
From Fintech Founder to Cyber Investor with Chris Zadeh | Cyber Security District
Cyber Security DistrictShow Notes
In this episode of Cyber Security District, we speak with Chris Zadeh, serial entrepreneur, fintech pioneer, angel investor, and author. Chris was founder and CEO of Ohpen, one of the first cloud-native core banking platforms in Europe, orchestrating more than €100 billion in financial flows. After building and scaling Ohpen for ten years, he exited and shifted his focus to investing, launching a dedicated cybersecurity fund and his own investment vehicle. From growing up without financial privilege to becoming one of the early digital banking pioneers at Binck in the Netherlands, Chris shares an unfiltered look at execution, obsession, discipline, and what it truly takes to win in regulated markets. Now Chris is investing in cybersecurity startups, Chris explains what he looks for in founders, why AI is reshaping risk and compliance, and why Europe must rethink digital sovereignty. In this episode, we cover:
Chris’ founder journey: from Binck Bank scale-up years to building Ohpen for 10 years What “security-first” looks like in fintech, non-negotiables, resilience, and trust with enterprise buyers Execution culture, exceeding expectations, hiring for discipline, and why culture beats product The shift to investing and why he started a cyber fund and what he looks for in founders What’s next in AI-driven risk, compliance + security convergence, and Europe’s digital sovereignty challenge
Timestamps:00:00 – Intro00:14 – Meet Chris Zadeh01:59 – Growing up without financial safety nets03:14 – Joining BinckBank at 2306:52 – Scaling to market dominance08:57 – Wanting to sit at the decision-making table11:36 – Early infrastructure and security lessons14:18 – A firewall shutdown incident17:55 – Leaving to build Open18:48 – The vision for cloud-native core banking22:29 – 744 pages of rejection before first contract27:14 – Migrating €15B live28:09 – Security as non-negotiable32:15 – Hiring discipline and execution mindset35:05 – Culture: exceed expectations or leave37:35 – The cost of extreme execution41:21 – Transitioning to investing44:27 – Why he rejects the “solo entrepreneur” myth49:35 – Launching the cybersecurity fund51:16 – AI, compliance, and new cyber opportunities58:55 – European cloud sovereignty01:04:03 – Signal message to CSOs: stay curious01:06:00 – Outro Connect with the guest:Chris Zadeh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriszadeh/Dark Red (Cyber Fund): https://www.darkred.at/ Follow Cyber Security District:Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/All channels & newsletter: https://beacons.ai/cybersecuritydistrict
More from Cyber Security District
Your organisation has 143 security tools and still doesn’t know what to fix first. Sound familiar? In this episode, host Jeroen Prinse sits down with Anuj Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Gambit Cyber. Anuj spent over 12 years in threat intelligence at iSight, FireEye, Mandiant, and Intel 471, and kept running into the same problem: the intelligence was good, but nobody could operationalize it. That gap is what Gambit Cyber was built to close. They dig into Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), why it’s a program and not a tool, what AI-native really means in security and the uncomfortable question of who is accountable when an autonomous system gets it wrong. In this episode:
The Rise of Identity-Based Attacks with Olivier Eyries | Saporo What if you could see your entire attack surface the way a hacker does and fix it before they strike? In this episode, hosts Laurens Jagt sit down with Olivier Eyries, co-founder and CEO of Saporo, one of Switzerland's fastest-growing cybersecurity startups. Saporo helps organisations stop hackers by identifying and eliminating identity risks before attackers can exploit them. Olivier is a serial entrepreneur with two previous ventures under his belt, including one sold to Proofpoint in 2021. He and his co-founders built what he calls a "Google Maps for cybersecurity": a graph-based platform that maps every attack path, every permission, and every identity risk across an organisation's environment. In this conversation, he breaks down why identity-based attacks have exploded, what AI agents mean for the attack surface, and why fixing one permission can block millions of potential attack paths. In this episode:
What if your infrastructure was built secure from minute one and stayed that way? In this special one year anniversary episode of Cyber Security District, host Jeroen Prinse sits back down with Mahdi Abdulrazak (CEO) and Kim van Lavieren (CTO) of Dawnguard, a security automation platform that turns approved security architecture directly into deployable cloud infrastructure as code. One year in, having just closed a pre-seed round and raised €6.3 million in total funding and opening a new office in New York, Dawnguard is making a bold bet: that the only real answer to modern cyber threats isn't better detection or faster patching, it's building systems that are resilient by design from the very start. Mahdi and Kim have both led security teams inside large organisations and lived through the same recurring nightmare: architecture locked in too early, security reviews arriving too late and a list of 50 findings that nobody has time to fix before the product ships. Dawnguard was built to break that cycle, with a collaborative canvas that lets teams design, validate and deploy secure infrastructure in minutes, with continuous drift detection to make sure it stays that way. One year on, we look back at how far that idea has come and what's next as the company expands. Key Takeaways:
What does it take to build a cybersecurity company not once, but twice from the ground up? In this episode of Cyber Security District, we sit down with Francisco Nina Rente, one of Portugal's most accomplished cybersecurity entrepreneurs. Francisco started his journey as a teenager tinkering with computers and quickly found his way into ethical hacking and open-source security communities. That curiosity became a career, which then led to a company. His first venture grew from a university incubator into a 250-person operation delivering services across 22 countries, before being acquired by a global security group. After years scaling that business from the inside and taking on roles as country manager, CTO and board member, Francisco stepped away to build again. This time, the mission is clearer: help organisations stop just detecting threats and start truly recovering from them. Art Resilia was born out of a conviction that the market was shifting from cybersecurity to cyber resilience, and Francisco positioned the company right at the centre of that shift. Key Takeaways:
What if you could clone your best cybersecurity consultant and put them to work on five engagements at once? In this episode of Cyber Security District, we sit down with Leslie Clement and Erie Berhitu, co-founders of Clember AI, an EU-first, AI-native platform built to automate the repetitive, time-consuming work that holds cybersecurity consultants back. Both Leslie and Erie spent years grinding through the same manual loops at major consultancy firms document analysis, gap assessments, risk reports, roadmaps before deciding enough was enough. Rather than build another consulting firm or hire more headcount, they built a platform. Clember AI now enables security consultants to run five or more client engagements simultaneously, with consistent, high-quality output every time. And they did it entirely bootstrapped, no VC, no investor pressure, just product-market fit and a clear-eyed vision of where cybersecurity consulting is heading. In this episode, we explore: