Island's CRO on Creating a Cyber Category From Zero
Cyber GTM PodcastJuly 07, 202600:49:43

Island's CRO on Creating a Cyber Category From Zero

Island CRO Eric Appel breaks down the cybersecurity sales strategy behind selling an enterprise browser nobody asked to pay for, and how Island went from 6 months out of stealth to 900 deployed customers.

In this episode of the Cyber Go-To-Market podcast, Eric and Andrew Monaghan get into the cyber gtm reality of building a category from scratch: the education-heavy early motion, the SE-led deployments that made land-and-expand work, how the seller profile had to change as the sale moved beyond the CISO, and why Island refuses to spend a single sales kickoff session on competitors.

In this episode:

* Selling the "unsellable": paying for a browser you already have for free
* The seller-profile shift from network-rich closers to maniacal multi-champion prospectors
* Keeping attrition under 7% while scaling past 800 employees
* How Island reacted when Palo Alto acquired Talon
* Why the channel scales a business but can't build a new category
* Investing in international and enablement, and what Eric would time differently

New episodes of the Cyber Go-To-Market Talk podcast drop regularly. Subscribe for more conversations with the people building and selling in cybersecurity.