Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 172: How to bring a HARDWARE innovation in cybersecurity to market with Jack Wilson, the CRO at Token

Transcript

172: How to bring a HARDWARE innovation in cybersecurity to market with Jack Wilson, the CRO at Token · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes something comes along that reimagines a very tired area of cybersecurity.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Today's interview is gonna highlight one of those areas.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned to listen to Jack Wilson, the CRO at Token.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, where we help cybersecurity companies grow sales faster.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you are a seller, marketer, leader, or founder, we give you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or ten about building great cybersecurity companies.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Andrew Monahan.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Our guest today is Jack Wilson, CRO at Token.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Jack, welcome to Sales Bluebird.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Andrew, for taking the uh the time and the interest to spend a little bit of time with me and me uh be able to educate you on all the great things we've got going on at Token.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you why.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think one is you've got a really interesting and eclectic uh background and sales and leading companies in and out of cybersecurity.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: But also, in my mind, and you may think this is unfair, you're kind of an anomaly, right?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is a piece of hardware in a software-dominated world.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm fascinated about what that means for bringing something to market that is hardware versus software, how you think about the business model, uh, what it means for selling, all sorts of questions around that.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm looking forward to learning all about what's going on with token.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: But Jack, before we get to the business end of this, uh let's get to know a little bit about you first.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've got a list of 35 questions here.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna ask you to pick three numbers between one and 35, and I'll read out the questions.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh one of my favorite numbers is 32.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So 32, dive bar or cocktail bar?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely a dive bar.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to a cocktail bar and it's the same thing over and over, you know, the the the dark paneling, you know, the professionals, but you go to a dive bar, and I've met some of the most interesting people in my life and dive bars.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just think they're cool, they're eclectic, and the the people that I really like to affiliate with typically hang out in a dive bar.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right, next number.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Next number 15.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Fifteen.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Favorite vacation destination.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, favorite vacation destination without a doubt is Cape Town, South Africa.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me more.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I I opened up the market in South Africa years ago, right as they had laid fiber whenever the World Cup was.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I had an employee working for me that said, you know, hey, Jack, this is the next opportunity in a country that's really been in the dark ages now that they have fiber.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know anything about South Africa.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was from there, and I just fell in love with the country the first time that I stepped foot there, and I've been back to Cape Town many, many times.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the crazy thing is, most people don't go back, you know, repeatedly to a destination.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But every time I go to Cape Town, it's just absolutely amazingly just beautiful, and the people are some of the friendliest people in the in the world, and it's just uh I've not seen anything in my career or in my travels that even holds a candle close to Cape Town.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And was that the Rugby World Cup uh in 95 or the soccer world cup that was later?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: The soccer world cup.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's always an exciting time for a country when the World Cup comes, whichever one it is, right?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I actually got to participate, uh and you know, being from America, you know, didn't know a whole lot about soccer, but one of my very first matches I had ever gone to was one of the preliminaries leading up to the World Cup, and I was just amazed at the size of the stadium and the and the fans.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we over here think that our football stadiums are are big, but I can tell you uh what after now getting involved in the soccer community, the uh the soccer fans are just absolutely they're crazy.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're a different breed, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're a different breed for sure.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's fun.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: All right, next one between one and thirty-five.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's do number 10.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Number 10, window or aisle.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm absolutely an aisle.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: I prefer aisle because I'm that guy that has to get up a number of times during a flight.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it's an hour flight, I've just got to get up and stretch my legs.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um I prefer the aisle.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that, I think.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I like to be hidden away in the corner, but uh I do like to stand up on long flights for sure.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta go to the legs for end.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a three million miler on Delta, so I've done a tremendous amount of travel in my career, and the the aisle for me is just the only way to go.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fair enough.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: How did you first make money as a kid, Jack?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the way I first started making money as a kid, my father was a uh was a professional sales guy, and this is in the day that where giveaways were really, really big, and he had some of the best giveaways in the world.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the industrial oil business.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he had these heavy-duty gloves that we just had boxes of them in our garage.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided in order to make a little bit of money, I would just go door to door because everybody needed gloves to work in their yard, and I would just knock on people's door and I started selling his gloves for five bucks a bundle.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So one day my dad, I guess he went out to the garage to get gloves, you know, to put in for his next week, and he asked me where all the gloves had gone.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, What do you mean?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I sold them.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You sold them, they're free.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, How much money do you make?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I made 50 bucks.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just absolutely floored that I had sold his free gloves around the neighborhood.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: True story.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that was uh glove selling was your your first uh venture into making some money.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: What was your first real job?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: My first real job uh out of school, I had applied for a job in the newspaper.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you listening remember the old days before the internet, but when you would see a classified ad, if that's something that you wanted, you had to physically put all of your information in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and you know, and that's the way people communicate it with you.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this was an internship for row furniture, a company that's been way out of business, but it was uh it was a very prestigious job to even to get into the intern program.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then you would uh you would get into the program, and then as the the sales reps would either age out or not be the fit for them, you would be the next person up to be able to take over a territory anywhere in the country.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of what you signed up to do, is you could be re relocated anywhere in the country.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my my first true sales position was getting the um the internship with uh with Roe Furniture.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh do you remember your first big real sale professional sale and your first uh selling job?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of a tricky question because I consider my very first sell was selling um probably the most complicated product in the world, and that's selling yourself for the first time.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this was actually at the uh at for the the Roe internship.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I had my best JC Penny suit on.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 22 years old, and this is one of the first times that a company had flown me in for this interview process.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the process was there there were six people in the bullpen when we walked in, all in their best JC Penny suit as well.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the HR person came out, she explained to us that the process was that we would be going door to door throughout the hallway here, and that after each interview there would be one less person in the bullpen when you came back.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the day, when we broke for lunch, there were three of us left.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the three of us went to lunch together, came back in the same process all the way up, and you end with the CEO of Roe Furniture, Gary Burnback was the guy's name.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So walked into Gary's office, and his office was literally the size of my parents' home.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I just never had seen anything that large before, overlooking the Washington Monument, you know, extremely intimidating for a 22-year-old young man.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so Gary immediately looked at me, looked at my, I don't even know if you would call it a resume, the sheet of paper that I turned in, and he just simply told me, he said, uh, hey, thank you very much for participating in this, but you simply don't have enough experience for us to move forward.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, uh Mr.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Bernbeck, I, you know, with all due respect, I think that you need to at least give me the respect of going through the interview process, and I bet I can change your mind.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he sit there and he pontificated on that for for just a moment, and he said, All right, kid, he said, if you're as good as you say you are, and he had this massive desk and he slid open the drawer and you could hear the sliders.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's how long the draw, you know, shh sh and he looks in his drawer and he he grabs a uh a yellow number two pencil that had not been sharpened and he throws it at me and he's like, if you sell me this pencil, you're the guy that we're looking for.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the classic sell me the pen thing, right?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Way before Leo made it famous uh in the movie.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally uh I stood up, walked out of his office, closed the door behind me.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he was thinking, What's going on?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I knocked on the door, he said enter, and I came in just completely, you know, off the street, introduced myself, shook his hand, told him to sit down, and I sent and I went through the features and the benefits of having a number two yellow pencil all the way down to he had a blue suit, and I held the yellow two pencil up to a suit and complimented him on how this works.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and should you make a mistake, which I doubt a man of your stature would, but we have a convenient eraser on the end of this.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I went through my whole just you know mumbling sales pitch, and the guy reached in his pocket and all he had was a quarter and he flipped it and he said, sold, Pat, the HR lady will take care of you.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: What a story.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, so you know, I've I've sold a lot of technology and I've sold a lot of product in my day, but I love telling that story because it does bring me back to just the beginning, and I believe that you know, if if you can't sell your yourself with the enthusiasm, whatever product you've got, you have to be uh enthusiastic about it.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if it wasn't for Roe Furniture and Gary, I may not have had this experience.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the very first thing that I ever sold was a yellow two number two pencil and my professional career.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what a career it's been.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: If I look through your Linton profile, gosh, lots of titles such as SVP, EVP of sales, VP of Sales, EVP of North America, companies, some of which I've heard of and some of which I haven't, you know, Oracle is in there.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: You were a co-founder of a company that sold to live person back in the day.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Omada is in here as well from our world and cybersecurity.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then right now you are the CRO of a company called Token.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm a CISO, Jack, uh, how would you answer the question, what does token do?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, before I would answer that question, I would say that that we have a problem in the market today.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that identity and access management, it needs to change.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: The promises of many of the current solutions that are out on the market, they simply fail to live up to reality.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And specifically, we're focused on fixing the number one vector of attack in cybersecurity, and that is weak and inadequate forms of authentication.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where we we kind of start with where I believe the problem is, and most people that resonates with because the the press does us a favor on a daily basis and it reminds us of how insecure we are.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if current identity access management solutions were were truly addressing the need from inadequate forms of authentication, we probably wouldn't see as many of these in the press on a daily basis.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we have come to market with a solution that directly identifies the weak and inadequate forms of authentication.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go a little bit deeper then.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um what exactly is token?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Who does it compete against and what's new about it?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell We are the only biometric wearable multi-factor authentication solution on the market today.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, we use public, private key cryptography, secure hardware, and a decentralized uh credential deployment scheme into a convenient wearable product that lets your customers uh employ truly secure MFA in a single step.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: So MFA to me multi-factor, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there's uh this is one of the factors that's in the in the mix.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a piece of hardware, it's a ring that uh that you I guess most of you will wear, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: So what what does that do compared to like I've got a secure ID token from my bank, for example, and here I use it twice a year when I have to do something that requires a secure ID token.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: How does it compare for those of us that are familiar with secure ID?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So secure ID tokens, the RSA tokens, Yuba keys, you know, there are a lot of different tokens in the market today, none of which are are biometric, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the it's still the old school goes back to how do I know that Andrew is the person Andrew claims to be?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've done here are your credentials are generated on and they never leave the ring.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the ring isn't connected to a network, so someone would have to find you in a physical space to even attempt to compromise the ring.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And even if that were possible, each person's credentials live with that person, not in a centralized location.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in essence, Andrew, there's a fingerprint scanner on the bottom of the ring.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you authenticate by simply matching up your finger, very similar to what you would see if if if anyone actually has the uh the Apple type device that you authenticate your fingerprint to.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So once you authenticate and you slide the ring onto your finger, there are sensors in the side of the ring that say that the ring is actually on the finger, and when it's slipped over, the authentication's actually your fingerprint.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you are the identity of the solution.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: So in the secure ID token, I lose the token, someone else finds it, and then there's nothing I can do about it.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: In this world, I need to find the ring and also find my finger for it to be able to work, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I had someone just yesterday ask me the question, which happens a lot, you know, because obviously in the in the token space, you know, the tokens are lost frequently because they're typically in your pocket, you're fishing it out.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to leave the ring, you go to the restroom, you take off the ring to wash your hand, you leave the ring there, it's absolutely useless to anyone else because the biometric is the secure ID that knows you.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you would simply, if you don't find the ring, you would go to your IT department, you would obviously let them know.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: They would temporarily shut down your account.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: We would ship you out another ring within 24 hours, and then you would go through the same process.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then what I what I didn't tell you is that was just the authentication piece.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have an NFC reader that you would then load the applications that are important for your daily use, whether it's Active Directory, any application that's out there.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've tested them all ping, Oracle, Okta, whatever it is that you're using.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's no limit to the amount of applications that you can actually put on the ring.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when I hear about things like this, I think that you know there's gonna be a lot of the market where this is not for them, but there's gonna be some areas of the market that it's absolutely for them.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering what the main use cases or types of buyers you're you're targeting.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's a very good question.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we're very optimistic that this is gonna proliferate the market everywhere, but the reality is that the healthcare space is definitely a vertical, that it's uh it's got a high rate of phishing attacks, a high rate of ransomware attacks.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we we are actively engaged in talking to healthcare providers, large hospitals, uh large physician groups.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's one vertical.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that's really regulated uh from a finance perspective, another market that has showed a lot of interest, oil and gas.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: The use cases are really unlimited, but we're also uh very aware that it's gonna take a while for people to actually understand this is something unique and different that no one else has on the market today.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So why would I be interested in doing something that no one else has?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think one thing in your favor, though, is from a B2C standpoint, URIN has been out for a while.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the certain subset of the market are just used to having something like that on their finger, I guess.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that might help with adoption for those that are for areas of the market that might be skeptical, let's say.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell And they've shipped over a million rings into a market that you're right.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is on the consumer space.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it's it's amazing to me that a million rings has been shipped for healthcare, you know, heart rate, you know, sleep patterns and things like that at a price point of anywhere from$350 to$500.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we think that what we've got, very similar in design, you know, a ring looks like a ring, but to be able to actually protect your entire network so that you don't have the phishing attacks and the ransomware attacks, this would absolutely 100% address the needs and the causes of those attacks.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why has no one done this before, Jack?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this new?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like it should be reasonably obvious going back.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: What a great question and what a humbling question.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we it's taken us four years to actually go to market with the ring.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And where the where the concept is is easy to understand, we have 96 components within the ring here.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when you start talking a form factor of a size five to a size 14 and the traditional tokens that are on the market that we're all aware of, when they're coming off a manufacturing facility, they're flat.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to mass produce.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you start bending a motherboard into the form factor that we've got, things get interesting very quickly.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I can 100% say the reason you haven't seen this technology out in the market today is because it's hard to do and it's very costly to get the production and to get it ready to go out to the masses.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So as I mentioned, it's taken us four years to get this right.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of this year, we will be in production for 2023.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're at that stage now, just about to start shipping, then it sounds like.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we are.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the late stage POCs with selected, uh, we call them early adopter MSPs.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: The strategy for us is to be 100% channel focused.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you start talking about the channel ecosystem, it's very complicated.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: But we're choosing to go to market through Selected MSPs first, since they're very focused, obviously, on the security side of the customer base.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we we currently uh are in POCs with about a hundred MSPs around the country.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me more about why MSPs.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious about that.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because they have such a security focus and such a broad experience and such a diverse end-user base.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh an MSP could have uh they could have healthcare, they could have oil and gas, obviously enterprise customers.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we go back to who is the market, you know, truly the market is anyone that has a security focus, the breach, you know, you know, Uber, Colonial uh oil pipeline, uh Haynes, you know, these are all prospects, not only because they're in the news and they've and they've already had these ransomware attacks, but because it just sets the precedence that whatever they were using to get to that point, it wasn't secure enough.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so um the MSPs, in our opinion, is just kind of the tip of the spear, but it's certainly a way to get our name out.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: They manage a number of different clients and to be able to get, I call it the low-hanging fruit first.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: The people that are most interested in their portfolio will show the interest and then we'll get the rings out to them quickly.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is gonna be a viral marketing message when people have something that's so easy to use and is so secure to use, they're obviously going to tell others, and then people are gonna be coming to us through their MSPs and they're gonna want to also participate in having a token ring on their hand, quite honestly.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my business is I I help early stage uh cybersecurity companies come to market and go about their selling motions.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I I worry about, frankly, when someone says to me, we're gonna build our business through a channel, whether it's a traditional security channel or something like that.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just wanted a mind share from the channel partner to really help you build your business.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it sounds like you're getting incredible traction right now from the MSPs.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting uh tremendous traction.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And quite honestly, we've we've been in stealth mode.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: We've done very little marketing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: What little marketing we've done, uh, we're just kind of in the infancy.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: However, we're in we're in full grow growth mode now.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we brought on a uh a CMO, we brought on a uh head of channel.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're starting to build out the ecosystem from a go to market strategy.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I am a true believer, not to quote Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner, but you build it, they will come.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have something so unique that no one else has in the market today.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: When the word gets out, people will come.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: to token to get their token ring.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: One other thing that I think about with hardware is uh one-time sale, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: 50 bucks for your your whatever skewer ID token, whatever it might be for hardware, and that's it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering, you know, in this day of ARR, MR, MRR, recurring revenue, how how token plays into that.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have a very unique model for a hardware play where we call it has hardware as a service.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously to produce and manufacture a technology that's never come to market, it's expensive.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that we would not sell the ring directly outright, but I believe that the price point is going to be prohibitive to be able to actually penetrate the market at mass.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've come up with is a hardware as a service, so for a low monthly fee for a 12 month or 24 month commitment, you too will be able to have the the highest level of security with the token ring for a very low cost.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell And is there more service wrapped around than just having the piece of hardware that's like a payment plan?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as technology changes, obviously you can't ship hardware and say, hey, we're one and done.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of the firmware updates when we release you know the version two ring, whatever that's going to be in the future, obviously the people that already have the rings, you're going to get all the firmware updates.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: If there's anything going on in the world today from a security aspect, we have the ability through our secure app that you would download and as part of as part of actually registering the ring, all of that when your ring's in its cradle at night will have all the firmware updates to it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting the latest and the greatest and then as the actual ring gets smaller, you know, newer technology comes out to play, you would be eligible for the latest and the greatest token ring as we grow our business.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking about the the coming year then, right?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a channel focused model.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: How are you thinking about the scaling the sales team and the type of roles that you want to bring in?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so and I'm very animate also about being a channel direct company.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know a lot of people have questioned me on this about you know hey you know someone comes direct we're simply we're going to roll that back into the channel because I don't want to cannibalize the channel and I want our channel partners to know that we're very focused on helping them grow their business.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is from a sales and marketing aspect I believe that this is more of a marketing focus, evangelizing, getting the word out into the market.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to have a more of a focus on the marketing side of it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: But then we also have to have obviously people to service the needs of the MSPs, resellers, the whole ecosystem.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, we have a head of channel we have three salespeople today and two engineers sales engineers.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're going out to market if people are having trouble logging in or something with the ring we do have the technical support but we have to grow out the whole ecosystem to ensure that we're ahead of the demand that's coming in.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know we're a small company today but we're projecting phenomenal hyper growth for 2023 but what comes first the chicken or the egg?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know it's very hard to hire salespeople and channel people without having the revenue in the door first but I can reassure you that today we have we have more than enough headcount to address the needs for Q1 and Q2.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then if your primary rut is MSPs is that is that the same sort of channel manager as the traditional security channel or do you need slightly different people if you're different groups?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we have someone that is 100% specifically focused in on MSPs.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: They've spent their career in the MSP market and that person is managing that kind of leg of the stool but when you start looking at a true channel partner approach that ecosystem you know you've got MSPs you've got resellers you've got OEMs you've got distribution so you know the ecosystem is way broader than just MSPs but we chose to use that focus to go to market with first in the MSP market and then we're going to scale this out over time into a much broader ecosystem partners.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned distribution there I'd imagine at some point you want to go two tier right and work with distributors in different parts of the world right absolutely Andrew you know I I remind my CEO frequently it's a crawl walk run strategy.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know I've got a lot of experience of the end state of managing very large global sales organizations but you know what it takes time to get there.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the starting phase of a very long journey and quite honestly the feedback that we've gotten from the MSPs we've gotten way more demand than what we had anticipated.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's very encouraging for bringing something to market that there is truly a demand for this.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Actually there's so much demand we we just did a trade show in Orlando this week and we showed up at the trade show we had a 15 minute spot to be able to you know just talk about the ring and then I didn't even realize that the vendors were voting on who should win the award for the whole trade show on the best technology and the best presentation.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very happy and humbled to tell you that token walked away with best in show and that's just an indication of how unique this technology is.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I was literally just humbled by the amount of people standing in line to get to our booth to be able to have the conversation and to be able to sign up for the POC for them and their organization.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I can see that right I mean in our a world that's full of I don't know if mundane is the right world world but you know software solutions and and cybersecurity it's not the most exciting and flashy and you know uh high design sort of world right and that's their environment seeing something come out that's so different is hardware based, not software based.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: It looks good.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's very elegant um I can imagine that it would stand out quite a bit and people actually take notice.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing I also need to say just in in having a conversation with you because this is going to be of key importance to a lot of the people that maybe listen to your podcast is that we utilize the FIDO two protocol, which means that the ring isn't vulnerable to fission attacks or credential misuse, period.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, FIDO two is the future in security and so we built the architecture on the FIDO2 protocol.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well uh Jack I've really enjoyed the conversation this morning if someone wants to get in touch to talk about uh either coming on board or or being a distributor or reseller for you what's the best way to get a hold of you?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah the best way to get a hold of me is Jack at tokenring.com.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that that simple I've also got a LinkedIn profile Jack Wilson definitely want to engage with as many of you as possible and answer any questions that you may have.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: More importantly I want to get a a token ring to you and your organization no cost no commitment I'll send you out a couple of rings and you can have a two week or a 30 day POC for yourself to test the ring.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Try before you buy I love that I love that I encourage everyone to take a look at this when I when I first saw what uh what tokens doing and what jack's to bring to market it's kind of exciting right it you know it's one of these classic to me cybersecurity things which is a really dull market which is tokens and someone comes along and goes well let's reimagine it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Let's think about using modern techniques and modern manufacturing practices and bring something to market that people might actually want to use and wear and it's uh it's gonna be fascinating to see how this plays out in the next year or two.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Especially as the world is trying to go password less right now.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right that seems to be where you're gonna get a lot of uh uh a lot of support right and a lot of um drafting off that that kind of password less movement this seems to be a key component of that I believe that the token ring is the gateway to passwordless in the future whatever your strategy is this is a great way to start love it all right well listen Jack really enjoyed the conversation it's been fun getting to know you and I'm I'm rooting for you for this year and for next year and uh wish you all the best.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your time Andrew and your interest well that was a fun interview to do.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think Jack is obviously very personable very enigmatic good person to chat to and uh has a really good way to communicate with us on the podcast.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: I had three takeaways from the conversation I want to highlight back to you.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: First one is how they're building their initial customer base and market through the MSP channel.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: They recognize there's a fit there between what they're trying to achieve and the way the direction that the MSPs are hitting up their customers.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they seem to get some traction from it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as I said in the interview it's often not a great idea to rely on other people to help you build your market.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the uniqueness of what token is doing and what it means for the market, I can see why they've got a whole bunch of MSPs wanting to jump on board and at least POC and try this out seems like that's a going to be a good route for them to the market.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Second is something that we see a little bit in cybersecurity is how there's a connection between B2C and B2B interfaces, applications, how they work the simplicity of applications these days is being dictated by the simplicity of the B2C acts we're used to working with in our in our personal lives.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you know if you look at something like a ring there's a classic example right we've got uh something the market already on the B2B B2C side that shipped a million units, the URA ring and now we've got something on the B2B side that looks and feels very similar obviously it's got different functions inside the hardware itself but there's definitely a connection there between something that's been recognized in the B2C world and therefore now appearing in the B2B world.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: The third thing I call out is you know here's another great example of potentially what might have seemed like a very tired and boring part of the cybersecurity market tokens, right?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember when I first got my first secure ID token but maybe it was 20 years ago I don't know 15, 20 years ago.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it hasn't changed much since then right the way they work and all the rest of it I'm sure behind the scenes hopefully there's better management servers and things like that.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: But uh you know my experience as a consumer is very much what it would be in the past and here's something coming along that's reinventing quite a tired market.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think it'll be a chance to really disrupt that and make a big difference.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh again thanks Jack for joining us and I look forward to chatting to you next time.