Cofounder, Darktrace
2019 A Conversation with Erik and Emily Orton - Seven at Sea
About Emily Orton
Emily Orton, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Darktrace, has spoken in recent years about the company’s growth from a startup to a publicly listed cybersecurity firm. She described Darktrace as the first company to develop AI capable of interrupting in-progress cyber attacks inside a company’s systems, and said the technology learns a “sense of self” for an organization to spot novel threats. Orton noted that the COVID-19 pandemic expanded the attack surface for companies as they adopted tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and she stated that the industry’s traditional approach of building a perimeter around a network is “discredited” because attackers are often already inside. She also discussed the company’s IPO, saying the process forced the business to present itself as an external party would and was a proud moment for employees. Separately, Orton has spoken publicly about her family’s decision to live on a sailboat for nearly a year with her husband and five children, including a child with Down syndrome. She said she had a fear of deep water and sharks, and that the family deliberately disrupted their routine by asking “what could go right” rather than focusing on reasons not to go. Orton described the experience as galvanizing their family and teaching them to be comfortable being uncomfortable. She has also said that she believes people can have the courage to step through their fears and seek the lives they dream about.
Transcript (10 segments)
H
Host0:01
Okay, so Emily and Eric Orton, let me tell you a little bit about them. So they are the parents of five children. They live in... this is amazing to me. They live in an 800-square-foot apartment and they still like each other. That's pretty impressive. Something else about them: a few years ago they decided they were going to buck convention and live on a boat for an entire year with your family. Is that correct?
E
Emily Orton0:24
That is correct.
H
Host0:26
Oh my gosh. Sit down because we're going to talk... because there are many things that could have happened, like just anything on this boat, and I want you guys to sort of set the stage and tell us about this. Because when I heard this story, I thought I would make a kid walk the plank within the first 30 minutes of being on the ship. So this blows my mind. So set the stage for us and tell us about how this happened, because Emily has a total fear of water. Like horrible fear of water, right? Yeah. And you had to leave your job. Yep. So go tell us your story.
E
Eric Orton0:59
Well, as you can see, our apartment was way too big. Right. Right. It's all about the tiny house these days. So really the idea started with Eric and he was working in a job that he didn't love. He was in a little gray cubicle. He was working at nights in this high-rise and his building was in the financial district in Manhattan, so it was right along the Hudson River. And he on the weekends and in the gaps he was serving in a young single adult ward. So his weeks were packed and he would get a little piece as he would walk along the Hudson during his dinner break and see these boats, and he would tell me about this sailing school that was there. And I could tell he was really curious and interested to learn more about it.
E
Emily Orton1:47
I'm curious if there's... anybody who can hear that. Is there anybody out there who's ever wanted to bring something into your life or do something, but you felt like it was for other people and maybe people who were different from you, who didn't have the same skill set as you? But that's how Eric was feeling. And I feel like that was actually the biggest obstacle that we first overcame, for him to just go into the sailing school. And he ended up signing up for a class and to get it at a time that was convenient for him, he needed to bring along three classmates. And because none of his friends or co-workers were interested, and believe me we tried to think of everybody, it ended up being me and our two oldest daughters who were 11 and 9 at the time. And I was like, you know, I'm scared of water, right? And he said, 'Stay in the boat and wear a life jacket, it's that easy.' And I said, 'How are we going to afford this?' And he said, 'I'll get a second job.' So he was very determined. The first thing that we learned in this sailing class is that we all get really seasick and that there are lots of ways to attempt to combat that. But we ended up learning a lot and we came out of the class deciding the real test would be if we could get on one of these little 20-foot sailboats with all five of our kids and manage without an instructor. And we got out there, we were running into things, we were dropping sail ties overboard and wobbling around, we were shouting and crying. The kids were really nervous too. And the other boaters were laughing at us and pointing, literally pointing like 'Look at them, the family of seven, they do not know what they're doing.' So there was a little hiatus there where Eric would take little rental boats out with friends who would help cover the cost. But meanwhile at our house, we started watching videos of other families who were living on sailboats, bigger boats obviously a little more complicated, and something happened: our imagination just expanded as to what was possible and it started to sort of spread to the kids. And then one day, I remember it distinctly because everyone was home but it was quiet, and Eric said, 'I think the seven of us on a sailboat would be enough universe for me.' And I just thought that was so romantic. I didn't want to destroy the moment. I had a million questions coming into my head about: we don't have the skills, we don't have the money, what about our house, what about school, what if anybody gets sick? All these what-about’s. But at that moment all I said to him was, 'Well, when would you want to go?'
H
Host4:36
You're so composed, because I would not have restrained myself. So that's… I love it. So when did you want to go?
E
Eric Orton4:45
I wanted to go before our kids started to leave home because I knew that we had this finite window of time when our kids would be with us and then would come college, maybe missions, maybe marriage, and we would never have all of our children back under the same roof, under the same circumstances. They wouldn't be ours the way they were at this time. And our daughter Karina, who was our oldest, was 14 at the time. So we had a few years to work with, but we wanted to go before her senior year. So we bought a set of life jackets for the family. We found a sailing club that was close by and we could go for about $140 a month and sail as much as we wanted on these little 23-foot boats. And so we started to take the kids out three or four times a month and we would just have the best time. It was always an ordeal to get five kids out on the water, but we would go and we would have time to think and talk with each other and we would sing. And we started to teach the other kids who hadn't been in the sailing class what we had learned. And so we were transferring those skills to them. And they were able to grow in confidence, I think, into these skills. And we talked and talked about this. And Emily and I then went and took a class down in the Caribbean ourselves on a bigger boat in bigger water. And we came home from this class and we kept talking about it. Finally, our oldest daughter turned to us and she said, 'Are you guys going to do this? Do you have the guts to do this? Or are you just going to talk about it?'
H
Host6:17
Truth teller. Thanks, Karina.
E
Eric Orton6:20
This was highly motivating to us because we believe in the credibility that we want to be credible with our kids and with ourselves. So we said all right. I was window shopping for boats at the time, just online, but we started to venture out up and down the East Coast to look at boats whenever we were on a trip. And we would always bring them with us. And this became annoying to them, but if they were going to be in the mix, they were going to be in the mix. And eventually we found a boat. Sorry, we… Emily and I went to the Caribbean again, chartered a boat where I was the captain and we split the cost with some friends so we could try out a certain kind of boat. And then we thought, well, if we're going to go for a year with the kids, we should probably go overnight at least once with the kids. So we found an affordable rental down in the Florida Keys and we went for two nights. Emily was brilliant, she bribed them by making all of their favorite foods, and they loved it, they had a great time. So when we came back, we knew that the kids were on board with us and we said, 'All right, let's do this.' And so we'd found a boat that we thought was going to be a good match. We put in an offer. It was a lowball offer and this offer was promptly rejected, which I was very grateful for because I didn't know if we had the guts to do this or not. We were scared. A couple months later, we found another boat, put in another offer. This time it was accepted. And this time I was really scared. Because now we knew that we were going to be on the hook. And we had an average income. We weren't doing this because of some financial windfall. But we had to sit there and assess: okay, what are all the things that could go wrong? We knew what the risks were. We looked at all the things that could go right. And then for me an interesting question was: what are the risks of not going? What are the risks of staying exactly where we are, doing exactly what we have been doing, in the same situation? And we decided that the potential good that would come of this situation far outweighed the potential downfall of losing what we already had, which was good. We wanted to go from good to better. So we asked ourselves what could go right. Also, some might say, okay, you have five kids, your youngest has Down syndrome. That's a really good… you get that's an out. You have an excuse not to go. And we decided to flip that and say, 'Well, what if our kids were our reason? What if our kids were our excuse to go rather than our excuse not to go?' And once we took all that into consideration, we bought the boat, we bought plane tickets to the Caribbean, I quit my job, and we got ready to head out.
H
Host9:07
Okay. So when you said like I hear you and you're saying, 'Well, what could go right? What could go right?' But I like in my mind, the only could go wrong would be bedtime for me. I mean, I can't even do that in my own house because it's like Clash of the Titans when Zeus says, 'Release the Kraken.' That's me when my kids come back to me after I put them to bed. I'm like, 'What are you doing?' Like I can't even imagine being in a boat with my kids. So it's amazing that you have the way to think of that, like what could go right? So tell me what went right. What did go right for you?