January 9, 2026 • 42 mins
Navigating AI and Security Assurance with Pukar C Hamal
In this episode of The Wireless Way, host Chris Whitaker sits down with Pukar C Hamal, founder and CEO of SecurityPal AI, a company that addresses security assurance bottlenecks affecting enterprise deals. Pukar shares his journey from Kathmandu to Silicon Valley, emphasizing the potential of leveraging global talent and the transformative power of technology. The discussion delves into the complexities of AI, the importance of cybersecurity, and the evolving landscape of technical talent. They also explore how AI can enhance efficiency in businesses and discuss the future of work in an AI-driven world. Despite several technical hiccups during the recording, the episode is a compelling conversation about technological advancement, security challenges, and human ingenuity.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:59 Pukar's Background and Journey
01:20 The Value and Impact of AI
02:02 Building a Tech Company in Silicon Valley
04:11 Silicon Peaks: Bridging Silicon Valley and Kathmandu
05:24 Pukar's Early Fascination with Technology
09:16 Founding Security Pal AI
15:11 The Growing Importance of Security Assurance
18:30 Challenges and Opportunities in Cybersecurity
19:56 Pukar's Startup Experience
20:33 Hiring Elite Technical Talent
21:13 Debunking the Myth of Technical Talent
23:27 The Future of Jobs in the Age of AI
27:20 Introducing SecurityPal AI's New Product
29:04 The Role of AI in Enhancing Human Work
32:57 Final Thoughts and Future Outlook
38:25 Closing Remarks and Technical Difficulties
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Episode Transcript
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Chris (00:51):
And welcome to the episode of The Wireless Way.
I'm your host, Chris Whitaker,and I'm grateful that you're
here today.
As always, I know you have a lotgoing on.
There's so much going on inbusiness and technology.
So thanks for checking out thisepisode, and I'm equally
grateful for my guest Pukar CHamal He's the founder and CEO
(01:12):
of security pal ai whicheliminates security assurance
bottlenecks that stallenterprise deals.
For companies like OpenAI,Figma, and MongoDB.
He's born in Kathmandu, raisedin New York City, and now living
in San Francisco.
He built a profitable companywith engineering talent from San
(01:33):
Francisco and 24 7 SecurityAssurance Command Center in
Kathmandu, proving that worldclass execution doesn't just
require Silicon Valley overhead.
He writes about capitalformation and the economics of
AI era operations.
Pukar, thanks for making timetoday, man.
(01:53):
How are you?
I'm doing well.
I'm glad we got through
Pukar (01:56):
the technical hiccups here, but excited to chat with
you, Chris.
Thank you so much for having meon.
Chris (02:03):
Yes.
It is always a pleasure to meetthought leaders and people
moving the needle advancingtechnology, advancing the
conversation, if you will.
And, for listeners, you thinkabout the last dozen or so
episodes, AI is definitely thecommon.
Theme, right?
You can't have a technologyconversation today without AI in
(02:26):
there somehow, and this is areally good one, a really unique
one.
We've talked about a lot.
It's what's the real value ofai?
Of ai?
Companies are calling me going,Hey Chris, I need to incorporate
AI into my business.
And I'm like, okay, what part ofyour business, what technology?
It's, a broader conversation,right?
AI by itself is not a product.
(02:48):
It's not a skew, if you will.
It's it's an enhancement.
I'm anxious to get your take onthis.
But before we get there, asalways what's not the bio Pukar,
how did you get here?
Pukar (03:02):
Yeah there's a lot not in the bio considering it's, as is
the case long.
Yeah.
But, I think obviously I've hada, I've had a very interesting
journey to on my way to Buildinga AI technology company in
Silicon Valley.
I feel obviously very blessed tobe able to do that.
(03:23):
I I was, as somebody that wasborn in Kathmandu very grateful
to have immigrated to this greatcountry and growing up in New
York City and I moved out westbasically in 2009 to, to enter
Stanford.
And then my journey totechnology was was really a
(03:44):
result of realizing that thescale of technology, that
technology as a lever is justenormously powerful.
You can have so much more moreimpact, right?
As a, as a service worker, likea standard like doctor or lawyer
or whatever my parents wanted meto be back in the day.
(04:07):
You can you're like singlethreaded in some ways in terms
of how, many people you canhelp.
But with technology you can gofrom helping times and dozens,
hundreds, thousands of people toactually helping millions of,
people.
And, the scale that it, givesyou is tremendous.
And so realizing that early on,I think was like a big unlock
for me.
(04:28):
I've now lived in the Bay Area,Silicon Valley now for 16, 17
years.
I think it's the most magicalplace.
I, personally, I think America'sthe best place to build
anything, and I think SiliconValley is probably the best
place to to, do that.
If you don't have an existingnetwork and wanna, wanna enter a
(04:48):
pool of like pure meritocracy, Ithink we, we have something akin
to that here.
Silicon Valley.
Obviously there's great hubsaround the country.
Atlanta where you're based is agreat one too.
We've got a lot of reallyamazing customers there.
And, and I've, always had thismission of taking some of this
secret sauce that we have hereof Silicon Valley and bringing
(05:12):
it to to other talent hubsaround the world that could
probably benefit from From thisop, what I like to say is an
operating system, a philosophyof, building companies and
playing the long game.
And so I've been working withLeaders and technology and
others and, Cat Mandu rumoriginally actually from and
(05:35):
trying to bring Silicon Valleyto, and I, think we like to say
that our office is exactly ahundred miles away from the top
of Mount Everest.
And and we're championing, asort of Silicon Valley and the
Himalayas that we're callingSilicon Peaks.
Very apropos given thetremendous, backdrop of the
(05:57):
Himalayas that, that, existsjust a few hundred miles away
from, from that, from thecapital.
Yeah.
Chris (06:04):
Oh that is, fascinating.
I love that Silicon Peaks andthat, that's a good way of
putting it.
Yeah.
That def it helps people kindaunderstand where, is Catman do,
or you, what's the in relationthere?
What, have you always been atechie, would you say?
Was there a time in your earlyadulthood or even maybe going
back into being a young man,have you always had this
(06:27):
interest in technology?
Yeah, I think it's a it'simpossible not to
Pukar (06:32):
be not to be fascinated and in awe of how much
technological progress we'vemade.
Just still, I was, bornbasically right after the Berlin
Wall fell, right?
I was born in 91 and we look atgoing from nine one to today I
(06:53):
mid thirties, but people don'twanna do their math.
And where, I was born, where Igrew up I was born in du
obviously most capital city,most advanced city for, Nepal.
But I actually grew up in, inrural Nepal where there was no
like electricity or indoorplumbing.
And we were like really farmfarming, rural, a lifestyle.
(07:16):
And, I always like to say I'veexperienced like probably two,
200 plus years of technologicalprogress in my three decades,
three plus decades that I'vebeen blessed to be on this
incredible planet.
And I feel that that is, thathas drawn me to wow.
(07:38):
There's just, there's so muchwhen I was young I used to look
at like planes in the sky andwonder if I would ever ride in
one and now.
I traveled back I, put 110,000miles down last year.
I was looking at my, flighty appand so wow.
In the air and it's just it'syour technology's incredibly
fascinating to me, always hasbeen.
(08:02):
I never thought I was gonnabuild a tech company.
I think that's a little bit of aof, a surprise that I ended up,
Speaker 3 (08:07):
I
Pukar (08:07):
ended up there.
I don't think it was really likea desire for me to.
Build a company.
But I think a lot of it justcomes from realizing and having
great mentors that shared withme that anything is possible if
you're willing to work hard,especially in this country.
And and so yeah, really gratefulabout
Chris (08:26):
that.
Yeah, that's great.
What a great story, man.
Have you ever thought aboutwriting a book?
You're right to go from ruralNepal, no energy no electricity,
no indoor plumbing to justmoving to New York City and now
San Francisco, and now a techcompany.
You're, that's a, you haveperspective.
You have a deep perspective thatso many people.
(08:46):
Probably can't even begin toreally grasp.
I don't know that's a stretch,but it, seems that way to me.
You like for me from mybackground I spent 10 years in
the army.
I never thought I would be intechnology, but I've always been
a gadget guy.
I've always loved what differenttechnology, how I can make life
better.
I've always been a big studentof efficiency and effectiveness,
(09:08):
which is all about your company.
I think your company really.
Helps businesses become moreefficient and effective, and
we'll go talk about that.
But but no I, it is afascinating story thanks for
sharing that, man.
I, really appreciate it.
Yeah.
And thank you for your service.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
That's that's tremendous.
Chris (09:25):
Thank you.
Oh, yeah, no, my pleasure.
People like you were worth it,man.
I it's funny when I joined, Ididn't really know if I thought
of it that way but back to yourpoint yeah, there's society in
general.
There's always a great communityof people doing amazing, great
things.
Yes.
Unfortunately, because of humannature, there's always a
component of people not doing.
(09:46):
The right things and all, but Ithink generally speaking, we all
are more alike than different.
We all just want a fair break.
We want a fair chance.
We want a roof over our head.
We want food in our stomach.
We're all more alike thandifferent.
And I do my best not to focus onthe differences and try to
embrace what we have in commonand just respect, hey we're not
always gonna agree, but we canstill be friends that's right.
(10:07):
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
And so pivoting a little bit,one of my favorite words for
listeners that may not knowsecurity power AI yet what
problem were you seeing in themarket that made you say this
has to be fixed?
And how did that lead to foundin the company?
Pukar (10:28):
Yeah i, didn't think I was gonna build a company in
the, cybersecurity assurancespace.
I was previously a co-founder ofan HR tech company.
So human resources technologycompany, circa 20 16 20 17.
When I joined that founding teamand we were building a a,
(10:52):
recruiting technology that waspowering some of that.
Biggest companies in the worldin, their recruiting efforts,
companies like Uber and Lyft andAllstate.
And as we were selling ourproduct more and more up market,
more and more to enterprisesafter 20 2018 we started seeing
(11:15):
more and more of these, thesesecurity compliance assurance
related questions in the salescycle, right?
Like a lot of times people wannaknow about, okay does your
product have this feature?
That feature?
Like how efficient is it gonnamake us?
What does the ROI look like?
There are a lot of thesequestions about product and
(11:38):
features, but after 2018 we westarted seeing a lot of
questions about security stuff,like how do you encrypt data?
Where, is it stored?
Who has access?
Are you doing pen tests,firewalls, all these different
types of questions.
And I realized that there was a,new legislation that was passed
in Europe called the GDPR,general Data Protection
(12:00):
Regulation, which is effectivelylike a data privacy regulation.
And the.
The gist of it is because somuch, because the internet had
eaten away at so much of what wedo, right?
The, famous quote from Mark andsoftware was eating the world,
(12:22):
right?
And because software had donewas so effective and efficient
at eating the world over thepast few decades.
It had created a lot more risksin the internet era for data,
for healthcare data, personaldata personally identifiable,
sensitive information about ourabout who we are.
(12:43):
And that had increased thethreats online.
And so when companies wereentering and when two companies
wanted to work together.
It wasn't just enough for you tofigure out how you were gonna
pay for the tool and whether thetool was gonna work.
You actually had to figure outif the tool was secure or not.
And that's this, it was a newsort of like hurdle you needed
to cross in your journey ofselling your product.
(13:07):
And so as a result of that whatwhat I realized is, wow, we
gotta get through this problem,this challenge.
And the way that the, initialproblem showed up was
effectively like a securityquestionnaire.
You have to fill out thesemassive security questionnaires,
and there wasn't a good way offilling it out.
You have to like literally sitdown and, open the spreadsheet
(13:28):
and fill it out manually, and itwould take like days, hours.
You don't know what the answersare.
You don't even know what thequestions are asking sometimes.
And that was really, you knowwhat I like to say is every
problem If you look at problemsas problems, you're not really
gonna get anywhere.
But if you look at problems asan opportunity, then you know
the paths open up.
And so I really saw that as anopportunity.
(13:50):
I was like, okay, here's achallenge.
And so that was really the sparkthat sort of lit the match
eventually for security power,which was realizing in my
previous company that I ran intothis problem and then eventually
realizing that other leaders intechnology.
Other sort of mentors of mineformer colleagues of mine were
also running into similarproblem.
And that's what led me to signmy first customer.
(14:10):
Before I'd even incorporated mycompany, they were interested in
working with me.
And so that's how I knew therewas product market fit
underneath here.
And as we turned the pages onthe company now we process over
10,000 questionnaires.
There's hundreds of millions, ifnot billions of dollars of
revenue that depends onsecurity, power uptime.
When companies like OpenAI,Figma, MongoDB D script, superb
(14:35):
base when all these companiesare, distributing their
incredible products out theresecurity power is here and,
helping those those incredibleenterprises accelerate.
The way in which theydemonstrate assurance to those
customers because they do havebest in class security.
It's all.
(14:55):
There's a difference betweenhaving best in class security
and assurance posture, securityposture, and then being able to
effectively communicate it tocustomers on the market and
regulators.
And there's a tremendous amountof work that needs to be done in
that journey.
And we effectively help makethat happen in a much smoother
way.
And so we've obviously movedbeyond just security
(15:16):
questionnaires to helpingcompanies with vendor
assessments.
It's not just when you'reselling your product, you also
have to ask the similar types ofquestions and concerns when
you're purchasing products andtools.
And then there's also other,assurance work that has come up,
like audits and all types ofdifferent regulations that are
(15:39):
coming up around the world likethis.
160 plus different countriesthat have their own sort of
version of GDPR and data privacyregulation and industry standard
regulations.
And so the, market is massive interms of how do you demonstrate
assurance during that commercialtransaction on both the buy and
sell side and we effectivelyhelp accelerate that.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah.
Chris (16:02):
Wow.
Where do you think we are interms of the market that you're,
serving?
How mature is this market?
Pukar (16:10):
Yeah.
On the, security assurance side,I think we're still in the very
early innings.
And I think it, it's gettingearlier and earlier in the sense
that in a normal baseball game,as time goes on you, move up in
the innings, but here,technology's moving so quickly
that you might actually be goingfrom inning two to inning one
because the, of the next game.
(16:31):
Yeah.
No, in the sense that theproblems are compounding faster
than technology's ability tosolve it.
And so the game is actuallystretching.
In, in in that, sense.
Hopefully my analogy isn'tbreaking down, but if you're an
inning four or five, you'remaybe halfway through a baseball
game, but here, if you're inningfour or five you might be, you
(16:53):
might go from ending two toending five.
But you might actually be goingfrom 30% of the 40% of the game
to 20% of the game just becausethe complexity is growing.
But yeah, competing at
Chris (17:02):
such
Pukar (17:03):
a large
Chris (17:03):
scale.
Are you saying maybe by doingthe due diligence and going
through the process, you'reidentifying new problems?
Yeah.
You're exposing newvulnerabilities, you're.
You're yeah.
The, yeah, that's, I do agreewith that.
The, more you dig intosomething, you start to find
that it is more complex of aproblem than you originally
thought.
And then even in my world I wetalk to companies all the time.
(17:25):
It starts out with, they justneed a simple question about how
to secure their mobile devicesand an MDM conversation, but
then we it goes down thesedifferent rabbit holes
Pukar (17:36):
yeah, it's networks are incredibly complex and they
operate in a world of factorialmath.
And so devices are exploding.
The number of humans that arecoming online is exploding.
The number of humans that areyou know, the building
applications, the number ofapplications are exploding.
We're actually gonna be goingthrough a yeah, I don't even
(17:57):
know if supercycle is anappropriate word for what's
gonna happen in the world ofsoftware.
There is going to be anabsolute, just like Cambrian
explosion times 10 in the worldof software just because of how
easy it is to build softwarewith the chat GPT, quads and
some of these other appapplication builders that make
it so easy to just open aterminal window and literally in
(18:21):
natural language build anapplication from scratch.
And so this is we're, just inthe very early stages of this
unfolding and.
When chat first came out, myinitial thought was this
probably overnight 10 x thecybersecurity market.
But I think I underestimated it.
(18:42):
I actually think it's probably ahundred x or a thousand x that
over the course of the comingdecades, just because security
is this fundamental thing thatwe all need as humans to
interact with, one another.
Without security, you're notgonna leave your house.
You're just not gonna doanything.
You're just gonna stay put.
And so in order to powercommerce, in order for us to
(19:03):
have a, commercial economy inwhich we are engaging with one
another in which we are in orderto have a dynamic economy you
need you need a lot of, people,businesses and entities bumping
into one another withoutsecurity, that just doesn't
happen.
It just freezes things in place.
And delivering security,providing assurance to
(19:26):
businesses, to people asbusinesses do transactions with
one another it's gonna be evenmore important, but the threats,
again, are just that much worsetoday.
If it used to be the case thatthe hackers of the world were in
some ways, hackers wereconstrained by your ability to
code.
(19:47):
So you actually had to learn howto code.
You actually had to learncomputers, and so you actually
had to be smart enough and, youactually had to like put energy
(20:39):
and effort towards being a badactor.
But if you could hack systems innatural language.
That increases the service areaof potential people that can
actually hack, right?
So it's not, you take everybodythat has the intent to do
something bad, and then in theold world it was okay, you have
to have intent, time, skill todo something bad.
(21:03):
But in this world where you cancommunicate with machines in
natural language, you merelyjust need intent and ability to
string together a bunch oftokens and words, and you can
do.
Tremendous damage, and that isincredibly risky in this new
world that we're entering.
And that's that's something thatwe're hoping we can play a small
(21:23):
part.
And combating those risks forfor growing enterprises.
Chris (21:30):
I believe you are, I believe you are having do I have
this right?
Two startups?
You've been a part of twostartup companies.
Pukar (21:39):
So Yeah, the last one exited to another company and
was, I was an early employee atmy first startup, was exited to
to, Monster Jobs monsterWorldwide.
Which is a big job board companyback in the heyday.
That's right.
I remember that one.
Super, super Bowl commercialsback in the nineties, two
thousands.
(21:59):
But yeah, this is my thirdstartup that I'm part of.
Third.
Okay.
Second that I've that I'vefounded.
Yeah.
Chris (22:07):
So so this next question I think is unique.
I this is a technology show andin a lot of ways so you've had a
lot of experience around hiringtalent technology, talent.
That's why I love to ask theearlier question.
It's have you always been atechie person?
'cause there's a lot of articlesI've read that there's a
shortage of technical peopletalent.
(22:28):
There's not enough young peoplethat wanna get into true behind
the scene.
Technology.
Everyone wants to usetechnology, but everybody wants
to be a a wizard behind thecurtain, if you will.
On that note what's youropinion?
What separates good technicaltalent from elite talent in
today's market?
Yeah.
You
Pukar (22:48):
know, I
Chris (22:48):
think
Pukar (22:50):
In terms of in terms of technical talent, I think we do
a disservice by making it seemlike there's some sort of a
yeah.
Insurmountable barrier to beingtechnically.
Adept in some way, or beingtechnical talent.
I think anybody can do itreally.
I think most being, technicallyliterate today is the bar is
(23:11):
incredibly low.
Again, these technologies havemade it so easy to be able to do
that, right?
And so, one, I don't think it'sanything special to be a,
technically literate talent.
I think to be great in any sortof part of it it just requires
practice and running into enoughof the problems and I think
(23:33):
generally, like being elite atsomething is just doing it over
and over again, such that you'veran into all the edge cases and
if you have a thousand hours ofexperience in something you
might have run into maybe 10 to20, maybe even a hundred edge
cases that you can solve for.
(23:54):
But somebody that's has 10,000plus hours of experience in
something who just ran into manymore edge cases, understand.
The total contours of that skillmap in a way that somebody with,
less experience does not.
And then of course I think the,only way to like really get
those reps and that timeinvested is you have to, love
(24:17):
what you do and you have to bewilling to do it even when it's
not the most interesting thingto do.
So I think for me, elite elite,what separates elite talent
from.
From just let's just saystandard talent is really the
the experience, but theexperience really comes from a
(24:38):
willingness to learn and justspend time doing it even when
it's not interesting.
And that can only happen whenyou, really have a lot of
passion and, interest in in, thetopic that you're you are,
trying to become an an an expertelite and
Chris (25:00):
okay.
As we're talking about talentand, personnel and people and
staff another topic that comesup a lot with AI is it's gonna
take my job.
I, so I gotta ask your opinionon that.
As you're looking at growingyour company are there jobs or
roles at your company or othercompanies you're seeing that
will be performed by an AI botversus a human being?
(25:23):
What's your thoughts on that?
You
Pukar (25:24):
know, my my general thoughts on this is if you are
incredibly comfortable in yourjob, in the sense that you are
used to doing the same thingover and over again and you,
don't really have a desire tolearn new things and you're
excited to just collect thepaycheck for doing the same
repetitive workflows and stufflike that chances are that's
(25:48):
gonna get automated because themore repetitive something is,
the more predictive predictableit is.
The more predictive it is, themore decomposed it can be into
steps that AI can just takeover.
And really, like my advice toanybody in in any industry is to
not chase comfort and not drivetowards towards, spending a long
(26:14):
period of time doing the samething over and over again.
But really chase complexitychase tricky situation, chase
problems.
And that is where AI is notgoing to be super adept at at
handling at least not foranother, my, my core philosophy
(26:36):
is I, still think we're about 10years away from.
What could be defined as a GI,although those timelines are
extended in some ways I wouldsay that if you had showed me
the AI of today, 10 years ago,would I have thought it was a
GI, I probably would've saidyes.
But that in some ways is howprimitive my thinking of AI was
(26:58):
back then.
And also I think in some wayswe're anchored our A GI,
definition of a artificialgeneral intelligence and AI that
can do everything and replaceall of us is is a little bit
anchored by the jobs that we alldo, which seem fairly
automatable.
But the reality is we just havenot been around long enough as a
(27:21):
species to run into the, to thereally challenging.
Problems.
There's so many problems aroundthe world today, yeah.
There's, still like 30, 40,000people that die from the flu
every year, believe it or not,and and that's just the, tip of
the iceberg.
Like all these diseases all the,sort of conflicts resource
(27:43):
constraints.
So there's a tremendous amountof challenges that we're all
facing.
And and I would say chasecomplexity.
And chase trickiness and,problems.
And that's like where all theopportunity is.
And people, should, and by theway, I think fear is a great
motivator.
(28:04):
And so I think if you are alittle bit scared, concerned
about your current disposition,it's a real good opportunity to
assess what is what is it thatyou really want to do.
And not all of us have theluxury people have like families
and homes to take care of andall these other things.
And it's a tall order to askpeople to reassess the skillset
(28:25):
that they might have investedthe last 10 to 20 years in, in
building up.
But you could the fundamentalskillset that are gonna matter
though are, gonna be how goodare you at building human to
human relationships?
Chris (28:39):
That, that's good information about ai.
I think we're all safe.
I agree with You That's anotherthing I love.
AI's not gonna take your job.
Someone that knows how to use AIis more likely to take your job.
So you gotta be curious.
You got to constantly belearning and growing with
technology.
But pivoting back to SecurityPalai why would a company work with
(29:00):
you and, gimme a specificexample of what issues are you
solving for them?
Pukar (29:06):
So we we just launched a new, product recently, which
effectively gives our customersthe same capabilities as like an
FTE on their team.
So our fundamental philosophy isthat what most FTEs internally
at companies did that wererepetitive, wrote hackney,
(29:27):
day-to-day work.
That's all gonna be done by ai.
And so we built these conciergeagents.
Quincy, who's our questionnaireyes.
Connoisseur.
I love all these names,
Chris (29:38):
by the way.
I love how you named them all.
Pukar (29:41):
Yeah.
Libby, for Knowledge LibraryManagement.
Venue for vendor assessmanagement.
So we have all these agentsconcierge agents, and they are
hybrid agents, so they are, theyhave a AI front end, and ui.
But the backend is reallypowered by people and, and, our
(30:01):
proprietary software and datathat we've collected over the
past four or five years.
And it just it's like having a24 7.
Team member that understandsyour needs, understands the
problems you're looking tosolve, and you could just assign
the work to Quincy, assign thework to Libby, assign the work
to Vinny, Tracy, like all thesedifferent agents that we've
(30:24):
built, and they'll just do itand they'll use the tools.
They will get the context fromthe different tools.
And they work 24 7, 365.
This isn't 40 hour work FTE,right?
And the individuals on the teamI, I think people shouldn't be
afraid of that because that'scoming.
(30:44):
Whether you want it or not, likethat's just gonna happen and
business is gonna make decisionsfrom a, from an efficiency
standpoint.
What's really exciting though,for the, for our internal teams,
the companies that we're workingwith.
It's not replacing anybody.
What it's allowing our customersto do is actually shift.
To the, to change complexitylike I talked about, right?
(31:07):
To actually do the work that'struly complex, the human to
human compact that you need todo, right?
Doing customer facing work,doing real time triage jumping
on something that requires anextra perspective, more
strategic thinking.
Weighing trade-offs with fullcontext, like there's so much
(31:30):
more work to be done withinenterprises and the talent.
We hire incredibly talentedpeople, by the way, with
bachelors and masters and PhDs.
And we hire people that can dolike insane calculus or, deeply
understand human psychology orhave been on the battlefield
like in Chris, right?
Like incredible complex humansthat are so skilled.
(31:54):
We put them in front of acomputer to click buttons and
send out forms.
There's so much skillset thatneeds, that we can mine from our
existing workforce that isliterally just stuck.
Is not getting exposure becausethey're spending most of their
time facing software and facingforms and facing buttons and
(32:17):
clicks and cells where theycould be like facing real
challenges and, helpingbusinesses in much more
compelling ways.
So I'm really excited about thatfeature.
That's really the vision withour concierge agents, which is.
Hey, hire our concierge agents.
You're gonna get a departmentfor effectively the cost of an
fte.
Like you'll get literallythousands of hours of
productivity per week, or costof an of, less than an FTE.
(32:44):
And then the folks that you havehired on your team that are
incredibly skilled can go work.
On much more challengingproblems.
I'm driving growth for thebusiness.
And so we're really excitedabout this, future and and, and
that's that's what we're mainlyworking on.
Yeah.
Chris (32:59):
No, I love that.
That's something to be excitedabout using technology to make
us more efficient, moreeffective, get more work done.
And I agree with you.
It's great to have the bots todo the grunt work if I could
call it that's the right word,but it's that repetitive.
Just grunt worker.
You still need that employee,that person that you know, has
the compassion, has the empathythat understands the client.
(33:21):
You still need that person toquality control, check it if you
will.
It's almost always.
At least 99%.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Pukar (33:31):
AI's not a hundred percent of the way there.
Just like you said, right?
Like you need the qualitychecks, you need a AI's gonna
run into tremendous amount ofedge cases and corner cases.
AI's not gonna be able to weighthe trade offs of this customer
who's might be a little bit moreimportant than this other
customer because they're goingthrough something that this
other customer's not goingthrough.
Only you have that contextbecause you had dinner with the
(33:52):
customer last night and it was areally deep conversation.
AI's not gonna have thatcontext, right?
There's, a lot of data in thereal physical world that AI's
not gonna have context on.
That is the opportunity in thesurface area for humans to
escape freely on.
And we should really leavebehind the day-to-day clicking
(34:12):
and, and.
paper chasing that we all do,because that is just not what
humans are put on this planetfor, you
Chris (34:19):
know?
That's right.
We're very social beings.
We still need that socialinteraction.
And, that's right.
Yeah and we have to focus onthat.
I think that's smart companiesare the ones that embrace that
concept.
Pakar it's been a greatconversation.
I know we, we've covered a lot.
Definitely check the show notes.
I'll have links to learn moreabout SecurityPal AI and Pukar
(34:43):
and his team.
Is there anything we didn'tcover?
Anything you want to go over?
Any last words you wanna leaveus with?
I think a lot of leaders
Pukar (34:52):
are gonna hear a lot more about AI and there's gonna be a
lot of concern and, what I thinkI would say is the more things
change, the more they stay thesame.
And so let's think about the,what are the things that are not
going to change?
We still have 8 billion peopleon the planet and we still have
(35:14):
tremendous problems andchallenges that we need to
solve.
From all the diseases, from allthe sort of conflicts.
We still have a whole universethat we need to explore.
We don't even know that muchabout our own moon We haven't
even been to Mars yet.
And so I always think about oneday maybe I'll go visit my, my,
(35:34):
my grandkids or something likethat in their Martian colony.
I hope to be able to do that oneday that are like the types of
dreams that I have from ruralNepal to one day setting foot on
Mars to visit my grandkids.
Because that's where they that'swhere they live.
It'd be nice if we could
Chris (35:52):
teleport.
It'd be nice if we couldteleport by that point.
Pukar (35:55):
Who knows?
There's a lot of reallyincredible light cell
technologies technologies thatallow us to move much faster.
I don't put anything past humaningenuity.
I think the thing that we don'twanna be, we don't the, yeah.
The only thing we have to fearis fear itself.
I'm like, that's.
Don't let this sort of likeconcern about AI paralyze you.
(36:20):
This technology is actually muchmore accessible than people
think it is.
Yeah, it's incredibly easy tolearn.
And if you don't know how tolearn it, you could literally
ask it.
Hey because I tell AI all thetime, I'm like, I'm too dumb to
know this.
Like what I'm trying, how do I
Chris (36:37):
do this?
Pukar (36:37):
Yeah.
How do I do that?
I'm literally, I'm too stupid.
I don't know.
Please explain.
I explain it to me like I'm fiveyears old.
One of my favorite prompts is tojust say, Hey, Eli five, quantum
Computing or Eli five somegeopolitical event or something
like that.
And it's just incrediblypowerful at explaining those
tools and you can talk to it.
So I think it's, never beeneasier to start and get started
(37:00):
on these technologies.
And again, it's okay.
You're bad at it in thebeginning.
Everyone is bad when they'relearning something new.
I'm a.
I, I was shocked to find out I'ma top 0.01% ChatGPT user.
I feel like I'm barely using ai.
I feel I'm so bad at ai,actually compared to some of the
other folks that I'm using.
But turns out I'm, better than alot of the people out there in
(37:22):
terms of in terms of myexperience.
And so just don't be afraid ofthe technology.
Use it, learn it.
Realize that like the planet isan incredibly big place.
That's incredibly complex.
And as long as you're chasingcomplexity with good intent and
putting honest effort to tolearn new skills and up level
(37:46):
and asking the right questionsfrom the management team, and
you're talking to your boss andtalking to your peers about how
you can solve this problem in abetter way.
You don't, I don't think.
Those are fundamentally goodbehaviors.
No matter what the timescalewas, they were good behaviors to
do 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
They're gonna be good behaviorsto do.
10, 20 years into the future.
So I'm incredibly bullish on,
Chris (38:07):
on
Pukar (38:08):
humanity and our ability to get through this.
Chris (38:10):
I agree with you a hundred percent.
That's some great words to endon.
Be curious learn, and it'ssomething you said about you're
surprised that your rating andChatGPT, one thing I've, learned
the more you learn about atopic.
The more you realize you reallydon't know that much.
Exactly.
Again, more than the averageperson, but to have a knowledge
of how what a delta there is,right.
(38:33):
Of what a true expert is.
So I live that life every day.
Yeah.
Pukar (38:37):
Expertise is, realizing how little you really know about
something, yes.
Humbling mastery.
Yeah, exactly.
Chris (38:45):
But, it gives us something to work toward, right?
That, that's, that fuels ourfire.
That's what you know.
To try to add value.
I think learn new skills, so youcan always add value to your
colleagues, your customers, yourfriends, your family and, you
will go far in life if that'syour, if that's the goal is how
can I add value?
So again, thanks for addingvalue to us today.
(39:06):
I've really enjoyed ourconversation.
Thanks.
Thanks again, man.
Check the show notes, guys.
There'll be ways to get ahold ofPukar and his team.
Thanks so much for your timetoday.
I really appreciate it.
I'm glad we were able to getthrough this.
Pukar (39:19):
Thank you, Chris and wonderful chatting with you
again and hopefully we canrecord another one that'll be
Chris (39:24):
much
Pukar (39:24):
smoother.
Chris (39:25):
That's right.
That will be our plan.
And folks, there you go.
Another episode of The WirelessWay.
And as always, if any part ofthis struck a nerve or you
thought about a colleague, youthought about a customer share
this episode with them.
Check the show notes again.
Please look further intoSecurityPal ai.
This is where we're going folks.
(39:46):
It's not the future it's, now.
Again, grateful to Pukar and histeam joining us and being
available.
Check out the website, thewireless way.net, and I'll see
you on the next episode of TheWireless Way.
Chris Whitaker (40:00):
That was a fantastic conversation with
Pukar, but what you don't knowdue to the metric of editing, we
had a lot of technical problems.
And just a couple of a minute ofsome of the excerpts and take
takeouts it was a great time.
I appreciate Pukar being a goodsport and hanging in there with
(40:20):
me, so check these out.
Okay.
Chris (40:23):
Gosh I'm, edit that part out too.
I'm, this has probably been themost.
Interesting episode I'verecorded in five years.
This is I apologize.
We found our way
Speaker 3 (40:34):
through it.
You knows, we
Pukar (40:35):
found way through it, right?
That's right.
This is I think this is, goodcommentary on how human jobs are
not gonna be taken because whyis it that we have all this
technology but nothing works.
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
And that's that gives me a lot of hope for humanity.
Chris (40:54):
It does.
It does.
All right.
Whew, man.
Woo.
That was, like I said, that wasrough.
I'm sorry about that, man.
That's all right.
We've,
And welcome to the episode of The Wireless Way.
I'm your host, Chris Whitaker,and I'm grateful that you're
here today.
As always, I know you have a lotgoing on.
There's so much going on inbusiness and technology.
So thanks for checking out thisepisode, and I'm equally
grateful for my guest Pukar CHamal He's the founder and CEO
(01:12):
of security pal ai whicheliminates security assurance
bottlenecks that stallenterprise deals.
For companies like OpenAI,Figma, and MongoDB.
He's born in Kathmandu, raisedin New York City, and now living
in San Francisco.
He built a profitable companywith engineering talent from San
(01:33):
Francisco and 24 7 SecurityAssurance Command Center in
Kathmandu, proving that worldclass execution doesn't just
require Silicon Valley overhead.
He writes about capitalformation and the economics of
AI era operations.
Pukar, thanks for making timetoday, man.
(01:53):
How are you?
I'm doing well.
I'm glad we got through
Pukar (01:56):
the technical hiccups here, but excited to chat with
you, Chris.
Thank you so much for having meon.
Chris (02:03):
Yes.
It is always a pleasure to meetthought leaders and people
moving the needle advancingtechnology, advancing the
conversation, if you will.
And, for listeners, you thinkabout the last dozen or so
episodes, AI is definitely thecommon.
Theme, right?
You can't have a technologyconversation today without AI in
(02:26):
there somehow, and this is areally good one, a really unique
one.
We've talked about a lot.
It's what's the real value ofai?
Of ai?
Companies are calling me going,Hey Chris, I need to incorporate
AI into my business.
And I'm like, okay, what part ofyour business, what technology?
It's, a broader conversation,right?
AI by itself is not a product.
(02:48):
It's not a skew, if you will.
It's it's an enhancement.
I'm anxious to get your take onthis.
But before we get there, asalways what's not the bio Pukar,
how did you get here?
Pukar (03:02):
Yeah there's a lot not in the bio considering it's, as is
the case long.
Yeah.
But, I think obviously I've hada, I've had a very interesting
journey to on my way to Buildinga AI technology company in
Silicon Valley.
I feel obviously very blessed tobe able to do that.
(03:23):
I I was, as somebody that wasborn in Kathmandu very grateful
to have immigrated to this greatcountry and growing up in New
York City and I moved out westbasically in 2009 to, to enter
Stanford.
And then my journey totechnology was was really a
(03:44):
result of realizing that thescale of technology, that
technology as a lever is justenormously powerful.
You can have so much more moreimpact, right?
As a, as a service worker, likea standard like doctor or lawyer
or whatever my parents wanted meto be back in the day.
(04:07):
You can you're like singlethreaded in some ways in terms
of how, many people you canhelp.
But with technology you can gofrom helping times and dozens,
hundreds, thousands of people toactually helping millions of,
people.
And, the scale that it, givesyou is tremendous.
And so realizing that early on,I think was like a big unlock
for me.
(04:28):
I've now lived in the Bay Area,Silicon Valley now for 16, 17
years.
I think it's the most magicalplace.
I, personally, I think America'sthe best place to build
anything, and I think SiliconValley is probably the best
place to to, do that.
If you don't have an existingnetwork and wanna, wanna enter a
(04:48):
pool of like pure meritocracy, Ithink we, we have something akin
to that here.
Silicon Valley.
Obviously there's great hubsaround the country.
Atlanta where you're based is agreat one too.
We've got a lot of reallyamazing customers there.
And, and I've, always had thismission of taking some of this
secret sauce that we have hereof Silicon Valley and bringing
(05:12):
it to to other talent hubsaround the world that could
probably benefit from From thisop, what I like to say is an
operating system, a philosophyof, building companies and
playing the long game.
And so I've been working withLeaders and technology and
others and, Cat Mandu rumoriginally actually from and
(05:35):
trying to bring Silicon Valleyto, and I, think we like to say
that our office is exactly ahundred miles away from the top
of Mount Everest.
And and we're championing, asort of Silicon Valley and the
Himalayas that we're callingSilicon Peaks.
Very apropos given thetremendous, backdrop of the
(05:57):
Himalayas that, that, existsjust a few hundred miles away
from, from that, from thecapital.
Yeah.
Chris (06:04):
Oh that is, fascinating.
I love that Silicon Peaks andthat, that's a good way of
putting it.
Yeah.
That def it helps people kindaunderstand where, is Catman do,
or you, what's the in relationthere?
What, have you always been atechie, would you say?
Was there a time in your earlyadulthood or even maybe going
back into being a young man,have you always had this
(06:27):
interest in technology?
Yeah, I think it's a it'simpossible not to
Pukar (06:32):
be not to be fascinated and in awe of how much
technological progress we'vemade.
Just still, I was, bornbasically right after the Berlin
Wall fell, right?
I was born in 91 and we look atgoing from nine one to today I
(06:53):
mid thirties, but people don'twanna do their math.
And where, I was born, where Igrew up I was born in du
obviously most capital city,most advanced city for, Nepal.
But I actually grew up in, inrural Nepal where there was no
like electricity or indoorplumbing.
And we were like really farmfarming, rural, a lifestyle.
(07:16):
And, I always like to say I'veexperienced like probably two,
200 plus years of technologicalprogress in my three decades,
three plus decades that I'vebeen blessed to be on this
incredible planet.
And I feel that that is, thathas drawn me to wow.
(07:38):
There's just, there's so muchwhen I was young I used to look
at like planes in the sky andwonder if I would ever ride in
one and now.
I traveled back I, put 110,000miles down last year.
I was looking at my, flighty appand so wow.
In the air and it's just it'syour technology's incredibly
fascinating to me, always hasbeen.
(08:02):
I never thought I was gonnabuild a tech company.
I think that's a little bit of aof, a surprise that I ended up,
Speaker 3 (08:07):
I
Pukar (08:07):
ended up there.
I don't think it was really likea desire for me to.
Build a company.
But I think a lot of it justcomes from realizing and having
great mentors that shared withme that anything is possible if
you're willing to work hard,especially in this country.
And and so yeah, really gratefulabout
Chris (08:26):
that.
Yeah, that's great.
What a great story, man.
Have you ever thought aboutwriting a book?
You're right to go from ruralNepal, no energy no electricity,
no indoor plumbing to justmoving to New York City and now
San Francisco, and now a techcompany.
You're, that's a, you haveperspective.
You have a deep perspective thatso many people.
(08:46):
Probably can't even begin toreally grasp.
I don't know that's a stretch,but it, seems that way to me.
You like for me from mybackground I spent 10 years in
the army.
I never thought I would be intechnology, but I've always been
a gadget guy.
I've always loved what differenttechnology, how I can make life
better.
I've always been a big studentof efficiency and effectiveness,
(09:08):
which is all about your company.
I think your company really.
Helps businesses become moreefficient and effective, and
we'll go talk about that.
But but no I, it is afascinating story thanks for
sharing that, man.
I, really appreciate it.
Yeah.
And thank you for your service.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
That's that's tremendous.
Chris (09:25):
Thank you.
Oh, yeah, no, my pleasure.
People like you were worth it,man.
I it's funny when I joined, Ididn't really know if I thought
of it that way but back to yourpoint yeah, there's society in
general.
There's always a great communityof people doing amazing, great
things.
Yes.
Unfortunately, because of humannature, there's always a
component of people not doing.
(09:46):
The right things and all, but Ithink generally speaking, we all
are more alike than different.
We all just want a fair break.
We want a fair chance.
We want a roof over our head.
We want food in our stomach.
We're all more alike thandifferent.
And I do my best not to focus onthe differences and try to
embrace what we have in commonand just respect, hey we're not
always gonna agree, but we canstill be friends that's right.
(10:07):
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
And so pivoting a little bit,one of my favorite words for
listeners that may not knowsecurity power AI yet what
problem were you seeing in themarket that made you say this
has to be fixed?
And how did that lead to foundin the company?
Pukar (10:28):
Yeah i, didn't think I was gonna build a company in
the, cybersecurity assurancespace.
I was previously a co-founder ofan HR tech company.
So human resources technologycompany, circa 20 16 20 17.
When I joined that founding teamand we were building a a,
(10:52):
recruiting technology that waspowering some of that.
Biggest companies in the worldin, their recruiting efforts,
companies like Uber and Lyft andAllstate.
And as we were selling ourproduct more and more up market,
more and more to enterprisesafter 20 2018 we started seeing
(11:15):
more and more of these, thesesecurity compliance assurance
related questions in the salescycle, right?
Like a lot of times people wannaknow about, okay does your
product have this feature?
That feature?
Like how efficient is it gonnamake us?
What does the ROI look like?
There are a lot of thesequestions about product and
(11:38):
features, but after 2018 we westarted seeing a lot of
questions about security stuff,like how do you encrypt data?
Where, is it stored?
Who has access?
Are you doing pen tests,firewalls, all these different
types of questions.
And I realized that there was a,new legislation that was passed
in Europe called the GDPR,general Data Protection
(12:00):
Regulation, which is effectivelylike a data privacy regulation.
And the.
The gist of it is because somuch, because the internet had
eaten away at so much of what wedo, right?
The, famous quote from Mark andsoftware was eating the world,
(12:22):
right?
And because software had donewas so effective and efficient
at eating the world over thepast few decades.
It had created a lot more risksin the internet era for data,
for healthcare data, personaldata personally identifiable,
sensitive information about ourabout who we are.
(12:43):
And that had increased thethreats online.
And so when companies wereentering and when two companies
wanted to work together.
It wasn't just enough for you tofigure out how you were gonna
pay for the tool and whether thetool was gonna work.
You actually had to figure outif the tool was secure or not.
And that's this, it was a newsort of like hurdle you needed
to cross in your journey ofselling your product.
(13:07):
And so as a result of that whatwhat I realized is, wow, we
gotta get through this problem,this challenge.
And the way that the, initialproblem showed up was
effectively like a securityquestionnaire.
You have to fill out thesemassive security questionnaires,
and there wasn't a good way offilling it out.
You have to like literally sitdown and, open the spreadsheet
(13:28):
and fill it out manually, and itwould take like days, hours.
You don't know what the answersare.
You don't even know what thequestions are asking sometimes.
And that was really, you knowwhat I like to say is every
problem If you look at problemsas problems, you're not really
gonna get anywhere.
But if you look at problems asan opportunity, then you know
the paths open up.
And so I really saw that as anopportunity.
(13:50):
I was like, okay, here's achallenge.
And so that was really the sparkthat sort of lit the match
eventually for security power,which was realizing in my
previous company that I ran intothis problem and then eventually
realizing that other leaders intechnology.
Other sort of mentors of mineformer colleagues of mine were
also running into similarproblem.
And that's what led me to signmy first customer.
(14:10):
Before I'd even incorporated mycompany, they were interested in
working with me.
And so that's how I knew therewas product market fit
underneath here.
And as we turned the pages onthe company now we process over
10,000 questionnaires.
There's hundreds of millions, ifnot billions of dollars of
revenue that depends onsecurity, power uptime.
When companies like OpenAI,Figma, MongoDB D script, superb
(14:35):
base when all these companiesare, distributing their
incredible products out theresecurity power is here and,
helping those those incredibleenterprises accelerate.
The way in which theydemonstrate assurance to those
customers because they do havebest in class security.
It's all.
(14:55):
There's a difference betweenhaving best in class security
and assurance posture, securityposture, and then being able to
effectively communicate it tocustomers on the market and
regulators.
And there's a tremendous amountof work that needs to be done in
that journey.
And we effectively help makethat happen in a much smoother
way.
And so we've obviously movedbeyond just security
(15:16):
questionnaires to helpingcompanies with vendor
assessments.
It's not just when you'reselling your product, you also
have to ask the similar types ofquestions and concerns when
you're purchasing products andtools.
And then there's also other,assurance work that has come up,
like audits and all types ofdifferent regulations that are
(15:39):
coming up around the world likethis.
160 plus different countriesthat have their own sort of
version of GDPR and data privacyregulation and industry standard
regulations.
And so the, market is massive interms of how do you demonstrate
assurance during that commercialtransaction on both the buy and
sell side and we effectivelyhelp accelerate that.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah.
Chris (16:02):
Wow.
Where do you think we are interms of the market that you're,
serving?
How mature is this market?
Pukar (16:10):
Yeah.
On the, security assurance side,I think we're still in the very
early innings.
And I think it, it's gettingearlier and earlier in the sense
that in a normal baseball game,as time goes on you, move up in
the innings, but here,technology's moving so quickly
that you might actually be goingfrom inning two to inning one
because the, of the next game.
(16:31):
Yeah.
No, in the sense that theproblems are compounding faster
than technology's ability tosolve it.
And so the game is actuallystretching.
In, in in that, sense.
Hopefully my analogy isn'tbreaking down, but if you're an
inning four or five, you'remaybe halfway through a baseball
game, but here, if you're inningfour or five you might be, you
(16:53):
might go from ending two toending five.
But you might actually be goingfrom 30% of the 40% of the game
to 20% of the game just becausethe complexity is growing.
But yeah, competing at
Chris (17:02):
such
Pukar (17:03):
a large
Chris (17:03):
scale.
Are you saying maybe by doingthe due diligence and going
through the process, you'reidentifying new problems?
Yeah.
You're exposing newvulnerabilities, you're.
You're yeah.
The, yeah, that's, I do agreewith that.
The, more you dig intosomething, you start to find
that it is more complex of aproblem than you originally
thought.
And then even in my world I wetalk to companies all the time.
(17:25):
It starts out with, they justneed a simple question about how
to secure their mobile devicesand an MDM conversation, but
then we it goes down thesedifferent rabbit holes
Pukar (17:36):
yeah, it's networks are incredibly complex and they
operate in a world of factorialmath.
And so devices are exploding.
The number of humans that arecoming online is exploding.
The number of humans that areyou know, the building
applications, the number ofapplications are exploding.
We're actually gonna be goingthrough a yeah, I don't even
(17:57):
know if supercycle is anappropriate word for what's
gonna happen in the world ofsoftware.
There is going to be anabsolute, just like Cambrian
explosion times 10 in the worldof software just because of how
easy it is to build softwarewith the chat GPT, quads and
some of these other appapplication builders that make
it so easy to just open aterminal window and literally in
(18:21):
natural language build anapplication from scratch.
And so this is we're, just inthe very early stages of this
unfolding and.
When chat first came out, myinitial thought was this
probably overnight 10 x thecybersecurity market.
But I think I underestimated it.
(18:42):
I actually think it's probably ahundred x or a thousand x that
over the course of the comingdecades, just because security
is this fundamental thing thatwe all need as humans to
interact with, one another.
Without security, you're notgonna leave your house.
You're just not gonna doanything.
You're just gonna stay put.
And so in order to powercommerce, in order for us to
(19:03):
have a, commercial economy inwhich we are engaging with one
another in which we are in orderto have a dynamic economy you
need you need a lot of, people,businesses and entities bumping
into one another withoutsecurity, that just doesn't
happen.
It just freezes things in place.
And delivering security,providing assurance to
(19:26):
businesses, to people asbusinesses do transactions with
one another it's gonna be evenmore important, but the threats,
again, are just that much worsetoday.
If it used to be the case thatthe hackers of the world were in
some ways, hackers wereconstrained by your ability to
code.
(19:47):
So you actually had to learn howto code.
You actually had to learncomputers, and so you actually
had to be smart enough and, youactually had to like put energy
(20:39):
and effort towards being a badactor.
But if you could hack systems innatural language.
That increases the service areaof potential people that can
actually hack, right?
So it's not, you take everybodythat has the intent to do
something bad, and then in theold world it was okay, you have
to have intent, time, skill todo something bad.
(21:03):
But in this world where you cancommunicate with machines in
natural language, you merelyjust need intent and ability to
string together a bunch oftokens and words, and you can
do.
Tremendous damage, and that isincredibly risky in this new
world that we're entering.
And that's that's something thatwe're hoping we can play a small
(21:23):
part.
And combating those risks forfor growing enterprises.
Chris (21:30):
I believe you are, I believe you are having do I have
this right?
Two startups?
You've been a part of twostartup companies.
Pukar (21:39):
So Yeah, the last one exited to another company and
was, I was an early employee atmy first startup, was exited to
to, Monster Jobs monsterWorldwide.
Which is a big job board companyback in the heyday.
That's right.
I remember that one.
Super, super Bowl commercialsback in the nineties, two
thousands.
(21:59):
But yeah, this is my thirdstartup that I'm part of.
Third.
Okay.
Second that I've that I'vefounded.
Yeah.
Chris (22:07):
So so this next question I think is unique.
I this is a technology show andin a lot of ways so you've had a
lot of experience around hiringtalent technology, talent.
That's why I love to ask theearlier question.
It's have you always been atechie person?
'cause there's a lot of articlesI've read that there's a
shortage of technical peopletalent.
(22:28):
There's not enough young peoplethat wanna get into true behind
the scene.
Technology.
Everyone wants to usetechnology, but everybody wants
to be a a wizard behind thecurtain, if you will.
On that note what's youropinion?
What separates good technicaltalent from elite talent in
today's market?
Yeah.
You
Pukar (22:48):
know, I
Chris (22:48):
think
Pukar (22:50):
In terms of in terms of technical talent, I think we do
a disservice by making it seemlike there's some sort of a
yeah.
Insurmountable barrier to beingtechnically.
Adept in some way, or beingtechnical talent.
I think anybody can do itreally.
I think most being, technicallyliterate today is the bar is
(23:11):
incredibly low.
Again, these technologies havemade it so easy to be able to do
that, right?
And so, one, I don't think it'sanything special to be a,
technically literate talent.
I think to be great in any sortof part of it it just requires
practice and running into enoughof the problems and I think
(23:33):
generally, like being elite atsomething is just doing it over
and over again, such that you'veran into all the edge cases and
if you have a thousand hours ofexperience in something you
might have run into maybe 10 to20, maybe even a hundred edge
cases that you can solve for.
(23:54):
But somebody that's has 10,000plus hours of experience in
something who just ran into manymore edge cases, understand.
The total contours of that skillmap in a way that somebody with,
less experience does not.
And then of course I think the,only way to like really get
those reps and that timeinvested is you have to, love
(24:17):
what you do and you have to bewilling to do it even when it's
not the most interesting thingto do.
So I think for me, elite elite,what separates elite talent
from.
From just let's just saystandard talent is really the
the experience, but theexperience really comes from a
(24:38):
willingness to learn and justspend time doing it even when
it's not interesting.
And that can only happen whenyou, really have a lot of
passion and, interest in in, thetopic that you're you are,
trying to become an an an expertelite and
Chris (25:00):
okay.
As we're talking about talentand, personnel and people and
staff another topic that comesup a lot with AI is it's gonna
take my job.
I, so I gotta ask your opinionon that.
As you're looking at growingyour company are there jobs or
roles at your company or othercompanies you're seeing that
will be performed by an AI botversus a human being?
(25:23):
What's your thoughts on that?
You
Pukar (25:24):
know, my my general thoughts on this is if you are
incredibly comfortable in yourjob, in the sense that you are
used to doing the same thingover and over again and you,
don't really have a desire tolearn new things and you're
excited to just collect thepaycheck for doing the same
repetitive workflows and stufflike that chances are that's
(25:48):
gonna get automated because themore repetitive something is,
the more predictive predictableit is.
The more predictive it is, themore decomposed it can be into
steps that AI can just takeover.
And really, like my advice toanybody in in any industry is to
not chase comfort and not drivetowards towards, spending a long
(26:14):
period of time doing the samething over and over again.
But really chase complexitychase tricky situation, chase
problems.
And that is where AI is notgoing to be super adept at at
handling at least not foranother, my, my core philosophy
(26:36):
is I, still think we're about 10years away from.
What could be defined as a GI,although those timelines are
extended in some ways I wouldsay that if you had showed me
the AI of today, 10 years ago,would I have thought it was a
GI, I probably would've saidyes.
But that in some ways is howprimitive my thinking of AI was
(26:58):
back then.
And also I think in some wayswe're anchored our A GI,
definition of a artificialgeneral intelligence and AI that
can do everything and replaceall of us is is a little bit
anchored by the jobs that we alldo, which seem fairly
automatable.
But the reality is we just havenot been around long enough as a
(27:21):
species to run into the, to thereally challenging.
Problems.
There's so many problems aroundthe world today, yeah.
There's, still like 30, 40,000people that die from the flu
every year, believe it or not,and and that's just the, tip of
the iceberg.
Like all these diseases all the,sort of conflicts resource
(27:43):
constraints.
So there's a tremendous amountof challenges that we're all
facing.
And and I would say chasecomplexity.
And chase trickiness and,problems.
And that's like where all theopportunity is.
And people, should, and by theway, I think fear is a great
motivator.
(28:04):
And so I think if you are alittle bit scared, concerned
about your current disposition,it's a real good opportunity to
assess what is what is it thatyou really want to do.
And not all of us have theluxury people have like families
and homes to take care of andall these other things.
And it's a tall order to askpeople to reassess the skillset
(28:25):
that they might have investedthe last 10 to 20 years in, in
building up.
But you could the fundamentalskillset that are gonna matter
though are, gonna be how goodare you at building human to
human relationships?
Chris (28:39):
That, that's good information about ai.
I think we're all safe.
I agree with You That's anotherthing I love.
AI's not gonna take your job.
Someone that knows how to use AIis more likely to take your job.
So you gotta be curious.
You got to constantly belearning and growing with
technology.
But pivoting back to SecurityPalai why would a company work with
(29:00):
you and, gimme a specificexample of what issues are you
solving for them?
Pukar (29:06):
So we we just launched a new, product recently, which
effectively gives our customersthe same capabilities as like an
FTE on their team.
So our fundamental philosophy isthat what most FTEs internally
at companies did that wererepetitive, wrote hackney,
(29:27):
day-to-day work.
That's all gonna be done by ai.
And so we built these conciergeagents.
Quincy, who's our questionnaireyes.
Connoisseur.
I love all these names,
Chris (29:38):
by the way.
I love how you named them all.
Pukar (29:41):
Yeah.
Libby, for Knowledge LibraryManagement.
Venue for vendor assessmanagement.
So we have all these agentsconcierge agents, and they are
hybrid agents, so they are, theyhave a AI front end, and ui.
But the backend is reallypowered by people and, and, our
(30:01):
proprietary software and datathat we've collected over the
past four or five years.
And it just it's like having a24 7.
Team member that understandsyour needs, understands the
problems you're looking tosolve, and you could just assign
the work to Quincy, assign thework to Libby, assign the work
to Vinny, Tracy, like all thesedifferent agents that we've
(30:24):
built, and they'll just do itand they'll use the tools.
They will get the context fromthe different tools.
And they work 24 7, 365.
This isn't 40 hour work FTE,right?
And the individuals on the teamI, I think people shouldn't be
afraid of that because that'scoming.
(30:44):
Whether you want it or not, likethat's just gonna happen and
business is gonna make decisionsfrom a, from an efficiency
standpoint.
What's really exciting though,for the, for our internal teams,
the companies that we're workingwith.
It's not replacing anybody.
What it's allowing our customersto do is actually shift.
To the, to change complexitylike I talked about, right?
(31:07):
To actually do the work that'struly complex, the human to
human compact that you need todo, right?
Doing customer facing work,doing real time triage jumping
on something that requires anextra perspective, more
strategic thinking.
Weighing trade-offs with fullcontext, like there's so much
(31:30):
more work to be done withinenterprises and the talent.
We hire incredibly talentedpeople, by the way, with
bachelors and masters and PhDs.
And we hire people that can dolike insane calculus or, deeply
understand human psychology orhave been on the battlefield
like in Chris, right?
Like incredible complex humansthat are so skilled.
(31:54):
We put them in front of acomputer to click buttons and
send out forms.
There's so much skillset thatneeds, that we can mine from our
existing workforce that isliterally just stuck.
Is not getting exposure becausethey're spending most of their
time facing software and facingforms and facing buttons and
(32:17):
clicks and cells where theycould be like facing real
challenges and, helpingbusinesses in much more
compelling ways.
So I'm really excited about thatfeature.
That's really the vision withour concierge agents, which is.
Hey, hire our concierge agents.
You're gonna get a departmentfor effectively the cost of an
fte.
Like you'll get literallythousands of hours of
productivity per week, or costof an of, less than an FTE.
(32:44):
And then the folks that you havehired on your team that are
incredibly skilled can go work.
On much more challengingproblems.
I'm driving growth for thebusiness.
And so we're really excitedabout this, future and and, and
that's that's what we're mainlyworking on.
Yeah.
Chris (32:59):
No, I love that.
That's something to be excitedabout using technology to make
us more efficient, moreeffective, get more work done.
And I agree with you.
It's great to have the bots todo the grunt work if I could
call it that's the right word,but it's that repetitive.
Just grunt worker.
You still need that employee,that person that you know, has
the compassion, has the empathythat understands the client.
(33:21):
You still need that person toquality control, check it if you
will.
It's almost always.
At least 99%.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Pukar (33:31):
AI's not a hundred percent of the way there.
Just like you said, right?
Like you need the qualitychecks, you need a AI's gonna
run into tremendous amount ofedge cases and corner cases.
AI's not gonna be able to weighthe trade offs of this customer
who's might be a little bit moreimportant than this other
customer because they're goingthrough something that this
other customer's not goingthrough.
Only you have that contextbecause you had dinner with the
(33:52):
customer last night and it was areally deep conversation.
AI's not gonna have thatcontext, right?
There's, a lot of data in thereal physical world that AI's
not gonna have context on.
That is the opportunity in thesurface area for humans to
escape freely on.
And we should really leavebehind the day-to-day clicking
(34:12):
and, and.
paper chasing that we all do,because that is just not what
humans are put on this planetfor, you
Chris (34:19):
know?
That's right.
We're very social beings.
We still need that socialinteraction.
And, that's right.
Yeah and we have to focus onthat.
I think that's smart companiesare the ones that embrace that
concept.
Pakar it's been a greatconversation.
I know we, we've covered a lot.
Definitely check the show notes.
I'll have links to learn moreabout SecurityPal AI and Pukar
(34:43):
and his team.
Is there anything we didn'tcover?
Anything you want to go over?
Any last words you wanna leaveus with?
I think a lot of leaders
Pukar (34:52):
are gonna hear a lot more about AI and there's gonna be a
lot of concern and, what I thinkI would say is the more things
change, the more they stay thesame.
And so let's think about the,what are the things that are not
going to change?
We still have 8 billion peopleon the planet and we still have
(35:14):
tremendous problems andchallenges that we need to
solve.
From all the diseases, from allthe sort of conflicts.
We still have a whole universethat we need to explore.
We don't even know that muchabout our own moon We haven't
even been to Mars yet.
And so I always think about oneday maybe I'll go visit my, my,
(35:34):
my grandkids or something likethat in their Martian colony.
I hope to be able to do that oneday that are like the types of
dreams that I have from ruralNepal to one day setting foot on
Mars to visit my grandkids.
Because that's where they that'swhere they live.
It'd be nice if we could
Chris (35:52):
teleport.
It'd be nice if we couldteleport by that point.
Pukar (35:55):
Who knows?
There's a lot of reallyincredible light cell
technologies technologies thatallow us to move much faster.
I don't put anything past humaningenuity.
I think the thing that we don'twanna be, we don't the, yeah.
The only thing we have to fearis fear itself.
I'm like, that's.
Don't let this sort of likeconcern about AI paralyze you.
(36:20):
This technology is actually muchmore accessible than people
think it is.
Yeah, it's incredibly easy tolearn.
And if you don't know how tolearn it, you could literally
ask it.
Hey because I tell AI all thetime, I'm like, I'm too dumb to
know this.
Like what I'm trying, how do I
Chris (36:37):
do this?
Pukar (36:37):
Yeah.
How do I do that?
I'm literally, I'm too stupid.
I don't know.
Please explain.
I explain it to me like I'm fiveyears old.
One of my favorite prompts is tojust say, Hey, Eli five, quantum
Computing or Eli five somegeopolitical event or something
like that.
And it's just incrediblypowerful at explaining those
tools and you can talk to it.
So I think it's, never beeneasier to start and get started
(37:00):
on these technologies.
And again, it's okay.
You're bad at it in thebeginning.
Everyone is bad when they'relearning something new.
I'm a.
I, I was shocked to find out I'ma top 0.01% ChatGPT user.
I feel like I'm barely using ai.
I feel I'm so bad at ai,actually compared to some of the
other folks that I'm using.
But turns out I'm, better than alot of the people out there in
(37:22):
terms of in terms of myexperience.
And so just don't be afraid ofthe technology.
Use it, learn it.
Realize that like the planet isan incredibly big place.
That's incredibly complex.
And as long as you're chasingcomplexity with good intent and
putting honest effort to tolearn new skills and up level
(37:46):
and asking the right questionsfrom the management team, and
you're talking to your boss andtalking to your peers about how
you can solve this problem in abetter way.
You don't, I don't think.
Those are fundamentally goodbehaviors.
No matter what the timescalewas, they were good behaviors to
do 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
They're gonna be good behaviorsto do.
10, 20 years into the future.
So I'm incredibly bullish on,
Chris (38:07):
on
Pukar (38:08):
humanity and our ability to get through this.
Chris (38:10):
I agree with you a hundred percent.
That's some great words to endon.
Be curious learn, and it'ssomething you said about you're
surprised that your rating andChatGPT, one thing I've, learned
the more you learn about atopic.
The more you realize you reallydon't know that much.
Exactly.
Again, more than the averageperson, but to have a knowledge
of how what a delta there is,right.
(38:33):
Of what a true expert is.
So I live that life every day.
Yeah.
Pukar (38:37):
Expertise is, realizing how little you really know about
something, yes.
Humbling mastery.
Yeah, exactly.
Chris (38:45):
But, it gives us something to work toward, right?
That, that's, that fuels ourfire.
That's what you know.
To try to add value.
I think learn new skills, so youcan always add value to your
colleagues, your customers, yourfriends, your family and, you
will go far in life if that'syour, if that's the goal is how
can I add value?
So again, thanks for addingvalue to us today.
(39:06):
I've really enjoyed ourconversation.
Thanks.
Thanks again, man.
Check the show notes, guys.
There'll be ways to get ahold ofPukar and his team.
Thanks so much for your timetoday.
I really appreciate it.
I'm glad we were able to getthrough this.
Pukar (39:19):
Thank you, Chris and wonderful chatting with you
again and hopefully we canrecord another one that'll be
Chris (39:24):
much
Pukar (39:24):
smoother.
Chris (39:25):
That's right.
That will be our plan.
And folks, there you go.
Another episode of The WirelessWay.
And as always, if any part ofthis struck a nerve or you
thought about a colleague, youthought about a customer share
this episode with them.
Check the show notes again.
Please look further intoSecurityPal ai.
This is where we're going folks.
(39:46):
It's not the future it's, now.
Again, grateful to Pukar and histeam joining us and being
available.
Check out the website, thewireless way.net, and I'll see
you on the next episode of TheWireless Way.
Chris Whitaker (40:00):
That was a fantastic conversation with
Pukar, but what you don't knowdue to the metric of editing, we
had a lot of technical problems.
And just a couple of a minute ofsome of the excerpts and take
takeouts it was a great time.
I appreciate Pukar being a goodsport and hanging in there with
(40:20):
me, so check these out.
Okay.
Chris (40:23):
Gosh I'm, edit that part out too.
I'm, this has probably been themost.
Interesting episode I'verecorded in five years.
This is I apologize.
We found our way
Speaker 3 (40:34):
through it.
You knows, we
Pukar (40:35):
found way through it, right?
That's right.
This is I think this is, goodcommentary on how human jobs are
not gonna be taken because whyis it that we have all this
technology but nothing works.
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
And that's that gives me a lot of hope for humanity.
Chris (40:54):
It does.
It does.
All right.
Whew, man.
Woo.
That was, like I said, that wasrough.
I'm sorry about that, man.
That's all right.
We've,
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