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Matasano Security acquired for £8.4m ($13m) - Congrats tptacek
- tptacek 14y agoIf you thought I was insufferable before...
- anigbrowl 14y agoWell done!
- vld 14y agoCongratulations! Will you still be directly involved?
- tptacek 14y agoWe're continuing as an independent business; the two biggest changes are (1) we're hiring more people than our original plan, and (2) we get to work directly with our friends and rivals at iSEC, who were bought by NCC 2 years ago. (2) is a big deal --- there are so many smart people doing what we do at NCC companies that we expect research time to get way more productive; also, iSEC and NGS/NCC (the UK "us") have different research focuses, like Android and 3G to our crypto and trading protocols. Black Hat next year should be fun. (there are crypto people at iSEC; I'm sleep deprived and on an airplane)
- raesene2 14y agoYeah I'd reckon with the depth and breadth of talent across the testing business now, it should be really cool. I hope they make the internal information sharing/collaboration piece a priority. Almost makes me regret being a freelancer.
- DanielRibeiro 14y agoThat is great news! Congrats!
- ta12121 14y agoEspecially when you're wrong :-)
- aortega 14y agoUnlike most startups out there, I believe Matasano is a purely consulting business with no product, IOS app or social site, and it got bought anyway. As the founder of a "cyber-startup" with no product and no social site, this is very encouraging :) Congrats!
- jonknee 14y agoSo where are you eating your celebratory meal?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 14y agoMy flight out got cancelled, so my celebratory meal was "Marriott room service Caesar salad". Apropos nothing: I do not understand why anyone in 2012 flies United. And while I understand why someone might order a Marriott room service Caesar salad, I do not recommend it.
- jonknee 14y agoFor shame. At least Chicago is not lacking for good eats.
- rdl 14y agoSWUs for international flights. Especially if you buy them on eBay for $200. A cheap coach international fare + a $200 SWU puts you in United Business, which is sometimes better than best-carrier coach. (honestly, I'd prefer CX Economy to UA business on most routes, but UA wins for SFO-IAD-KWI.)
- semanticist 14y agoUnited business between Edinburgh and Newark means seats that fold down into beds and was entirely worth the US$480 I paid to upgrade my flight home last month. They also have a monopoly on direct flights to the US from Edinburgh, which is another reason someone might end up on a United flight.
- rubyrescue 14y agoCongrats, though we've not interacted much here, you feel like a neighbor... so it feels great to see... and i've learned a LOT from your posts, like never typing the letters, A, E, S in consecutive order, for starters. : )
- rafaelferreira 14y agoDo you have a link for the HN discussion? My google-fu failed me.
- apu 14y agoTwo discussions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030560 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030560 The original post: http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2009/7/22/if-youre-typing-the-letters-a-e-s-into-your-code-youre-doing.html http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2009/7/22/if-youre-typin...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mindcrime 14y agoIf you thought I was insufferable before... You are, but congrats nonetheless! :-)
- _pius 14y agoCongratulations Thomas!
- comatose_kid 14y agoNicely done! Congrats!!
- Sukotto 14y agoCongratulations on the big win Thomas. Hope it just keeps getting better for you guys.
- larrys 14y ago"If you thought I was insufferable before..." First, congratulations. I did notice though a change in your comment tone from some time ago. (Unfortunately I can't recall exactly when and there is no easy way to draw up comments on HN from "x" days ago you have to go through page by page.) I'm wondering though if it coincides with this (or maybe another deal) going down. Meaning either the stress or elation of this or another potential transaction altered your writing.
- tptacek 14y agoYou actually can do this using HNSearch and the by: keyword. If you ever do find some inflection point at which I become/became even more annoying, shoot me an email.
- dchuk 14y agothis inflection point is almost certainly not unique to you, though since you're probably one of the first to discuss it in this way, you should probably name it so we can all start identifying it in ourselves and other founders :)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- niels_olson 14y agothe Ptacek point. Similar to the Wadsworth point, but different. Now all we need is some guys from Stanford to demonstrate an algorithm that finds this.
- rdl 14y agoThere was a point about 12-18 months ago where you stopped explaining yourself each time and made more appeals to authority (your own) on crypto issues. Admittedly, you were right, and these were all things which you'd explained in detail before, and on which the academic and practical communities have pretty much reached a consensus.
- georgespencer 14y agoCongratulations!
- unreal37 14y agoCongrats! That's great news. Btw, I feel you bring a lot of value to HN (and me) through your comments, so I hope that doesn't change.
- stox 14y agoCongrats!! It has been a long time coming.
- jayliew 14y agoCongrats, Thomas!
- citricsquid 14y agoCongratulations, good luck with the new opportunities!
- sown 14y agoNeat. Does this mean the nature of working there is going to be different? I've been through an acquisition before and everything changes afterwards.
- tptacek 14y agoNot in our case; we're a wholly-owned subsidiary, but not integrated with our parent company. Our sibling company on the west coast, iSEC Partners, has been operating independently under NCC for several years. We work a little bit like small record labels. The changes that will happen include "we're hiring more people" and "we get to share research with sibling companies".
- angersock 14y ago"If you thought I was insufferable before..." :) At any rate, congratulations and great work!
- scott_s 14y agoCongrats, Thomas. I'm glad to you have you around.
- SatvikBeri 14y agoHigh five and well-done! You and your team earned it :)
- brianlash 14y agoReally fantastic news. Congrats!!
- mhartl 14y agoBravo! Keep up the great work.
- bane 14y agoHa! Congrats anyways!
- rbanffy 14y agoWe can agree on something. Congratulations, nevertheless. I suspect you worked very hard for this and it seems well deserved.
- Nrsolis 14y agoCongrats man. Be sure to send the announcement URL to your old friends at Arbor.
- jgrahamc 14y agoI'm happy for tptacek. He's a great member of this community and deserves every success.
- tptacek 14y ago:)
- mechanical_fish 14y agoMay I also sign that greeting card? Congratulations!
- nanijoe 14y agoIt almost feels like a personal win here(not in SV, "more experienced guy", networking background etc)...also shows you can be obnoxious and right at the same time
- tptacek 14y agoThere is a nonzero risk that my partners may frame your comment.
- dfc 14y agoWhat is SV?
- dbattaglia 14y agoSilicone Valley
- joezydeco 14y agoLocal boy done good. Congrats from all the hackers left in Chicago.
- tptacek 14y agoLEFT in Chicago? Are we being hunted?
- casca 14y agoThis is an interesting purchase as Matasano is a services company that has some of the smartest people in infosec. For those not in the field, Thomas, Dave and Jeremy are well known and highly respected. Many acquisitions are to get the talent but I can't remember another one where it's so apparent. The problem is that talent is mobile and $13m for a few super-smart people who leave after a year is expensive.
- tptacek 14y agoThere is no such thing as a non-talent acquisition in consulting. We're not going anywhere; like iSEC before us, we continue to run independently as Matasano.
- masklinn 14y agoSo you're acquired in a "becomes a subsidiary" sense rather than "be assimilated in the borg" sense?
- tptacek 14y agoYes. The parent comment illustrates exactly what happens when you try to Borg a high end consulting firm.
- RobAley 14y agoSo have the acquired you solely for your (current & expected) revenue, or will you bring other wider benefits to the group? Will you just be producing profits for them, or are you planning any kind of inter-play with other group companies?
- tptacek 14y agoI'm not sure how to answer this but I am psyched to be able to talk to iSEC people more. :)
- revorad 14y agoCongrats tptacek!! Thanks for all your amazing comments over the years and now that you are set for life, I expect more higher quality commentary. :-P
- fasouto 14y agoCongrats for the adquisition tptacek! :) [Off topic] I really like the name "matasano", it means bad doctor in informal Spanish. Matasano = matar(kill) + sano(healthy) literally means the doctor who kills the healthy patients.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- aortega 14y agoHere in Argentina is a slang term for doctor, not particularly bad or good.
- tptacek 14y agoWe like the name too! We picked it after giving up on naming the company (we had chosen "Aperture Security" only to find a week later that it had already been taken) and consulting a "list of plant names" for cool-sounding plants. We hired a (very smart) Argentine national friend of ours who immediately made us aware of the connotation. We were somewhat unhappy for about 500 milliseconds, and then immediately very very happy.
- fasouto 14y agoYour new logo :D http://foros.androidvenezuela.com/Dr-Nick-Simpsons.png http://foros.androidvenezuela.com/Dr-Nick-Simpsons.png
- zfran 14y ago> We hired a (very smart) Argentine national friend Any chance we could know who that was? I'm argentinian too and I'm curious.
- tptacek 14y agoMax Caceres.
- smountcastle 14y agoHow come only ~1.3x annualized revenue (the press release said: Year to 30 June 2012, Matasano revenue was $5.0m)? That seems like a very low multiplier -- are consulting companies treated differently from product companies in this regard?
- rubyrescue 14y ago1.3 is good for a consulting company. 1x-1.25x is normal
- patio11 14y agoServices companies, of which consulting companies are a subset, typically receive 1.5x to 2x multiples. [n.b. Your math does not match my math.] Why is this less than product companies get? That's less because consulting companies are a bad place to be and more because successful products are an awesome place to be. It is totally reasonable to have a product company do $7 million of revenue on, say, $2 million of costs. (Let's see: four devs, two sales guys, one marketing, two founders... throw in overhead and we're there.) An acquiring company might have an easy, obvious path to turning that into $70 million of revenue on $5 million of costs. (For example: "We change essentially nothing about your company. We hawk your product to our customer base, using our sales guys, who 6 weeks ago only uttered your name if a customer brought it up, to disparage you. This makes us a mountain of money.") A services company, on the other hand, might have $7 million revenue on $4 million in costs (16 consultants, 1 business manager, 2 founders). The most straightforward pathway to take this business from $7 million to $70 million is to add 144 consultants. They cost ~$40 million a year. This would be a radically less attractive proposition if it were even possible, but if hiring 144 consultants was easy, you wouldn't have to buy a company to find only 16 of them. Also, with a dev company you're buying some capital (software) plus renting access to brains. With a consulting company, you're renting access to brains. In all circumstances, brains can move. Software rarely decides to do that spontaneously. Edit to elaborate: The above is not a strike against doing consulting, by the way. Thomas, for example, has frequently mentioned on HN two true, salient facts: a) almost all products fail miserably and b) the principals at a consulting company beat BigCo salaries approximately the second they call themselves "principals at a consulting company", which is very much not the case at most product companies.
- urbanjunkie 14y agoFantastic, and (from what little I know about tptacek) very well deserved. Congratulations (from an invisible and hellbanned HN'er!!)
- alinajaf 14y agoMore congratulations for tptacek, I'm significantly less stupid for his comments and wish him all the best. It's weird, just today I was thinking about what it would be like to work at a company like Matasano instead of being the paranoid security guy on every web app project I'm hired for.
- ontoillogical 14y agoThey're only hiring more people now then before. You should apply.
- alinajaf 14y agoI've had a look at the requirements and I'm not really up to scratch, additionally I've spent the last five years trying to get out of full-time employment. If I were looking for a day job and was able to relocate to the states, I would totally spend a few months training up on the required skills and send my details over.
- rdl 14y agoCongratulations! (and wow, the low multiple for consulting in general is kind of sad, but oh well)
- alinajaf 14y ago£8.4 million sits comfortably in the 'fuck you' category of windfalls as far as I'm concerned.
- rdl 14y agoSplit how many ways? (and maybe there is equity split beyond the top 3?) I personally would be quite happy with $5-10mm, but to net that, I presume he'd have to sell the company in the $40mm+ range. Nice that they did it this year before cap gains go up, though.
- void-star 14y agoHN always seems so fixated on the big payout. tptacek, the other founders, and employees have also just taken their baby to the next level in so many ways. Getting acquired doesn't have to be the end-game.
- _delirium 14y agoThere's a not-always-unjustified perception in the SV startup scene that it is the end-game, at least of a particular run, because so many startups' products are shuttered by the acquirer. So it better be a big enough payout that you're satisfied with that cashout. But it looks like this is a quite different kind of acquisition, where they'll basically be doing the same job as before, just under a new umbrella, so it's not really cashing out and shutting down the old business at all.
- latortuga 14y agoCongratulations Thomas, I know I'm not the only one who has learned a mountain about security from you! You're an invaluable member of the community.
- justjimmy 14y agotptacek is one of the few names on HN I recognize during my short time here (not to mention he posts alot!), so needless to say it's pretty awesome to see this happened to him/her. Congratulations!
- trevelyan 14y agoWhat a wonderful thing to read. Upvoting threads doesn't have the weight of leaving a separate note, so congratulations!
- grandalf 14y agoCongrats! I've much enjoyed your comments and knowledge on HN over the years.
- casca 14y agoFor those who are familiar with tptacek from HN but don't know why he's so respected in the infosec space: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-to-break-into-security-ptacek-edition/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-to-break-into-securit..., http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-companies-can-beef-up-password-security/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-companies-can-beef-up...
- ilconsigliere 14y agoI'm really enjoying the "How to Break into Security" posts you linked to. The infosec (specifically, appsec) space seems very very interesting.
- gruseom 14y agoExtremely many congratulations! Now get some sleep.
- tptacek 14y agoCan't sleep. Clown'll eat me.
- rman666 14y agoCongrats tptacek and crew, and NCC, too!
- debacle 14y agoDoes this mean you're going to be putting some of that $13m towards hiring a few fellow HNers?
- tptacek 14y agoYes? Very yes?
- dhimes 14y agoI'll add yet another "Congratulations, Thomas." Not only have your posts enlightened me with answers about security, more importantly they have taught me to ask questions about security practices. Thank you. This WIN was well-deserved.
- staunch 14y agoCongrats!
- sabat 14y agoFor just a moment, I thought that Monsanto corporation had been acquired, and thought: "oh, nooooo."
- ephermata 14y agoCongratulations!
- kyro 14y agoJesus, another no-revenue Silicon Valley social startup acquired. This madness will never end. Congrats, though, Thomas.
- petercooper 14y agoThis makes me wonder.. how many of the http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders have had a company/technology acquired? Would be an interesting stat.
- feralchimp 14y agorock on, tptacek! if you're not eating sushi off the top of a rare steak right now, stop what you're doing. :)
- kajecounterhack 14y agoCongrats tptacek!
- edanm 14y agoCongrats tptacek. Besides being very happy for you, I'm now very happy for myself, for listening to your advice during the last half-year of starting my own consulting business. Your very generous and open comments about everything to do with running a consulting business were, and are, a constant source of help and encouragement. So congratulations, and I hope you have a lot of fun with your new friends at sibling companies! Much deserved!