Are there common pitfalls that you see people, the, the mistakes that people make that sort of sink their hopes, their chances?

I think, uh, every, every pitch is not about, you know, a VC pitch.

I don't really need to know the history of the company.

I don't need to know the lineage of every one of your founders.

Uh, get to the point.

What, what problem are you solving for the customer? How big of a problem it is, and, and how does it work? Uh, I think customers wanna get to past the slides, show me the demo, show me the POV.

And so one of the questions I ask quite often, and you'll hear me in a lot of my interviews, is, what's the moment when the customer says, "I get it", when you do your presentation? Skip everything before that [laughs] and go right to that, right? Because that's really where, where the traction happens.

What do you bring to the startups in terms of the, the spectrum of support that they get when they partner up with Microsoft?

For whatever you love, infinite worlds await at the most magical place on Earth, Walt Disney World Resort.

[upbeat music] Kevin McGee is Global Director of Cybersecurity Startups at Microsoft for Startups.

But this week at the RSAC Conference, Kevin is my intern.

What's your name, please?

It's great to talk to you today.

today.So it's Kevin the intern coming live from the streets of San Francisco, and because I'm an intern, I don't have much of a budget, but luckily the Arm Cyber van is passing out free burritos.

So I'm here scrounging burritos.

Tell me, uh, who you are and what do you do?

We have not been able to spring for an all-access pass for you, so you actually do end up spending a lot of time out on the sidewalk in front of the building, [laughs] but, uh, but it's g- good, good conversations out there.

I think, uh, one of the great things about RSA is there's so many different types of people: practitioners, vendors, startups, um, just, just a wide range of people to talk to, and to be able to cover some of the stories that maybe don't get the coverage of the mainstream media or aren't getting the big press releases is kind of fun, um, to have those conversations on the floor and see what's happening.

And everyone responds pretty well, uh, to the Kevin the intern, um, approach to interviewing as well too.

Is, is that part of your mission at the show to skulk around the, the corners of the show floor, finding that next startup who's gonna really take their place?

Absolutely.

I kinda think we're at the end of a cycle, so we've secured the cloud now.

You know, the Wiz applic- um, acquisition's probably that high-water mark for that phase.

And we're noo- moving to a new phase where all of these AI companies that have come up with something new and exciting, there's gonna be a, a rush of security companies to come and secure this new era of the AI era, so I'm gonna be on the lookout for what's new, what is exciting, uh, what's coming, and probably securing technologies that didn't exist three months ago or I'd never heard of.