Announcing Cyb3rSyn Labs!

After 23 years of specialization at the intersection of cybersecurity and software development, I'm diving head-first into entrepreneurship! 

While fully acknowledging proximal causes and narrative fallacy at play, it feels like my entire life has led me to this very moment. 

The first eight years of my career was being a cybersecurity vendor/consultant to many large (financial services) companies across the globe - I traveled a lot, met new people and had loads of fun - but the work eventually left me very ungratified.

Why?

I didn’t know if I really moved the security needle. I wanted to know if any of my "recommendations" actually worked... Even if it did, at what cost? What were the long-term consequences? What about the unintended consequences? 

In other words, I wanted to be in the shoes of my customer and take long-term ownership and accountability of security programs. And that's exactly what I did, by spending the next 11 years at a fast growing Fortune 500 FinTech firm in various leadership roles - but mostly focussed on and accountable for product security. 

That's where I took my red pill and learned the most profound lessons in complexity and systemic thinking. A ton of unlearning ensued. 

Inspired by the practical theorist, Kurt Lewin and the late Charlie Munger, I then started learning various fundamental insights, principles and heuristics from various disciplines - psychology, sociology, biology, cybernetics, complexity, systems thinking, philosophy, epistemology, etc. and experimented with them in different complex systems (including myself) over the past several years. 

These real-world experiments and learnings coupled with a lot of coaching, mentoring and consulting on the side have given me the confidence to now jump into entrepreneurship!

Announcing my new startup - Cyb3rSyn Labs: 

Cyb3rSyn is a leetspeak nod to Project CyberSyn, architected by Stafford Beer, the father of Management Cybernetics. The word CyberSyn  is a portmanteau of the words 'Cybernetics' and 'Synergy'. 

My new startup will be in the business of promoting multidisciplinary thinking in our society. Its immediate focus will be to help accelerate the transition away from mainstream management practices and build a new generation of entrepreneurs and leaders for the 21st century. 

The startup is a crusade against Taylorism, reductionism and our blind chasing of efficiency. It will not trade code, but trade ideas! 

I will build here in public with a portfolio of small experiments. I’ll spend the next few months connecting with many of you and listening to your feedback and inputs. 

As its founder, I hope to learn the most profound lessons about intervening in complex systems!

This is my experiment #1 - The Cyb3rSyn Newsletter. It will provide actionable insights and guidance to aspiring and passionate managers and entrepreneurs. More details in the next post!

Subscribe and share this link with your friends! Onwards…