Bias in Humans Through Bad Representation with YL Ventures’ Andy Ellis

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone, welcome back here to Techron tv. I am really, really happy to have my next guest on here.

He's my friend. Well, I'm happy to call him my friend. He's also a huge New England Patriot fan, so he's one of my few friends who are a New England Patriot family.

But I don't hold that against them honestly. He, he, I, he's earned my respect with his football acumen. So we have some great discussions around football, around life, around world issues, peace, Israel, Palestine, everything else.

But we're not talking about any of those things today. I, I hope not. I hope not.

Uh, we're, we're here to talk some good stuff. This is my friend Andy Ellis. Andy, welcome back to Text Drunk tv.

How are you? I'm fantastic, Alan, as always. It's a pleasure to be here.

Thank You. It's great to have you here. So, Andy, for those of us in the audience, not those of us, for those folks in the audience who maybe aren't familiar with Andy Ellis, acclaimed CSO, hall of Fame, CSO author, venture Capitalist and everything else, why, why don't you give him a little bit of your Andy Ellis story?

Well, I think you just did a lot of it, but I was the first security hire at Akamai, was there for 21 years, finishing as the Chief Security Officer. So I've done just about every security job there is to do. Um, I did not walk a beat while I was there, but I did do that in a previous job.

So I've even done the, like, walk around and check lock somewhere. Now I'm a partner at YL Ventures where we invest in seed stage cybersecurity companies and help bring them to market and scale their businesses. Absolutely.

And, and, uh, you've recently become partner in the last couple weeks at Yle, right? Yep. I was an operating partner for the previous three and a half years and decided I was having so much fun.

I just wanted to do more of it. Absolutely. And Andy, you've been instrumental in, in your role at YL and, you know, since leaving Akima, actually even while you were at Akima, you were an advisor to YI was an advisor.

But since leaving, you've been instrumental in a number of, of, uh, cyber companies. Just thinking out loud, Orca comes to mind. Yep.

Orca Security Done work with Orca with, you know, some of the, you know, midterm companies in our portfolio. You know, valence Grip, some of the folks who've exited Mm-Hmm. Uh, like Spra who's bought by Okta.

Yep. Um, and then with some of the newer companies. So I'm also really excited about, I don't know if you saw the news about a L Beast, the, uh, configuration based vulnerability in AWS was actually discovered by one of our very early companies.

So when you have a company of about 10 people who's managing vulnerability disclosure across 2000 enterprises, because they happen to stumble across a shared responsibility gap, like so cool to help work with a company that wants to do the right thing is not staffed to do it. But nonetheless, you sort of get this all hands on deck and you know, how do you do the right thing and, you know, turn it into a brand moment where people say, oh, I really liked working with this company 'cause they didn't try to sell to me while I was having a bad day. But then of course you do wanna reach out later and say, Hey, can I at least give you the sales pitch so you would know if you would wanna work with me more?

Get it. I get it. Good.

So I didn't, did you mention the name of that company or That was Migo MI Migo GGO which Oh, I I interviewed them. Oh, you interviewed Migo. Awesome.

Yeah, but you'll love the origin of the name. It's actually a Talmudic legal principle that, uh, if I recall correctly, it's when you make one argument in defense of yourself that's amazingly complicated and hard for the judges to understand, but the judges can see a much simpler argument you could have made that they would've believed in than they should just believe you. 'cause you wouldn't make up a complicated argument if it wasn't as true as the simple one.

Very cool. Very cool. I, you know, they did mention that origin story when I interviewed him.

Yeah, No, they, they tend not to mention it 'cause it's one of those like esoteric things that, you know, one of the founders just loved and the name just resonates so well. It's a good name too though. Interesting.

Alright, so Andy, first of all, congratulations on being part of Thank you. Well deserved. And, um, I'm sure you're gonna do great things as you have been doing with YL Ventures.

I wanted to talk to you today though about something else. You know, I was out of black hat briefly until I was sufficiently well done for being in the 112 degree heat. Wait, you left the building.

Well, here's a note to self never co-sponsor a party poolside at Black Hat. Right? Oh yeah.

Which I was silly enough to do. And so we had, um, uh, it was poolside at the, at the port, at the Pool and beach club at Mandelic. And um, I think in the shade it was 112 degrees.

That sounds brutal o'clock brutal at night. So we had a VIP tent that we were having as part of being a sponsor. And it had those misters, you know, that, so I felt sort of like the broccoli in the produce aisle, you know, it was cooling me down.

But yeah, I won't do that again. I learned my lesson there. Um, but there was, there was a bit of controversy that quite frankly, company involved should have known better.

I thought we were way past this. Yeah. Uh, Palo Alto thought it would be cute to dress up some women with lampshades over their heads and talk about objectified.

Yeah. As objectifying as you can get, dress them up as an Object. Yeah.

And, um, and, and, and the backlash was pretty severe. And I will say rightfully so, rightfully so, and, and Palo Alto, you don't apologize as they shared and we can move on from it. But you know, Andy, I remember fighting this fight at RSA Mitchell, Ashley and I, 20 years ago, would walk around and we would take pictures, not with our cell phone, 'cause cell phones didn't have great cameras then, but with like digital cameras.

Right. And we take pictures of the booth babes and say, Hey, is this the book you're looking for? Is this like what you want to convey?

You know, you've got your fighter jet simulators and pretty knockout waves consign it. And, and then about 10 years ago, there was the equal respect movement that Chen like really pushed hard. That was fantastic.

I know I was a part of Mm-Hmm. Thing I I, I threatened a number of companies that I walked around and I the head of marketing and said, I'm outing you next year if you bring back Booth Babes. Absolutely.

And then I think RSA themselves made it an official policy and, and kudos to the, to the, the gals who run RSA conference. Right. And I, and I think Black had had done a similar thing, which in Vegas was unheard of.

So I thought we were way past it, but obviously it still, it lurks in the arts and the shadows of men. Right. Um, but there's another issue that you brought up in LinkedIn that I thought was equally as important.

Mm-Hmm. Which is, okay, so we're not dressing you in provocative clothing and you really do work for the company and that's why you're here. You're not some model I hired, but you are not gonna have the talking parts, you're not gonna have the, the parts that require a full brain.

Yep. Right. We need you to scan the badges or, or to hand out the tchotchkes.

But the, the demo, Mr. Man's gonna do that. Yep.

And in, in its own way, it's just as bad. Right. It is.

And it's not intentional. Let's, let's start from that 'cause it's really important to recognize that like it's just some dynamics in the workforce, which is your technical staff. And we're gonna use really broad brush binary like technical and non-technical.

It's a range. But your technical staff, your solutions engineers, your developers overwhelmingly male, your non-technical staff, your marketing, your events team, overwhelmingly female. So odds are when you walk up to a booth, the women are going to be non-technical and the men are going to be technical.

And so you are building into the minds of the people who walk up to the booth. If I ask a woman a question, she won't know the answer and she'll pass me to a man. And so they walk away more sexist than they walked up.

Yeah. Right. There's a reason people have prejudice is not because they make it up in their brain is 'cause the world gives them evidence to suggest that's true.

No, I mean it's, it's sort of unconsciously, not subconsciously. Right. Unconsciously reinforcing the stereotype.

Right. And so what we need to do, so one of the companies I worked with you, I was talking with the, you know, the head of marketing, the events marketing and she was like, no, every single person who works our booth is sales qualified. They can all do the sales pitch, they can talk about the problem.

Doesn't matter what their job is, you have to be qualified to do a sales pitch to work our booth. Kudos to them. Like that's fantastic.

But I've worked with you and I'll admit, you know, at Akamai we would occasionally hire outside staff just to be the person holding the badge reader. Like you need somebody to scan the badges while you're doing some event at the booth. Mm-Hmm.

Like, they don't even have a conversation. I will tell you every outside badge scan person I've ever seen has been female. So I Think that's a problem.

I don't disagree with you. Like, I think that if you're gonna hire people to represent your brand that are women who don't know what your brand is, you are making the rest of our community more sexist. I, I agree.

So I I think that the two sides of the coin, that's one side. Yep. That if you're gonna hire someone in a non-technical role, the same way we strive for diversity on technical panels and stuff like that, we should equally strive for diversity for non-technical roles.

Yep. Absolutely. Right.

So that we nontechnical men in the booth. I i and, and there is such a thing. Right.

Let's be really, really clear. I Mean you could get Alan to work your booth. There's your non-technical man.

I don't know if they want me to work their, you know, can put on Look, I'm available. Yeah. I I won't, I won't poison anybody's brain with the image of you dressed as a booth babe.

Um, well what what site only fans Yeah. Whatever it is. Only fans would show up there, right?

So No, but I think this is a, this is a really serious conversation, which is we do focus, you're, you're absolutely right. We focus so hard on how do we create representation and sometimes we push artificially Yes. That we have to make sure we don't create bad representation.

And sometimes the bad representation is, look, I hire a bunch of outside non-technical people. They're all women. That's bad representation.

Um, taking a woman who is almost qualified but not yet qualified and making them the representative without the preparation, that's bad. Look, I've made this mistake before where I said, oh look, I had somebody who I inherited, they were working for me. She was fantastic and she should have been promoted years before.

So I double promoted her 'cause it was, it was time. But I hadn't thought through the fact that neither I nor her previous management had given her the training for the job she should have been in and was doing, let alone the next job. And so I set her up for failure.

Like when people talk about like, oh this person just got promoted. Because it's your job to make sure that that is never true. Like as a manager you should make sure that every person is amazingly qualified because one bad representative moment reinforces so many bad beliefs.

And we have to, to stop contributing to discrimination in our environment. You know, this is an argument I've seen with the whole DEI thing. It's not that DEI itself isn't good or it's bad.

It's that given the opportunity, we, these people are not really given the opportunity to rise. Right. Right.

We need to make sure they're led in the door, Let them in the door and develop them. Develop everybody. Let's be honest, most companies are not developing any of their staff.

You need to develop everybody, whether they're man, woman, white, minority, whatever it is, they all need more development. But you know, there's a number of studies that have been done at a number of universities about what happens when you put people, somebody who is well qualified at a third tier school in a second tier school and they end up with worse outcomes. Yeah.

And you make the other students at the second tier school say, oh, like all of the people who look like that are less qualified and we need, I get it to stop both of those. Like we're doing a disservice to our staff by not training them and to the rest of the world by putting them in positions to fail. And you know, here, here's another point Zoe.

Andy, the fact of the matter is, is we have made a tremendous strides in bringing women and other underrepresented minorities into technical roles. Yep. It's not what it was when you and I frankly were out there at the booth Absolutely.

Talking to people. Um, it's, but but it's not reflected in who's actually on the floor. Like there's almost a disconnect there.

Uh, and and, and you wanna know, to be fair, there was a time where I knew technical women Yep. Who would say, I don't want to be at the booth because there's animals that are gonna come over and accost me. Right.

Right, right. They're Gonna be treated badly 'cause people assume they're non-technical. Right.

So here's, here's my, But I, is that still true? You think? I think it's, I think it's less true, but still true.

But it's actually very true that they'll be treated as non-technical. I think it's less true that they will be harassed, but it is still true. So I think, you know, I was actually watching, and I'm gonna reveal, I dunno how people feel about this.

Uh, America's Sweethearts, the documentary about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Right. My daughter, I'm, I'm Not gonna admit Watching, loved it.

It was, it was great. But what's fascinating was there's this moment where, you know, one of the rookie cheerleaders, um, gets accosted by a photographer. And unfortunately they don't end up with any video that could prove that this actually happened.

But the photographer does get never allowed back in, in Dallas, in Cowboy Stadium. But what's important is they had briefed all of the cheerleaders in advance on what to do. That everybody around was instantly supportive and knew what to do.

Right. And that they handled it with grace and with professionalism, emotional support and professional support. If you are having a booth, you should have the same plan.

You should say, what do I do if one of the women in my booth or one of the men in my booth honestly gets sexually harassed, sexually accosted, assaulted? How are we gonna deal with it? Who do they go talk to?

How are we gonna handle it? Because you need to tell the women that that's not going to happen. And if it does that it's not acceptable and that you've got their back.

'cause I'll be honest, I'm pretty sure most of 'em don't feel like their employers have their back. I, I agree with you and, and Andy, we're about outta time. I gotta end this.

I have a me another meeting to jump to, but I think that's a great place to end this. Uh, I, I hope that that's the case. Certainly Palo Alto is gonna be a little bit more sensitive, I think, going forward.

Hope so. But as an industry and not just security, the whole tech industry, we, we gotta keep this stuff in mind. Andy, congratulations on being partner.

Keep up the great work. Thanks a football season. We'll be talking.

Absolutely. Andy Ellis, YL Ventures here on Techstar tv. We'll take a break.

We'll be back in a moment.