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From Government to the Private Sector

In 2009 I left a job at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and started Siege Technologies. My goal was to fill the vacuum of small, innovative companies building advanced, disruptive technical solutions in offensive and defensive cyber warfare left by recent large corporate acquisitions. The last day at DARPA, I signed paperwork removing all the accesses I had received during my time there. They took my green badge, CaC card, DARPA badge, and computer. I felt a little like George Banks in Mary Poppins when the bank fires him and proceeds to destroy his umbrella and poke a hole in his hat as part of the discharge process.  I founded Siege Technologies two weeks later and slowly collected most of those resources again over time. The experience was extremely informative and provided some important lessons for anyone contemplating a move into private industry from government or into a startup from a large company.

Starting from scratch is hard

It is not easy to take a blank piece of paper and write a novel. Starting a company is similar, as building something from nothing requires the ability to see a future that does not yet exist, and to make that vision a reality. Taking a small firm and helping it break out of a small business mindset to reach its potential is equally hard (and maybe harder in some ways), because you need to reshape structures that may have hardened and take on risk that may have been previously discarded or avoided. The technical team, technology, access to customers and partners, cash, and information are never as robust as you would like and are often in a state of flux.

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