“5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became the CEO of vArmour”, With Tim Eades

Raising money: Always raise more than you think (by 25–30%) you will need and assume it will take a few months longer than you think to raise a certain round. When it comes to your funding, you always want to err on the side of caution and be as conservative in your predictions as possible to make sure you maintain a solid runway.

I had the pleasure to interview Tim Eades. With over 20 years of leadership experience in sales, marketing, and executive management at the CEO level, Tim has deep expertise in driving high growth for computing, security, and enterprise software companies. Tim joined vArmour as CEO in October 2013. Prior to that, he was the CEO at Silver Tail Systems from March 2010 until the company was acquired by RSA, the security division of EMC in late 2012. Prior to leading Silver Tail Systems, Tim was CEO of Everyone.net, an SMB focused SaaS company that was acquired by Proofpoint. Tim has also held sales and marketing executive leadership positions at BEA Systems, Sana Security, Phoenix Technologies and IBM. Tim holds advanced degrees in business, international marketing, and financial analysis, primarily from Solent University in England.

Thank you so much for joining us Tim! What brought you to this specific career path?

I have found that, in life, I like fast, new things that disrupt the traditional. As a teenager, I was a young punk with bleached blonde hair jumping around to The Clash and The Sex Pistols. Fast forward to my work life and I find that the disruption and “everyday newness” of security is absolutely fascinating. New dynamics come about every single day as attack surfaces morph and hackers find new ways to infiltrate enterprises. Due to this daily excitement, security is the perfect career for me.

Can you please share an example of a major challenge that you encountered when first leading the company? What lesson did you learn from it?

Focus, focus, focus. When you are in a massive industry, like security, you need to be careful…