Ok, so the business world is finally starting to understand and embrace the criticality of company culture. We’re slowly starting to move past the notion that free pizza and a ping pong table are not the foundations of authentic culture. At this point, they are just table stake elements every startup is adding to contribute to their “cool” factor.

A genuinely healthy company culture will drive engagement, lead to optimal productivity and a healthy business overall.  And yet, defining what culture actually is – and then finding an adequate way to measure its success - leaves many companies understanding its importance, but not how to approach it. More challenging still is even if you determine a solid way to define and build your culture when your company is small, scaling it healthily becomes an even more elusive mission.

Got a strong culture you are proud of?  Excellent. Read on for four ways to scale it with some soul.

1. UNDERSTAND WHO YOU ARE. Your organizational brand doesn’t just help you attract the right customers; it’s also a critical element in helping your employees connect themselves to the overall company and its mission.  If you have the right team, they will desire to be part of the growth story, as well as to understand their place within it. Having a clearly articulated and understood vision, mission, values and celebrated behaviors helps to ensure every person on the team has the context to make those connections. This goes so far beyond plastering these items up on a wall and hoping everyone embraces them by osmosis - they need to be woven into everything from decision making to success delivery. Understanding who you are as an organization becomes the glue that helps both “old timers” and “newbies” alike navigate your culture in a productive, meaningful way.
    

2. NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF YOUR PEOPLE. Your business may be thriving, but to scale your company, you can never take the focus off of your people. Understanding who you are (think articulating your core values) is just the start. They must be well articulated, understood, and embraced by all. That requires you to ensure you have the right people on the team – and this goes way beyond a strong skill set.  Building a team of people who balance those talents with a positive attitude, the aptitude to evolve and continue growing within the company, and the ability to enhance your culture is vital. And that’s just the beginning. As you begin to build out your people function, ensure that every element of your “employee lifecycle” – from the first outreach to a potential candidate, through your promotion cycle, through the day you part ways (and every step in between) maps back to your core values. It is one thing to say “THIS” is what’s important to us. It’s quite another to have your employees truly understand how those values provide the roadmap to success.
    

3. TEAM US.  It’s one thing for each individual to understand the company, and how they can find optimal success within it…it’s quite another for those individuals to come together and operate as a real team. When you can move from an “ego of one” mentality to an “impact for the good of the company” one, you’ll be far better positioned for success. Again, having your employees effectively rally around the mission and values becomes invaluable to the health of your organization. That’s not a particularly hard task when things are going well.  However, having this shared mindset becomes critical when the inevitable impasses, disagreements and approaches surface. Your culture cannot be about who is right; by focusing on the unified goals and values, you’ll healthily scale your culture AND find success.
    

4. ALWAYS CONSIDER WHAT TOMORROW WILL LOOK LIKE.  When we crafted our core values nearly eight years ago at Rapid7, we balanced them with notions of who we knew we were; as well as aspirational values of who we wanted to be.  We committed to these five values and built our growing business around them. As the company scaled quickly, they become an invaluable touchstone to ensure everyone was on the same page in terms of what was important to us as an organization.  When that growth comes quickly, and you are fighting to keep the pace, it’s easy to lose sight of these fundamentals. You can’t. Having a stable culture bolsters people through the changes in their roles and the business and creates an environment of further scalability.

Culture is not at all the “fluffy” stuff it’s been accused of being. Of course, creating an environment and reputation of fun can initially attract people to your organization; but it sure won’t retain them if you don’t have the basic fundamentals in place.  If you are fortunate enough to work for a company that has carefully outlined its culture, ensure it scales with soul by providing you apply it – every single day. This should be on every CEOs radar screen and priority list when contemplating healthy growth. And it should be something every prospective employee should probe on while they are evaluating whether or not to join your company.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

Piaggio Fast Forward, or PFF, was founded in 2015 by the Piaggio Group to pioneer the intelligent movement of people and goods. The company’s mission is to help people move better, further and faster, in ways that have not been possible before.

To get a closer look at how the team operates, we connected with two members of their team, Carlos Asmat and Eddie Carrillo, to learn more about the day-to-day operation of their engineering organization, the technical challenges they get to solve and what it is like working on their robotic mobile carrier called gita!

Also, Piaggio Fast Forward is hiring! Check out its BIZZpage for all the company’s openings!

Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.

Images courtesy of Piaggio Fast Forward

For this episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Mike Volpe, who is the CEO at Lola.com.

I’m excited, as this is Part 2 of our special podcast mini-series where I interviewed two Boston tech legends. The first being Paul English, who is best known as the Co-Founder & CTO of KAYAK. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, make sure you do. There’s so much great info in there.

But today’s interview features Mike Volpe, who as most of you already know, was the Chief Marketing Officer and an early employee at HubSpot. And, he was recently the CMO of Cybereason.

So, why is this a podcast mini-series? Well, they are both together now at Lola.com, a disruptive online travel service which is focused on serving the needs of business travelers.

They recently announced the addition of Mike as the company’s CEO, and Paul moved to the role of CTO. I went over to their offices to interview both of them shortly after the announcement was made to bring you these exclusive interviews for our podcast.

In this episode, we cover:

• Mike’s background, and his family’s history of success in the tech industry
• The story of HubSpot; we talk a lot about its early days, how they built a world-class culture, experimental marketing, and what it was like going public
• His current role as CEO of Lola.com, and the future outlook of the company
• His thoughts on the Boston tech and angel investment scene
• Plus, a lot more

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Yesware, an inbox productivity platform that transforms the way you send emails. With features such as campaigns, email tracking, and templates, Yesware removes barriers to productivity and empowers teams to make smarter decisions, faster.

Here’s some fun facts about Yesware... they are Boston born-and-bred, with a downtown office that has a nap room, yoga studio, and even their own Irish pub... they have an award-winning product and culture, and have been recognized as a Boston Globe Top Place to Work... they are proud to have reached a 50/50 gender ratio across their team as of this summer.... and they also just raised $15M in additional funding!

The company has big plans to put those resources into further developing their product and people, so as you might have guessed, they're hiring! Be sure to check out yesware.com/company for more info on their culture and job openings.

To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

I’m fresh off the plane from Las Vegas; arguably no trip anyone in their right mind wants to take in the brutal desert heat of August. And yet each summer, thousands of hackers descend on the city for the penultimate series of cybersecurity conferences known as Blackhat, BSides, and DefCon. As a people leader who has been in cybersecurity for nearly two decades, attending these conferences have served as an incredible sociological study on the evolution of a community and industry.

When I joined the fledgling company @stake back at the start of 2000, little was known about this emerging new industry. I was hired by a venture firm to do some diligence on a Boston-based hacker collective called The L0pht. Admittedly, at the time I knew very little about what a hacker was, or what the heck I was walking into. I entered the meeting in a clandestine warehouse space slightly scared of these man-boys who refused to share their real names with me. I walked out at the end of the day sharing the assessment, “Not only do I think you should invest in them; I want in.”  

And so one of my favorite startups and career experiences was born.  

Nearly 20 years have passed since that initial meeting, and much has changed in the industry, as well as in the personal and professional lives of those who were involved. I had the incredible opportunity last week to see this group of old friends and colleagues of the L0pht, and listen to them address a packed house discussing their role in one of the most game-changing moves in cybersecurity. They testified before a Senate subcommittee back in 1998. Using only their handles to protect their anonymity, they warned our government of the potential insecurities of the Internet. Among their most powerful testimony included the terrifying-yet-likely-very-true claim, that the Internet could be taken down “by any of the seven individuals seated before you” with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes.  Unfortunately, that prophetic statement was largely ignored. We now see the ramifications of our lack of security with cyber attacks dominating the daily news. Once dark and mysterious, this topic is now the focus of boardrooms and frightened individuals alike.  At this point, even my mother will call me with a phone call that starts, “Did you hear that Target had a breach?”

In the time that has elapsed since that groundbreaking testimony, I’ve been witness to this group evolving from a reputation as “scary hackers” to well-respected thought leaders. To sit in the audience of their talk last week and listen to other members of the security community thank them publicly for inspiring them to pursue this field made me proud of them. As any pioneer knows, it is exceptionally hard to get out in front and share a reasonable misunderstood point of view with the world. And yet, when you summon your courage and share a message you passionately believe in and the tenacity to bring it to reality, you put yourself in a position to potentially change the world.

The understanding of the internet “breaking” is slowly starting to evolve from Kim Kardashian’s racy pictures to a deeper understanding of the capabilities of hackers using their powers for evil, rather than good. In other words, the L0pht saw the future all those years ago, and it’s taken us nearly twenty years to begin to grasp the reality of their words.

I’m proud to have played a small role in creating a platform in @stake where this group of brilliant pioneers had a “legitimate” forum to educate the world and play a role in making it a safer place. However, I’m even more proud to associate with these people who put themselves out there - dodging death threats and claims of being “sell-outs” along the way - in their journey to make the world just a little bit safer. Being a pioneer can be a scary role; and yet when we find the courage to do so, we can indeed change the world.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

Masthead and thumbnail images courtesy of The Washington Post.

Working with our clients on a range of cybersecurity marketing efforts, from market assessment to branding and messaging to marketing program development, we set the foundation for sales to get in front of the right prospects in the right way to drive the company’s overall growth objectives. Whether selling cybersecurity products and services directly or through channel partners, today’s landscape requires being very deliberate in whom to target and how to engage with them. You need to find the most effective ways to reach, engage and nurture them with relevant information on an ongoing basis.

We’ve compiled a set of six tactics to consider as part of your cybersecurity sales and marketing efforts. Some of these come from our own client experience, and others are the result of successes from other sales leaders in the industry. Have your own cybersecurity marketing tips to share? We’d love to hear from you!

1. Don’t Assume Going to the Top Will Get You Results

While some cybersecurity companies have embraced a “bottom-up” revenue model - targeting developers, analysts, and other users of a solution - many firms still vie for the attention of executives. In marketing products and services in general, it’s easy to assume that going “to the top” will get you faster results because the executives are the decision-makers, right? However, this is not necessarily the case when marketing cybersecurity products and services. While the executives may love your pitch and think your products have value, they will often pass the purchase decision down to middle management or the technical and engineering teams. Security is complicated and must take into account adherence to standards bodies, compliance, current existing infrastructure, and vendor compatibility.

In government, for example, it is almost always assured that the top executives will pass purchase decisions off to their direct reports. Charles Booth, Vice President of Sales in the IoT, Cybersecurity, and Networking departments says that top executives rarely pull the trigger when it comes to security solutions. “An executive strategic decision maker in the government sector has that power but rarely uses it,” said Booth. Having worked in the government sector for over twenty years, Booth attributes this to the executive role having an “expiration date” of 2-3 years. For executives to make a purchase decision, they would need to deeply immerse themselves in the process, which ties them up and keeps them from focusing on strategy, an integral part of an executive's job.  

In a mid-market commercial environment, seasoned Sales Executive Joel Broyhill shares how important it is to remain open to targeting different personas rather than the obvious ones, especially in the early stages of a company maturing their sales and marketing functions. “We had been targeting CISOs with our solution but started to realize that some of the lines of business leaders actually had a greater vested interest in investing in our solution. We started to see success by targeting business leaders instead, and having them champion the solution with the CISO.”

Tip: By all means, pitching executives at the highest level are sometimes the best path forward, but don’t rely solely on going to the top. Much of your marketing work and sales outreach can (and often should) be focused on targeting across a range of levels within the organization.  

2. Develop Distinct Programs for Each Security Persona  

Along with the above, it is imperative to understand the various personas involved in both purchasing and using your solution and then planning the right marketing activities to support them. For example, as part of our cybersecurity marketing practice, we recently worked with a client who sold security tools to developers and designed a go-to-market that was heavily “bottom-up” versus a “top-down approach” as is typical in many non-cybersecurity markets. In this bottom-up approach, we focused our marketing efforts directly on the developers who were responsible for writing more secure software, skipping the middle-management layer altogether—or at least building the organizational groundswell first with users before moving up. Some examples of marketing tactics we included were targeting very technical keywords, creating technical content, engaging on GitHub and Stack Overflow, and going to developer Meetups, among others.

Tip: Deeply immerse yourself in the buyer personas engaged in both using and purchasing your solutions. Then, focus your marketing efforts where you will get the most bang for your buck, and build that into your marketing and sales enablement plans.

3. Use Trade Shows for Show, and Verticals for Progress

While attending the larger cybersecurity industry events is a necessary element of marketing for many, it tends to help more with building brand awareness of your company rather than having an immediate impact on your pipeline. Let’s face it – the cybersecurity market is crowded and noisy. As such, unless companies invest in a robust, multi-channel lead generation plan for their presence at larger events, it’s common for very few “hot leads” to come through.

Matthew Fisch, Cybersecurity Consultant and SVP Sales for security company Towerwall, Inc. emphasize that getting in front of the right buyers requires you to “swim in their lane.” Matthew says you need to engage and hang out where they hang out, and not just attend security-focused events.

“If I want to sell into the banking or financial vertical, for example, I find events that they all go to, I get to know them, listen to them, and then build a real relationship,” said Fisch. “Then, when the topic of security comes up, I act as an advisor to help them build business solutions, whether it’s with my company or recommending products and services that I’m familiar with from being immersed in the industry. This builds trust and you can bet when they are ready to buy, I’m on their short list.”

Tip: Swim in your customer’s lane by finding the industry-focused events they frequent and attend them as an engaged participant. While there, introduce yourself and talk with them about the key issues they face. Learn to speak their language and build a relationship. Later, you can follow up with suggested security solutions positioned to them around the specific problems you know they face.

4. Create Vertical-Focused Cybersecurity Marketing Strategies

While vertical marketing strategies are commonplace due to their effectiveness, many smaller cybersecurity firms still shy away from narrowing their focus to a few key verticals for fear of alienating a potential prospect that does not fall within those parameters. Instead, they may focus on the pain points their solution addresses across sectors, and treat verticals as an afterthought. This approach is generally not sufficient to stand out in the cybersecurity space. Why? Since most buyers of cybersecurity products face the same pain points, too many vendors end up sounding the same.  Buyers of security solutions all want secure end-points, a secure network, the ability to detect a breach, secure software development practices, strong governance, remediation policies in place, and the ability to gain rapid insights when a breach does occur, to name a few.

With so many vendors pitching their solutions, the cybersecurity space can be noisy and confusing with little differentiation in messaging, which can quickly become frustrating for buyers.

Instead, marketers should focus on topics their prospects care about, relevant to each target vertical. If a target buyer is a hospital, focus on topics they care about, such as HIPAA. If it’s a government target, focus on the standards they must adhere to, such as JITC (Joint Interoperability Test Command) or TAA (Trade Agreement Act). Discuss cybersecurity solutions from the buyer’s perspective, relevant to their day-to-day - and to do so in their language.

Tip: Leverage sales intelligence tools such as DiscoverOrg to develop industry vertical segmentation with tight targeting and associated list development, and create specialized content and campaigns accordingly.  

5. Follow Up with Content Containing Substance, Not Glitz

Done right, a technical white paper can be very useful for engaging technically oriented prospects. It provides detailed, high-value information that the customer cares about while positioning the company as a thought leader, which drives credibility in support of sales. Keep in mind that you should not use a valuable white paper for cold, top-of-funnel lead generation, as it may never get the attention it deserves. Instead, use it as a follow-up from other lead generation efforts, whether digital advertising campaigns or an in-person interaction. This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many marketers use white papers as first-touch lead generation activities, and then follow-up after customer visits or other interactions with glossy, shiny marketing material. By all means, include the glitz, but be sure to leave prospects with a substance they can use.

One method Matthew Fish used with great success was a white paper he authored on GDPR, which he used to start conversations with key executives at the vertical-focused events he attended. “I’d follow up after in-person interactions with key executives by giving them my GDPR white paper, which they found very useful,” said Fish. “And now they know me and trust that I know their pain points on this subject. That makes it a lot easier to let them know what my company does and how our products can help them.”

Tip:  Build into your cybersecurity content marketing plan a list of topics that would provide value to your customers based on issues they face on a daily basis. Once these assets are created, use this content to nurture new and existing prospects.  

6. Find Creative Ways to Showcase Customer Successes  

Marketing teams in every cybersecurity company know the challenges around case studies and testimonials in this market.  Customers are often reluctant to announce to the world what products and solutions they use to keep their organizations secure. While the reason is obvious – inviting a breach from a hacker who knows the loopholes – it leaves cybersecurity marketers with a problem. How can you maximize the value of a happy and satisfied customer for prospecting efforts?

One way to help prospects understand the benefits of your solution without explicitly naming them is to write use case oriented thought leadership articles based on client engagement but anonymized and with broader best practices referenced. This serves as high-value content as well as education around the challenges presented and a solution offered.

Another way to get your name out there without having your customer reveal any security secrets is to invite clients to discuss trends in published content, ideally in alignment with your solutions, even if they don’t reference them directly. This is particularly valuable for high-profile clients, such as F500 or other well-known entities.

Tip: Be creative in finding ways to showcase your solution’s value in the customer’s voice and “promote” a happy customer without having them tout your products overtly. The simple association with them can get you noticed.

Natalie Nathanson is the Founder and President of Magnetude Consulting. Find additional content on the Magnetude Consulting Blog. Follow her on Twitter: @_Magnetude

For this episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Paul English, who is one of the top entrepreneurs in the tech industry.

Several of Paul’s companies have been acquired, but he is probably best known as the Co-Founder and CTO of KAYAK, which went public and was acquired by Priceline for $1.8B. Paul’s current company, Lola.com, is a disruptive online travel service focused on serving the needs of business travelers.

In this episode, we cover:

• Paul’s background, and his earlier companies
• The founding of KAYAK and its acquisition
• The details on Lola.com
• His thoughts and tips on hiring
• What it was like having a book written about him
• His charitable work
• Plus, a lot more!

Ok - quick side note! This interview is actually Part 1 of a two-part podcast mini-series, as this interview was held shortly after the announcement of Mike Volpe joining the Lola.com team as CEO (and Paul moving into the role of CTO).

So in addition to today's interview with Paul you’ll want to check back next week because we are going to have an interview with Mike Volpe, which is his first podcast interview since taking on the role as CEO.

To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

More than several former employees of Open Market left their mark on the Boston tech scene, and many of them have gone onto executive roles at other prominent tech companies, have started their own, or have become board members at other tech companies in the area. We've compiled a slideshow of 20+ alumni to share the details on what they are up to now.

For this slideshow, we used the following criteria:

• Must be based in the Boston area.
• Tenure at Open Market for at least two years...however, we did make a few exceptions if the person played a key role in the early days of the company.
• Currently a founder, executive, or board member. 

A special thanks to Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge for helping us put this slideshow together.

For this episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Eric Paley, Managing Partner at Founder Collective, a seed stage investment firm in the Boston area.

This year, Eric was ranked #11 for the Forbes Midas list, which is a ranking of the top VC in the industry. And yes… there’s no doubt, he definitely has the golden touch. Here are just a small sampling of his early stage investments: Uber, The Trade Desk (IPO), Cruise Automation ($1B acquisition by GM), Formlabs (valued at $1B), and more.

Prior to launching Founder Collective with his partners David Frankel and Micah Rosenbloom, he was a co-founder (along with Micah) at a company called Brontes Technologies that was acquired by 3M.

In this episode, we cover:

• Eric’s background and his journey into entrepreneurship
• The background story about Brontes and how they disrupted an untapped industry
• The formation of Founder Collective
• The story behind his investment in Uber
• Why he loves making investments that are "non-obvious” or “non-glamorous.“
• Plus, a lot more!

To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

I have an addiction to change. So much so that I have a tattoo of symbols representing the balancing of “crisis” - namely, “danger” and “opportunity.” For me, I choose to overlook the danger - I just prefer to see that in any chaotic situation, there is a blank canvas of opportunity to create an answer. With that mindset, it’s no shock my career gravitated towards the continually evolving world of startups.

I’ve been at Rapid7 for over seven years now, and admittedly, I’ve considered leaving a handful of times. It was never because I didn’t love the company, respect the leadership, or embrace the future of the company. Instead, I had convinced myself that my measuring stick for success was building something from scratch, and then getting to scale. I feared that if I stuck around after an event (in this case an IPO), I would become bored, or worse, complacent.  How wrong I was. My infinitely patient and understanding CEO said exactly what you say to a person like me, “Great job getting us to this point... but scale this to a few thousand people and still have it be an amazing place to work, and then you can call victory and move on.” So I have stayed.  And I am happy I did.

There is some odd characteristic that those of us who are drawn to startups share.  I’m guessing many of us might have run with scissors when we were little or touched the hot stove when we were told not to...just to see how hot it actually was. In other words, we are typically insatiably curious and are eager to learn.

During the last rainy spell we had, I was binge watching Six Feet Under, and there was an episode about a house catching on fire, which led to an advantageous twist of fate for the business of the main characters. I always identified with the notion of a firefighter - I love running head-on into the problem in front of me, and if it’s a little bit risky or dangerous, it’s that much more interesting.  However, it never occurred to me I might connect with the mindset of an arsonist as well.

Now wait...what I mean is, if there is no readily available problem for me to work on, I’ll create one from scratch so I can become immersed in solving it. Obviously, I’m no arsonist, nor do I seek out illegal activities to keep myself entertained.  However, the recognition of these driving behaviors was yet another confirmation about why the field I choose has proven to be a great fit for my passion around the startup community - I’m surrounded by similar profiles, all packaged differently.

Question to ponder: How well do you know yourself?  Can you scratch below the surface of “I aspire to be a CEO someday” or “I’m a great team leader” and really identify what motivates and excites you?  And if you can, are you in a role or environment where those areas have a chance to shine? Life is short, but careers that we aren’t passionate about can make it feel very, very, long.

I’ve learned a major factor to thriving as an entrepreneur isn’t just having a great idea or assembling a stellar team; it’s about doing that one thing you just can’t live without doing.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator