Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 91: Paul Ayers, CEO of Noetic Cyber, reveals tips on breaking into the European market

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91: Paul Ayers, CEO of Noetic Cyber, reveals tips on breaking into the European market · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Bite Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that sales of B2B startups should be easier than we often make it, and that it's plain wrong that sales teams and startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams of their bigger and more well-known competitors do.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a seller or a sales leader in a B2B startup, especially if it's in the cybersecurity space, you're in the right place today.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and welcome to episode 91, where our guest is Paul Ayers.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul is the CEO of Noetic Cyber.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Paul, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Andy, great to be here.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation today, but before we get into it, I do need to do a quick sponsor read.
• 1:25
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• 1:30
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• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, Paul, when I look at a quick scan down your LinkedIn profile, if I was to give a couple of quick headlines, I would say Europe.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Those of you picked up on your accent already would guess that you're over in Europe.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I would say is cybersecurity.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, going all the way back, you spent many years working in the semantic fold.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you seem to cut your first uh teeth around sales in the corporate environment.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: You were one of the leaders at Intellect, which in my mind is an integrator in England, primarily focused in those days on cybersecurity as well.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Although we probably didn't call it cybersecurity in those days, right?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably information security or data security.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think intellect's what the Americans would call a boutique var.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that was many years there, about eight years, I think, in two different stints.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're one of the founders of PGP Europe.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the days when selling PGP in Europe was, you know, somewhat legal.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was in that gray area I remember where there was rules and regulations, but creative ways to get around them.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think that was probably one of the craziest gigs I ever uh uh I ever did.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of long stories there, but we started that gig just after the feds dropped their investigation into Phil Zimmerman.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: But encryption was treated as munitions and was difficult to export.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that was a challenging opportunity.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you made it work, and then you were part of the team that created this the version two of PGP, PGP Corporation, and uh grabbed that and its death throws in Network Associates or McAfee, depending on exactly which day of the week you were working there, and revived it and made it work, and then uh sold that to Symantec, right?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, we call it PGP one and PGP two.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So PGP one went to uh Network Associates McAfee, and then we we bought the rights back again, had another run at it, and uh ended up at Symantec.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, I would say you've got a history here of helping North America US companies launch in Europe as the leader of their European operations.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um looking at uh Vormetrics in there, resilient.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: You spent a little bit of time at 1011 Ventures as the EIR, and I'll come back to that in a second.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then companies on here, such as CryptoSense, as your advisor, really at CryptoSense, right?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then now for the last couple of years, you've been the CEO at Noetic Cyber.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: What the heck is an as an entrepreneur in residence do at a VC company?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a great question.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think it's kind of broadening, but it's very much a US-centric term.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when I updated my LinkedIn profile, mostly you know, Europeans ping me and said, What the hell's an EIR?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's actually uh a pretty interesting and amazing role.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was less familiar with it.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was approached by 1011 Ventures and I bumped into them at RSA.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: My last operational role was at Resilient, would sold it to IBM.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great acquisition.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was locked in as an executive for two years, stayed longer than that, was trying to work out what to do next, and was offered this EIR role.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of where you're working with a venture capital firm, and they normally put you the E can mean one of two things.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you're normally either an executive in residence where you're looking for your next operational role, and so you'll work with them whilst you're kind of finding what's next, helping their portfolio, but ultimately that's what you're trying to do, and they're normally trying to place you in one of their portfolio roles, or you're an entrepreneur in residence where you're looking to start something.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the in-residence is consistent, you know, depending uh on the E.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I when they asked me to come on board at 1011, I said, no, I should be an executive in residence.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: All I've done is operational role.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we negotiated the kind of contract and I redlined all the entrepreneurial kind of elements to it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And turns out that I ended up being an entrepreneur in residence because as part of that journey, uh, it really was a good reflection of what I wanted to do next.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, you know, I concluded I wanted to start my own software company from scratch, having previously you know worked for five different companies in prior roles.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it evolved then what you were doing with them.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a way to keep great talent such as yourself in their fold while your next move, your next step is you could figure that out.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is that well, you first of all you say the nicest things, Andy.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it is a lot of what I was doing was given my background, helping portfolio companies on their expansion strategies internationally.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But as we all know, particularly in cyber, there's a vibrant community of innovation all over the world now, right?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just in North America, you classically think of the valley, but you know, DC, Texas now, Boston, London's very hot, Tel Aviv and Israel obviously, as well.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I really enjoyed doing in particular was I led the research on a couple of companies.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I researched a lot, but you know, a couple of companies that the 10-11 ended up investing in.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's exciting.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as kind of a sales guy, you feel you close something for the first time in a in a while because you're moving from the day-to-day of a normal operational role when you're at a VC, it's a very different kind of cadence, it's low volume, a lot of research, you're making very measured bets.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it was exciting to be on that side of the community and work with the CEO and say, Yep, we believe in you, we're writing you a check, we want to invest in your company and take it to the next level.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, for those who don't know, 10-11, they're a pure place cyber investor.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's all they do, and so made a lot of sense in terms of you know my background and uh experience.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think you go say, I want to become an EIR.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's timing and it's work you've done with investors who know you that those kind of opportunities come along.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'd encourage anybody that gets that opportunity, it's something you should definitely take because it's going to broaden your thinking and look at the investment side of the equation and introduce you to lots of interesting people in terms of network expansion as well.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed my time there.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 1011's got a great portfolio of companies they're working with right now in the cyberspace.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty impressive, the growth they've had over the last decade or so.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go all the way back though, Paul, to Paul Ayers as a kid.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, seven-year-old Paul, where in the world were you and what did you care about?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: What were you up to in those days?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's interesting.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, seven-year-old Paul, I lived in the UK, grew up in the UK.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we moved from where I was born, which is the in Kent in the UK, thought of as the Garden of England, so it's where a lot of the agriculture of the UK is, and then I moved to Buckinghamshire at the age of five and started primary school there.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I would have been in Buckinghamshire two years into primary school.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying to think, seven seven years old.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, curious about stuff, love sports.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I started to perhaps do my first deals as a seven-year-old.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember you know, the big thing would be in the summer you would have the sports day and you know, it'd be a nice hot day, and everyone would get thirsty.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to freeze bottles of squash um and always have ice cold squash and then sell it for like a couple of pence for a few gulps to my colleagues that were that were thirsty on sports day.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a bit of a digression.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I grew up with a great family, I was very privileged, nice part of the world, and uh had uh you know pretty normal childhood, you know, I would say from that perspective.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And for the US folks who aren't familiar, Kent is in the southeast side of London, and Bucks is out west of London, right?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, west of the yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then into your teenage years, were you still looking at little hustles to make a few pennies here and there?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think I was an early uh uh hustler.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think when I it's always interesting with the US audience, you start comparing the schools.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I always have to recompute, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, we have different exams, different what's at college, what's O levels, what's A-levels, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm always curious when um I interview people, you know, for roles in the company, actually to understand those formative years and to understand what kind of came naturally, what subjects, what kind of things you know were of interest.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess the equivalent of when you go to college is when you start to focus on particular subjects.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that was three things.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was pure math, it was economics and computer science.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess you could start to see, you know, areas that I had kind of natural interest and passion in at that, you know, at that kind of age.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then what age were you when you got your first proper you know job where you got a paycheck and pay tax on it and things like that?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I did what would be the equivalent of an internship.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: My father was in the insurance industry, and you know, I'm sure your audience is familiar with Lloyd's and Lloyd's of London, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of the underwriter.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I I spent, I think, four weeks on the box, as they say, at Lloyd's of London, which is an amazing building.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was at the time the biggest sort of open-air building in Europe, and you're really at the heart of the insurance world.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, I remember my kind of mentor showing me around the company, it was called Sturge Holdings, and there was all these sort of ancient pictures of, well, this is old Mr.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Surge, and this was the next generation of Sturge.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, in six years, Paul, you could be a junior underwriter, and in 14 years you could do all this kind of stuff.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And just my brain was going, no, no, no, no, no, this isn't for me.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then we just looked in, you know, as you would in kind of local press at the time on job opportunities, and there was uh an advert for a company called Corporate Software, and they were kind of in the next town down from me, and I went and interviewed there.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And corporate software were an early reseller, you know.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: This was in uh I hate to show my age here, this was in the sort of 87 period, and really enjoyed that and started very much in a junior role where you were doing both sales and support.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a weird combo, and you'd have to go find your own accounts.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I did a lot of business with local government and some of the local enterprises in that area, but you'd not just uh be kind of selling the software products, but when they had problems, you would take first-line support.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pretty small company, and those days um everything was boxed software.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you got a copy for 50 licenses, that was a big crate of box products that you guys ship out the door.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, it was a very interesting foundational role, understanding technology, understanding a bit about the technical aspects, the sales aspects, and good kind of general expounding, I guess, into a first sales role.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, there is no better way to learn more about you, Paul, than by using one of the bullshit LinkedIn polls that are out there right now.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I have three of them lined up here.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's no right or wrong answers, by the way, so don't feel like you're gonna pass or fail at the end of this.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: First one is from actually well-known sales uh consultant Andy Paul.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting question.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Should a buyer be able to see your pricing without talking to a salesperson?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I should there be pricing maybe on the website that someone could look at in our world.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's think about cybersecurity.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that we should offer or not?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that's an interesting question where I'm more inclined to say yes than I would have done a period ago.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think buying behaviors have changed.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was happening anyway, it's been accelerated by COVID.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, think about anything you buy, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: You research it online at a personal level.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You research it online, you decide what you want to do, and you're away down a journey before you want to engage with the sales process.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So naturally it's going to vary on the nature of the technology and what you're buying and the complexity and variance.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what people want is more of an indication and a feel of what the range is of this thing I'm looking at.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's human instinct, and I think we've seen behavior, even in you know, certainly in cybersecurity, where people can go learn a lot, they can get into the technology, they can get some idea at the entry level of what this thing might cost before they engage with a salesperson.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's just going to continue in our industry.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was interesting.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: The results from this poll were 59% of people said yes.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: You should be able to see pricing without talking to a salesperson.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was surprised that it was quite so high, but I think it is a reflection of how we're recognizing that buyer behavior has changed so much recently.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So 59% said yes, 22% said no, and the 20% can couldn't decide and just said it depends.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Next poll, and I can't pronounce this person's name, it's Quonict.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: What makes an effective workplace?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: A flexible working options, B, a positive vibe, C, effective technology, and D personal comfort.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting question in this these times.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean that doesn't feel like a choose one of four, that feels like a staggering kind of you know response there, right?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because all of the above.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, what really I think for me it's so I'm not gonna answer your question directly on which of those four.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's about people and it's a culture and a creative environment, and there's lots of elements that make that up.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you can have a great team of people working in a pretty terrible office environment, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But they know that as they become more successful the office environment changes, but you don't get to change the people you're working with.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got to get that right first time.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was interesting on the response, so 67% said a positive vibe.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Culture, as we know, it's the key.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask people, you know, what's the best company when you look through and reflect on their, you know, CV, the best company you've worked, they're gonna think about the people, the culture, the can-do attitude, and what they achieve together.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the beauty of building teams.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Final one from Garav Kumar.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Don't know if you're gonna like this one or not.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Which of these industry figures is more of your role model than the others?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Four likely candidates here are Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Google uh CEO, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can say none of the above.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not one of those are in my kind of immediate mentor type thing, but I there's a lot of respect for those organizations and what they've built, unquestionably.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's maybe I'm a Brit.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I like people like Branson that's challenged organizations and gone after established markets and others.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I find it hard to choose one of those for, although I respect all of them, of course.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the answers were uh almost 50% said Sundar at Google or Alphabet, I guess it is.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Blowest, somewhat unsurprisingly, was Zuckerberg, and the Bezos and Gates were kind of in the middle.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so in your tenure, all the companies we mentioned, I think three or four times you were the person at a cybersecurity company which built and ran their European operations.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And in working with my clients over here and just getting a bit of a feel for what people are concerned about or thinking about at an early stage, is at what point do we make that step to go into Europe and and how do we do it?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's what is that first step?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's the way to do this?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do we go in all guns blazing and hire a big team?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do we go and dip our toe in?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: If we dip our toe in, how do we do that?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought it'd be useful if we could talk about some ideas that people should be thinking about as they're making the decision.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, everyone's situation can be a little bit different, but there must be some guiding principles that you've come to over the years to say here's some simple things to start thinking about.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I I think that is uh a little bit different, obviously, between North America and Europe is thinking about how you get to understand the market, the territory, which areas country by country are the ones that you should be thinking more about and less about.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: How have you tended to approach that working in previous roles?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, I think in terms of your point on the you know the timing, generally what my experience has been is classically, if you're looking at a North American company coming into Europe, it's normally at the Series B onward stage, right, in terms of investment, or certainly when you're on the kind of 20 to 200 customer journey, where you've got traction in your home territory in North America, you're probably getting some inquiries internationally, and for various reasons, you're thinking about what do we do now and how do we establish that that presence.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that there's some there's a kind of a science approach to this, but also I think there's a cultural approach, which is first of all, you've got to think about looking at this new market with a different lens to how things are going in your current market where you have that traction, right?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And almost roughly think back two years in terms of what you've just been focusing on and the challenges you overcame to get to your traction because it's not just a straight continuity of extending your North American team.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you are sort of starting afresh to a certain degree, and then when you look at Europe, obviously, you know, that there's 44 countries in Europe, in the EU, or not, they've all got their own kind of unique characters and considerations.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you really want to think about focus and getting a beachhead territory in place there.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So to kind of summarize what my experience has been is effectively triage the market.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of three kind of segments there.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your kind of core market, which is where you're gonna put your people, that's your foundation where you want to, you know, get your beachhead, so to speak, your near-core market, which is the second logical places you're gonna move into, and then kind of outfield, which is just forget about it for now, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of markets to get to, that's gonna be a distraction for you.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you really want to kind of map out those markets, and then depending on the nature of your technology, take a science approach, obviously, to the size of the market.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at cyber, which is what I'm familiar with, two countries account for 54% of the total spend.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, based on IDC and other you know research firms, and that's the UK and and Germany or the DAC market.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's often some of the logical places that you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna look to start at.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And back to what you said, always adjust, but most organizations will typically start in the UK.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm a Brit, so other people will go, oh, Brexit, all these kind of things, or have you bought, you know, and I've had that, you know, conversation actually, it doesn't feel that different when you're here to what you're looking at externally.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, it's the largest market for cybersecurity, and you're gonna need a presence here anyway, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever you do.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And also outside of that, any segment that you look at, you need to look at ease of doing business, legal frameworks, culture, those kind of things as well.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a logical extension.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: So not always, but often that's where you'll start with a view on markets like Germany.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd encourage anyone just brutal focus, get established, get traction in that landing market, and be very reactive to others because it can be a distraction.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to have a it may change slightly, but you've got a a lot of other markets they want to have that local presence, the local language support and other aspects as well.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: How easy is it to service, for example, Germany from the UK or maybe some of the scandic countries?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I would say if you look at how it evolves, certainly over time, the UK, if you look at a mature organization, is probably the head office for kind of like the northern Europe aspect, which classically includes, say, the Benelux and the Nordic regions.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: The uh nice thing about things like Nordics is they've got a history of being open for innovation.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Microsoft famously launched Windows in Sweden, way back uh in the day, you know, uh English language speaking, those kind of aspects as well.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So those are pretty easy to service.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, Paris is a two-hour train ride direct from London, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just two hours, 15 minutes, and you're in the the centre of Paris.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good hub from that perspective.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked about getting a beachhead, a landing spot in the UK.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean, people-wise?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I guess when you think about your foundational hire or hires, it sort of varies really again on the appetite and where you are.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the last operational role that I did, I was the founding hire at a company called Resilient Systems, and we had immediate headcount for four people as part of that team.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: There was me, there was a pre-sales person, we invested in a channel uh person, and we had kind of like an inside salesperson on that side.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that means that you can go faster, obviously.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: But really, I think that the thing you need to think about is what type of sales leader you want in that foundation.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess you've got, you know, really kind of three three options there.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: You go for either an experienced seller, you go for somebody that can do that and is has the potential to be an emerging leader, or you hired someone that's experienced at building and scaling and know you can take your international organization on a long journey from scratch.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: When you're doing the resilient gig, Paul, you were the seller in that quartet of people, right?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: You were you're the leader, but the seller as well, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and that was a foundation team.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I actually find, in my personal experience, it's easier to coach if you've actually been active in the field.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so some of that is by design and still have the appetite and also have a roller decks to start getting traction.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But six months after starting, I hired my first field salesperson in that model.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you kind of want to understand the nuances a little bit.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I that's how I'm personally wired, before you sit so you're clear on the talent you need to bring on board in the next phase.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you're a US-based company, let's say you've gone for a little bit of light touch, you maybe got a couple of people, you got a seller and SE as your first pair.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: At what point do you think what we probably need is a proper leader who's gonna be the leader for the next two or three years to really build out the team?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: What point does that come in naturally?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I would first of all say that if that's your approach, and that's fine, you've got to make sure that your leadership team at head office in North America, and kind of the example we're talking about here, has the capacity to do the coaching needed to take that team to the next level.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: But really, I would say there's two answers to this.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on the coaching capacity of who they're gonna be reporting into, because it becomes harder if you've got, for example, a worldwide leader in North America where they've got two, three, four teams in Europe reporting into them.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't scale.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I would encourage people if you think you're in a solid market opportunity and you're gonna be successful, I would try and hire leadership as soon as you can.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because the difference is they're gonna think less tactically on sales quota negotiation what I'm achieving in the short term.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be thinking more about strategic growth of your organization.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a slightly different mindset, you know, on that side.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: To answer your specific question, though, you know, it's a capacity in North America, but B, I think as soon as you know you're gonna need two or three kind of sales pods, if you like, either in one or multiple territories, then that that's probably a trigger point where you need to start thinking about how you scale that.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you've got to think it's not just about okay, we need to put sellers in place.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: You need a plan to launch in every market.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna start, whichever market you're gonna start in, you're gonna need to think about local PR, local messaging, building a reputation, building a name, building a brand.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's different culture, different processes, probably different agencies than you've had in North America.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: So then who's the spokesperson, right?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And how does that work?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's other aspects to it as well, beyond of just thinking about this, isn't it like opening up another NFL territory, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is a different thinking and a different approach.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And also, this team is representing your company, your DNA, your culture in a new market, and you need to be very comfortable that they've got the experience to do that in the way that you want them to.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it seems like from what you're saying, then the danger is that you do treat your expansion in Europe just like adding another territory.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go do Midwest, let's go Southeast and just you know, put a pot in and away you go.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's not really the way to do it in Europe when you have to think about whilst they're part of Europe, the countries are still quite compartmentalized with their own cultures and their own ecosystem of how they do business and who they do it with.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Massively.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely so important.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I won't mention names, but there are famous stories, you know, in Europe of North American companies that have gone, right, let's hire up, we're ramping, let's go, let's get four sales pods going, let's just hire, higher, higher.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just not worked at all.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the headhunters did well, but no one else did.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's back to what I said earlier on.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've also got to think about where you were two years ago, right, with that lens.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it may it shouldn't take you two years to get to where you want Europe to be, but you've got to recognize that you needed a certain grit, you needed to get those foundation accounts.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: People didn't know your organization, you didn't have the brand awareness and presence, and you've got to re-establish that.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's getting easier because of you know all the things we've talked about, and particularly, you know, COVID has kind of shrunk the buying community and how you can do business easier in more ways, and there's a lot of things that are doing remotely and and what have you.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of this has been the experience pre-COVID where it's been the more classic hiring face-to-face enterprise sales class, you know, people.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: But but certainly, yeah, have that kind of think two years back and forget your classic NFL city thinking, and and you may need to adapt the model.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you're thinking about investing, you've got to think more than just headcount, right?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: It it sounds like PR marketing, probably more events as well, even now.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And again, all of those are different, right?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, RSA is kind of the Mecca that we all go to in the cyber world, right?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's probably the biggest show.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh black hat's kind of catching up on that site.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: But RSA famously tried for many years in Europe and failed.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But all the vendors went because it's like, oh, it's RSA.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, different, right?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Different shows, different markets.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got infosecurity in the UK, you've got Itza in Germany.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's different shows that and events that you need to almost disassociate the brand you're familiar with and ask very locally what works and what the people really go to.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things I hear as well, talking about more of a strategic approach, is people tend to have a good intuition that the channel is much more important or useful or whatever in a MIA than it might be in North America for an early stage company.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Is that true?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then if so, how do you engage?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Why would a VAR or a distributor in London care about the next company trying to make it in Europe coming over from North America?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say yes, that is true.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And back to what we said earlier is just the number of countries, the cultural elements, you need friends that understand that.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And channel is a logical area to help you with reach and sort of expansion there as well.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: In a couple of companies I've worked at, you know, actually, it was the European team that really matured the channel program because it was so important to what we needed to do locally.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, that absolutely will be key.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, my personal experience has been when where you're putting your own people in.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you use the UK as your beach head, I've not gone two-tier and gone to distributors, I've built a small network of partners that we're working with directly, collaborating with directly, coaching and learning together to be that kind of first phase of channel adoption.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you'll find that there's a number of focused partners that are just in your domain, your area of expertise, and want to show that they are bringing innovation to their clients.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So markets are busy and all those kind of things, but they need the new thing, right, to also bring to those customers as well.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's often the thing that's going to drive interest.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to drive it yourself in the foundational year, but you want to be thinking about building that channel in you know in parallel.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And many of these are used to running events that can bring new leads and opportunities to you.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: And my sense is that the when you're ready for two-tier and you got your distributors, they tend to be more value-add distributors in Europe than perhaps our experiences might be in North America.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that fair as well, do you think?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's certainly the case.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it has been the case in single-tier as well, right?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they want to earn margin and they know that they need to to, in order to earn that margin, they need to do more of the heavy lifting.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be more self-sufficient on just the kind of pre-sales process, but also in the post-sales uh uh process as well.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul, tell us about Noetic Cyber.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: What does Noetic do?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: We just came out of stealth last quarter, and we kind of came up with a concept uh the last couple of years working at, which was in the response market.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But when, you know, through that journey, we kind of built 150 enterprise customers in Europe, spoke to a lot of people in security operations and understood what are their challenges.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, in today's environment, it's really difficult to do the hard fundamentals of knowing what you're trying to defend, know its current state, and making sure that you've kind of closed all the different elements of attack surface that an adversary is trying to leverage.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we're building what Garner started to call a cyber asset attack surface management.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's basically having a cyber lens of all your critical systems and assets in a way that you really understand the relationships and can understand what you need to do today to protect your environment and leveraging automation in a new way in a very proactive way where we can start self-healing those environments so that we're kind of keeping those doors closed from the adversary.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what size of company is the natural market for that?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: So when we were in stealth, we worked with over 20 design partners, which is a lot, actually, when you're building a company, but we purposely looked at different sizes and different verticals and different geos because we wanted to kind of understand the addressable market, right?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say the smallest organizations that we're looking at, where we looked at the time are kind of a thousand employees up, and so it's kind of 100 million turnover, a thousand plus employees, all the way up to the largest uh enterprises, which is a significant market opportunity.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it tells you that this is a tough challenge at all different sizes of organizations.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that's kind of the entry level, really.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And are you looking to hire salespeople right now?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Can people get in touch with you about that?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: They they certainly can.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, we just came out of stealth.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: We put a foundation team in the UK, and we've got a foundation team starting in North America as well, and then you know, we'll be looking to expand as we go down on our journey.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: So always interested to talk to top talent.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So careers page or LinkedIn?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is that yep, careers page on um noedic.com, and we promote things on LinkedIn, and people can always ping me on LinkedIn as well.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, is there a sales saying or sales question that you just wish to banish to the far reaches of outer space and never hear uttered ever again by a salesperson?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh well, if that's one of your standard questions, right?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm trying to think which ones I'm there's all the what keeps you awake at night, all that kind of stuff.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, I I find the that's a great question acknowledgement, right?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in these kind of interactions.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a natural thing, but actually it's not always a great question, and it feels a little bit cheesy.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: But just everyone, when they're being asked questions, making the uh the person asking the question like that's the smartest thing they've ever heard can come across as a little bit uh patronizing sometimes.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Although that was a good question, Andrew.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: It does seem almost like people feel it's to buy them time, right?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what's weather like today?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a great question, as you're trying to, you know, and it does, you're right.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds so disingenuous, even the second time you say it, and sometimes the first time you say it, right?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're getting on the call.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: To be fair, it's when you just see the repetition of that, right?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it just doesn't feel sincere.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, not at all.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, Paul, I I enjoyed catching up with you again.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed uh hearing your perspective about how companies should be thinking about their expansion in Europe.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: I took away some good things here about the size and stage of the company you should be at when you're thinking about this.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: The whole concept of you know, cash your mind back two years and think where you were and some of the decisions you were making then and think about that as a lens to look through a European expansion.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think you said that 54% in the market is in the UK and the DAC countries, which I think is Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is that my correct?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that the channel has a role to play, and you should view that as in as you invest in your own team in countries, you should be investing with the channel as well in those same territories.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure others will have their own takeaways, but that was some of the notes that I took down.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: So really appreciate you taking the time to share that with everyone and certainly wish you all the best with Milletic and hopefully you'll get some traction with some people reaching out and looking to have a discussion about opportunities.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the conversation, always good to talk to you.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Ed.