CXO Chat with Pat Clawson, Chairman and CEO of Resurface.io.

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jason DWA and I am the host of C X O chat. And I have the pleasure of being with pat Clauson. Pat Clauson is the chairman and CEO of resurface labs and resurface labs. I wanna tell everybody is an awesome company. It's a data driven API security company that detects and responds to API attacks in real time. And pat, I know you have a, a, a long history and a, a big background in cybersecurity. I am so happy that, that you, uh, decide to be, uh, a guest on our show today. And, uh, I'll tell you, um, you know, there, you know, you are our first guest, you know, CX O chat. This is our first episode ever. So you have, uh, uh, we're privileged to have you, and thank you for being on our show today, pat.

Speaker 2: 1:08

My pleasure, glad to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Great, great. So well with that said, um, you know, and this is gonna be about a 30 minute or so or less, uh, episode and the, you know, obviously the purpose of the, you know, this whole podcast is to talk with C-level folks, you know, CXOs. Um, and you know, I know you're the CEO of resurface labs and we wanna hone in, in this series and discuss, um, and learn from you, right? Your success, your success stories. I know you, you've worked hard over your career. Uh, you've had a lot of cybersecurity, uh, companies you've run. So, um, let's go ahead and start. And, you know, pat, if you could share with the listener, all our listeners, um, tell us some of your success stories, maybe your journeys, your career path story, where, um, you know, everybody starts somewhere, right. You know, you know, get outta college and then you go to, uh, move your way up. And then, you know, so go ahead and share with us, uh, some of your success stories, pat

Speaker 2: 2:13

Love to, um, yeah, guys, I went to, uh, college at a small liberal, large school in Florida, but the whole time, even before I went to college, I knew that I wanted to mix domestic business with international business. So in the back of my mind, I was always looking at ways of being a part of an international organization, working overseas, growing and learning. Um, when I first got outta college, I went on my interview circuit. Now forget the job I wound up ticking was with the company out of Atlanta. And the, the regional manager I had at the time had this interesting interview process where he would never call you back. You had to get feisty and come knock on his door and show that you had a motor. And I did that outta luck. And, uh, cuz I was feisty and I, you know, I wanted a job and you know, persistence, I think is one of the things that I, I learned early. Um, and that helped me get going in that particular job. But as I moved, you know, I do think that the things that I got through luck and I've hoped to impart upon people because I learned it, um, through luck, but was education training, learning your skill, honing your skill set. If you wanna be good in any industry or particularly if you wanna lead a company, you gotta know it, man. You gotta know it really well. And you can't just think it's gonna happen because you're a great person. You've gotta practice those skillsets. Like you expect every doctor to practice every lawyer to practice every accountant to practice. You wanna be top of the food chain, practice work, do the, do the hard stuff. So yeah, look, I got fundamentals from the very early stages. I was able to take my first job and move overseas for six years and, and work, you know, in a different environment. Part of what you get there is look, it's baptism by fire. You're on your own largely you're not part of the home ship. Um, and you learn a lot of very skilled, unique things that you wouldn't have gotten sitting in a, you know, in an office at a much larger company in your own home country. So, um, through there I met some fantastic people, um, and eventually went into the startup world and I did that with a really good friend and uh, longtime neighbor. And he was a startup guy and always has been, he's been growing companies and I got the bug from there and we started building companies and selling them together and over the years have done that several times in the, in the cybersecurity landscape.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Oh, that's excellent. Excellent. So, um, you know, you mentioned, you know, living overseas and all that, that was, I bet that was a wonderful experience. Uh, I'm just curious. What, what part of where overseas were you at?

Speaker 2: 4:44

I was stationed outta of Sydney. Um, went down there, spent almost six years. Both my kids were born down there. So a couple little Aussies and uh, brought them back home, which was fun. But look, the unique thing about that, and it's hard for you to realize and why that's such a growth experience is you're buying and selling product from R case from Japan and selling it local currency and converting that back to a us company's P and L and sometimes with exchange rates, it wasn't beautiful, but you learn so many things in that environment. And it was such an explosion of opportunity for me and I matured so much as a manager, as a leader, uh, as a business versus

Speaker 1: 5:21

Well that's excellent. Excellent. And, uh, I wanna ask you one other thing about this, um, when it comes to, um, startups, you know, I love startups, you know, I've started companies myself. Um, I'm just curious as far as it doesn't really matter, right? How, how old or young you are. I'm just curious. Um, and it sounds like when you started started startups, you, you might have been a little younger, right? When you first got your you're getting at getting into startups, is that right?

Speaker 2: 5:48

Fairness? Yeah, the first one we were actually in the medical field and really automation in the medical field. So electronic medical record, um, mm-hmm,<affirmative> voice data, all that to mobile, to the mobile devices, severely stage of that. Um, so the answer was yes, I was definitely younger. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, I'm not sure that changes much in my world cuz I'm pretty high energy, but the answer is yeah, I was definitely younger.

Speaker 1: 6:12

That's awesome. Yeah. Cause I know there, you know, some of our listeners are fresh outta college and you know, and some people are, you know, later in their careers and you know, I guess my thought is there's, you know, it's never too late to start a company, right. Whether you're 20,

Speaker 2: 6:28

Absolutely not.

Speaker 1: 6:29

You could be 80 years old and start the next big company. Right. So,

Speaker 2: 6:33

And it's, you know, it's about, there are certain people out there that have the ability to see the future and then know how to get there and create, you know, one of my good friends is, has been that guy for many, many years. I'm not always the original thought guy. I'm the growth guy for sure, but okay. Um, you know, and, and the startups that I've been associated with, I wasn't the guy who came up with the idea, but I was able to see their vision and figure out how to turn it into revenue. Right.

Speaker 1: 7:00

That's great. Awesome. Well, thank you. So let's move on. I got another great question for you today, pat. Um, so I would like to know, and for our, our, um, audience here, uh, what were some of the challenges pat that you faced as you were, you know, in your startups or, you know, working in corporate America, you know, that you faced as you were moving up the ladder or as you're maybe as you were building your company. So

Speaker 2: 7:29

Yeah. Look, I think part of it is always, um, the, the image you portray of your, of yourself, are you a listener? Are you a learner? Are you a team player? Um, and there's this action that we developed many years ago and it's track record teachable way and show no greed. And it's, I expect of myself, what I expect of everybody else in the company and track record is, look, you've gotta be a consistent performer. Our bills are consistent. We require, you know, our players to be consistent. Um, teachable way is look, this company grows on culture, positive culture, learn your job so well that you can pass it on to successive generations so that they can in turn, do the same thing and make this a bigger, better company. And I think shown no greed was probably one of the most important ones that I learned. And when you come out of a revenue generating world, it's all about you, right? You're how can I make more money? Right. And I had a, I had a boss, he said, you know, shuttle, breed's a little bit different when you have somebody new on, for example, the sales floor or development floor or wherever you might be. And they come to you and ask for help. You got two choices. One is, yes, I'll help you, but are you gonna cut me in? Or the next one is absolutely. I'll help you. Do you have any time after work? And we can sit down and talk about it. One of those is more of a leader. One is more of an individual and show. No greed is, you know, you give enough of yourself and you'll get more than you can take in return. So fundamentally it's listening and learning. I've had great mentors. People have taught me so much, you know, instead of being that super bullheaded young person, sometimes you gotta stop looking, listen, and then have good behavior. Right,

Speaker 1: 9:11

Right. That's awesome. I love, um, the fact that you mentioned having good mentors, um, that's something that, you know, I think everybody, you know, should have, regardless of where you are in your career, I mean, you could be, isn't it true, right. Some of the best CEOs out there in the bigger companies they mentors, you know, too. So having a mentor is, is critical. Um, you know, as, as you, yeah. Through your career. Right?

Speaker 2: 9:36

Absolutely. When I was started and was running cyber guard, which was the layer stuff in firewalling company, um, our largest shareholder and he is now a Senator was a phenomenal mentor. You know, a lot of what we did in expanding our technology was through M and a, and he had a world of experience and it was just a, you know, I was a sponge. I was learning and listening and, and, and gaining experience. And then buddy, that I've worked with the old neighbor, you know, he is we're the same age, but just a brilliant guy and opportunity to listen and to learn constantly and have different perspectives is just such a powerful tool. So these guys have been huge in my life.

Speaker 1: 10:16

That's awesome. All right. So mentors, everybody, who's listening. Get a mentor. If you don't have a mentor, find one today,

Speaker 2: 10:25

Lemme add some to that. And that's, that's something the current Senator told me. So you know what, the people within this business aren't necessarily your mentors, they either want your job, or they're afraid of you because you're the boss find people that you can trust that are your mentors that are outside and you can have honest conversations with, and that will help you, right. They're interested in your success. And I think that's an important nuance cuz often we look to our coworkers and that's not always the right thing to do. Right. You need to be worried as a CEO about things that you may not mention to them, or you need advice that they're never gonna have experience to give you.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Great, great advice, man. All right. Let's move forward to, um, got another wonderful question here for you, pat. So, um, let's talk about your current role and obviously, uh, you are the chairman and CEO of resurface labs. Um, tell me, what are you doing at resurface labs? Tell me about your company and your current role and um, and all that.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Great. So resurface labs founded out of Boulder, Colorado, um, three powerful founders, the lead technology founder, uh, Rob Dickenson. This is the second observability platform that he's built. So he comes with the background of knowledge of building a magic quadrant leader. Having exited that through question Dell and, and stayed on and learned from really big accounts. And, you know, he had the vision about what's changing in the API landscape and he said, look, these things are exploding. Um, and they are at the beginning of this year, I, um, Akamai said that 83% of all web traffic now went through APIs and partner said, I think last year they said it was the, the API traffic, malicious API traffic dwarfed legitimate traffic that was last year. This year, they started off by saying, it'll be the number one attack factor within businesses. So as these things have proliferated, we've not done a really good job of protecting them. They're built for business, they're built for fluidity and creating revenue, not necessarily with thought of security. So our company focuses on doing that. We do it a unique way where we only do it in the customer's environment so that there's sensitive data never leaves there, but it also allows us another layer of inspection and threat hunting functionality. So really cool. Um, so kind of dovetailing the second part of that question. What are we doing? What's my current role, you know, part of it in early stage world, it's about focus and not everyone has that experience. So when I come in, I try to do four things in the very beginning to get us grounded. The first one is it's, it's all based in the bucket of research, the whole leadership team and the rest of the company needs to be a part of that. And it's all right. Let's understand from industry analysts, the, the gardens, the foresters, you know, guys like that, you know, what they think about the space is trajectory the players, the capabilities. Then you do the same thing with financial analysts, the guys that work for the mid mid-range banking firms. Um, then the next thing I like to do is a deep competitive analysis. So I want to know every competitor, how much money they've raised, what they think they're valued props are, what they think their target verticals are, what their pricing strategy looks like. Is it simple as it complicated? Um, and then the, the fourth thing I like to do is just statistically relevant survey of our buyer types around the world. And then once we do all that, we really take that knowledge and we boil down into exactly who we are, what competitive advantages we have, what verticals make sense for us to focus on what our product to market our route to market strategy should be, how are we gonna create revenue, right? And what's the pricing model that we can offer up to support that. And then focus say super focused. And that's what we're doing here. It's an early stage software company. It's about getting all that tight and then staying on a very, very focused trajectory towards adding customers and building the business. Mm-hmm<affirmative>.

Speaker 1: 14:21

That's great. So, um, I wanna ask you then, uh, because we have a lot of great listeners on this call, um, you know, maybe they could have a need for what you're doing at resurface labs. What, you know, do you have an ideal customer, you know, profile or, or what's your, or is it, you know, who would you say you're targeting?

Speaker 2: 14:40

Absolutely. So, um, we narrowed our target markets down to the, the financial sector banking, finance, insurance, cetera, as the primary followed by healthcare and then followed by high tech, which includes defense contractors largely because that's the majority of the spend that's where the regulations and the associated fines live. Um, and they're also heavily inundated with APIs and a lot of the known attacks are happening in those environments right now. Um, so we're very targeted there, there's different influences that our buying. So our ideal customer profile folks is primarily on two different buyers. One is the CTO's office and the other is the CISO's office. There's obviously dev involved and there's AppSec involved with the people with the budget so far right now, are, are those guys, our average annual subscription is somewhere between call it 48,000 and 150,000 per year, depending on the volume of API traffic you're trying to monitor, manage, um, and inspect and alert on. Um, so it's a, it's a tight annual subscription. Um, yeah,

Speaker 1: 15:47

That sounds great. Well, thank you. So, so everybody listening, if, uh, you have a need for resurface labs, definitely give, uh, pat a call. So, uh, great, great company. So let's move on then pat, um, as, and I mentioned before about challenges, right. You know, just challenges that you face throughout your career though, but I wanna take that and narrow the challenges to what you're currently facing today at resurface labs. Um, go ahead

Speaker 2: 16:15

One way. Um, yeah, it's different, but at the same time, it's exactly the same. And as something small as it is to bigger, it's the challenges think very, very focused on your own corporate EKG strip, right? What are those things, those heartbeat style measurables that you can't delude yourself in pretending that they're not important, right? You have to focus on those things that have to get accomplished on a daily basis for you to continue to move forward, whether that's, um, marketing lead gen, whether it's your, your sales organization's ability to take those inquiries and move them into opportunities, um, your, your development cycles, your how you support your clients. Those very basic little fundamental details add up. And if you're not, if you drop any of'em, something about the business will fall and you're way too young to let that happen, right? You should focus on the small stuff. They're really small stuff. And the rest of it kind of takes care of himself. So I think that's, it's easy to say, not today. It's easy to say, look, let's just do it once a month in a startup when you're burning cash, that's not okay. You gotta look at it literally daily and you gotta worry about it daily.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I know how it is with the startup company. You know, you gotta, you know, when a lot of cash is going out, you gotta figure out how to make that revenue. Right. So<laugh> yeah,

Speaker 2: 17:37

Yeah,

Speaker 1: 17:39

Yeah. Revenue's king. So, um, so with that said, obviously you have, you have built a lot of successful companies pat, throughout your career. Um, how would you say and tell, tell our listeners, how, how do you build, I'm gonna call it a plus a plus teams. I mean, how, you know, talk about your recruiting strategy, how do you attract talent and how do you build teams that thrive?

Speaker 2: 18:08

Yeah, look, that's a really good question. Uh, there's a lot of surveys and studies that have been done about the impact of B or C players and the you, how they translate, you know, one C player or one a players equal to the five to seven C players. Right? So understanding the math in the power of, of the best at any individual level, I think is key. And, you know, our founder, Rob has done a fantastic job in the development organization and finding absolute a players, people who get it, people who don't need to be told what to do, people that are constantly accountable to themselves, much less to everybody else. Right. So, right. Part of it is in, in your careers, you meet people in your company or in other companies, you develop relationships and you begin to understand their skill sets. And I, I always think that my personal, um, connections have provided some of the best, um, candidates that are true, a players. But outside of that, remember, it's your, it's your mentor network? It's your, it's your deep, your friends that you've built out that are leaders in other aspects of other businesses that you call out to and you, you learn from them why people are great and do they have great candidates and mm-hmm<affirmative>, and it, the sifting process is finding those that are the true gems. And sometimes you have to pay a little bit more for true gem and that's okay because you don't have to have seven C players to kind of make up for it. That makes sense. So you're much better off having super high quality and it's, it's a combination of your own experiences and those that you count on. I very rarely use outside resources to hire cuz within the network of people that we've built trust with over the years, right. When you got a candidate they'll, they'll, they'll hand you people that they believe are very high quality,

Speaker 1: 19:57

Right? No, that's great. So, so, so you're saying that you're using your network or using your mentor network people you've worked with to find, you know, if you're hiring right, you are using net network. So, so when it comes to like posting on your careers website or whether do, do you do that as well though, or, or, or

Speaker 2: 20:17

We do sure. For example, when we're hiring sales development reps, so we're hiring, um, you know, earlier stage we'll do internships, I think are a great way to get to know young people on their way in to give them an opportunity. Um, we use things like LinkedIn advertised for the low medium level positions, but when you're trying to find leaders, leaders, yeah. It's more to me. I need to know who they've worked with and what they think about of strengths and weaknesses. So it just depends. They're an a player. It doesn't mean they're gonna work well with your personality type too. That's another part you've gotta find people to get you and that you can get them right. You can work together and have a great working relationship while you're trying to build a business.

Speaker 1: 20:58

That's great. No, thank you for sharing that pat. Now I appreciate that. Um, moving on, we got a few more questions here and then we'll be wrapping up this episode today. Um, how do you keep up pat with, uh, industry trends? Um, and obviously here in cybersecurity. So I guess what resources and sites and how, how do you keep up? I'm sure there's a lot to learn in cybersecurity, right? So how, how do you keep up with it all?

Speaker 2: 21:28

Uh, in fairness it's not easy, right? What's one of the great advantages of cybersecurity. It, it never stops morphing and changing, right? The concepts of API security didn't exist when I was running a layer seven firewalling company, right. It was, we were going from firewalls to firewalls with the VPNs on them, and then we were adding other gateway functionality. Right. So that was at a point in time. And then, you know, new threats, evolve, attackers change, you know, everything changes. So I went to, we went up an endpoint then from endpoint to data and then data at the dark web. Right? So it's, I think part of it is you've gotta stay high level and while things like the R state conference are expensive, they're also really good in terms of helping you understand the trends, things that are happening in the marketplace. What, and if you listen to enough people that you respect in the space, you, you start to understand new risks. Um, mm-hmm<affirmative> and then it's just research you study it. Like when I make a commitment to come into something like, like, you know, resurface my, my goal isn't just to be here and run the thing I gotta get in and know it. I gotta pull it apart. I have to understand it so I can stand and fight in a panel with a competitor. Right. I've gotta be able to be in that position. So it's a lot of research. It's a lot of studying and you've gotta have the mindset and the energy levels to want to know and be a part of it.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Oh, that's awesome. No, and you know, I'll, I'll, I'll add to that too. I mean, you know, you know, I've started companies too and, you know, you know, knowing your competitor and doing that competitive research and being able to go into the boardroom and you know, you're going up against a competitor, you could say, Hey, here's how reservice is different than this company. And just really know, know your stuff, right.<laugh> yeah. You gotta know your stuff. Right. So it's

Speaker 2: 23:14

Part of those, that initial research, right. You need to be able to Jack Welsh, right? Mm-hmm,<affirmative> find your competitive advantages if you don't have'em get out. Right. So part of that initial research is understanding what you have and do differently, but in your sales process, if the buyer or prospect understands that separates you from the herd and, and what future ones can you build toward, right. Do you have the ability to build future into your, your platform so important and that's part of that research. Right?

Speaker 1: 23:45

Got it. So everybody take Pat's advice, do your research, research, research research. So, all right. Moving on two more questions for you. Um, what advice pat do you ha um, lemme see, uh, what is your advice to people who want to start their career in your industry of cyber security?

Speaker 2: 24:11

Yeah. And look kind of after the, the last question, it, it changes and continues to change and it's so dramatic and it's more global. It's just a fascinating place to be. And it's a great place for smart young minds to come invest because it's a career. It's not something that's here and gone in a, you know, a couple years or commoditized in a couple years, the whole industry shifts. And there's great opportunities to innovate. There's great opportunities for researchers, for analysts, for developers, for all kinds of different roles and skillset, but it is a career that is constantly morphing. It is incredibly exciting. So mm-hmm,<affirmative> my first thing. I, when you're going off to college and you're trying to wonder about what it is you want to do think about the concepts of cybersecurity and how global it is, how exciting it is and what the career opportunities are. I mean, look, the big names that existed, you know, 5, 6, 7 years ago that we thought were the, you know, the, the, the one big NA or the biggest names ever, and would always be aren't really the names anymore. Right? The whole landscape has shifted in the last five or six years, and we have new giant corporations because the threat. Right. It's super exciting.

Speaker 1: 25:24

That's awesome. And is there any certain positions or, you know, roles that like, if someone really wants to get in, they can say, Hey, I would start out in this role or that role or, or not.

Speaker 2: 25:38

Oh, no, not necessarily. I think it's fine. Your in, I, I do think that young people and CEOs in business leaders, you know, those who report the CEOs should do a better job of working with local universities. Um, okay. On internships, get people in young show.'em the ropes have'em for a summer or two summers, bring them in if they're hard workers. Um, and I think the other advantage to that is there are a lot of states that have internship, um, rebate programs. So they want you to invest in local talent and they'll provide you a rebate, which makes it a relatively low cost experience as you're, as you're finding your next leaders. I think the other thing is, as a young person, coming in the old never gets old. The reality is that we, as business, people are trying to build a bench of future talent. You know, you might be the minor league, you might be the non-starter to start with, but you're being groomed, right. You're learning the business, you're learning the culture, you're learning the technology, you're learning the competition so that you can grow and be a future leader in the business. So there's a great reason to start, um, to get your foot in the door.

Speaker 1: 26:46

Yeah, that's great. And you know, that's a great segue into our final question. Today is what advice do you have for folks who desire to be in your position to be the chairman and the CEO of a company? What would you, what would you tell everybody listening?

Speaker 2: 27:07

Uh, look, it's hard work. Um, you have to have a passion for wanting to be and do this type of a role. It's not for everybody. Some people just love the revenue, generating some love the technology side of the business, somewhat fighting the bad guys. Some are finance people for me, this has always been exciting. It's solving the problems that never end. It's all the different aspects of the business, finding the right people to run.'em understanding working through new problems as they present themselves, coming up with successful, you know, outcomes, and then proven that you can do it globally, right? Can you build out a European business? Can you build out an Asia Pacific business? Can you set up a KK in Japan and have that build and be successful, right? It's, it's, it's a lot and you need to be mentally driven in that direction. So my first piece of advice is work harder than anybody around you. You might be the smartest person in the world, but that's not gonna get you there. You gotta work hard. You gotta touch aspects of the business and you've gotta build respect with people around you. They gotta want to work with you and for you, um, the other way around, you're just a CEO with a poor approval rating and probably terrible results.

Speaker 1: 28:19

<laugh>. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. So, um, man, this has been a great, great episode with you today. Uh, you know, pat and thank you for your time for, for joining, joining us. And, you know, I know you're, you're a busy guy, so taking 30 minutes outta your busy schedule, uh, you know, I'm very grateful for, for your time today and all our listeners are grateful as well. So thank you, sir. And again, everybody, well actually, let me ask you this, pat, if, if any of our listeners would like to get ahold of you and they wanna learn more, you know, talk to you personally, or learn more about resurface labs, how can they get ahold of you?

Speaker 2: 28:57

The super simple email for things like this, pat resurface.io that will get through to me, I'd love to talk to anybody about anything and be helpful in any way that I can.

Speaker 1: 29:07

Okay, sir, it's been a pleasure today. Have a great day. And, uh, maybe we'll have you on the show again, the future. So sounds good.

Speaker 2: 29:15

Take care. Take.