admin “The ultimate quality of leadership is integrity. No real success is possible without it,” expressed Ainsley Braun, Co-founder & CEO of Tinfoil Security. Tinfoil Security is a SaaS company that provides cybersecurity tools tailored to DevOps teams. They create the most comprehensive and usable security products on the market, by focusing on developers and integrating the security process into the DevOps and development processes.
Great leaders never fear people better than themselves. They embrace differences and help strengthen them. “I believe every employee that joins Tinfoil should equal or increase the average of the team. Eventually, I should be the worst employee. Along the way, a great leader will provide the tools and help needed for those strong employees to get even stronger,” says Ainsley.
Trigger for Tinfoil
Ainsley got into security serendipitously. Her research in college was in cognitive vision, understanding who and what you’re looking at in the world. After graduation, she was hoping to work on facial recognition but ended up on a team doing security consulting.
When asking her about a project that forced her to be innovative and creative, she expressed, “Every day is filled with innovation and creativity. Starting a company has to be creative, or you’ve lost from the start. In the early days, we often had to think through unique ways to get eyes on the company and to gain trust in the industry. We’d proactively find and disclose vulnerabilities, as a part of the research, to gather information on what our customers truly needed.”
Adept Internet Security
Ainsley Braun is the Cofounder and CEO at Tinfoil. She earned two Bachelor of Science degrees from MIT in 2010; one in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the other in Writing. She holds four patents (with one more pending), and has published two scientific papers in Cognitive Vision.
Ainsley is also a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), which represents more than 400 of Silicon Valley’s most respected employers on issues, programs and campaigns that affect the economic health and quality of life in Silicon Valley. She is also a Board Member of the Women in Cybersecurity council at California Technology Council (CTC). Ainsley also works heavily with StartX, mentoring teams as a Neighborhood Lead, sitting on the Female Founders Board, and as a part of their Selection Committee. Lastly, she is also a co-captain of the Samurai Capture The Flag (CTF) team, which won the DEF CON CTF tournament in 2012.
‘Mother Is Inspiration’
Ainsley’s greatest inspiration is her mother. Her mother is brilliant at understanding new situations and is always asking why. Similarly, Ainsley is driven by extreme curiosity every day. She further added if not learning something new every day, she doesn’t feel successful.
Fear: ‘Leaving the World Without an Impact’
When asked about her greatest fear, Ainsley said leaving this world without having made an impact is the greatest fear. “Our entire team cares about our community, and I take our values personally. We’re trying to make the internet more secure, one business at a time”. She added, “Personally, I love to volunteer my time with multiple causes, including animal welfare, getting more women in security, and feeding the hungry. I manage any fears by taking a deep breath, removing as much emotion from the problem as possible, and breaking the problem into smaller pieces. It’s easier to tackle small pieces with logic than it is to tackle overwhelming problem that instills fear.”
‘Failures Are Great Lessons’
While asking about what she would do differently if she got the chance to restart her career, Ainsley said she would hope to have the common sense to focus on product-market fit earlier, but she feels every mistake they’ve made has been a learning experience. She thinks that we can’t learn without failure.
Reliability Builds Credence With Customers
Ainsley gives credit to the Tinfoil support team for building a strong customer base. Tinfoil’s support team is keen to acknowledge issues quickly and addresses each issue with a concrete solution. They genuinely care about every single customer.
Trust Yourself: Encouraging for Women
Ainsley’s advice to other women is trust yourself. According to Ainsley, women are stronger than how the media portrays them. And she suggests women shouldn’t be afraid of finding a strong voice in a field where they tend to be disadvantaged. Trust your gut and don’t be afraid to show your technical knowledge. Catching people off guard and surprising them will always give you the upper hand.
Her advice for women entrepreneurs, “Don’t wait. There are so many support networks for female founders now. You’ll be fine. The worst that can happen is you’ll end up exactly back where you are today, but with 10000x the amount of knowledge as before.”
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