Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 162: Eric Appel, CRO @ Island: why stealth is sexy and the different way Island has built the sales team

Transcript

162: Eric Appel, CRO @ Island: why stealth is sexy and the different way Island has built the sales team · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

0:32
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes changing one thing changes everything.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: That was the tagline on Island's website before they came out of stealth earlier this year.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: And I've got to admit, when I first saw it, I was cringing.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: I thought, gosh, here we go.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Another cybersecurity company getting all weird and hypey, and they're not gonna deliver.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a slightly better version of something else.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: But boy was I wrong.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: When they came out of stealth, I sat there and went, you know, sometimes one thing does change everything.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: They already had a whole bunch of true enterprise customers when they came out of stealth.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: And they are on a tear right now.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: Learn what happened, how the sales team is winning business, and the incredible culture they are building with their head of worldwide sales, Eric Apple.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and when I first met Eric, I thought, oh no, poor guy.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Find out what happened for me to think that.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, which exists because at cybersecurity startups, it is hard to get to a repeatable sales process and then scale the business.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: Sales Bluebird gives you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or ten about building great cybersecurity companies.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and our guest today is Eric Apple, worldwide head of sales at Island.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: Eric, welcome to Sales Bluebird.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Andrew, thanks for the invite.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: After about a year and a half, I finally clawed my way into your club.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Glad to be here.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: It's good to have you on.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: And actually, you know, this is a conversation that's going to be a lot of fun.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Thinking about it for a couple of reasons.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: One is that Island came out of stealth about six months ago.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: A lot of very high-quality people leading the efforts there, Island, and with a unique take on doing cybersecurity at mid-market enterprise.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So I'm keen to learn more about that.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And then secondly, you know, we go back a few years.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm not sure if I've told you this story before, but uh I left McAfee for a little bit and came back.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: And at that time, there's a new leadership that were in place.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: Dave DeWalt was the CEO.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: Joe Sexton was the head of sales.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: And Joe had been going on a bunch of sales calls, and he kind of came back and said, you know, we're all describing McAfee differently.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: We're all not using different words, and it's all wrong, it's all different.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: We need to get back on the same page.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And uh the solution was every single salesperson in the company needed to be certified in the corporate pitch, whether you're an AE, uh S E a junior, senior, leader, everyone had to go through the process.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: And the kicker at the end of what he announced, as you'll remember, was that uh he said, Yeah, everyone's gonna pass the corporate pitch.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, a kickoff in four months' time, I'm gonna pick a name out of the hat, and that person has to come on stage and deliver the corporate pitch to the 1,200 salespeople.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: And I remember at the time thinking, there's no freaking way he's gonna do that.
3:32
unknown: Right?
3:33
SPEAKER_01: No, no one in their right mind is gonna just pick a name out of the hat.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was thinking, some poor person in France who doesn't speak English that well, you know, what are they gonna do?
3:41
SPEAKER_01: You'll you'll it'll be broken if that was what they had to do, right?
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And then 5% of me said, Yeah, but what if he did?
3:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, I need to get my shit together.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't really hold on the stage and embarrass myself.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: So fast forward a kickoff, and you know, he was updating his speech and everything.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: And he got to the point in the proceedings, he said, Okay, you know, now for the corporate pitch, and you know, everything went dead silent, you know.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: And uh he said, the name we picked out of the hat was Eric Apple.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: And I remember my first reaction was, Oh, thank God for that.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And my second reaction was, Who the heck is Eric Apple person?
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, he stood up and uh walked on the stage and absolutely killed it, knocked it out in the park, just did so well.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: I remember thinking, God, that guy, I feel for him, but I was so impressed.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: So that was the first time I heard your name and saw you in action.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, that was it was quite a moment for a young sales rep trying to make his way within the McAfee world.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: And uh dirty little secret, I was giving a given a couple of days heads up that they were gonna call my name out of the hat.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: So I was given a couple of days to go prepare so I wouldn't completely fall on my face.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: But just what a great opportunity to deliver the pitch in front of 1,200 of my closest friends and and to know that you felt like I did okay uh means a lot.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: So thanks, Andrew.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I hope you someone bought you a lot of beer that night at the bar.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: I did not buy my own beer that night.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: That is correct.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: Good for you.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're gonna know a little bit more about Eric.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: I've got uh a list of 35 questions here.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna ask you to pick uh three random numbers for you, one in 35, and I'll ask the question it corresponds to.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: All right.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Three, ten, and thirty-three.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: So three is favorite season.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: The fall.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Why the fall?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, in Texas, we have two sports.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: We have football and spring football.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And once it hits the fall, the weather uh dips below 100.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: And so the fact that we're down the heart of football season, my son plays football, my wife and daughter seem to tolerate it, and the temperature is dipped below 100.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: So, what more could a man ask for?
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's that's a good time of year, right?
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Coming off the stretch of the of the summer.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: All right, number 10 was one thing that you own that you should probably throw out.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: That is well, I will say I have a truck that I really, really like.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna think, oh, this is just so perfect.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: This guy from Texas is talking about his truck.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna throw it out, that's for damn sure.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: But with the uh the price of gas and how it rose over the past several months, I did, or years, I should say, I did ask myself, should I be having it?
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And also, people give me crap because it's a raptor, and the most off-roading I do is about driving over a curb.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know that I would throw it out.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: It's just probably not absolutely needed, but it sure is fun to drive.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I bet it is.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you said 33.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh early bird or night owl.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: This is where it's a little sad for me.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of both, which is I love to rise early.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: I love the the taste of the coffee in the morning, maybe a little workout.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Probably tend more towards that.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: I was definitely more of a night owl and enjoyed the good times uh a little bit in my younger years.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: So I probably have leaned more to the early bird because I don't like to feel bad in the morning.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And typically when I stay up too late, that means I'm enjoying too much fun and I feel bad in the morning and I like the mornings too much.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So let's go with early bird.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: It's funny as you get older.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: I remember when I was younger wondering, why do my parents get up at six in the morning?
7:19
SPEAKER_01: What it's crazy.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: There's no need to do that.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: And now that I'm a little bit older, I get up at five every morning.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: I think it's great.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: I enjoy it.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: I know there's something special about the morning.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: The promise of the day.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: The promise of the day, yeah.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: That that early crisp morning air.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: Tell me, Eric, when you were a kid, how did you first make money?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, I had an entrepreneurial spirit, and my first job was I painted address numbers on curbs for people.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Dirty Little Secret was depending on the size of your house and then the neighborhood, I charge different prices.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: But that was my first foray into business and entrepreneurship.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: So there was the fancy neighborhood tax.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Is that what it was?
7:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they went for about 20 to 25.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: And the more modest homes I did for 10 as a show of good faith and just asked for references.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: For those I did for 10, I said, hey, I'll do it for 10.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: I just need you to be a reference.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there you go.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: Good negotiation.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: You're a man of the people, right?
8:14
SPEAKER_01: You're supporting the everyone in that whole spectrum of uh earning.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: What was your first real job?
8:21
SPEAKER_00: My first real job.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, I could give you a long list of jobs I wasn't very good at, including I was not a very good waiter.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: I was turns out I was not a very good courier for a law firm.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Both jobs I was not invited back the following summer.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: The first job I was probably good at uh was right out of college when I had an opportunity to go work for Arthur Anderson as a consultant.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh just an amazing opportunity, work with some great people, really get to experience business and how business is done operationally.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: And it was just a great opportunity.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And then that really led to other opportunities from there.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: And what was your first sales job?
9:02
SPEAKER_00: First sales job was for a streaming video company called Clips.com.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: And it was right when streaming was right after I left Arthur Anderson, the dot com booth, and um I uh was selling streaming video applications.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: It turned it was YouTube about seven or eight years before YouTube.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: It did exactly what YouTube did.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Challenge was there wasn't the proliferation of broadband like we eventually got, but it's a great opportunity, and then that led me actually to broadcast.com, uh Mark Cuban's old company, and then uh which was acquired by Yahoo and uh had the opportunity to grow up within Yahoo, and then um and then on from there.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's just quickly fast forward then.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: You spent had a stint at McAfee under its various names.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: There was McAfee or Intel Security, then back to McAfee, Bluecoat.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget network associates.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: Network associates as well.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: I was just reading again about that this morning.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Bluecoat, Cyber Reason, and now you're the head of worldwide sales at Island.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: My last question about firsts.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember the first order that Island ever got?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: What was that feeling like?
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Just amazing.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, this entire experience as Island has been the best professional experience of my career.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: And I say that with a humble heart because I feel like I've been very blessed.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: But that first deal, I mean, I remember what day of the week it was, I remember the day of the month, I remember who we talked to on the phone that day.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: I would just remember the drive home.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was special.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And you're thinking, this might just work out, right?
10:41
SPEAKER_00: This might just work out.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: And to top it off, we were in stealth.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: We took uh you know 10 to 11 uh deals while we were in stealth.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And so to be taking down business with very large organizations while the rest of the world didn't even know who what we were doing was really special.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I bet.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's uh let's talk about Island then.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: If I was one of the CISOs that you're targeting right now, how would you answer my question?
11:11
SPEAKER_01: What does Island do?
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: So Island has reimagined what the browser can be for the enterprise.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the browser, it's the most widely deployed application in everybody's environment, but yet we still use a consumer application, a consumer browser to do everything we need to do from a work perspective.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: And so what Island has done is reimagine that.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: What if the browser could actually be the core of your IT stack, be the foundation of your security architecture?
11:47
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we've done.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: We've built an enterprise browser built on top of Chromium that builds security by design, data governance, web security, privileged access management, these things into the browser, simplifying the entire stack, if you will.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: So let me play devil's advocate a little bit.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm the CISO of a 100,000 employee company.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: We've been doing enterprise security for 20 years in different guises.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: What problem are you actually going to solve for that?
12:17
SPEAKER_01: I get it's kind of cool and interesting in you, but you take it off my plate that I'm going to be pretty excited about.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you two main use cases that we're solving with Fortune 10 all the way down to small businesses.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: If you think about remote access, think about how employees or contractors or vendors bring your own device.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Think about these groups and how they access applications today.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: It could be third-party SaaS, it could be internal applications.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: If you think about how they access those today, you typically have to ship them a computer.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: That could take six weeks.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Then you have to deploy a desktop as a service tool like Citrix, like Amazon Workspace is your virtual desktop, massive cost, massive complexity, terrible user experience.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: What if a user all they had to do was download a browser, a Chromium-based browser called Island, that then accesses whatever applications that you need.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: The user experience completely frictionless.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: The cost structure much more favorable to the enterprise.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Security controls much more granular.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: So massive use case that we solve there.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And then if you just think about accessing applications in general, think about the risk of data loss.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we can shoot straight and say that data loss prevention has been around a long, long time.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Most organizations have really struggled to implement a data loss program effectively.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: If you think about where data exists today, data primarily exists in web-based applications.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: What if we could create a closed loop that ensured that if you didn't want data to leave a web-based application, internal web-based app, third-party SaaS app, you could do it.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievably easy to do within Island.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: So then I what I've heard is cost reduction, big driver, right?
14:16
SPEAKER_01: Simplicity for the end user.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: The experience is just so much better than the clunkiness of what they've been doing up till now.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: And then the granular security gives them a risk reduction as well.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: So you're you're hitting like three of the main business drivers right there.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And the team, when they go out to sell, are they targeting which which persona inside the organization is the prime target for you?
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd say 97, 98% of our cycles start with the CISO.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: We are very fortunate that we were able to, with the idea, uh, with this new category that's been created, type of people that we have, we're able to enter at the CISO level.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: The CISO typically, 9.9 times out of 10, understands the vision, can apply that vision to their business problems, and then we go from there.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're asking an organization to really just think differently about how they're doing security.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: This is not uh we're better than this or faster or slightly different.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: This is a whole different way of doing things.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: And I guess you need that visionary strategic person to understand it and then have the wherewithal to you know go down the path with you, right?
15:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, thanks for pouring that out.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: It's what's really unique is this is not a plus one technology.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: This is reimagining what the architecture can be.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: And you need somebody who can cast a vision and then go execute upon that vision for something like this.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: All that being said, what's really unique is being able to go address very tactical business problems.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Once the business vision has been set, we can then pivot into specific problems.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Right.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: That's the marriage between we're going down a path and a vision, but we need things to we need to solve things now.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: We need to change what we're doing to justify things in the short term, not just the long term.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, I I'll tell you another quick story.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: I remember last, probably a year ago now, when Ireland put up its splash page for the first time, and it simply said, sometimes when you change one thing, you change everything, right?
16:25
SPEAKER_01: And or something like that.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: I'll probably butchered it.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I remember sitting there.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: Now you nailed it.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, good.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: I remember sitting there first time I saw it going, oh no, another security company is gonna claim they're doing something different, and they're just gonna pull something out, and it's just gonna be you know a faster widget, or it's gonna be blue rather than red, or oh no, I I know people there.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: I hope, I hope it's more than that.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: And then when it actually when the when you came out of Snell, I thought, huh, so simple, but that's completely different.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: And I I'm wondering, you know, what you guys want to think about a lot internally is why did it take so long for everyone to figure this out?
17:01
SPEAKER_01: Like you would have thought years ago someone would have said, huh, let's do this differently.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: There's something change in the environment and the IT infrastructure to make this happen?
17:10
SPEAKER_00: It's a really astute question, Andrew.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: The Chromium project is really what makes a lot of this possible.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Chromium is what all the modern browsers now are built on.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: So if you think Chrome, if you think Edge, which are the two most widely deployed browsers by a long shot, Chrome now represents a massive part of the market, and then Edge, sort of the other.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Those are Chromium-based browsers.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: And so before you had different architectures for each browser.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: So it would have made it very difficult to come to market.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: But now we all leverage the exact same foundation and code stack.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And so we just built a browser built on top of Chromium.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And once we nailed that, then it was just about how do you go build the dexterity and the depth that you need for a solution to bring it to market.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: So five, 10 years ago, you kind of built around the browser.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: You had solutions like Invincia and Bromium, even browser isolation capable, you know, technologies, and I don't need to get into the names of those, but they would have to build around the browser because they couldn't be the browser.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Now we can be the browser because we're all leveraging the same foundation as Chromium.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a much more elegant way to present it to the user, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_01: They don't, they probably don't even know something's going on, right?
18:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's your browser.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Let me rewind a little bit then.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: You you mentioned you put the first clients before coming out of stealth.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering, you know, as you think back on winning those first 10, 15, you know, clients, proper paying clients, not the kind of friendlies signing up for you know freebies, but really, you know, big companies spending money.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: What learnings?
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Anything surprise you about that?
18:53
SPEAKER_01: What learnings you got from doing that that you'll take to the rest of your career?
18:58
SPEAKER_00: In terms of those first 10 to 15, like while we were in stealth.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, first I will tell you that it made me nervous to stay in stealth as long as we could.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: As a sales leader, you have a tendency to want to go to the top of the mountain and shout, hey, look at us, we're at a stealth, look at our website, talk to us.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Turns out there was something sexy about staying in stealth.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: There was something rewarding about being in stealth.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And when we really came out of stealth, we were truly enterprise ready.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I think some organizations, and everybody's situation is different, so I'm not casting judgment, but it appears as though some organizations perhaps come out of stealth prematurely because they feel the need for adoption and they feel the need for acceptance.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't have to do that.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And so we were able to really build functionality that was required to be accepted into the enterprise while we were in stealth.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: When we came out, we were ready to go.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: And also when we came out of stealth, we had 10 very meaningful organizations that had transacted with us, not just as friendlies, but that bought into the vision and really wanted to be in at the ground floor to help us design to where we were going.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And those 10 organizations have helped immensely.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: They're, you know, all fully deployed.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: They're willing to talk to any organization.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: So it was really interesting.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I would have changed any of it.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: I was anxious.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: I was ready to come out of spell six months before we did.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: But it turned out it was the right call to do what we did.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: It's nice to have a patient uh exec team and also patient board, right?
20:47
SPEAKER_01: Who who kind of get that.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Very fortunate at a board on whom we were aligned.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I bet.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I I noticed as you were building the team is you you've hired some people that are extremely high caliber, people that I I know and I like I look at, you know, these people are really know what they're doing.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't peg many or any of them as startup people, right?
21:12
SPEAKER_01: If you look at the track record, look at yours as well, right?
21:15
SPEAKER_01: You've been a big company, big company, medium company, big company.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: And yet, you know, you've had some success with tenured, you know, big company people working in a startup environment.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering, as you were thinking about whether that was the right thing to do, you must have thought about the profile and what other people do, and what led you to come to the realization that was the right path.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: I guess you could say birds of a feather, because if you look at the executive team that is here, we've all worked together for 15 plus years.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: What a unique thing to take a group of people who have worked together for 15 years and be able to reconnect in a startup like this.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that that happens very often.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: So to take an executive team that's worked together for a long period of time and then put them in a startup, if we then we then evaluated the type of person that we wanted to hire, we were going to go hire people that we trusted, that we had worked with, that we knew would be successful.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And so you're right, in the first 15 or 16 hires, not one of them had startup experience.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what they brought with them was an understanding of how to.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Sell security and even security platforms, but they also brought with them a network.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: And so by bringing those two things in a way, it shortened our time to value with customers.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: And it turned out to be a great way into the market, albeit unique, that you look around us and it's a bunch of people that have been selling a long time as opposed to a bunch of people who have had experience in startups.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes the risk when you hire like that, though, is that the network really goes so far, right?
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Your technology needs to follow through to get progress in deals, but then you know, let the word spread.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: Because you know, no matter how long you've been selling, you're, I don't know, what does someone come in with?
23:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, 15, 20 CISOs that they they know pretty well can get first meetings with.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: It only goes so far just because of the scale of it.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering what your experience was and learnings were around that.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's two things there.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: First, Ireland is not a transactional sale.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: And so what I mean by that is it really becomes a partnership.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And so it does take a special type of salesperson that can understand how to land and then expand into a partnership.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times, we are not adopted as the only browser for the entire enterprise right off the bat.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: We could be adopted just for a privileged access management case or just specifically to enable contractor access.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And so you need someone who understands, okay, I can I understand how to solve this problem while casting a bigger vision and be able to follow through on that vision.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: That is not your traditional transactional salesperson.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to make that point, that that's why somebody who understands the landscape, understand how to cast a vision is effective.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, to your other question about scaling beyond those 15 to 20 CISOs, what we where we've been really, really fortunate is that our product makes us look good.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Island is just a tremendous product.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: It works.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: The user experience is amazing.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And so our ability to do reference selling has been amazing.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: We are so fortunate.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: We've gotten into influencer groups who have helped us get to other organizations that we didn't know.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: We've actually been able to call on CISOs that have bought Island or have worked with in the past and said, Hey, I know you've got a network of 60, 70, 80 CISOs.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we're doing.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: We'd love you to help us.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: And they've been very, very open to helping us.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: It's we've been so blessed to where you take these 16 sellers to your right, had a great network of 15 to 20, and now all of a sudden that 15 to 20 has grown to 40 to 50 to 100, and so on and so forth.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: So that gets you the scale that you need, right?
25:28
SPEAKER_01: So you can keep working the growing greenfield as well as existing accounts.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Going back to the first few hires, what roles did you hire for first?
25:37
SPEAKER_01: Were it technical?
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Was it uh AE's?
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Were you looking for future leaders, or were you just looking for people to mend some territories?
25:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, we were shooting when I came on, to be clear, when I came on board, I carried a bag.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: There was me and Carrie Lois and Bill Garardini, and I wasn't going to just manage two people.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: So with the three of us started selling.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: And I I think that's a that's something I, you know, I wouldn't change at all.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: The fact that I got to understand the customer journey personally, from prospecting to getting a customer to agree to do to a meeting to the that first pitch, to then meeting with his team, to then a commit to do the POC, and then a POC, then a negotiation and a close.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: It was a great experience.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: I encourage others that have the opportunity to do that, to live that, to breathe that.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: And so that was great to be able to do that.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: And it just got back to my roots, and I just loved it.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, beyond that, it wasn't complicated in terms of we wanted to just go hire people that were trusted and could ensure that Island could be introduced.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Because what we know is that when Island gets introduced in front of a CISO, 90% of the time that CISO wants to move to a POC.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Never seen anything like it.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: 90%?
26:58
SPEAKER_00: 90%.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And so we wanted to go find those people that obviously had those relationships.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: And so again, that kind of gets back to our mindset.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: And we learned that before we started hiring.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: We stayed at three salespeople for several months.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: We didn't jump to go say, all right, we're ready to go hire 20.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: No, the the three of us uh we got to the breaking point.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And I finally I remember going into Mike Fay's office one day and just saying, Man, I'm broken.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: And we we got to start hiring.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Because I my follow-ups were not, you know, we we pride ourselves on being fast.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: But I get to the end of the day and have 11, 12 follow-ups that weren't happening.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And so at that point, we looked at our pipeline, what the three of us had grown.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: And then we went and hired our first wave of salespeople.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And those first waves of salespeople was great.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: They walked into pipeline.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And versus, you know, your fourth salespeople, salesperson getting here and saying, Here's your computer, here's your browser, go.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: We said, here's your computer, here's your browser, and here's 12 to 15 qualified opportunities.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And were you hiring these people just be part of the reps, or were you were Carrie and Bill going to be running the sales teams at that point?
28:15
unknown: Yeah.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: So Carrie and Bill have have emerged into leaders.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: And then beyond that, we went and hired great salespeople.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Some that have a desire to move into leadership.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And as we expand our leadership needs, they will have the ability to move into those.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And some that just love to be salespeople.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: And you can look around and I don't have to tell you their names because you you know the people in our organization and you know what killers they are.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And so we hired a lot of those.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we've got some on our bench that we know have the ability to move into leaders as we scale into other verticals and just have a need to continue growing.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: You know what's interesting in looking at your progression is that one of the stumbling points that startups have is as they move from founder-led selling into sales team-led selling, there's a disconnect, right?
29:01
SPEAKER_01: You usually have quite a technical founder who's never really sold before, but you know, gets through it and figures out how to land a few customers.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And then as they transition into a leader or two or three sellers, it kind of falls apart a little bit.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: Your profile is that you had a you got a CEO who's very technical, but he's a go-to-market person, right?
29:22
SPEAKER_01: He's he's very business-like, he's great in front of prospects, customers, the whole thing.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering how that impacted as you were coming on board, if you were kind of working under Mike quite a bit, or he lets you kind of do your thing.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: It didn't take me long to realize that Island has two CROs.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: No doubt about it.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: There's Mike and myself, but I wouldn't have it any any other way.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Mike is, we are so fortunate in that he is a CEO and founder that absolutely understands the technology very deep.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Mike started out his career as an SE and then grew his career and is now, you know, do being a president at McAfee and Symantec, and is now our CEO.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, you're right.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: His focus is understanding his passion is on the go-to-market side.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: It's very unique to have a CEO that really understands that and embraces it.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Mike loves doing sales calls.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: He still does initial pitches and demos several times a day, stays very involved in the sales cycle.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And that's been unbelievably rewarding.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And then on the flip side of that, his co-founder, Dan Amiga, who's now our CTO, is one of the smartest technical people that I've ever met.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: And so the marriage of those two is amazing.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: It works unbelievably well.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: It creates a customer-led culture.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't change it.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: It's intense, it's fast, but it's been amazing so far.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: You said customer-led there.
30:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the things that other companies struggle with is getting out of their own way, right, with their product.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Everything's our product, and we're building this amazing product, and the product does this, and we're going to talk about product, and we're innovating around product, and suddenly everything they talk about is all about us.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: It sounds like the culture you're trying to build there is one that's all about the customer.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Am I reading the tea leaves on that one, right?
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: It's a very fast culture that strives for perfection.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Those two don't typically coexist fast and perfectionist, typically going way too fast and no perfection, but we seek both.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: And again, getting back to Mike Azar, our CEO, he and Dan are very tied in in terms of what's important to the go-to-market and how the product supports that.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: And so everything we do is around speed and perfection to our customers in terms of how we design the product.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: We do two-week sprints and we we've built a platform that ensures that features aren't always dependent on the other.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: And so we're able to release something quickly for privileged access management, release something quickly for web security, release something quickly for DLP, all in an effort to get things out quickly for our customers.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: And then in terms of how we respond to customer needs, this is unbelievably unique in that we'll hear a requirement or a feature, something that's going to help make a business process better for a customer.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: We've turned them around in six hours before.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: And so that interaction engagement between sales and product, I wouldn't call it sales led, and I wouldn't call it product led.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: I would call it customer-led.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: And both sides of that can believe in that.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, you stuff you have a lot of cultures that are that say I'm sales first.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know if that's the right thing, but customer first, heck yeah, that seems like the right thing.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And so both sides, you know, build into that.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: And for us, it's worked really, really well.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you're right.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: I think that a lot of people, though, you know, it becomes a nice tagline.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: We're customer first, we listen to our customer, customer, customer.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: But in reality, behind the scenes is all about, well, the product, the product, we're talking about the product.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: And I think resisting that temptation, because you know, that's what people are working on.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a big thing, resisting the temptation and truly having that North Star is so important.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like you're you're trying to navigate that path right now.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: Agree.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: What role does the channel play with you right now, Eric?
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Great question.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: We were intentional early on that we wanted to ensure that there was market and product fit for Ireland.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: We intended to do that by not ensuring that the only way to do that was for the channel to bring us there to figure that out.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to go establish that product and market fit and then work with the channel to help scale that fit.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: We're very fortunate, and I think that we have proven there is definitely product and market fit.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: We've proven that through our customer wins and just and also our deployments and success.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: The analysts are now validating that.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the investors have validated that.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: And so now we are at we are at a critical point where we are now looking at scale, and we could look at it one of two ways.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: We could say, okay, we're at 16 reps and we're gonna go to 600, or we could look at we're at 16 reps, we're going to scale responsibly, and then look for ways to partner.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're doing.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: At this point, we're a spot in our journey where now we've got demand, we've got customers talking about us.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: And so it's easier for the channel to now enter at this point.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: Other organizations have started by saying, I have this good idea.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Can you guys help me get it to market?
34:53
SPEAKER_00: We've gotten the idea to market, we've gotten customers, we've gotten buzz, and so now it's easier for the channel to now engage.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we're working pretty closely right now with I'd say 10 to 15 channel partners across the U.S.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: I think that there's room for more, but we also don't want to dilute ourselves at this point.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'd say we're just at the beginning of that journey, but it's a journey that we think can really take us and hopefully those channel partners to the next level.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: One of the phrases I've heard in the past is that uh your channels are hugely valuable.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: They just don't make markets for you, right?
35:31
SPEAKER_01: They you have to go and do the cold-face work yourself and bring them along with you.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: I've heard companies that try to do it the other way around.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what success they're having, but it seemed to me, kind of like you were saying, that you've got to take ownership of that and then partner after that so that you can all be successful rather than feeling like you know, there's a bit too much dependency at the start.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that uh a bunch of companies in cybersecurity think about is, you know, there's 3,000 vendors right now.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: Everyone's trying to get their fair share or more than their fair share of the noise.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Most are failing at getting attention out there.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: It feels like, from what you're saying, that's not your challenge right now.
36:08
SPEAKER_01: Am I right?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: It is not our challenge.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: I say I try, I want to say that with humility.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: We are very, very fortunate right now, where I think I told you this on a phone call, our product makes us look good.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not that we've got just this jamming go-to-market machine that you know is like reminiscent of Oracle in 1998.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: It's a really, really great product that not only demos well, but implements well.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: And so what I've also really come to understand is the CISO community is a lot more connected in the underground than I knew before.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that these CISO Slack channels existed within Chicago, within Dallas, within LA, within New York.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know they were constantly talking about emerging tech and who's making a difference.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: Turns out they are.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And so we are really benefiting from that.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: Word of mouth is great.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: I've told, like, if you look at Leadlander, I don't know if you're familiar with Leadlander, it's a tool that tells you how many companies come to your website every day.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: I've now had that at my disposal in my last three companies.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: And I was telling this story to my sales team this morning.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: I was like, do you know how fortunate you are to know that several hundred companies come to our website every day?
37:35
SPEAKER_00: I said, I've been at companies where it was a home run if you had six.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: We have several hundred that come to our website every day.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: And so that has just been astounding for us.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's and again, it's not because of some special go-to-market machine.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: I think it's just because we've built a really special product.
37:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's more than that.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: You built a lot of trust with people over the years.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: Right?
38:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, you didn't just meet them yesterday and suddenly they love your product.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: This trust that you've used and built and it's coming together for you.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: I think that's an interesting observation about the system slack channels.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that people say is that the you know, the relevance of salespeople because people do their research, was it 70% of the research done before they even try to contact the company?
38:20
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, you know, what's the role of sales and things like that?
38:23
SPEAKER_01: I think uh a different segment of the market, which is the analyst community, they used to hold the keys to the kingdom, right?
38:29
SPEAKER_01: We talk to all your peers and then we get all this information, we give it back, we sell it back to you.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: And now what's happening is all the peers are talking to each other anyway, right?
38:38
SPEAKER_01: And uh this kind of underbelly of communication is happening.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: I kind of wonder what the right role is for the analysts going forward, given that he can't hoard the information anymore.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: We we don't build our product or build our messaging for analysts.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a trap you can fall into, but we do take them very seriously and we really appreciate the direction, the feedback that we get from them, and we realize the power and influence that they yield.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we reached out to them really early on to get their view on what Island was, where Island was going.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: And we thought we were on to something when the two, you know, uh most of the major analysts, without mentioning names, were trying to put us into a specific category and they couldn't.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: And in a way that could be scary because you realize, oh gosh, I'm in my own category.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna have budget for something in its own category?
39:43
SPEAKER_00: But in a way, it could turn out to be the best experience of our life of our professional lives to be able to complete and what I tell people it compete, what I tell people is a complete blue ocean.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Every organization has a browser, everybody uses it all day, every day, but hardly anybody has an enterprise browser.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: And as the analysts started to look at that, they started to realize this is probably its own category.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: And now, fast forward nine, 12 months, there's other people at the dance.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: There's other people trying to build into the category, and then there's mature companies that are trying to back into it as well.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: So the analysts have validated things, you know, to an extent for us.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, they definitely have the role.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: And also it must be nice to have the competition.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: That was that's what keeps you honest, right?
40:30
SPEAKER_01: You want someone who's challenging you and forcing you to feel a little bit paranoid, to keep everyone on their toes and moving forward as fast as you can.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: Speaking about being paranoid moving forward, you know, when you're thinking about the next year or so, what are the big uh decisions that you're making in the go-to-market team about how you how you change what you're doing or or keep adapting what you're doing?
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: All of the data tells us to put the throttle down.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: The pipeline data, the velocity of the pipeline, the value we're driving for customers, the speed at their implementation, the fact that customers are coming back and buying more and expanding to the enterprise.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: So all of the data is suggesting to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: And we believe that we need to follow the data.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: There was that point probably four or five months ago when we started to realize that we could move into a recession type environment.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: And we paused because we wanted to make sure that the data would actually come out the other side into customer deployments, word would keep spreading, pipeline would keep growing, and it turns out it has.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: And so now we are we are in definite growth mode.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: And so then it's a matter of how do we grow, what segments do we grow into, what verticals, all those things that we're deciding, and you know, what type of sales, you know, we could be getting back to the type of people that we need to hire, what markets do we need to do we need to hire into?
42:13
SPEAKER_00: We've already built out a presence in the UK and Europe, where else do we go?
42:18
SPEAKER_00: The federal, I mean, there are so many uh things and markets that that we could go into, but it's coming back to using our investment dollars wisely and setting us up for something that will sustain for a 10 to 15 year company.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: We at this point do not want to be a three-year, five-year, and out.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: We want to set ourselves up for a company that can sustain for the long term.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, when you're thinking about the long term, the growth, what you're gonna go through, it sounds like coming up as you're expanding.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: Don't forget that first deal that you want and the moment, the time, the season you're in, the call that you got, the people you talked to, because that's what's going to remind you that uh you started uh pretty humble right there at the start and you've you built this amazing company.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: So congrats on you done so far, and I wish you every success for the rest of the year and into 2023.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: If someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do that?
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh my email is uh Eric E-R-I-C at island.io.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: I won't tell you, our name was not always as cool as Island.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: Was it not?
43:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh it we had some other iterations.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: And uh it was definitely not as cool.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: And even my son thinks that Island is cool.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: So to be able to land at a very easy name like Island that rolls off the tongue.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: We even have good swag.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: That's fun.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: Before we sign off, I really just wanted to thank you, Andrew.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: You uh man, you've been a great friend through the years, just had great experiences and memories working with you.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: And I love what you're doing for the cyber industry.
43:54
SPEAKER_00: This is not, I know you don't get paid for these.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're just giving back to us, and you you get to interview some pretty great people.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: I've had the opportunity to listen to your podcast, and I learned something um from many every time.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: Even the one that you did up by just by yourself.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: I even learned just from listening to you.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: So it was amazing.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: And I know you're you're growing your business on the enablement side, and uh I'm happy for you.
44:15
SPEAKER_00: And I just wanted to thank you for what you mean to me and what you mean to our industry.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: You drive a lot of value for us.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, thanks, sir.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: That's very kind.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: I I I love doing these interviews.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: I get to be some really cool people.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: I get to talk more in depth in some ways I haven't done before with people like yourself who I've known for a while.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: And uh it's a lot of fun.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: It really I really do enjoy it.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: But you know, the conversation comes to an end and we have to kind of sign off.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: I really encourage people who are intrigued with what's happening on Island right now to get an email and uh start a conversation and learn the culture that is going there and great people are already over there.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like a really cool environment.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: It does mean though if you call an island, you can't have your president's club in the desert though, right?
44:58
SPEAKER_00: We cannot.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: This is a crazy story.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: We're actually announcing tomorrow where we're doing our our first ever president's club.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: And it is a pretty damn cool island.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: That's all I will say.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: It's an island that I should say that 99% of the people that listen to this podcast have not been to I don't know that's a bold statement, but I'm gonna I'm gonna say that 99% of the people on this podcast have not been to this particular cool island.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Is it like Falklands Islands, or is it uh is it then you can learn I don't know, man.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: It's a cool, it's a cool island, that's all I want to say.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, your logo's got a palm penis, it can't be in the cold.
45:45
SPEAKER_01: I know that.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, you got us intrigued.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm looking forward to hearing uh when you announce some point in the future where that is.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: But uh Eric, listen, great team over there, a lot of a lot of good people.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: You're having a lot of fun with working with uh friends and new friends, and I wish you every success.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Andrew.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it, man.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: So that was a fun episode for me.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Eric, I found over the years to be very thoughtful and very smart about how he goes about his business.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: And I know that would have come across in our conversation for you all today.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: I always learn new things and new perspectives when I talk with Eric.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: So it's tough to boil it down to just three, but here it goes.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: The first one is being in stealth is sexy.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's just something about it that the right people like about it, right?
46:33
SPEAKER_01: For a lot of people, being, you know, working with a stealth startup is not their thing, right?
46:37
SPEAKER_01: They'd rather buy from the Powells of the World and the Z-scalers and the big companies like that, right?
46:43
SPEAKER_01: But for the right visionary type of people, they like to get in early on new technology, especially when it's so transformative as what Island is doing with enterprise browser.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: And for many people, being in there in stealth and being in the secret society and helping the company shape the product and things like that, before everyone else knows about it, there's a lot of cachet that goes with that.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: And I love what Eric was saying about that on the episode.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: The second thing I took away was working with people you trust and admire and you know.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: At some level, it's just better that way, right?
47:14
SPEAKER_01: But when you really know people, and what Eric was saying was, you know, the exec team, most of it been running together for a long time, the good market team.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people that he's been hiring, they're people that you know the team has known for a long time.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, you just know that they're good at their job, you know they'll do the job, you know the character of the people that you're hiring, and you know that they're gonna be a good fit.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: And although Eric didn't say it on the episode, I'm sure things haven't all been hunky-dory in the last year, but when things go wrong, you know, there's no finger pointing and doubting and second-guessing and triple guessing about what everyone's doing.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you have that level of trust to fall back on, you say, look, we're all doing the right thing, we'll figure this out and we'll move on.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: I think in a startup environment, when you have that foundation, it's so strong.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: And when you don't have it, it can be really telling.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: And I know I've been in environments where it hasn't been in place and you sometimes wish it was.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: So that was the second thing.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: And thirdly, the my takeaway was the power of the network.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: What Eric was saying, but two things here.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: One, the sellers that he brought in, although they were known and trusted and all the rest of it, the other thing that he brought was a tremendous network and some CISO connections and relationships that they already had, really built up over the years.
48:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you get really good quality enterprise sellers who've got a track of success, they're often known and trusted within their clients, within their prospects, with their customers really, really well.
48:38
SPEAKER_01: And for the team that Eric brought in, that's one of the things that he was looking for.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: The people that he knew, but also had that network where that getting that first meeting wasn't going to be as difficult as it was if he didn't have that network come into.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: So one aspect of the power of the network is what the reps were able to bring in.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: The second part of though is what he was saying about the CISOs and them having their networks, you know, these uh CISO Slack channels that uh you've we may all have heard of, right?
49:05
SPEAKER_01: Whereas he was saying, you know, the Chicago Cisos, the Dallas CIS, the Bay Area Cisos, I don't know, the FinTech CISOs, you know, they all talk much more now than they ever did 10 or 15 years ago.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: And they got a community to do it in.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: And word spreads fast in these communities.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: So it really puts a pressure, not a pressure, but it really puts the emphasis on the sales team to deliver, right?
49:28
SPEAKER_01: Be really good at what you do, be true to your word, be memorable, deliver a great product, solve problems, deliver value for these people so that when they're in their channels and you know your name comes up, the company name comes up, their response is good company to work with, good people, things like that.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: That word spreads fast, you know, and just doing the right thing for the customer and making sure that they get the value they want is what it's all about.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: And I hate to say it, and especially in the startup world, you know, that's not always a high bar to get over, but it really sounds like what they're building on Island is revolving around that.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: So those are my three takeaways.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've got different ones or slightly different takes than I do.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Whatever they are, you know, I've really been enjoying to see the success that Island's having.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: And I wish everyone over there tremendous success from 2022 into 2023.