I’ve been thinking about Martin leaving Cobia and my own career path. For about 10 seconds I thought of picking up the phone and calling Mitchell to see if they were going to replace Martin. I really enjoy working the vendor side of the house. I remember the thrill of pitching NitroSecurity’s technology to the VC’s then working with them from term sheet to picking up the check. However I came to the realization that not working for a vendor right now is a good thing for me. Like many things in life my employment habits seem to be cyclical in nature. I work for a vendor then I work outside the vendor world. I believe that moving in and out of the vendor world keeps me sharp and somewhat in touch with what customer wants and doesn’t want in a product. I think that depending on your role, working for a vendor exclusively may not be a good thing. It would not be for me.
I have an acquaintance that has worked for vendors pretty much his whole career (more than 15 years) out on the west coast. After having a conversation with him last week I realized how out of touch he is with his customer base. If it isn’t in a trade magazine or analyst report it doesn’t make it into the product requirements doc. Now I don’t blame him for the product being out of sync with customer requests. The company has a poor beta program, no advisory panel, no customer focus group and hardly any post sales follow up (other than support renewal quotes). This is someone who should spend some time working for a VAR / Solutions Provider in their channel to see what is really happening.
I’ve only been out of the vendor space for about 6 months. Already I have picked up on half a dozen things that could be done better, potential niche security products , service opportunities….the list goes on. I don’t think that security innovation is dead as some have suggested. We may not see the level of innovation that early security companies like Checkpoint and ISS were responsible for down the road. Maybe we will….I definitely think we will see more innovation in the future. There are opportunities for innovation out there. If I can see them then rest assured someone with more smarts and a VC bank roll will pick up on them too. As for my own path…I’ll be back in the vendor community at some point.
–Chris
July 5th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Vendors ARE fun, but they don’t half wear you out. You need to take “time off” from all the marketing speak, “80% of attacks are internal”, “SOx is coming”, “you NEED PCI DSS”, etc… and get a proper job every so often. The only problem then is that you are immune to the advertising and the next time round you need to think of something better. We’re our own worst enemies, but it means IT Security moves at a hell of a pace.
July 5th, 2007 at 10:20 am
“…and get a proper job every so often.”
I love it.
Thanks Rob.