static-analysis
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Adam Kolawa and the business of fewer mistakes
He built Parasoft without outside funding, then spent years arguing that better software begins with better habits. Behind the testing tools was a physicist with firm opinions about work, independence, and the cost of doing things twice.
Bryan Helmkamp and the trouble with good code
Good developers can still leave difficult software behind. From Code Climate to Qlty, Bryan Helmkamp has built a career around making the next change easier - and the evidence easier to use.
Sam Blackshear and the Art of Making Bugs Harder to Write
He built Move to give digital assets the rules that physical objects already have. After taking that idea from Meta to Sui, the engineer has turned back toward the problem that started his career: finding flaws before anyone can use them.
Jon Stephens
Jon Stephens is the CEO and co-founder of Veridise, an Austin-based blockchain security firm that brings academic formal verification to smart contract and zero-knowledge audits. A computer science PhD researcher at UT Austin, he built tools like SmartPulse and Zequal that grew out of his work on formally reasoning about programs, and turned that research into a company that has audited protocols including RISC Zero, Succinct, Semaphore, vLayer and Ankr. His mission is to make everyday users secure without asking them to think about security at all.
Isaac Evans
Isaac Evans is the Founder and CEO of Semgrep, the developer-first application security platform that has redefined how modern engineering teams handle code security. An MIT-trained computer scientist with a background in U.S. Department of Defense security research, Evans co-founded Semgrep in 2017 with college roommates Drew Dennison and Luke O'Malley. Under his leadership, Semgrep grew from a niche static analysis tool into a platform scanning 75+ million code repositories annually, serving customers like Figma, Dropbox, Slack, and Snowflake. In February 2025, the company closed a $100M Series D led by Menlo Ventures, bringing total funding to $193M. Evans's core thesis - that security must serve developers, not obstruct them - has made Semgrep a defining force in the AppSec category.