Innovate or die: Insights from Hex-Rays' CEO Philippe-Alexandre Leroux

Looking for invaluable insights on leadership, fundraising and the importance of innovation? Philippe-Alexandre Leroux, CEO at Hex-Rays, is your man. We sat down with him to discuss his views on entrepreneurship, the startup crux, and the value of collaboration between scale-ups and big corporations. 

Tell us a little something about you and your company!

Hex-Rays is the global leader in binary analysis solutions, providing cutting-edge software tools to cybersecurity vendors, government cyber-defense agencies, and various industries, including microelectronics and automotive. Our products enable customers to reverse-engineer software binaries, addressing critical use cases.

As for me, I studied Engineering and Applied Mathematics, an early form of Computer Science. I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey at the age of 25 and co-founded three technology companies. After selling my last venture six years ago, I planned to transition into a quieter life as an asset manager in my mid-forties. However, my path changed when I met Ilfak Guilfanov, the founder of Hex-Rays, and Smartfin, a dynamic private equity fund in Europe. 

Eager to revitalize Hex-Rays and accelerate its growth, I took the leap to co-invest with them and later joined the executive team. For the first time in my career, I’m leading a company I didn’t create myself.

In your opinion, what personality traits does a good entrepreneur need? 

In my humble opinion, a good entrepreneur must:

1. Have big dreams and a bold vision.
2. Be unafraid of failure, which often holds back brilliant individuals from taking concrete action.
3. Stay focused on execution—getting things done, which requires listening to customer feedback and pivoting quickly when needed. This balancing act between having a bold vision and acknowledging where adjustments are needed is challenging but crucial.

What has proven to be hard in your journey with Hex-Rays? Which challenges did you overcome?

One of the biggest challenges for me at Hex-Rays has been stepping into the leadership role while the founder and former CEO, Ilfak Guilfanov, who has built this global, category-leading company over the past 20 years, remains actively involved at both the executive and board levels. It feels like walking in the footsteps of a giant.

Fortunately, Ilfak is incredibly smart, and I enjoy the way he challenges both me and the rest of the executive team. If Ilfak has concerns about any decisions we make at the executive level, we’ve created a space where he can freely voice those concerns. As I understand, Eric Schmidt, when he became CEO at Google, established a similar dynamic with the company’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, which allowed them to collaborate effectively.

Another challenge I faced was at AdsWizz, the last company I co-founded, where we focused on disrupting the music and radio industries. The main challenge for any startup is to identify the crux—finding a problem worth solving and offering a solution that isn’t easily replicable. Too often, startups pursue problems that lack sufficient monetary incentive or solutions that are easily matched by competitors.

How did you experience fundraising, networking, and pitching? What tips do you have for entrepreneurs in the same boat?  

Between 2010 and 2013, I spent about half my time raising money from investors. It was frustrating, as that time could have been spent developing the business. However, it was also insightful, as investors challenge you with questions you might not have considered. I view conversations with private investors, VC, or PE funds as “business consulting provided for free by very smart people.”

My main advice for entrepreneurs is to engage with as many people as possible—you will always learn something. Listen to their feedback; it’s often compelling. Don’t be discouraged if they come off as arrogant or fail to understand your vision. I still have an email from a French VC fund that claimed we had no chance of creating a new market. Five years later, the market was worth a billion dollars, and we exited for just under USD 200 million.

What experience or moment in your career will you never forget? 

In B2B business, landing deals with large, high-profile customers is always the most exciting part for me.

Do you still have big dreams or ambitions for Hex-Rays? 

Our primary goal is to, once again, create a significant technological leap that sets us apart from the competition - this is a full-scale product strategy. We are heavily reinvesting in our technology assets to achieve this.

Ultimately, we aim to disrupt the industry. Malicious actors are generating more malware, spyware, and ransomware than the good guys can handle. Our vision is to push automation in binary analysis to a level where analysts can focus on more value-added tasks, trusting that technology will take care of the heavy lifting.

You’re no stranger to IT and technology. How do you stay up to date with the latest developments in technology and innovation? 

Keeping pace with innovation is challenging. My strategy includes:

1. Constantly listening to younger generations about cool new technologies and asking questions.
2. Subscribing to podcasts or YouTube channels that discuss the latest in our industry. I follow about 30 channels; I browse transcripts quickly, and for deeper dives, I listen to the whole thing at 2x speed.
3. A “tech watch” channel on our company messaging app, where our team members can share articles they think are worth reading.
4. Funding internal projects to experiment with new technologies. Yes, you may waste money from time to time, but on average, you will innovate and write history yourself. 

What role do technologies and innovations play for you and your company?  

We will fail as a company if we don’t innovate. Each quarter, 35% of our product roadmap capacity focuses on “breakthrough features and innovation”, while only 25% is about “doing more of what we already do well”.

What are you most curious, excited, or skeptical about?  

I think I am always curious and excited, but I can become skeptical when I sense that individuals are overly optimistic about new technologies without concrete applications. I don’t mind having conversations about Blockchain, Web 3.0, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, Emotion AI, Artificial Creativity because I reckon some of these technologies deserve years of investment before they can yield anything concrete. However, I’m not interested in the overpromising aspect of their value propositions.

How would you summarize SuperNova for people who have never been there?  

I wish this type of event had existed 25 years ago when I began my entrepreneurial journey. SuperNova is a place where investors meet startups, and young founders connect with experienced entrepreneurs. Attendees gain invaluable insights from startup talks and investor interactions, re-energizing themselves as they realize they are not the only ones working their socks off to reinvent industries.

What are three strengths of SuperNova in your opinion? How do you think SuperNova contributes to the tech sector in Belgium? 

The quality of attendees, the talks and the special guests. SuperNova’s contribution definitely goes beyond Belgium. It’s now one of the major events in Europe. 

How can startups/scale-ups and large companies collaborate effectively, in your view?

In my opinion, pre-revenue startups should avoid spending too much time with other pre-revenue startups to prevent being trapped in an echo chamber of wishful thinking.

Startups should engage with larger companies to uncover real problems worth solving. While larger companies may initially express skepticism, their concrete problems can be valuable opportunities.

Established companies, on the other hand, need to be open to listening to startups. It is very hard for human beings to question something they have been doing in a particular way for years.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves. Thank you for your time, advice and insights!