This month industry veteran Erik Dasque joined Allure Security as CTO and dove right in executing on his vision of fostering a good engineering culture, reducing technical debt, and delivering customer value. Erik brings more than 20 years of experience building and leading engineering and product teams at public companies and numerous startup ventures and has overseen multiple acquisition integrations. Read Erik’s biography for more information about his previous experience. To introduce Erik to the Allure Security audience, we asked him questions about why he joined Allure Security, his perspective on technology innovation, and more. Â
Tell us about your background and how you ended up here at Allure Security?
ERIK DASQUE: I’ve had the opportunity to lead big (100+) and small engineering teams in a number of technology startups over the last 20 years – as well as at a few public companies. There came a time recently where I wanted to join an early stage company again. I was looking for a great executive team, a field that excites me, and a place where I could have a measurable impact and agency. Allure Security came along and fit those criteria perfectly.
Tell us your “CTO origin story” in terms of – where did your interest in tech originate?
ERIK: I was born and raised in France and at 11 years-old was loaned a Commodore CBM for the summer. I was entering pre-written Basic code from books until a colleague of my father told me I could write my own, which as you can imagine I jumped on and loved. Years later I chose to follow a Computer Science path in college and lead my first engineering team, composed of chemists & grad students, in Russia in the mid 1990s during a summer internship that lasted a year. The rest is history.
How do you discern between true technical innovation and hype?
ERIK: While most engineers, including myself, enjoy a shiny new toy/technology, it’s important to recognize whether something is just new, change for change’s sake or really brings a measurable improvement in quality of life, productivity or maintainability. Hype is fine when it helps drive changes that are impactful but not by itself.
What appealed to you about solving the online brand impersonation problem and Allure Security’s technology stack?
ERIK: I was attracted to the market’s need to solve brand impersonation before it hurts our customer’s customers and the exceptional market fit for Allure Security’s solution. Moreover and after a conversation with Shlomo [Shlomo Hershkop, VP of Engineering at Allure Security], it was clear that the technical choices made were justified and sensible, giving us a huge advantage over the competition.
What’s something the public might be surprised to learn about CTOs or the CTO role?
ERIK: No one can agree on what a CTO is. Sometimes it’s a legacy title for the technical co-founder, sometimes it’s assigned to a VP of Engineering type role that’s part of the executive team (a la Executive VP of Engineering), on occasion it’s more of a Chief Architect position. Some are very externally focused (thought leadership, customer facing, conferences, working groups, etc) and sometimes it’s a role parallel to the VP of Engineering but more focused on R&D and innovation. I’ve fulfilled both CTO and Executive/Senior VP of Engineering roles in my career.
