Winning Cybersecurity Sales Strategies: Insights from a Former Buyer Turned Seller on CISO Engagement - Chris Camacho, Co-founder & COO at Abstract

Andrew Monaghan (00:01.555)
Well, Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Camacho (00:04.078)
Thanks, Andrew. Happy to be here. Excited to be here, actually.

Andrew Monaghan (00:07.071)
Yeah, I'd appreciate you doing the little sign behind you there. That's awesome.

Chris Camacho (00:10.306)
Yeah, yeah, I'm doing some work with this company, the Vesta board, and I'm I was excited to actually use it for something like this. So there you go. Helping promote us both there.

Andrew Monaghan (00:20.03)
I've seen one of the socials and it seems like a really cool idea.

Chris Camacho (00:23.298)
Yeah, actually I used one at RSA, the little smaller one. So every time we had meetings in our suite and I would customize them and they would flip every, it got everyone's attention. So I'm really excited about them. Yeah. It's a really good idea. Exactly. Whatever.

Andrew Monaghan (00:33.574)
Every little bit helps, right? So Chris, Chris, I'm going to take you back 10 years, believe it or not. 10 years ago, you made the switch from buying cybersecurity products to actually making them and selling them. Why did you make the change?

Chris Camacho (00:51.214)
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. You know, I don't regret it. In fact, just even today I had a nice like private session with a bunch of my former colleagues from financial world and I admire everything that they do. I miss it sometimes. But at the same time, I'm like, I'm also glad I'm on this side. It was just different challenges and stress. But it was it was around the time when I was in the financial sector. And I always had this like background of like

being creative, growing something. When I was even a kid, entrepreneur spirit, my parents were entrepreneurs. I was in the bank. I was helping so many of these startups as being kind of the initial vendor they were working with or bringing them in. then somehow us becoming the biggest customer for a variety of reasons. And usually these vendors would just bring in, as you can expect, like the best and brightest, the CEO or CRO or whoever, or their best sales team, right?

And I would just sit there and learn and observe and watch. I'm like, okay, I was appeal. was like, this, this, you know, use case is interesting. The team is interesting. The product's interesting. I like the message. I like the pitch. And I kind of just was always focused on what they were selling more than I think others were, you know? and, and, and I was fascinated. So I decided one day to like, let me take the leap. Cause if I don't do it now, probably will never be the right time.

I found a company that I was really attracted to. was actually personal friends and an official customer, early customer believer in what they were doing. It was right in my wheelhouse. So I joined them and the rest is history. I went from the buy side to the sell side. So the dark side has everyone used to call it back then.

Andrew Monaghan (02:34.181)
Well, it's interesting. You told me that you actually bought CrowdStrike early. You mentioned Flashpoint just now. You bought them early. As you're reviewing all the decisions you made, the vendors you saw, what made you say yes, for example, to those two when they were still such early stage companies?

Chris Camacho (02:55.938)
Very easy, actually. Was there a need? And were they, did they have visibility or a product or solution that I didn't have like visibility into? That was really the big thing that would help the business. So one of the areas that I tried to differentiate myself early on was I want to support whatever enterprise, whatever business, you know, I am working in, right? I don't want to be just another leader that's focused on technology and solutions and then sharing off, hey, go do this, go do that.

I wanted to really understand the business that we were in and how I could help the business. And those solutions, particularly, especially in and around that time, just had really interesting products and data that we, at the time that I was on with a very large team, had no visibility into. There was a gap. So they identified a gap. I looked at it closely with the team. We determined, hey, this gap, the risk outweighs not having this.

Right? So the value was there. So we procured it and brought them in really early. And then lo and behold, they became obviously big companies that others followed. We just like to be early adopters when there was a need and we identified a vendor that could fill that need quickly.

Andrew Monaghan (04:13.337)
Was Bank of America known for being early adopters and being willing to embrace new technology or was that not succumbed to what you get to do at certain times?

Chris Camacho (04:22.558)
And you know, the wonderful thing about the area I was in while there was they gave me full autonomy to go figure out what I needed in order to do my job to identify and find like the missing gaps. So if there was a well established player that we needed to get a hold of and work with, lo and behold, yes, go do what you need to do. If there was a new like emerging vendor that no one had heard about, but the data.

The vendor was trusted per se because of the team, the background, the investors, right? And there was no critical risk as they were too scrappy or in a region they shouldn't be. Then, yeah, we would have the opportunity to go work with them really.

Andrew Monaghan (05:03.384)
So you mentioned looking at the team and maybe the funding. What else would de-risk a earlier stage company for you back in those days?

Chris Camacho (05:10.686)
Usually if there was somebody that I knew there personally or someone within my team, somebody that I knew from actually I was big into collaboration and networking. So my personal network was pretty big at the time and continues to that's actually how I kind of differentiate myself in the market, but using my network. So if I knew somebody that was there and if I didn't, did I know, like I mentioned an investor.

or someone that's worked with the new founder or the selling team or the analyst team that was there that could at least give me some background as to what is it that they're building? Is it legit? Are they doing anything that's shady or not shady? Are they investing in security? That was very important because I didn't want to bring in a vendor that would then expose us to a different type of risk for the wrong reasons. Right. So a little bit of the due diligence just in the background who investors are, who I know from the team.

What are they actually doing? And they can mention earlier, where are they actually located?

Andrew Monaghan (06:06.612)
Yeah. So you're now the co-founder and CEO at Abstract. I'm wondering, were there any decisions you made at Abstract early on that were basically driven by your learnings back in the practitioner days?

Chris Camacho (06:21.262)
Oh, many of mine personally, yes, are. So I always say, especially, and I've been saying it very, very frequently as we've been expanding our go-to-market team here, and everybody thinks that I'm just gonna go poke my friends at these financial institutions and get them to buy. It doesn't work like that, A, because it doesn't work like that, but B, I'm not gonna do that. So I leverage my network, my old network of...

you know, folks that I work with that are now CISOs and even beyond CISOs, CIOs in many cases at large institutions, as they're just people that have this acquaintance with, maybe had made a friendship and maybe I will ping them to like make sure they understand what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, but I'm not expecting them to purchase. So I will use them as a reference point. Are we onto the right things? You know, I know we're in a very competitive market. You may already have an incumbent solution to what we're doing.

But please guide me what's working with that vendor, what's not working with that vendor, what should I be doing in this AI age that's moving so rapidly that you'd love to see? And then I go behind the scenes and work with our product and engineering team on bringing that feedback so we can differentiate in the market. And then I go visit the team at this, wherever my person that I've been working with or talking to is and saying, here's something that we've identified that may be interesting to you.

We're solving it this way. This is what we built and what other customers are actively using and see if it comes together that way, right? If it comes a chance that I can't ask the C-suite or whoever, because I know them for like the opportunity to purchase, I tread that very, very carefully. And I think the good thing is many folks that have bought from me at various organizations that are in this space know that I'm not going to be that pushy, know, overwhelming salesperson.

But they know that we're actively working together just probably because we identified a requirement, a need, and there's something that will show ROI that we can build the partnership again and show them what the product is doing. And that's kind of how I built my way of selling and in how I'm positioning our sales reps and go-to-market team to sell into these enterprises.

Andrew Monaghan (08:34.055)
I wonder if you've re-prioritized anything in the product based on what you've learned you really need from an early stage product versus maybe what sometimes engineering leaders or founders might think they need.

Chris Camacho (08:45.516)
Yeah. So I mean, just like every product led company, it's a lot of times driven by engineering and product and they're building products that, you know, they think the market needs. Thankfully over here, we have a lot of practitioners and folks that have sold and built products for large enterprises before. So they know that we should be building or we need to be building products that, the customers and prospects actually need and want. So yeah, I can get to the practitioners. I can get to the buyers. can get to the C-suite.

listen and bring that information back to the product and engineering team so they can prioritize what needs to be on the roadmap next.

Andrew Monaghan (09:25.85)
Okay. You mentioned when you were at B of A that you could see which vendors brought in their all-star team for the meeting. Did any vendors go to B of A without their all-star team? This seems ridiculous to me.

Chris Camacho (09:36.45)
You'd be surprised. Yeah, you'd be surprised that there were some times when it was just the territory AE. I don't know why, but yeah, there were times and I mean, some of those junior reps that tried to sell to me back then are now CROs now and we'll still keep in touch. Some of those CROs are now CEOs at these various companies and we still keep in touch. Like I said, we were early crowd strike and now that company is blown up. I actually can still ping George Kurtz whenever I kind of need to thanks to that relationship.

But yeah, sometimes they would bring in just the wrong team. And it's unfortunate because I even tell our team now, you really have one shot to get in front of someone like an institution like that, right? And if you don't impress them on that first shot, first impressions are the worst and then you don't have a chance for probably a year.

Andrew Monaghan (10:24.337)
Oh yeah, I just kind of imagine when you, you know, I saw, I think it was a survey or some feedback the other day from someone and they surveyed a bunch of heads of sales, CROs at cyber companies, the number one challenges pipeline, right? If you get a meeting with a big company like that, I'd want to figure out every which way possible to maximize the chance it might turn into something.

Chris Camacho (10:46.842)
would expect, right? I mean, that's what we do here, right? There's a lot of preparation work that we do if we're going into a, like a fortune 500 even. Right. And we're taking our co-founders. I attend most of those meetings. Maybe my co-founder and CEO is also, but yeah, there's a lot of preparation and we usually, we always bring our breasts and brightest as other companies should. And I'm sure they try to, but sometimes things happen or it's just misjudgment. then like I said, first impressions are the most important.

Andrew Monaghan (11:17.263)
Yeah, now you touched on something there, which is this incredibly noisy credit market right now. Richard Steeden tracks about 3,900 vendors in the overall market right now. I remember 10 or 15 years ago, it was a lot less than that, maybe 10 to 20 % of that. So as a co-founder, someone trying to get attention in the market, how are you thinking about doing that at abstract and try and get more than your fair share of attention beyond using your network?

Chris Camacho (11:26.734)
I know.

Chris Camacho (11:45.738)
Yeah, obviously we have to and it's that's what I even tell myself these days. I was like if I was still on the buy side and I had to navigate this, you know, hectic vendor landscape, I don't even know where I'd start right now because there's just so many vendors. 3900. I mean, walk the RSA floor, walk the black hat floor. It's just vendor, vendor, vendor, right? And all these systems can't buy all these solutions, right? It's impossible. So.

To me, we're in interesting times. People are spending a tremendous amount of money on marketing, on buyouts of if you go to RSA, like a lot of the restaurants are bought out for the week, right? On these fancy dinners, everyone's just trying to like up each other because they need to get somebody to that Tuesday night dinner at the better place. So they're literally picking them up in limos now, right? And sending these gift baskets, inviting their family. I mean, it's all over the place.

Yet at the end of the day, we're all trying to do the same thing, sell a solution, right? But we're trying to also capture their attention. So it's interesting in this seat, now having to cater to those needs, like we have to be as creative as possible. How do we stand out? Do we partner with other vendors and spend a tremendous amount of money of taking them to an F1 race, right? People are trying to approach me now of let's buy a suite at a FIFA World Cup game, right? Or even the finals.

ridiculously expensive, right? So you have to kind of team up with others to make it worthwhile. And then who do you invite? Right. And what do you expect from those people that you're going to invite when you're spending that much money? Are they actually going to buy? So we have to measure all these things. And then in this global market, can you actually be everywhere? I mean, I'm just talking about the big shows in the U.S. Right. There's shows all over Europe and the Middle East and Latin America. Right. In Asia.

How do you spread like a company, all these companies worldwide in these interesting times, especially if you want to be global, right? It's hard to prioritize where you're going to spend your dollars and I didn't even get into the partner ecosystem. They also demand a lot of dollars in attention in order to stand out in their portfolio.

Andrew Monaghan (13:54.219)
Yeah, imagine what you could do. said prioritization there. You're going to balance the big hit versus the thin spread, right? You can't put everything into the box at the World Cup game, right? How do you think about that? We can actually go bigger in a couple of areas, but then we still got to have the 510K for the regional partner events, for example, things like that.

Chris Camacho (14:16.408)
Yeah, exactly. And those regional events can sometimes, to be honest, turn out more opportunity than spending at a very large event. Right. The problem that a lot of vendors like us have is if we don't do those large events, we get the FOMO. Like, did our competitors do it? Right. And now they have the edge or they have that brand exposure that we didn't get because we weren't there. And I bet you if you interview, just the overall vendor, the landscape or did a survey, they'd say the same thing. We're there.

not because we want to, we find true value because if we do miss out, our competitor might get that deal or have an edge, right? So you kind of have to spread yourself into as many of the large ones as possible, but still find time and dollars for the regional events where there are very important enterprises that don't have the budgets or luxury to go to the big events, but they participate in those smaller ones.

Andrew Monaghan (15:08.318)
Let's pick an example of something kind of middle, right? So you say you're, I'm pick Columbus, Ohio, let's say, right? And you wanna run a, I don't know, some sort of event, we get dinner, maybe something a little bit different. What have you seen work in terms of actually structuring the event so it's not just a random hope that something happens in terms of the people that are there, things like that? What have you seen others do or yourself do that you think, that's the way to do that right?

Chris Camacho (15:33.4)
Three things that I've seen work. One, you can work with the partners, right? There's plenty of partners in that region that host regional events all the time. We can team up with one of those. Second, there are now these like, I don't know how to describe them other than maybe CISO evangelists that have either left their day job and now are building these little networks for these CISO dinners, right? And there's many of them out there now. I happen to know one in Columbus, Ohio where

If I approach him, he charges anywhere from 10 to 20,000, right? And then I think you still have to pay for the dinner and he brings a group, a little consortium of 12 to 15 of the regional systems there. And then we have an opportunity to pitch. Or the third is if I have someone within my network or maybe a customer that's there and I convinced them to do a fireside chat or some type of event, that's the anchor or the hook that I can then start inviting the others. Those are the three that I've seen usually work in the various regions.

Andrew Monaghan (16:30.472)
So it's good to have that anchor, that hook, right? So it's not just come along for dinner to hear the blender. Here's someone you might have heard of in the industry that's gonna come and talk with something specific.

Chris Camacho (16:33.026)
Yeah, thank you.

Chris Camacho (16:39.714)
Yeah, and I've seen vendors just try to throw a dinner out there in a Columbus, Ohio on their own and put it on Luma or whatever, then blast it on LinkedIn. And my understanding and the feedback I'm hearing is they struggle to get the people there unless they have that anchor. And that's even for a free steak dinner, right? That happens out there. I think a CISO probably at any given week can have a steak dinner from a vendor, probably five nights a week if they really wanted to.

Right. So they also need to prioritize not only their diet, but like their time, right. And where they're going to spend time away from work and family. If I'm going to go talk to a vendor for yet another state.

Andrew Monaghan (17:17.383)
Yeah, I feel like the easy bit is the planning. The hard bit is getting people to show up, right? So, think about one of the things that will actually influence someone to say, yeah, sure, I'll go on to that one versus the eight others I've been invited to this month, right?

Chris Camacho (17:31.95)
That's where we try to put ourselves. how do we, back to what I was saying earlier, how do we stand out in the eight invites the CISO community is going to get? And to do that, everyone just has to top each other or get very clever.

Andrew Monaghan (17:45.796)
or stop doing steak dinners and start thinking about what's a different variation of this? I know Danny Wolf does cooking with cissots, for example, right? What a great idea.

Chris Camacho (17:53.132)
Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, that's a great idea. Right. So we've also thought about that. Like what other unique things like that can, can a vendor like us or other vendors are doing that are different and differentiated instead of another steak dinner. So I like that one too.

Andrew Monaghan (18:08.134)
Yeah. Any other things that you've seen or have happened in your past, like say, that have got a vendor their unfair share of your attention back in the day, you thought, yeah, that was really, effective how that happened.

Chris Camacho (18:23.842)
To be honest, for me personally, in addition to solid tech and product, it was the relationship. And that's actually what I tried to focus on a lot of my time here, just continue building and maintaining relationships. Not just hitting up my relationships or network when I need something or when I'm trying to get a deal done or even like an initial meeting, but just maintaining relationships. So one of the other unique things that I did was I built a company called

Ninja jobs that was in the staffing and recruiting side. And lo and behold, either through the platform or through my direct introductions, we placed many people into their dream job at the time. And then they've moved on, right? And I've helped them even then. So they still approach me to this day if they're needing an assessment of their resume or they're like really frustrated at their current job or really want to get a promotion at the current job, just because I helped live then do that for them back in the day. Right.

And that trust network and relationship is what I really like focus on. I want to maintain the relationship with people that when they were selling to me, maintained it post sale, not just did a transaction, you know, and we're excited that they got the bank or whoever, right. And moved on and I never heard from them again. I probably won't deal with those guys now. And there's some that maintain and continue that relationship. My co-founder and CEO being one of them. He sold me products. He maintained the friendship.

He always invited me when he was in town here or if we were at a big event, hey, let's go do this either as a one-off or something more like smaller, more private. And I appreciated that. So we kept in contact, build a partnership at my last company. And now lo and behold, we're over here, co-founded and building this new company. Right? So that's how important the relationship is.

Andrew Monaghan (20:10.598)
I sometimes get asked by people, you know, get some advice for someone, get into sales and cyber or get into cyber, right? And one of things I say to them is you got to have a long term view on this. You got to say, look, I want to be known as, let's take our example, the cyber go to resource on the vendor site in Columbus, Ohio, right? Invest in every relationship over 10 or 15 years so that when you just like taking your franchise to a new company, you join abstract and you say,

Chris, look, here's my deal. The Ohio Valley I know really well. I know 25 security leaders that were on texting terms and things like that. And it's just my gig. People know me really, really well. That's good value to startups, I would imagine.

Chris Camacho (20:50.4)
It's got a lot of value. I'd say that has a lot of value to especially younger startups, less than this value to companies that are established and have sold into that initial like tranche of marquee deals. The relationships will help, but they're not necessarily going to sell anymore, right? Then you're really selling on the product and the value and ROI positioning. But to me, those relationships help tremendously. I'm also aware, like at my last company, we hired folks that had zero relationships.

We hired them because they had the right mindset to build relationships and network. And we were right. They built new relationships and a network based on just their style and their personality. And those folks now have built new relationships based on like where the introductions that we helped them, right? Positioning in the market. And those are the folks that like maybe I'm even trying to recruit because they're in texting relationships with those folks now, right?

They've built a trust in some cases, they've been invited to like weddings and such, right? And those are the ones that I appreciate because they did take the time to invest, build a friendship and a partnership more so than just a sales, you know, contract.

Andrew Monaghan (21:56.586)
Yeah, you said there when you're hiring folks, you look at their DNA almost like what are they like as a person? How do you understand that? It's almost intrigued by the hiring. was decent at when I was running teams, but I always felt like I could get a lot better. And reading someone initially over a couple of calls to figure out what's their real DNA, I always used to struggle with a little bit. I'm wondering what you look out for and what you sense sometimes.

Chris Camacho (22:02.062)
Whatever you like, yeah.

Chris Camacho (22:20.386)
I still struggle to it now. mean, we have a pretty tight over here at least like interview process, you know, multiple people interview. I personally don't interview on, sell me this pen, you know, others can do that interview. I actually try to interview on how creative they are and how open to collaboration they are. You know, we are very collaborative here and I do believe the most successful sales reps are the ones that are collaborative as well. Like it's not just.

my way and I've been successful and I'll do it my way for a long time and I'm going to continue doing that. That's great. And let that work for you. But if you're like really want to be successful, go collaborate with the co-founders, your SC teams, the CS teams, the product manager teams, right? Your current customers go and learn like what's worked. Why, you know, why did this company buy? What am I actually selling? What could I improve in my pitch? Right? Work with your BDR as a network and learn across the board.

and even help your other sellers. Those are actually to me the ones I really appreciate, right? Not someone that's just like looking at their own territory and focus on themselves, but helping the other sellers because they, it'll get repaid. They'll also see it reciprocate. And those are the ones that I'm always like focused on because those could be the future leaders. Right. and so I really try to sniff out how collaborative are you, how creative are you? Are you going above and beyond besides just looking in Salesforce and expecting leads in order to go sell.

Andrew Monaghan (23:44.509)
Yeah, it's funny, I was talking to a seller recently, very experienced guy, done a number of startups, and he was telling me he was at the company kickoff, and he actually spent almost all his time with the engineers, not with the go-to-market team. said, look, I can hang out with the go-to-market team anytime, but they actually hang out with engineers and really kind of talk to them, understand them, and build a relationship with them. So that's going to pay off in droves down the road when I'm looking for some resources or something or some straight answers on something.

Chris Camacho (24:10.542)
If you think about it, makes a lot of sense, right? Especially at a very technical sale, right? Because those are the guys that are demoing, you know, and taking the feedback directly from the prospect or customer. Those are the folks that are identifying those like gaps much, much faster. So as a sales rep, yeah, if I can learn what those things are and how to navigate my sales pitch around it or improve it, right? So I can deposition the competitors or make my product look even better based on the efficiencies or where it's strong, I have the edge. So that makes a lot of sense to me.

Andrew Monaghan (24:40.188)
Yeah, yeah. And I kind of feel like the ones that command their unfair share of attention internally, not just externally, but internally, tend to be the ones that do a lot better as well. Yeah, it's a collaboration that happens. It's, you know, it's not like the founders will be sitting there going, well, I'm not going to talk to these sellers because they never talked to me or whatever. But I don't know. There's just something about that. The learning by listening and osmosis and talking and understanding just being part of that, just always looking for

Chris Camacho (24:52.674)
Yes, yes.

Andrew Monaghan (25:10.096)
more information and slightly different ways to position things.

Chris Camacho (25:12.438)
Yeah, to me, folks have to understand if you're working at, let's say here, right? We expect you to be collaborative and asking questions because the better we can make you, the better you're learning and better you're collaborating with even the founders, right? The better you're going to be able to sell our product or solution and make yourself the money that you want, right? We want you to be as successful as possible, make as much money as you want because that only helps everybody, right? And if you're really independent or think you can do it on your own,

we struggle with those types of folks. it's not just me, I think, talking to other peers, those are usually the sales folks that struggle.

Andrew Monaghan (25:46.863)
Yeah. Switching gears a little bit. You know, at RSA this year, AI was the thing, right? mean, a lot of it was, you know, AI for helping security people do their jobs. AI for SOC, AI for analysis, AI for, you know, lots of different things, right? But I'm wondering, you know, we had, for example, last week, Mythos came out from Anthropic, right? And we had something, think, from similar from ChadGBT. I'm wondering how you're thinking about that as someone who's building a company right now.

What is that new threat to our business? Maybe, maybe it's not a I don't know. What does that mean for us and how we do things?

Chris Camacho (26:22.636)
Yeah. I mean, to be honest, has to be considered a threat, right? At any given time, somebody like Anthropic or ChatGPT can come in and say, hey, we built this and it's right in our space. Right. So, hey, market, you don't need all those other solutions because you have it here now. Right. That is a threat. I think it's happening. Right. I think just this weekend, Claude released like Claude design. So they've put a threat to, you know, other

big tools out there and I would be like nervous if I were them. So what we do over here is we always sit here wondering what if, what if those scenarios happen, right? So we've built our product to be resilient to those types of things, meaning yes, we leverage AI, we're all over AI, it's incorporated into our product, not only for our customers, but the way we do things. But if somebody like Anthropic or, or ChatTPT came and built this solution, what is it that we can maybe partner with them on? So we're modularized, right?

We've separated out core functionality. So should that scenario ever happen? We can still even work with them and be a partner to them rather than saying, we give up because they're in this and they're starting to dominate the market. And I believe that's how many of these companies should be looking at it. If they come after your space, how could you partner with them and be either a data source, a integration or some type of feed into them?

Andrew Monaghan (27:42.776)
Yeah, I feel like two things from that. is that, you know, obviously very good companies, very powerful in what they're building, but they're not security experts, right? I'm sure they have some internally, but someone like yourself who's got all that rich experience and you kind of probably had your black eyes along the way as things worked that didn't work. you know, that's not to be ignored in the whole process, right? There's certain value to that. And also, yeah, I if someone was to challenge me as a seller to say, well, how does

how you better than mythos, would much rather turn around and say, here's how we make that better. Here's how we partner with them. And here's how your positioning, your experience and your capabilities will be so much better with the two together rather than me trying to battle away, say, well, our blue widgets, Brett and their blue widget or whatever. Right.

Chris Camacho (28:26.806)
Exactly. I mean, mythos is starting from the top down and I'm talking to CEO, right? CEO visibility and it's going to work its way down. So if I'm a vendor that's trying to say, you don't need mythos. have security mentality. They don't you're you're up for the wrong fight, right? Because it just has boardroom visibility. Now back to your point, here's how we can work together to accomplish your goals of reducing risks or making your analysts better. mean, those has to be the answers that any vendor should be thinking about.

Andrew Monaghan (28:55.734)
Yeah, I imagine for the bigger companies, they might probably stand off a little bit. you know, there's a whole market in the middle where good enough sometimes is good enough, right? I've definitely been on the wrong end of that in the past where, you know, we're trying to differentiate on being a lot better than something else. And then they said to me, well, you know, this 70 % solution is good enough for us and it's a third of the price. So we'll just go that way.

Chris Camacho (29:05.88)
Thanks.

Chris Camacho (29:17.902)
I've been on that side too. I mean, if we look at the TAM just for in general, plenty of market out there for everybody, right? Plenty of market for, you know, Anthropic to build every single cybersecurity solution out there, but not everyone's going to jump to it to plenty of market for vendors to have real opportunity to sell their product. They just have to be smart in their positioning.

Andrew Monaghan (29:40.127)
I wonder what you're hearing from your network, given where a lot of your network is and the practitioner side, about how they're thinking about using AI themselves to make their team better or maybe replace some heads. What's the general things that you're hearing from them about that?

Chris Camacho (29:59.264)
Yeah. Interesting things is if I were to, if I were to like put myself back in enterprise world, I'd be like fascinated how fast AI is moving and how much large enterprises, financial institutions that are normally very risk adverse conservative of adopting these technologies have allowed it to be used internally, right? Means, meaning if

You're a blocker. You may not even have a job anymore because you have to be an enabler enabler of these AI solutions inside of business. Talking to CISOs now, I'm also hearing like, Hey, I don't need to be technical anymore. A technical CISO. I honestly need to almost have an MBA because most of the discussions now are more about business problems, head counts and budgets into what I'm doing with my security program.

in an AI world to your point about, it that I'm going to be replacing a SOC team, a 24 by seven SOC team with agents? Discussions are happening. Implementations are happening in and around that, right? If you're worried and then we see these things happening in various companies at a given day, 10,000 people sweep, right? They do the layoffs and they just use AI. And then

the business, the finance side of things like, oh, good, know, that's savings over here. Stock price goes up. So if these CISOs aren't adopting AI fast enough and really maturing their teams by enabling them with AI tools and what capabilities can be like automated, that's the big one, automation, right? Scaled with AI, you know, it's just so repetitive. It can do the things 24 by seven.

Right. It doesn't take breaks. It doesn't get sick. What use cases and skills can I leverage AI so that I can improve my security program? Those are probably the CISOs that are the ones in demand right now and the ones that are going to be the leaders here in the next six months to a year, in my opinion.

Andrew Monaghan (32:12.25)
Is that pressure on them to try and figure this out coming from maybe the CFO's office or the board or where's it really coming from to say we got to adapt quickly?

Chris Camacho (32:22.584)
I think it's coming from both. think it's board level visibility, right? The boards just talking to each other and seeing what's happening in the market. And then the CFO is looking at budgets and saying, we need more investment into AI, right? Security, okay, your biggest spend is one, two, three. Where can you cut there and where can you cut other spend because we need to incorporate AI. You can take advantage of whatever AI tooling we've chosen, cloud, Google Gemini, Microsoft.

Um, but you know, we need the budget from this programs or reduce it in order to go and adopt here that you can take advantage of. If you talk to many, uh, companies like me in the vendor world right now to sell into a security into the systems, you have to be doing two things. You have to be reducing a current spend, right? Or replacing our current vendor. That's usually the way in right now. Gone are really the times of I have a brand new technology.

It's going to help you guys have visibility here and it's just another tool in your tool stack that your team can leverage. Those are much harder to sell these days if you're not reducing or replacing.

Andrew Monaghan (33:33.69)
So would you advise a finder to maybe start with that, to position what they're doing? And here's what we do. And by the way, here's what it does. It's going to replace your investment in these types of tools. It should be that upfront.

Chris Camacho (33:41.998)
By all means, if they're not doing it right now, they need to be doing it right away, because that's really your only way in these days.

Andrew Monaghan (33:48.718)
Yeah, and then make sure you do a good job so when they tell their friends about it, it all goes really well.

Chris Camacho (33:55.15)
First, sure, like I said, that first impression, make sure you do a really strong demo with the best, especially when you're talking to Forge of 500, that you can bring. So when they're talking to their friends and they do all talk amongst themselves, right, they can really highlight your company.

Andrew Monaghan (34:08.655)
Let's go back to abstract. What role does, if I'm a seller of abstract, what role does AI play for me? What am I doing differently than I was maybe five years ago?

Chris Camacho (34:17.772)
I'd say we're encouraging them to leverage AI in order to do as much research as you can into a prospect. It's all out there, right? So in the world where before you'd had to log in to Salesforce and then maybe like a Zoom info or maybe some type of recorder and then start doing your own Google research, I actually would start with a prompt like, I'm prospecting into ABC company, right? Here's what I know about them. Here's the region and the territory.

Here's who at least I perceive the CISO to be based on my own research. And here's the problem set that we at Abstract do. Find me, are there other vendors that have openly blogged about them? Like, can you do customer testimonials? Are they going to partner events that I should be aware of? Some of these regional partner events. Have they spoken at any of the conferences?

Has anyone written about them? They've had a recent breach. And I would kind of put all that into a prompt and get a report back that I would really synthesize and then use that as the opening of my plan of attack for the prospect. And that can be done so quickly these days, right? Where in the past it took a while to get all that research that I've constructed and put myself together. This is almost so instant. It's incredible. I'll give you a use case.

My own son, he is a 17 year old senior in high school and we made him last summer an intern to be a BDR. And even for myself, seeing what he's able to do as a BDR in this AI age, I'm like in the past that was like beyond almost college graduate. Because AI has just enabled him to do so much of the research, he's seen me do my day job, he's listened to plenty of calls in the car, right? So he kind of had a hint of what he should be doing.

And he took it upon himself to leverage AI in order to go build his network, establish a game plan, understand the positioning, understand the competitors, and then go and prospect. It's pretty cool.

Andrew Monaghan (36:25.01)
I feel like one thing that hasn't changed is those that grab opportunities like that and just run rather than sit back and think, I don't know what to do or someone needs to tell me what to do. You're the ones that are going to do best out of all this.

Chris Camacho (36:37.57)
Yeah, they are going to be. Yeah. Again, back to my creativity, right? That's why I was saying I highlight creativity. Those that are creative, those that take it upon themselves, those that invest their own time, not just the nine to five, you know, abstract time, but they're like investing in themselves. Like the ones I really appreciate are the ones that don't use AI for just the prompt, like a chat, right? I have, I have some that are like bought these Mac minis and put in all these tools in it and are using it in their own like

environment just to learn and evolve. Those are the ones that I'm like really focused on because those are the creative ones that are thinking ahead, right? How can they can use that technology to make themselves better to then position themselves hopefully to sell abstract in the market.

Andrew Monaghan (37:21.502)
Right, right. Yeah, one of my clients, one of the sellers there, he said he did it basically over a week. He created a brain, he called it, and it's got all these kind of context things inside Claude. It's got Claude skills, the whole thing. And he just, you know, pumps in what he knows in his transcripts and his emails, and it just keeps telling him what to do next and things to watch out for. And he says he's got so much more capacity as a human being because he doesn't forget about things and doesn't get to things. just...

Chris Camacho (37:28.877)
Right.

Andrew Monaghan (37:50.634)
So he comes at him a little bit and he says it's just going to change how he works his deals.

Chris Camacho (37:56.29)
And that's, that's another back to your question about how sellers should be leveraging AI. It's not just the research, but if you lean in, it can prompt you, have you thought about doing this? And a lot of times you're like, I haven't thought about that. Thanks for that idea. Right. And this is all from AI, not from your BDR or your SCE or me as a leader kind of asking you anymore. It's just another system AI in this case, that's just prompting you with ideas of have you tried this? Have you thought about this? Have you positioned this? Have you approached this person? Right.

Again, all of that power in your hands in order to go be differentiated.

Andrew Monaghan (38:30.226)
Yeah, where does rest of the year hold for abstractors?

Chris Camacho (38:33.358)
So actually we end our fiscal year here in two weeks. We're a little bit off from a lot of other companies. So we have SCO here next month. So what does the rest of the year bring everyone together? Reflect on what happened last year and then focus on next year and then go and dominate our space. We're excited about where we are. Like I've mentioned, we're selling into these modularized solutions, plenty of opportunities for us.

Andrew Monaghan (38:38.929)
End of

Chris Camacho (38:58.86)
and really use the opportunity to educate our reps. Actually, AI is gonna be a topic like how you can leverage AI to do these things in your selling, the way you sell, right? So for us, it's just continuing to grow and build, hiring more sellers, educating them, enabling them, and then giving them the right tools to be successful.

Andrew Monaghan (39:20.636)
Well, listen, I wish you all the best in that success for this year and also next.

Chris Camacho (39:24.056)
Thanks, Andrew, I really appreciate it. Excited to have done this.