Cracking the Code: Generating Early Revenue and Building a Cybersecurity Sales Team with Omri Weinberg, CRO at DoControl

**Episode Summary: Omri Weinberg @ DoControl - Growing Sales and Revenue in the Cybersecurity Industry**

Are you a founder, CEO, or sales professional in the cybersecurity industry who wants to accelerate sales and revenue growth? In this episode of the Cybersecurity Startup Revenue Podcast, we dive into key strategies and insights from Omri Weinberg, Chief Revenue Officer at DoControl. Get ready to explore effective sales approaches, overcoming challenges in a noisy market, and the importance of trust in building relationships with clients. Don't miss out on this valuable conversation that could transform your approach to sales and revenue generation in the cybersecurity space.

👉 Key Talking Points:
- Overcoming challenges in a crowded market and connecting with your target audience.
- Leveraging events, partnerships, and platforms to drive conversations and generate traffic.
- The importance of adapting to the changing technological landscape and problem-solving in cybersecurity.

**About our Guest:**
Omri Weinberg is the Chief Revenue Officer and co-founder at DoControl, a cybersecurity startup focused on securing data stored in various SaaS applications. With his extensive experience in the industry, Omri offers valuable insights into driving revenue growth and building successful sales strategies in the cybersecurity space.

**Summary:**
In this episode, Omri Weinberg shares his expertise in growing sales and revenue for cybersecurity startups. He provides valuable insights on navigating challenges in a noisy market, leveraging industry events and partnerships to drive conversations and the importance of trust in building client relationships. Whether you're a founder, CEO, or sales professional, this conversation offers actionable strategies to accelerate your sales and revenue growth. Tune in now to gain valuable insights from a seasoned professional in the cybersecurity industry.

🔗 Connect with Omri Weinberg on LinkedIn and learn more about DoControl on their website.

📅 Book some time with Andrew Monaghan to discuss your sales and revenue growth strategies in the cybersecurity industry.

Transcript

Andrew Monaghan [00:00:00]:

On September 20, 2022, I released episode 159 with Adam Gavish, the co-founder and CEO of Do Control. Adam and I talked about what they do those early days and how they got going. Fast forward to today, the end of August, to episode two, two five, and we have Adam's co-founder and CRO Omri Weinberg on the podcast. In this episode, we talked about what's happened in the last year, how the go-to-market team has shaped the role of partners, and a whole lot more. Don't go away. Welcome to the Cybersecurity Startup Revenue Podcast, where we help cybersecurity companies grow revenue faster. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan. Our guest today is Omri Weinberg, co-founder and CRO at Do Control. Omri, welcome to the podcast.

Omri Weinberg [00:00:59]:

Hey, Andrew, thanks for having me.

Andrew Monaghan [00:01:01]:

It's you know, I'm really looking forward to this. Omri, a couple of things are on my mind as we head into this conversation. One is that we actually had our co-founder, Adam on last year, about a year ago now. So I'm keen to learn what's been going on in the last year for due control. And secondly, you're somewhat unique in the industry. There are very few of you in that you are a co-founder and a CRO at the same time. So I think we're going to have an interesting conversation about selling and what a role is early stage when you're this title saying CRO, what does it really mean when you're that early on inside a company? So I'm really looking forward to that aspect of our conversation today. All right, let's move on to talk about the business side of this. So, yeah, Adam Wright talked about a year ago, he talked about the founding of Due Control and some of the thought process that you guys went through to do that. But a year's gone by, right? And we probably need a refresher on what Due Control is all about. And it'll be really cool to know what's changed in that year, what's been updated, what have you learned, and what's the direction of the company right now? Cool.

Omri Weinberg [00:02:12]:

So, basically, just as a high level of due control, try to make it as simple as possible for our audience. Think about it. For people to do their work in their companies, whether they have 500 employees or 5000 or 50,000, it doesn't really matter. They have a lot of SaaS applications that they use in order to drive the business. They need to collaborate, right? So they can either use Slack, they can use Zoom, they use GitHub for developers, use Google Drive, or SharePoint. All of those tools are meant to do one thing to collaborate, whether it's internally or externally. And what we found out is that a lot of companies, don't have visibility to what kind of data is being stored in those sales applications. It can be their intellectual property. It can be product roadmaps. It can be code repositories, can be zoom recording, board Zoom recording, it can be encryption files in Slack. So just think about the enormous amount of data that is being stored in those SaaS applications, right? So we have a very easy and unique way to visualize all of that data for the security folks in those organizations, to show them what data is being stored in those SaaS apps, unstructured data. And we have a way to actually remediate the access to that data, whether it's internal or external, with our very unique patent workflows mechanism. So it's a very modernized solution. We're trying to fix the current CASB and DLP ecosystem that we think and we hear that it's quite broken. And the tools that were built, if you think about a Ngu 15 years ago, even more, are just not fitted to the ecosystem today. Especially post the pandemic when everybody is working remotely. They need more tools to collaborate, they need more tools to share stuff and the data is all over the place. And every time that we are onboarding a client, basically every week, it's like we are always amazed at the amount of exposure that those companies so this is what we do in a high and.

Andrew Monaghan [00:04:19]:

Just to get into that a little bit. So a lot of trusts is placed on these sales providers that they're doing all the things they should be doing to control and protect all the rest of the data that you're putting in there, I'm sure a lot of it is warranted trust. But from a user standpoint or a company corporate standpoint, you feel like you've got to have control yourself, right? You need to be able to answer a lot of questions about what is out there and then do something about it if in some way it contributes to policy or gives you some exposure you're not happy with.

Omri Weinberg [00:04:53]:

Trust is key for everything you do in life, right? If you lose trust or if you have broken trust, you're not going to go places. But I think the SaaS application that those companies use, they use the shared responsibility model, right? They have security protocols in their SaaS. Each one has a different one. So think about it, it's also hard to manage each sale individually and to apply something which is unified across the board, right? So it's very tedious work. And also they have different data models, different field names, and different data types. So how do you tackle all of that without hurting the business? So on one hand, you can completely block everything and shut it down and you'll be the most secure environment in this ecosystem. But on the other hand, you're going to have a lot of friction between your It and security teams to the actual employees that are going to drive the business. At the end of the day, those employees are paying the bills and the likes, whether it's the salespeople, the marketing people, or customers, relation people, and the R and D and they need the nature of the work they need to collaborate internally or externally. And trust is there is an agreement between the company and an employee, right? When you start with a new company, you sign this document or it's called a contract. But in most cases, if you think about it and from what we see also is like people are not mean, they are not doing things intentionally, right? There are some that are insider threats. Like they're doing things because they want to leak data intentionally, right? But what we see is like a lot of those things, a lot of the data leakage is being done intentionally because people are not even aware of what the capabilities are not in those SaaS applications. And they do it because they don't have an education. They are always in a rush, they have a lot of work on their plate and they try to make shortcuts in order to get things done. So there is always the fine, there is the balance that we are trying to make sure that you have the security thing in place, you have the visibility, you have the control, but it's not going to hurt your business enablement. So we can also interact with the end user with our decision, with our actions from due control. So if you think about a security person, he doesn't know why employee number 5000 has just done this action. They don't even know their names. So we have a very sophisticated way to get to bridge that gap, basically.

Andrew Monaghan [00:07:18]:

Well, let's talk about that quickly. So what is the hardest thing about delivering a solution like that? You mentioned a patent before, it must be something in there that's like the thing that you've cracked that no one else.

Omri Weinberg [00:07:29]:

Great question. I think not just for Ducontrol, but for any other company. Whether it's a commodity, whether it's a blue ocean, whether it's a red ocean, all those nice examples. You need to get the attention of the buyer. You need to penetrate, you need to wave, say hey, I'm here, talk to me. And this is the hardest part, right? And it's even harder when you are trying to reinvent something new, when the spotlight is not on your category at the moment, or when people, think that they have what they need, but they don't understand the gaps. So when you try to come to them with new technologies, with innovation, with new angles or approaches, people are always hesitant. Think about it, most people, they don't like changes. They like the status quo. Let me do what I do, don't bother me, I hope I'll make it to the finish line, right? And then we come to them in the middle of the day and say hey, we have something that can make you faster, better, more secure, more collaborative. They are doubtful. How can it be and then the process, especially with us is just to get their attention, right? Because we are doing something which is very innovative. Right? And people always doubt you how it cannot be, how can it be? There is no way that it's happening in my environment, right? And also if you think about his cybersecurity space, if you ask any other company or any other CISO, they have usually an average I would say like 70, 80 vendors that they work with. They don't need another vendor to work with. It's another headache for them to manage it, to maintain it, to do a POV, to procure it, to buy it. But our job is to convince the otherwise that we can displace other vendors that they don't work with, they can automate some of their stuff, and they can reduce the FTEs by leveraging automation and new technologies. Because think about humanity, right? The history of humankind. Every year new technologies are like it's changing the way that we work. So our pitch is you cannot use tools that were built 15 years ago, you just can't. The ecosystem is different. Maybe you were used to working on-prem, but now most organizations starting to transition to SaaS applications and the cloud-native companies are only sales. So it's a problem and it's a real problem that we're solving. So I'm happy about the future, I'm very excited about it. Yeah.

Andrew Monaghan [00:10:00]:

And what I like about what you're doing is this focus back on data. I think if you look back 25 years in cybersecurity, what tends to happen is people focus on infrastructure or applications and securing things like that, and for some reason, data almost becomes the thing that comes next as opposed to a thing that comes first. And in a day what people are after is your data, not your configurations or your access or stuff like that. Right?

Omri Weinberg [00:10:26]:

Andrew, you said something which is very smart and I'll tell you why you mentioned configuration and I'll give you an example, just to examples maybe think about it for the security folks out there like most companies have, okta? Or like any of the IDPs, right? And basically what happens is when a user leaves the company or when you let go of a user, the first thing that you do, you deprovision him from all of the SaaS applications that you have. Because you don't want Andrew to have access to my Google Drive or to my Stack or to my Zoom. You just do provision he can access. But everything that this user has done a millisecond before the de-provisioning it's out there. Because I can share the company product roadmap for 2024 with my personal email to the Share button in Google Drive or SharePoint or whatever a second before that to my personal email. And in most cases and what we see companies don't even aware of that. And then you de-provision I cannot access the app. Boom. But he has access to their data. That's one example. Let's take another example. You are the CFO of a company, traded publicly listed company. You are the CFO on paper, you should have all the privileges in the world, correct? You deal with all the financials, all the numbers, like the secret stuff. But what if the CFO is about to resign and quit or maybe move to another competitor or another company and he just, I don't know, shares something with OneDrive or Box, just like the PL, just to set the ground for the next company to understand the KPIs with his personal email. No one will know because they trust him. They have all the privileges. And that's exactly we are trying to find those anomalies and the insider threat. And the funny thing is, we find it all day, every day, constantly, especially now when people are laying off. Unfortunately, a lot of people, and people by nature, take the client list, the customers list, the numbers, the product roadmap, the architecture plans, and you name it. We've seen it all.

Andrew Monaghan [00:12:25]:

Yeah, I bet you just then it was human nature. You feel like you should have stuff like that. But in the day it's the corporate assets that need to be protected, not someone's belief that they should be accessing, things like that. But you taught their omri about it's been a tumultuous year in tech in general, but certainly in cybersecurity. There have been companies that have been growing, there are a lot of companies doing layoffs, there have been redirections, there have been pivots, there have been acquisitions, what's happened in the last year with due control.

Omri Weinberg [00:12:57]:

So luckily, I think we capture a good wave. I think we are onto something. And when you start a company, you have a vision, me and Adam, basically, we co-founded this company because of the pain that we suffered from a company that acquired my previous company and Adam while he was working at Google. And then we started to talk to the market about what can be done. And everybody said we have this, we have that, we have that, it's not going to work. And also to your question, ah, you're a CRO. Usually, it's like, why do you need a CRO, a business guy? When you start a company, usually you bring those guys in a later stage, but what can I do? That's what I've done in my lifetime. I was born into a family business that we sold many years ago. So that's the skill set that I bring to the table. Long story short, we build a company and by being a CRO, usually I call it TCB. Do you know what's a TCB Andrew?

Andrew Monaghan [00:13:48]:

Oh, no, I don't.

Omri Weinberg [00:13:49]:

So I'm a CRO. I'm a TCB taking care of business, whatever needs to be done in order to make things happen, to create a new reality, to talk to investors, to build a platform, to have design partners, to do marketing activities to walk on the floors. I've done it. All right. So basically from the get-go, we did not spend time taking a year to build something and then understand if it's to validate if this is what we need to do. So luckily I can say that from day one, from inception or even prior to that, we have not changed our northern star. We did not pivot. I don't think we're going to pivot. There's no need for us. We have a direct line to the northern star. Maybe we need to do a small deviation to the right, to the left because they're like rainy days. But we know where we need to go. We have a clear understanding. It's not because me and Adam and Leon are genius or the rest of the team here in the company are genius and other companies. But we talk to the market. We talk to the market from day one. We engage with the market from day one. Even if we did not have anything and everything was broken. We were fearless, relentless. And we connected the technology, our technology to their environment. And we built trust together so we will be able to build the right things moving forward. Right? And luckily things have gone. I want to take things in proportion. It's going great for us since the last time you talked to Adam. I think we tripled our revenue. We quadrupled. I think our logos count. And we were not afraid to charge money from day one for our services, for our technology. Because if we bring value, this is how you validate if the market needs it or not. And if you are giving your products for zero amount or for a very high percentage discount, you don't know if it's really needed or not. Because if there is a pain so someone will go to the procurement with the legal, they will sign a check and they will do everything that they can do in order to buy your technology. So we validated that with some of the biggest names that you can possibly think of out there. It can be financial firms, hedge funds, technology companies, data companies, education institutions, and many more. So the thing that it tells us this is why it's a very big problem across multiple verticals. It's not a niche problem and it's not fitted to just small companies, medium or big companies. It's all of the above. Because there is one commonality for everybody. They're using SaaS. People are working remotely. They have tons of data in those SaaS and they have zero visibility to who has access to even those data sets and leave aside the control that they need to have.

Andrew Monaghan [00:16:34]:

So that brings up an interesting area though. I think it's good that you've got such a wide market to go after. But in the day you're a startup, right? You don't have 1000 person sales and marketing team to go do that. So you got to focus somewhere and I'm wondering what you learned about where you could actually go spend some time and get the most success.

Omri Weinberg [00:16:54]:

Absolutely. It's a great question because my inbox has been bombarded every day with like hey, we can do lead generation for you. Hey, we could do that. Hey, we can open the market in Argentina, in Japan, whatever. So luckily, or sadly, I need to say no to a lot of those offerings because as you mentioned, we need to be very focused, laser-focused about what we can win, who can win, who can we win, what is the effort from our end, what are the use sales that we are solving? Is there a pattern? So this is what we are trying to do. And I have a Prisma. I can look at other companies that I was involved with, some that we sold, some that we took public in different verticals. And I think the startup Quo today for Do Control is about how we navigate between the leads, the go-to-market, the accounts that we are after, like the top accounts, like a second round of accounts, and so on. I think we are very accurate about that. And we are trying to pound on what we know that will yield more success and for the other things that we are not 100% sure of or maybe they're not right in their go-to-market. We have partners that we are working with that can work alongside our internal team to facilitate those meetings, to build brand awareness, the need, and the pain. So it's like a parallel because, at the end of the day, I don't want to build a company that I will start a sales cycle that maybe I will close a deal in a year and a half from now for like I don't know, $800,000. I'd rather have like seven smaller deals for months' time in five months' time. That's how we look at things, especially in the vertical that we are chasing after. So in our internal team, we have a VP of sales, John Chester, an amazing guy. Underneath. John, we have, like, two amazing sales managers. Jack Wheel, Jack Nunese, and Michael Johnson. So we are dividing the US into territories basically into account size like user account below and above. And with my help with John with three RSM, we have a very good salesforce to tackle the opportunities. And alongside them, we have a very strong Se team solution engineering led by Tim Davis. And there is Richard and we have Ken underneath him that basically, they are helping us with all the technology aspects. So we have a very robust team, a very old machine that we know how to tackle every opportunity that we encounter, whether it's small, big, or medium, so we have playbooks for each one. So I think that's the most important thing that you should do stay focused and have templates for what you're going to do next when someone will knock on your door.

Andrew Monaghan [00:19:40]:

It's funny when I often talk to CROs and CEOs and talk about the team, they talk about the team almost in the abstract, but you actually went in and mentioned names and called them out. And I love that you did that because it says to me that you've got a connection with them and you're working together truly the team, and you're really advocating for them.

Omri Weinberg [00:20:01]:

If you rewind like 20 minutes ago, I think we mentioned the word trust. Trust is not just external with partners or with prospects or with VCs. It starts with trust between partners, co-founders, and your employees. And that's it. That's the foundation for everything. Because if you lose trust, everything will be shaky. At the end of the day. I'm not saying it's easy. There are a lot of hurdles, a lot of disagreements, and commit a lot of arguments. But that's a startup. If people are not used to working in this high-paced environment or like high-speed environment, they should go work in a different company. I don't want to mention names, but you know, some of the companies, the biggest companies in the world, that they can be like another person in a 50,000 people company.

Andrew Monaghan [00:20:51]:

Yeah, I think there's an element, anyone that goes in early stage as an employee or as a right, there's an element in your mind that you must want to thrive in that environment. Right. It's not an easy thing to go and do. It's a lot of fun. Right. And when it works out well, it's even more fun. But it takes a certain type of person to get in there. I'm wondering, as you were, let's say, bringing on John. You said he was the VP of Sales. You brought in what sort of characteristics you look for in John to say that was the person that we needed.

Omri Weinberg [00:21:19]:

To you know, when you interview people or you try to bring people on board, I think that's the hardest task. I think maybe that's going to be my next startup because HR, it's not something that I've done before, because I think if you look at HR, we've been doing HR and recruitment the same thing as we've done in the last few years, right? So I think when I interview people, obviously we have the process, we have a round of interviews internally, we have reference checks and that kind of thing. But when I talk to people, I try to take it on a personal level. I try to understand who is the person behind the camera, or if we have a face-to-face meeting to understand what drives them, what makes them itch, or move uncomfortably in their chair. And as I mentioned, the startup is not easy. You need to have elephant skin because the amount of negative things that are happening on a day-to-day basis are much greater than the positive things, but one positive thing can cover all of the bad negative things and that's why we are here. If you think about it, we had an idea in our mind from our previous jobs working for other companies and now we took it from inception to a technology that we solve some of the biggest problems for the biggest brands out there. It means that that's an accomplishment by itself, regardless of so this is how you're running a marathon. It's not a sprint. And you can look at, like, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel because it's a long tunnel, but you know there is a light there and you see, like, it's growing every day that passes by, it's growing a little bit more. And I think every person that you recruited, the company, needs to have the same mentality. It's going to be dark most of the days, it's going to be hard, it's going to be rainy, but when spring comes and you have a lovely day. And I know you're from Scotland, Andrew, so I'm sure it's lavish over there. There's a lot of green, but it's nicer when the sun is out, right? And when we win a deal, when we solve a problem, when we help a customer, when we connect people in our industry, this is where the sun comes out and this is where we're happy about it.

Andrew Monaghan [00:23:28]:

Yeah, what you're talking about there is resilience to get through those times when things aren't perfect, right? They're a long way from that, usually. Remember I talked to the CEO at Strata Identity and he described it like everyone needs a personal roll cage. It's like going off-road. You're going to tip over, you're going to go sideways, but you need to get back on your feet again pretty quickly and keep moving forward. And to me, that's a good summary of what resilience is all about. What else do you look for, though, Amri? Do you really look for people with startup experience? Do you look for those with cybersecurity experience? What other characteristics are important to you?

Omri Weinberg [00:24:04]:

It's a good question, and especially in cybersecurity, I think we are looking for people with experience because it's a very specific vertical where you need to know how to talk, who to look for, where to be, and so on. Right? But we had SDRs before, look at what we brought on board or even customer success managers who did not have a big experience with cybersecurity. But if you think about it, what if it's cybersecurity or Ethic or gaming or whatever the vertical is out there? The business fundamentals are always the same, right? It's always the same. It's like, what if you're in sales? You need to build a pipeline, you need to be very consistent about how you approach your customers to be on time, to send summaries, to ask the right question, and so on. I don't believe that what we do is rocket science, right? No, it's easy to learn, especially now when you can find everything on the web and you have colleagues that you can educate you. It's not rocket science. I'm not looking for physicians to work with us, but you need to have some kind of background, and more important, you need to have the wheel to succeed. I grew up in a family where my brother were professional tennis players, so I was always competitive. It always was competitiveness around us. Right. So personally, I hate to lose. I like to win talking to friends. I like to bet on anything to make it a competition out of it. So I think if people are eager to learn, they are eager to run a marathon and a sprint because that's what it's all about. And they know that they are coming in with their minds open about the difficulties and they understand that it's going to be a lot of hiccups. I need people that have good proportion in life because also what we do is it's like not life and death. Right. At the end of the day, we win a customer, we lose a customer, we win a deal, we lose a know. It's like endless opportunities out there and we just need to let go and move to the next one if those things are happening.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:11]:

Army, let's learn a bit more about you. I've got a list of 35 questions here. I'm going to ask you to pick three numbers for your one and 35, and I'll read out the corresponding question. Cool.

Omri Weinberg [00:26:22]:

Let's pick 16, let's pick 23, and let's pick number one.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:29]:

All right, 16. What is one event in the world that you haven't been to but you would love to attend?

Omri Weinberg [00:26:37]:

It can be any event.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:38]:

Andrew, anything? Pleasure, work, I don't know what.

Omri Weinberg [00:26:43]:

So there are like, the World Expo events that I didn't have the opportunity. It's not related to cyber, it's not related to sales. But that's a big event that I've heard and read, like, amazing things on it. So that's one of the events that I would like to participate in. For sure.

Andrew Monaghan [00:26:59]:

What happens at a World Expo, basically.

Omri Weinberg [00:27:02]:

It's divided into many countries and each country expresses or is showing its inventory about what is it that the country produces manufacture, technologies, and tourism. So it's like a showroom for a country, basically.

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:18]:

So you can learn a lot about a country in one place?

Omri Weinberg [00:27:20]:

Yeah. So it's like a global event. So basically walking in between different booths, but that represents a country and many different verticals or industries within that country. I think that's fascinating because it can teach you about our neighbors in this world.

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:36]:

Very good. That's a great idea. I've not heard of that before. So you got me interested and intrigued by the whole concept.

Omri Weinberg [00:27:42]:

Maybe we can go together, we can plan. A trip together.

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:46]:

Well, so if it's in Denver, Colorado, I'm not that interested because it's where I live. But if it's the other side of the world in some amazing place, that'd be fantastic.

Omri Weinberg [00:27:55]:

Sure.

Andrew Monaghan [00:27:55]:

Next number was 23. So tricked-out Jeep or German car with all the gadgets?

Omri Weinberg [00:28:04]:

It's a funny question, actually, because I'm originally from Israel and I've been living here in the States for, I would say almost nine years. When I was in Israel, I had like three cars and every car was a Golf, German Golf with a newer model. Now that I'm here in the States and I have two little kids, I have like a huge truck with all the gadgets. So I think it answers your question.

Andrew Monaghan [00:28:28]:

It does. That's awesome. Three golfs, though. That's quite the obsession.

Omri Weinberg [00:28:34]:

Yeah, it was like I always replace the models, basically. I love that car.

Andrew Monaghan [00:28:38]:

Yeah, it's funny when you get used to something, you see the latest model, you're like, oh, I could get the same car with more stuff and more stuff. I'm sure there's some psychology behind that that we should all tap into at some point. All right, number one, this will be interesting because you recently moved. What is one thing you own that you should really just throw out?

Omri Weinberg [00:29:00]:

Wow, that's a sensitive topic because I want to throw up so many things and my wife especially, likes to hold a lot of things and I like to throw them out also, like kids' toys that are no longer in use. That's a tough one. To be honest, I don't have a good answer because of everything that I don't use, basically I either donate to Goodwill or something like that, or I just throw up that it's not usable anymore. So I don't have a big problem with that.

Andrew Monaghan [00:29:32]:

You are much more disciplined by that than I am. I just find I moved into my office here at home four or five years ago and it was a basic place when I moved in. And now everywhere you look there's something that I should probably not have. Distractions.

Omri Weinberg [00:29:48]:

So just the other week we did a renovation to our kid's room, basically, and I hope they won't hear that, but I took like six full bags with toys and we just donated them with a car seat and like another chair. So I'm easy on letting go of stuff.

Andrew Monaghan [00:30:05]:

Yeah, that's good. When our kids were younger, you do the same thing. You clear stuff out and then you wonder how long it's going to take them to realize that that thing is gone. And most of the time you don't even realize.

Omri Weinberg [00:30:16]:

True.

Andrew Monaghan [00:30:20]:

And you mentioned partners before. What sort of partners are you working with? Are they resell or integrators or more than that?

Omri Weinberg [00:30:27]:

Great question. So actually now we are just in. We had some kind of a partner portal, but it wasn't that sophisticated. But now we're on the verge of launching it. So every partner we are working with can actually log into their environment. They can have all of the assets, all of the things that they need, all of the reg flow, the deal flow that they put in and they can actually see the status of each one of the accounts that we have in common. So it can be VARs MSPs like whatever that you can possibly think of if they have the connection if they have the people that they have the relationship and trust and they can refer to Ducontra and we can have a conversation. We are game on. And we're going to help them educate them about what is it we do and why their customers need it. So that's one area. We have strategic partnerships with AWS as well that we just launched our you know, we're accelerator partner, global startup partner. So we have a PDM that works with us and we're actually starting selling directly from the marketplace in AWS. So that's something that opened our market completely because if you think about it, every account out there has some kind of an AWS rep. So we are working constantly with them. I would say on a daily basis. They are bringing us opportunities, we are bringing them opportunities. So together we have a better together story. So that's another avenue that we are taking putting a lot of our efforts into.

Andrew Monaghan [00:31:48]:

With the VARs that you talked about, I'm always wondering if the VAR has been in place for a while and another new cybersecurity company shows up saying let's do some business. What are they looking for from you as a startup? What's the big attraction for them?

Omri Weinberg [00:32:03]:

First of all, they want to see that okay, who are we dealing with? Are we a seven-people company or we are 70? So we are the latter. Okay, so you are much more established. Okay, that's check number one. You're a security company, how secure are you? Right? So we are ESO and Sock two and HIPAA and GDPR. So we've done all of that. So to make sure that we are following the best guidelines and standards out there. So that's check number two. Right? And then when they go on a call, first of all, they want to understand what is the use cases that we are solving, what are the pain points that we are addressing. Right? What kind of clients we are working with so they can find a repetitive way to send it over to their client base? Checkbox number four or three. Right? And then they need to see that we see eye to eye. We can work with them. We are transparent about how we do business. We are very communicative. If they send us an email or we have a mutual Slack journal and we answer them after a week, after two weeks, I don't want to do business that way. Right. So we are very aggressive about how we give our customers the best service. And customers can be a customer that is paying due control, a prospect that hopefully will be a customer. It can be a partner that is our customer, that will serve customer to us. So I'm very aggressive on that because my part as a CRO is not just bringing new customers, it's also retaining customers that we have and getting more out of them in the future.

Andrew Monaghan [00:33:28]:

And you talked there about the two-way leads. You bring them leads, they bring you leads. A lot of companies right now are struggling for a great pipeline, right? Really good opportunities. What's working well for you right now in terms of getting that pipeline up?

Omri Weinberg [00:33:44]:

So I think companies are struggling. It has twofold, right? Because I think it's struggling because being a startup, it's not always easy to be heard between all of that noise, right? But macroeconomics, it's tough. You see, and we see it every day. Companies are trying to find ways to cut budgets, to get weight. You mentioned earlier about doing cleanups and throwing things that you have in your house. But this is what companies are doing, even us, trying to see, okay, what is it that we don't need? What is it that we can let go of? What is a must-have? So I think those two together are becoming very problematic for my team or for any other sales operation team to stand out. But I think this is why we are putting a lot of effort into being I don't want to say everywhere, but trying to be as much as possible in LinkedIn to know part of the conversations to be in shows like Blacket, like last week or RSA or any other regional events that are out there. Work with our partners to get the connections doing demand-know campaigns to drive traffic to our site to have conversations. Because in sales, at the end of the day, it's a numbers game. It's like a net, right? You go fish, you throw a big net. First of all, you need to know where to fish, right? Because if you're going to go fish in a place where there aren't any fish or maybe fish is not allowed or whatever, it's going to be very hard for you to fish any fish, right? So we try to understand, okay, who is our ICP? Where can we find them? What shows, what events? Who are the stakeholders? Who do we know that knows them? How can we get introductions and nothing is being left on the table? We try everything, whether it's our friends and family and friends of friends and colleagues and VCs and investors and private bankers, you name it. We just need to get stage time. When we have stage time, there is a spark. They understand what we do. They realize, you see, how they think about our solution, how they think about our technology, and then for the serious companies that want to take it to the next level, we do a deep dive. We try to bring more manpower because in the first meeting is like very high level. Tell me about your problems, and let's see if I can help tackle some of them.

Andrew Monaghan [00:35:58]:

Sounds like you're doing a lot of different things, including Black Hat last week. Tell me about your presence at Black Hat. Did you have a booth? Did you have a meeting suite? How did you get people to meetings? Things like that.

Omri Weinberg [00:36:08]:

That's a good discussion that we're always debating with ourselves. I think the booth that we had was said from last year. So we had a boot. Black hats can be expensive, right? So obviously the boot can be expensive, but we had a boot. We had a lot of traffic into the boot. One of the things that I'm guiding the team is don't be there just for the scan, to scan people. Scan only the contacts that are relevant with the right title, that they've shown interest because I'm not here to scan like 5000 contacts and then maybe we're going to have like 25 or 30 that are relevant. No, that's not my interest. Make sure that you talk to everybody, try to understand what they are trying to do or trying to get out of this show, and then give the Do Control pitch. Don't waste your energy about talking about Do Control and then you're going to find out this is a CFO format. You need to be smart about how you manage your energy, basically. And I think a boot is a good thing because you have a lot of foot traffic that's coming in. Usually the top CISOs or whatever, they do like 1-hour session, they go around to see what's new or whatever. I think most CISOs or like a lot of companies, they already know Do Control, which is a good thing, they come to us, hey, I saw Do Control. We know Do Control, but sometimes the low-level guys sometimes like the engineering or the dev-op guy, the dev security people, they're not always aware and they really want to understand and get the ins and out of the technology. So it's a good way to interact and also it's a good place to meet current customers because everybody on the same place at the same time.

Andrew Monaghan [00:37:42]:

And the booth that you had, were you in the startup city area, or were you one of the bigger booths?

Omri Weinberg [00:37:47]:

No, the way that it works today, if you are a startup older than two years or something like that and you present it, you cannot do the third year. You need to have like a regular booth, whether it's like ten x ten or ten x 20 and so on. But when we started we were in the startup pavilion, basically.

Andrew Monaghan [00:38:02]:

And then this year, did you have a meeting suite somewhere in the hotel? That you took people to.

Omri Weinberg [00:38:07]:

We did not have a suite. We booked a lot of meetings in the Boot itself and we had other meetings across the Strip, whatever it's like different restaurants, different lobbies, hotels, and so on. Again, we were trying to accommodate some of our partners. We will come to them. We don't want to make them effort to come to us. So if we can make their life easier in any aspect, even if you start a POV, you want to give them everything on a silver platter so they will not need to make any extra moves if they don't need to.

Andrew Monaghan [00:38:43]:

Yeah. I was walking around the Expo last week wondering about the value that people get from going to Black Hat and how they do it. So would you say last week was a huge raging success? A success, a mild success. How would you kind of put it on the scale?

Omri Weinberg [00:38:58]:

We just sent out a summary email to our entire company just to give them a summary of what happened in Black Hat. And just from looking at a summary and the numbers, we got a few hundred leads that are accurate, good, and quality leads that people that we can talk to. Out of that, we have a few dozen good opportunities. So in our business, you don't need to close like 20 opportunities. If you can close a handful of them, that will be the best ROI ever. After spending the time, the amount for the boot, for the travel, for everything else. So again, it's all about numbers, games, and especially for a company that is still small, still growing, and trying to make a way in this cybersecurity world. I think it was a very successful show for us as it seemed on paper. For now, we can talk in a few months and then I can update you.

Andrew Monaghan [00:39:46]:

Well, Omri, listen, I really enjoyed our conversation. If someone wants to get in touch with you and talk about control, what's the best way to do know?

Omri Weinberg [00:39:54]:

This is what I tell internally, externally, I'm always accessible. I want to talk to people, I want to meet people, I want to tell them about what we are solving, I want to hear their pain, I want to get educated, and vice versa. Omri weinberg I'm in LinkedIn or omri at docontrol IO. Shoot me an email. I'm always answering emails.

Andrew Monaghan [00:40:13]:

Always. That's great. Well, I love to see the success you guys are having rooting for you from Colorado and hoping that it continues into the rest of this year and into next year as well. Wish you all the best.

Omri Weinberg [00:40:24]:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Andrew. It was a pleasure. I hope I contributed a little bit to the broader audience out there.

Andrew Monaghan [00:40:31]:

Absolutely. Thanks for joining us.