Yahoo Finance My first boss: Guy Golan, CEO of cybersecurity firm Performanta
The people who helped shape business leaders
Guy Golan co-founded Maidenhead-based managed services provider Performanta in 2010. The cybersecurity outfit predicts revenue of around £28m in 2023 and employs 200 staff globally.
I’m a very bubbly character by nature, but I was once told: “You don’t make a decision on a bad day, you don’t make a decision on a glorious day, you make a decision on a normal, normal day.”
I was actually shy and quiet growing up but the army changed me massively when I joined the intelligence forces. After three years they asked me to become a trainer of the next generation and it forced me to become more eloquent and outspoken.
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My first employer during university was Jonathan Hashkes, who was one of the founders of the software enterprise Magic, the first genuine customer relations management firm which was introduced to the world in 1994 and was Israel's first company to go public on Nasdaq.
He spoke really fast and what I really enjoyed was when he retired and started a comic book company, which I managed on his behalf. In 18 months, he had built the largest comic book business outside of the US.
One day in Jerusalem we had a meeting with the auditors. He looked at his watch and said that he first wanted an ice cream. We stopped on the way and he told me 'to always mix business with pleasure’. I was still young then but now I lead by that mantra today.
Jonathan made me feel welcome, to have the potential to be successful in my life, to never change as a human being, and, wherever the business goes, always to have fun. So much so that if someone goes overseas on a work task today, I always encourage them to spend another night to experience the culture or the food.
Jonathan handed over a lot of his knowledge and he did it in a smart way and expected me to get on top of it very quickly. With everything he did he explained the why behind it. As a 23-year old finishing the army and in the middle of my degree, I didn’t know what the real world was and here was a guy sharing the wisdom of the world with me.
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When I started my business, people were too scared to say what they thought. Today at Performanta, it feels like there is far more openness and honesty without it being an insult. It makes it easier to speak in a safe office environment.
I also learned a very valuable lesson growing up when my girlfriend’s father, Stanley Schreiber, took me to the paper factory with 800 workers. He went through the front door and said ‘good morning’ to everyone and I still do this today. We can run the best companies in the world but we need to treat people respectfully. After all, people want to be valued.
I had zero intentions of going into cyber security, especially when you are born to a Jewish mother who measures you in three acronyms: L for lawyer, D for doctor and A for accountant. I studied the latter and entered the cyber world by fluke in 2003.
I was in an elite unit in the Israeli army and in 1994 there were 80,000 cyber related attacks a day on the analogue side and we were forced to defend ourselves by ways and means. When I came into the cyber space, my knowledge of 1994 and the astonishment that the market didn’t see it told me that we would get there.
When I opened Performanta in 2010, changed the direction in 2016 and evolved that in 2018 to where we are today, it was all about the idea that if I saw what happened in four years in the army and how far the private sector was lagging behind, which was five to 10 years, it meant that I have a window into the future.
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The market is flooded with misinformation and throwing money at cyber without knowing what they are doing. Companies don’t prioritise cyber because most board of directors don’t understand it. We need to provide information that is understood to different stakeholders to make the right decisions. The world of cyber is lacking in that aspect massively.
Organisations like banks weren’t built to do cyber security but have been forced to do so through digital transformation. Thus, they need to be more competitive and it takes the back office to the front, which in turn allows people to steal money much more easily.
We are pioneering cyber safety. If you think long and hard about what ‘safe’ is for an individual, couple or a company, you eventually look at the positive side; one where safe is when you are able to continue with a planned routine uninterrupted.
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