I was introduced to Mikko via a long-time business contact, someone who had seen my work, believed in my approach and thought CIH was exactly where I could add exponential value.

When I joined as CRO, CIH already had a strong product, deep technical credibility, and real traction in the cyber intelligence space, but commercially things were messy. The team was small, spread across territories, pricing and proposals were all over the place and no one really knew exactly where deals sat in the pipeline. Renewal and upsell motion? Virtually non existent.

So I leaned in hard. I knew the only way to scale was to put structure and clarity underneath the promise. Over the first 120 days I led a full commercial overhaul and not just shiny slides – systems, processes and a rhythm that could actually deliver.

Key moves:

• I rolled out a global CRM, defined qualification stages, and refocused ICPs on MSSPs and CTI-enabled partners.
• We rebuilt all pricing, proposal and collateral to reflect CIH’s real value (no more scattergun, “take what you can” pricing).
• I built a 12-month renewal & upsell playbook, check-ins, triggers, usage reviews; so retention and expansion aren’t afterthoughts.
• We relaunched the brand: updated the website, launched a “Leak of the Week” campaign, and sharpened LinkedIn messaging for global visibility.
• I also developed competitive intelligence tools including battle cards, churn hunting from rivals, all done so CIH could play offence, not just defence.

In those first two months, the results spoke loud:

• $380K in new business and upsells closed
• $1.06M of qualified pipeline built
• CRM adoption above 95%, full pipeline visibility
• Standardised pricing made ACVs cleaner and renewals easier
• ICP and geographic focus tightened (US, LATAM, EMEA)
• Brand and lead gen investments started paying off with the website aligned, global event sponsorship secured

CIH went from reactive chaos to disciplined, data driven GTM execution. Renewal risk dropped, growth motion became predictable, and their commercial foundations were finally ready to support global scale.

Working with CIH reaffirmed something I’ve always believed: even the most technically gifted businesses need commercial muscle and you can’t scale what’s not built on structure.

I first met Will when I was selling to him at Endida. He was one of those clients you instantly know “gets it”, sharp, pragmatic, and always two steps ahead. He’d been watching how I built and scaled Endida and, to my surprise he reached out to ask if I could help him do the same for his own business, Netserve.

At that point, Netserve had a solid foundation, strong technical skills, loyal customers, and a decent reputation – but they’d hit a ceiling. Growth had stalled, margins were being squeezed, and the sales team were spending more time quoting than actually selling. It was clear they needed a proper commercial structure and a repeatable go to market motion, not just adhoc deals.

I started by mapping out their customer base and identifying who their real ICP was. Too often, they were chasing anyone with a pulse instead of focusing on sectors where they genuinely added value. From there, we rebuilt the sales process from the ground up, everything from pipeline management and CRM hygiene, to how they presented value in proposals and renewals.

Next came the team. Like most fast growing firms, there were some good people who just needed clarity, direction and the right tools. We introduced a proper performance rhythm including weekly reviews, deal clinics, and one to ones that were actually useful rather than tick box exercises. I also brought in one of my playbooks to help them develop a stronger channel strategy and nurture existing clients while still driving net new business.

The impact was pretty immediate. Within six months, pipeline velocity doubled, average deal size increased by 38%, and they closed several six figure accounts in markets they’d struggled to break into previously. Just as importantly, Will finally had a team that wasn’t firefighting every week, they were operating as a cohesive, confident unit with real accountability.

Working with Netserve reminded me how powerful it is when founders let go a little and trust the process. Will did exactly that, and the results spoke for themselves.

Endida started off life as Tamarillo Ltd and signed up ThreatConnect to sell their Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) to large financial, government, telco and manufacturing companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2018 I had the idea to expand and take on other products, also turn Tamarillo (now Endida) into a managed service provider specialising in cybersecurity. This had limited success, so I put it on the back burner while I was busy with other projects.

Fast forward to 2023, Fiona Whyte (who I had known for a while), expressed an interest in investing in a cybersecurity company and building out the offerings to both large and small organisations, so cybersecurity is available to all. We discussed and developed the idea over a number of months, rebranded to Endida and I am now back doing what I do best – building out global sales & operations. I am very excited about the exclusive tech stack Endida has, as well as working with someone as seasoned and as experienced as Fiona.

I built Endida to be all about visibility and knowledge, the AI Penetration Testing Platform (PtaaS), Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), ZTNA & VPN Replacement, Secure Web Gateway and File Sanitisation software Endida offered, were all cutting edge solutions built specifically for todays, AI based threat landscape.

Click here to read the case study

Well this is different, working for my first European start-up where all the rest have been US based. I was talking to my CISO, CEO and cyber security experts while I was still at Flashpoint and whilst they were all happy with threat intelligence, the reoccurring theme was they were also looking for better real-time detection and analysis of what was going on in their network. I saw this role at VMRay, did my due diligence and felt it would be a good fit.

VMRay had done well in EMEA & APAC at the very start, but as I have spoken about in previous roles, they too made the mistake of bringing on a so called heavy hitter who set up the wrong three tier model – which I had to fix and turn into a proper channel model. Also the focus for VMRay had shifted to the US rather than their home market.

I inherited a team from said “heavy hitter”, who all looked good on the surface but the cracks started to appear. I ended up swapping out almost the entire team across EMEA, which showed immediate results. All of the sales, business, marketing & people skills I had learned over the years really came in handy here too. I had new business and customer retention teams, so set about changing the way customers were looked after, I came up with a 12 month nurture programme to ensure retention; end result 108% retention rate (includes expansion).

Now the new business side was a challenge, the sandbox had been very much sold as a stand alone tool, not a strategic part of the SoC or Security Teams infrastructure. So I changed the way it was sold in EMEA & APAC, very much turned it into a value sell rather than a “show up & throw up” (trust me, it was exactly that). I would love to say I invented this method, but to be fair I have been a student of the consultative, trusted source selling methodology since my early sales career. I also bought in my own sales tools I have developed over the years and the results speak for themselves – 153% YoY growth in my first year.

Click here to read the case study

I was trucking along nicely at ThreatConnect, but they ended up selling to a PE, then John left, which kind of took the shine off it for me too. However at that same time I was approached on behalf of Flashpoint who were a partner company of ThreatConnect and had seen what I had done in EMEA for them.

Flashpoint had already been through two VP EMEA’s before I joined, had a team of people in EMEA and not bad revenue, but it was not commensurate to what they had in the US. So I employed my tried, tested and by now, well honed methodology of what was broken – no surprise it started with people (there is a theme here!). They were good people, but they just had become a little fatigued over time, a lot of their spark had gone which can easily happen if the team is not properly nurtured, mentored and bonded.

Flashpoint have a really brilliant product that totally bought that cybersecurity passion and child like curiosity flooding back. What is not to like, they have this fantastic repository of threat intelligence all about how threat actors perpetrate, how they compromise and harvest credentials, sell them and you can even see if your username and passwords have been compromised on the dark web – awesome!

I bought on board a new fresh team, really dug into who needs Flashpoints intelligence and what would make them buy it. I am not going to lie, this was a tough gig, just as I came on board they pulled the entire marketing, PR and BDR budget for EMEA. Not one to cry over split milk I just got on with it and treated it like the bootstrapped start-ups I had done before.

Had some really amazing success and wins at Flashpoint, again it was all about that approach of educating the potential customers without patronising them, then putting together the right package they needed. My pan European team were absolutely fantastic, could not ask for better people and by the time I left Flashpoint I had increased revenue by over 163% YoY.

So here’s the plan, I felt I needed a break from start-ups so I got a job with Sunsail in Croatia, teaching people day skipper practical – wonderful right? Well yeah, but I wasn’t really feeling it; I mean being stuck on a boat with 4 new random strangers every week, anyway you get the picture. I was suppose to start the Sunsail job in April but then I saw on LinkedIn John, who I worked with at Tenable had started with ThreatConnect as their CRO. I am sure you can see what happened next!

ThreatConnect was another classic story of US startup in EMEA getting it wrong first time. They had ploughed a lot of cash into building a team here and trying to make it fire. It was the “if you build it they will come” method which unfortunately does not work in EMEA. When I took over John had let go the entire team apart from one Sales Engineer. In the previous 18 months to me joining they had done around $300k in total across EMEA.

So I went to work, ripped up the cookie cutter approach they had in place and did my usual investigation of why it didn’t work. This was first and foremost the wrong people (again!), but I also found there was a bigger problem, customers didn’t know what a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) was and why they needed it. I put in place a programme that educated (not patronised) potential customers on why they needed a TIP and why cybersecurity is like an onion – the more layers the better. All of this came from my previous experience of starting from scratch – sometimes you just have to keep digging until you hit bedrock and start again.

Did it work? Hell yeah, I ended up getting 3 of the 4 top banks on board, a load of pan European and Middle Eastern customers which all resulted in increasing YoY revenue in that first year by 356%, I then went on to build the revenue well into late 7 figures. What a great fun gig and I really enjoyed working with John again too, he is a superb CRO, really gets the art of sales and what is needed to bring deals in.

Enter Iain again (Sygate & Protegrity) – I had just sold may share of EuroSmartz V2 and was taking some good quality sailing time when Iain got in touch and asked me to help him with Red Lambda (for which he had just become CEO).

Red Lambda needed to get some further funding and Iain asked me to get involved with talking to and attracting European & Middle Eastern VC’s. I took a look at the business plan, great product and a really strong team, but the sales strategy was a little thin as was the nod towards EMEA and what this market could bring. I worked with Iain and the team to really bring out the best in the business plan, built a pitch deck and went about talking to investors. Lost of fun, great road trip to Dubai, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi tapping up all the people I had met doing business in that region over the years.

This was a really good learning curve for me, something I had done years ago for myself so it was a little familiar, but this took it to another dimension and being a cybersecurity expert really did help. I really enjoyed it and gave me a much more in-depth view of funding and how it all works, definitely something I will explore again in the future.

So there I was working at Tenable and all was going well, in 2009 I read an article about a guy that had made $200k from building an app for the iPhone which came out in 2007 (app store launched 2008). I emailed my brother in NZ (who is a a developer) and asked if he could make iPhone apps (I am sure you can guess the answer!).

EuroSmartz was resurrected, but this time I bought an incredible amount of business experience with me that was completely lacking from the first EuroSmartz (like rapid multi-country scaling which I had learned from Sygate & AirMagnet).

The intention when we started EuroSmartz V2 was to make some apps, make a bit of beer money and have fun doing it. One of our apps was the first ever app to enable people to print from their iPhone, we couldn’t quite believe we had come up with a unique app that not even the big printer manufactures had created. Anyway it was trundling along nicely until one day Apple asked us if they could feature Print n Share in a global TV commercial.

So one awkward conversation with Jack, Ron & Cyndi at Tenable later and we were off (I did introduce them to my mate Dave who has done an amazing job building Tenable to an incredible level in EMEA). I have to say all my skills really came to the forefront with this, scaling, managing developers, setting up a help desk, sales marketing the absolute lot – everything you would expect a hands on CEO to do and more. We sold over 8 million apps, something I am extremely proud of.

The reason I am not at EuroSmartz today? It is a classic story of two founders/directors doing really well, then disagreeing on the next innovation that was needed to keep the company running. I wanted to turn EuroSmartz into a marketing app company, buy in apps rebrand them and sell them to our 8m customers. My brother wanted to continue to build apps, ultimately we could not agree a way forward so he bought me out – shame is it could have continued to be an incredible money making business.

 Click here to see the global Apple add campaign our app, Print n Share was in along with Visa & FedEx

 Click here to see the Guardian Article I was featured in

Now this is a classic “keep in touch with your network” story! Phil, who I worked for at Sygate got in contact and asked if I could help him in an advisory board capacity around how to set up his EMEA operation, help find the right people and mentor them through all the potential bear traps along the way.

I absolutely loved it and this is something I see myself doing in the future too. This role really enabled me to utilise all of the skills, hard lessons, successes and failures I had learned along the way and put them all together to really mentor/advise Phil’s team on the best approach, what to focus on and everything they needed to do to be successful in EMEA.

I see so many US companies eager to establish in EMEA but they all often use the “cookie cutter” method; “this works in the US so it will work in EMEA”. Unfortunately that is about as far from reality as you can get, selling in EMEA takes a lot of nuance, subtlety and a hell of a lot of experience.

Anyway the end result was Azaleos did super well under Phil’s leadership, got acquired and my lovely little nest egg of advisor board shares bought me some new sails for my boat! Happy days!

I got introduced to Jack, Ron & Cyndi via a person I used to work with at Sygate. They were looking to expand into EMEA but wanted to talk to someone that had done it to find out what were the pitfalls were, what was it going to cost, and also where to start.

I had learned over the years there is no such thing as a wasted conversation. I spoke with Jack, Ron and Cyndi over a course of 6 months or so just giving them advice, something I really enjoyed – this then lead to the conversation around me jumping onboard and leading the charge for Tenable and their vulnerability scanner, Nessus into the EMEA region – which got off to a cracking start with great revenue………..but!

If you haven’t already, read my next role at EuroSmartz V2 to find out what the BUT is.

I worked with Iain at Sygate, who was the VP of WorldWide Sales there. He had just jumped onboard with Protegrity doing the same role and asked me if I would come on board to fix the the EMEA operation which was all very flattering and so off I went.

Having just successfully turned around AirMagnet I was armed with the skills to do the same thing, so I set about trying to work out what had gone wrong. Interestingly enough it was the same as last time, wrong person, so I fixed that fairly easily, but even after doing that and bringing on some good start-up folks, it still did not really take off.

This was interesting for me because I had been involved with back to back successes so this was new territory (not sure I liked it either!). I really learned a lot here and it just shows you don’t need to be somewhere long to gain new skills and insight, as the saying goes “every day is a school day!”.

This was very much the hard school of knocks, Protegrity has a great product and did in 2007, however at that time it was a bit niche, so customers were few and far between. The big mistake I made was to let my ego and flattery get the better of me, and not do due diligence on the product and company before jumping onboard. Because I specifically got asked by someone I reported to in the past, all my usual check and balances went out the window – great lesson I learned the hard way!

This role at AirMagnet took me off in a new direction – fixing broken EMEA start-ups (of which there are plenty!). AirMagnet had been in EMEA for around 18 months with only around $1m in revenue during that time.

I got asked if I would like to chat with Dean & Greg, which when I found out what they did, it was a no brainer. AirMagnet’s products really did play to my strengths and passion (plus geekiness) for all things cyber – it was cybersecurity for WiFi. The AirMagnet product would sniff the air to see if anyone was trying to poison or break into WiFi networks – super cool stuff.

First thing I needed to do was to work out why it hadn’t taken off in EMEA like it had in the US, this was my first time of really digging into why a company does not fire in a region when it is so successful elsewhere. What I learned is; wrong people (usually always the case BTW), wrong price or there just isn’t demand.

What AirMagnet had done is the absolute classic mistake, hire someone that is a “heavy hitter” from a larger software company, plonk them in a start-up and think they will hit the multi-million revenue target. Great theory, but the reality? The reason they hit that previous massive target is because they had all the infrastructure and people around them. This was my first letting go, the person they hired simply was not self sufficient enough to get it all going, as tough as that decision was for me it was right for him and the business.

I learned a lot in my two years at AirMagnet, having to review its initial poor performance showed me just what it takes to build an EMEA operation – the ability to wear many hats, focus, focus and focus some more; but overall hire the right, entrepreneurial people. AirMagnet turned out to be a huge success, I hired a bunch of fantastic people, we smashed our targets and built AIrMagnet into a large multi-million dollar pan EMEA operation.

Oh and ask me about the Christmas lights PR story, THE most successful PR I ever did!

Having just had my arse kicked out the door at Netegrity, I wondered what to do next? By this time I had worked for 3 start-ups including my own and rather than apply for just another job I felt I was at the stage I could run the EMEA region for a US company. I had learned a lot in the last 5 years and it was time to put it all into practice – only one slight minor issue, who was going to give me a chance to prove myself with no track record of running an EMEA operation; the answer? Phil, that was who was going to give me that chance.

I must say, I am very proud of the way I approached this, after being turned down by every recruiter known to mankind telling me I did not have the skills to run an EMEA operation, I had to get very smart about how I was going to get my first gig! Solution; I went onto the RSA’s website (the then leader in cybersecurity), trawled through every partner they had, checked the web to see if they had an EMEA operation and if not I sent a carefully crafted email saying “if you are thinking of starting in EMEA, I am your man!”. I got 20 replies, 5 interviews and made the decision to go with Sygate and Phil.

Picture this, I didn’t know it at the time but I was on a roller coaster that just been pulled up the first hill and was ready to go – then you are off! That was Sygate, what a fantastic ride and what a way to start my career of running EMEA operations!

First customer – UK utility company that had an issue, I responded the same day to their query and closed the deal before my competitors even got back to them. Their CTO told me that story and ever since I have never left a lead hanging!

Anyway I grew Sygate to silly levels went from zero to multiple millions in EMEA in 3 years before being taken out by Symantec. I built a great team all across EMEA and along with triple digit growth, the skills I built along this journey were simply incredible – the main one……..tenacity always pays off!

Then one day I got a good old fashion phone call from a headhunter (no LinkedIn for another 3 years at this point). I can’t tell you how exciting this was, my first time ever being headhunted, what a buzz the fact that someone wanted me to go for an interview and I hadn’t even applied for the job!

So onboard I jump with Netegrity, employee number 5 in the UK and what a blast, back to confident me again by now and really enjoyed digging into the child like curiosity that has served me well over the years and finding everything I could about cybersecurity, I loved it and could not get enough.

SiteMinder was Netegrity’s product which was the pioneer of single sign on and access control, we also worked with a bunch of other companies one of which introduced me to the very first two factor authentication – it was an SMS system and super cool. I loved it and I was off on my cybersecurity career, I really didn’t know at the time just how much of my life would then be dedicated to cybersecurity, but this was the very start of that journey.

Big life lesson I learned at Netegrity, really very sad but it showed me how precious life and people are. On September 11th, 2001, Jim Hayden the CFO of Netegrity lost his life in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he was on one of the planes that hit the twin towers in New York. It really sent shockwaves through the company, and just bought home how we should treasure every moment of life.

Right! Plan A of starting a software company and making lots of money didn’t fly, so onto plan B, get a job at a company that actually makes money (or at least had VC funding). I was the 4th person in EMEA for Concur which really gave me a taste for start-ups and this job was again very pivotal in my career!

All of the skills I had learned doing my own start-up came in super useful at Concur, it really set me on the path, that as an individual, you can make a real difference to a company rather than just being a cog at a corporate, like I was in my early career.

I learned how to demo software properly (one of the million things we got wrong at EuroSmartz V1), but most importantly I was given my confidence back after the kicking a failure gives you. I really enjoyed working here and it was such a big part of my career which probably seems odd given it was not a long stint, but was just the tonic I needed to re-hone my skills and remember who Ian the sales person was.

If you know the saying “you are only seven people away from Kevin Bacon”, well I was only one as I worked with his sister at Concur. Not just trying to out-celeb anyone, the reason I mention this; my job at Concur was one step away from me finding one of my true passions – cybersecurity.

As confusing as it sounds, I have co-founded EuroSmartz twice. This was V1 which was a total, unmitigated, large steaming pile of failure……….and I would do it all again tomorrow!

It all started with my new found love of all things computing, by this stage I was doing the same thing I did as a kid and opened every cupboard to find out how they worked, I was in fact fixing computers for friends at this point too. Enter my older brother, the programmer – we had this great idea to create a CRM solution combining my years of sales skills and his programming prowess; SaleSmartz was born!

Woohoo, we have our own company and a cool software product so what else could possibly be needed for SaleSmartz to make us rich?? Only about a million different things, all of which we managed to get completely and utterly wrong! Firstly we made an off the shelf package that required an absolute ton of marketing for people to even look at it. My sales skills got it onto the shelf of resellers, we did shows, magazine advertising, reviews, you name it we did it………..just really badly.

We did try to get VC funding, but it was a little too late, and to be fair I would not have backed me or my brother at that time either, but it was a fantastic experience to go through and taught me a lot about the world of funding.

I could not even begin to count the huge number of things I learned from this absolute car crash of a failure and that is the reason I would do it again and again. I feel very fortunate to have had this experience and it really made me a much more well rounded & skilled business person