Anant Shrivastava, security practitioner and founder of Cyfinoid Research, treats a career as a notebook rather than a universal playbook. In this conversation he connects his move into cybersecurity with a nuanced view of certifications, three attempts at entrepreneurship, and the practical landmines that technical founders encounter when a useful project must become a viable business.
Anant’s security career began around 2010, after roughly two years in a server administration role. He already spent his time defending systems but did not want a career devoted entirely to programming, so he became curious about the other side of the equation. A role involving security operations, log monitoring, and automation gave him the challenge he was looking for and established his direction in information security.
Entrepreneurship was familiar from childhood because his father ran a workshop, exposing Anant to both the gains and difficulties of independent business. His own path, however, was not a single decisive leap.
Anant’s provocative view is that CISSP can be useful because it introduces a broad vocabulary across information security and appears in many job requirements. Specialized qualifications such as OSCP serve a different purpose by going deeply into a narrower area. Yet he does not recommend collecting credentials by default. They make sense when a missing certificate blocks a role or when an employer needs it and will fund it.
He urges companies to find technically capable people and pay for the required certification rather than limiting recruitment to people who already hold it. Exam performance reveals whether someone could produce expected answers at that moment; it does not necessarily demonstrate practical competence. The learner’s goal matters too: a brain optimizing to pass an exam may not optimize to understand the subject.
Anant’s first attempt came in 2009 after graduating into an uncertain employment market. He and friends explored an automation and access-control idea for internet cafes, but the effort lasted only a few months before he returned to employment. In 2014 he tried again through freelancing. That version generated meaningful income for about a year and a half, then ended when a major client invited him to join what became NotSoSecure.
He began a third attempt in 2021. This time he describes the goal as a lifestyle business rather than a growth business. The distinction clarifies motivation: a growth company seeks continuing expansion in headcount, clients, geography, and revenue, while a lifestyle business is designed around a different measure of success. Neither model is automatically superior, but a founder should know which one is being built.
Anant’s practical operating rule is to promise less than the maximum he believes he can produce. People tend to estimate optimistically and then commit at that limit. Committing to a realistic subset creates room to deliver reliably and, when conditions allow, exceed expectations without depending on perfect execution.
The first landmine is assuming that a solution to the founder’s own problem is something other people will pay to use. Solving a problem and finding a buyer are separate tests. The second is assuming technology is the whole business. For a technical founder, building the product may represent only a small fraction of the work; sales, marketing, finance, customer communication, and sometimes fundraising require different skills and different language.
An open-source audience does not automatically become a customer base, and paid customers bring expectations unlike free users. Each founder’s conditions differ, so Anant repeatedly cautions that there is no fixed sequence guaranteed to work.
The thread connecting his advice is honesty with oneself. A company does not have to pursue maximum growth, serve everyone, or claim an altruistic purpose. Making money is a legitimate motivation when the founder acknowledges it. Friends can influence a decision too, but the person making it should understand why. The danger is not choosing an unconventional goal; it is disguising the real one from yourself.
