$80M in pipeline generated. $14M in revenue. The market research and data science behind the repositioning of a saturated security platform — from honeypot-lead to visibility and east-west microsegmentation. Deployed behind a global systemically important bank, the world's largest public biomedical-research funder, and a white-shoe Wall Street law firm.
The problem
The security market was saturated with honeypots in 2018–2020. Customers had no real visibility into their networks — only the perimeter. North-south firewall traffic was well-defended. The lateral east-west traffic between workloads was a blind spot, and that blind spot was where ransomware lived.
The existing positioning leaned into the honeypot capability — a feature competitors also shipped. The top-of-funnel message did not match the reason enterprise buyers were signing six-figure deals at the bottom. The pipeline existed, but it had to be built.
What I did
01. Pipeline. I generated roughly $80M in pipeline and $14M in revenue. Outbound sequencing, account targeting, executive briefings, and the qualification that kept AE bandwidth on real deals. I sat in the deals.
02. MSSP partners. I helped sign the managed-security and reseller partners that extended the platform's reach. Partner reps carried the same repositioned story the direct team did.
03. Market research and data science. The repositioning was a team effort. My part: customer interviews, market research, data analysis, and the data science underneath it. I brought the findings to leadership.
04. The microsegmentation pilot. From those findings, I ran a microsegmentation pilot with a top-10 North American bank. The two anchors held — visibility first, then east-west microsegmentation. That story carried into the Akamai acquisition.
Outcome
Roughly $80M in pipeline. $14M in revenue. Average enterprise deal size moved up by $150K. The repositioned platform deployed behind a global systemically important bank and the world's largest public biomedical-research funder. It reached a white-shoe Wall Street law firm and a major U.S. utility, too. Trillions in assets protected behind the work. Akamai acquired in 2021. The positioning carried into Akamai Guardicore Segmentation.