A strong cybersecurity go-to-market strategy starts with trust, clear messaging, and experiences buyers remember. Valerie Worman shares how practitioner-led content, community relationships, event marketing, and tighter sales, marketing, and product alignment can help cybersecurity brands stand out and grow with greater credibility.
Head of Marketing at Monad
Valerie (Zargarpur) Worman is the Head of Marketing at Monad, a security data pipeline company that helps teams normalize, filter, enrich, and route security data to the right destinations. She leads go-to-market strategy, brand, content, SEO, events, and sales alignment, drawing on experience across cybersecurity and B2B/B2C marketing. Valerie specializes in turning complex technical concepts into clear, memorable stories, building trust through practitioner-led content, experiential marketing, and community engagement.
Cybersecurity go-to-market strategy is getting harder as vendors compete with similar messaging, crowded launches, and technical content. Effective B2B marketing requires clear positioning, memorable experiences, and buyer trust. How can cybersecurity marketers create a go-to-market approach that cuts through the noise and builds lasting credibility?
Valerie Worman, a cybersecurity marketing leader with expertise in go-to-market strategy, B2B marketing, and experiential marketing, believes differentiation starts with usefulness and trust. A strong cybersecurity marketing strategy combines practitioner-led technical content, influencer and community relationships, creative event experiences, and simple messaging that makes complex products easier to understand. Valerie also stresses the importance of aligning sales, marketing, and product so every part of the go-to-market motion reinforces the same customer needs and value proposition. The result is a more credible, memorable strategy built for long-term growth.
In this episode of Cyber Funnel, Thorn Compton talks with Valerie (Zargarpur) Worman, Head of Marketing at Monad, about cybersecurity go-to-market strategy, B2B marketing, and experiential marketing. Valerie shares how to stand out at industry events, build trust with technical content and influencers, and align sales, marketing, and product. She also explores what B2B marketers can learn from B2C storytelling.
This episode is brought to you by Amplifyed.
Amplifyed is a specialized SEO agency, and we partner with in-house marketing teams to boost search visibility, drive qualified traffic, and turn organic search into real pipeline growth.
From technical SEO to content strategy, Amplifyed handles the heavy lifting so your team can stay focused on building and selling. If you want to show up when your buyers are searching, Amplifyed helps you get there.
To learn more, visit us at amplifyed.io.
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Intro: 00:02
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, brought to you by Amplifyed. Where we feature the top minds in cyber security.
Thorn Compton: 00:14
Welcome to the podcast where we're lifting up the people behind the brands across the cybersecurity industry. I'm your host, Thorn Compton, and some of my great past chats include amazing people like Oversight Director of Product Marketing Thereasa Roy. Today I have the pleasure to welcome Valerie Worman, Head of Marketing at Monad, into the cyber funnel. How are you today, Val?
Valerie Worman: 00:32
Doing great. Thanks. How are you? Absolutely.
Thorn Compton: 00:35
I am also a fan to thank you for asking. I'm excited. We got some fun things to talk about today.
Valerie Worman: 00:40
Yeah. Yeah.
Thorn Compton: 00:42
Of course, this episode is brought to you by Amplifyed, the SEO and GEO agency for cybersecurity companies. Amplifyed serves cybersecurity marketing teams by driving more leads from Google and AI search. We handle all the heavy lifting and we know what levers to pull to get you the right skills. But most importantly, we speak the language of cybersecurity. Learn more at amplifyed.io.
That's amplifyed.io. All right. As I said, I have Valerie Worman joining me today. Valerie is a marketer with tons of experience across the cybersecurity spectrum. Are you ready to enter the cyber funnel, Val?
Valerie Worman: 01:18
Let's go.
Thorn Compton: 01:19
Let's go.
Valerie Worman: 01:20
I feel like it's a game show.
Thorn Compton: 01:22
And funny enough, we start off with kind of game show questions because, you know, we're going to we're going to get to know you just a little bit. And my first question for you is what was the last book you read?
Valerie Worman: 01:32
Okay. So I'm currently reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Amazing book. So really enjoying it. I, I read it like as a teen and, and one of my best friends was like, I need you to read this because I like to read it every couple of years.
And I was like, all right, let's go. So reading it currently, last book I finished though was I did the Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, fairies with my daughter. So she's, she's ten and, and we do books together. And so we read the series of three together. It was great.
Thorn Compton: 02:07
I on that note, it's funny, this actually works on both ends. A Wrinkle in Time is another fun to go back and revisit as an adult.
Valerie Worman: 02:14
I did I did the movie with my daughter recently and I was like, oh man, I really love this. And I was like, I should read that again.
Thorn Compton: 02:19
It's, it's a good book. And it's like, right about the age to really? Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got a four year old and I'm like, I want to get him into the, the, the, the magic tree house books where they and, but I'm like, he's not close.
Valerie Worman: 02:32
You're so close.
Thorn Compton: 02:34
Like two more years. I love that. Fabulous. I also have one more extra question for you because I a little birdie tells me that you have a really fun nickname among some of your, your, your friends, kids. Can you tell how exactly did you start to get known as Warmonger or Warhammer?
Valerie Worman: 02:51
Great story. So recently got married beginning of the year. Last name is Worman now And my husband does war games for a living. And so they were trying to. One of my best friends, her husband, was trying to put my new last name in his phone and couldn't remember.
So he's like, she's going to be Val Warhammer. It's gonna be great. So yeah, Warhammer warmonger, it depends on the day what what they call me.
Thorn Compton: 03:20
As a man named Thorn. But everybody I'm, I'm a big blond haired man with a beard, so people just drop me off and they go, Thor! So yeah, I always tell. I keep my hammer in my car. Mjolnir is always around somewhere.
Valerie Worman: 03:32
Exactly.
Thorn Compton: 03:34
Fabulous. All right. We're gonna hard pivot into cybersecurity talk. Now. I, I love it, love to get to know you a little bit.
In fact, I kind of want to start on that end. Can you talk to me about your journey into cybersecurity? Everybody kind of has a unique way that they've gotten into this.
Valerie Worman: 03:46
So yeah. Yeah, totally. So prior to cyber, I ran an experiential marketing agency for 12 years in the B2B, B2C space. and so primarily worked with like big fortune 100 fortune 50 brands, Nike, Coca-Cola, Vitamin Water, HBO, like really big brands. I loved it, but I was getting a little bored after 12 years.
And so I, I was sort of pivoting out of B2C, my background, my degree is in information systems and operations management. So I wanted to do something a little more technical and kind of pull on that thread a little bit. And so I just sort of stumbled into cybersecurity, which is, you know, and as soon as I landed here, I was like, oh, I love this. I love how technical it is. I love, I love puzzles as a person, you know?
And so I see cyber as just like one big puzzle that I can kind of pull on and untangle and pull on the threads. And my favorite people in cyber are not marketers. They're the, they're the practitioners because I like to pick their brains about everything that they do and why they do it and how they approach it. And so it just it's a natural fit for my curiosity.
Thorn Compton: 04:59
It's cybersecurity. So interesting too, because like you really are speaking to both ends. You got to speak to the technical and you got to speak to the CEO who might not be. Exactly. Yeah, I love that.
I love getting I same, it's one of my favorite things to do is just sit there and just let someone cook. And I'm like, I'm gonna understand every third word you say, but I'm still going to learn a lot from you. And this is fantastic.
Valerie Worman: 05:16
And honestly, the best practitioners are ones that will, they'll break it down for you in like natural language, not super technical jargon y language. And so in one of my previous roles, I was at an appsec company and I was like, all right, I need you to explain your core differentiator. And it was like a super, super technical thing. And it, it ultimately came down to they were like, you know, those like shape sorter things that you give babies and they have to put the little blocks in and stuff like that. There was a meme video around years ago that still makes its rounds, and it's like a woman is watching as they're putting every shape into the square hole.
And she's like, it's breaking her brain and. Yeah. And she's like, no, that. And so that was our differentiator. It's like we put the right shapes in the right hole versus other solutions do.
It where everything can fit in the one hole.
Thorn Compton: 06:06
So I, the amount of times I know exactly what video you're talking about too, and the amount of times I talk about like, you know, making sure everything goes in the right hole. Those people are my, my spirit animals.
Valerie Worman: 06:15
Yeah, absolutely.
Thorn Compton: 06:17
It's funny. I love that you bring up the memes and that kind of stuff. And so looking even just over the last five years in cybersecurity, it feels like we've seen a whole lot of change. What are some of the bigger changes you've seen specifically in marketing around cybersecurity in the last five ish years?
Valerie Worman: 06:33
Oh man, it's been great. So I came into cyber in 2020 and it was like pure Covid. And I was like, so experiential events were not a thing. But also like everything I, I learned in B2C was experiential. And so I was like, why can't, why can't I do this?
And so I came in and I had a great CMO. And he was like, he thought I was insane with half the things that I was pitching him. And then they ended up working most of the time. And then he was like, all right, I guess you you know what you're talking about. And it was so funny because as events came back in cyber, I was doing experiential stuff.
I created like a cybersecurity murder mystery sort of dinner theater and stuff like that. And Wiz Wiz, obviously a huge name in the brand in like in, in our space Wiz talk, they all are embracing this whole like, why does it have to be boring? Why? Why are we marketing B2B in the exact same way all the time? And so I, it is a change that I love seeing.
I love seeing more brands coming in and doing experiential coming in and not just saying the same thing over and over. Small side story. My favorite experience at RSA conference. For the first couple of years I was in cyber as I would walk the show floor and there would be booths right next to each other, and their taglines would be literally identical. Same thing.
I mean, I'm talking like trademarked identical word for word. And I was like. Okay. How do you like, how do you as a buyer differentiate when everyone is saying the exact same thing? It's like, you know what, at this point, I would rather just have you remember my brand.
And so with Jupiter one, one of the first brands that I worked with when I was in cyber, we had everyone wear neon green jeans and you could not miss us. And so it was like, I love that. And, and our follow up was like, hello from your friend in the green jeans. And they were like, or people would see us walking in San Francisco or walking in Vegas. They're like, oh, Jupiter one.
And we're like, yes, that's all I needed. I needed someone to know my brand.
Thorn Compton: 08:42
What I love about that too is like, I think when people think, okay, well, I have to be experiential and I'm going to be out of the thing Somebody else mentioned they had Grave Digger out there. And it's like, not everybody has that in their budget. Oh, I love that. It's yeah. Talked about like it can't it doesn't have to be that you can stand out without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Valerie Worman: 09:02
Bingo. So Jupiter one, my last, my last black hat and RSA conference I did with them. Coincidentally, Wiz had a, a very, extremely similar concept. And I did not find out that they had it until my booth had already shipped to Advanced Warehouse, which if anyone has done events like they know how the pain of that. Oh yes.
We both did a grocery store.
Thorn Compton: 09:24
Which. So funny.
Valerie Worman: 09:25
Yeah, which is really funny. I was at the time, I was sole marketer at Jupiter one, and I leaned on AI to like create all my products. And I literally stocked my shelves and created my little Jupiter 120 by 20 grocery store booth. And the joke was like, oh, they're the, they're the Walmart because they're like very flashy and polished and or maybe target like flashy, polished, everything is like great. And I was like the neighborhood bodega.
But you know what? People loved it. They, like, came up, they took pictures of it, they engaged with it, they asked questions. They were like, oh, you have, you know, identity keys here. Like, what does that mean in reference to your product?
And so it's all about creating that emotional connection. And it's all about having a conversation that is memorable because you're going to talk to that. You know, when you go to a show, you're going to talk to hundreds of vendors, right? And so how do you as a vendor stand out? It's not by giving the same pitch over and over to the same people, because they're hearing the same pitch from every other identity vendor they talk to, they're hearing the same pitch from every other cnap vendor or unknown management vendor that they're talking to, and they're hearing the same pitch from like, you know, von management, you can do it like six different ways.
And so it's like, you're, you're talking the same language to all these different people. And so it's like, how do you stand out? You connect with them. You connect with them 1 to 1. You connect with them on something that they either can pull on an emotional thread with or that you're just memorable.
Right. So as long as you can pull on those threads and kind of pull that together like that, there is how you stand out.
Thorn Compton: 11:04
And speaking of, you know, Blackhat RSA, I feel like, you know, obviously every one of those is going to have 50 new product launches to oh.
Valerie Worman: 11:11
Easily.
Thorn Compton: 11:12
Easily. And so like go to market is obviously super difficult. I mean, it's over. Overall, it's a, it's a, it's a tricky subject. How do events fit into that?
And really, how do you best position your brand when you're launching a new product or a new service like that?
Valerie Worman: 11:25
Yeah. I will say they are the noisiest times to launch. Unfortunately, a lot of a lot of VCs love having you launch at RSA or Blackhat Blackhat. And so because of that, it's like it's kind of unavoidable. And so you end up having to launch at that time.
But if you can get around it, launch in a month that's not RSA or Black Hat. Launch the month before launch right after. After it's. You are going to be drowned out in the noise of acquisitions. You're going to be drowned out in the noise of every stealth startup that raised more money than you.
And and you're also going to be drowned out by like, there are multiple like security competitions and startup accelerators and things like that. I've been part of all of those things. They're great. I've, you know, I've done stuff like pitches and stuff with, with like the, the blackhat startup competitions and RSA competition sandbox, right? Innovation sandbox.
And so the thing is, is that you're sort of going to get drowned out. And so you have to find other ways to stand out. If you are not like a series B company or just a really, really well funded series A, I generally don't recommend having a booth at any of those events.
Thorn Compton: 12:43
Right?
Valerie Worman: 12:44
You're you're not going to you're not going to bubble up above the noise. And they're so expensive to be at. And so you're better off having side events. You're better off connecting with your ICP directly and being like, hey, I noticed your company is going to Blackhat or notice you guys are going to RSA and then connecting with them that way. And a lot of that, because you're a small company, if you're not these big companies, a lot of that is built on trust and establishing trust and establishing trust in your brand.
And a lot of that is you got to come in with like solid technical content. For instance, you got to come in knowing what you're talking about. You have to come in and say like, hey, we work with X, Y, and Z company and they are your direct competitors basically. Right? And so this is what we're doing for them.
We think it's a good fit for you. Like, can we just buy you a cup of coffee? Like whatever it is, it's got to be low touch. It's got to be, you know, it's got to be like a hot, low, low touch, high value is, is sort of how I like to think about it, where they are not having to commit to something crazy in order to, to engage with you, but also like there's enough trust behind it essentially, because, you know, I hate to say it, but like CISOs also don't walk the show floor to buy a product. No.
Thorn Compton: 14:04
No they don't. No, I mean, again, being positioned there isn't a terrible isn't terrible. But again, you have to be in the right position. And like, yeah, like you said, you have there's other options influencers. We kind of talked about that before, but like, feels like they first, how do they fit even into your GTM strategy?
And it feels like that's a great opportunity again, to kind of take advantage of influencers.
Valerie Worman: 14:26
Oh, absolutely. It is, it is such a, an advantage to, to establish relationships with influencers. So I at Monad, I'm very, very lucky because I have an actual influencer that I work with, Darwin Salazar. He runs the cybersecurity pulse. He's got like 15,000 newsletter subscribers.
He, you know, he works with a ton of cyber brands. And so I, you know, I joke every day that, like, his value alone is, is worth the tens of thousands I could be spending in ads. I don't have to because he's talking about relevant topics, even if he's not mentioning Monad as a brand. Right? It's all relevant to our space and it's relevant to building trust in our brand.
And so that is that's, you know, I can't even quantify the value of having something like that. And so honestly, my best thing is like, as soon as you enter a space, identify who the influencers are in our space, there's, you know, 15 or 20 of them that are like really big heavy hitters. Engage with them, like reach out to them, ask questions of them, say, hey, can I show you a demo of our product? I'd love to get your feedback right. And the more you engage with them, the more interested they might become, right?
And so and then you get these organic conversations rather than having to pay for those conversations. And so yes, a lot of them are pay for play. You know, it is a business. It is like they're using their time to, to do all these things for you. And so as a result, you know, they, they do have to like compensate for themselves for their time.
And so that makes sense. But there are ways to do that. And there are also ways to engage with like Micro-influencers find people in your space that, that have, you know, 2 to 5000 followers or something like that, or they, you know, they have a private group on, on discord or they're the, the, the moderator on Reddit. Right? Like those are all things you can do.
Engage with them naturally, engage with them on topics that matter to them. And also don't look at it as like, hey, I need you to push my product, right? More of like a, hey, what can I do for you? What can I, how can I help? We want to be, we want to be in the community and we want to be helping the community.
And so what does that mean is like we do events, we host things with like, I'm not going to pitch you at any of my events. I never want to pitch you at my events. Because the idea is that like, you got to start by building a relationship. You have to start by building trust before you ever pitch them on a product. And honestly, like Monad, I came in six months ago.
We have we're closing like a deal a week, basically, if not more depending on the week. And we're, we have solid momentum, no ads. I haven't paid for a single ad in the time that I've been here, so it's great.
Thorn Compton: 17:26
Yeah, I again, I, you know, it's funny as an SEO ji, you know, practitioner, a lot of us like kind of like, oh, no ads. I think just like influencers, just like anything you're going to spend money on. It's all about what's the ROI? There are definitely times there's a lot of uses for ads. You can use it to run ads and get some great data about like what's actually converting.
Valerie Worman: 17:48
And then.
Thorn Compton: 17:48
Yes.
Valerie Worman: 17:48
Yeah.
Thorn Compton: 17:49
That's awesome. But yeah, the less I, again, I, the way I look at it is if it exists on your site and it's there, that's the thing that's bringing it in, that's going to be a lot more cost effective in the long term. Yeah, that's a, that's a tough thing for a different time. We've talked a lot about trust. And I, I really love that you specifically brought up that organic, organic mentions through like the influencers because it really isn't even just, okay, I paid for them and they talked about me.
They, you're now in their brain. So now they're going to bring you up again or you're going to be in a discussion. It feels like that organic trust building is, is really hard to replicate and just a hard thing overall for brands. Correct. What are your what are your thoughts around building trust?
Valerie Worman: 18:30
No, I agree 100%. I, you know, a lot of stealth or like seed stage startups. They're like, oh, I gotta hire, I gotta hire a marketing person and I gotta hire a, a, you know, like I have to hire product marketers and stuff like that. No. Hire someone who is technical, who can write content.
So if your CTO doesn't like to write content or your VP of inj doesn't like to write content, guess what? They're not your they're not your evangelists. Like you. You don't need them. You don't.
You need them. Sorry. Let me back up a little bit. You need them to build your product. Absolutely.
Need them to build your product. You don't need them on the marketing side or the go to market side of things. What you need on the go to market side of things is someone who is technical, who can speak the language. Former practitioners are great at this, and a lot of the former, like I work with a number of former practitioners at Monad. Darwin is a great example of this.
He was a former detection engineer. My my solutions engineer that I have is actually he was a former security engineer at Bank of America for like ten, 15 years. And so these are practitioners who are sort of like burnt out on the day to day, but they love talking about what they do and learning and like engaging. And so they are the perfect people to hire and then have them write content, right? That's the best content you could possibly get because it's not AI generated.
It's not it's not saying the same thing ten times. And it's, it's got technical meat behind it, right? It's like it's got code snippets on how you actually do things. It's, it's got practical, like this is how you do X, Y, and Z and it even, you don't even need to use our product to do that. And so for instance, we did, we're, we're wrapping up a, an LLM detection series that we're working on.
And I'm going to do an e-book. And by the way, don't, I don't get my stuff like that. So when it comes out, it'll be out and everyone.
Thorn Compton: 20:34
Will have access to it and giving it for free.
Valerie Worman: 20:36
Do it for free. Exactly. But we started doing this Lyme detection series because we had a couple of customers who were like, hey, how do I pull this like hotel open telemetry data in on my different coding agents or on my LMS? And we're like, nobody's talking about this today. And so we started covering it.
And so we have our, most of our blogs are two parts on these. It's like, hey, here's how you do it. And here are all the detections you can do. But also here's the second half of that, which is like, here's how you do it in our product. You don't care about how to do it in our product.
Great. Here's like how you do it on your own. Go build it. Right. And so it's all about offering things to the community like that for free and putting the information out there and doing the research and figuring out how to do it is how you're contributing to the community.
And that builds trust. That is like, that is the thing that really like builds strong brand trust. And then when people are looking for a product like yours, they're like, oh, I've been looking at, you know, I've been looking at Monads, like blog series about these things or like they write about how to do this in detection engineering. And like, I kind of need to solve that problem myself. Like maybe I should go talk to them.
Thorn Compton: 21:52
Yeah. That topical awareness, it's so funny because like, when it comes to building out a strategy for, you know, creating content, I oftentimes will be like, you know, sometimes write something, write something, let's put it out. Even if there's not like a, oh, what's the topic of this? Or what's the keyword? We're going after this.
It's like, we can find that, create the content and don't worry about going after it. That's my job. Yeah. Like, let me find something to be able to go for that. You do your job and like give real expertise because that's what's really going to work, you know?
Valerie Worman: 22:24
Yeah. I will tell you, like I came into Monad and, and I was the, you know, I'm like the, the first marketer, essentially. They're not they've had marketers previously, but like no robust SEO, like nothing like that. So I came in and I was like, okay, so we don't have any meta descriptions. We have no, no, no, no titles. I was like, I was like, you guys do realize that we have no SEO visibility strictly because we just, we never put in the fundamentals.
Right? And so like, that's my job is like, I come in and I, I build, I build the foundation, I build out all those things. And so, and it's a slow process. I'm sure, you know, as someone who does SEO. Like it's a super slow process and you just have to like start, you have to like get it going. And so then I, and so I, I let my team write the really technical content, love it. And then I go back and do my SEO linking and I, you know, I kind of like massage certain words and things like that because I'm trying to hit certain targets. And then from there, it's really just a function of like, you do the best you can with what you got.
Thorn Compton: 23:33
Amen Amen. Oh, and again, it's are you actually writing content that's going to serve the user? Yes. And then and then are you putting the content in the right places? And then yeah, then it's checking off the, the, the little things.
And then yeah, we can get into the schema and all that fun stuff. But it really starts off with strong content. Yes. Which leads me into my next question, which is like you as the, the head of marketing, you kind of have this little gap. You have to bridge between sales and the, and then the actual content team and the actual content on the thing.
How do you best bridge that gap to where both sales and marketing content marketing feel like they are both being represented?
Valerie Worman: 24:13
Great question. So the last two teams that I've, I've been on, I've been the only marketer and I've also been, you know, on founder led sales teams, basically. So our founder up until this week literally was our only sales person. So we have two new salespeople. Super excited to have them on board.
Thorn Compton: 24:33
I love the bandwidth. Let's go.
Valerie Worman: 24:35
But you know it. It is all about making sure that we are all rowing in the same direction. I actually have this like belief that, you know, pre-series A or even through series A go to market is one team. So sales and marketing is one team because you got to make sure that like whatever sales is doing, it actually is accurate. Number one, because sometimes sales teams like to, you know, run off in their own direction because they find what works.
And that may not be what your product does. So that's a problem. But also, you know, marketing also can get too deep in the jargon. And, and then you don't, you don't have, you have this like mismatch of like, we're saying the same thing, but we're missing each other completely. And the third important part of that, like sort of triad there is product.
You got to make sure that the product can do what the market is asking for it to do. And so once you have these three elements together, that really gives you a solid foundation in which you are all moving in the same direction. And so it becomes less about like, hey, I got to hit these SEO targets and more about like, hey, this is what our product does. This is what people are looking for. This is how we talk about it.
And we make sure that everyone is doing the same thing. And like, if, if people are coming and asking us for something that our product is not meant to do, it's like, oh, wait, we need to like realign here because maybe we're talking about it in the wrong way. And so is it like, is that a prospecting slash outreach reason or is it a content reason and making sure that like it's all aligned basically?
Thorn Compton: 26:19
I like to look at it as two sides of the same brain, because one's talking to the people that you're trying to sell it to, and one is actually building the content around what has been done. So like you got if.
Valerie Worman: 26:28
You go.
Thorn Compton: 26:28
Splitting those, I mean, what are you even trying to do?
Valerie Worman: 26:31
So yeah. And I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of like, as a marketer as like the, the sole marketer in a company. Typically, I want to talk to the customers. I want to understand exactly what it is they're doing. And that's actually why I love working with practitioners.
So like my favorite coworkers are the people on my security team and the people that are actually like doing the thing that I'm selling, right? And so I like to pick their brain. It's like, hey, does this make sense? Like, is this how you would say this? Is there a is there a better way to say this?
And I really love leaning on those, those colleagues and those colleagues become like my, my favorite people in the company because it's like, I can have a really frank conversation with them. I can ask the dumb question because they're like, Bell knows she's just trying to get to the core of what it is that we're trying to do here.
Thorn Compton: 27:23
So I. Speaking of your favorite people, who are some people that you look back on through your time even before maybe even cybersecurity that you look at as like a mentor, someone who's helped you kind of get to where you are right now.
Valerie Worman: 27:34
Totally. Yeah. So I've got, I've got two that have been in my cyber career have been really, really amazing friends, mentors, etc.. So Tyler Shields, he's currently CMO at all stacks, but he was CMO at Jupiter One when I joined, and he is still a person I talked to on like we talk on a regular basis. And I, I love to kind of pick his brain on the industry.
He's been in cyber for more than 25 years, maybe 30 years. He won't say that because, you know.
Thorn Compton: 28:08
We're not going to age him.
Valerie Worman: 28:09
I got no, no, no, no, no. But yeah. And, and he is just like, I trust him for his like very frank opinion of the market and like what it is that that really needs to like, how do I get to the meat of an argument? Right? And, and I was new to cyber when I joined J1 and, and worked with him.
And he gave me guardrails while also just letting me kind of like run with my insane ideas. So I, he, he is a mentor, a friend. Like I lean on him a lot. And then the other one is actually two of them. So it was the CISO and deputy CISO at J1 as well.
So Sounil Yu, he is a cyber practitioner. He's been he's been a practitioner. He's like chief data scientist, I think at, at Bank of America, if I remember correctly, he's created like frameworks. He's now he is now CTO at Knostic. He's a founder.
He, he founded his own cyber company. It's an AI security company. And he is someone who I have learned a ton from. And he just, he knows how to break it down in a very, like, Easily digestible way. Like I could tell HR what it is that we're doing using his words and they'll actually understand it, you know, and his deputy CISO, Guillaume.
Guillaume Ross, who is just doing like freelance stuff now, I think Guillaume is amazing and he's hilarious and he's my favorite, favorite cyber troll.
Thorn Compton: 29:43
So I gotta have a good cyber troll on your side.
Valerie Worman: 29:46
Yeah. He's amazing.
Thorn Compton: 29:48
That's fantastic. Okay. Hey, this has been fantastic. I have two questions left for you. One of them, we're going to go back to the we're gonna get to know you a little bit more.
And then one final thing around this my my get to know you question for the second one is what did you want to be when you grew up?
Valerie Worman: 30:02
Oh, man. So I wanted to be a journalist. Actually, I studied journalism in high school. We had the ability to sort of concentrate on certain things. I was like editor in chief of my school newspaper.
I would like write. I, I learned Carol back when people didn't know what Carol even was. And so I am like an OG, like in, in design and, and editing and writing my entire, the entirety of my life, basically. Yeah. And so I wanted to be, I wanted to be a journalist.
And then I sort of pivoted into business and then, you know, kept going.
Thorn Compton: 30:38
As someone who was a regional sports editor in Quincy, Illinois before moving into this. Yeah. Yeah, you probably would have gotten into journalism and hopefully pivoted into something else because yeah. Oh, the the state of American newspapers these days.
Valerie Worman: 30:53
I know I, I have a friend who he is still a journalist for Politico. And he's, he's like, he's still happy, but at.
Thorn Compton: 31:01
Least he's there. Yeah.
Valerie Worman: 31:02
Yeah.
Thorn Compton: 31:03
You kind of have to get up into that space. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Man. My heart though.
I love it. Yeah. Yes. As I always say, like even that mindset, that journalistic, especially editorial mindset, it will serve you forever too.
Valerie Worman: 31:17
So agree. I agree with that 100%. Yep.
Thorn Compton: 31:20
Fantastic. Again, this has been incredible. Before I ask my last question, I want to give you a minute. Tell the people where to find you. Tell the people about Monad.
This is your this is your pitch place.
Valerie Worman: 31:30
Oh, man. Okay. So you can find me on LinkedIn, Valerie Worman or Zargarpur. I think you can search for either. And it should come up and feel free to DM me, ask me questions I.
So I love talking marketing, I love talking, it doesn't matter the industry. I have friends in other industries, I still have friends in B2C. And so I love picking people's brains and sort of like letting them pick my brain on marketing stuff. So if you have questions like DM me, I'm happy to answer any questions, connect with me. And then, oh man, what is Monad?
Monad is a security data pipeline. And so we, we basically help you route your data and, and allow you to have autonomy over data ownership based on data routing. And so what that means is like, you know, you have security data sources from hundreds of, you know, different vendors depending on how big your security org is. We also work with security vendors themselves to help them route data for their customers. And so we help you normalize that data, route it to the right places so that you're not paying a ton in SIM storage fees and, and also not putting it in S3 where it's not searchable and not recoverable and quickly when you need it in an investigation.
And so I was very intentional about choosing Monad because I, I find security data pipelines to be really interesting. And I think that it is not something you can replace with AI, right? We use AI all the time at work here. And so it's, it's not that we're, we're ignoring AI or not thinking about it, but it's like, it is like foundational to the work that you need to do. And so I love that.
And I love, I love taking something that is like, you gotta do and like, just make it work really well. Like make it go really, really well. Do exactly what you needed to do. And so that's why I joined Monad and that's, that's what we're building here.
Thorn Compton: 33:30
The thought of a fully AI security data pipeline terrifies me. It just terrifies me just a little bit. So I love that. That's great. My my final question for you is, what is the biggest difference, having kind of been on both sides that you see in marketing between B2B and B2C?
Valerie Worman: 33:49
Oh, man. B2B, we are, we are still heavy in the jargon. We are still heavy on using words that, you know, I hate to say it, but like even practitioners in our space, not may not even know, right? Marketers are like, oh, like we should use the word ephemeral. Like, I hate to say it, but like a lot of a lot of practitioners, like, they don't necessarily know what ephemeral is.
And it's not, it's not because they're, they're dumb. It's just like, that's not how they think about it. That's not how they think about data. That's not how they think about like the things that they're doing. And so I am, I am a very pro, like I'm a storyteller.
And so I want to like, I want to take something and like, really digest it down to like, I want everyone to understand what it is I'm talking about. I want to be able to show it to my mom who has no clue what cybersecurity is. And click phishing links all the time. She's terrible in that way. I want her to be able to read my content and actually sort of understand what it is that I'm talking about.
And so I think that's important. I think there's like sort of this, this, this bar in B2B that I think we need to, we need to clear. B2C has long since been able to, to market in this way. And I think we, I think we went into B2B marketing as a, as an industry, cyber like is like, oh, we need to be very smart about the way we talk about things and technical and things like that. Big nerds.
right? Yeah, totally. And so it's like, no, we just need to like, say it simply tell people what it is you do. And say it in a way that anyone can understand.
Thorn Compton: 35:26
I'm, I'm still waiting for someone to really explain the blow up of the word agentic. One of these days. So yeah, yeah, yeah. How is that any different than we're just talking about AI led? Okay, I was going to say AI.
Valerie Worman: 35:39
Native is my AI native is my favorite, mostly because none of these companies were founded when AI was around.
Thorn Compton: 35:45
So not a single one.
Valerie Worman: 35:46
Exactly. Are you AI native?
Thorn Compton: 35:49
Yeah. Alright. We're genetically AI native. Val, this was incredible. Thank you so much for coming on.
And we'll, we'll, we're gonna have to have you on again. This was great.
Valerie Worman: 35:58
Awesome. Happy to come. Anytime. Thanks.
Outro: 36:01
Thank you for listening to the Cyber Funnel podcast. Tune in next time for more tips and insights, and be sure to click subscribe for future episode updates.
