From Hacking to Marketing

Technology moves humanity forward when it has two ingredients: capability and accessibility. It gets stuck somewhere when either item is missing. With capability, you make things possible. With accessibility, you give people a reason to go for it.

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 surfing the internet technically possible. It also makes everyone’s life easier because it is simple and serves its purpose well. So, it ticks both capability and accessibility and moves humanity forward.

Think of supersonic flights, notably the Concorde. It was an ambitious engineering project. However, the lack of accessibility made it impossible to pursue the idea, as it was not commercially sustainable and there was not enough demand for it, despite the capability being there.

Think of space travel, one of the most common childhood dreams. Most people want to go to space, so there is demand for it. But is there a technology that allows you to achieve this childhood dream? No, not for 99.9999917229% of humans.

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.

So far, I have learned a lot about the technical side of cybersecurity, even though it is still a drop in the ocean. But that is only the capability side of the equation.

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 accessibility side of the equation. 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 money, 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 cybersecurity researcher 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 because 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.

I would not argue that marketing is the most fascinating thing I want to learn. Not a chance, especially after AI. But it allows me to understand what people want to hear, how they want to hear it and through what medium. 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.

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.