Why we started Cleartext.

At Black Hat 2026, the best thing that happened to us wasn't a talk or a party. It was a founder pulling us into a hallway to ask whether he should build the feature his biggest customer wanted when no one else had asked for it. Then a second founder. Then a third.

We left Cloudflare in early 2026 to build something new. Almost immediately, founders started reaching out for candid advice. That's normal in security, and it should be; we're only where we are because people did it for us. What wasn't normal was how the conversations went. They didn't stay high-level. We could get into why the pricing failed, which intro wasted six weeks, and how alone it feels at times. Those are the things you don't want to say to your investors or board.

We left every conversation feeling electric. So did they. A founder, two days after we talked:

“I'm not even kidding, that was the most helpful founder conversation I've ever had, bar none, since starting this thing two years ago.”

Then founders started offering to pay without being asked, and introducing us to other founders. People paying before you ask is the only signal that means anything. We joked about how much we'd have paid for someone like this when we were starting out. Then we stopped joking.

We paused on what to call this. Consulting gives us the ick. Coaching is a real thing and we both believe in it, but this isn't that. Advisory is the closest word: we want you to succeed at whatever that means for you. We don't want cap table space, advisory shares, or the wheel.

The only thing in cleartext is the conversation we have. We don't backchannel to anyone, including your investors, even when we're asked. We don't name who we work with unless you want us to. A handshake and someone's word still mean something to us, and you have ours.

If you're a Seed or Series A founder building a security company, we'd love to chat.
Book a call.