Mahmoud Abdelkader discusses the process of raising over $100 million for his company, Very Good Security, which specializes in data security.
Mahmoud Abdelkader discusses the process of raising over $100 million for his company, Very Good Security, which specializes in data security. He also shares his background as a co-founder of a YCombinator company and an active angel investor.
it took me time to realize that to build the network that we mentioned earlier you know that i needed to be able to execute on my vision we achieved our vision we have shifted the conversation to let's talk about identity [Music] all righty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so i'm very excited today about the the guests that we have you know we're going to be talking a lot about building scaling the highs the lows of building a company and he's been through the full cycle so i think that we're going to be learning quite a bit today so without further ado let's welcome our guests today mahmoud abdelkader welcome to the show thank you so much for having me i'm very excited to be here alejandro so originally born in in egypt actually 60 kilometers away from cairo so i mean i'm sure that definitely quite a different environment from what you see there in palo alto nowadays so
how is life growing up there well not in palo alto now i'm actually i've moved to san rafael moved in i'm still in the bay area um there you go but still a little bit different from what yeah uh so i mean egypt is a developing nation right it's also but it has a very historic uh country and so it has a lot of real important um you know antiquities and gives us a kind of like a view into the past you know i've i've done my 23andme and i'm very my family generationally has been very much located in that fertile crescent region right and so um but yeah it's actually it's a lot different of course you don't have the same opportunities that you have in the united states but it's changing right there's change there's entrepreneurship i advise people now i'm an investor in a company called instabug and uh you know i think you know i think it's it's really it's really everything's working really
well um there so i'm very hopeful for the country today um but yeah you know i think when i was raised there i did not i did not live in cairo which is the capital right of egypt but i did you know i was raised in a country a small city called um this malaya which is actually a where the suez canal authority is and so that's when my family old works in the service canal authority right so my uncle actually is a tugboat captain that takes the big ships in and out of sioux canal and so um that's kind of like what my family has done and so that's it was really cool to know that that plays a big part of the economy of egypt and you know we have a small part in that and then the other thing is uh it also helped me to you know when i came here it's a lot different it's a lot greener in the united states right uh in egypt it's lots of sand a lot of sand and so um but yeah yeah but anyways it's
obviously it's a lot of it's a lot it's a it's a very different uh very different country compared to united states but they both have their pros and cons right absolutely i mean you turn you turn in in your case you turn eight and that was a pivotal moment in your life because your parents i mean your father was a in finance a cfo kind of role your mother uh was working for the government for the equivalent to the irs there but you turn eight and they make the decision that it's time to pack the bags and come for the american dream so tell us about this yeah it was just doesn't like that i i i fundamentally you know i gotta say it was one of the most amazing things that a parent can do for their children my parents realized that in order for them to be able to give us the best possible future that they had to you know in this case you know make the one of the most daunting exercises and
sacrifices of their life where that to leave family their safety their social circles behind their jobs and go in search of this american dream in the united states so they can give us a opportunity to execute it was never a dream that they thought about it just sort of like appeared and materialized and they jumped at it you know my dad was here for a long time he came out here uh two times before we moved finally with him um and so he would leave my mom for long stretches of like four months and then come back and ultimately and the third time my mom was like nope i'm coming with you next time and so that's what happened you know and so they they definitely made this like big sacrifice and uh we're very thankful to this day there's nothing that we can do to pay that back you know i have four i've uh three sisters and two of them are for uh physicians one is a family medicine physician
and the other one is a pulmonologist so obviously with the coven 19 situations that are happening here um she's she you know so and then my third the the third sister she is a analyst a sales analyst at bloomberg and so she you know my family's you know nothing we can do still to this day you know can pay back our parents for that ultimate mean i'm sure that for you that was that was very inspiring too because you went from seeing you know your father perhaps putting a suit on a tie and your mother you know same thing to go to to working in the corporate environment where they had like very very successful jobs to coming here to the us and literally working at restaurants right oh yeah my dad yeah my dad my dad took whatever job he can do he literally worked as a line person at a deli worked his way up to become general manager of that so that was very fortunate for us my mom worked at a
cashier at dry cleaners um again you know so she had a career in you know tax authority in egypt and so you know but took a k and then she worked her way to become a regional director at uh sears when it was you know um and it's it's heyday and then you know eventually you know my mom went back went to school when she was 40 5 and got her you know accounting degree equivalence in the united states and is now basically working as a part-time tax uh person at h r block and so and my dad's retired now but ultimately he you know when we were in new york we stayed when we immigrated to new york city we actually went to a place called bay ridge so i went to like ps185 deicard heights middle school and when we immigrated uh that you know just going to this foreign environment with a completely different school system in a completely different language is pretty tough for us and um and my
parents you know always instilled to us this work ethic right that we have to basically be the best at you know whatever we does we want to do like my mom is very famously known for i get like a 97 or 98 on an exam and she'd be like well i wasn't in a hundred you know most people are happy with the 98 but my mom was like why did you get the hundred and so um and so that's kind of like the environment that i grew up very like pressure heavy because we knew that the one thing that we had here in this country is education and so that's the ultimate sacrifice so my parents made sure that that's something that we you know continue to excel at and really compete with but again in about in 2000 and 2000 in 2000 my parents immigrated um to sorry moved again to maryland where i spent my high school i went to finish to my last bits of middle school in maryland and i went to delaney high school
she's one of the founders of college humor also did that too from delaney high school um and i you know we i went to and i went to university of maryland college park so we spent about another eight years in maryland i graduated and i went to go work on wall street and that's really the first and you know just going from basically not making any money you know growing up you know having to work at like home depot or lowe's or uh bertucci's pizza oven i used to actually make the pizza there uh and uh all the way to going to working on the trading floor on wall street right out of college that was a experience that i got to tell you was a phenomenal shift in differences yeah but i mean one thing that for sure you know your experience you know either with wall street because you obviously experienced the crash there also moving to a new country i think that you you perhaps developed that
muscle of of being able to deal with uncertainty to a certain extent and i'm sure that has helped you as well as a founder oh for sure look i'll tell you one of our values in our company today is authentic and resilient right and so what this uncertainty helped me do is establish this cult this attitude of resilience it's going to be better it's going to get better right just keep going just put your head down and keep executing you know it's very it's look it's a difficult thing to do um because you can always give up and it's easy you know one of the things that we value here in the united states is freedom right and so you're free to give up here and so and so by by being resilient by keeping your head down by staying true to your core right by and making sure that you treat folks with respect and empathy you know you can definitely have a really good shot at pursuing you know your
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