The MMA ring for cybersecurity: inside Hackerverse's product showdowns

Mariana Padilla is the CEO of HackerVerse, a seed-stage platform built to solve two intertwined problems in enterprise cybersecurity: the broken POC (proof of concept) process that buries vendors in 12-to-18-month sales cycles, and the “smoke and mirrors” buying experience that leaves security teams purchasing software they cannot properly evaluate. HackerVerse launched in 2023 (originally as Kicker), went through the Techstars Chicago AI cohort in fall 2024, and is currently raising a seed round. Before cybersecurity, Mariana worked in education, nonprofit, and marketing - and credits a beginner's mindset and storytelling instincts for her ability to see the industry's broken processes clearly.

The product has two sides: enterprise buyers (CISOs, IT leaders, MSPs) who need to evaluate security tools without being stuck in a sales cycle, and cybersecurity vendors (Series A-to-D) who need to run POCs at scale without burning their sales engineering headcount. HackerVerse's signature product - the World Hacker Games - positions this matchup as the MMA ring for cybersecurity products: red teamers attack a realistic environment while vendor products defend it, live, in real time, in public. No demo videos. No sales pitches. Just the product performing under fire.

The Problem: POC Hell and the Tech Closet

Enterprise cybersecurity sales cycles average 12 to 18 months. A huge portion of that time is consumed by the POC stage - building and running a proof of concept that takes three to six months to complete and fails 70% of the time. For vendors, this means one POC per sales engineer, non-scalable, and an enormous drain of resources for deals that often do not close. For buyers, the experience is the mirror image: vendors control the demo environment, the evaluation criteria, and the timeline, creating an inherent information asymmetry.

The buyer-side pain point Mariana heard over and over in customer discovery conversations: “smoke and mirrors.” Security teams buy products based on polished demos, their internal champion leaves six months later, implementation stalls, and the tool ends up in the “tech closet” - purchased, unused, and impossible to justify come renewal time. At organizations running 70+ security tools across fragmented departments, the tech closet problem is endemic. HackerVerse's thesis is that showing the product working under realistic conditions - before the purchase - solves both problems simultaneously.

The World Hacker Games: Real-Time Product Validation in Public

The World Hacker Games are HackerVerse's signature events, and they work like a capture-the-flag competition with vendor products on the line. Red teamers - actual offensive security practitioners - attempt to work through a realistic environment and capture specific flags or achieve attacker goals. The vendor's product is deployed on the blue (defender) side. Everything happens in real time, with an audience watching.

Mariana is explicit about the stakes: the tools that are going into banks and hospitals should be able to perform under realistic attack conditions. If they cannot, the industry deserves to know that before a multi-year contract is signed. HackerVerse works with vendors ahead of each event - sometimes including product hardening - to ensure what is being showcased is representative of what the product can do at its best. The outcome is a hardened, publicly validated product with a “Hacker Tested, Hacker Approved” credential, reached without any potential buyer having to click the dreaded “Talk to Sales” button.

The Self-Service POC Platform: Try Before You Buy

Parallel to the events, HackerVerse is building a self-service platform where enterprise buyers can evaluate security tools without entering a vendor sales cycle. The vision: a Street Fighter-style onboarding assessment (why should onboarding surveys be boring?) that recommends three products based on buyer inputs, then drops the buyer directly into a hands-on POC environment - not a video walkthrough, not a screen scrape, not a sandboxed demo, but the actual product running in a digital replica of the buyer's own production environment.

The production environment matching is a key differentiator: buyers need to know that a POC result reflects how the tool will actually perform in their specific stack, not in a generic vendor-controlled environment. HackerVerse uses generative AI to scrape product information, competitive delta analysis, and environment parameters to stand up a qualified POC in AWS in a matter of hours - a process that previously took three months. For vendors, the ROI is immediate: scalable POCs without SE headcount, and a funnel that delivers buyers who have already self-qualified through the evaluation process.

The AI Security Opportunity: Every Layer of the Stack Needs to Be Secured

HackerVerse is intentionally planting its flag in AI-native cybersecurity - security for AI tools, and AI tools for security - because this is where Mariana sees the most urgent unmet need and the most opportunity for newer, disruptive entrants. CISOs are overwhelmed: by the time the industry agrees on best practices for securing LLM deployments or agentic AI systems, those practices may already be outdated. Every layer of an AI stack introduces new attack surfaces, and the prevalence of agents - autonomous AI systems operating within larger systems - will only make that harder.

HackerVerse's most recent customer on the platform is Lydia, a deepfake detection company that plugs into video conferencing software. Upcoming additions fall in the AI security / security for AI category. The bet is that AI-native security companies entering a crowded, skeptical market need a different path to market validation - and that the HackerVerse Hacker Tested credential becomes a meaningful signal of credibility, especially as larger incumbents start paying attention to companies that have earned it publicly.

Brand, Community, and Building in Public

The HackerVerse brand (previously Kicker, previously Red Locust - a name Mariana killed immediately) is a deliberate departure from the cybersecurity visual cliché: black backgrounds, blue network diagrams, generic threat iconography. The HackerVerse aesthetic is neon, skulls, and an MMA energy that taps into cybersecurity as a lifestyle rather than an industry. Defcon is a cultural experience, not a trade show. The practitioner who evaluates tools for a Fortune 500 CISO has a hacker identity that conventional vendor marketing has never spoken to - and that practitioner will be tomorrow's CISO.

The community predated the brand: HackerVerse started as a Discord community before it was a product. Mariana built her network through 100 virtual coffees in 100 days - not pitching, but genuinely learning people's journeys in cybersecurity, then letting the quality of the idea pull the right people toward it. The North Star for the platform is stickiness that does not exist in B2B: Evergreen CTF competitions, Easter eggs on the website, cryptography puzzles that reward exploration. Cybersecurity is a lifestyle, and the platform should feel like a place people want to spend time - not a procurement portal.

Founders, Words Are Our Code

Mariana's most quoted line - “founders, words are our code” - is a critique of a specific pattern in cybersecurity: technically brilliant founders who cannot tell the story of their own product. The ability to articulate what a product does, why it matters, and who it is for is not a soft skill adjacent to the real work. It is the work, especially in enterprise sales where trust is the primary currency and relationships close deals faster than feature matrices.

Mariana came to cybersecurity from education and nonprofit, and she is direct about the advantage that non-technical background gave her: she had to ask every question because she could not assume anything. The beginner's mindset produced the questions that surfaced HackerVerse's product roadmap. Asking “why are we still doing things this way?” without the industry's accumulated deference to legacy processes is how you find the broken things worth fixing. She cites this consistently as the most important factor in everything the company has built.

Tools & Resources Mentioned

• HackerVerse - Try-before-you-buy cybersecurity evaluation platform; hackerverse.ai. Raising seed round ($2.5M–$5M target, $25K minimum check). LinkedIn: /here-to-shake-shit-up.
• World Hacker Games - HackerVerse's flagship event format; real-time red team vs. blue team product validation. Tagline: “The MMA Ring for Cybersecurity Products.”
• Lydia - Deepfake detection company that plugs into video conferencing software; HackerVerse's most recent platform customer. Also integrated into HackerVerse's own authentication stack.
• Techstars Chicago AI Cohort (Fall 2024) - HackerVerse's accelerator cohort; raised $120K through the program.
• ChatGPT - Mariana's primary daily AI tool; particularly useful for explaining cybersecurity concepts at varying levels of technical depth.
• OWASP - Referenced as adapting its frameworks to address AI security threats; Mariana cites them as part of the ongoing industry collaboration needed.
• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Book referenced as validation for the deliberate beginner's mindset Mariana brings to cybersecurity product development.

Frameworks

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