About this episode

Mark McClain discusses how incumbents in cybersecurity can survive and thrive in the age of AI.

This episode of Inside the Network is unique because it is our very first show recorded live on the RSAC 2026 stage in front of security leaders, startup founders, and identity experts. For this episode, we had the privilege of sitting down with one of the most accomplished founders in cybersecurity, founder and CEO of SailPoint, Mark McClain. Cybersecurity is not an easy market to take a company public, and only the most successful founders have the opportunity to take a company public just once. Mark on the other hand has taken the same company public twice. He created the identity governance category from scratch, grew the company into a global identity security leader with more than $1 billion in ARR, over 3,000 employees, and customers across nearly half of the Fortune 500, took it public in 2017, private again with Thoma Bravo in a multi-billion-dollar transaction, and then back to the public markets in 2025. This episode explores one of the biggest questions in cybersecurity today: how do incumbents survive and win in the age of AI? Mark shares how large cybersecurity companies think about innovation, disruption, and adaptation in a world that’s changing faster than ever…

People in this episode

Host: Inside the Network Pod

Guest: Mark McClain

Topics covered

• cybersecurity
• AI
• identity governance
• innovation
• disruption
• entrepreneurship

Keywords

• cybersecurity
• identity security
• AI
• entrepreneurship
• public markets
• innovation
• disruption

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: SailPoint, Thoma Bravo

Books & works: Inside the Network

Places: Fortune 500

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• Dean Sysman: Betting on a boring problem and scaling Axonius past $100M ARR · November 27, 2025 · 1h 16m
• Tomer Weingarten: From cyber outsider to building SentinelOne into a $1B ARR category leader · October 21, 2025 · 1h 11m
• Sumit Dhawan: Leading Proofpoint’s AI evolution and building toward $5B in ARR · September 15, 2025 · 54 min

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