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From Sales Leader to Federal Whistleblower | Bill Sullivan | Zero Friction Podcast · Zero Friction

• Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Welcome to Zero Friction Podcast. This is Terry Cucholuches and I have a great guest this afternoon, a software sales professional, software executive and president, and also an author. Today I have Bill Sullivan, who is the the president of Iothic, which is an encryption company. Bill has spent many years really creating the gold standard in the selling of software. And so we're going to spend some time talking about Bill's career in that expertise arena. And then we'll talk about what he does for I IOTIC and then maybe kind of tap into his new book. So Bill, great to have you. Why don't you give us a little background about yourself personally and then we'll dive into the company. Bill Sullivan: Hi Terry, pleasure to meet you. married 30 years. daughter who just graduated college works as an accountant at Ernst Young. I've been working in technology, specifically software, for most of that time. Early in my career, I learned that it is a lot of fun, if somewhat stressful, to do turnarounds. I was at PeopleSoft, did a turnaround there, went on, was promoted to run North American state and local government, was actively involved in the hostile takeover against Oracle. When that went through, I actually did the integration for PeopleSoft public sector into Oracle. after that experience, Oracle, as I like to say, was a profitable but soul-destroying experience. So went over to SAP on the commercial side, took over a division. On the commercial process manufacturing that you know was down to three salespeople. The vice president had left and built that. It was the number one division a year later in North America for their enterprise segment. this all drove towards you know, I I was hired by Informatica to run their public sector. My CEO and friend from PeopleSoft, Craig Conway, called me and said, This company really needs a public sector leader. Would you like to? Are are you available? And I, of course, was interested. And anytime Craig calls, you take that call and joined Informatica. within a year I was named top one of the top one percent critical employees. they had 3,000 employees in the company at the time, so it was quite an honor. I was named a second year as a top one percent critical employee. And along the way I discovered that the company was actually defrauding the United States government. And I first told them, Don't do that, that's illegal. And then I took it to internal legal and had them review the situation. And they issued a report that said, Sullivan's right. This is illegal. Stop doing it immediately. And they did it six months later. He looked at it again and said, You people are still doing this. I told you Sullivan's right. Here's all the bad things that can happen. So, long story short, I went to the CEO and quit. He asked me not to quit, asked me to help him fix the company. Five months later, they fired me. So that only at that time did I take the matter to a friend of mine in Washington who's a lawyer, and this was then passed on to the Justice Department. So it's it's been, you know, one heck of a career. the number one empirical rated vice president at six or seven of the technology companies' most respected companies, industry's most respected companies, followed by, you know, a federal investigation, settlement, and a defamation campaign that I've had to fight my way through. And it's all in the book. Yeah, all the emails and and As I as you and I were chatting, the the book seems to be Amazon run out of ran out of copies. They're going to a second printing apparently. it's also available on Barnes and Noble and on Goodreads. So there's a snapshot of my career and I hope that offers you some openings to to discuss topics of interest. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: So sure. So tell us a little bit about like your career, you know, and what you found yourself to really how did you elevate yourself first to the top one percent? Where do you think were the the biggest attributes, Bill, that sort of propelled you to that top, you know, level of performance? Bill Sullivan: I think first and foremost is a willingness to go into the burning building, right? Most executives do not want to take over an organization that is clearly distressed. There's a tremendous amount of risk. There's a tremendous amount of visibility on the situation. I've always seemed to be attracted to fix it situations for a variety of reasons. first, I'm just not the guy you want to hire if the business is growing at 10%, you want to bump it up to 12 or 14%. That just is just not interesting to me. I I I I'm fascinated to to get into situations where I can have a material beneficial impact on both the company and the people that work there. That's rewarding to me. Secondly, I have a very clearly defined philosophy about how to run a business. And that that's both philosophical, something that I call Bill's rules, as well as a one-pager that I use to run any business is how to run a software business. And again, both of these are in the book. But from a high level, Bill's rules are something that I I put together over the years. There's I know probably twenty-two of them now. And they're not directive. They're aimed at creating an environment in which everybody wants to work together. And then and then and then how to run a software company basically, a public sector software organization is you know. General George Marshall once said, if a man can't explain what he does in one page, he does not know what he's doing. So this is my one pager, and it lays out how I run an organization. And I I share that because when you go into a troubled environment when you know the house is on fire, it's it's it's it's very rewarding to see that your approach, your philosophy, how you run a company is successful, right? It's it's It's a battle of will against chaos to try to cause the people in that organization to come together and execute in excess of the sum of their parts. And that's really what I've strived to do throughout the course of my career. It's the reason I've been successful in the software industry. and it's been a it's been a great run. But that that's why I've really been attracted to it. you know, you it it as I say in the book. what fun is software if you can't throw the throttles all the way open and light off the afterburners, right? And and I've been blessed to work for some of the most aggressive and competent software sales organizations. When I was at Tivoli, it was per capita the most productive sales organization in the industry. I was at PeopleSoft, you know, running a large portion of that business, very well respected company. It's the reason it was the first major company that Oracle sought to buy. SAP under Bill McDermott, as one of the CEOs that I had as a customer once said, now there's a sales guy. Bill's a brilliant leader, brilliant sales guy. and so you know, I I I don't aspire to, as a that old monster commercial, claw my way up to mid-management. I seek to, you know, make a difference. And when you do that, y you you realize that that that people can people Realize the greatest part of their their potential. you know, after the year the the the last year I was at Tivoli, we we went from last place to first place in the in in the North Americas, and I was vice president of the year for IBM Software Group in North America. But one of my managers came to me, and I was about thirty-eight years old at the time, and he was late fifties, probably sixty. He looked at me and he said, Bill, I'm gonna have a good retirement because of you. Right. This was a This was a this was a an individual who was very talented, but hadn't been making making a lot of money the the previous four quarters, last year. And so we turned it all around with his help. He was a tremendous leader to his team and a great teammate to the other four managers in that organization. But it made me realize that when you do these turnarounds, it's not just about getting a plaque on the wall and it's not just about getting a big check. It's about unlocking the potential. of individuals and and a whole organization. And and you know, as I tell my managers, this is how people pay their mortgages, this is how people fund their retirement, put their kids through college and and and cover their health care. And so the decisions you make affect all of that. So decide wisely. and and so when you have that opportunity to turn things around, all of that makes What I've done to me personally very satisfying. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: What do you think the biggest challenge that you ever faced and overcame was it in in your software experience? Like what was sort of the the biggest problem or the biggest hill you had to climb? Bill Sullivan: I don't know that I could point at any, you know, every time I go into one of these fix-it situations, I think, well, I've seen it all. And invariably there's Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Right. Bill Sullivan: another new one. You're like, you guys are doing what? I I will tell you, probably my greatest disappointment was when when when PeopleSoft actually was acquired by Oracle. It was it was a it was a tremendous company, it was tremendous technology. we had a wonderful team in the public sector. we we were dominating in our market and in in large measure because all the wonderful people that came together to make that possible. And you got to remember in ERP, you know, we had people that were CPAs on the a and the finance and payroll side. We had career HR professionals on the HR side, we had career technologists springing all that together. And when you build An organization like that, it's just tremendously satisfying to be a part of it. So when that, you know, we we we really fought hard to avoid the acquisition. Turns out it was a very good acquisition for everybody, including Oracle. It didn't start out that way. But, you know, losing that, you know, was was probably my greatest disappointment. You know, I I helped do the integration with Oracle. Many of the people who left PeopleSoft went back and were hired by Oracle. To Oracle's credit and to Larry Ellison's credit, you know, they actually funded and continued to develop and grow the code line. So it was a it was a benefit for both the customers of of PeopleSoft as well as the people in the market. you know, when he initially made the hostile tender offer, he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy the company, I'm gonna shut down the technology, I'm gonna fire all the people. He went from that and our offering, I can't remember what it was, four dollars a share to There's like a 20-some odd premium between the opening offer and the final offer when the deal finally went down. And it was, you know, expensive. I think it brought $11 or $12 billion for the company. But in the long term, that was very successful. But I will tell you that losing that opportunity of people's soft was probably my greatest disappointment. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: When you look back at your career as a as a fixer, right? Like, you know, looking at all these challenges, what are some of the personal traits that you have to take in to fixer type of situations? Like what what what do you go to battle with every day from a, you know, personal skill set? Bill Sullivan: The first thing when you go into those situations is you just really have to know yourself. You know, I I I wrote Bill's rules originally just to articulate what is important to me, right? And and and that's critical when you go into a situation where everything is chaotic, where politics are rife, everybody's backstabbing each other. You got to come in and just say, look, this is who I am, this is what I believe, and this is how I'm going to operate. And all of a sudden everybody Freezes up, turns around and looks around, says, Who's the new cat? And and what that does is, you know, just that self-knowledge and and and sharing that with people, it does a number of things. First, it it calms everybody down. Secondly, it gives you as the leader the opportunity to objectively evaluate everybody's performance without regard to what anybody else says. And and third, it w it it allows me To look at each segment of the business from the product to the marketing to the channel to sales consulting and figure out how strong is any one of these individual pillars? You know, how what do I need to do in what order? And that's critical. What do I need to do in what order to fix this problem first? And that's, you know, from a tactical, from an execution perspective, that's probably the hardest thing to get your head around. And you got to do it quickly. But having a framework that I've used repeatedly from business to business and a found philosophical foundation from which I operate, I can do that a little faster and a little easier than most people. But that that's just practice, right? That's just coming together. but as I say, stratifying, you know, usually you come in, they're they're behind on the number, and everybody says, well, it's sales' fault. Well, you know. How's the product quality? When was last time the product was refreshed? What's the marketing quality? Are they generating leads? Are we relevant to the market? Do we have any channel partners? Are we co-marketing with our channel partners? How much is all that behavior generating leads to the sales force? we're not generating leads. Okay, so maybe the problem isn't your sales force. Maybe the Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Right. Bill Sullivan: problem is everything that comes before it. Now, if you got all that stuff, then chances are you don't. But if you got all that stuff clicking, then you can go look at the sales team and say, okay, you know, strat it's real easy to stratify a sales force, who's ahead of the number, who's behind, stack, rank them, and move. But before you go in and start shooting people indiscriminately, you better know exactly what the problems are because you could create a much bigger problem for yourself by failing to understand what's going on in the environment. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Thank you for that. so tell me about your your current you know, your current company, IOTIC, you know, cybersecurity, is that kind of the arena you guys play in? Bill Sullivan: That's correct. it is specifically it's post-quantum encryption and authentication. So it is a tech Yeah. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Okay. So in English for our listeners. Bill Sullivan: Don't worry, I'm not a cyber guy, so I I can I can explain this at the at the sixty thousand foot level. So the the company, the technology itself originally came out of Oxford University in England. It was originally funded in part with some United States Navy money. they've solved They solve a problem that most people didn't even understand for the first five or six years. Last, you know, it what is quantum computing? You know, how does that work? Okay, now why do I need a cyber defense against that? And and increasingly, you know, people are starting to understand what is quantum and why you might need to be able to defend against it. from from the layman's perspective, you know, cyber. Security has largely s existed along the lines of perimeter defense, your network sign-in and password. Okay. And then you hit a PKI certificate, which authenticates you and that combination then will also give you authentication to those systems internal to a company or an agency for which you should have access at the level that you should have access. okay, that that that's very high. And and You you know, I I actually ran a a cyber company back in 2007, 2008. cyber is a lot like manned flight, okay? From the Wright brothers to the F-35, the the the fundamental principle hasn't changed. You've got a wing, air passes over the wing, there's lift underneath, there's drag across the top, but that basically is what creates flight. cyber's the same way. You have a network password, PKI certificate is about 50 years old and and it's the same principle. What Iothic does is basically we're a flying saucer. Okay. We've done away with the whole principle of a wing. what we do is instead of a singular point of entry to the network, we turn the network into a trust layer. So when you go to sign on to the network, you have to authenticate across five or six different elements in the network. And if you fail any of them, then you do not get access to the enterprise. And and this is designed to accomplish a number of things. First, you know a quantum and AI right now is already generating scripts which allow you to just continue running passwords against a against a a a network until you can get on. Well if we find out that somebody's doing that we can automatically just disregard their efforts to access the network. there is some question about quantum computing, you know, being able to do that times ten. Okay, right. Those just be able to crush through sheer numbers, through sheer computing power, what exists. And and again, the the the concept is that be having to authenticate across five or six different elements in the network will help protect against that. the the next component that we we address is you know right now I think PKI certificates might be There's there's some academic research to suggest that they're about 80 to 90 percent hacked. I think I saw something out of one of the major cyber companies. so that we're designed to actually protect against that. You once you have that the the the IOTI framework in place, you don't actually need a PKI certificate. Now it's important to recognize we don't we're not looking we're not telling anybody to get rid of your your PKI certificate, right? We we can sit In front of that network and serve as an additional layer to protect and to avoid some of these risks that quantum offers. But when you look at large enterprises, particularly some in the United States federal government, you might have multiple networks daisy chained in order to accomplish a singular purpose. So think about, you know. Networks designed to provide control for a theater in in the military for a theater commander. Okay, so they might have one network controlling satellites, one for planes, one for ships, one for under underwater, one on the ground, another one for floating assets. So you've got five or six different networks you're trying to integrate, and managing the PKI infrastructure across that is a tremendous expense and and complexity. And by sitting in front of all of that, Iothic is designed to remove that expense and complexity. So there there's a lot that goes into it. As a friend of mine up at the fort once said, Bill, all we really know is what our PhDs tell us. So I have my PhD, talk to his PhD, and I've got the humility to recognize I need that. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Yeah. Bill Sullivan: but but from a high level, that's that's what Iothic does. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: so let's lean into the book a little bit. You mentioned it a little earlier in in the intro. And so, you know, I wanted to kind of as we close things up here, let's talk about the book, which is titled It Used to Be Fun. And it's really around the software executive's experience as a federal whistleblower. And so why don't you tell us about the book and you know, what what you can talk about and what you can't talk about. Bill Sullivan: Well, just about everything is on on in the book now, but I became aware that there was an active defamation campaign against me as a result of the Justice Department finding the company twenty two million dollars. you know, the CEO and the president of the company, obviously they had won many awards. F Informatica had hit its numbers for forty seven straight quarters, which was somewhat unheard of in in in a lot of areas, but particularly in the software. And so they certainly did not want the world to realize that they'd been submitting false representations and certifications to the federal government for a period of years governing hundreds of tens of at least tens of millions of dollars of revenue. Now, why is that important? Well, for the for the benefit of the layman, when when you sell to the US government, the US government is the largest acquirer of anything, software, pencils, jet engines. Okay. And so You know, and because it's public money, the government says you have to give us your best price, because we we buy more pencils, jet engines, and software than anybody else. And so that's called most favored nation pricing. So to get on to sell to the government through the GSA schedule, which allows you to sell direct without having to go through an RFP and a bid and proposal every time, under oath you say that these are the best prices available on a commercial market. Okay. And and And what was happening was the government, excuse me, Informatica was knowingly falsifying their submissions to the federal government. Now, this in and of itself is a big deal. The other companies have paid $180 million fine, $6,200 million fine. It's a very big deal. But the even bigger deal is by the fact they knew it and they did it over a period of at least five years, according to the government's own settlement document, and I only worked for the company for three years. They did it over five years. individual executives could have borne criminal responsibility for that behavior. And the reason they've been conducting this defamation campaign against me is to just defer blame, responsibility, and acknowledgement for their own conduct. And it it it it gets better. the the CFO of Informatica was named the CFO of the year for the software industry for five or six years. when all this was going on. So it's important to note that the CFO of Enron was also named the CFO of the year. and and so, you know, these the these these group of executives did things that might otherwise have caused them to go to prison for some period of time. And it's important to remember that, you know, Martha Martha Stewart went to prison for six months on a forty three thousand dollar tax problem. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Right. Bill Sullivan: These folks submitted documents to the federal government and the SEC, which were knowingly false for over five years. And all that happened was that the company paid a fine. So they had to find someone to blame. And that's someone for the last eight years, nine years, until this book came out, has been me. So I I I caught them doing that. I hired retained some private investigators from a large national firm. I have these individuals on tape saying that Bill Sullivan set this whole thing up. Of course, that's an entire entirely as the emails demonstrate, that's untrue. and finally, after a lot of machinations, the acting US Attorney General Rod Rosenstein heard about the situation through a friend of mine. He took the case and he sent them a letter saying, you know, we know what's going on, you need to cease and desist. so all this is in in in the book. it it you know, all the emails, Rod's letter, the settlement document. It's it's all available to read. And and I I would not have written the book at all. I I'm not all that comfortable talking about myself, but you know, I have been fired repeatedly because people thought I was a criminal. it's been hard to find another job. And so it was just time. And and you know, and and that's why the book and that's the the the the story from 60,000 feet. But as one of my attorneys said, look, if you just publish all the emails, that's all you need to do. And and that's that's literally what I've done. But, you know, I I I don't see myself as a victim. I'm not a victim. I refuse to be a victim. it would be better for some people if I was in fact a victim, but I'm not. you know, I I had a very successful career. I'm going to use some of the skills that I learned across that career. to fix this situation. Well, that's where we're at. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Well good. we wish you the very best of the book. You said it was already on back border so that's great as it as it starts off. So where can the listeners get the book Bill Sullivan: it's available on Amazon. it should be in the next couple of days. They're they're restocking, but it's also available on Barnes and Noble and it's available on Goodreads. So again, it's the name of the book is It Used to Be Fun, a Software Executive's Experience as a Federal Whistleblower. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: Well there you go guys. Bill Sullivan, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your stories, appreciate you giving us perspective, and certainly appreciate you being here as you launch your new book. So thank you so much. Bill Sullivan: Pleasure's mine, Terry. Thanks so much for having me. Terry Coutsolioutsos-RevRx AI: You're welcome.