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OCS 2020 Fireside Chat: Kara Nortman and Mark Curphey

Kara Nortman is a Partner at Upfront Ventures, the largest venture capital firm based in Los Angeles. Some of her notable investments include Parachute Home, The Wing, Fleetsmith, Stem, Territory, Strive, and Qordoba. Before Upfront, Kara co-founded the children's e-commerce company Moonfrye and also spent seven years at IAC where she co-headed the M&A group and acted as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Urbanspoon and Citysearch. During her tenure at IAC she oversaw the initial investment in Tinder. Earlier in her career, she also spent time at Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, and Battery Ventures. She received her AB in Politics from Princeton University and her MBA from Stanford University. Kara is also a founding member of All Raise, a VC-led group dedicated to increased diversity in funders and founders and serves as an advisor to the Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association. Kara resides in Los Angeles with her husband and three daughters.

Relevant Links
LinkedIn - Twitter

Mark Curphey is the founder of OWASP, SourceClear (acquired by CA) and now founder at Open Raven. British ex-pat currently living in San Francisco.

Relevant Links
LinkedIn - Twitter

Kara Nortman and Mark Curphey discuss the future of open data security.

Mark’s introduction - 0:00

Kara’s introduction, about Upfront Ventures, and investment pillars (founders, culture) - 0:45

Kara shares earliest notes/observations on OpenRaven - 3:19

Why hasn’t there been a large-scale, successful open-source security project, along the lines of a Cloudera or a Databricks? - 5:05

Who is going to be part of these projects? Who is going to come and choose to work on what projects? The hospitable and egalitarian nature of open-source cyber security - 6:43

Kara’s parting thoughts: be aware of the intentionality of your open-source decision, and the impact of cybersecurity on contributing to GDP and going mainstream - 8:17

Mark talks about the journey of starting an open-source company - 9:51

Observations on open-source business models, and discovering models for the security world - 13:10

Finding the right VCs and criteria for selection - 15:20

Hiring an experienced Head of Open Source - 17:32

Introducing Dave Lester, OpenRaven’s Head of Open Source - 17:47

How OpenRaven defines open-source strategy - 18:20

Objectives that frame open-source perspective - 19:27

The opportunities around extensibilities - 20:47

OpenRaven’s approach and stage appropriateness to open-source strategy - 21:28

Community is everything. Open source is about relationships. Sharing software that OpenRaven actually uses internally - not just marketing. - 23:28

Working in open-source: work upstream as much as possible - 25:02

Staying simple with software licenese - 25:24

Open source is a promise. What are the promises you’re willing to keep? What promises could you change? - 26:04


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