting technologies. But, I think the most exciting thing is that we started for the first time in history, we have the technology at hand that can help us mimic how humans think and operate in real time at scale, which in our opinion, and this is what got us to start a company, is the first time we can really scale offensive security without losing the depth accuracy, or control and safety. And this is the technology we're using at GenTech AI to change the way offensive security is done.

Dave Vellante

>> You guys started as cloud native was part of your ascendancy, you're a AI native. The timing is perfect, but the momentum is remarkable. Why ... How do you explain that?

Shahar Peled

>> I think it's a combination of two things. One, I think people are trying to automate pen testing for decades now, right? And great companies have tried, and they've done some really good things. But, eventually, the technology wasn't there. And everyone is talking about AI in the past, I don't know, two and a half years. It is one of the clearest use cases of agentic AI that people understand that AI is being thrown everywhere, but offensive security, and pet testing specifically, is the most straightforward use cases to build with agentic AI, because of the reasons I mentioned before. The second thing, when we got out of stealth right before RSA with our seed funding, a few days after, we won the Accelerator. And having worked with executives from such incredible companies, three of the leading software companies in the world, CrowdStrike, AWS and NVIDIA, and then having chosen out of, you said 1,000 startups, then 35, and then top 10 on stage with CJ, and DB, and George Kurtz, and David Reaver from NVIDIA, I think it did two things for us. One, it gave us the network working with such executives being able to work with the practitioners within these companies, but also the validation. When we go to a potential prospecting customer and tell them we were chosen out of hundreds of startups as the winner of this Accelerator, by these executives, it helps us really bring Terra to the market in a way that is validated. People understand it's not just technology, it's not just vision, it's also execution, and it provides value, and it helps us really exponentially grow in a quarter and a half with something that we could not have done unless we would've won Accelerator.

Dave Vellante

>> I want to ask each of you, Daniel and CJ, how you spot the up-and-coming startups, how you choose them. It's renowned that VCs maybe have a 10% hit rate. I'm not sure what your hit rate is, but I wonder if ... There are similarities and differences, so let's start with Daniel. What is your innovation startup spotting secret?

Daniel Bernard

>> I think it all comes down to what's the problem that the founding team's trying to solve. Are they choosing a problem that's not a point product problem that has a vision and a capability to ultimately solve something end to end wholistically? Because if you go into a market that has some mess, and some scope, and some scale, that gives you space to actually build something that's going to add value, and no company has it all nailed on day one. They need to grow, they need to learn, they need to lose some deals, they need to win some deals, they need the customer feedback. It's one, founding teams that have some of that diversity of experience. We heard over here, you have engineering, you have go-to-market. Two, a really interesting market and a big, big problem. And three, are they able to execute? That's my one, two, three, team, market, and ability to execute. And what we need to do as a CrowdStrike is put these winning companies up on the stage, so to speak, give them visibility, give them resources, and then, the little falcons will fly, the birds will fly, and the good things happen. And that's the vision of what this is all about.

Dave Vellante

>> Now CJ, I assume you agree with what DB just said.

>> Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Dave Vellante

>> But, you also have this amazing advantage of all the data, so you can see what's happening with your customers, and where they're gravitating. I wonder if you could talk to that.

>> Yeah, absolutely. That is a great advantage for us is, especially for the startups that are actually running on AWS, we're able to see the metrics from that. We do pay attention to privacy of course. It's not something we go mummaging through your data. But, at the same time, I think that using that data in order to assess to the items that actually DB was hitting on, is very important, because there are a lot of startups that have a lot of Slideware, and have a good story, but when you actually start asking questions, it all falls apart. And that's when we're judging at these events. That's what you're looking for. You're looking for founders, specifically, that you can bet on, because they have the answers, because they are day-to-day involved, and understand, and know their business better than anyone. And then, you're not in a position where they're relying on other people to know the business. They actually own it. And that's what we found with Terra. And I think that's what ... Actually, if you look at Terra, if you look at the previous winner, Remedio from the year before , it was GitPoll. Now Remedio with Tal, another strong leader that is able to lead a company through what it's going to take to go from being a startup to making it beyond that.

Daniel Bernard

>> And they just had around this week as well.

Dave Vellante

>> Oh, it's a .

Daniel Bernard

>> There's a common theme here.

>> The first two both announced ... The first two winners of the Accelerator, the one from previous year and then this year, both announced on the same day. Did you guys schedule that, or-

Shahar Peled

>> We didn't, big surprise, so yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> Shahar, the money helps obviously, but the ecosystem is a big part of that flywheel. I wonder if you could talk to that. Is it the go-to-market? I'm sure it's all, but the go-to-market, the technical capabilities that you get out of the cloud and out of CrowdStrike, the speed, what are the things that the ecosystem that are giving you that tailwind?

Shahar Peled

>> Yeah, as you said, it's a combination of both. Obviously, having a network within these three companies is really amazing for us on our end. And we're able to work with all the way from the executives talk to CJ when we need to get some advice, but also, talk to the practitioners who build and focus on these problems on a daily basis. But, on the other hand, it's really go-to-market. When we're able to have the AWS ecosystem sell on the marketplace, BNISVA, or work with the CrowdStrike partners that we just joined, it allows us to really scale in a way that we couldn't have done before. And I can speak to myself, maybe it would've been able to do something similar without winning the Accelerator, but I think being the winner allows us to really enter those ecosystems of AWS, and CrowdStrike, and also NVIDIA. We're in their inception program as well in a, I would say a red carpet way that allows us to really scale and be almost like a poster child. And for that, it's our job to really then execute, and show the results. And I think this is what we've been doing so far.

Daniel Bernard

>> Yeah. Question for you. What was the inflection point that you saw post-Accelerator? You were able to successfully raise this round. You're working with these companies. What happened after the Accelerator that made your business start to fly to get the interest for the round?

Shahar Peled

>> Yeah, so that's a great question. It was the second day of RSA, I think when we won the Accelerator. The third day, our category, agentic AI Pen testing was the talk of the day across customers, VCs. We didn't think of raising money, we didn't need to raise money, but we were getting outreach from so many VCs, and we're able to do an A round before we actually needed it. We, in one quarter, got 400% growth in our customer base, over 1,000% growth in our pipeline. We tripled our team, and did all of that, I think, thanks to the Accelerator as part of the momentum we're getting. And lastly, we actually announced the first agentic AI-powered continuous penetration testing platform with a human-in-the-loop mechanism earlier than we thought. It just gave us the boost to really go out there, validate, and now we win deals thanks to all of these components together.

Dave Vellante

>> But, DB and CJ, I want to ask you about M&A through innovation, through M&A. It's worked. I think of Cisco under Chambers. For a long time, they had a good run, so that can work. But, why is the Accelerator different? I wonder if you could address that for us.

>> Yeah, so I think how it's different is, I think it really comes down to that we're looking for the one in 1,000 or multiple thousands not out there looking for broad categories of things we're going to buy, because we can't build them ourselves. A lot of times, we're looking for things that we've thought about, but internally, haven't come up with any great innovations or plans for being able to do so, or be able to actually implement it. And you look at a company like Terra that already has done it, actually has made innovation in that space with such a small team that allows us, if we were to try to do a merger, and actually, we don't plan it. You're good in the space you're in. But, it allows us to be able to draft off of that innovation. And when it comes to M&A, that's the opportunity to buy the innovation and the team. That's the important part. When you're looking at companies, we're not looking at companies, don't take this the wrong way, for sales and marketing. We're looking at companies for the engineering and the intellectual property of what they do, and the leaders that can lead that team forward. And when doing that assessment, if you find the right people, with the right tech, and you're either able to either bring them through M&A, or even better, make them part of your ecosystem so that they can continue to grow and innovate with others, providing drafting into that space, it just helps all ships rise with the tide.

Dave Vellante

>> And you guys actually, you bring the go-to-market engine. It's amazing. The technical stuff is super hard, but if you look at the stats, 70% of companies who achieve ... Series A, B, or C companies, 70% fail to return 1X to investors. And I believe one of the big reasons is it's hard to scale go-to-market when you don't have product market fit, you're trying to scale go-to-market. You guys solve a lot of that. If you can get product market fit, then you can plug into the go-to-market engine of an Amazon, and now a CrowdStrike. It really can put you on an ascendant path. Your thoughts on that, Shahar?

Shahar Peled

>> Yeah, I think this is where we are right now. We see product market fit. We see it because we hear our customers talk about us. They say constantly win deals against competitors, against more mature companies. I think it shows us that what we're solving is real, and it allows us to really start scaling on these ecosystems. And as I said, we already closed a bunch of deals on the AWS marketplace. We joined the CrowdStrike and Fal.Con partner program and the NVIDIA partner program. And now I think there is a really strong better to get the stories with all three of these companies that shows we were the chosen ones from the Accelerator to really represent the next generation of innovation. Let's see how we can win deals together. And we don't compete with any of these companies, which is a great story for us, because we can win deals that are also AWS customers, CrowdStrike customers, NVIDIA customers, and it's what we're looking for.

>> Yeah, I think the thing that we find is, is that they actually complement our companies, including with CrowdStrike and with AWS. And that's what we've seen is these new innovations, these complements, when we put them into the marketplace when we ... Big thing is, is that a lot of larger companies don't want just one piece of a solution. They want the total solution. They may actually choose to use CrowdStrike, and then the implementation method that they use for Terra is through CrowdStrike, and maybe they're purchasing through that way, or allows that on-ramp in that vehicle, to go back to your original question, that allows where people have failed in the past, where startups have failed in the past, this is actually the Accelerator for them to be able to not have to create all of that. We've already done it for them.

Daniel Bernard

>> Yeah, and between what the two of them just said, that's really why we did the Accelerator. Shahar's answer is spot on in terms of, we can help them find product market fit faster, we can connect them with customers, and we can connect them with other partners under our umbrella. And that's really a very powerful thing. For us at CrowdStrike, from an M&A perspective, they weren't a winner, but two years ago, there was a company that was a finalist. They were called Onum. And you'd notice in the news three weeks ago, four weeks ago, Onum just became a part of CrowdStrike. And so, yeah, we meet companies that are complimentary as part of the Accelerator. It's not our primary goal, but we have a pretty regimented view of how to do M&A where we buy the teams, we buy the tech, we integrate them, and they become very successful modular businesses for us.

Dave Vellante

>> But, part of the selection criterion is filling that white space. It's not just incremental improvements. It's something that really is a need in the market. The timing is right. Shahar, what would you like to be able to say a year from now that you can't say today?

Shahar Peled

>> I think we need to prove two more things, and I think we'll get there. We started selling in a very nice space and very happy about it. We need to exponentially grow our go-to-market and sales. And this is exactly when we're going to start that. A year from now, I'm not going to say the number, but good millions of dollars in ARR that have been won by Terra repetitively with a very promising pipeline to continue scaling dramatically, and become a growth company. The second part is enhance the technology. AI native companies are still new. This whole ecosystem of AI native companies is new. Our category is new, and we currently support three main use cases within offensive security. But eventually, we want to be a platform. We want to support the entire offensive security stack, and this is where we're building towards. And if these two things happen together, I foresee a very bright future for Terra, also alongside our partners that we gained through the Accelerator.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, the company you keep says a lot, companies like CrowdStrike, and AWS, and you've got some other great investors. I know Scott Darling, and the Dell technology, or the Dell Capital folks are involved. Congratulations, and well done, you guys, on sniffing out these great startups. Love to have them on theCUBE every year. We really appreciate you bringing them on.

Daniel Bernard

>> There's nothing more rewarding for us.

Shahar Peled

>> Absolutely, absolutely....

Daniel Bernard

>> than taking what was a really exciting idea two years ago, two and a half years ago, and seeing a whole group of companies succeed on the back of it. And that's what the ecosystem's all about.

>> Agreed.

Shahar Peled

>> We are lucky you had this idea.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, the fall season is in full swing. We'll see you guys reinvent if not sooner, so really appreciate you coming on.

>> Absolutely.

Dave Vellante

>> All right, and thank you for watching theCUBE. This is day one coverage. We're wrapping up. Go to thecube.net, you'll get all the videos on demand. Check out siliconangle.com for all the news. Go to thecubeai.com and ask it, what does Terra Security do? It'll be in there tonight. Thanks for watching. This is Dave Vellante. For Rebecca Knight and the entire CUBE team, we'll see you tomorrow, day two, CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2025 from Las Vegas. Thanks for watching.