About this episode
What happens when you take a longtime security pro and turn her into a venture capitalist? We find out in the 4th installment of our investor series when we interview Dr. Chenxi Wang, fresh off her 1 year anniversary starting Rain Capital. The beginning of our interview showcases the grasp of our market that makes Chenxi such a sought-after partner-- we go deep into the transformation of app sec, poking at fuzzing vs. static analysis, package vs. code level analysis and how the network-centric roots of the security may be impeding our progress. We do a brief retrospective on Kubecon before diving into her reflections on being a full-time investor, starting with what separates an angel from a true venture capitalist. Chenxi explains what sucks about being a VC (spoiler alert: it’s fund-raising) and how she’s using Rain to chip away at the longstanding diversity problem in the security industry. Before hitting our usual hype-o-meter and speed round questions, we discuss exactly how she ended up on the board of directors for a logistics company based out of North Dakota.
Special thanks to Chenxi for doing this not once but twice with us due to tech errors with the initial recording.
Meet our guest
Dr. Chexi Wang
General Partner, Rain Capital
About Chenxi
Dr. Chenxi Wang is the founder and General Partner of Rain Capital, a Cyber focused venture fund. Previously, Chenxi was Chief Strategy Officer at Twistlock, VP of strategy at Intel, and VP of Research at Forrester. Chenxi was named by SC Magazine a 2016 Women of Influence, and served as the program chair (Security & Privacy) for the 2016 and 2017 Grace Hopper Conference. Chenxi’s career began as a faculty member teaching Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Chenxi has keynoted events worldwide and been featured by top media outlets. Chenxi holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia.
