#169 CEO and Founder Cato Networks, Shlomo Kramer: The Burden of Persona

Grit

Guest: Shlomo Kramer, founder and CEO of Cato Networks

Shlomo Kramer has founded three companies to date — Check Point, Imperva, and most recently Cato Networks — and taken the first two public, with plans to do the same with Cato. By any measure, he is a successful entrepreneur, but he defines “success” as “a burden you need to shake off every day.” And the easiest way to do that he’s found is to keep moving, keep failing, and keep creating. The material wealth he’s created, he explains, was never the goal: “It was never about things. It was about ideas and making them real.”

In this episode, Shlomo and Joubin discuss the contexts of our actions, the IDF, taking three companies public, ideas vs. things, kibbutzes, Gong, Sumo Logic, serial entrepreneurs, leading by example, consumer cybersecurity, trusting others, Albert Einstein, “making it to the pass before winter,” and Israeli directness.

In this episode, we cover:

• The delta between micro and macro (00:54)
• Working in wartime Israel (03:18)
• The burden of persona (06:37)
• Shlomo’s family (13:19)
• The time between startups (16:30)
• Self-fulfillment (18:31)
• “What am I going to do next?” (21:14)
• Rebelliousness (24:58)
• Palo Alto Networks (29:42)
• Loyalty and competition (31:32)
• Building trust relationships (35:02)
• “The last one” (37:41)
• Shaq, Tom Brady, and Carl Eschenbach (42:15)
• Tough feedback (46:50)
• Shlomo’s friends (48:18)
• Intellectual honesty (50:14)
• What Cato does (52:37)
• Hiring and work culture (55:23)
• Ignoring startup advice (58:15)
• Ideation and being present (59:22)

Links:

• Connect with Shlomo
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: [e-mail]
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm