Philippe Courtot: V is for Visionary
I was deeply saddened this weekend to learn of the passing of my friend Philippe Courtot, the founder, former chairman and CEO of Qualys (and several other companies before that). The word visionary gets tossed around a lot in today’s world, but if there ever was a visionary, it was Philippe.
vi·sion·ar·y /ˈviZHəˌnerē/
–noun
- a person with original ideas about what the future will or could be like.“He is a visionary keen on policy-making.”
Yes, this was Philippe. I first met Philippe in the early 2000s when I was the co-founder/chief strategy officer at StillSecure. He was a fierce competitor. While we were developing our own vulnerability management solution, VAM, Philippe was convincing people to keep their critical vulnerability data “up there” (it wasn’t called cloud yet) and to pay for vulnerability scans on a subscription basis. It was such a radically different approach to vulnerability management.
The only thing not on-premises back then were net scanners that would give people a “hackers eye, outside in” view of their infrastructure. Yet, there was Philippe preaching to all who would listen that his was the way of the future. While we tried our best to use that against Qualys, at the end of the day, he was right and we were wrong.
Even while competing with him, I had the chance to meet Philippe at industry conferences like RSA Conference. He was always gracious, gregarious and eager to talk shop. I came to respect him for what he had accomplished, his intelligence and vision and as a good human, father and true industry leader.
After I left StillSecure, I remained friends with Philippe. No matter what I was working on, there was always a chance to interact with him at industry events. He always had a kind word, advice and demonstrated pride and passion in what he was building at Qualys.
I know there are folks who worked at Qualys and left the company because the expectations Philippe had for those who worked there were, for them, too high. But he didn’t ask any more from anyone than he asked from himself. He built Qualys into the successful company it is today based on his vision, grit and hustle. He continued to innovate; not with just products, but in other ways, as well.
Philippe saw how difficult it was to in hire talent in Silicon Valley. So, he pivoted and built an engineering team in India, which gave him access to more talent, at lower cost. When he saw that just sponsoring industry conferences was not enough, he pioneered ‘rolling his own’ conference. He also was an advocate for industry associations like the Cloud Security Alliance.
As a matter of fact, the last time I saw Philippe in person was at the Qualys Security Conference at RSAC in 2020. He sat down with me and we talked about the big announcements made at the conference.
I had the chance to do another video with Philippe when Qualys rolled out their big update in 2020. That was the last time I spoke with him. When I saw the announcement that he was stepping down from his position due to health concerns, I knew it had to be serious. Philippe loved Qualys too fiercely to step away unless it was a truly dire situation. I wrote him privately to say that I knew it had to be very serious for him to step down and offered my best wishes, prayers and respect.
In typical Philippe fashion, he graciously thanked me for writing, and then mentioned he was looking for a new sales leader. He said, “Not someone in an Armani suit, but a roll-up-your-sleeves sales leader.” That was Philippe—even dealing with his own medical condition, asking if I knew a good sales leader for Qualys.
He will be missed in this industry, where too often we label people ‘genius’ because they had a good exit. Philippe was a person who helped shaped this industry.
On behalf of all of us at MediaOps and myself, I send our heartfelt condolences, prayers and peace to his family, friends and the whole Qualys family.
