Sometimes the best business decisions look completely insane at the time. When George Kurtz founded CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (CRWD) in 2011, he made a bet that nearly everyone in cybersecurity thought was foolish: he would only deliver security software from the cloud. No exceptions.
The Cloud Was Too Scary For Wall Street
In a November 2022 conversation with Ryan Limaye from Goldman Sachs, Kurtz described what it was like pitching his cloud-only vision to the financial industry. Walking into major banks with this idea meant getting shut down almost immediately.
"The cloud was pretty scary for a lot of folks, including the banks," Kurtz explained. Banks kept demanding an on-premises version of CrowdStrike's platform—something they could install and control behind their own firewalls. One Swiss bank loved the product but told Kurtz flat-out they would never move to the cloud.
Kurtz had heard this story before. He reminded them they'd once said the same thing about virtualizing data centers and adopting Linux. Eventually, they'd embraced both technologies. Two years later, that Swiss bank became a major CrowdStrike customer.
Watching Competitors Win Because You Won't Compromise
Principles are expensive. CrowdStrike watched competitors close deals simply because they offered traditional on-premises tools that made IT departments comfortable. Losing that business hurt, Kurtz admitted, but the company was playing "the long game."
The cloud-only approach wasn't just a bet on future adoption trends. It was fundamental to how CrowdStrike's crowdsourced threat-detection system worked. Bending on that architecture would have meant building a different, inferior product.
Another Agent On Every Machine? Good Luck With That
CrowdStrike faced a second major hurdle: convincing banks to install yet another piece of software—an endpoint agent—on every device in their networks. IT teams were already fed up with bloated antivirus programs that slowed computers to a crawl.
No one wants another agent running on their systems, Kurtz acknowledged. But CrowdStrike's AI-driven design was lightweight and fast, which helped build trust over time. Still, asking a firm like Goldman Sachs to deploy your startup's software across critical infrastructure? That's a tough sell when you're an unknown name.
Earnings Report Coming This Week
CrowdStrike is scheduled to release its fiscal third-quarter 2026 results on December 2, 2025. Last quarter, the company posted revenue of $1.17 billion, beating analyst expectations of $1.15 billion. Adjusted earnings hit 93 cents per share, topping the consensus estimate of 83 cents per share.
For the upcoming quarter, CrowdStrike has projected revenue between $1.208 billion and $1.218 billion, with adjusted earnings expected between 93 cents and 95 cents per share.
The company now commands a market cap of $127.78 billion—not bad for a business model that banks once called reckless. Kurtz's early decisions to stay cloud-only and lose deals rather than compromise turned out to be exactly right. The banks eventually came around. They always do.