Transcript:

Rick Currier (00:00) Honestly, if there's background noise, it's not a big deal. If you hear anything, let me know. Yeah, and I'm already recording because we will edit the beginning and end since we're starts, typically we just start conversational anyways. And then hopefully we don't bake to death. Yeah, exactly. It's funny though coming in here, I was almost thinking we should have done this on your sailboat. Yeah. would be cool. You just never know what kind of outside interference you're to get. Whether it's a seagull landing on your shoulders. Or little windy might not it. might not make for a good podcast. Yeah, exactly. A little extra wind. I'm glad we're glad we were actually able to sit down and do this because I know you and I were going to do this back when I was at IDG. Something came up and and then my whole life changed and I left IDG. But here we are. Yeah, it's like we've come full circle. Exactly. Yeah, that's great. So tell me a little bit about yourself, your role here at TNM, what you do. Yeah. So Mike Mahoney, senior director of our technology alliance and marketing, essentially. And, you know, what that is is I spend my day working with ⁓ multiple partners in really helping us bring our joint solutions together to drive incremental value for our customers. An example of that, you and I were chatting earlier, is really for the average person thinking about what does that mean, technology alliances. Think about that thing that many of us have in our pocket or in our purse every day, an iPhone. ⁓ And then think about that other thing that you hop into probably every morning or sometimes to go pick up the kids from school, your car. ⁓ And now think about the fact that there's this thing called ⁓ CarPlay. That is basically taking two platforms and bringing them together to drive incremental value to the end user, which is us as the consumer. We now get the same ease of use and cool features of our iPhone in our car. In a similar way, what I do is bring Tanium's platform into our technology partners, whether it's a ServiceNow or Microsoft and Amazon AWS ⁓ and others again to bring these two together, these two platforms together, strategic platforms to help bring, help our customers get more value out of what they already have. And so ⁓ that's really what technology alliances are all about. What does, what does that look like from a day to day perspective? Are you thinking about what new partners you can bring in from that, from that strategy perspective? Is it more, are we executing and hitting our goals through the partners we have? Like what does your day to day look like? So my day to day is typically a bit chaotic, but not unlike many in my role. Really, it's about, we've identified, we'll continue to identify, and we're always identifying new technology partners that could potentially, again, bring added value. My role is really on the marketing side of things. So it's a mix of, in some ways, I call myself the CMO of our technology alliances, because ultimately I am focused on our go to market effort from a marketing perspective and orchestrating go to market market plays, go to market motions with those partners. So I get involved in working with our field teams. get involved with our communications teams. I get involved with all of our creative teams and working jointly then on the flip side with our partners. So working with their partner marketing teams, working with their sales teams, working on the enablement. That's a big one too. When it comes to partners, especially in the tech alliances, working with our technology partners, sellers is a critical element to any successful partnership. They need to be able to understand the value that we're bringing them. I recently had a technology partner seller on one of our own internal sales calls and that person shared with our sellers the fact that they get, I think the quote was nine to ten different inquiries into their email or phone every week saying, hey, can we partner on this? Hey, can we work together on this? They're sitting there trying to treat which partner can help them close a deal. Because at the end of the day, it really does all come back to the impact that we're having. That means creating opportunities and pipeline. And so, you know, we're trying to help their sellers be successful. At the same time, we're trying to help our sellers be successful. All right. So one of the biggest challenges I'm seeing right now in the industry is around sales alignment. Right. And the constant challenge I hear is we're just flipping leads over the fence and we don't even know if they're following up with them. Right. And so what are you seeing as like success in terms of aligning with these sales and making them a champion for the partnership as opposed to a blocker. Yeah, it's extremely important to be ⁓ really focused on where all your leads are going. We just as an example, we were just at a big industry conference in Vegas last week with one of our largest strategic partners, and we got a whole bunch of leads that came out of that. And so all of those is typically they get dumped into the top of Salesforce or whichever CRM you're using. ⁓ And now it's about making sure that you've got a solid process to make sure that you can action those leads and move them through the funnel, mature them, all of those things. You know, when we show the value though of the wins that we're having, that's when our sellers get excited. That's when they start to believe. As I was mentioning, it's absolutely critical that, you know, as a, I wear a hat of product marketing, I wear a hat of partner marketing, all the above. And so really, you when I think about sort of that partner or product marketing side of things, the enablement side, part of my job is to make sure that we are creating proof points for sellers that this partnership will help them be successful. And ultimately, the only way they're successful is when their customers are successful. Yeah, I think that's like one of the biggest challenges on the partner marketing front is you have to be, you know, go to market. expert, you have to be a product marketing expert, have to be a sales enablement expert. And then you also have to do it across multiple partners, right? Exactly. Yeah, and again, ⁓ it's interesting. My peers, obviously, they're focused on selling our products to an end customer. I'm focused on taking our products, but I also then work with my partner's product marketing team, partner marketing team. So it's almost an exponential ⁓ increase in the complexity of it. Then how do we go to market together? So, you you're asking earlier, partly, what do I spend my day on? It's really building a joint go-to-market plan together collaboratively and that we agree on and that we're both investing in as well. We're both leaning in. And I think truly that is what makes the most successful partnership. It's not when one is just leaning in and running as hard as they can, but when the other truly sees the value, then they lean in just as much. Now, is this like an actual documented plan that you co-collaborate on and then you revisit. Tell me little details. How do I go about creating this plan? Yeah, it absolutely is. You sit down and the first thing you should be doing is figuring out what are your business objectives. ⁓ There is no plan until you get agreement on, I think, what are your business objectives? What are the metrics you're going to use to measure success? Obviously, it's the growth, increased growth in pipeline and closed revenue, whether it's going to be reduced churn, whether it's going to be to increase renewal rates. whether it's going to be to accelerate undeployed backlog for your tech partner. All of those are metrics that you should be identifying as part of your business plan. Once you identify those objectives, now you can start to build that plan and start to think through the strategies that you're going to use to achieve those objectives. Then once you have your strategies, whether it's, we're gonna, you know, could be the fact that we're gonna go after a certain market segment, could be that we're gonna go after a specific region, could be that we're gonna go after a specific solution area. Then we start to get into the actual tactical plan and decide where are going to go tactically next. Whether again, it's, you know, now you start looking at the events you're going to co-sponsor together. You're going to jointly develop marketing, digital ads together, all those sorts of things, content, websites, ⁓ all of that to me is more the tactical plan. But you have to have agreement alignment on the strategy that then lines right up to the business objectives. Have you found that you and the TNM team pretty much lead this effort or is it a true collaboration with your strategic partners? So what I would say is when we have a strategic partner that is really leaning in, it's a collaborative effort. And that's probably ideal. And that's the ideal state. But not every time. Not every time, though. Not every time. you know, look, at the end of the day, I don't know that it can be every time. Yeah. I think that, you know, every organization has multiple tiers of partnerships, too. And even we do in tech alliances. I think it's it's only the most strategic that you're going to get to that level. I think, you know, some companies are smaller ones. They want to lean in, but unfortunately we can't lean in as much. Right. And then vice versa. You know, there's times where we're leaning in heavily. We would like the other to lean in and they just can't, right? We're not at that level yet with them. So there is a lot, there are multiple tiers, I think, and it varies depending on which perspective you're coming from. Yeah, I this is helpful and sorry to grow you on this, but I've, I've seen through research, that partner marketing organizations that have a documented plan tend to see better results. But I've never really dug in on, well, okay, what does that exactly mean? What's a plan? What does it look like? How do we execute it? So I want to ask you from a scale perspective, because to your point... you only have so many time resources, you probably can't co-collaborate a plan like that for every partner, and not every partner's at the same strategic level. So how do you scale or do you not scale? Do you cut off at a certain point with certain partners, or do you do a limited version? Does it scale based on how big that plan is? What does that look like as you go down the road for more and more partners? I think it's a little bit of what you just said, which is at the most strategic level, we identify which partners we believe are going to, can have the biggest impact. And they can have the biggest impact on our metrics as well, our objectives. So once you identify that and you look at kind of what that tiering looks like, at the highest level, you're going to have a very collaborative, well planned out plan. However, that plan will change. Just like anything in life. was, we can probably talk about that in a minute. But as I say to even my kids now, have a plan, have a plan, but be ready to adjust. really no different business. We start out with a plan. We try and get it as far as we can at the beginning of the year, knowing though that there are things that are going to come along, opportunities that are going to come along, and we need to adjust. It may actually require us to consider that, you know, this other event, this other activity seems to have a bigger, you know, we think it has a bigger opportunity for us, could have a potentially bigger impact. So we may have to shift some funds. In some cases, we may be asking for just incremental funds to take an opportunity. sort of get down in the lower tiers, it's a little bit more of a self-service model. What I mean by that is we'll try and sort of out partner-in-a-box kits, if you will. And so we'll give them the content, we'll give them material, things that will help them really be able to self-service their own press releases, their own events, and ⁓ jointly tell that value story between us and their platform. How often on the big strategic plans are you doing quarterly business reviews? How often are you going back to this original plan to figure out, all right, adjustments, what's working, what's not working? I would say, so there's probably weekly and monthly reviews with a certain group of people. ⁓ then, you know, I think as you get up in, know, quarterly is probably when we get up into the executive level reviews. But again, it's somewhat right now, I would say with the level with our strategic partners. talking about two or three of those. There's a team, let's call them, that is combined of both, know, Taneum and our other partners that are working together, you know, weekly and monthly to really achieve our goals. how many, like, let me take a step back instead of asking how many people are involved, but like, what do you recommend as who should be involved in terms of either building the plan or just that co-collaboration ongoing, you know, because you mentioned you work across so many different teams to execute. Are you bringing each person in from a team to represent and what does that look like? ⁓ That's a great question because You know today's world right where everybody's everybody's thinned out. Yeah this is a different model than it was three even four years ago and I Always look people ask me how big my team is I said I look at my team as the entire company That's my team and I need the resources I go and pull them in and so we create that cross-function of resources that us achieve our goal. And the ones, if you do it successfully, I can tell you right now that you won't even have to make the phone call. They'll be calling you. Yeah. Because they start to see the success and they can start to see that if they want to be successful in their area of the business, they need to be tied to yours. And so in partner marketing, again, I've got tech alliances. It's not just about tech alliances. I need to be working across all our areas disciplines within partner marketing, whether it's our channel teams. I work daily. and weekly with those who have responsibility for our ⁓ services partners and large global system integrators, GSIs. Everything I do has to not only help our titanium direct sellers, but also make sure that we are pulling along all of our ⁓ our channel partners, because ultimately they're the ones that help us scale and will bring us the biggest success. ⁓ So, as I said, my team, it doesn't matter if they have a direct report to me. I consider them part of my team, field marketing. have as an example for those listing, I actually have two people dedicated to tech alliances now, not just one, but they have one or two are strategics. But they I look at them as part of my team. I set my plan with their input. We work collaboratively. And again, they see the success and the opportunity of the partnerships that we have. So in helping drive their success. Yeah. So again, when you do it right, when you can create that kind of success, others want to be a part of it. And I think that's, that's when you know you've created some magic. I mean, this goes back to, so the show, the tagline for the show is tech marketing, the human connection. And it's funny, I'm about to get into the AI side of things to pick your brain there. But I mean, this human connection part is so important to get the job done. And you just can't work in a silo and just focus on your little thing. I mean, you got to be a connector within the company, but also all your partnerships as well. Right. And so the relationship is so key. Yeah. I'm fortunate to work with an incredible team. And as you're saying, there are some, on any team, whether it was your soccer team, your swim team, and others, those teams that really have a true team sport, my kids grew up playing some competitive soccer, I love it. You gotta use your strengths, right? So you put people in specific positions based on strengths that they have. so ⁓ I'm fortunate to be working with an incredible group. One of our leaders, he's phenomenal at what you're talking about, which is those personal connections. I have to say, he's far better than I am. And I've been able learn from him too. And so it's been great. But others, maybe we're executors, so we get the stuff done. ⁓ Whereas he would rather stand back a little bit. So it's great to have a team that is well put together with all those different skill sets. Well, you seem like a pretty friendly guy, so don't sell yourself short there. I want to ask you about AI through the lens of this planning process. don't have to divulge any secrets, like are you utilizing AI in the planning process? know, if so, what does that look like? you plan to like where, where's your head out with AI with these strategic plans that you have? You do know I work for a security company. I can't divulge too much. No. ⁓ You know, it's interesting. Like every company right now, I got a couple of stories on this, but you know, every company right now is struggling, I think, to figure out what's going to be locked down and you know, just how much flexibility they're going to give their, you know, their team members. We're no different. I think. we're struggling, I think as a product marketing, as a marketing person in general, you want to use every AI tool at your fingertips that can help you. You also need to just realize that there are some risks that you need to be aware of. And I think as long as everybody truly understands that, they understand where the boundaries are, ⁓ we can be successful. ⁓ So I think it's going to be, you've got to be careful with it. But again, yeah, I'm not, I'm like everyone else. I want to use it. There's no question. can help accelerate what I'm doing, whether it's in the planning or execution of all of our go-to-market activities. balancing out the security side of things. You have to. Yeah. Yeah. So it's important. But again, that technology is moving so fast. I actually, you know, I applaud our IT and security teams for doing all the effort to keep up because it is challenging. And at the same time, marketers are trying to do more with less, which we've heard forever. But truly now they can. They actually can. I absolutely see that opportunity. ⁓ Interesting story I'll tie into this. was just down at my alma mater, which actually just became my daughter's alma mater as well last year, ⁓ UC Santa Barbara. We were down there for what they call their alumni day. We were actually down there for ⁓ similar reason, but we were there for the communications department alumni day as well. We brought over 300 students into the big arena, set up over 30 tables, round tables. Were you there as part titanium or just part of your support? this is just part of my alma mater. Going back down supporting the school. part of the UCSB alumni communications department alumni account. Okay. Got So I actually support them. We put this on. We put on this communications career day. And so we bring all these students in to learn more about what their alumni are. So we had over 50 alumni there. We had a panel session up at the front before it got into the table rounds. But what was really interesting is, of course, you've got these wide eyed students coming in, some are seniors and some are, know, ⁓ you know, freshmen, software, cetera. But, you know, they're all very interested. And the topic of AI came up. And what was interesting is one of the panelists, I actually learned something and he brought he kind of brought some thought provoking discussion to it. He said, and he's part of kind of an AI think tank. And he said, look, we're at a point where where knowledge is democratized and everybody in the room is leaning in, like, what does he mean? And he's like, look, every one of you now has the knowledge of a PhD at your fingertips. And, you know, that was like, wow, it's, you know, it's amazing. Then he actually went even further. said, by raise of hands, how many of you students have been told that using AI is cheating? And of course almost everybody's hand goes up. And then he said, do you know though that, right? now, and many of them are actually interviewing too, they're seniors, they're saying every company out there is saying, if you don't know AI, unlikely we're going to hire you. So again, the room is now silent and he's like, and we've got professors and department heads in the room and everybody's like, he said, we've got a problem here we need to fix. Seriously, yeah. There's a conflict here. We're going to have to find the happy medium here in middle and figure this out because it's going to be that important. it's amazing what we can do. And he's right. just the other day I had to write kind of a legal-esque letter and I went into chat of course. I'm not a lawyer. Yeah. But I start out by saying you are a lawyer. Yeah. And I gave chat some info and I was once again as many people are absolutely floored by the level of detail that came put into that letter and you could see the legal angle to it all the way through. It's funny. And I didn't go to law school. No, I know. you know, being this new startup, you know, founder, it is my assistant on everything from ⁓ creating contracts to developing code for the website. OK, you're now my new CMO. Go through my website and review all my messaging with brutal truth, you know, and just getting feedback on what to change and every aspect of it. It's helped me tremendously. But you said something interesting earlier that really caught my attention. So obviously, you know, from the Tainian perspective, very careful. what we're utilizing AI for because our proprietary data security all that stuff but almost through the lens of the partnership it's not just about you it's also about your partners right and what do you unknowingly exposing your partners data to through these AI efforts right and so there's almost like a there's a pitfall there for strategic strategic partnerships and partner marketers they got to be careful about what they what they're utilizing AI for because it's not just their AI guidelines and security process it's also their partners yeah you know there's all when you work with partners you have again that extra layer of scrutiny on everything, right? You're constantly working together to make sure you're not breaking any of your rules and we're not breaking any of theirs. you know, AI, whether it's helping you accelerate your own go to market efforts or, you know, in the case of, you know, many organizations now their platforms all have AI and, you know, we're, seeing that across the board in terms of how that's helping customers be more successful. you, is there anything on the AI space specific to your job? or role that you're really excited about where this might be going? ⁓ In terms of marketing or just... So, I mean, look, I think, again, the fact that I can already see how it helps me accelerate what I do every day. And ⁓ that, to me, is great because, like everybody, I have asked for more headcount. And it's like, you're not gonna get it right now. you know, I have to figure out how do I still be successful? So I think on the content side of things, I think most people would agree now it's really good. And if I was a writer for a living, yeah, I might be a little concerned. as I mentioned, my daughter just graduated college. My son is in college. you have those kind of conversations like, keep an eye on where it's going and what your interest is. Because I do think there will be some impact, but you've got to stay ahead of it and be thinking, about, know, there still has to be expertise out there. AI doesn't, it's not generating content on it, it's out of thin air. where I see it could also go though, where I think there's still a lot of room for improvement is whether you're trying to develop better PowerPoint slides. I know we know a lot of presentations that we all work on every single day. I think it still has a long way to go. I hope that there's going to be improvements in that area. That is an area where it would saved me a whole lot of time. The graphics capabilities of some of these out there, I won't name them all. I'm not gonna disparage anybody, but we all know who they are. ⁓ Yeah, they're not there. I can still do a whole lot better on my own. But that takes time. I know I can do better, it just takes more time. Yeah, it's interesting to see where it's all going. So obviously for the college kids, they gotta learn to utilize it. Sounds like the schools might be a little bit behind in that aspect. What other advice do you have for these new batch of kids I don't want to them kids, but people coming into the workforce. Are they nervous about what the market's looking like and their potential to make a break in the business world? Are they excited? You're around them. What are your thoughts? Yeah, it was great to be able to have that opportunity. As I mentioned, 300 students all went through a round robin. We moved them through three different times. had 10 eager-eyed folks at my table over a two-hour time frame. It was pretty interesting. I think they're all nervous. I think they still see opportunity out there. And I try to sort of reassure them as well that there is a ton of opportunity out there. That as I mentioned, that they're going to have to continue to look at how AI may affect things. Again, I think that it's a huge productivity tool and platform, but nothing is going to replace their knowledge and their minds at this point. They still have this ability to contribute. so ⁓ I think there's still amazing opportunity for them. They're just going have to be, like I said, if there's certain roles, I think that, yeah, you might think about that. If your only goal is to be a content writer, I would say that, I've seen people cutting back on those budgets already. there's other areas. If you want to invent a new product, AI is not going to just flat out do that for you. But it can help accelerate that. accelerate the innovation but they need that human expertise always. You like being involved in the school? Yeah it's it's fun I actually wish I had done it a little earlier I didn't start you know sort of paying it back until just a few years ago so I would encourage anybody who has that opportunity because it is great and it kind of brings back a little bit of that youthful spirit too. And your son same school or different school? No no he's over he's living on an island. you mentioned Hawaii. Right, Both my kids like being in their water apparently though. Santa Barbara and Hawaii. Will he ever come back or is he there for? If the money isn't there, I'm sure he'll come running back. Oh man, love, I'll just ask. My daughter loves Hawaii. We went one time, she was only like three years old, and she keeps asking when we're going back and now she's eight. Oh yeah. I gotta take her back. You have a very interesting perspective on the marketing landscape. Tell me, going back, Mike, years ago, what really shaped this perspective. It sounded like you did a couple different roles and functions. It's just a combination of everything coming together right now here at Tanium. It really is in some ways because what was my background really started out in creative services believe it or not early on. Back then it was called marketing communications or creative services in some areas. Creative services was a part of marketing communications. So I like that part of it. moved along in my career, I sort of moved out of some of the more creative stuff, really early on I started out just in advertising. One of the big, big firms, global firms, quickly figured out I couldn't make a lot of money there. I gotta get over to the client side of this and away from the agency side. So I moved over to the client side and from there then I started working, as I mentioned, in the marketing communications role. Then I started to move closer into product marketing. What I love about that is truly that ability to create and innovate. on products and work with your engineering teams and things like that. ⁓ And then I got in one of my roles in more of my recent past, I got to that opportunity to not only have product marketing, but also a partner marketing team. And so that was really that opportunity to see how all of this starts to come together because really to be truly successful in an organization, leveraging that partner ecosystem is absolutely critical. You just can't do it alone. So being able to do that well is great. And I love the fact that I get to work with other organizations and their technology. I think that's what's really cool for me is, you know, it's being able to see other technology coming together with ours and creating something even more magical. I'm really excited about where I kind of landed now and ⁓ that opportunity. you seeing strategic partnerships, just the model, is it shifting, changing at all? Or do you foresee it? Trends? how it might shift or change in the future? So I would say that I have opinions on which ones have a really good model. We've talked a little bit about it because I have the opportunity to work across different partner organizations at other companies, right? So you get exposure to get exposure to these and I see how some operate versus others. ⁓ I see some that are just hugely successful in how they've structured their go-to-market approach. And those are the ones, like I said, that really ⁓ I believe are going to be most successful. you know, having that truly having a joint partnership where both parties are leaning in success. Having, you know, executive sponsorship to is going to be important. It's that where that comes from in terms of leaning in. I mean, is it is it a top down mentality or it a process? would honestly say, you know, it's interesting from what I've seen. We talked about it earlier on to which is everybody's got to see the value, whether it's the sellers at the bottom or the executives at the top. When I can see the value and the value is either our customers are saying we need this to come together. We can see the when the customers are saying we can see the value of these two things working together. That's you everybody's going to get you know if you're a seller you're going to see this. We talked about being able to generate those proof points. You know that's one and that will be seen by sellers at the bottom but also executives at the top. Yeah because you're going to see success rates go up, your customer's stats going to go up, all of it works together at that point. And so those who can do that successfully will just, that's what a beautiful partnership really looks like. ⁓ I think when others aren't leaning in both at the top and the bottom of the sellers and you're struggling to really prove out the value, right, then it's a struggle. It's just a struggle. It takes more time, it takes more effort. But when that value is starting to flow through, it makes a lot of things easier. Is that is that harder to do at a larger organization to get to get buy-in from the top and the bottom moving in that same direction? Yes, and no You know, I would say some small technologies can be just as successful though ⁓ Working with another tech provider if they've got something truly unique that can add again immediate value to something your customers are looking for I've got it, you know example in my head. We have a very small, know, cuss technology partner that again though is driving value both in revenue and pipeline and all that because our customers see the value in it. ⁓ We've got very large partners, companies that have ⁓ tens and tens of thousands of employees and customers. so it does take a, it can be a little more challenging and more complex because you're trying to navigate different lines of businesses where you may have value across those different lines of businesses. So there is truly a bottom up effort and at the same time though, when you go to these events and the customers are talking about the value they're seeing from these partnerships, then you get the executive's attention pretty fast. It's funny how so much of this just comes back to education and enablement. It really does. It's critical. ⁓ And at the same time can be little challenging, right? Customers, as a marketer, you're always wanting that great success story and you're always wanting to use their logo, which is always one of the hardest things to get. But you know, ultimately at the end of the day, we can still tell a story. We don't always have to use a logo. We can share it anonymously and share that value. And whether that's a public-facing success story or just an internal one that you just use to share with your partner sellers. So that, like I said, that is one of the most important things without a doubt. But it can also be challenging. Like I said at the beginning, I say you, but partner marketers, you're wearing so many hats and doing so many things within your one organization, but then multiplied by all the partners you're working with. Yeah. It brings that extra layer of complexity for sure. Yeah. It adds a few more meetings to your calendar. No doubt about it. Now I know why you sail. You get to go out there and just let it all go, right? Yeah. When I go out there, all the phones get turned off. Yeah. can reach me. It's great. Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, Mike, this has been fun. I appreciate you coming on. Anything else you want to plug or anything you're excited about what Taneum going or? Well, lots of great things happening here Taneum. So, excited. Thank you again for the opportunity and hopefully, you for those listening, it was informative. Yeah, awesome. Thanks a lot, Mike. I appreciate it. Thank you.