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Pax8 Roadshow Special - Nihil Morjaria · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, welcome back to Partnerships Unravel, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and secrets of partnerships and the channel.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Coming to you from PAX 8 Beyond and sitting down with Nihil Morjari from USecure.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Did I pronounce your name correctly?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: You were so brave to not double check the surname before and just jump with it.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, you nailed it.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right, good.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're not going to do a retake.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, how are you?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Very well, thank you.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Beyond's always uh a big event.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: There's always a good buzz.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, just come out of the uh introduction sort of keynote.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's uh it's an exciting opportunity, lots of ideas going around, lots of people that you can meet, lots of conversations to be had.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, very well.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm hoping I can keep up the energy, but to start with, could you give us a quick introduction about yourself and your background?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course, yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: So um Snihill, I'm the chief revenue officer at U Secure.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been at the organization for almost eight years now.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've done basically every sales role there is to do within U Secure.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I've cold called, I've done um managed teams, I've done the go-to-market stuff, I've done retention.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my background is in psychology.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: That was why I studied at university.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, so it's quite convenient that I've landed in an organization inside security that's all about human risk.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: So my focus is very much on making sure that we have the right people, the right processes in place to make sure our partners can grow.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's everything that I do at USQL.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Incredible.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's great to talk to you.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I think that psychology background is invaluable in any SILS role because what is SILS other than the like laying connection, understanding the other person, you know, understanding what you're looking to achieve together, like digging deeper than the surface level.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's interesting, and I'll definitely come back to that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's talk a little bit about USecure.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you've skilled to 2200 partners, more than 2200 partners.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm curious to know what was the biggest mindset shift that your team had to make to go truly channel first.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and how did that show up and how you structured your CRO role?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the so for the first three or four years of USecure, we didn't have a channel.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: We were purely direct-to-end customer.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a very competitive market in what was then just security awareness.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: We've now shifted into a more sort of comprehensive, wide-ranging human risk vector.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: But at that point, really competing on the direct-to-business model was very tricky.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so, from the from a commercial perspective, the biggest challenge was essentially having our reps buy into the idea that we are going to give away a significant chunk of margin.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: But what you get back from that is scale.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: What you get back from that is external support.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: We were bootstrapped, we were a small team, we had to be very, very efficient with our resources.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so the big challenge for me was making sure that before we go channel focused, I can get buy-in from our reps to understand that this isn't going to it's a short-term hit to your revenue.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: But long term, it's going to absolutely extrapolate because then you're going to have essentially outsourced sales functions where your job is to prime those people to be mini use.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden, you can then scale out to thousands of partners whilst not needing to scale out your team internally.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so doing the groundwork before that change was really important to make sure that the reps are primed and excited by that and see as an opportunity rather than something that's going to cause friction or complicate their sales process or hit their revenue.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think that makes so much sense.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the way that I have these discussions with sales leaders all the time is Ryan, there's there's a mindset shift required to think about channel sales as anything other than an extension of your sales, right?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a force multiplier.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't see like obviously it's changing right now, this this uh this paradigm.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: People are starting to understand, and partner programs are starting to be developed to support that more effectively.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, the idea of like, oh, my partner's coming for my commissions, it's like, no, no, no, your partner should be like 2Xing your commission because you're you're uh extrapolating your network.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's about choosing those right partners where you they're not just a transacting partner, they're they're a partner that actually add that value.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's such a buzzword, but you have to look for those partners where they have supplementary resources, which mean that you you internally as an organization can grow because you're getting insights from people that have experience in the channel, that have the network, and that can support you so that you're not a bottleneck anymore.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: You have these external sources that can provide those leads, that can provide that support, and that can help you to learn as a organization, but also as a salesperson.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think it's about again going beyond that surface level.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking about what network means.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Look, some people say, like, oh yeah, I've got uh 1,200 people on LinkedIn, that's my network.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, it's not.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, network is someone that I can call for a beer and for a job.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that person can call me for a beer for a job.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think with partners, it's the same thing, like understanding what uh what their their um would you say that sphere of influence actually really is, as opposed to what they're saying it is, and then building on that, and then it becomes a rule for smaller.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: And also someone that can challenge you.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like if it's uh if it's a true part of your net but a true friend, that if you're gonna say an idea that they think is an awful idea, they should tell you.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas if it's someone that you don't, it's it's like a just a LinkedIn connection, it's all uh uh an echo chamber of positivity.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay, yeah, great idea.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then in the back of there's kind of like, oh, I'm not gonna do that myself.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas you need those people that can sense check and that can challenge your ideas, and that's how you then grow and and evolve rather than just uh happy years.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the psychology behind it as well.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, next question.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned you have a background in psychology, you bring that to your CRO role in a cybersecurity company.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, how much does that shape the way you think about like partner enablement, for example, but also to help getting MSPs to change their sales behavior?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's it's that that sales function is so important because it's you know the average MSP quite often is someone that's very technical.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: The commercial side of things is something that they understand is important to their business.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: They know is like the foundation of their business to be able to run, but it's the probably the part they're least confident in because they come from a technical background.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so a lot of our go-to-market messaging is about almost getting ahead of those issues and showing our partners that we understand the challenges that they have.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're all different, they all have their own backgrounds, but we have to adapt to the personas of the people that we're speaking with and think our expertise is in the human side of things, our expertise is on enabling them to go to market and enabling them to be able to have conversations around what can be quite abstract uh topics, but to be able to make it tangible, to be able to bring in real-life scenarios and examples that people can actually relate to.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so a lot of the work that we've done with our go-to-market strategy with our internal training is making sure that we can communicate those sort of problems to our customers and to our partners, and that they can almost become a mouthpiece then and they become trained by us in how to how to educate their own customers.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the human risk element is a really interesting antidote because so much of technology is is systems focused.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: And particularly now, everyone's talking about AI enablement, everyone's talking about software that that can be um that can evolve incredibly quickly.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, those things are fundamental, and they'll always be fundamental, but it's almost a nice change of pace to go back to well, there's still a person in front of their computer.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: And how can we empower them to be able to use those systems in a more effective way?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and again, that's where the psychology background comes into it, is it's it's making people feel heard, making people feel understood, and it's making sure that we have frameworks internally so that we can tap into those kind of things and understand them as an individual person and then use that to make sure we can grow with them rather than just treating them as a number on a screen and a metric.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's something almost ironic about um we when we talk about implementing AI, there's this narrative of uh human in the loo, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you talk about cybersecurities, indeed it's all systems and functions and tech and follow up.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And like, well, but if I just put in my password into like a phishing email, then that no no system is is stopping me from doing that, right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like answering a scam phone call, whatever.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the human element there is almost critically ignored from my perspective, even though that's like the the quickest point of failure, even if your tech is like massively well managed.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, speaking of, um, you've talked about human risk intelligence and a new product you launched called UHealth.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm fascinated by human risk in the AI age, um, especially how you balance that narrative.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But can you tell me a little bit about why this is important to offering uh UHealth and what innovations you're bringing to the table?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so one of the challenges that we've we've had, and I think everyone that deals with human risk has had, is often the program sits in isolation in its own tenant, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's to do with, oh, okay, you've done this training course and you got this score, or you didn't click on this fish.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's great.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pat ourselves on the back and let's move on.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: The thing is, is that there are so many real life signals that we don't incorporate into those programs that tell us actually, are they applying things?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you send them a policy that says you should not use your work email to sign up for um unapproved services, are you actually monitoring whether they're actually doing that or not?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Do we have a sense check that allows us to verify whether those behaviors are actually being implemented?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so the idea with human risk intelligence is to bring real life signals into the use of your product.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So and that's where UHealth comes into it.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll be able to um integrate with entra ID, and I'll be able to say, Oh, Michelle, you you've signed up for these 10 services in the last three months because you're testing a ton of AI tooling.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: And whilst that's great that you've got the appetite stealer and the proactivity, none of these are authorized.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: And uh our CTO has no visibility on where your data's going, whether those have been approved.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: And also it just so happens that you've not set up MFA on any of them and you've reused the same passwords.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry to use you as an example, but your face tells me that I've I've figured you out.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um you use AI for that, but expression when people are reading that email.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea is now if we if we have that in the same spaces, we can then say, oh, but Michelle's also been sent these um these training course on AI usage.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe uh now it means that we need to revamp that training.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: We need to use that to feed how we then fish him, um, because we know the services that he's using.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so then it then makes the program so much more tailored to you as an individual person.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: And UHealth is what gives us that insight.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: It tells us what you're signing up for, whether you've set up MFA, whether you're reusing passwords, whether you haven't reset your password in months.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea is again, it's bringing real life signals into the product.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then one of the questions that we get so often is well, if we get this, if we get insight into this risk, what do we then do with it?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the goal is then to give clear remediation steps to say, and that's so powerful for an MSP to say to their customer, we're taking all these risk signals now into the product, and I'm gonna do all these things for you to reduce that risk.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm managing all of that for you.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: But here's a nice report that tells you what what um risk factors we've identified and the steps that I've then taken to remediate them.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you're actually hitting every step in the chain, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you're hitting the do you also align with the policies?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is that something you can automate where it's like, hey, you parse a policy of a company and you can link up those uh uh those variables to those policies?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we can we we have policy documentation that we can send in the product, and we also can align that with uh certain frameworks.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um so UHealth is is the first step in this.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that is the integration with entra and it tells us where you're signing up for different services, whether you're reusing passwords, whether you have MFA setup.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: The longer term goal is to then feed that into um custom policy creation so that we know that you're um that Dora is relevant to you as an organization because in the EU, you work in the finance sector.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so we can then feed in policies to then understand um whether those uh uh frameworks are being met by the policies that you have.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a bit more of the longer term plan.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: But the initial idea with UHealth, what we'll be launching, is get those insights from ENTRA, use that real life signals, then feed the humorous intelligence program.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have uh real-life behaviors coupled with still the importance of security awareness training, simulated fishing, yeah.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: But it becomes a much more robust understanding about you as an individual person.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: What I like so much about that, it's very exciting to me because it removes the kind of rote nature of cybersecurity training and awareness, is where if you tailor the the uh the simulated attacks to people's behaviors, it's gonna be more difficult for them to actually intuit them, let's say.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like um when you're driving, when you do get your driver's license, you do like you look at your inside mirror, you look at your outside mirror, you look over your shoulder.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was doing my driver test, I was just kind of doing that automatically.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, oh, I actually have to look at what's going on.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a bit analogous to what you're saying here, is what you're triggering people to actually take control of their uh their their their cybersecurity awareness.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really cool move.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a really important point as well because it's it builds a culture of accountability.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's the end users so often when we speak to organizations that are trying to deploy humor risk, yeah, yeah.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: The end users aren't necessarily informed about what the expectations are there as an employee.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost a case of, oh, our IT function or our MSP have these things in place, and I'm sort of secondary to security.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: And instead, if we can have a continual program that empowers them, again, it comes back to the idea of of culture about um accountability, yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: It then it then makes them an active unit in the security posture rather than just a passive secondary um line that then often is where things fall apart.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: If we can then have them proactively contribute towards security posture, we then have another layer and then these people in the systems feet together, all of a sudden we're much more robust.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that makes so much sense.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: A fascinating approach.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well one thing I I do want to end on is where do you see AI like rocket shipping the human risk management domain in the next couple years?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Does it make the MSP's job easier?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, does it change what they need to sell and deliver?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Does it work together with them?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: It makes things easier if you have the right processes around it.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the challenges, if you if you collate all this information, um but you don't have the right processes and frameworks to then be able to understand that data, operationalize it, and act upon it, then you just drown in information.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so what a lot of our better partners are doing is they are looking at what data they can pull, but before they start to then present that to their customers, they already have a workflow that says, if I get this information, here's what needs to happen, here's what needs to happen after that, and here's the impact that it has upon you.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then they can wrap that into this brilliant service, which they can increase their margins off because it's it's output led, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's here's the impact of it.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a case of going to them and saying, This is the information we found, what do you want to do with it?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's I found this information.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: I found this information, I've acted upon it, and here's how it's helped you as a business.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: And all of that has happened in the past.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now, AI is a massive enabler to that, but you have to put the structures around it to make sure that as we're using these tooling, as we're gathering that data, we can then maximize it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's the challenge that a lot of our partners are having and will continue to have over the next year is those teething issues.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of people will drown in information and then try and figure out what to do with it.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the the more proactive partners that will have the structures in place that mean when they get that information, they already know how to then feed it in.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where they can then charge exponentially more because for their clients, it's a it's a very value and outcome-driven um service they get from their from their provider.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're willing to pay for that because it's a massive headache that'll be taken away from the.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and especially if you can then benchmark that.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh non-human risk empowered uh end customers compared to human risk-empowered emperor.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's fascinating.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hey, to end this, do you have any final thoughts, insights, tips, or tricks you'd like to share with myself and the audience here at Pikes MPI, though?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um isn't just general like like meditation life tips, or or anything related to you secure to the channel, to your to your solutions, anything.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh I think it comes back to the point that you met you made earlier about the network side of things.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's it's incredibly important that people talk to one another, that people come to these events, that they share what what challenges that they're having, and that they're honest about them as well.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's so tempting to come to these things and paint the rosiest picture about your organization.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Everything, everything's great, everything's going fine, all the crazy.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and ultimately everybody has certain challenges that they're working on.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: And fundamentally, when you just sit down and speak to people, so often there's a lot of crossover in those.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think one of the great things about working the channel that we've we've realized over the last four or five years in particular is it stops you being an isolated organization.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: But you have to be um it takes a a a villager to build a village, you have to be part of that community.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that would be my advice.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: We we've gained a lot from the channel.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: I hope we give a lot back, and it's important that people keep on keep on communicating, keep on discussing those sort of challenges, and that's what helps me with continually grow.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I love that.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, keeping in on uh in line with the whole surface level thing, it's beyond the surface level.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: If we have to start having more real conversations, being honest, because then we all grow, right?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like a rising tide lifts our buttons.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, thank you so much.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, and