Speaker 1Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management co-founder John Kaplan, the show goes behind the scenes with the people who have been there, done that, and seen the results. If you enjoy our content, please subscribe, rate, and review the show to help us reach more people. Revenue Builders is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Find us at forcemanagement.com. Enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 2Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast. I'm John McMahon, and I'm here with my co-host, the big man, John Kaplan. Kaplan, how are you, bud?
Speaker 3I'm doing great, buddy. Doing great. You sure?
Speaker 2All right. I'm doing good. Hey, Kaplan. Due to overwhelming demand, overwhelming, we brought back Carl Froger, who is the ex-CIO of Citibank, and Joe Lynch, that was an account executive at the time at Zscaler, and he sold the big deal to Carl during Carl's time as the economic buyer at Citi. So I would recommend that anyone who hasn't heard the first episode with Carl and Joe go back and listen. In fact, we'll put. We'll link to that episode in this show notes. Hey, Kaplan, before we begin the episode, let's review some of the key points we covered in that original session with Joe and Carl, and maybe I'll start first if that's okay. I think one of the things we heard is that Carl made it really evident as the economic buyer that he doesn't like vendor bashing, meaning account executives. So I think we need to remember that it's the EB's job to evaluate the different vendors. So let the EB and his team come to their own conclusions on which vendors best fit their internal needs. There's no need for vendor bashing.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think that's a great one, Johnny. I think AEs need to approach the EB with the value their product brings to the business, and you can't say it enough. You have to lead with the value. How is the product differentiated? How is our company going to support the economic buyer's business? That's your main focus.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think that's a big one when you're someone like Carl, who's the EB of Citi. That's what he's thinking about. What type of risk am I taking, and how is this company and this account executive going to support my business? Then one of the other things we heard is in Carl's experience, he was the EB. Account executives rarely, which if ever, have they done their homework on the needs and strategies of the business when they go and meet with him. Therefore, they never come to the meeting fully prepared with a compelling point of view that can quickly interest somebody like Carl as the EB, and that's shocking that people still don't do that.
Speaker 3Well, I know, Johnny, in today's day and age, we call it the collective yes. There's not much that gets procured. There's not much that gets procured today in what our audience is selling that does not have multiple buyers and multiple personas. You'll hear, and we did hear, Joe meeting Carl for the first time. He'd already talked to 20 internal Citi people, so he'd done his homework. He had multiple external partners to help him understand Citi's business, their strategies, and current issues. You'll hear Carl talk about, in this last episode, please go back and listen to that, as Johnny said in the first one, you'll hear him talk about how important that is, people show up prepared.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's right, Cap. When Joe did approach Carl with his compelling point of view, Carl naturally thought a couple things. One, it was kind of shocking to Carl, too, that Joe had information that he necessarily shouldn't have had. He was talking about Citi's problems, their business priorities, and how Zscaler could uniquely address those issues, because he had done so much homework. The other thing was that Joe was focused on the value that his product and his company could bring to Citi, not features and functions. And then Joe differentiated himself as an account executive, and Carl started to view Joe as a potential partner.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think this is really, really good. This is a really good point to take away from these conversations. I found it very interesting, a point that Carl made earlier when he talked about, during the conversations with Joe, with Joe's presentation, it was starting to help Carl articulate the why. So Carl was actually using Joe and Joe's resources to formulate his why, because internally, even as a CIO at Citi, he's got internal stakeholders. And they've got to not only make their decision, they've got to deal with and sell their decision and deal with the ramifications of their decisions and make it intersect with the strategy of the entire business. And I think that's a big, big takeaway for me.
Speaker 2Well, it's big, Cap. I mean, the sales isn't over just because the EB liked what you had to say. Even though someone may be the EB, they still have to sell. So I think that's a pretty good review of some of the key points that we heard. There was a lot more information in that first episode. But we primarily highlighted the discovery part of the sales process in the first episode, and then the first meeting with the economic buyer. But in today's session with Carl and Joe, I'd like us to touch on a few other parts of the process. Yeah, let's do it. So Joe, good morning. Good morning. How are you doing? Welcome back. Thank you. Hey, in the last session, Carl had obviously heard what you said about his business and how your product could potentially bring value to Citi since he let you proceed. So can you talk a little bit how you proved the value of your product to Carl?
Speaker 4Yeah, absolutely. So at Zscaler, we had a really robust business value practice that Mike Murphy and Connor Stone had built out. And a best practice that I found useful because I had done some deals with banks, similar sides of Citi, is engaging that team early and often, right? Too often, sellers are bringing in the BBC when it's time to put to a business value consultant, when it's time to put a quote together. I actually had Connor on internal and external discovery calls prior to our first MBM, our first business meeting with Carl. And we actually had our business value assessment 1.0 built out. So that first MBM, with some rough estimates on kind of the qualitative and quantitative benefits we're seeing from customers of about Citi size and the success they had seen, again, from a qualitative and quantitative size, right, when they are successfully deployed
Speaker 2with Zscaler. So had you already, when you first met Carl then, does that mean that you had shared some of the BVA elements that you just described?
Speaker 4Yeah, so my first meeting with Carl was just described. So I was like, "Hey, this is what I'm hearing about your business, right? This is how I'm hearing your teams are helped driving those business objectives. Can you confirm this is accurate? Yes. Okay, great. Here are the relevant stakeholders that will probably be engaging from your side. Can you bring them in from an MBM perspective?" And then that's when we shared the updates on network benefits and user benefits, security benefits, cloud benefits, to help them achieve some of those kind of business outcomes, like the nine-figure investment they had made with a massive company. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I think that's really important. I think that's really important.
Speaker 2Yeah. That's really important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5Yeah. Yeah. let me jump in a minute as well to run out something here right um so i think i said last time right joe had obviously done his done his homework and understood uh you know what we were trying to do now at the time i'm gonna say a lot of the things joe just mentioned about mpls whatever not not my primary driver right um yeah cost for me was a secondary if not tertiary um the one thing i do recall though joe because yeah everybody else you know you weren't you weren't the first one right everybody else is kind of the same roughly the same things uh so again from my perspective kind of i've heard it before the one thing i do recall though was you mentioned about user experience and um obviously i just heard of all the stuff that you went through but that really resonated um with me because first of all it's the first time it had really come up as as a uh an advantage right a benefit um and and second from that perspective it was maybe timely but we uh my end user stakeholder uh who was responsible for all the desktops and email and telephony and whatever else in in uh in the city and therefore the user experience it was a massive internal thing uh strategy of driving a better employee slash user experience when they consume technology so maybe maybe you got a little bit lucky on kind of hitting that but from my perspective you were the only one who made that a real kind of value prop and and yeah it it again it was a differentiation from everybody else right uh from that perspective and then when you met
Speaker 2these uh team members of carl before you did any production pilot or that hundred user pilot um you said that you've had to go through like let's say 10 iterations of bba before you had to wrap it up and i'm sure that there were a number of those that were done even after you met with some of the people on carl's team did you feel like you had to that you learn new things by talking to some of the people on carl's team as far as some of
Speaker 4their needs yeah 100 right so the first one was really a blueprint but that's why i was such a big fan of engaging connor early and often because their role right is strictly finding out exactly right how to uncover some of that pain and help drive home why this relatively massive investment makes sense and they will see numerous areas of roi but every discovery call we had because i used i think people ai to gather intel about how many people we actually we met with over 150 people at city throughout that sales process and every single time it just seemed like someone had a different priority or different perspective of what success looked like and what they cared about so yeah a lot of a lot of iterations then just working with the experts about what's going to resonate for at the end of the day this deal was so big that you know carl was obviously the eb but we had to meet with city ceo jane frazier right to get the blessing to move forward and we had to understand right that hey this is what a ceo actually cares about for this type of transformational project to move forward
Speaker 3so before you go into that process of sharing that with carl getting the information from his team i want to just touch on something real quick and ask a couple of questions these bvcs i think you called them um could you give us some advice both of you now carl that you're on the good guy side uh if you could uh if you could both of you just kind of give us advice first i call these guys or people men and women the 100 pound brains in the company there's not a lot of them and when you say go to somebody early i hear people say that go to them early um i always wonder is there a qualification point criteria that says before we get this person involved because all the new people i remember when i was new and ptc and people told me go get the 100 pound brains early i try to get them on first calls and that wasn't doing anybody any favors the customer nor us a couple things how do you engage these folks where you say early where in the process and um what should the qualification criteria be to get these people engaged
Speaker 4yeah i'll start and i think you know one of my mentors andrew bonner had put it really well at the beginning of the interview he said you know what you're not going to buy technology because it's cool and flashy right city's going to buy technology to solve a business problem and because of that understanding and the this team that i engaged had dealt with the other big five banks right and seeing what they care about what their priorities are what their landscape looks like what some of the challenges would be and what usually resonates with anyone from the ceo to the cfo to security network executives right that's when i kind of knew okay that's how we're going to do this and i will keep them in early often and i'm usually pretty transparent if i'm on a discovery call and i engage someone with that team and you can i've said look i i understand you guys are doing like engaging with us to solve a problem i've looped in my 100 pound brain here because he's going to help us solidify why that problem exists and how we can be best positioned to overcome that problem and help accelerate your business initiatives why do
Speaker 3you not wear out the 100 pound brains with unquad now you're going city so any call at city is that okay that's qualified because it's a major account but where is the give some give our listeners some advice there because everybody's dealing with it
Speaker 4internal champions are just as important as external champions right having a relationship and building up enough sweat equity and you know showing that you care about their success as well and that you guys are aligned in the same goal of going to tackle this 800 pound gorilla and this massive logo is you know is is really really important so just spending as much time with them as possible right ensuring you know building personal and professional relationship because you know i know it's their job but you do need to ask a few favors of them to maybe loosen up you know some of their schedule their bandwidth etc um but yeah so it's ensuring that you have some really solid internal champions that'll sponsor you throughout this engagement because we want everybody on the team to be successful
Speaker 3carl any thoughts there and then johnny i'd like you to give your thoughts on how to resource and deploy these people because i see a lot of them
Speaker 5get worn out yeah i think um i i think uh john does think right one is if you look i'll say financials but what i'm seeing in this role it kind of applies if you look at verticals and roughly the same size customers however you measure that now they generally have the same needs right so i think i think you know if um now they generally have the same needs either from a regulatory or a customer base just same vertical roughly same size the thing that fluctuates is their maturity where are they going to be able to do that and i think that's a really important thing to think about and i think that's a really important thing to think about and i think that's a really important thing to think about um yeah i i see uh you know even just last week at rsa right i see some some of my financials further ahead and then honestly some of them are kind of 10 years behind what i what i did a couple of years ago so um i think you can rinse and repeat i think that's what joe's kind of saying right you kind of refine your messaging and then for the lower tiers or the small medium size um joe maybe becomes more of a template because it becomes a bit simplified i would generally say a small to medium size and i think we touched on this last time yeah that them really more focused on their business right they generally have very much smaller i.t and cyber teams so you know um pretty much the stuff you learn from the big guys right it just filters down and maybe becomes more of a repeatable process process from from a joe and and yeah that perspective would be more my view
Speaker 2i want to go back to what joe said so joe you talked to a number of carl's you know key stakeholders he gave you access to them you come back with you know a whole bunch of like you said some of these people had different viewpoints so now you're trying to come up with uh a criteria that you and carl can agree on but you have all these different viewpoints did you and carl together or with some of his stakeholders narrow it down to what's truly important in this pilot to understand if you're successful or not for city's business
Speaker 4yeah yeah absolutely the excel document we had was just tabs and tabs and tabs and different teams and different priorities and you know internal champions being as important as external champions you know and building relationship with carl is just being transparent viewing that data hey we're meeting with my ceo's name with your seat with city ceo right what does she want to hear about what does she care about okay we're going to go to the global headed networks right what do they care about so we we just had so much data and so much due diligence and a really really good champion when carl and a few of his team members underneath him that he sponsored intros to that can help us validate what's going to really kind of hit the nail on the head for for what these what what each kind of um decision maker or influencer or you know an ea i believe you guys call it on a pretty previous podcast, someone with influence and authority, right, wants to hear. and what's what they care
Speaker 5about no no i want to weigh in there a little bit right because um at this time joe uh yeah despite his mustache he did build a good relationship sorry joe i had to mention it oh
Speaker 4it's perfect it's from a golf trip you can only
Speaker 5comment on cap's beard live your life brother live your life i'm jealous now i can't grow anything um oh man i lost my train of thought there um when you're i want to be clear i want to be clear at this at this stage joe right um we were yeah you you were driving it was interesting and again i felt manipulated but in a good way joe were joe and the team because it wasn't just joe had built a rapport had built a cadence of these these are the next steps that we need to do carl do you agree right yes this makes sense um and i would have done that for the others who were involved remember this wasn't you know we were doing a competitive bake-off um we started with over 30 we got down to three and those three uh i want to be very good we're treated equally they had equal opportunity and we will touch on that in in a minute right but what joe's describing nobody else did okay if they'd have done if they had a similar thing i'd have been just as as as whatever um but i think it's a good thing that um but you're totally right in everybody had different drivers number one it was such as joe mentioned jane the ceo was involved it was such a big everybody wanted to run it everybody wanted to take it away uh from from uh me and the cso right it's it's end user it's not like yeah because it's one of those things no remained in security um but then together we mapped out uh you know and again joe and the team would driving the the structure but it made total sense internal champions are key to my success right so again i'll go back to end user i remember the gentleman i knew him well well no what did i focus on hey office 365 his main main thing area affects everybody but then talking about the user experience and some of the built-in things and really emphasizing that um and how we could do it together some of the and i'll be honest uh because i don't work there anymore some of the other groups that we talked about joe i know who you're thinking of right they were very obstructive so we just worked around them right you know rather than because ultimately i needed to get the job done i needed to get the value to the business but at this stage that we're talking about i want to be clear it was still a competitive three three horse race at the time it's just that the structure that joe and the team were in was not a competitive three three horse race at the time it's just that the structure that joe and the team bought was all the right things to uh you know to to move it along and and to continue to show that they understood that they were solving my problems and not just there to sell me some kittens
Speaker 2right okay so now you come up with this test criteria it probably sounds like looks like an excel spreadsheet like you said joe but now the key comes into especially when you're teeing off against two other vendors how does carl and his team weigh each one of these elements and score each one of these elements so that the things that are your differentiators can be highlighted so that you can win and each vendor is trying to highlight and weigh their differentiators higher than maybe your differentiators can you talk did you run into any of that while you're coming up with the test criteria and eventually the success
Speaker 4criteria yeah so um i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point on the previous podcast carl talked about timing right seven-year depreciation cycles for hardware right discovery phases into the initiatives etc um timing for us was so critical i think for most reps if they hear that you know uh production deployment or you know etc wouldn't start for two years they'll circle 18 months from now let's touch base with carl and see how that's progressed yeah that wasn't the mentality that you know dali and zscaler had built out for sales reps so um you know we were really really determined to influence that decision criteria before it became one of city's formalized rfis so we were able to meet with so many people with carl's blessings prior to the success criteria being finalized we felt we had a good understanding of what they were trying to accomplish i don't think carl knows this but i actually built a relationship with a seller from the biggest competitor in our space at the time who was also covering city and he let me know that once his team received the rfi they knew that it had been favored towards zscaler so he actually you know being that city was his only global account he ended up leaving that company because that company which is an 800 pound gorilla in the cyberspace felt that from the jump they were at a disadvantage and that's kind of a kudos to the team and i staying so close to that team regardless of whether it's a two-year review cycle or a discovery process etc and influencing that decision criteria as early as possible so so powerful what you just
Speaker 2said and so many sales people don't understand that when that rfp comes out you're late to the sales process some other vendor has gotten in there and actually helped write that criteria so when you if you can't change the rfp when it comes out chances are you've already lost so yeah
Speaker 5besides enough what joe and i'm not just talking about joe now but um i can probably name less than 10 account executives that i would recommend and i've been doing this for 30 years yeah just think of that for a second sure it's powerful and i i know know the names and i've still got their phone numbers right yeah um because what what we're talking about here it's long term it is long term you turn up on an rfp yeah you're at a disadvantage from the get-go right remember the rfp comes out because i've been doing work probably for the last three to six months minimum right i've been exploring the market i've been looking for things i've almost i've already engaged with um you know not necessarily on the nda because then right but i've already certainly gone to your website almost certainly had an initial kind of you know show me your stuff right you know so not necessarily under nda i've already done all that i've already done that and i've been doing it for months so if you just turn up and you're now just responding to an rfp yeah wait not just late right the party's part is almost over yeah
Speaker 2um it's crazy so joe when you wanted to get your differentiators weighed more heavily into the test criteria success criteria whichever one you want to call it did i hear that you were speaking to some of carl's internal stakeholders or his champions which also became some of your champions and were you giving them demonstrations or trying to educate them on why your differentiators were so much more valuable to city at that point and why they should be weighed more heavily in the test criteria
Speaker 4yep and i think what was great about that is that we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and we had a lot of people that wanted to go to the rfp and zscaler at that time is that we had the proof points right we had these finalized business value assessments of companies of that size that scale that complexity 150 plus countries to really say hey we're not just talking about smoke and mirrors here right like we've seen this at company xyz bank abc that you compete with and it's of similar size and scale and these are the benefits they saw and that's why it's so crucial to engage i think that bbc team early early right because they're working on these day in and day out and you can position that as hey you know we were an early stage startup hoping that city would be our first big adopter we had actually proven this out right size complexity scale and this is the benefits that they saw which we've heard from our discovery calls that you guys care about as well
Speaker 2and then carl for you when they joe kept going through these iterations with your team and different groups within city when did you decide okay now it's time to go let's let's do this 100 person pilot when when what what was it that made you comfortable enough let's say to say okay now it's time to go yeah so
Speaker 5let's we're and again we're not just talking about one company so um initially i've asked me questions but initially um yeah we we recognized the need uh that we needed something like a sassy right um so that that's in that's initial kind of step number one then we do reconnaissance we go and look at the market um i may be a little bit different to others because i like the underdog i like looking at startups right before i'm working at a startup so i would always you know you've always got to consider the big players right um insert vendor right you never got fired for buying big massive vendor who's been around for you know 30 years right doesn't matter what which one you pick um so and again for your audience is from who what did what's the personality of the eb right are they are they willing to take a risk or a punt on on something that's a little bit less the the road less traveled right um see i think for me you've got to understand that i know i always wanted uh an underdog i'll call it in in that final round so remember we had we boiled it down to three we we did research on over 30 um most of your audience probably can't name 30 different sassy vendors right um but obviously some of those were written off straight away but we bought it down to to you know the three not a pretty obvious three if you ask me even at that stage discounting some of the big vendors big global tech vendors cause politics right their ceo phones our ceo their ceo right it's it's hilarious by the way for your audience it never influences decisions right we have so much paperwork to back up why we went with vendor industry a and not vendor b right all it does is burn bridges and and causes a lot of friction for any future business right hey we have a process we have a methodology we followed it um you know sometimes we'll share the results sometimes we won't but accept it and move on um your phone call your escalate like never never influence anything right uh kind of interesting um and we do the reconnaissance and then we boil it down to the three and then we have um three or four stages a proof of value a proof of value is is very focused in the lab we're not talking about um testing everything or whatever so the proof of value would be for z scaler does it work does it work with office 365 um and and and like really just focused on the value prop itself right then you get to get to the point where you're able to do all of the things that you want to do and then you get to the point where you're able to do all of the things that you want to do and then you get to the point where you're able to do all of the things that you want to do and then you get to the point where you get to the point where you're able to do all of the things that you want to do and then you get how does it integrate into single sign-on and MFA? So POV is purely about the thing that you were really, really wanting the value, the value prop. POC was the next step of, can I actually make this work? Do I think I can? Still not scaling necessarily at that stage. And then a production pilot, you would have confidence out of those first two stages that, hey, if we did go with this, we're pretty sure we can buy it and make it scale. In this three-horse race that I had, I had a time crunch. So everybody had 30 days, which is very short, actually. But the long tail was getting to that 30 days. But everybody had 30 days to do that production pilot. Okay. Just before
Speaker 2you hit the 30 days, you had to feel comfortable with the criteria. Correct. When. When was it that you were comfortable or what did you see from your team and Joe's team to say, okay, I'm comfortable with that criteria. Now you got 30 days.
Speaker 5So his team and my team were working together on that POC, right? And still in a lab environment, but we're taking a very critical look, not just at that very core value prop. But remember, I'm running an enterprise. It's got to integrate. I've got to be able to manage it at scale. So we look at all that stuff. The big thing, and Joe's kind of gone through a lot of this stuff, but as he said, they have really good referential customers of similar size and scale. So as the EB, that gives me confidence. And I think I've talked with a couple of them, Joe, I can't remember. Right. It gives me confidence. I knew some of them, right? So it gives me confidence if they can do it, I'm pretty sure I can do it, right? So that really helps. But all the other things that Joe mentioned about the test criteria and whatever, we had got to a point of ticking those boxes. Things like scale and how exactly how are we going to do it? Yeah, maybe we didn't have the minutiae detail, but we had enough there that we felt confident to take it to the next step.
Speaker 2And on references, Carl, when is a good time for you to speak to a reference? Is it just before you're doing the pilot project? Is it? When I when I want that's the answer to that.
Speaker 5Well, yeah, sure. Yeah, look, I and again, this is maybe myself. And but I know, I would go out on a limb for vendors, even then, even when I wasn't supposed to write as long as it was off the record and that sort of thing. To be honest, I had already kind of talked to people I already knew, I already knew. I had friends who were running it, or I didn't really need these guys and make introductions for for me, because they had already won some trying to not mention names, some very large accounts, and I knew people there. So I was kind of confident when we boiled it down to that last three that these were vendors that had similar reference kind of scale and accounts. I think to be fair, Zscaler definitely at the edge there. And, you know, just the not not just the amount of reference accounts, but but the scale, right? Some of them were not quite at the same scale at that time. But I'll be honest, I think at that stage, all three of them. If I'd have turned to my boss at the time, I could have made them work, right? There is now there's a big influence from my perspective of making them work. And you'll find this with technology, Pete. People, they'll flog a dead horse, right? So they they will like, yeah, technology with bugs and issues or they will they will technology people generally want to try and make stuff work in the face of any adversity that you're throwing them. And as a leader, I have to control my team. Just because you can make it work doesn't make it right. Because I now have to run it at scale after running at 24 by seven. So if we've got to do all these kind of ad hoc, whatever scripts, you know, hooks, whatever, to make something work. It's more complicated. And now but now for me, because remember, I ran this, right? The burdens on me, if it goes wrong, it's on me. I can't I can't look at these. So the simplicity of of how I can deploy and run this was was one of the criteria. And definitely they they had that multiple kind of reference accounts different. Different nuances of the same problem. Yeah, they had all that ready. But certainly, and again, this is the member is me, but I had other internal stakeholders. So having them talk is just as important as me, right? And I think Joe's touched on it a few times as you know, how we had his team was very transparent about we're talking with this person, right? So it's like, Oh, we need to hook the end user up with somebody in the end user space, we need to hook the network and the network space. It was interesting to try and build because there's so many facets to this problem. It's interesting how everybody has their little view. And as long as their piece is fine, they're kind of they don't really care about the right. They do, but they don't. Right? I've been waiting for this part to come up. It was a complicated thing that we Joe, we, you know, Joe and I worked on together. Right? And again, I want to be clear, the other two vendors at the time, had the same opportunity, but didn't have the maturity and the structure that Joe just spent the last half hour going through.
Speaker 3Yeah, I've been waiting for this part of the conversation to come up. I call it the collective Yes. And I'd like to hear from both of your perspectives. Joe, it's clear what you went through to put your team together and to go wide inside of an account. But Carl, you're pretty honest and transparent a little while ago. And you said, you know, people try to take it away internally. So you have your own politics to deal with internally. So I'd like to just kind of understand at what moment does the champion Carl look at Joe say, here's what we're going to do on this? Or does Carl say, Hey, Joe, this is going on. I know people are calling on the CEO, and they're calling on other people. And these people have a voice. At what point does it come together? Because I can sense that it happened for you all. And how does that work? Because we got people listening, they're going, man, I hear everything they're saying, how do I know? When? How? If? If it's okay, if Carl starts the stiff army, or if I tell Carl something that sheds light, and Carl says, Yeah, you know what, that's a pretty good idea, we probably need to get that person involved. Tell us the tell us your experience on that. Joe, why don't you start?
Speaker 4Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's understand, right? You're buying personas. Zscaler could be purchased and operated in three different pillars. It could be owned by end user. It could be owned by network. It could be owned by security, right? So it's like, well, where is this going to land in this account? Because every account's unique. From the research I did with those vendors that we partnered with at Zscaler, everybody said, if you want this product to be successful, right? And move on a timely effort, you want to work closely with Carl, probably. And he had done similar sized deals with those vendors as to where we estimated the Zscaler deal to land. So once I had that intel, I kind of just started backlighting all the information from all of our conversations to Carl. And I do believe it did lead to an inflection point at Citi where someone in network said, I want to run with this project. But obviously, you know, we knew Carl had run these projects before. So we did backfeed that information to Carl. And he said, let me handle this internally, right? We'll get this sorted out. And then after about a week or so, I'm sure internally at Citi, it did come out that Carl will be running point on that. So my big bet on Carl from the homework I had done on his past, you know, engagement with vendors and doing deals of this size kind of led me to him. And it worked out in our favor that he was running point on the initiative. But I let Carl speak to that as well.
Speaker 5Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're spot on there. So yeah, there was absolutely. So please, thank you. Right. I have my own stuff to deal with internally. On a big deal like this. Yeah, everybody wants, everybody wants to own it. So this is where certainly for your audience, John, right, they need to know, like their buyer and more importantly, how their customer runs. And as Joe said, he did all this homework. You know, security, the CISO function at Citi was kind of a foundational function for different businesses. So it was quite easy for me internally, apart from having some, you know, big, big successes over my career there. B, I was very cross-functional. I, I understood the end user. I, I came from networks. I work with identity and then the other kind of, you know, all the other components. So for, for me internally, it was quite easy. I'm going to use a maybe overshare a little bit though. So there was some groups trying to be generic, who would be negatively impacted by the deployment of something like Zscape. In other words, we don't need them anymore, or we don't need their tech because obviously we're going to rip. We are ultimately, if you not, maybe not on day one, but on day five, six, seven, eight, you're going to re-architect a whole bunch of things. And, and those teams are going to shrink from hundreds to maybe tens, if not lower. Right. So the, so for me internally, it's not just the tech cell, it's the mo what's the motivation of this person. What are they? Yeah. What's in it. Right. So you start now getting people who want to take over because it protects their little fiefdom and their little kingdom that they built for the last 10 years. That's not good for the company. No. And that, that, I think you can tell that really gets on my, right. It doesn't align, right. If you're, you should be embracing this by the way. And then, and then, you know what, there's something else that will come up that we need. Right. So, but, but unfortunately we're dealing with people and that's how some people think. So I had to deal with all that. The end, I mentioned it at the start, the end user became a very influential stakeholder for me because. The end user team at the time was first of all, we were joined at the hip because they were rolling office three, six, five, and obviously I owned all the, all the connectivity and, and whatever else. That was number one. But number two, they had the end user team rolling office three, six, five, but then a city committed to a green initiative of energy and, and whatever. And so. They, the head of that team had pretty much direct access to Jane and the seat. Right. So I had done my own internal, right. Hey, right. I need this per, do I need this, this person over here? I kind of do. I do. I do. Right. But if I have, if I have this person, that person just going to get told what to do. Right. So that's how I dealt with the naysayers, right. Of, of corralling the people in the room. Yeah. That's, that's how I dealt with the people who were positive and then ultimately, you know, uh, figuring that out.
Speaker 3Carl, how just one last follow up on this, how, and maybe when have you ever gotten advice from a partner like Joe or what advice would you give to the Joes of the world on how to deal with the Carls of the world, your peers, not you that are just not seeing that they're trying to do it in there. In their little fiefdom, they're trying to control everything. And the seller's just obviously aware because they've done deals. It never goes down that way. It's always got to be some type of leverage of a collective. Um, have you ever gotten advice from a partner that you said, you know what, I, I think I understand what you're telling me and I need to do X and how did it go?
Speaker 5Um, Joe, I don't know that I can't remember advice, you know, that Joe put his arm around, but it was the dialogue. It was the interaction. Right. Um, so yeah, with, with the homework that Joe and the team had done and, and like I say, they gave me a whole bunch of structure and facts, um, and then shared experiences. And again, I keep coming back to the end user because it was, for me, it was like a bit of an aha moment of, oh, now, now I can see how I can map and stuff like that. Right. Um, around, because obviously security people think about security, right? Nobody thinks about end user. Nobody's thinking about network and identity. So I was able to see how internally, and I leveraged my boss at the time to get there. Um, if you have, for your audience, if you've got somebody who's not thinking like that, I hate to say it, you probably need to find somebody different. Right. Because, um, either, uh, have somebody who's not thinking like that. I hate to say it, you probably need to find somebody different. Right. Right. Because, um, either, uh, have somebody can i put it look i i made mistakes and you get slapped down uh some the culture of the organization that you sell into i think joe is very influential here um and you know people don't want to put their head above the parapet kind of thing right they whack them all um and i do see a lot of companies who are very fractured in in that you know spend um so i've already seen it actually where you know one part of the same the same company and the one i've got in my mind everybody would recognize the same company bought one thing and then and then the other part the company over here bought another thing and they don't really talk to it it's crazy it to me it's nuts because ultimately it's about it's about the business right um we're not buying a z scaler because it's cool we're buying it because because i've got xyz from a business strategy either to sort out and you need to add value to that right um so maybe yeah i hate to say it but maybe you got the wrong person maybe you need a great point that
Speaker 3is the point great point
Speaker 2so joe at the end it's the end of the pilot you have certain findings because you've been monitoring the pilot for 30 days i'm assuming you and your people and along with carl's people did you now have an opportunity to go back to carl and his team and present the findings as you saw them yep absolutely
Speaker 4so you know carl talked about our structured approach by my partner in crime and shankar satina ryan on um he had actually dealt with city at his previous company um we laid out very clearly what a successful engagement for both city and z scale would be that is an eb go no go right we're committing our best resources to this engagement right a free engagement for 30 days right do you agree that this is what we want to accomplish is what we're going to set out to right lay out very very clearly what's going to be accomplished day over day week over week right do you agree that this is a big enough problem for us to go try to solve together and commit our best resources for free yes pov midpoint review two points in including the eb this is what we've accomplished this is kind of some of the blockers we're seeing right now can you guys assist us overcome these hurdles so we can hit these timelines and the pov wrap up two weeks later obviously always including the eb right to ensure that hey here's how here's our echo back here's what we saw from a tech perspective here's what we saw from a business perspective here's our estimates again on a quantitative quantitative and qualitative roi so we actually presented our structure for best engagement i think that carl appreciated that because i'm sure in the past some vendors have gone awry from what was initially agreed to and that actually really helped us with a scope perspective right sellers like you know you hate scope creep but when you have that discussion at the forefront we're committing to this because we want to be successful partners we understand that scope creep for an organization of year size can happen, but we need to try to minimize that. And that's why we're going to be transparent with daily updates of what's been accomplished throughout a POV. And I actually learned about that from my time at AppDynamics that, hey, here's what we accomplished today during the 30-day sprint. Here's what we need to accomplish tomorrow. And here's what kind of the biggest hurdles are that may prevent us from achieving our goals for the week.
Speaker 2So just to be open for the, and clear for the audience, if it's an out-of-account executive, what you were talking about on this 30-day plan, that was all in writing. This is what we're doing.
Speaker 4Here's the role of the city.
Speaker 2Here's our role as a Z-scaler. Here's what you're going to do. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going to try to achieve on a daily basis. That's all in writing. And then what you're doing is going back daily and checking with Carl to make sure that all those things occurred. And what's changed on your side of the fence and what's changed on Carl's side of the fence and what needs to change before you go back in the next day.
Speaker 4Yeah. A hundred percent. I think it's just, hey, again, we're committing and understanding that this is a pre-engagement in the hopes that we will become partners. And from the get-go, if we do solve these business problems that you've laid out in your success criteria, do you agree that we've accomplished what you're setting out to accomplish and you're comfortable moving towards contractual conversations? And having that laid out from the get-go, again, it's not about wasting our time. It's about committing resources to try to solve this problem together. You respect our people. We respect your people and our time. We're not here to waste anyone's time. Does this all make sense from what you guys care about? And let's agree to that and move forward. Have a handshake agreement right from that EB go, no go.
Speaker 5Yeah. I want to jump in, right? And this is not unusual. First of all, the 30-day was set by me because I, I had a time limit and I was down to three, right? So 30 days, three months, right? So that's a lot of time. Two, I committed the resources both in the lab, lab time, which was all city as well as the people. And then three, obviously, you know, everybody tries to influence the test plan, but we had all those other internal stakeholders that we were talking about. So I included those. So it was a, it was a joint plan at that point. What, again, what Shankar was awesome is awesome, right? But that structure, that kind of boom, boom, boom. And then, hey, Carl, like, you know, there's a delay or something, something, right? Can you, right? So, because remember at this point now, from my perspective, I'm trying to get to a decision. So, I want to be clear, we're not talking money and procurement and all that at this phase. Obviously, I'm thinking of that internally and internally we're kind of talking. But that's not the, that's not the primary driver. Now the primary driver is to get to a decision made. So it was in my interest, you know, to partner closely with, with Joe and make sure that it was, yeah, nothing smooth, right? But at least we were together. I just want to say one last thing. The one thing, I'm not sure if I said it last time, right? Well, and Joe mentioned it a couple of times now. This, this was now a, hey, you, if you want to succeed, Joe, you need to help me, right? And here was some of the things that I needed. And one of them was, I don't want Joe running, you know, I don't know what your quarterback analogies are in America, right? Right. But I'm the, you want to talk to Jane, you want to talk to whoever, like at least make me aware. No surprises, right? Because again, we're, we're in that stage of building trust, right? And if you kind of doing this, that, and the other, it, it destroys trust. And so I'm not going to start, and I would always say, I'm not going to, yeah, I get at the end of the day, you're salespeople, right? If I think of another engagement I had, I was very clear about that, that all the business lines are really interested. It was a data tool, right? So they, they all wanted to use it. And so with that sales, I was like, hey, I can't, I can't corral, you know, kind of half a million employees, right? I can't tell them to come through me, but if you get any outreaches, you let me know. And all I ask is that you say, hey, if you want anything further about where, where, right? Like you need to speak to Carl, because he's the, he's the EB for, for your company, right? Because obviously. 150, 90 countries and all those people, you can't educate them all, right? So this was about a, now a joint trust thing. And I'm pretty sure Joe, we had some interesting talks about handling your side of the shop as well, but maybe that's for the next.
Speaker 3Well, I, I gotta tell you what the dialogue that we just had, it's one of the best we've ever had Johnny on a revenue builders, as it relates to engaging the economic buyer and the criteria for pilots and the back and forth. And one thing I just want to highlight for all of our listeners, Carl has now said structure two or three times and structure of the partner is not a bad thing. Carl is recognizing structure or the process as trust building, sharing of information, showing what you have. And I just want to make a comment here, how you sell. This is what Carl's saying. He said, I could have made any three of them work. How you sell is just as important sometimes as what you sell. And is that fair for me to characterize what you've been saying on structure, Carl?
Speaker 5Absolutely. In a way. And another way, yes. And in a way, the way to think about it is what Joe was doing was bringing the entire experience of them doing this in other big companies and small companies. They're the, you, the seller, you're the expert on your stuff, not me, right? So by bringing that structure and that information, you're making my life a little bit easier. But there's a way I've got to highlight, right? Don't, don't, you know, spoon feed me the, the bite, the sound bites, right? I said it last time. I'm going to come to my own decision, but by delivering that in a bit of a structured way without, without the kind of we're the best, we're the best, right? I'm, I'm going to come to that conclusion and that's exactly what the team behind Joe did, right? Um, very key, but yes, absolutely. And it makes my life easier, right? I educate myself quicker on your thing versus the other people who are in the running, because I've got to do harder work and, and, you know, kind of do that myself. So it makes it easier for me to.
Speaker 2Now, Joe, when did you know you were going to get a deal?
Speaker 4Oh, boy. Um, Citi runs a very good.
Speaker 2Because Citi, as sales guys, we all want to feel like, okay, no one said anything to me yet, but I have this feeling I can sense it like I'm going to get a deal.
Speaker 4Citi runs a very, very stringent RFI process where engaging with vendors and back channel information. I mean, people at Citi have gotten their bonuses redacted from sharing information with vendors that they weren't ready to share. Wow. So it was a very, very tight.
Speaker 5Did I share that one last time? No, no. We had a, sorry, Joe, hold on. We had a deal, we had a deal signed, like, um, and we said to the vendor, hey, it's done, done, right? We, we've got to, you know, it's got to go through, but it's done. It's yours. Yeah. I think either later that day or that, but, but keep it quiet. Right. It didn't come from me. It came, uh, came from, uh, above me. Right. But, um, uh, keep it quiet. Right. Because we have to tell the other vendor that they've lost. Right. Notified next to Kim. Okay. Um, the vendor who won, um, by the way, I know, you know, they were the more expensive vendor. Um, but, uh, you know, they had some event in New York. I think it was either that evening or the day after. And it was a closed door event. It wasn't a media, whatever. It was a bunch of CISOs or IT CIOs. And they, they kind of mentioned, hey, yeah, keep it to yourself. But yeah, we got city in the bag. Right. Of course it leaked. We rescinded that deal and we went with the other vendor. Oh, even though, and this actually going back to what I just said, even though that other vendor was harder. And, but I was in the boat of, I can make it work. It's not, it's not my first, my first choice is the one that we picked and they lost not only that deal. Uh, they, they, we, we just never, they were just never included for a number of years ever again. So the, and, uh, I can't say what it is, but that, that costs them hundreds of millions of dollars in, in the initial deal, in the initial deal. Nevermind all the lost stuff. Cause they had obviously a portfolio with the products that were not related. And we, we just never bothered.
Speaker 4Yeah. so very very very stringent process where everyone was very tight-lipped and i i think i mentioned this on the previous podcast but zscaler had our had our cards stacked against us right the other vendor one of the most successful cyber security ipos of all time they enlisted city uh investment bank to run their investment banking their m a their billing things like that right so they had massive reciprocal relationships the other vendor was a series d startup and who was the lead underwriter or you know prior to them going well as they were planning to go public and their lead investor was city ventures so we knew that the cards were stacked up against us and we were very very we were walking on eggshells a little bit you know we we did have carl saying hey you guys are in a good position that's all i can say but it wasn't until my ceo zscaler met with city ceo because we had zero reciprocal business with city while the other two vendors had so much going on from a reciprocal business perspective uh that they had agreed to okay let's move forward with zscaler we understand who you are as a vendor we understand the ceo right even working working closely with your teams after that meeting uh which stalin was in as well we got a call that you know we feel like we're in a good position but uh let's not hold our breath right or actually we should hold our breath let's make sure that we dot the i's and cross the t's on a po and then we can actually kind of come to uh come to a comfortable place where we know we won the business so it was uh it was stressful but you know again a little bit of back channel information would be here there that we succeeded well on xyz from a test criteria perspective and we knew that those were really really important to the business so we did feel comfortable and confident but not overconfident so it was i was it was daily calls and sourcing to figure out where we stood but once it got signed it was a mega
Speaker 2relief and who set up the ceo to ceo meeting was that city looking to try to get some of z scale's business as e-scale are saying i know there's a big deal at city and i wouldn't mind having city as a partner how was that set up do you remember
Speaker 4carl worked closely with city ventures and the investment banking team so he knew who was running the point on that from uh from an iv perspective uh he let me know that the global head of tech investment banking and jane would likely want to meet with us so i kind of prepped my side for that meeting where they went through the investment banking process and they were like you know we're going to start the engagement but i think you know a deal of that size is going to kind of perk up the ears of anybody from a city investment bank perspective especially when a decision is not going in the favor of a city partner
Speaker 5yeah look this is the internal kind of stuff that i don't want to say politics just internal business that that i dealt with on on other big deals too so there was nothing uh different about this particular one um i and again maybe it's just my experience i had already mapped out um in my head at least uh all of the pitfalls and politics that would likely take place which included jane uh you know the ceo and um and and others because uh i would i would uh walk in the other bend in the bender shoes right okay what if i if i'm in this position what what am i going to try next right um uh from a test criteria perspective joe because and again if it's the same with the others it was very transparent as to i didn't have to tell joe or the others very transparent as to where you were uh where they lacked in some of the engagement and uh structure that that that joe and team had done you know we we kind of did that right so they they kind of knew where they were um and i could anticipate uh the other various different moves and tactics i'm going to say i remember speaking with uh with my boss very late at night one night i'm like whichever whichever way this lands we we've got heartache we got heartburn right like you know what i mean uh yeah one one you know two two one massive bender z scale is obviously a big bender um and uh and then the other one we we had all sorts of rates so i was kind of like you know it doesn't matter whichever one i choose whichever one the chips fall on yeah we're gonna have some things to figure out so so we handled that but uh again the the results from that perspective were were pretty transparent at the time because unlike some other test povs we would do or production pilots right i didn't have time so the vendors were involved in the test criteria sometimes we do it on ourselves in the lab right but we didn't have time this time so they knew they knew where they
Speaker 2were yeah one we could keep talking about this forever but one last question which i always think is important is so carl you decide to buy from zscaler you have and joe has found the number of internal champions that he had to help you know let's say sell this purchase and you also have your own internal champions or key stakeholders from the different groups and even just inside your organization once you've decided to buy do you have a meeting where you direct certain people that you're holding them personally accountable for the success of this implementation how does that can you just talk
Speaker 5so in turn especially uh uh an initiative of this size and and by size i don't necessarily mean cost right because we knew it was going to be a big big kind of purchase size could be the impact to the business it could be reduction in risk right so so it depends obviously we need to make sure that we're going to make the right decision and we're going to make sure that we're going to make the right decision and we're going to make sure that we're going to make the right decision and we're going to make the right decision and we're going to make the right decision so internally i was reporting the status of this at least every week um and because it's a company you know like zscaler the business the business are interested not just in the impact uh and the user experience and the enablement of the business and what it means for them they were also interested in in the business side right the uh uh yeah reciprocal business and and and whatever else so um yeah i was reporting this so don't feel this was just me right i was managing uh with the help of internal kind of project management communicate that's why i asked yes exactly like every every week a formal update uh that then gets published that then i get a load of questions and and that's that's that's just part of the role um and and then there does come a point internally and again procurement a part of that so there does come a point internally especially when we get down to the last three because again we started with 30 over 30 um uh and we were on a bit of a time crunch here so actually procurement from my perspective were engaged quite early because they were starting to do their due diligence and kind of get themselves ready knowing it's going to kind of come down to to you know uh yeah one of these three um and remember there there was always an element of um you know if the if the pricing and the cost is just like way out and the negotiations aren't working i may have to fall back to the plan b the one that i can make work but it's not necessarily yeah from my perspective uh the easiest and and whatever right but i i have to obviously support uh procurement um in in in that so yeah but yeah very kind of a lot of a lot of things going on internally at a company of city size that you're probably not aware of all the way
Speaker 2through yeah i'm sure hey thank you so much yeah Johnny do you say
Speaker 3something i want to say a couple things uh we spent this whole time talking about City and Enterprise and all this stuff Johnny give me give me a plg angle here on um you know no company is plg forever or they they they don't I I don't want to make any statements like that because I'll get some hate mail but most people are trying to get in and and uh land and expand uh Carl can you kind of help us understand uh how these products that are easy for end users to use you have to deal with it on what the strategy is going to be kind of going forward where they're going to kind of come in what advice do you give to kind of plg partners that you know are going to go Enterprise someday how does it all come together um all
Speaker 5right I'm trying to understand your question a little bit this is great for
Speaker 3zscaler uh there and by the way zscaler also had some you know uh plg product as well at what point do you think that you're going to go enterprise someday how does it all come together at that point from where do you look at the products that are able to be um you know kind of purchased online at the end user level when do they get your attention and when does a company start to come and talk to you about a strategy what does that fit for you is that an easier way to say it no I'm still not like it sorry it's
Speaker 2pretty easy look so with with plg you're going to have some of your end users that are going to just try to buy like one copy of something And then they're going to start to use it and it's being used. But to your earlier point is that might leave you with some vulnerabilities or security vulnerabilities or any of that stuff. So I think Johnny's question is, have you ever seen, you know, certain people in your organization buy through an online purchase and then eventually over time it goes viral and a whole bunch of other end users are using it. And then all of a sudden you discover it and go, oh, you know, either this is going to have to buy for the enterprise. Or this is something that I'm going to have to try to manage.
Speaker 5So, again, for your audience, it depends on the maturity of the leadership that you're dealing with. I would like to say I was pretty mature in that. So let me answer your question a different way. Why is this person buying whatever it is, right? They must have a need. They're not just going to go and buy it, right? So forget the fact right now that, you know, procurement, you couldn't do it. You couldn't install. The software, we added the kind of controls because, you know, a lot of software you buy for personal usage, for example, can't be used in an enterprise, right? So you have software licensing and all sorts of stuff, which, you know, most people don't. So why are they using that? Why did they buy it? Why did they feel the need, right? So one, if you're kind of from my perspective, it would be, you know, I'm actually, I actually have an example. Which was language translation software, you know, and it was an interesting one because if you're, I don't know, out in the far flung reaches of whatever, the particular software that we had was good for, I don't know, European and some, but not good for this or that. Remember, I was in over 150 countries, so they would buy whatever the local kind of thing was. Because the translation software we had, whilst it did work in that particular language, it just sucked. You're right. So again, if you're from a maturity perspective, you would kind of go, okay, I understand why, and maybe for that country, I'm going to allow it because it's a business value. To be honest, sometimes people just buy stuff and they, the other kind of element is they don't realize that you already have something, right? So education first. And I'm using the translation software as a great example. It's like, hey, we have all this stuff over here, right? And they were like, yeah, but, you know, for these languages, it's really bad. And they would try to go, yeah, that's pretty bad. In that ultimate example that I'm giving, we actually came down to across, right, all the bit, we came down to two. We used to have one, Ben, we ended up having two that would cover the majority of the pieces. But again, you've got to be open. Why, why are they, why are they downloading that stuff? Either they don't know that you have something already, right? Number one, number two, what you have sucks and doesn't work for them. Why is that? Number three, yeah, like I say, a lot of the time and trying to actually translation software works, you're, you're, you're copying and pasting stuff to translate Docker. Well, hold on what the sensitivity of that data are. So sometimes users don't realize that we have this thing here because it meets all the other regulatory and PCI and whatever that the thing you've just bought doesn't, right? So you got to kind of have that piece as well. Does that help MC your question? Totally, totally, right? So it's going to get one way or another, right? Why, why? So ask why, why did they buy it? Did they either didn't know what you have doesn't work. Obviously they could just be trying to wind you up, right? Or they don't realize that the thing you have does PCI and other stuff that's not visible to them, but it's required to do business and it's on them, right? Because everybody's responsible for risk in a business, right? So that was usually the things I would, I would come across
Speaker 3in that regard. Johnny, before you wrap, do you mind if we let Carl just have a couple of minutes to? Give us his feedback. I know you were at RSA, Joe, you were probably there too. Would you mind just telling us what you saw and what's hot and what's your, what are your
Speaker 5takeaways? Yeah, RSA, Joe, Joe got the happy hour, so that was, that was nice. Yeah. I did a lot of media things like RSA, guess what, RSA is buzzword, right? So it always is. It's not a bad thing by the way. Yeah. Zero trust, right? Crypto, quantum. This year the buzzword was AI, right? So interestingly, and I was a little bit on provocative on some of my kind of talks and media because you walk around the room, first of all, everybody's talking about AI, 99% of what was there, the AI is not the core competency of the companies there. A lot of them. They're just balding on the side. And it's very, very kind of rudimentary in a lot of cases in that it is not, it's not, it's just helping with efficiency is not really leveraging AI in a way from a cyber perspective to prevent threats, right? So quite a lot of, you know, kind of co-pilot, you know, the bad thing already happened with, you know, the bad thing that already happened a little bit quicker, right? So very reactive still, even though IDC and others have called for, you know, a preventative, right? And really getting back into a prevention first mindset. I'm not saying that you don't need telemetry and things like that, but not, not much AI use for prevention. And then, yeah, just a big, big buzzword. And there's an industry last year, as the good guys, we spent 188 billion, I think Gartner said, we're about to spend 214, 15 billion this year, the most ever, and yet we're having record breaches. We paid over a billion in ransomware fines for the first time, and I think the second worst year when it came to vulnerabilities. So even though we're spending all this money on this stuff, we're by any measure, we're, we're not doing a really good job as an industry. And I think we really need to, you know, take that prevention first kind of mindset, rather than letting the bad, bad things happen. And whilst we were there, breaches were occurring in almost real time. It was, it was crazy. And then we announced Diana, which is the- We meaning Deep Instinct. We meaning Deep Instinct and Diana's using our, you know, we're a core AI. Our company was founded on deep learning, which is an advanced subset of machine learning. And we announced Diana, which is the first artificial assistant for analyzing known and unknown malware, but really on the unknown, but analyzing that malware in seconds and giving a readout in plain text as to this is the snippet of this file and whatever, these are the characters. These are the characteristics that make it bad. Because when you're looking at new and unknown malware today, an analyst would take hours in a sandbox or different tools to figure out why is this bad? Because we've never seen it before. We don't have a pen. We don't have a history. We don't know what it's called. And the bad actors are moving using generative AI because they're ahead of us. They're using generative AI to create new and unknown threats and exploits. So, yeah, that's why I joined Deep Instinct, a preventative-first deep learning AI. Boom. Mic drop. There you go. Well, thanks, Karl. Thanks, Joe. It was another great session with both of
Speaker 2you and thanks, Cap, and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.
Speaker 1Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us out at forcemanagement.com.
PodcastTranscript AI