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From Startup to Rocket Ship: Building Doppel’s Hyper-Growth Sales Team · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Mike.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, welcome to the Cybersecurity Go to Market podcast.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're recording this from the Doppel Meeting Suite at the Palace Hotel at the 2025 RSA Conference.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: And in line with the Palace Hotel, it's a it's a fancy looking room.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not a bad place to have your meetings.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's very quiet.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: My interviews so far have been in busier places than this, you know, we've got some peace and quiet, we've got some tranquility in order to have our discussion today.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, Mike, I was looking at um, I think a couple of weeks ago, I did some analysis.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Richard Steen um provides me access to his IT Harvest dashboard, and it's all about research and industry.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: And what I did is I looked at companies that had started since 2000, not named Wiz, that were growing fast by headcount, headcount being the proxy for good business growth as well.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: And Doffel was in the top 15 fastest growing companies, which is a heck of a situation to be in.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you just joined as the head of sales, you joined from a bigger company, big ID, right?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I was kind of curious as you were coming in about the move from a bigger company then to one that's smaller, but obviously on a trajectory, and what you're thinking about, what has to change in terms of go to market to keep this growth going.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, great question.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: Joining a company at you know, roughly$5 million in ARR and trying to get it to 10 is a vastly different thing than going from zero to five million.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: And from 10 million to 20 is a vastly different thing than going from five to 10.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so you've got to start to put in some, you know, some relatively straightforward blocking and tackling type uh strategies relative to the sales team.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that we did um very early on is uh we divided uh the sellers into mid-market, um, addressing two and a half billion in revenues and below uh account reps and enterprise account reps.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: And at the time when I joined, there we literally only had six sell six sellers, right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we've more than doubled that already in four months.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the whole team was just a territory-based team, any size company can have win.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: For the most part, right?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, with that few people and that kind of revenue growth, everybody was covering everything.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: So, what do you think is behind the revenue growth?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so well, social engineering defense is the most the most significant threat, I think, in cyber today.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, everybody's familiar with what's going on, right?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because you yourself probably get three or four scam texts a day, maybe two or three or four phone calls a day.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: We're all very aware of the fact that with artificial intelligence, the threat actor now is able to, for far less money, um, scale their attacks uh toward companies.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's significant.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And there's really no technology that has holistically addressed the problem at scale um like like Doppel.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so the the drive, the market, the market demand for for our for our platform is is is high and um our customers are getting a ton of value very, very fast.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when I I think of what you're talking about, uh the the old way of describing this was digital risk protection.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and what Doppel's doing, I guess, is bringing a new approach to that.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: And thinking about you know, category change and you know, bringing on the version two of that marketplace.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Anytime that happens, though, it gets very messy.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're trying to you're trying to do things and there's fine lines to draw.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering on the sales side, and if any of those observations you made about what it takes to do that effectively on the sales side, not necessarily the marketing side.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, that's a that's a really, really great question.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: We probably don't have time for the full answer, but you know, just basically it's it's extremely important to get consistency across the team in messaging, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: And to understand, you know, uh very early on what the required capabilities are to deliver, successfully deliver social engineering defense and align with the customer that those are indeed required capabilities.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: The only way you can possibly defend your enterprise against these threat actors who are using AI at scale and the internet, essentially, dark web and the public web and their cell phones, whether they're making phone calls or robo dialing or fake, deep fake calling people, um, or just simply texting and saying, hey, it's the CEO.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: Can you get me$500 gift cards?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you've got to make sure that the sellers are audible ready, right?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: That they are quick to uh communicate effectively what the required capabilities are for uh the enterprise in order to defeat this threat.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And what gave Doppel the space to do this?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: What are the older players not doing that meant there was a there was actually a room for Doppel to come in and make such a big difference?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, Andrew, it's uh, you know, I guess the easiest way to describe it is the way, the acceptable way to address the problem historically with without AI, right?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Before AI really came to be a powerful tool, uh weapon, weaponized by the threat actor, um, is whack-a-mole.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, fake Facebook pops up, it's not your CEO's Facebook.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: Someone identifies it, you call the lawyer, you put a bunch of materials together, you have the lawyer call Facebook or Meta and try to get that Facebook down.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's the old way, right?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: Whack-a-mole, we call it.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um the new way, that's just not good enough because by the time the Facebook's down, something else has popped up somewhere else.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so what Doppel does is uses AI to and large language models at to at scale, um, really see that attacker, see that entire vector of attack across social, across domains, across paid ads, um, across telco um and other places, holistically see that threat actor and their infrastructure.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then what's the big deal about Doppel is we take the entire infrastructure out of the threat actor.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: So instead of playing whack-a-mole, going after the Facebook accounts or the LinkedIn accounts, or these set of telco numbers, or this paid ad or that domain, we go after the entire thing, which makes it very expensive for the threat actor to persist and they move on to another customer.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes, you know, making that transition from the old way to the new way, you're you're asking your prospects to go on a journey with you a little bit and say, well, you know, I understand now that the threat landscape has changed.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if you've learned anything as you've been engaging with uh these bigger companies about whether they actually recognize that's a problem, first of all, and see what the real root cause is, or if you haven't to really kind of shine a light on this need in the first place.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, all all all of the data, right, uh from third parties um and other cybersecurity experts is that the human is the most vulnerable vector now that the threat actor is trying to exploit.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's recognized wide widely.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I'm a customer of a big financial institution.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, three weeks ago I got an email from them and says, do not take our phone call, we won't call you, do not respond to a text, we won't text you, do not respond to an email, we aren't going to email you.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: And if anybody ever sends you something, please send it to us so that we can investigate.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: You know, two weeks after I received that email, we got a call from the CISO of that organization asking for help.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: So clearly there's recognition in the market.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, very rarely does a two and a half-year-old software company get a call from a Fortune 50 financial bank CISO asking for help.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we did in that circumstance.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: So the recognition is there, the problem is real.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's highly impacting these companies' employees, their executives are at risk, um, their customers certainly are at risk.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're protecting literally hundreds of millions of people through that downstream um from this from this terrible um risk that uh the threat actors are imposing on these companies.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I guess at the enterprise level, you've got you know very sophisticated and capable teams.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: You got lots of people inside these teams to see more than perhaps mid-market might do.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering what, as you're making that shift to work with these larger companies, what you've had to think about in terms of the processes and how to go about doing that.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, as people have said, and some people get still get wrong, it's not a case of just saying, well, it's the same message and same thing just at a bigger level.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's a whole different way of doing that.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 100%.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it's super interesting.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Listen, we we signed on our first enterprise customer just six months ago.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: So this business was a mid-market commercial business to start.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: And the enterprises are now starting to come to us with these sophisticated problems.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: And you so you have to think about how you go to market differently, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: We wholesale revamped our pricing, wholesale revamped the way we uh set expectations up front about what the investment is and what the ROI is.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because you have to do that, right?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: At scale, um, a uh, you know, two plus million dollar TCV on a deal is a vastly different thing to sell than a 40K uh deal in the commercial or mid-market space.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got to arm your sellers again.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: Talk about Audible Red being Audible ready, understanding the value proposition, you know, um, really playing the game on our home field, making sure that the customer understands that there's one and only one solution for them, and that's Doppel.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it's natural, I think, as a company makes that shift, there's resistance around, well, you know, is this the right thing to do?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Did we done it this way for six months or a year?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, where were the resistance points that people naturally would have?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a human thing that you've you've had to work with.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's interesting, not very many, to be honest.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I think that you know, six to eight months ago, the recognition was there by our certainly by our founders that this was a big problem and that the large enterprise was need needed to address it.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so making the investments in enterprise sellers and doubling the team and putting them in regions and really focusing on building partner relationships, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because we're 100% channel and highly value all of our channel partners that we work with, really that force multiplier in the field was an easy investment to make and an easy one to make a decision on.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so at the board level, you know, um uh our Series A was was funded by Andreessen Horowitz as, you know, and uh at the board level uh and at the executive level, there was no resistance at all.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell Now you talked about uh adding to the team, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you're looking to bring in people to help support the growth coming up.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: What are the Mike Ferrari non-negotiables as you're looking to build the team?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um so what do you in terms of non-negotiables, you mean in terms of talent, or are you talking about okay.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Bringing team members on.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: So so um they they have to they have to have, you know, at the enterprise, right, 10 years of experience or more.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um so they've got experience selling in the enterprise.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: They've uh been successful in their careers.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I don't think it's necessarily a requirement that they have been in cyber.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very interesting sort of debate at the sales leadership level.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Do to is it really that important that someone has had specific experience in cybersecurity or not?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's the old, you know, do you want the athlete or do you want the exact person to be in the market?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly right.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it's articulate, it's someone who's willing to get on an airplane and travel 70 to 75% of the time.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, non-negotiables for us is we've moved all of our internal calls to Mondays and Fridays to enable the sales team to be in the field Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I always say to them, if they don't have an appointment with a customer on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, they should be sitting in their channel partner's office, building those relationships, gaining that trust, and looking for other new opportunities in the market.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we've been very successful and fortunate because our sellers are regionally based, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: So they're in the major NFL cities right right now, um, in the northeast, the the southeast, the the the mid-Atlantic, in Tola, in the Midwest, in the Northwest, in the Southwest.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: And they're they're sitting right there in those hubs of of our channel partners um and in the field with their customers.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's the expectation is high to travel.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you've got to have a lot of tenacity.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: We also have a non-negotiable for pipe gen, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody has to have time on their calendar to generate pipeline.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because pipeline is not someone else's responsibility at Doppel.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's our seller's responsibility first and foremost.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, the marketing team contributes.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we have SDRs who contribute.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Our partners are amazing in that equation, but it's still the reps' responsibility to generate pipe.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm proud to say that every single one of our reps that are on board um are over 100% in pipe gen for this quarter.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we actually have 5x pipe, uh qualified pipe for Q2, which very few software companies get to say for sure.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: So how did you instill that level of culture then that that's that's part of what they have to do?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, I I it's a great question.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that you you as a new sales leader coming in, you you you you sort of sit back.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: I did a lot of analysis and a lot of watching to start, right?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then I hired a bunch of people who I know and trust um to join the team.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I watched the folks who were on board, understood their t their strengths where they needed help, um, brought on other people who I know have been successful in the past and who I trust.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and uh it's been great so far.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I I think that, you know, the explaining over time to the sellers that these are non-negotiables.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: And being in a market like we are, we're fortunate to be in where there's a ton of demand for our software makes it relatively easy, as long as you follow the formula, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Non-negotiable time on your calendar, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the field, simple stuff to do.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: As you look at the rest of the year, what's your biggest concern though?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're bringing all these people in, you've got a momentum going.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't want to give up any of my secrets here on a public forum, but uh no, it I I uh execution.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've been asked by the board, by you know, um, our CEO, our founders, um, what's the biggest risk?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's execution.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: The opportunity is there, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: 5x pipe generated in 90 days for the next the next quarter, and our sales cycles are relatively short compared to other places I've been.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: 110 days on the enterprise side, less than 40 days on the on the mid-market side.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, every single one of our sellers uh puts a deal up in the first quarter that they're at the company.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um on the enterprise side?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's correct.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: And we had 100% participation in Q4, meaning every single one of our reps put a deal on the board.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: Every single one, even the new ramping reps.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I think that's that's kind of it.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's execution.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Do we have the right people in the right place to capture the market opportunity?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: And and listen, we've got to make our customers successful, right?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: So there's um, you know, we have to deliver on our promise.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: When I think about uh social engineer defense, I think about what it why people buy it.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um cyber is obviously involved, potentially brand, marketing, legal, there's lots of different groups.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Who gets it best when you try and get into those companies?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it it's for sure cybersecurity at the moment, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: I and and frankly, in the four months, four plus months I've been with Doppel, most, if not all of our opportunities, in particular in the enterprise, have been sponsored by CISOs.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: So, um, and not to say that there aren't other stakeholders, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'll give you an example without saying any without naming names, of course.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: We're working with a large enterprise right now, we'd recognize, um, and they're very concerned about executive protection.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: And the CISO does not own executive protection, actually.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: The chief security officer has a cyber leader, CISO, and a physical security leader.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: And the physical security leader and the cyber security leader are joining, right, at the hip to sponsor this type of an opportunity because it's it's cyber related because it has to do with the public-facing internet or dark web, right?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: Or telephone.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: But it's physical security, executive security is owned by the physical security leader.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: So these there's teams coming together there that haven't historically partnered with one another.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: I wonder as a rep.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I wonder as a rep what challenges that that provides.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know, it's you know, security sellers historically are very comfortable in security, but struggle to be relevant and credible outside of that.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Outside of that, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, marketing um are stakeholders in in Doppel, uh, legal are stakeholders in Doppel.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: So you like I said at the front, I'm not necessarily so sure you have to have cyber experience.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: What you have to have experience doing is selling a platform.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: And when you sell a platform, there are multiple stakeholders and they've they have different different uh needs, you know, different requirements, um, different personalities.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so you've got to be able to be to be to be able to communicate um the value proposition through those lenses.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're talking, having been there now for less than six months, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: So you've you've stepped in there and you've as you said you've listened and wanted to understand and then think about how you make changes.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you think in your in your history, your past stops in your career, have you learned the most that's actually allowed you to be ready for this stepping in here?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: Boy, that's a great question.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I've had I've had the great fortune of having a lot of really awesome mentors, right?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: And people that I could watch and follow and mold myself after, um, and strengths and weaknesses, right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, don't do this because that didn't work out very well, or do do this because that was great.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting because as a seller, um having sold, gosh, from you know, early days IBM to uh eProcurement to pricing software to then cybersecurity, uh endpoint, uh data security to now.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've I've been had the great fortune of working with a lot of terrific sales leaders and I've learned a lot from them.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that's given me this opportunity, frankly.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that goes back to since the early days of my career.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'll never forget there's a gentleman who's no longer with us, but he was uh he was my sales leader um at two companies.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually took me from one to the other when he went to that company.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he he taught me I didn't know it then, but I was a very young and very impressionable and super hungry salesperson.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: And he was just an amazing leader.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I learned a lot from him that I applied today.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Any particular companies that were going through changes, transitions that you go, I see how they did it or didn't do it well, that you're kind of drawing on.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, so uh, you know, we we um fashion ourselves to be, you know, the whiz, the crowd strike, the abnormal security of our space, right?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm highly um we we watch um you know what Kevin's doing, frankly, at over at Abnormal and and watch um watch what he's been able to accomplish, right?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because he started in very early days, abnormal, and has taken the company now to over 200 million.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really what I aspire to do here at Doppel.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's I think it's unique because oftentimes companies go through sales leaders as they go through different phases of growth, right?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: The person that got you from zero to five million is probably a different person than can get you from five to ten or from ten to twenty, et cetera.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: That that's something I really am challenging myself with every day.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: I really want to take this company to to its IPO over 200 million in ARR.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I feel like it's uh if if you remain the same person as you were when you took it from one to five or five to ten, I get it.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it really is about, you know, how do you adapt?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you look at um someone like Chris Degden as a Snowflake.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he was basically the first seller.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And now he's still there after everything they've been through, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: And he's clearly adapted along the way as well.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: And there's people that we know that are adapted as well.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: You have to you have to grow and develop and and adapt for sure.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: And be ahead of the changes, otherwise you get caught up in them somehow.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: And you gotta perform, right?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: At the end of the day, the numbers are the numbers.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: The numbers are the numbers.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_03: Either the puck goes in the net or it doesn't.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care how many times you shoot it.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, Mike, you mentioned uh channel a couple of times now.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: What role does a channel play in Buffalo's growth?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Extraordinarily important.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, the the channel partners that we work with um tend to be trusted advisors of their customers, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, there's so much noise in cybersecurity.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: There's, you know, you walk out here in the streets RSA, there's signs everywhere, information overload, of cybersecurity tools.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: We do this, we do this, we stop these guys, we stop those guys.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so breaking through the noise is a critical role for our channel partners.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: They need to understand what Doppel does, they need to have a grasp of the value proposition.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: And if they have a relationship with their client, which they tend to do, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Years and years of relationships in some cases, they can impart that message on our behalf.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: So this is gonna overload in inundated with emails and phone calls, right?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: From people just like us all over the place.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so when they they pick up the phone, typically it's somebody who they trust who they already have a relationship with.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's the primary value.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: I will tell you too, just anecdotally, we I'm super proud in just the just the the the quarter here, we've got over 40 deal registrations from the channel.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: And that may not seem like a big number um for a fast-growing company like Doppel, but we had 15 all of last year.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: So one five all of last year to 40 just in the first quarter of this year.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: So there's definitely some momentum and some buzz brewing that we're really, really excited about.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: We're also proud to say that we're over 80% of our business this quarter went through the channel.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's rare for a young software company.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right, because you struggle with relevance, you struggle with visibility.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the customer wants to, you know, a lot of customers want one throat to choke.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: They don't want to be, they don't want to think that there's another party involved in a young, potentially ID Series A, risky cybersecurity company.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: They want a direct relationship.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: What what's an ideal partner?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: Are you looking after the big ones, the the DeFi's and optives and all the rest of the world, or you look up to the boutiques?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: What's your so we're we partner, we were partnering with a lot of different firms um from the really large ones like the guide points and the optives of the world.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, CDW and SHI are great partners as well.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and we're working with several others, Presidio ahead um consortium.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh Trace3 has become a really good partner to us as well.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you said guide point.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Skip Shaw is the guide point rent in Columbus, Ohio.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: If Skip was to ask you the question, why the heck should I devote my time?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: I've got 3,800 vendors who want me to sell their stuff all the time.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Why on earth should I engage with Doppel and can I go deep with you guys?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, that's it, that's a great question.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well, number one, um, Skip would be uh hooking his wagon to the fastest growing Andreasen Horowitz cybersecurity company, right?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, number one.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Number two, it's a problem that every single one of his customers is faced with right now.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so he has the opportunity to to be hero, um, to to introduce them to the first and only social engineering defense platform like Doppel.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I will also say that we're doing some very large uh deals with our friends at GuyPoint.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's an opportunity to make uh a lot of money as well.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that money is is pure margin or you do deal regis, is there back end stuff?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: How do how does how does Skip make money?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Our approach is pretty much the same as all the approaches, right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: If uh Skip brings us a deal, right, we register that deal that we are committed to working with Skip and he gets the highest amount of margin or discount off of list um for Doppel that then he is able to to you know make his earn earnings by adding value to the equation for the customer.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And is it sell width that you expecting Skip to do a lot of legwork right now?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's 100% sell width.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know our our team obviously is responsible for the demo, which is custom every time um which is really cool.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, listen the the one of the um one of the common ingredients in very fast growing highly successful cybersecurity companies is time to value.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: So we're not installing agents we're not connecting to systems.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: We're going out and discovering publicly available information and sharing it with the customer and then taking action on their behalf against it.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: So in the space of a couple of hours we can add tons of value without even having that particular company be a customer.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: So we do the public we do the custom demos we do POCs.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: POCs really the difference between a POC and a custom demo is in a POC we actually perform the takedowns.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: So the customer actually gets to see firsthand, as does our partner, how quick and different our approach to infrastructure takedowns is and the value that it adds compared to whack-a-mole of the extra year.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's interesting.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: So as a as a prospect, you know usually in Cyber you give the discovery call, there's a demo that happens, there's a should we do the POC and no point in that process really is the prospect getting much value, right?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: They're understanding the product and whether it's gonna work for them.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: They're actually delivering much value.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like what you're able to do because you're outside the network is you're able to actually give them a whole bunch of value even if we're going through the sales process with it.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll give you an example really quickly.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: We worked with a Fortune 50 um company and they had a LinkedIn impersonation single LinkedIn impersonation that they discovered and they brought it to us and said this is concerning.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: And because of the way Doppel goes about things we find all of the I call forensics of that particular compromise or threat um underneath it, right?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Whether it's an email address or maybe a domain or maybe a phone number and we pivot off of those pieces of evidence to go find other threats being performed by the same threat actor against that company.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so in that particular case before they were even a customer before they did even a POC from that one LinkedIn impersonation we were able to find hundreds of telephone numbers that were targeting their customers.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: We were able to find thousands of other impersonations across X, across Chinese uh websites and apps, across other LinkedIns and Facebooks before they were even a customer, we were able to identify that.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: But listen, nobody wants just a bunch of alerts right you want you you want to be able to say these are important and these are not right it's the needle and the haystack sort of approach.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so we'll prioritize those alerts and go after those that the customer sees the the most sensitive or the most concerning.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: And we did that for that customer and literally in the space of two weeks we were delivering value and they weren't even a client yet.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I I remember in you know 10 years ago now the CASI space kind of took off because they basically plugged in and were able to show visibility, but there was nothing that was going to get shut down because of it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: What you're actually able to do is show the visibility but also take down these things before they've even spent a dollar with it.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly right.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Which must be you know when you think about the this the world we're in cyber where people are clamoring for you know less alerts and more action they're they're looking for things that stand out they look for things that are more valuable reduce the risk of purchasing new stuff right you're basically giving them what they actually will get before they buy seems like it'd be a powerful position to be it is and and I'll tell you the other thing that's really really important and differentiated from some of the work that I've done before they're also looking for a partner.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Their sock their sock their their their people are strapped thin right there's no and we've all heard the stories right these companies are understaffed and their people are already working you know and so when you get to Opel you don't just have more work.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: You actually get a partner who actually partners with you to help you accomplish the the goal which is to defeat the threat actor um in this particular space.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: So if they are looking for a partner not just a piece of software that provides a bunch of information.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well Mike on that note let's uh let's ask ask you one last question.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: You've sold, as you said already, you sold a lot of different types of tech products over your career um you've worked with the same people sometime at different places.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: If you weren't selling cybersecurity and it was a totally different random product right now, what would you just love to be selling somewhere?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: Ferraris true people would never forget the use of Ferrari it's true I growing up my friends always said you guys you should go to work as a at a Ferrari dealership.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm like nah I don't think so and at multiple times I've gone to the dealership and the answer to the question no I don't have one um not yet um and uh people just get you know the win in Las Vegas right I don't know if you've ever been to the Ferrari dealership at the win in Las Vegas but you know you you walk in there they ask you for your ID to go into the store and you show them your ID and they're like whoa Ferrari that that that's the that's the truth.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think if I you know in uh in a sort of a fictitious world that would be very cool to do.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna uh uh break a rule and finish a story about me actually since you just brought that up so we're in San Francisco right now um there's actually a bar over the marina called Monaheads all right and when it opened up many years ago I did the same thing I went up and you know it was a quiet Tuesday night or something like that and um the guy at the bar obviously ID'd me and I said yeah there's my ID and he's like okay and I go did you see my name?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: And he just kind of looked at me like yeah what's the big deal like so you're you're getting eyebrows raised in celebration as you walk into Ferrari dealership I don't even have a free pint.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: That Monah's bar this is not good.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: I need to change my last name to something worse like Porsche or McLaren or something.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: One of these days I can get a good discount on a Ferrari.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well Mike it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you um covered a lot of good grind there thanks so much for taking the time and giving everyone some thoughts it's fun all right we got our next person talk about visionary or smoking crack.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Who are you and what do you do?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Patrick Dillon and the chief revenue officer for Airlog Digital.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: All right I'm gonna throw out some bold predictions at you Patrick about the future of sales and cybersecurity sales and you tell me am I a deep thinking insightful visionary or did I inhale a little bit too much walking through a tender line on the way to the conference this morning.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: You ready?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay by 2030 so in five years time 80% of cybersecurity purchases under 100K will happen without a human seller or a human buyer will all be done by AI visionary or smoking crack?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think you may just be on a little marijuana there.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're not quite cracked but yeah I I certainly see a lot of uh a lot of business being more automated especially of the smaller you know uh variety those deals have to go at speed and a lot of times customers right now are just going through but uh yeah I think you I think you may be just a little little weed a little pot there but but not quite full full crack.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well I'm like I'm in Colorado so no that's true that's perfectly legal stereotypical right there.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: So next one in five years' time more CISOs will report to CFOs than to CIOs or CEOs and sales will shift to finance first as opposed to security first.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it's visionary or smoke agreement visionary yeah I mean I think right now I mean if it's not the CFO it may be some the the CEO or some board level person we're seeing it more and more and we're certainly seeing CFOs making decisions and signing off on things far more frequently than than in the past so yeah you're you're right on track.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: In 10 years time both the RSA conference and black cat will be dead completely gone visionary or smoke and crack wow you may be smoking crack on that a little bit I just think you know that now where they may be held may be completely different.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that the security communities will still need large you know industry type get togethers so to speak um so whether it is in San Francisco or in Vegas uh I I think they'll still be around I I may not be here I may be retired by then but who knows?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: Two more questions.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: By 2030 Shadur Sanders will have won a Super Bowl Smoking Craig.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think he is a great talent.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think he shouldn't have fallen that far in the draft but I think for for making bold predictions for Super Bowl winners for any new person nobody thought Brady would have won you know as quickly as he did nobody thought Patrick Mahomes would have won as quickly as he did.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's if you predicted that one and plus it's the Browns so I mean that's go somewhere else my dad my dad grew up in Cleveland I've been kind of a not a lifelong Browns fan but you know you have pity for him for for a long period of time.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah the Browns it's it's gonna be tough in five years.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Recently Google announced they were acquiring Wiz and some hacks in the industry called it GWS.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: So within 12 months Island the Enterprise browser company will acquire the Cyberheart platform from Deos Technology rename the company Love Island visionary or smoking crack?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that might be a I I I I'm gonna go visionary on there.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah the the Island folks they've they've got great tech they've got great awareness they've got great branding out there who knows what they might do but it's I'm sure it's gonna be big things Michael over there is doing a really good job.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna go visionary on this there you go love it.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the name won't be Love Island but you know acquisition may take play well thanks for playing along absolutely appreciate it