Bugcrowd is excited and very pleased to announce the appointment of Ashish Gupta as our new Chief Executive Officer. With this addition, I’ll be transitioning to Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer.
The “napkin moment” for Bugcrowd happened on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney on the 1st of September, 2012. I came up with the name Bugcrowd and the Flex reward model on that flight. On arriving home from the airport, registered the domain and the Twitter handle, and the crowdsourced security testing platform provider industry was born.
Looking back, I couldn’t have imagined how far we’d go or how fast we’d get here. I sit here having realized the most significant parts of my dream for the security industry: To connect two groups who desperately need each other but have historically been terrible at getting along, and to do so at massive scale.
In the past four years, Bugcrowd has grown to more than 100 employees. With more than 600 programs run and more than 60,000 researchers in our crowd, we’ve proven there’s a huge need for crowdsourced cybersecurity testing. We’ve also proved it truly works and it can be trusted as a solution to these problems.
As a founder, the decision on who will help carry out your vision is not only important, it’s deeply personal. I have worn many hats at Bugcrowd – sales, marketing, product, HR and even janitorial services. I’m immensely proud of the work I’ve been able to do so far. Turning Bugcrowd from an idea on a discount airline napkin into a technology company that employs more than 100 people and serves hundreds of customers worldwide has been a remarkable journey, but I’ve always worked to be critically objective about what the company needs. The process leading to today started about 6 months ago, when I decided that adding a new CEO to the team would maximize our ability to scale, win in the market, and see our incredibly ambitious vision realized.
We’ve consistently led our space, correctly identifying where the market is going and executing to address it. We’re a high-growth business in a hot market and I wanted us to appoint a leader who could help accelerate this traction. After several months and several dozen interviews, I’m delighted that we’ve found the perfect person for the job.
Ashish has many years of executive experience in cybersecurity and other industries, and an amazing track record for helping companies scale. But the two key things that set him apart were his altruistic character and entrepreneurial spirit. These are the things that drive us at Bugcrowd… To make the internet safer, yes, but also to do so in a truly innovative way, and a way that benefits as many as possible in the process. That’s the kind of person that fits beautifully into our mission, and the kind of person I’m excited to work shoulder-to-shoulder with as we go forward.
For me personally, Ashish’s addition to the team allows me to spend more time doing what I love: Seeing around corners in the market and increasing Bugcrowd’s impact. I’m very much looking forward to my new roles as Chairman of the Board and CTO. With Ashish on board, I will be able to focus squarely on the vision for the business and how we move it forward, spending more time with our customers and the crowd. This is an exciting time for Bugcrowd.
I’d like to welcome Ashish to the team! I’m excited, the team is excited, and the Board is excited too. Our new CEO is a born leader and an ideal culture fit. He will be a tremendous asset to our business as we continue to grow, as well as to execute our mission to make the internet safer.
#ItTakesACrowd
