From Exit to Restart: How Torq’s Repeat Founders are Reimagining the Future of Security Operations

In this episode of Notable Perspectives, we sit down with Ofer Smadari, co-founder and CEO of Torq. Cybersecurity is in the midst of a massive transformation, and Torq is setting the pace.

Ofer has built and sold a cybersecurity company for over $200 million. But he still had that founder hunger and urge to build — this time even bigger. Cut to today, Torq has recently announced a $140 million Series D and a valuation of over $1 billion. This is the story of what happens when a serial founder refuses to settle.

Episode Summary

Hear how Torq’s founding team went from a previous exit to building one of the most ambitious platforms in modern cybersecurity. In this episode, we dig into:

• The Pivot That Built Torq: Why the team shut down their original product and redirected their technology toward cybersecurity automation after realizing adoption wasn’t there.
• The Alert Fatigue Problem: How security teams are overwhelmed by alerts and why automation is essential to eliminate operational noise and scale security operations.
• Modernizing the SOC: Why legacy security platforms were built for on-prem environments and how Torq’s open, SaaS-first platform enables faster integrations and automation.
• AI in Security Operations: From no-code automation to AI-driven investigation agents that perform analyst-level tasks and accelerate threat response.
• Founder Trust and Velocity: How strong co-founder relationships, decisive leadership, and trust across teams enabled rapid pivots and global growth.