Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Elisity CEO James Winebrenner (Part 5)

James Winebrenner: The second thing is not going at it alone. All of these companies that we want to do business with can’t evaluate tens of thousands of vendors. The space changes rapidly. Much more so in security. Some of these segments are so small when they start.

All of these customers have phenomenal relationships with system integration partners that they trust to provide that first level of triage. We’ve invested heavily in working with a number of those strategic partners including Worldwide Technology that have trusted relationships with their end customers. They provide a great conduit for us.

Sramana Mitra: Some of these relationships that you have built around have been relationships that you brought into Elisity from your prior experience.

James Winebrenner: Some of them. The network is very valuable. I’ve got a large network of folks that I’ve worked with over the last few decades. I’m excited that we’ve been able to leverage that network. The new network that I see developing is one that is much faster and easier to leverage.

I’ve got a person on the team who runs our technical marketing. His reach on LinkedIn is phenomenal. In a lot of cases, these aren’t even folks that he has worked with directly. These are people whom he has mentored and whom he has provided technical content. We think about the Rolodex as people we’ve done business with 10 to 15 years ago. I’m excited about the reach of these newer networks.

Sramana Mitra: LinkedIn has been a gamechanger in terms of building networks and relationships quickly and effectively. You defined your strategy as very targeted. Once you position where you want to go, you can easily figure out who are the people that fall within that target. LinkedIn is a must in networking.

Last question, where do you see open problems that you would recommend new entrepreneurs go after within the cyber security space?

James Winebrenner: The interesting thing for me is we’ve seen this pendulum swing from traditional infrastructure to cloud. There is a ton of interest in security companies that are 100% focused on the cloud. Elisity is at this weird intersection, because it’s the physical infrastructure that’s leveraging cloud technology. But it’s the stuff that nobody wants to think about.

If I was thinking about it, it would be the impact of augmented reality and metaverse technologies and the security implications from a brand perspective. Who is setting up shop in the metaverse as your company? How are they interacting with people in those types of use cases? We’ve seen a shift from a cloud-based infrastructure toward an application approach in the cloud. In the future, it’s interesting to think about how we’ll deal with threat mitigation and things like augmented reality and the metaverse.

Sramana Mitra: Great! Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Elisity CEO James Winebrenner
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