Before co-founding Avanan in 2014, Michael Landewe had over 20 years of internet startup experience, starting with co-founding an ISP in 1996. He was an early employee of Network Physics, an Internet traffic performance company that was one of the first technology companies to develop detection response for the Blaster worm. As a research engineer at ForeScout Technologies, he was part of the team that transitioned the company from intrusion prevention and worm protection to network access control and insider threat defense.