 Hello and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, got a variety of interviews across the gamut from topics, women in tech, mentoring, pipelining developers, open source, executives, Stanford's having International Women's Day celebration with the Women in Data Science, which should mean that live as well, Friday programs. In this segment, Megan Eisenberg, friend of theCUBE, she's the CMO of Laceworks, is an amazing executive. She's got a great journey story as a CMO, but she's also actively advising startups, companies, and really pays it forward. I want to say, Megan, thank you for coming on the program and thanks for sharing. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. Well, we're going to get into some of the journey celebrations that you've gone through and best practice what you've learned to pay that for. But I got to say, one of the things that really impresses me about you as an executive is you get stuff done, you're a great CMO, but also you're advised a lot of companies. You have a lot of irons in the fires and you're advising companies, and sometimes they're really small startups to bigger companies, and you're paying it forward, which I love. That's kind of the spirit of this day. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. When I think about my career, a lot of it was looking to mentors, women out in the field this morning, I was at a breakfast by Eileen, and we had the CEO of General Motors on, and she was talking about her journey, nine years as a CEO, and she's paying it forward with us. But I think about when you're advising startups, gathered knowledge and pattern recognition, and to be able to share that is, I enjoy it. Yeah, and the startups are also fun too, but it's not always easy. And it can get kind of messy, as you know. Some startups don't make it, some succeed. And it's always like the origination story is kind of rewritten, and then that's that messy middle, and then it's like that arrows that don't look like a straight line, but everyone thinks it's great. And it's not for the faint of heart. And Theresa Carlson, who I've interviewed many times, former Amazon, now she's the president of Flexport, she always says sometimes startups in certain industries aren't for the faint of heart, so you got to have a little bit of metal, right? You got to be tough, and some cases that you don't need that, but startups, it's not always easy. What have you learned? Yeah, I mean, certainly in the startup world, grit, creativity, you know, when I was at Terp Actions, travel company, pandemic hits, nobody's traveling, you cut budget, you cut heads, but you focus on the core, right? You focus on what you need to survive. And creativity, I think wins, and you know, as a CMO when you're marketing, how do you get through that noise? Even the security space, lacework, it's a fragmented market. You've got to be differentiated and position yourself and you know, be talking to the right target audience and customers. Talk about your journey over the years. What have you learned with some observations? Can you share any stories and best practices that someone watching could learn from? I know there's a lot of people coming into the tech space with the generative AI things going on and cloud computing scaling to the edge. There's a lot more aperture for technical jobs as well as just new roles and new roles that have, you really don't go to college for anymore. You got cybersecurity you're in. What are some of the things that you've done over your career you can share and some best practices? Yeah, I think number one, continual learning. When I look through my career, I was constantly reading, networking. Part of the journey is who you're meeting along the way. As you become more senior, your ability to hire and bring in talent matters a lot. I'm always trying to meet with new people. Yeah, if I look at my Amazon feed of books I've bought, right, it kind of is chronicle of my history of things I was learning about. Right now I'm reading a lot about cybersecurity, how they tell me the world ends is the one I'm reading most recently, but you've got to come up to speed and then know the product. Get in there and talk to customers, certainly on the marketing front. Anytime I can talk with a customer and find out how they're using us, why they love us, that helps me better position and differentiate our company. By the way, that book is amazing. I saw Nicole speak on Tuesday night with John Markoff and Palo Alto here. What a great story she told there. And they recommend that book to everyone. It goes in and she did eight years of research into that book around zero-day marketplaces to all the actors involved in security. And it was very interesting. Yeah, I mean, it definitely wakes you up. Wakes you think about what's going on in the world. Very relevant. It's like, yeah, it was happening all the time, wasn't it? All the hacking. But this brings an interesting point though, because you're in a cybersecurity area, but by the way, it's changing very fast. It's becoming a bigger industry. It's not just male dominated, although it is now. It's still male dominated, but it's becoming much more and then just tech. Yeah, I mean, it's a constantly evolving threat landscape and we're learning and I think more than ever, you need to be able to use the data that companies have and learn from it. That's one of the ways we position ourselves. We're not just about writing rules that won't help you with those zero-day attacks. You've got to be able to understand your particular environment and at any moment if it changes. And that's how we help you detect a threat. How are things going with you? Is there any new things you guys got going on? Initiatives or programs for women in tech and increasing the range of diversity inclusion in the industry because again, you got this industry is getting much wider too. It's not just specialized, it's also growing. Yes, actually, I'm excited. We're launching Secured by Women. Securedbywomen.com and it's very much focused on women in the industry, which some studies are showing it's about 25% of security professionals are women and we're going to be taking nominations and sponsoring women to go to upcoming security events. And so excited to launch that this month and really celebrate women in security and help them, you know, part of that continual learning that I talked about, making sure they're there learning, having the conversations at the conferences, being able to network. I have to ask you, what inspired you to pursue the career in tech? What was the motivation? You know, I think way back originally, I wanted to be on the art side and my dad said you can do anything as long as it's in the sciences. And so an undergrad, I did computer science and MIS, graduated with the MIS and computer science minor. And when I came out, I was an IT engineer at Cisco. And, you know, that kind of started my journey and decided to go back and get my MBA. And during that process, I fell in love with marketing and I thought, okay, I understand the buyer. I can come out and market technology to the IT world and developers. And then from there went to several tech companies. I mean, my father was an engineer here, the same kind of thing. You ought to be an engineer, it's a steady, stable job. But that's why I'm computer science. I mean, we've seen the evolution of computer science. Now it's the most popular degree at Berkeley, we've heard, and around the world, and the education formats are changing. You're seeing a lot of people self-training on YouTube. The field has really changed. What are some of the challenges you see for folks trying to get into the industry? And how would you advise today if you were talking to your young self, what would be the narrative? Yeah, I mean, my drawback then was HTML pages were coming out and I thought it would be fun to design web pages. So you'd find something you're passionate about in the space today, whether it's gaming or it's cybersecurity, go and be excited about it and apply and don't give up, right? It's do whatever you can to read and learn and you're right, there are a ton of online self-help. I always try to hire women and people who are continual learners and are teaching themselves something. And I try to find that in an interview to know that they, because when you come to a business, you're there to solve problems and challenges and the folks that can do that and be innovative and learn, those are the ones I want on my team. It's interesting, you know, technology is now impacting society and it's not, we need everyone involved to participate and give requirements. And that kind of leads my next question for you is like in your opinion, or let me just step back, let me rephrase, what are some of the things that you see technology being used for for society right now that will impact people's lives? Because this is not a gender thing, we need everybody involved because society is now digital, technology is pervasive, the AI trends now we're seeing is clearly unmasking to the mainstream that there's some cool stuff happening. Yeah, I mean, I think chat, GBT, think about that. Although different ways we're using it, where we're writing content and marketing with it, where, you know, I just read an article yesterday, folks are using it to write children's stories and then selling those stories on Amazon, right? And the amount that they can produce with it. But if you think about it, there's unlimited uses with that technology and you've got all the major players getting involved on it, that one major launch and piece of technology is going to transform us in the next six months to a year and it's the ability to process so much data and then turn that into just assets that we use and the creativity that's building on top of it. Even trip actions has incorporated chat, GBT, into your ability to figure out where you want when you're traveling, what's happening in that city. So it's just, you're going to see that incorporated everywhere. I mean, we've been on an interview before, trip action, your other company you're at. Interesting point, you don't have to type in a box and to say, I'm traveling, I want a hotel. You can just say, I'm going to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. I want to have a good time. I want some tapas and a nice dinner out. Yes, yeah, that easy. We're making it easy. It's efficient actually. I was going to say for women specifically, I think the reason why we can do so much today is all the technology and apps that we have, I think about DoorDash, I think about ways. When I was younger, you had to print out instructions. Now I get in the car real quick. I need to go to soccer practice. I enter it. I need to pick them up at someone's house. I enter it. It's everything's real time. And so it takes away all the things that I don't add value to and allows me to focus on what I want in business. And so there's a bunch of apps out there that have allowed me to be so much more efficient and productive that my mother didn't have for sure when I was growing up. That is an amazing one. I think that actually illustrates, in my opinion, the best example of ChatGPT because the maps and GPS integration were two texts, technologies merged together that replace driving and looking at the map. You know, like how do you do that? Like now it's automatically. This is what's going to happen to creative, to writing, to ideation. I even heard Nicole from her book read said that they're using ChatGPT to write zero day exploits. So you're seeing it for everywhere. Super exciting. I got to ask you before we get into some of the lacework things that you're involved with. I think you're doing guys great work over there is what was the most exciting projects you've worked on in your career? You came in Cisco, very technical company. So got the technical chops CS MIS which stands for management of inspiration science for all the young people out there. That was the state of the art back then. What are some of the exciting things you've done? Yeah, I mean, I think about, I think about MongoDB and learning and learning to market to developers, taking the company public in 2017, launching Atlas database as a service. Now there's so much more of that, the PLG motion going to trip actions, surviving a pandemic, still being able to come out of that. And all the learnings that went with it, they recently, I guess rebranded, so they're in a bond now. And then now back in the security space, 14 years ago I was at Arc site and we were bought by HP. And so getting back into the security world is exciting and it's transformed a ton. As you know, it's way more complicated than it was. And so just understanding the pain of our customers and how we protect them is fun. And I like being there from a marketing standpoint. Well, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing that. I got to ask you for folks watching, they might be interested in some advice that you might have for there in their career in tech. I know a lot of young people love the tech. It's becoming pervasive in our lives, we mentioned. What advice would you give for folks watching that want to start a career in tech? Yeah, so work hard, right? Study, network, your first job, be the best at it. Because every job after that you get pulled into a network. And every time I move, I'm hiring people from the last job, two jobs before, three jobs before, and I'm looking for people that are working hard, care, are continual learners, and add value. What can you do to solve problems at your work and add value? What's your secret networking hack or growth hack or tip that you can share? Because you're a great networker, by the way, you're amazing. And you do add a lot of value, I've seen you in action. Well, I try never to eat alone. I've got breakfast, I've got lunch, I've got coffee breaks and dinner. And so when I'm at work, I try and always sit and eat with a new team member, new group, if I'm out on the road, I'm meeting people for lunch, going for dinner. Just don't sit at your desk by yourself and don't sit in the hotel room. Get out and meet with people. What do you think about the, now that we're out of the pandemic or somewhat out of the pandemic, so to speak, events are back. RSA is coming up, it's a big event. The bigger events are getting bigger and then the other events are kind of smaller being distributed. What's your vision of how events are evolving? Yeah, I mean, you've got to be in person. Those are the relationships right now more than ever, people care about renewals. And you're building that rapport and if you're not meeting with your customers, your competitors are. So what I would say is get out there, lace work. We're going to be at RSA, we're going to be at reinforce. We're going to be at all of these events, building relationships, coffee, lunch. And yeah, I think the future of events are here to stay. And those that don't embrace in person are going to give up business. They're going to lose market share to us. And networking is obviously a very key on events as well. Yes. A good opportunity is always get out the events. What's the event networking trick or advice do you give folks that are going to get out to the networking world? Yeah, schedule ahead of time. Don't go to an event and expect people just to come by for great swag. You should be partnering with your sales team and scheduling ahead of time, getting on people's calendars. Don't go there without having 100 or 200 meetings already booked. Got it. Let's talk about your career. You're currently at Lacework. It's a very hot company in a hot field. Security, very male dominated. You're a leader there. What's it like? What's the strategies? How does a woman get in there and be successful? What are some tricks, observations, any data you can share? What's the best practice? What's the secret sauce from Megan Eisenberg? Yeah, for Megan Eisenberg for Lacework. We're focused on our customers. There's nothing better than being close to them, solving their pain, showcasing them. So if you wanna go into security, focus on the issues and their problems and make sure they're aware of what you're delivering. I mean, we're focused on cloud security and we go from build time to run time. And the draw for me here is we had a lot of happy, excited customers by what we were doing and what we're doing is very different from legacy security providers. And it is tapping into the trend of really understanding how much data you have and what's happening in the data to detect the anomalies and the threats that are there. You know, one of the customers I was just having with a senior leader, she was amazing. And I asked her what she thought of the current landscape, the job market, the how to get promoted through the careers, all those things. And the response was interesting. I want to get your reaction. She said, interdisciplinary skills are critical. And now more than ever, having a set of skills, technical and social and emotional are super valuable. Do you agree, what's your reaction to that? And how would you reframe that? Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. You can't be a leader without balance. You've got to know your craft because you're developing and training your team, but you also need to know how to build relationships. You're not going to be successful as a C-level exec if you're not partnering across the functions. As a CMO, I need to partner with product. I need to partner with the head of sales. I need to partner with finance. So those relationships matter a ton. I also need to attract the right talent. I want to have solid people on the team. And what I will say in the cybersecurity space, there's a talent shortage and you cannot hire enough people to protect your company in that space. And that's kind of our part of it is we reduce the number of alerts that you're getting. So you don't need hundreds of people to detect an issue. You're using technology to highlight the issue and then your team can focus on those alerts that matter. Yeah, there's a lot of emerging markets where leveling up and you don't need pedigree, you can just level up skill-wise pretty quickly. Which brings me to the next question for you is how do you keep up with all the tech day-to-day and how should someone watching stay on top of it? Because I mean, you got to be on top of this stuff and you got to ride the wave, it's pretty turbulent but it's still growing and changing. Yeah, it's true. I mean, there's a lot of reading. I'm watching the news. Anytime something comes out, chat, dbt, I'm playing with it. I've got a great network and sharing. I'm on LinkedIn, reading articles all the time. I have a team, right? Every time I hire someone, they bring new information and knowledge in and I'm, you know, Cal Poly had this learned by doing. That was the philosophy at San Luis Obispo. So do it, try it. Don't be afraid of it. I think that's the advice. Well, I love some of the points you mentioned, community and network. You mentioned networking. That brings up the community question. How can people get involved? What communities are out there? How should they approach communities? Because communities are also networks but also they're welcoming people in. That form network. So it's a network of network. So what's your take on how to engage and work with communities? How do you find your tribe? If someone's getting into the business, they want support, they might want technology learnings. What's your approach? Yeah, so a few different places. One, I'm part of the operator collective which is a strong female investment group that's open and works a lot with operators and they're in on the newest technologies because they're investing in it. Chief, I think is a great organization as well. You've got a lot of, if you're in marketing, there's a ton of CMO networking events that you can go to. I would say any field. Even for us at Lacework, we've got some strong CISO networks and we do dinners around, we have one coming up in the Bay Area at Boston, New York and you can come and meet other CISOs and security leaders. So when I get an invite and you know we all do, I will go to it. I'll carve out the time and meet with others. So I think part of the community is get out there and join some of these different groups. Megan, thank you so much for spending the time. Final question for you, how do you see the future of tech evolving and how do you see your role in it? Yeah, I mean, marketing is changing wildly. There's so many different channels. You think about all the social media channels that have changed over the last five years. So when I think about the future of tech, I'm looking at apps on my phone. I have three daughters, 13, 11 and eight. I'm telling you, they come to me with new apps and new technology all the time and I'm paying attention what they're participating in and what they wanna be a part of. And certainly it's gonna be a lot more around the data and AI, I think we're only at the beginning of that. So we'll continue to learn from it and wield it and deal with the mass amount of data that's out there. Well, you saw a TikTok, it's got banned by the European Commission today around their staff. Interesting times. It is. Megan, thank you so much. As always, your great tech athlete been following your career for a while. A long time, you're an amazing leader. Thank you for sharing your story here on theCUBE. Celebration of International Women's Day. Every day is IWD and thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. Okay, I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto. Thank you for watching. IWD more to come. Stay with us.