The Achieve Podcast - Craig Patterson (Exabeam)

Welcome to another episode of the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs who are building meaningful businesses, shaping their industries, and having an impact. I'm Taylor Baker Baker, your host, and excited to be joined today by Craig Patterson, Global Channel Chief at Exabeam, and you can find them at exabeam.com. Now Craig, we were just talking off camera, but tell Give us the backstory on how you got into the space and what it is you guys are doing in the cybersecurity space.

Yeah, no, thanks for the question. First off, my man, thanks for having me on. Excited to have this conversation. So my backstory is really I've spent the last 2 decades of my life, you know, getting up, having a cup of coffee, and then figuring out how do we scale global go-to-market organizations. And so my role today is in cybersecurity. You know, we're focused on scaling our global ecosystem. You know, my company, Exabeam, we're focused in the security events incident management space, or SIEM. And that's our primary line of business. Our secondary line of business is called user-based entity behavior analytics, which we call UEBA. UEBA is all about insider threat. And so when you think about one of the biggest risks for companies out there today, Taylor, It's all about insider threats, you know, insider, malicious insiders doing bad things. And so we look for people that are doing things that are a bit abnormal. And so we can, you know, create those, those risk indicators. And so they can be investigated for their malicious behavior. So that's a bit on me. I've spent the last, you know, 10, you know, 20 years of my life in go-to-market organizations. And really what I like to do is I like to, you know, find companies that are really focused around scaling through some sort of channel ecosystem, you know, on a global scale. That's really where my specialty is.

Wow, that's, that's impressive. That is a rising problem for sure, that insider problem. Now what would you say is actually driving growth for your guys's business right now?

Yeah, I mean, it's very simple. It's channel. And so when you think about the whole landscape of security, it's very, very complex. So imagine you are a, you know, a CISO, Taylor Baker Baker, at an organization. You think about the role of the CISO keeping the security posture, you know, keeping companies safe from all the bad actors around the world. Well, it's very, very complex, right? You know, there's new threats emerging every single day through agentic AI. AI, you know, companies using AI to generate more and more risk, more and more threats. So it becomes very difficult for companies to figure all these things out on their own. And so, you know, the emergence of channel, you know, there's this whole ecosystem of channel partners out there that have some level of expertise in certain areas that can come in in sort of an unbiased fashion and help these companies solve, you know, all these threats that are happening day in and day out. And so When you look at the landscape being very complex, you know, we're really tapping into that ecosystem, you know, building those strategic relationships with channel partners all over the globe, you know, and that's really, you know, the catalyst for our scale is just really, you know, unhooking the growth as it relates to the channel ecosystem.

Wow. Now I read an article recently, I wanna say it said cybersecurity or cyber crime is the third largest industry as far as transactions. And then, yeah, it's crazy to me how much money, like, yeah, it's fascinating.

And it's, it changes minute by minute. So the threats that, you know, companies are experiencing today aren't going to be the same threats they're experiencing tomorrow. You look at all the things that are happening with like deepfakes. I mean, it's, it's terrifying. You know, we've had some examples of, you know, catching certain, you know, behaviors where people try to, you know, impose themselves as certain people going through interview process, things like that. And because of that abnormal behavior, we are able to sort of identify those risks. But yeah, cybersecurity is a great field to be in. It's, you know, it's fascinating. We're dealing with unbelievable interesting things that are changing day in and day out. Especially when you think about not only the insider threat problem, but what's really starting to emerge is the threat around securing agentic AI. And so all these companies out here are, you know, they're creating these AI agents, right, to do certain things or certain workflows for the company. But every time those are set up, it becomes another risk point for companies where, you know, breaches can happen. And what we're seeing is a lot of these AI agents actually start to go rogue themselves. And so not only are we baselining employees, you know, looking at like what Taylor does every day. Taylor gets up, he has his coffee, he does these certain, you know, activities every day. He looks at these applications, you know, he looks at these files. And then when you do things outside of that norm, we create those risk indicators. Now we're taking that same technology and we're looking at how do we identify what's happening with AI? So why is this AI agent giving out this API token or key? Like, why is this API agent getting out this confidential information? So you start to baseline what is normal with AI, and then you can identify those risk factors when AI starts to go rogue. So it's pretty fascinating, my friend.

That is unbelievable. It's like sci-fi movies.

It is.

Now, how do you determine if it's like the AI itself going rogue versus somebody guiding the AI to go rogue? Does that make sense?

Well, it's kind of a combination typically because people are trying to infiltrate AI to get information. And so typically it's a combination of both. And so again, we look at that abnormal behavior of what are the activities that the AI agents are doing or what information are they sharing. And so by looking at it every single day, by looking at all the different AI agents within an organization, you can kind of baseline that. and you can start to see when things fall outside of that normal behavior.

Wow. Now, how big is your guys' team and organization?

Yeah, so we, we have, you know, about 100 salespeople worldwide, you know, in the channel ecosystem, we have about 40 people worldwide. We're about $300 million in revenue, you know, 6-time Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in our specific domain. So, You know, as it relates to that analytics, that user-based analytics, the agentic AI analytics, which is our new category, you know, we're kind of the gold standard for the market, you know, Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in that particular domain. So, you know, people are trying to solve insider threat, they're looking to secure AI agents, like we're the company that people reach out to.

Awesome. Now, what would you say for you personally, some Driving points, what experiences, positive or negative, have molded the way you think about running the organization?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. You know, fortunately for me is I've had an opportunity to work for a lot of different people over the years, and I've learned what not to do as well as what to do. And the thing that, you know, that I've always really focused in on over my career, and I think this really is the secret sauce for me personally, is really building a culture, a culture that people want to be a part of. And I think what I've recognized over the years is when you take the time to put in the effort to build the culture, the results always follow. And so how do you do that? There's a lot of ingredients that go into that, right? First, you got to bring in the team, right, that share the same philosophies and energy. So I'm very much a high-energy guy. I want to find people that are competitive, that have an unquenchable thirst to win. So we're always looking for those competitive people that have trust and relationships in the market and then have proven success. You always want to find people that have proven success. And so you really build out the high-performing team that share those same kind of common themes. But I think it's always about really making sure that you're transparent. And so you build a strategy. And you're transparent to the entire organization on what that strategy is, what those overarching goals are that the company is aligning to. And then you always want to align the individual people within your organization. Like, they need to be aligned to those overarching goals. And so to me, like, my entire career has always been focused around the culture piece, you know, taking care of people, helping get people more opportunities and exposure. You know, really, really pushing people to look within themselves to identify like what is that one thing in their life they think is holding them back. You know, once we identify what that one thing is, we start to build, you know, development plans to help them improve, whether it's public speaking, whether it's, you know, putting together better proposals or, you know, becoming better at what other, you know, any sort of, you know, thing. Specific to their career. So anyway, I think it all just kind of comes back to the overall, you know, culture.

That makes a lot of sense. Now, as you guys try to grow and expand, what have been the biggest bottlenecks or obstacles that keep showing up?

Yeah, I mean, when I look at channel, so, you know, channel really is building strategic relationships with companies, you know, across the globe. You know, here at Exabeam, my channel ecosystem is very large. You know, we have 3,000 partners around the globe. We focus in North America, we're in Europe, I'm in the Middle East, I'm in Asia Pacific, I'm in Latin America. And so each region is a little bit different in nature. Fortunately for me, as I have the opportunity of kind of bouncing all over the world, getting to know people. I was in Australia last week as an example. I get to have a lot of good common, a lot of good conversations that lead to common themes. And what I've identified is that in order to really have success, you need to really understand what are the trends that are driving partners, you know, really what's important to them. And so when you start to break down the overall macro trends, like you want to build a channel strategy and program that aligns to some of those trends. As an example, you know, partners are really keen on becoming better. Well, what does that mean? They want to become more educated. And so, you know, unlocking those bottlenecks is all about really creating that educational path, which we call enablement. So, you know, what are we doing here? We're finding ways to make our channel ecosystem better by providing enablement systems that train them, that teach them to become better sellers of Exabeam. You know, when you do that, you do it in a way where you lead them you know, from a behavior standpoint where you want them to go, it's always this balance between, you know, driving the right behavior and always having the right controls in place to ensure, you know, you drive the right level of outcome. And so, you know, what we're doing is we've reinvented and relaunched our enablement program, you know, really helping partners be a better seller of our services, help them get more certifications, they become more of an expert in our domain. They then become more active. They bring us more opportunities. The conversion rates climb. So, you know, that's one way that we're doing it. The second way is what all people should be doing right now is figuring out like, how do I scale leveraging AI? How do I scale my go-to-market organization? How do I scale my enablement without increasing my operating costs? And so what we're doing there is we're building some next-generation tools to really help partners on the enablement side. And so I recently launched an AI strategy called Sherpa. And so now partners have this always-on resource. They can ask questions, they can qualify opportunities, they can look at use cases, they can practice their pitch, they can record giving their pitch on my products and services, they can upload it into the Sherpa tool. It'll give them feedback on, you did this very well, or you should look at incorporating this value proposition in your pitch next time. So, you know, it's leveraging tools like that to help the partners become better. But where we're going is what's really become— it's really fascinating. And that's, you know, partners are going to be able to invite Sherpa to join calls. And it's going to give them real-time coaching. So imagine you and I are having a conversation, Taylor, and you're giving me objections about what you don't like that I have to offer, or, you know, different things with my products that you have concerns about. Well, Sherpa in the background will start to give real-time coaching to the partner. Hey, Taylor said this. We'll talk to them about this value proposition. Talk to them about this feature set. And so the whole purpose around this is to help partners with speed and velocity, help position the services better. Hopefully that drives a higher conversion rate, you know, in a faster sales cycle. All ties back to my private equity owners.

I love that. Now, when it comes to your messaging and outreach, your marketing systems, what's been working well and where do you feel the gaps and frustrations?

Yeah, so what's really working well for us is the Insider Threat capability. You know, again, you look at the market where it's at, what, you know, the fact that 80% of all breaches are centered around compromised credentials or insider threat, 80% of all the breaches. Wow. And that's exactly what we do. And so a lot of our messaging is around helping companies solve the insider threat. You know, you, you look at the news every single day and every single day in the newspaper, some organization is being breached and, you know, their data is being infiltrated. Traded and it's creating, you know, a lot of problems. So, and that's really what we do is help organizations solve those problems. And so all the messaging around that is really resonating quite well in the market because it's a problem everybody's trying to solve. And then what's really getting people leaning in on the, you know, the edge of their seat is the whole securing Agentic AI. Because it's a bit of the Wild West right now. People really don't understand You know, they don't understand the risk they have in their security posture and they don't understand what to do. Like they're completely clueless on what to do. And so because there's this terror in the enterprise segment right now is, you know, people are really resonating with that messaging because they're all trying to figure it out.

It's so true. And it's like they know they need AI, but they're not sure how to use it.

Exactly.

And then you'll have silly things like, hey, let me just upload my bank statements to my AI tool and it's an open source now. It's open to everybody.

He's like, all right, I mean, 90% of the users probably don't know how to turn that, you know, feature off within ChatGPT. Like, hey, I gotta click this button that says do not allow ChatGPT to train itself by leveraging my information. Most people don't even know how to turn that feature off.

Yeah, and so they only need it, but then they're a deer in the headlights saying, all right, there's a threat here that I I can't even see.

Exactly.

Now, when it comes to AI internally, where have you guys found ways to utilize it? And where do you still see opportunity on the table?

Yeah, so really, when you first off, you look in our product category. So we have a feature within our, our SIEM platform, and that is the Security Incident Events Management platform, which is really the software that security operation centers are using to manage their security posture. So what we've done is we've embedded AI within that tool because the users of that tool are their SOC analysts. Okay. And they're investigating all those tickets that are happening every single day. Would you think about the number of things happening day in and day out? AI really helps them from an efficiency standpoint. It sort of prioritizes a lot of those tickets coming in and then it sort of creates a situation where we take an average analyst and they become significantly above average because they can leverage AI and all the insights that they gain through AI. And so it's embedded in the tool. We believe it makes most of the analysts about 80% more efficient in their day-to-day activities. So that's pretty compelling. On the product set. And then internally, you know, we have our own AI agents. We've set up one for the partner community, which I talked to you about already, which is called Sherpa. And then we also have one internally as well. We can access, um, the cool thing about that is it's all integrated with a lot of our tools internally. And so like the days of like having to search to find this one particular email or this one document, you know, most of the knowledge base has already been created in the tool, so it's easy to access information. Um, and so that just helps our entire organization be a lot more efficient.

That makes so much sense.

And that—

next time, that's a big increase, 80% efficiency. Wow. Now, when you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?

Yeah, I think for me it's like the continued evolution of the channel. And so like the channel just becomes, you know, more and more sophisticated, right? And you think about, you know, where the channel first started. You know, I started in the channel space 20 years ago and it was really kind of focused in the SMB market. You know, they were helping to solve a lot of these transactional type opportunities. You know, it's gotten more sophisticated every single year. And so, you know, what I see is I think that we're just at the tipping point, you know, the security landscape's going to become even more specialized. And so it's going to take a lot more sophistication from the partners to learn, you know, certain verticals, you know, really understand, as an example, you know, what's happening in the financial vertical because the threats and breaches that are occurring in that vertical are sort of specialized versus manufacturing. And so what I see is I see the channel ecosystem and become even more specialized over time and really get aligned around certain verticals, really understanding all of the issues that are happening in those particular verticals. And so that's kind of where I see things will continue to evolve.

That makes a lot of sense. And you would need that with the different tools and AIs, and we're just scratching the surface. Now, when you think about with your journey, your wins, your mistakes, what lessons stand out to you? And what do you wish you understood sooner?

You know, I think the lessons that stand out to me the most really are, you know, kind of going back to what we opened the conversation around is like the culture piece is so incredibly important. You know, people will put up with a lot of things, but if they believe in the leader, if they believe in the culture in which they're working, like you solve a lot of problems. You know, one, you look at attrition. Attrition's a big problem in my industry. You know, people are constantly moving on to other organizations. You know, anytime someone leaves an organization to go somewhere else, it creates friction, it creates lost opportunity, it creates a lot of, you know, time spent rebuilding. And so if you can keep that organization stable, like you're ahead of the game. And so to me, it's like, it goes back to that culture piece. If you have the right culture, if people are excited to be part of the organization, if they feel like their leader is being transparent, honest, they have a path to some level of career growth or opportunity, right? You know, they have trust in the organization, like they're going to stay. And then when they stay, you know, it's going to generate the right level of results. It's gonna— it's just gonna put you in a position to win. And so at the end of the day, it's like you, you want to build engines that scale, you want to build the teams that stay, and you want to build the cultures that people fight to be a part of.

I love that. I love that. Build a culture people fight to be a part of. That is— wow, that one's gonna stick. Now, Craig, if you were to pick one constraint to focus on and solve over the next 90 days, What would it be?

Yeah, so looking at where we are in our go-to-market, you know, we've spent the last 12 months kind of building out the infrastructure. And I always think of this as like, you know, getting ready for the climb. So getting prepared to climb the mountain, which is like, you know, getting our plans in place, mapping out a route up the mountain, getting the team behind us, getting all of our resources ready. You know, getting all of our incentives and everything like that aligned. So we spent the last 12 months kind of getting prepared for the climb. You know, 2026 is all about the execution. And so, you know, we're really starting to pivot into the execution mode, which is like locking in, you know, shoulder to shoulder with our partner community, helping them grow, helping them scale, you know, making sure we're hitting the right level of performance within our organization. And so it's really that level of focus for us this year is it's all about execution, you know, finding those key levers. You know, here we have 4 strategic levers in terms of how we're going to be growing this year. You know, staying disciplined, don't get distracted, you know, staying disciplined on those strategic levers throughout the course of the year to ensure, you know, you have success. Love that.

Now, Craig, any final words for our listeners, for other leaders and entrepreneurs in a similar journey?

Yeah, I mean, I think again, like, you want to take the time to understand your organization. You want to make sure that you do right by your people. You build that culture that people want to be a part of. They fight to be a part of. That solves your attrition problem. You want to make sure that you're always being transparent. Setting those goals. But you got to hold people accountable too. Like you got to set the goals. You got to make sure they're doing their part, holding people accountable. But you set up those basic fundamentals, like you're going to be in a situation to have success, no matter what industry it is. And I know you talk to a lot of different sales professionals across a lot of different industries, but I think at the end of the day, it all zeros back to that, my friend, having a culture that people want to be a part of and the fight to be a part of.

I, I love that, that statement. I have never heard it put that way, that they— I've heard they want to be a part of, but they fight to be a part of, like, have a culture. That, that one's going to stick with me. I appreciate that one, man. Craig, thank you. You've dropped so many nuggets and so much insight and wisdom to the future. This ambiguity, this question people have around it, like Thank you. Thank you for coming on and sharing.

No, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Always happy to give back in the community. If you have any questions, anybody out there has questions, they want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn. You'll find that I have as much energy on LinkedIn as I do on the podcast. Follow me. Happy to answer questions if people have them.

That's awesome. Yeah, reach out on LinkedIn and again, exabeam.com if you have questions. And thank you to our sponsors of today's episode, Achieve a Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, with a colleague. If you have questions about the security aspects of your business, give Craig and the team a call. They'll look at it and let you know what threats you're aware of and ones you're not aware of. So reach out to Craig, and we'll see you in the next episode of The Achieve Podcast.