Episode 429 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Lior Div, CEO & Co-Founder of 7AI.
One of the most exciting parts of this platform shift to AI is watching elite, repeat founders get back into the arena. It’s often these experienced builders who have the appetite and the playbook to swing for the fences and create a truly category-defining company.
Lior is exactly one of those entrepreneurs. Along with his co-founder, Yonatan Striem-Amit, this duo is uniquely qualified to build the leading agentic AI security platform. They have deep expertise in the cybersecurity industry and… by the way, they’ve done this before with their prior unicorn, Cybereason.
7AI empowers enterprises to shift security tasks to AI agents. The company recently made waves across the entire tech ecosystem by announcing a massive $130 million Series A round of funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Blackstone Innovations Investments, Greylock, CRV, and Spark Capital.
To put that into perspective: a $130 million Series A is the largest Series A round in the history of the cybersecurity industry. It is exactly that type of aggressive funding, along with blue-chip investors, that creates market leaders.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- A discussion around the rapidly changing landscape of AI and how that affects cybersecurity.
- Lior’s background story, including being part of Israel’s elite Unit 8200 intelligence group and how he got involved in the cybersecurity industry.
- Scaling Cybereason, plus why he chose to build his companies in Boston.
- The background story of 7AI and all the details on the company & platform.
- The distinct operational differences between building a traditional software business versus building a native AI company.
- 7AI’s aggressive growth plans ahead, a look inside their company culture, and what it takes to build a trusted brand in security.
- The most important skills someone needs to be a successful CEO.
- And more!
This podcast is brought to you by one of the strongest longtime supporters of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors and $44B in loans as of Q4 2025 – SVB delivers expert guidance, specialized products and a team that knows the innovation economy inside and out. Learn more at SVB.com.
Transcript
Keith Cline (02:57)
Thanks so much for joining us.
Lior Div (02:59)
Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s a pleasure.
Keith Cline (03:02)
⁓ I feel like this is overdue. ⁓ I’ve known you for a while now and I’m like, how is it possible that I haven’t had you on the podcast yet because you’re what I consider like one of the anchor startup CEOs in the Boston tech scene. You you build big companies and that’s what I think is super exciting about what you’re building with 7AI. And we’re to talk all about 7AI and what you guys are doing. But I want to address the elephant in the room and that is AI and cybersecurity, right? So
⁓ There’s so much going on, right? And obviously 7AI is addressing pieces of it, but it’s a really big spectrum. Like I just, you know, I was reading about, you know, what glasswing is in Claude and Anthropic. So there’s, and that’s more of a, from what I gathered, more of a, in the code writing, right? So that’s, so anyways, before I get into that, let’s talk about what’s going on in this crazy world of AI.
Lior Div (03:58)
Yeah, so first, thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be on the podcast and it’s pleasure to build a big company here in Boston again. ⁓ But I think that when we zoom out, actually, it’s a good segue to why we established 7AI. When we were done with my previous company, we looked at the landscape of cybersecurity and we said, okay,
Keith Cline (04:10)
Exactly, again, and that’s what I love.
Lior Div (04:28)
We as an industry invested a lot in creating a detection system to detect things on the endpoint, to detect things on the cloud, and so on and so forth. And the question was, what’s new under the sun? Is there is something that is actually changing everything in a significant way? Because I think that you alluded to it a little bit when me and my co-founder Yonatan, when we’re building a company,
we want to build something that it’s significant, built to last and something that it’s meaningful and big. So the question was, is there is something big going on in cyber? And the, the, we left our, our previous company, the answer was kind of no. It’s like there is big companies. It’s like, we’re kind of set, but very quickly what’s happened. We had a conversation with the head of product in OpenAI and it was exactly when they released the first 3.5 version, the ChatGPT ⁓ and the ah-ha moment that happened to everybody. But we had a deep conversation with this guy and basically we looked at it and we said, okay, if the bad guys gonna have access to this type of technology and because our in our history, we’ve been kind of on the other side of the fence, we looked at it and we said, okay everything gonna change and whatever we did as an industry in the past 30 years actually gonna almost become ⁓ irrelevant in a significant way. So that was the thesis. Of course, back then we did not have any proof to these thesis, but now fast forward two years into it, it’s become clear that everything is changing and we can talk in depth how things are changing.
Keith Cline (06:09)
Right. Yeah, I mean, it’s just rapidly changing and it’s changing by the day, like months or seem like years of how quickly things change. Like if you asked me before, like probably around the holidays, people were like, well, it seems like AI is, it’s gonna take people’s jobs. And I’m like, well, I think software engineers, they’re just gonna become more superhuman with Cursor. And then all of sudden, Claude Code came out and I was like, oh, okay, this just changed everything. So just.
Lior Div (06:37)
Yes. So if we will think about it, basically the way that we are assessing it every two months, there is something major that’s happening and changing everything. And I’m talking about major, not just a small release of, ⁓ and I think that the, can put kind of a timeline and the last November ⁓ was kind of a pivotal moment when we think about what’s happened. Basically after the release of Claude Code with the new model, people realize that AI can write code and can write code well. And to be honest, a few weeks into it, we realized that it’s not just about writing code well and helping people. It’s actually people should not be in the loop. They should be on the loop and dictating to the AI what they need to do, but the AI needs to write the code. And that thing changed dramatically the way that we build a company. We think about us as an AI native company. We can discuss.
What does it mean to be an AI native company? But once Claude Code starting to write good code and we could compare it to Codex and let one check the code that the other is writing, so we’re flipping between kind of the result, ⁓ it’s reached to the point that the velocity and the cadence of change that we can introduce to our customers is grew in an exponential way.
Keith Cline (08:02)
Yeah, it’s just so radical how everything’s changing. So, all right, we’re gonna talk more about 7AI and the cybersecurity landscape and what you guys are doing to address that. But I think it’s important to talk about your background, because if, you know, like you’re uniquely qualified to do what you’re doing. So talk about, you know, your background story and how you got to the point of entrepreneurship.
Lior Div (08:23)
Yeah, it’s funny because ⁓ I started basically in cybersecurity. I’m usually joking. said before it was cool. So think about it in the past 12 years, I’m here in Boston. This is home. But I was born and raised in Israel and over there you go to the army. I was part of the 8200 unit. This unit is equivalent to the NSA here. ⁓ Some people will argue that not exactly, but in general terms, this is the easiest way to explain it. So I was an officer there. I stayed many years in that unit. ⁓ And over there, you basically think about it is a nation ⁓ state level hacking capability, complex hacking operation that our job was to basically craft them, think about them, invented them, execute them. So it’s like soup to nuts, everything from the beginning all the way to the end.
And then basically a few years later after I left there, I joined the Mossad and they equivalent to the CIA here and was there for many, many, many years. Again, focusing on the field of offensive cyber operation. ⁓ After a few years there, many years there to be honest, left. That was around the time that Stacksnet, the attack on the nuclear facility in Iran. Uh was very public and people started to understand that you can leverage line of code in order to achieve military and government goals. So after that, basically, Yonatan and myself, we looked at it and say, people will understand that cyber, this is something that consideration for everybody, specifically for big enterprises. So this is where we left and established ⁓ Cybereason I think that the story of Cybereason was stocked.
Lot, but we built a big company. So at the peak we were around 1,500 people We were selling in probably 50 countries across the world ⁓ hundreds of million of recurring revenue. So it was a big operation complex operation ⁓ and once basically we left ⁓ the question was okay what’s next as I discussed earlier and when we looked at it I said, okay, we’re expert in a narrow field that used to be not cool and now it’s cool called cybersecurity. So we had kind of the itch to do something different than cyber. But then we realized that as you said, we have an unfair advantage when it comes to cybersecurity and with everything that’s going on with AI, was kind of a shame not to combine those two capability into one and build a big company again.
Keith Cline (11:08)
Cybereason planted in Boston, you’re building 7AI in Boston. What drew you to Boston as an entrepreneur the first time and why do you continue to build in Boston?
Lior Div (11:19)
Yeah, so when you think about where to build big companies, the reason that we moved from Israel to Boston was we wanted to be on the East Coast and it was a debate between New York and Boston. And back in the day, we’re talking about 2014, Boston was kind of the hub of big cybersecurity company all the way from Symantec, RSA, CyberArk and others. And for us, it was obvious that we want to be here. Now, fast forward to where we are today, 2026, we could choose to go to any city in the US and build a company there. But what we realized that Boston is still very unique when it’s come to the talent pool that exists here. So when you think about the universities, you think about the different government labs that exist here. You think about the hyperscalers that have an R&D center that’s focusing in cybersecurity here.
When you really think about kind of the full ecosystem that we have around us, this is a fantastic place to build a company. And then we looked at it and said, okay, there is not a lot of ⁓ West Coast swagger cool companies in Boston. And we said, okay, we know how to build it. We have access to capital. So let’s build a West Coast swagger cool company in Boston. And I think that, you know, by now I’m looking like here, this is kind of ⁓ all of our people coming to the office every day. ⁓ It’s a great space and a great, I think, ecosystem to build a great company.
Keith Cline (12:59)
And I appreciate that. And I think Boston needs more of that, right? Not to say that it’s just a braggy, because it’s the opposite in Boston. It’s more humble and heads down. And we just kind of do the things and don’t celebrate enough of these victories. And as we were talking about earlier, swinging for the fences, right? So you and your co-founder, like you don’t just say, hey, we’re going to build like a nice company. And they’re like, no, you get the top tier investors. You raise large amounts of venture capital.
I was fortunate because I stopped by your office the day you announced your Series A, $130 million Series A, right? This isn’t like the $7 million Series A from Index, Blackstone, Greylock, CRV and Spark, right? So these are just like massive blue chip VC firms that fund category winners. So how do you, what’s your mentality around building and raising capital like that?
Lior Div (13:39)
You
Yeah, so, you know, many, many people saying it’s like, Hey, we want to build something big or we want to change the world. ⁓ but this is kind of just words that not translate to reality. ⁓ me and my co-founder, we feel that after ⁓ building a company, my previous company for 12 years, we literally understood kind of, I’m joking because there is a lot of university here. said, we did a PhD of how you build a startup. We really understand the good, the bad, a lot of learning from our previous company. ⁓ You know, when you’re running for so long, think about it. We started from an idea all the way to a pre-IPO company. So we did kind of the full gamut of growing company with the ups and downs and like the whole thing. So when we looked at it, we said, okay.
There is a rare opportunity in the market to build something big, and we’re not building small company. We’re not the one that just building something just to want to sell it and flip it to and build another company. No, the whole idea is to how you build something to last and how you create something that generationally is changing the way that we are doing something. So when we looked at it, we said, okay, there is a massive mission. We can fight AI with AI and give power to the defenders. Very simple. And we can change the way that we protect big organization here in the US and then outside in the world. This is a mission that I’m connected to personally. So we said, okay, let’s go. And when we’re going, we’re building something big. It’s not just about the size. It’s really about the impact and the influence that we can do. And right now you speak with every big enterprise. Everybody has this problem.
Everybody when they think about security operation, when you think about kind of the labor intensive kind of ⁓ way that they need to invest and deal with cyber, it’s something that is not going to hold the test of AI trying to attack those big enterprises. So we said, okay, how we give this power of AI to the hand of the defenders. And for us, it’s like, it’s only about going big all in.
Keith Cline (16:13)
So when you were first coming up with the idea for 7AI, what was the state of the Chief Information Security Officer’s mindset? Because I’m sure it’s like, OK, AI is here or coming. But obviously, it’s progressed so quickly since then. But what was the original state that led you down the path of starting the company?
Lior Div (16:33)
Yeah, it’s fascinating because we started one click before everybody understood that AI will change everything. I’m feeling lucky that we had time to really think. ⁓ And if you think about it, we started saying, hey, we’re going to build AI agent to do security operation and we’re going to build the operating system for the modern SOC This is before the word agent was invented.
Keith Cline (16:40)
Right.
Lior Div (17:01)
So this is kind of the point in time that people will say, oh, agent is something that you actually installed on endpoint. And I said, no, no, no, that was my previous company. And in my previous company, we installed agent on the endpoint. Since then, the word agent transformed to be something that AI is doing and making decision and operating in a basically autonomous way. So, and it’s look like or sounds like agent has been here for long time, but that’s not true. This is something new. So where we started the conversation with NVIDIA about, we’re going to leverage AI in order to convince AI do stuff in cybersecurity, it was a novel kind of discussion back then. And over time, it’s become, okay, it’s agent and then agent talking to agent and then swarming of agent and so on and so forth.
Keith Cline (17:55)
Well, you talked about like that startup MBA. You learned so much, right, from that previous experience, which this is another reason why I’m so excited and bullish on what’s happening in Boston, because we have these now serial entrepreneurs that are building again in this unique timeframe where there is going to be category leaders. There are going to be anchor companies built during this stretch. And obviously you’re building one of them. So what is 7AI? What do you do?
Lior Div (18:22)
Yeah, so when you think about ⁓ in very high level, we want to give the power of AI to the hand of the defenders. It sounds very simple, very hard to do. When you translate it into giving them unfair advantage, we’re really talking about speed because when you think about cyber attack, what the bad guys are going to do, they’re going to leverage everything that they can in order to attack as fast as they can and as wide as they can.
So we’re talking about attacks that used to be, you know, measured in minutes or hours now shrinking to be measured in seconds. So now the question is like, okay, how you take a big enterprise and give them the power to identify response and radicate this type of attack almost semi real time because AI will move fast. It’s not really real time, but they’re AI. So now you have to rethink the whole kind of infrastructure that those people are using. So think about the same layer, basically where they store the data and how they detect stuff, the store layer, the orchestration layer of how they’re automating stuff, and the 24 X 7 layer of how they’re actually reviewing ticket and reviewing them. So instead of saying, hey, we’re just gonna introduce a new SIEM, bring all the data to one place, then we’ll have AI, we ⁓ started from the top. We said, okay, first we’re gonna… convince AI to do all the work that need to be done manually today. So we have this layer of agentic AI that can actually take investigation, do a full detection, then providing a full response capability. This is the third layer. And now we’re building a full federated team. So this is kind of the full ⁓ ability to store the data where you want to store the data. So think about it, AI going to the data instead of the data coming to AI. It’s changing in a fundamental way, the way that we’re thinking about architecture ⁓ and how to build those solutions.
Keith Cline (20:22)
And what I think is fascinating is it’s not like, obviously AI is powerful in its ability to do things, but it’s also what you’re building is solving a critical need, right? There’s not enough manpower, there’s not enough people to fill the roles of what’s needed in these SOCs right?
Lior Div (20:38)
Yeah. So this is leading me to, ⁓ you will see us using a lot ⁓ the slogan, do human work. And the reason that we’re saying it is we believe that nobody going to lose their job in cybersecurity, meaning that there is enough open position right now and people can grow into many, many different direction. But there is a lot of jobs that people should not do.
So the toil, the boring, the repeatable, but very necessary to cyber, things that need to be done, it’s like people should not do. doing the same investigation again and again and again, and writing the same queries again, it’s like people don’t need to do it. They don’t need even to automate it. AI can do it for us. People, as I said earlier, should be probably on the loop, not in the loop, because when you’re in the loop, you’re interfering the machine to work in a machine’s speed.
Once you put people on the loop, you basically reap the benefit of both things. So if you think about it, we are big believer that people are necessary to cyber. People need to review what the AI is doing. People can give direction to the AI, but people need to be the manager and the supervisor, not the one that actually doing the day-to-day work.
Keith Cline (22:25)
And this is a solution that’s mainly addressing the enterprise type of customer, right?
Lior Div (22:30)
Yeah, it’s fascinating because while we’re focusing on a big enterprise, ⁓ we have customers all the way from, let’s ⁓ say, 700 people, but very sophisticated, to the peak we have, I believe, 250,000 employees organization that we’re supporting. So we’re focusing a little bit more here, but it’s like actually it’s suitable to everybody. And the reason is very simple.
Instead of creating technology and throw it to the customers and we said, Hey, good luck. Use AI. We created another layer. We call it the Plaid layer. This is an acronym of people led AI driven. And the whole idea around the Plaid is basically saying, Hey, you want to reap the benefit of using AI. You don’t have the people in order to configure it and oversight AI and cyber in your environment.
We can provide the people that they’re expert in AI and cyber. This is the people led AI driven. We’re going to help you to reach to outcome. So we are not buying from us just a platform with feature and functionality. You actually can buy an outcome and we can guarantee this outcome with our people. So we took it all the way to the end that we have now the Plaid Elite team that literally can do 24 X 7 eyes on glass for some companies. So, this is kind of the thing that usually dealing with the mid size of the market and then there is the platter lead that dealing with the upper side of the market. People that don’t need a 24 by 7, they have the people, but they need help of how to use AI in a large scale environment.
Keith Cline (24:10)
So we talked about, you you raised a large Series A round of funding. What’s different building this time around? Like, round of fundings that I see out there, like a Series A of that magnitude never used to happen, right? And whatever error from web to mobile to whatever. So what are you feeling? What are you seeing out there as it relates to building a company this time around?
Lior Div (24:38)
I’m smiling because we were said, hey, we’re building an AI native company. But what does it mean? It’s like everybody can say they’re building an AI native company. But then when we looked at it, and because we have so much experience of building companies, we looked at it and said, OK, they’re organized. So I’ll give you kind of a few anecdotes from what’s going on at 7. So everybody coming to the office in Boston usually four days a week beside Friday. Okay, it’s a flat organization. There is not layers of managers and this and that. Even the way that the R&D is built is small group. A lot of Claude Code can run super fast. They have the autonomy to make decision on the product and ship it to the customer. There is not red tape and layers of a lot of approval. We still have the product function, but it’s like the R&D is moving super fast. And I think that the fundamental change is with the concept of people that they are driven, the Plaid model, and I’ll explain. In the SaaS world, what you try to do as the owner of a company, you try to put the customer here and the R&D there, and to create the maximum layers between the customer and the R&D. So you had customer success, customer support, product, sales engineer, you try to make sure that the customer will never speak with your engineers because the engineers are the most precious thing and this is kind of the slowest thing that moving. So you need to make sure that they’re focused and separated too. The first thing that we did at 7, we took the customer and the engineers and plugged them together. So we have AI security engineers that we’re hiring here in Boston that’s speaking with the customer.
The AI security engineers can listen to the customer, understand what the customer need, in a three day cycle, develop that thing, test it, and ship it to production to the customer hands. We never had that capability before.
Keith Cline (26:50)
It’s fascinating. So ⁓ I’m smiling because I like it. So over the weekend, was listening to so Brian Halligan, founder of one of the co-founders of HubSpot and ⁓ he’s with Sequoia and does an amazing podcast called ⁓ Long Strange Trip and he had Jack Dorsey on from, he talked about block and how he has reduced 40 % of his workforce. And his goal is to make Block, a flat organization, they got rid of all titles. And he’s like, I think, you know, we’re not there yet, but I would like to have, you know, people being like two steps away from me in terms of reporting structure. Like if you think about most companies, it’s like layers and layers and layers. And they got rid of titles because now it’s like, I want people to be, ⁓ lead whatever they’re doing. And then they engage with our customers to talk about whatever that person does versus before customers would want to talk to the executive vice president of whatever that isn’t even the minutia of what that person’s working on, right? So anyways, it’s just what you’ve talked about is absolutely what he was referring to.
Lior Div (27:54)
Yeah, think about it. What is the new word? ⁓ Everybody is a builder. We’re builders. So even my executive, this is people I say, it’s like they were climbing the mountain, they reached to the peak of that mountain. They agree to come back and climb it again, not telling people how to climb it, literally climbing the mountain. So it’s like, I’m using Claude Code. My co-founder is coding every executive. For example, we’re not using a presentation.
Keith Cline (27:58)
Yep. Yep.
Lior Div (28:23)
Everything is through Claude Code. You say what is your idea. It’s creating kind of an HTML. You can present that thing, move on. And usually it’s already created what need to be in the website and to use in other ⁓ things inside the company. So it’s like the whole mindset of how you’re managing, how you’re pushing, what is giving motivation to people and leadership change in the dramatic way. We’re a big believer in leadership in every level. So it doesn’t matter if you are new to the workforce. So you’re 20 something, you just finished your university and you’re joining us or you’re 20 years in. It’s like leadership needs to be in every layer and every aspect of the organization. And we’re giving people the autonomy to basically giving it’s interesting. We’re not giving, we’re expecting that people will have the autonomy to operate. And it’s like we’re creating an ecosystem that enable them to do that and supporting them of doing it.
Keith Cline (29:24)
All right, so we talked about building products, servicing customers. How have things changed as it relates to the go-to-market function? When I think of 7AI, I immediately, you guys have a very, you have a brand, right? I feel it, right? You could feel this consistency of the way you guys produce content and everything you guys do. And then how are you thinking about go-to-market with your sales function and all that?
Lior Div (29:51)
Yeah, so this is the topic that I love the most. So people ask me, it’s like, hey, Lior it’s a new company. What are you guys building? And my response is we’re building a three-star Michelin restaurant in the field of cybersecurity. And people are, I thought that you’re in cyber, what? And I’ll explain how those two things are connected, okay?
So when you think something happened in restaurant that they understood long time ago that ingredient at least in the US is available to anybody. Everybody can buy any ingredient. Okay, so that’s not a differentiation. ⁓ Cooking, everybody can cook. ⁓ And cooking well, there is a lot that cooking well. So now when everything become commodity, what’s the difference between restaurant and you know, all of us will agree that there is difference between restaurant.
So the difference is that three-star Michelin restaurant, are like, okay, the quality is different. Okay. The consistency is different. The quality of service is different. The design is different. When you go in from the person that greeting you to the person that cooking in the and washing the dishes, there is some consistency in the way that they behave and the way that they are carrying themselves and the way that they think. And the place of the customer in this ecosystem that they build. So when you go in, you feel different immediately. You don’t even think about it, but you know that something different is going on there. So what we’re building in a very intentional way, and thank you for saying it, is this three-star Michelin ⁓ approach to the way that cybersecurity. I believe that code will be commodity.
Everybody can write code if not today a year from now, code did become commodity but the difference between company will be all of those things the consistency, the quality, the way that you behave to your customer, the way that you’re interacting with your customer. Are they your partners or are they your customers? It’s like, we feel that they are our partners. We’re building for them together with them. So there is a whole mindset shift of what you’re building and that has to translate to everything. It has to translate to the website, to the fabric that you give, t-shirts, to the way that the logo is written. So literally everything.
Keith Cline (32:21)
How did you come up with the name?
Lior Div (32:23)
That’s fascinating. We wanted something that it’s simple, memorable, but has a meaning. So 7AI ⁓ is like very memorable, very simple. But when you think about the translation of the number seven, and we were looking for something that it’s very basic. So when you think about the translation of the number seven in multiple cultures, it’s talking about the completion.
It’s talking about seven wonder. It’s talking about lucky number seven. So in every culture, it’s talking about usually the end, the completion, and elite. And this is kind of the way that we’re thinking about what we’re building here. So on one hand, it’s something very basic. It’s a number. On the other hand, carry a lot of weight with the responsibility that it’s carry. It has to be complete. So if we’re doing investigation, if we’re doing cyber, analysis, it’s like we have to get to the root of the thing and we have to solve the problem.
Keith Cline (33:25)
How are you thinking about hiring in this? So you’re building a native AI company. So ⁓ not a lot of native AI companies have been built, right? So how do you go about hiring for this type of company?
Lior Div (33:41)
Yeah, so first there is the skill and will. Two categories. The will part, we want people that wants to be part of the new wave of change. So we are, I’ll say it differently, we are, I feel that we’re lucky, to be honest, that we’re building a company from scratch. So we don’t need to take a current, let’s say, point of view or culture and change it. We can actually build it from the beginning to the end. So this is one. So when you think about it, it’s like you wanna bring people that in their mind, they wanna be part of this revolution that’s happening in AI and basically lead this revolution. So the will is very, very important. And then we’re looking to see if there is skills, but skills is… it’s not just, hey, can you code anymore? Or hey, can you sell? Skill goes to multiple things. For example, if you were an athlete and you were pushing your team and you were part of the team player, it’s like, okay, this is somebody that we want to be part of the 7AI team. So it’s like the skill and will is very, very important. And the most important thing is somebody that willing to be part of ever changing a situation. So if you are coming to us and say, hey, this is the title that I want and this is the realm of responsibility that I want. I will say, I’m not sure that I have it for you because things are moving and changing so fast. It’s not saying that we’re not pushing people and promoting people all the time, but it’s happening in a different way. It’s happening not in the corporate way that we used to see in the past.
Keith Cline (35:30)
And as far as growth this year, how many employees do you have and what functional areas are you hiring for?
Lior Div (35:36)
Yeah, so we started around 30 people this year. We’re going to end around 150. ⁓ The majority of them will be here in the city. So we’re hiring a lot. And you can think about it every aspect of what we are. It’s like R&D, product, marketing, ⁓ customer success.
Keith Cline (35:43)
Wow.
Lior Div (36:01)
all the GNA support structure, all the way from revenue operation to ⁓ lawyer. it’s like, it’s the whole thing because you need to build a company that have all the function in order to go big.
Keith Cline (36:15)
and you ⁓ moved into new space recently too, like the day I came to visit, was, I think you had just moved in recently.
Lior Div (36:22)
Yeah, so we’re in Back Bay ⁓ and we’re a big believer that it’s a great place to be because everybody can come ⁓ through the T or through ⁓ driving. ⁓ There is parking in the building, so it’s like no matter how you look at it, ⁓ it’s comfortable for everybody in every step in their career. ⁓ So it’s a pleasure place to be honest.
Keith Cline (36:50)
And then, like, what’s next for 7AI?
Lior Div (36:53)
Yeah, so it’s really taking what we are building and put it in the hand of the customers. At the end of the day, the number one criteria, are you successful or not? It’s not just how fast you’re growing and how many people is, are you changing the life of those customers that you give them this product? Are those customers become more protected as a result of 7AI? And if the answer is yes, and if you can help them push the bad guys to go to a different attack, somebody else, you’re doing your job. And basically, this is the job that we’re chasing every day to make sure that our customer base are the most protected that there is right now in the US, and later on, you know, we’re gonna extend outside of the US as well.
Keith Cline (37:44)
All right, so if I’m a technical founder and I’ve got a great idea that I think I can raise some capital and scale a company, what do you think are the most important skills that a person needs to be to lead a company and be a successful CEO?
Lior Div (38:00)
Yeah, it’s a great question, but I think something around growth mindset and the ability to understand the situation, assess and change and change and change. Cause think about, I was a CEO of a thousand plus organization and started from zero. Starting from zero, meaning it’s Yonatan and myself sitting in a room and literally writing code, ⁓ ideating and literally doing the work hands-on. So if you’re not willing to do the work hands-on and really understand that your job will change every two months in a significant way, it’s like you’re not the right person for it. But if you do and you feel comfortable in an uncomfortable situation, then you’re gonna keep evolving and evolving and evolving and evolving. And that’s very important.
Keith Cline (38:55)
Well, we talked earlier about building a company in Boston and 7AI is part of the Mass AI Coalition, which is an amazing effort that Ryan Durkin is pulling off. it’s just in short amount of time, it’s been extraordinary. And I’m just excited for what’s to come. So what would you tell entrepreneurs about building a company in Boston?
Lior Div (39:16)
Yes. So from my point of view, Boston is a fantastic ecosystem to build a company in, like really fantastic. And now that we brought kind of ⁓ all the strong companies that actually focusing on AI together. And by the way, this is a calling to anybody that did not join yet to be part of it because it’s really about the community. But you bring all the smart people and we have a lot of them here in Boston. I think that there is no reason for Boston not to start leading this effort in the ecosystem of building cool companies, big companies, unicorns and above. We have the talent, we have the ecosystem, we have the ability and now we’re sharing data in multiple kind of ways. for example, my, ⁓ my co-founder, CTO, he is leading right now kind of what’s next about AI, how to build an R&D in a good way. So he has a small version of the coalition with the key CTOs to share this note. But this is just one effort out of, I believe, nine or 10 that’s happening right now that it’s fantastic. I think that this is the place to go. I chose.
Keith Cline (40:28)
know,
well, it’s perfect timing too, because there is this movement and the foundation’s already there. It’s not like you’re trying to build something from scratch where it’s like, well, we don’t have the schools, we don’t have the investors. no, all these things already exist. It just needs to come together. And the part with the schools, the students didn’t know that there were companies in their backyard. And that’s our fault, meaning there wasn’t enough engagement with the students. But this is radically changing that because I’m part of one of the task forces that is called Anchor that is making sure there’s tech tracks in Boston, not just San Francisco and New York where the kids would go and see Anthropic and all these companies. I’m like, why don’t they go to companies here in Boston? So that’s changing. There’s multiple tech tracks happening for MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Northeastern, BU kids, right? there’s a lot.
Lior Div (41:21)
Yeah, it’s not about asking why or look at it at the rear mirror. I don’t care about it. It’s like it’s really about going forward. And I’m saying it’s like once we decided as a community that we’re going all in, in order to make Boston the hub for AI. Let’s go. We have everything. And to be honest, what we’re doing on a daily basis, we’re literally doing it and we’re reap the benefit out of doing it because right now I think that there is the talent that we have right now. It’s like they’re happy. They’re happy because they’re touching the cutting edge technology that exists right now. And that thing is not just happening on the West Coast. And by the way, but we’re collaborating with a lot of companies on the West Coast to make sure that there is symbiotic informational exchange between us and them to make sure that everything that’s going on, they’re happening here. So it’s like, think about what we’re doing. And I think that we are doing it very well, is to be on the beat and to be kind of and understand what’s fresh, what’s happening, what’s happening today, not last week, today and making sure that that thing is propagated here to the community.
Keith Cline (42:33)
Alright, some rapid fire questions here. Three apps you can’t live without can’t be Slack, email, or your calendar.
Lior Div (42:40)
Ooh, so I’m very dyslectic, so it’s not email. So, so I think that today, ⁓ it’s probably Claude everything, code, cloud, it’s like Claude everything. It’s shortened the time to do so much. For somebody like me, it’s like, okay, do this, write this, move this. It’s like just a fantastic.
Keith Cline (42:56)
Yeah.
Are you, is it branching over into like, okay, let me, I think I need to this question into the fold of this interview. How are you using it to manage your job as a CEO running a company or maybe your personal life? Like how are you leveraging these platforms?
Lior Div (43:19)
Yeah, so by now it’s fully integrated to everything. All the way to the way that we think about marketing, all the way to outreach to people, all the way to managing my calendar, all the way to everything that I’m doing.
And the nice thing about it, it’s like if in the past you look at it and say, okay, this is a CEO, CEO has an executive assistant, and then there is more people that supporting a CEO, that thing disappear. I don’t have any of those things. We shrink that thing. It’s a flat organization. Multiple people have access to my calendar. I have access to other people calendar. And we as a group can operate very fast together. And there is a lot AI in the mix in order to support all of those things. So it’s like by now it’s fully integrated to our day to day. So it’s not only, hey, AI do this, people do that. No, it’s like the part, the way that we’re doing everything.
Keith Cline (44:18)
Alright, how about podcast book recommendation for entrepreneurs?
Lior Div (44:22)
Okay, ⁓ if you have dyslexic children, read the Dyslexic Advantage. This is the only book that talking about why dyslexia is actually a good thing that will give them an unfair advantage and not just a disadvantage because the disadvantage they already know. So this is one. And the other one is a book that I believe still relevant called Mindset. They’re talking about growth mindset.
And if you’re not aware of this concept, this is something that I believe everybody needs to be aware. It’s really talking about what do you do when things are not going the way that you want them to do and how you are adopt and change and embrace change as part of your being. And I think that those days when AI changing everything around us so fast, it’s actually even more important.
Keith Cline (45:15)
Alright, what do you like to do for fun outside of work when you have time?
Lior Div (45:18)
I’m trying to spend time with my kids as much and I’m painting, but that’s a different story. Yeah, big acrylic and mixed media. So it’s different aspect.
Keith Cline (45:21)
Right.
You paint. Like canvas painting?
Yeah, but obviously ⁓ I’m sure that’s something you enjoy in terms of the creative element and just being in that mindset.
Lior Div (45:42)
Yeah, I believe that creativity is crucial to what we’re doing right now because the ability to implement things become, the barrier of entry become lower. So it’s really about the imagination. Where do you want to take it? And if you can imagine big and if you can think about novel ideas, you probably can implement them those days.
Keith Cline (46:05)
I love it. Well, Lior, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through your background story, obviously all the great work you’ve been doing with the team at 7AI, and obviously all the great advice along the way.
Lior Div (46:14)
Thank you so much. Pleasure as always.