What CEOs Actually Think When They Watch CMOs Operate with David Politis

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K. Welcome to the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing podcast, where we explore the hottest topics in cyber marketing, interview experts, and help you become a better cybersecurity marketer.

Gianna Whitver (0:25)

Hello, listener. Today, we have a very special segment episode. That's right. We are playing our Cyber CMO Confidential Segment, where we interview some of the best marketing leaders in cybersecurity and dive really, really deep into what they're thinking, how they do things, and the hard decisions they've had to make. Enjoy and send us a note, leave us a five-star review, or give us some feedback. Podcast at cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com.

Enjoy the episode.

Charles Gold (1:00)

Welcome to CMO Confidential, the only podcast that gets to the bottom of the burning question, what the f*** are CMOs actually thinking?

Gianna Whitver (1:09)

In each unfiltered episode, we interview a top cybersecurity marketing leader to drill into the issues that drive budgets, priorities, projects, and occasionally the desire to quit.

Charles Gold (1:20)

Listen to laugh, learn from the top, and commiserate.

Gianna Whitver (1:29)

Hello and welcome to our super special segment episode of Cyber CMO Confidential. My name is Gianna Whitver and I'm here with my amazing co-host, Charles Gold.

We are super excited because we have a not CMO on the pod today as our guest. It's still going to be a fabulous conversation. We have David, aka Dave, Politis. He is the founder of Not Another CEO. Dave, thank you so much for being on the show today.

David Politis (2:03)

I'm so excited for this. I've been looking forward to this. Since Charles emailed me, I've been looking forward to this.

Charles Gold (2:08)

This is going to be amazing, everyone out there. I've known Dave for now, we figured it out, more than 12 years. He is a multi-time CEO, multi-time founder. I'll let him tell his story in a second, but he's a guy that we can all learn from, and we can all learn a lot about what it means to be a CMO working for an amazing CEO. Dave, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself?

David Politis (2:32)

Sure. I'll be quick so we can get into the conversation. But spent the first 20 years of my career building companies. First one was a Cloud PBX business called Vocalocity. It was really the first ever multi-tenant Cloud PBX running over the public Internet that was selling to SMBs. So that was kind of the early part of my career selling to micro SMBs. And I joined that company as a marketing assistant and then was made CEO after six months and ended up taking that business to about 20 million of ARR and it was acquired by Vonage. Then I went to a company called Cloud Sherpas, which was the first ever Google Cloud partner, helping people migrate to Google Apps. And I was there in the early days, pre-Zoom, pre-Microsoft 365, all of that was really successful there. That company was acquired by Accenture. And then I started a company called BetterCloud. And the idea with BetterCloud was helping IT people discover, manage and secure their SaaS applications. And took that company over a course of 10 years to about 70 million of ARR. And then we sold that company to Vista for 750 million in 2022 And now I've spent the last three years of my career really giving back, honestly. Started Not Another CEO, which is a podcast, a substack.

I've been advising over a dozen companies, invested in about 25, 30 companies. So really just trying to give back to the next generation of founders, CEOs. And this conversation is exciting for me. It's really the first podcast I've been on that is not directly related to CEOs and founders. And so I'm really excited for this because actually what I tell people all the time is if I wasn't a CEO, I would definitely be a CMO. I love marketing. I think my marketing leaders I've worked with probably don't like this, but I love marketing. And that's how Charles and I connected really.

And I've always enjoyed the conversation because I just, it's, I don't know, it's where my brain goes. So, but anyway, that's my background. So I've seen it SMB, mid-market enterprise. I've seen from the very beginning of companies all the way through acquisitions. I've seen all the different consulting services businesses to software businesses, all of that.

Gianna Whitver (4:33)

And you've had that IT security industry experience as well. So you had at least 50% of fit for this podcast.

David Politis (4:39)

50%, 50%.

Charles Gold (4:40)

He is a thousand percent of fit for this podcast.