From Hacking to Marketing

Technology moves humanity forward when it has two ingredients: demand and supply. It gets stuck somewhere when either item is missing. With supply, you make things possible. With demand, people have a reason to go for it. Of course, this is an oversimplification, there are dozens of other factors. But as a mental framework for thinking about why some technologies take off and others don’t, it’s been useful for me.

Think of the browser on which you read this post. It is one of the most sophisticated technologies out there. Some even say it is more complicated than operating systems. It makes everyone’s life easier because it is simple and serves its purpose well. So, it ticks both demand and supply and moves humanity forward.

Think of the Metaverse, NFTs, smart glasses and crypto projects. Such projects raised billions of dollars in investment. However, while there was initial excitement and speculative demand, the real underlying demand, people actually wanting to use these things in their daily lives, wasn’t there. Or at least, the execution was so poor that whatever demand existed got killed by bad user experiences and obvious cash grabs. The technology was there, but the product market fit wasn’t.

Think of space travel, one of the most common childhood dreams. Most people would love to go to space, so there is demand for it. But is there a feasible technology that allows you to achieve this childhood dream? No, not for 99.9999917229% of humans. We’re talking about maybe a few thousand people worldwide who can realistically afford it, even though there are millions who want to experience it.

I used to do web application security. I did bug bounties, which were a lot of fun and challenging as hell. I also earned my bachelor’s in information systems and technologies. I’d say I’ve developed some understanding of security, even though it is still a drop in the ocean. But that is only the supply side of the equation. In other words, it is just being able to create minimum viable products.

I want to start my own company in the near future. For that, I need to work on both elements of the equation to create something that moves humanity forward, in whatever way I can.

That’s why I’m now focusing on understanding the demand side of the equation. There are probably other ways to learn about market demand such as product management, sales, customer success… But I chose marketing because it forces you to get into the minds of your audience. That’s why I’m switching my primary focus from hacking to marketing. That is a difficult choice because I am leaving years of experience, better pay, and a more advanced career on the table and starting from scratch in an irrelevant field. However, the long term focus should be balanced to go after big goals. Otherwise, I am not in the best position to grasp and draw the bigger picture.

I consider myself lucky and prepared to go after this. Because the technical part of hacking is actually just an infinite experimentation cycle. Run a payload, analyze the response, think of new ways, and do it again and again. That is what makes a cyber security analyst a hacker. Over time, running that many experiments on an infinitely large number of scenarios, which were developed by many different people, helps you build this hacker mindset. After a while, you become able to find vulnerabilities even before opening your computer, as it is a mindset.

Hacking is an interchangeable term for breaking patterns and finding unusual ways of doing things. I’m not speaking of finding new bypass methods or attack vectors. I’m speaking of the broader term of hacking, which applies to everything everywhere. That mindset of finding unusual approaches is what I’m hoping will transfer to understanding markets and customers.

I would not argue that marketing is the most fascinating thing I want to learn. Not a chance, especially after AI. But I’ve realized that building something nobody wants is worse than not building at all. I’ve seen too many brilliant technical projects die because nobody knew they existed or understood their value. Lacking these skills is simply leaving what I build to the void. Because in an age of so much information and such short attention spans, nobody will spend hours understanding things and seeing the benefit for them and convince themselves to pay you. So while marketing might not excite me the way cyber security does, it’s become a necessary skill for the bigger goals I’m chasing.

I don’t see this as a “from… to…”. That’s why I’m not seeing this as a change in my path. It is more like creating another line in my path. So that I can move more freely and faster. And if I fail, it is not the end of the world. I would still have worked on my hacker mindset, and staying up to date with the newest technical methods is a thing that I’m already used to doing.

That is a calculated risk I’m taking with my career. Let’s see how it plays out.