Cybersecurity Spending , Events , RSA Conference

How Cybersecurity Startups Can Weather the Economic Storm

Momentum Cyber's Dino Boukouris on Startup Pain Following Cuts to Innovation Budget
Dino Boukouris, founder and managing director, Momentum Cyber

Organizations have taken a hatchet to their "innovation budget" amid economic headwinds, making it difficult for startups to hit their sales projections, said Momentum Cyber's Dino Boukouris.

See Also: Making Sense of FedRAMP and StateRAMP

Longer sales cycles for early-stage startups have resulted in them burning through cash faster than anticipated, forcing them to either lay off employees, raise capital at a reduced he said, founders can exit the market by selling their startup to a financial or strategic acquirer, often at a pretty steep discount (see: How the Economic Downturn Has Affected Security Funding, M&A).

"[The spending cuts] tend to skew heavily toward the startup ecosystem," Boukouris said. "Those are the innovators, and those are the ones that have the latest and greatest technologies. It doesn't really affect the Palos and CrowdStrikes and others of the world as much."

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at RSA Conference 2023, Boukouris also discusses:

  • Why some startups are opting to exit the market rather than raise capital;
  • Why the size of cybersecurity M&A deals has decreased over the past year;
  • Why investors are focusing heavily on business fundamentals, not vision.

Boukouris has spent over 17 years in the technology industry advising CEOs and boards of companies at all stages of their life cycle. He has expertise in M&A, cybersecurity, finance, strategy, operations, entrepreneurship, and venture capital and private equity.


About the Author

Michael Novinson

Michael Novinson

Managing Editor, Business, ISMG

Novinson is responsible for covering the vendor and technology landscape. Prior to joining ISMG, he spent four and a half years covering all the major cybersecurity vendors at CRN, with a focus on their programs and offerings for IT service providers. He was recognized for his breaking news coverage of the August 2019 coordinated ransomware attack against local governments in Texas as well as for his continued reporting around the SolarWinds hack in late 2020 and early 2021.




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