Sam Crowther

Founder & CEO Kasada

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Sam Crowther is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kasada, an Australian-founded cybersecurity company that protects websites, mobile applications and APIs from bots, automated abuse and online fraud. He founded it in 2015, aged 19, on roughly $50,000 from an angel investor and the help of a few friends. What gives the company its distinctive technical posture is where Crowther learned the problem: he worked with the Australian Signals Directorate, the country’s signals intelligence agency, while still at high school, and then on a red team at Macquarie Group, attacking the bank’s own defences. Both roles taught him the attacker’s side first, and Kasada’s founding argument follows from that — the reason conventional bot defences fail is that they treat automated abuse as a pattern-matching problem in code, when it is actually an economic and psychological contest with human adversaries who adapt as soon as they are detected. Kasada’s approach is to make attacks expensive and unrewarding rather than merely to block known signatures. The company has raised more than $39 million from investors including In-Q-Tel, Main Sequence and Ten Eleven Ventures, operates from Sydney with hubs in New York, Boston, Melbourne and San Francisco, and was named a Leader in Forrester’s Q2 2026 Wave for bot and agent trust management.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of Kasada, established in 2015 when he was 19 years old.
• Started the company with roughly $50,000 from an angel investor and a handful of friends.
• Raised more than $39 million in venture funding from investors including In-Q-Tel, Main Sequence, Ten Eleven Ventures and EQT.
• Built a global company headquartered in Sydney with hubs in New York, Boston, Melbourne and San Francisco.
• Kasada named a Leader in The Forrester Wave for Bot and Agent Trust Management, Q2 2026.
• Named to Forbes Australia’s inaugural 30 Under 30 list in 2024 in the Enterprise Technology category; earlier an Anthill 30under30 winner in 2016 and a SmartCompany Smart 30 Under 30 selection.
• Finalist in EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year programme in Australia.
• Worked with the Australian Signals Directorate while still a high school student, and subsequently on a red team at Macquarie Group.

Professional Journey

Crowther’s career in security started while he was still at school, working with Australia’s signals intelligence agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, during school holidays. That is an unusual apprenticeship, and it shaped his approach: his formative exposure to security was offensive and intelligence-oriented rather than compliance-driven.

After finishing high school he began a software engineering degree but left it for a year-long role at Macquarie, working on the red team — the internal function that attacks an organisation’s own systems to find what real adversaries would exploit. That role put him directly against the bot and automation problem at a large financial institution, and it convinced him that the defences available on the market were structurally mismatched to the threat. Conventional bot mitigation worked by detecting known signatures and behaviours, which meant that a determined attacker simply changed behaviour and continued. The defence was reactive by construction.

He founded Kasada in 2015 at 19. The start was modest: he persuaded an angel investor to put in around $50,000, recruited a few friends, and built a minimum viable product. Accounts of where this happened differ, with Forbes Australia placing the early work in Newcastle, New South Wales and Kasada’s own telling describing a shipping container under the Sydney Harbour Bridge — quite possibly successive premises in the company’s first year.

Kasada’s technical premise is that defeating automated threats is less a code problem than a problem of adversary economics. Rather than trying to identify bad traffic by signature, the platform is designed to impose asymmetric cost on the attacker, making automated attacks uneconomic and forcing the operator behind them to abandon the target. That framing — understanding the motivations and behaviour of the people behind the keyboards — is how the company describes its own philosophy, and it traces directly to Crowther’s red team and intelligence background.

The business grew from a Sydney startup into a global vendor, with hubs in New York, Boston, Melbourne and San Francisco, funded by more than $39 million from investors including In-Q-Tel, the US intelligence community’s strategic investment arm, alongside Main Sequence, Ten Eleven Ventures and EQT. Kasada’s customers are companies for whom automated abuse translates directly into lost revenue or fraud losses — retail, ticketing, travel, financial services and similar.

Crowther has become a visible figure in Australian technology as a result, named to Forbes Australia’s inaugural 30 Under 30 list in 2024 in enterprise technology, after earlier recognition from Anthill and SmartCompany, and named a finalist in EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year programme. The market he founded into has also shifted under him: Forrester’s Q2 2026 evaluation, in which Kasada was named a Leader, covers not merely bot management but agent trust management, reflecting the arrival of autonomous AI agents as legitimate as well as hostile automated traffic — a distinction the industry did not need to make when Kasada was founded.

Education

No completed education could be established. Reporting indicates that Crowther began a software engineering degree after finishing high school but left it to take a role at Macquarie, and no source records him completing a degree at any institution. This field is deliberately left empty rather than recording an incomplete course of study as a qualification.