Creating and Marketing Cybersecurity Products by Richard Reiner

In this ProductTank Toronto talk, Richard Reiner, Executive Chairman at dfuse, takes us through various case studies and lessons learned from his experience building and marketing products in the cybersecurity space.

His key points include:

• Creating a category at Assurent
• Surviving in a maturing market at Enomaly
• Consumer security at PasswordBox

Creating a Category at Assurent

Between 2002 and 2006, cybersecurity technologies for networks were now entering into a period of maturity. Having access to a number of Chief Security Offers due to the consulting work they did, Richard and his team conducted user research to find out how much companies truly cared about security and what they would be willing to spend on it. They began putting all of their time and effort into developing a solution to this problem but realized they were too early and the CSOs were unwilling to spend money on it because it wasn’t actually a priority.

When launching a new product, knowing that customers have a need for a solution you offer is only part of the process. It needs to be the right time to offer that solution and customers must be willing to spend money on it now as opposed to in the future.

Surviving in a Maturing Market at Enomaly

When he joined Enomaly in 2008, Richard found himself at a company that was at the forefront of cloud computing having created the category when it was still nascent. They had a celebrity like founder, yet, were losing leadership in the market and growth had plateaued. When new competitors enter a market that your company’s product once dominated, it can be tempting to rest on your laurels. Richard soon realized that for all of the leads they were generating this wasn’t translating into new revenue. The solution required a pivot and a focus on their competitive differentiators as well as new geographical targets.

Consumer Security at PasswordBox

How do you take a stale category and make it new again? Richard solved this issue when he joined PasswordBox and realized that their password manager wasn’t a product but instead a customer acquisition channel.

The key takeaways from this talk are that you need to truly understand what your customers want when launching a product. Always be willing to pivot to differentiate yourself from competitors and really identify if customers are buying your product or something else.