Hyperscale Security

How does anyone think this works?

Sponsored/InMail: Hi, my name is XYZ, Co-Founder and CEO at ABC, dedicated to solving the big problems in cybersecurity. Here's a link to my calendar so you can schedule a 30 minutes demo

Cybersecurity vendors, please stop doing this. I get a couple of these per day on LinkedIn or email, and the only thing it does is get you remembered for all the wrong reasons. Cold contacts like this literally scream that you have no idea what you're doing.

We all have a lot of work to do, and if you are in the cybersecurity industry, I assume you are in it to make the world more secure. Therefore, allow me to share some insight from the other end, and hopefully you can spend your energy better.

We Study the Market

Large organizations with a significant security organization follow what is going on. Different teams will track different segments through the industry media, analyst briefings and reports, and what we hear our peers are using and their experience. We attend conferences, watch webinars and listen to podcasts. We get regular dedicated presentations from established strategic partners. We have partner teams and investment arms that survey what the cybersecurity industry is doing.

You don't have to contact us – certainly not over LinkedIn sponsored direct message! – we will contact you. For all of our new cloud security tooling, we reached out to the vendor. Two of them we talked to for use cases we identified them for that they weren't even selling the product on. One of them, we contacted when they just came out of stealth, after an analyst had talked them up during a briefing and got us interested.

If we don't contact you, it's because you are not a realistic candidate. (Sorry)

Do Your Research

During my consulting days, before every job, I looked up their website and searched around to get a sense of what the organization was doing. If you give me in the first contact the idea you don't know what we do, how big we are, or what challenges we may face, you have just shown me you wouldn't even do that.

There are ~3,000 people in our organization involved in security in some form or fashion. We operate cloud services with critical workloads for paying customers. Established vendors have seen their products fail in our landscape. We have spoken on security and DevOps conferences about the challenges we've faced that are an easy search away.

Are you sure you would even want us as a customer? Are you ready?

I Get How This Would Be Good For You, How Is It Good For Me?

I have been in the tech industry since the 90s. I totally get why it would be a fantastic opportunity for you to have a customer this size and name. The marketing potential alone would be excellent, wouldn't it?

Cool. But what is the problem you are solving for us, though? What remaining gap do you cover? Why would we replace an established vendor for you?

At Least Give Me A Reason To Be Interested

The effort may not be entirely wasted. It's always possible that you are doing something very cool and innovative. It is useful to have a product sheet and a tech paper that allows me to place you in a particular segment. That still likely won't lead to a follow-up, but if it is interesting, I will remember you. If I hear others mention you, I will ask them about you.

There is at least one company, though, that keeps contacting me and never seems able to explain what they do. That is all I remember about that company. I talk to others about them and their sales approach. Don't be that company...

But My Product Is Different!

You may genuinely believe you have a solution I should know about and your startup is different from the pack. It may well be! So, tell the world, get onto conference talks and podcasts, and release technical papers. Get the attention of the analyst firms.

But realize that a company our size has 18-24 month procurement cycles with multiple layers of approval. You'd get fully scrutinized for multi-year viability, likelihood of being sold to a larger company, level of funding, and all that for the duration of a multi-year contract. You would have to prove why you're better than a preferred vendor that has more resources than you. You could run out of runway chasing a whale, when you could be building the business fishing for cod.

If you're good and get traction, and solve problems for your customers, we will notice you. We will follow your progress. And if we think you could fit in our plans, we will give you a call.

Just writing this, I already thought of enough material for a future follow-up: how not to screw up your first meeting. Stay tuned!

cloud security posts without corporate approval @jaythvv@infosec.exchange