Patrick Collins
Co-founder & CEO at Dam Secure
Patrick Collins is co-founder and chief executive of Dam Secure, a Sydney startup that puts security guardrails around AI-generated code. A self-described serial entrepreneur who has built six companies, he spent a decade in application security, including as an executive at Secure Code Warrior, before founding Dam Secure with Simon Harloff. The company closed an oversubscribed US$4 million pre-seed round in 2026. On Secured by Galah Cyber, Collins discussed raising capital across Australian and US markets before reaching product-market fit.
Career
- Now Co-founder & CEO · Dam Secure
- From 2021 · Scale-up Chief Product Officer · Airtasker
- 2019–2021 · Scale-up Chief Product and Technology Officer · Zip Co
- Earlier · Startup SVP Product and Engineering · Moovweb
- 2015–2017 Founder · Aussie Founders Network
- 2012–2015 SVP, Customer Experience Products · Merkle
- Until 2012 · Startup Founder & CEO · 5th Finger
- Earlier Founding technical team member · Fairfax Digital
Sources: itnews.com.au
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of How Dam Secure Puts Guardrails on AI Generated Code you want.
- 1:01 Chainguard ad
- 1:28 Meet Patrick Collins and Simon Harloff from Dam Secure
- 3:00 Why existing AppSec tooling never worked for developers
- 5:30 The artisanal vs factory model of software development
- 8:30 Hacker News, polarisation and the AI sentiment shift
- 11:00 Agile, standups and processes that no longer make sense
- 14:00 Bigger PRs, higher velocity and workflows without an IDE
- 17:00 Skills, agents.md and the limits of deterministic guardrails
- 20:00 The AppSec to developer ratio problem
- 23:00 The SaaSpocalypse and why rebuilding tools is a side quest
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
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