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A slide deck can open the door. A sharp executive summary can earn a coffee. But the full business plan is still what investors read when they decide whether to wire money or ghost you. It is the dossier that must survive partner meetings, analyst reviews and late night “prove it” Slack threads. Here is…
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Small-Team OKRs: Avoiding the Spreadsheet Graveyard
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2 min read
Most small-team OKRs die in a spreadsheet. Buried in tabs, forgotten by mid-quarter, reviewed once a year if you’re lucky. They didn’t fail because OKRs don’t work. They failed because they weren’t designed to live. OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — are supposed to focus effort, align teams, and drive outcomes. In big firms,…
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He was calm, senior, and unimpressed. A global CISO. One of our biggest prospects. And he wanted a feature that didn’t exist. “We’d need custom X, but built into the UI. Auditable. Editable by non-admins. Can you do that?” Old me would say yes. I froze for a second. Because technically—yes. Our engineers could build it. But…
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Using Public Breach Data as Content That Converts
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3 min read
Most breach write-ups are fast takes. “X company was hit, Y records were exposed.” Maybe a hot take on the attacker group. Then the news cycle moves on. But if you sell security, public breach data is more than a news hook. It’s content that converts, when you use it to show, not just tell.…
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Marketing Automation: A Silent Revenue Growth Engine
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2 min read
When interest rates climb and pipelines shrink, most tech chiefs reach for the red pen. The smart ones reach for their workflow rules. Marketing automation—dismissed for years as the digital PA—has become a revenue underwriter hiding in plain sight. From polite drip to persuasive dialogue Legacy “nurture” sequences are the email equivalent of lift music:…
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Build a Certification Academy Now!
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2 min read
If your partner training is just a deck and a checkbox, you’re missing the real opportunity. Yes, partners need to know your product. But more importantly, people always want something for themselves. That’s where a proper certification program shines. Not just enablement. A career asset. Something they can add to LinkedIn, put on their resume,…
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“We hired a manager to tame the chaos. Ended up with a Zoom zombie apocalypse.” – A startup founder’s epic facepalm. Startups are a glorious mess. Founders, GTM hotshots, and CISO are juggling flaming torches. Growth hits, and chaos sneaks in like a ninja. Middle managers can be your superhero—or a bureaucratic villain. Time it…
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Channel conflict gets all the attention. But that’s not the real issue, at least not first. The real issue is you’re asking partners to behave like extensions of your team when you haven’t even fed them yet. No pipeline, no support, no shared upside, then you wonder why deals get weird. Here’s the truth: happy…
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Cybersecurity buyers evaluated three or more vendors before committing. When every deal becomes a multi-vendor shootout, your team needs sharper ammunition than feature comparisons. Enter the battle card. Battle cards evolved from basic competitor cheat sheets to strategic playbooks. The best ones map your EDR solution’s false-positive rate (e.g., ≤5% vs. CrowdStrike’s 7.2%) to the…
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Every “survived” startup hits the same moment: cash’s moving, invoices are flying, investors want numbers — and there’s no CFO in sight. You don’t need a finance exec yet. But you do need a finance function. Here’s how to build one before you can afford the title. Start with visibility. If your bank balance and…