During a recent visit to email security vendor Proofpoint in Silicon Valley, SC Magazine editor Paul Fisher met with Paul Auvil, Proofpoint CFO. In this wide-ranging interview, they discuss Proofpoint’s success, the global economic crisis and the outlook for the email security market.

Paul has also held the CFO position at VMWare and Vitria, but he’s not just a finance type… trained as an engineer at Dartmouth, Paul also holds several patents on digital video compression. So, he’s always got a lot of interesting thoughts to share. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Paul Fisher: Gary Steele, Proofpoint CEO, said that one of the reasons why he’s fairly confident is that you’ve got a strong cash position. Would you want to start an information security company right now though?

Paul Auvil: No. I wouldn’t want to be in a small start-up right now. There are some companies that are series A, series B companies with some very good technology, but it is hopeless to try to get anyone to buy your products right now if you don’t have strong reference accounts for prospective customers, if you don’t have someone that they can call and can confirm and corroborate that the technology is good. Combine this with the fact that people are increasingly concerned that these small companies aren’t going to make it and it’s not a good outlook.

It’s tough going but it’s proving to be an opportunity for us, in that there’s a large list of very interesting series A companies with very good technology who are essentially trying to find an outlet, a buyer. So we’re pondering that list at this point and trying to decide which of those really have great technology that would be a good addition to our product portfolio.

Read more on Proofpoint’s progress here: