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Our story, mission, and dedicated team
Our passionate team believes in protecting people from those who would use their information against them.
The story behind Picnic
For decades, the promise of big data was on the horizon as a means to make sense out of our digital chaos.
The big data wave crested and crashed: there is more data at the fingertips of any human than anytime in history – all you need is a smartphone and the internet. While there are many positives associated with such rapid innovation, a dangerous current cuts through our online world: hackers also use big data tools to make cents from the digital chaos.
Until now, the cybersecurity industry has done what it knows how to do best: harden infrastructure.
By locking hackers out of systems, traditional cybersecurity vendors tried to stem the tide of attacks. We are at an inflection point: further hardening of infrastructure is a losing battle, because hackers know that they only need to trick a human to defeat the most powerful technical solutions.
The human operating system is fallible.
Love, fear, curiosity, and other emotions present potential ways that we can be manipulated, and personal information about each of us tells hackers what our passions and concerns are. This fundamental situation is the reason the social engineering problem is so challenging to resolve, and has remained such a threat.
The world digitized faster than society ever imagined.
Working to secure the human OS and protect good people from bad actors.
Recognizing that our own data trails are being used against us, and that humans are vulnerable to exploitation, Picnic’s founders realized that the solution to the social engineering problem – the way to protect people from those who would use their information against them – is to think like a hacker, to focus on harnessing the power of information for good, and to provide people with the technological means to reduce their visibility and accessibility to social engineers by controlling their data footprint. Our team was built to achieve this.
Matt Polak
Chief Executive Officer
Matt is a subject matter expert in intelligence collection, having spent his career applying these skills to intractable growth and competitive strategy challenges for Fortune 500 customers. Matt’s extensive experience and expertise in the field of human intelligence inspired Picnic’s creation as a means to protect people from open-source intelligence gathering by hackers.
Prior to founding Picnic, he was the founding partner of BroadBranch Advisors where he directly supported over $200B of successful M&A transactions in over a dozen industries ranging from cybersecurity to life sciences. Early career roles included working in investment banking and as an intelligence analyst. Matt holds dual MBAs from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Escuela de Negocios de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile). He received his BA in International Affairs from James Madison University.
Michael Hans
VP of Engineering
Troy Roberts
VP of Sales
Troy Roberts is a proven sales leader with over twenty years of experience and expertise in enterprise software, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. He is a committed “servant leader” who is passionate about elevating the performance of his teams and enabling them to achieve exceptional results.
Parag Baxi
VP of Product
Parag has over 15 years of experience in cybersecurity, product management, product engineering, and scalable organizational growth from startup to IPO.
Manit Sahib
Director of Global Threat Intelligence
Manit is a Certified Red Teamer and Expert Social Engineer. Formerly Head of Red Teaming for the UK’s central bank, Manit now leads Picnic’s Global Threat Intelligence function, building the attacker mindset and techniques into the Picnic product line.
Sara Trammell
Director of Marketing
Sara is an award-winning marketing leader with over 15 years of experience fusing strategy, technology, and creativity to help leading organizations in the commercial, professional services, and agency spaces forge and amplify their brands in the marketplace, with a focus on driving growth and delivering quantifiable results for clients.
Marco Gomez
Chief of Staff
With over 10 years of experience solving challenges across the private, public, and non-profit sectors, Marco is a strategy consultant at heart with a deep interest and expertise in technology, data, and cybersecurity.
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