The Hard Moments That Build a CEO with Mark Thurmond

0:00Steve Vintz: I was with my family and I got a call at six in the morning from Steve Vintz and from our head of HR, Bridget Paradise. And they gave me the news that I mean it passed. And a lot of people were like, well, you must have thought that was going to happen. You must have expected. One hundred percent we did not. But, you know, you talk about getting into the seat. So you're dealing with that at six a.m. And then we have to rally because we've got to do emergency board meetings within the next two hours. We have to inform the board. We have to now create documentation and communications for our employees, for our customers.

0:30Steve Vintz: We had to deal with all the Wall Street ramifications, right, of changing control and all those things. So you go from this super emotional, finding out one of your close friends and boss has passed. And literally two and a half hours later, you are on board calls, on vacation, putting together all of these very big decisions and all these big critical events that need to cascade out before word got out that he had passed.

0:56Mark Thurmond: Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and force management co-founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel, behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid. Most CEOs come up through product or through finance. Today's guest got the job because of how he sells. Mark Thurman is co-CEO of Tenable, and this is his second time on Repetit Builders.

1:37Mark Thurmond: Since we last had Mark on, a lot has changed. In April of 2025, after Tenable's longtime CEO passed away during treatment for cancer, Mark and CFO Steve Vince went to the board together and asked to run the company jointly and they've been doing it ever since, splitting responsibility, staying aligned and keeping a public company moving through one of the hardest and most difficult transitions a leadership team could face. He's also been leading Tenable through a bigger shift from the gold standard in vulnerability management to the leader in something new, exposure management. That's not a rebrand.

2:19Mark Thurmond: That's asking a massive install base to buy a platform instead of a product in a category Tenable is trying to define in real time, while AI reshapes what customers expect. Today, we're talking about the rep to CEO Klein, stepping into the seat during an incredibly hard moment, what he learned from mentors like Joe Tucci about influence versus command and control, how he and Steve actually run Tenable together, and where he thinks enterprise selling is headed in the AI era. This is Mark Thurman, co-CEO of Tenable. So Mark, one of the great things that we love about you is your journey from rep to CEO.

3:09Mark Thurmond: It's just an incredible arc. And, you know, living that with you over the past, you know, several decades, it's just been amazing. But when you look back at that arc, are there some moments that, you know, you live through that you recognize them as pivotal, but only later? Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of them,

3:33Steve Vintz: but a few of them and really a couple of them really stick out. I think first and foremost, and you and I have talked a bit about this, is having that opportunity early in the career to have that international experience. Right. So you look at the time I was able to spend in Asia for a few years and live in Germany and Munich for a couple of years and being able to have a lot of roles where I spend an enormous amount of time overseas. And now as you progress through your career and you go in from rep and then, you know, up to RD, second, third line management, and the COO and now CEO, being able to have an appreciation and understand how international markets work, how cultures are different and how you need to support them and support your people, the different languages, the intricacies that need to happen, say, in Asia versus EMEA versus the US versus Latin America.

4:22Steve Vintz: So that, I think, is a true very big building block of my career. So that is one. The second one is actually not a good situation. And I think you were around us for a little bit. But when we went through that state sponsored attack from China at RSA, when RSA was really one of the first big cybersecurity companies that was breached and a very sophisticated state sponsor attack, to live through that type of situation and really just crisis management and being able to keep the team motivated, being able to communicate with customers, communicate with government agencies, regulators, NSA, FBI, CIA, and then the government on how we were communicating and how we were working through our customer base and explaining what was going on and how we would be working with them around two-factor authentication and replacing tokens and all of the logistics.

5:19Steve Vintz: And that was a one-year process. And arguably, You talk to anyone that that went through it through RSA and everyone brings it up as one of the most instrumental times of their career where you truly understood what pressure was. Right. But then you rally. And, you know, as you know, we ended up coming out of that situation, growing faster, hitting all the different financial metrics that we needed to hit within EMC, used it as kind of an executive platform to talk to executives, CIOs, and CISOs about what an advanced persistent threat really is and how you need to rally when you are attacked and breached.

5:59Steve Vintz: So that really, I use that as my crisis management 101. When certain situations in the back of my mind, I'm like, hey, man, if you live through that, you can live through anything. And I think that was another big kind of critical event that you could say happened in my career. That's a little bit of a building block.

6:14Mark Thurmond: What was amazing about that was how fast you guys mobilized. I remember Castagnola, Casting, and you got all these people. I think you guys actually brought people into, they lived there. They did.

6:27Steve Vintz: We lived there for a few weeks in the beginning, and Joe Tucci, the CEO of EMC, pointed at that time, the COO, Dave Goulden, to work out of the RSA offices, which he was there 12, 13 hours a day. And we really did. We converted all of our inside sellers into folks that would talk to customers about what took place you know we took a lot of our tech support people they were actually enabled and trained to have customer conversations you had to have legal someone from product and someone from sales on every call to make sure you were positioning and explaining exactly what took place and we did and i think if you talk to anyone you know cassie being one but eric erstin and dino de marino and jeff brooks the whole crew, it really, every time we get together, we always bring that up as one of the most pivotal times of our lives and in our careers.

7:17Steve Vintz: A Foxhole moment. It's a big-time Fox moment, man.

7:22Mark Thurmond: A lot of times, though, in the beginning, you know, there's a lot of people that really panic in those situations. And there's other people that stay really calm. Totally. But a lot of people are really short-term thinkers. And the point you're making is you have to have a long-term perspective. And if you do and you don't panic and you treat the customers right, it can actually turn out to be a big benefit for you.

7:43Steve Vintz: Yeah, no, it's an awesome point, John. And that's really what happened is no one panicked. You know, we all work insane hours. We all rallied around this mission and vision of how to communicate to customers and explain the situation. And a lot of folks had empathy for the situation we're in. And, you know, John, they appreciated the transparency. You know, Art Coviel at the time made a very bold mood to go public within a 24 to 48 time period, which was very rare back then. And by based on that transparency and then the lessons that we learned and what actually took place, people could actually learn, you know, from it did become public after that.

8:19Steve Vintz: It was China that did the attack, how they got in, how they navigated the network, how they stayed low and slow and, you know, traversed the network laterally. And so lots of lessons to be learned. But then, you know, once we were able to work our way out of the woods a bit, we then were able to have these executive level conversations that actually accelerated our business because we had lived through something that all of our customers wanted to avoid. So it was it was pretty pivotal.

8:43Mark Thurmond: It's something that was something that was something I was pretty amazed by as the first of all, I think it was with huge humility that your leadership team, you know, went public. with that so early and not having all the answers actually, by the way, because of the way that you guys did business with your customer base, they were, from my memory, they were more open to, hey, we understand that that's going to happen, that it's probably happening to us as well. What can we do together? And it was really kind of a lesson for me in that if you are open and transparent and there's a couple of things that I saw there that, you know, that open and, you know, open and transparent.

9:36Mark Thurmond: And then the way that you communicated with the teams, because a lot of times sellers can go south. They're like, oh, my God, like, I don't even, you know, this deal that we have on the table, that can go south. And you guys delivered forecasts. You, you know, you delivered revenue, you delivered recruiting. And what would you take away from that now from a, you know, from lessons learned from a communication standpoint as it relates to like a sales org? Because there's people going through stuff every day right now in these AI companies and in every company. Just the pace of change, the pace of information that's out there.

10:15Mark Thurmond: Any lasting lessons that you would give to people?

10:17Steve Vintz: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is pretty straightforward. And a lot of it is based on being able to control your emotions, being able to be somewhat patient and understand the situation, make very clear decisions and be super specific and explicit on those different action items and those different follow ups, right? Like the saying we have all the time is don't worry about things you do not control. Like literally move those things off because you can't control them. So what can you control? And that would be our message. And we over communicated. You know, we were talking to sellers three or four times a day.

10:52Steve Vintz: I had stand up calls at the end of every day, so on and so forth. But I think the way we're able to keep them really motivated is super clean, super simple. Here's the message. Here's the playbook. Let's go deliver it with humility, but with passion and enthusiasm, knowing that we learned some lessons and we could share that with our customer base and they could benefit from it also. And so I think you tie all those things in there. And I think it's transferable to so many different situations, you know, as either reps or first and second line managers start building out their career.

11:20Mark Thurmond: Amazing. I want to talk about this arc a little bit more.

11:24Steve Vintz: Yeah.

11:25Mark Thurmond: Airborne Express, Abbott, PTC, EMC, RSA, Turbonomic, Tenable. You're swinging for the fences. You're going through the rep phases, the leadership phases. You talked about an Asia stint in there. As you got your head down, you've got the advantage now of being able to look back for people that are listening and they've got their head down and navigating opportunities, whether to go to Asia or not, or whether to go to Europe or not, or whether to take that opportunity or not. What lessons have you learned as you climbed up the ladder, when you look back at those pivotal times of decision making to figure out what's the next company, what's the next opportunity, what advice do you have for the people that are out there listening, wondering, do I have an arc to go from seller to CEO?

12:21Steve Vintz: Yeah, absolutely. I think the one thing when I look back at my career and I talk to folks about my career the one thing i tell a lot of folks especially younger folks is i didn't have this documented plan and documented timeline to become a publicly traded ceo you know of a cyber security company it really was and i think it's it's one of the things i i can do there's not many things i can do really well one thing i can do really well is focus and just stay in the moment and know exactly kind of what the mission is. What do I need to be successful? Who do I need to work with and communicate and bring, you know, together with me to go achieve the goals.

13:01Steve Vintz: And a lot of the times when I got promoted, or when I moved to different roles within different companies, and they were always for bigger roles and bigger opportunities, it was because I had executed in some way, shape or form in the past role, whatever it was. And so I tell a lot of people is don't get caught up and saying, I've got to be at this certain level by this certain time period with this certain salary, with this much equity. I am like, focus on the moment, focus on execution. And if you are one of the number one, number two, number three, or top, you know, 5 % performers, opportunities are going to come to you, right?

13:33Steve Vintz: They're going to find you either internally within the company you're at or externally, you know, folks are going to seek you out. So my advice to everyone, right, that I talk to in my network, and I've got, you know, a couple of kids in college right now playing college sports and I talked to other teammates and I just say stay in the moment focus on what you need to do focus on the next play focus on the next rep and if you do that right with discipline you're gonna actually end up in a great spot um so those are some of the the things that I do I did not map this out um to be a CEO of a publicly traded company it just kind of happened in regard to focused on execution um and being with the right people I love that

14:13Mark Thurmond: You know, basically in the statement that you made, it all starts with performance. So to even think about a career or trajectory in an arc like yours, you have to perform. If you want the next job, you know, there are ways to act like you already have it. One of the ways you can act like you already have it is to outperform the job, the current job that you're in. And that can't get lost in any of the messaging that we do. You performed at every single level. The other thing you did, and whether you did it consciously or not, you were not only performing, but you were gathering followers. Like when I think about all those places where you move, Johnny's a great example of that.

14:56Mark Thurmond: Well, it's that you are gathering followers. Are you aware of that as you're going through your career or how does that play out?

15:03Steve Vintz: Yeah, it plays out. you know well a you get to see the result when you do make a move or you do go to another company you know you can actually very simply look at all the different people that you would want to reach out to that you would want to communicate and you would want to work with again and as i made these different moves you know there would always be a core group of people um that i would reach out to and say hey listen i've got this opportunity i think it's going to be great let me kind of walk you through it but then i really flip it to them and say here's why i think it's great for you Right.

15:33Steve Vintz: Here's why I think this is going to be an amazing opportunity for you and your career. Right. And when you're able to look at these opportunities, evaluate them correctly and then be able to build your team and have your following. You know, to me, that's a great sign of a phenomenal leader. You know, we all know this. It's super basic. But, you know, one of the biggest telltales of hiring the wrong person is once they've been in the seat for three, six, nine months, they don't have anyone from their past companies that have joined them. you know that to me is like a massive red flag like we might have hired the wrong person if they don't do that right um we've got examples you know we just actually just brought in dino di marino as our new cro congratulations yeah total rockstar but you look at dino being on board 120 days he's already brought in four or five people from his network right um a lot of the folks that we've brought on board and retooled our executive staff have all brought in people whether it's in product, whether it's in finance, whether it's in human resources, that to me is one of the biggest telltales of a phenomenal leader.

16:35Steve Vintz: And all you got to do is look at John McMahon right there and look at all the companies that he's been involved in and all the different people that follow John, whether he's on the board or whether he was running it day to day. You know, that's it. That to me is one of the biggest things for a phenomenal leader as a grade.

16:50Mark Thurmond: What I wanted to add to what Mark was saying is like for me, and some of it's built into what he's saying, is you have to put yourself in learning and developing situations constantly. It's the times when I've left companies is when I feel like I'm not growing anymore. When I'm not growing, I kind of get bored. And in a funny way, I like to put myself in situations where I'm comfortable being uncomfortable. Yeah, absolutely. And that's where the growth is. That's where, Johnny, as you always say, the learning is in the struggle. That's where the learning is. That's where the struggle is. That's where you have to learn how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations, because that's where you grow.

17:35Mark Thurmond: Without a doubt.

17:36Steve Vintz: The other thing, too, is everybody always asks me, like, who's your mentor?

17:40Mark Thurmond: I'm like, I don't really have a mentor. Like, everybody to me is a mentor. So no matter what level they ever were at or who they were, I was always listening to what they said. And if they said something or they had a certain skill set, I always thought, wow, that's really interesting. Like, I need to incorporate that into what I do. So think of the fact that you can always learn from everybody around you if you have that mindset. And that developing mindset, for what Mark said, is that's what's going to get you to the next level. and you know mark you know with the internet going international and dealing with the crisis those were all learning and developing situations he didn't run away from them he was very tried to be as uncomfortable as possible no question comfortable yeah and you look at what he's saying so i want to just you know add some no i i think it's an awesome point john and if

18:37Steve Vintz: you look at you know just use myself as the example you look at some of those roles i ended of moving into, you know, coming out of EMC after 15 years, you know, they were chief operating officer type role, right? Well, really at EMC, it was such a machine. I was really, even though a general manager titles and things like that, where I'd learned different aspects of the business, you know, when I left EMC and then went to Click, it was running professional services and, you know, running all the renewals business and involved in tech support, and then going to Turbonomic as a COO with even more role responsibility with marketing, and then, you know, going to a public company as a COO right now, learning how the, you know, the street and being able to work with wall street, work with all of the different folks that you need to work with in a publicly traded company, every one of those moves, it was a really big challenge, but that honestly, you know, the money was second.

19:27Steve Vintz: It's like, if I can learn something and I can benefit, and I think I can impact this org a little bit, that was always the compelling reason for me to kind of make those jumps. And there were with people, you know, especially when the Turbonomic and with Hannibal folks that I knew, right? And a network that I knew.

19:44Mark Thurmond: So I want to just summarize a couple of things that I heard from both of you, which I think are really, really important. You have to have performance to even have any kind of arc at all. So if you're not performing right now, focus more on performance than the arc and trajectory of your career. Focus on performing where you're at and being, you know, making a name for yourself that way. Also, building, you know, I think it is a big red flag when leaders, you won't have an arc like this if you do not, if you have not built a relationships and a communication path and style that would get others to want to join you and follow you.

20:28Mark Thurmond: just like they would show up in a crisis like you guys had early on in that RSA situation. And then the other thing is what I really have been most impressed about you, Mark, is the number of years that I've known you. Invariably, I talk to you at least once a year where you will ask me a question for feedback. You'll say, hey, based upon what we're talking about, how do you think we're doing against that or xyz or abc and you're constantly i've never talked to you where you thought like you had it all you got it all buttoned up and you got it written down and it's you just running a playbook that's always been something i've always been most impressed with with you think you got it all locked up and you've got all the knowledge in the world or in sales or in sales operations you're done you're done everybody realizes at that moment you're a dinosaur now.

21:23Mark Thurmond: It's a really matter of time before they find a way to get you out.

21:27Steve Vintz: 100%. It is one of the biggest things. I always, whether I'm talking to my marketing director, I'm talking to our CMO, I'm talking to our product people, I'm talking to our renewals team, I always ask, how do we benchmark against the competition? Who is first in class and how are we competing and how are we going against them? I always want that third party validation and I want that stack ranking because to me simplistically right there's all sorts of creative ways to get better but if there is a playbook and it's all about execution and you can learn something not that you're going to take every single step because that might not work for your company but if there are people that are out there doing it understanding how they do it how you compare what you can benefit from um that to me is like a calling card you know you can talk to my people and they could say thurman is always asking how does this compare against our competition and how does this compare against folks that are doing it world class?

22:22Mark Thurmond: I want to add one other thing that Mark said before, because a lot of people, especially these days, younger people think they need to get promoted really quick, and they're quick to grab onto a position, quick to grab onto money, but not quick to grab onto opportunity. So I get calls all the time from people that have been around, and they'll label out a couple different opportunities that they're looking for. They'll name a company where they got the better title and more money and more stock. But when they tell you about the situation and they know it's going nowhere, it's literally going nowhere.

23:02Mark Thurmond: And then they talk about another one where there's a really good opportunity. The title is less and the money is less. and what do they choose? Even though you tell them you go for the opportunity because three years from now, if you work your ass off, you'll be at a much bigger title with more money, working around people you want to work around, you know, with the stock that you want and the company's going somewhere. And then the next place you go, you have a whole bunch of other people you've been around that you can go with. But guess what they always do? They always choose the position or the money.

23:37Mark Thurmond: And then two years later, they call me and say, yeah, John, you were right. I made a mistake. You know, okay, dude, but you lost two years of your life. You weren't challenged. You didn't learn anything. You took a big title. You didn't work around anybody you really wanted to, you could learn from. Now you're stuck and you got a big black mark on your resume.

23:55Steve Vintz: Good luck. Could not agree more. You know, and listen, all I can do, you are 100 % accurate. You know, all I can try to do is, you know, use myself as an example. You know, when we were able to sell Click, we got an exit at Click, sold it for about $3 billion. I had a bunch of other opportunities going through that process after we had sold. And a bunch of people reached out, really, really big companies, big publicly traded companies coming in for really big CRO roles and things like that. And I had the opportunity to go as chief operating officer to Turbonomic, which is a Boston-based company, and work for a guy, Ben Nye, who probably is one of the smartest humans I've ever met in my life.

24:32Steve Vintz: Mensa level intelligence, unbelievable work ethic and passion and drive. And he was a very well-known executive and venture capitalist in Boston. And I'm like, I can learn probably more from Ben than going to any of these other publicly traded companies and learn at running a startup and running all these different functions. And it turned out to be exactly what it was. Learned a ton. Ben did an incredible job getting a$2 billion exit out of Turbonomic and amazing experience. But it was a great example, John, of not going for a bigger title, a bigger company, definitely a bigger OTE. And saying to myself, I can probably learn.

25:13Steve Vintz: I haven't been in this environment before because I've always been with kind of bigger, you know, PTC and EMC, more larger, well-established companies. And, you know, it played out pretty well.

25:22Mark Thurmond: Johnny take us into the journey of the CEO well that's a pretty easy one to do Cap talk to us a little bit about grabbing that CEO title talk about maybe the top two biggest things you learned as you sit in that seat because the CRO seat can be pretty lonely seat and now you're in a CEO seat that could be pretty lonely like a man on an island before we do that Mark would you mind just the circumstances are so unique they're so powerful and i don't think i don't think our audience really understands like how that solidified itself but would you kind of take us through that a little bit yeah let me kind of walk you through it because it

26:07Steve Vintz: is super unique and kind of situation we're in right now as a co-ceo is unique too so as a publicly traded company so you know the way it happened is i i came and joined tenable for there you talk about have a following for Amit you're on right Amit was the CEO of Tenable I worked with him at RSA it was funny as you know Cap we used to butt heads quite a bit oh yeah there's a there's a lot of mutual respect and so when the opportunity came up after talking to Amit through a lengthy process I decided to make the move and became extremely close with Amit right obviously we talk every day he was one he is and was one of these visionary leaders that people talk about to this day every time you meet someone that met Amit they bring up an Amit story And so he was truly one of these visionaries within cyber.

26:51Steve Vintz: And, you know, listen, it's super sad. You know, meat was was diagnosed with cancer. And by the way, unbelievably healthy individual. He was West Point guy, wrestler, worked out every day, cardio, super clean diet. You know, we'd go in and out of like vegetarian diets and carnivore diets and always experimenting with fitness and nutrition and live the very, very healthy lifestyle. And Amit was diagnosed with cancer, became interim co-CEOs with Steve Vince. And we were doing that role for six or seven months. And then Amit had a relapse. So same type of situation. And then, you know, Amit passed away at the beginning in January of 2025.

27:34Steve Vintz: and I was on vacation with my family. The year just ended. I was with my family and I got a call at six in the morning, you know, from Steve Vince and from our head of HR, Bridge of Paradise. And they gave me the news that I mean it passed. And a lot of people were like, well, you must have thought that was going to happen. You must have expected. 100 % we did not. Every single person at Tenable thought of me because he was such a grinder was going to fight through this. So it was shocking. But, you know, you talk about getting into the seat. so you're dealing with that at 6 a.m and then we have to rally because we've got to do emergency board meetings within the next two hours we have to inform the board we have to now create you know documentation and communications for our employees for our customers we had to deal with all the wall street ramifications right of changing control and all those things so you go from this super emotional finding out one of your close friends and and boss has passed and literally two and a half hours later, you are on board calls on vacation, putting together all of these very big decisions and all these big critical events that need to cascade out before word, you know, got out that he had passed.

28:44Steve Vintz: And so this is, this is one of these things where you talk about putting emotions in a certain, you know, part of your personality and compartment within your brain, and then focus. And as much as you're grieving, you've got to focus on the mission. You've got to focus you got 2 000 plus employees you got 44 000 customers you have to start executing and just have that switch go automatically on and avoid the brutalness of the situation because you got to run the business and you got to keep this thing moving forward and so super rare the way it happened obviously uh we all love to meet with such passion and enthusiasm he was a true true true visionary and just an awesome, awesome guy.

29:28Steve Vintz: But Steve and I then as being co-CEOs of Tenable, you know, kind of unique. We both were talking to each other, both looked at each other and said, hey man, you know, we've been co-CEOs for six or seven months. We know how to run this business. We've helped build this new exposure management strategy. We can run this together. And neither of us wanted to stay if the new guy came on board and had to retool everything. And neither of us felt that the other one might've deserved it and should have it. and one of us would leave. So we actually approached the board. This is kind of unique. We approached the board together and said, hey, we think we can run this business at an unbelievably high level as co-CEOs.

30:03Steve Vintz: We put a lot of thought into it. What the role, the responsibility, what Steve was going to do, what I was going to do, how would we communicate? And the board said, let's do this. We think you guys can execute. And we've had a lot of beaten raises since that decision has been made to Wall Street. So we're continuing to execute and stand focused on the mission.

30:23Mark Thurmond: Yeah, so your international experience, your crisis management at RSA, a lot of that stuff came back allowing you to do what you did during that terrible situation. Yeah, absolutely brutal.

30:37Steve Vintz: Without a doubt. And those are the things you really look back on. And some of that, John, you don't even realize when you're in it, it feels like it just becomes part of your DNA. It's just kind of who you are now as you've kind of grown in your career. And you just kind of fall right into it. You know what the right thing is that has to happen. And your execution mindset just kind of overtakes and says, all right, here's what we got to do. Company always comes first. And so what the company always comes first? What are the things we need to do to execute? And then, you know, put your emotions at the side.

31:08Steve Vintz: Eventually, you know, you got to check into your emotional side and understand and grieve. But, you know, at that time and continuing, we needed to drive the business and make a lot of changes in the business and execute even at a higher level. But that's really where our mindset went. And that's kind of what Steve and I have been able to do as as co-CEOs of Tenable.

31:26Mark Thurmond: Yeah. Now let's talk about something that's close to me. Yeah. I know close to you. Talk about whether or not that had a I know you've always been a health nut a little bit like me. Yeah. But talk about whether or not that made you think even more about being healthy and.

31:45Steve Vintz: Yeah.

31:46Mark Thurmond: And watching what you do in your life with respect to health.

31:49Steve Vintz: Yeah, no, I love, first, I love that you actually brought this question up, because it did change quite drastically. And as you said, always been into fitness, always been working out so on so forth, relatively clean diet, cheat a little bit here and there. But, you know, overall, fitness has always played a big role. And my mental makeup, right, making sure that I'm in a good mental place and making sure I get my workouts done in the morning. And when I land into a city, you know, I tell my team, if I'm coming in a red eye, I'm working out before I go on my first meeting.

32:14Mark Thurmond: So that's always been. Let's talk about why that's so important, especially as a leader. The reason that's so important as a leader is everyone is counting on you to make very good decisions. You're now the co-CEO of the company. And if you're not in good health, in a good mindset, because, you know, you came in on a red eye and now you went to work out to clear your head, get the cobwebs out and be in a really good frame of mind, then you can't make good decisions. And, you know, we've all seen people that were in leadership positions that slowly lost themselves. themselves they didn't take care of themselves and they ran themselves into the ground and if you know good for yourself as a leader then you certainly know good for anybody else there is no

32:54Steve Vintz: question about it and and you know this and cap knows this too is a lot of times when you are flying into different countries and all that you know they're your teams have set up meetings that they've been working on for months to try to get you in there right whether it's with an executive a cio or cso or ceo whether you're doing press interviews and you're on tv or doing print and making sure you're there, whether you're doing a keynote at a presentation, you know, whatever it is, when you get to kind of that that that C level in regard to being a CEO and a CRO and a COO, the work that goes into these trips is amazing.

33:28Steve Vintz: And your team is counting on you. And so you can never, you know, go into those situations without a clear head, clean body, because it's gonna allow you to execute better. But going into the meat situation, what was really eye opening. And again, if you talk to any of my friends and even my wife and my kids and anyone in my network and see my employees is I really am focusing and trying to talk to people about longevity and really the proactive nature of medicine and what's going on in this kind of revolution, which AI has helped drive, you know, but you look at some of the diagnostic and biomarker tests you can do.

34:03Steve Vintz: You know, we actually, after me passed, we changed our insurance. We now give every single employee at Tenable, we give them a$500 subscription to Function Health, which is very expensive. It's 160 biomarkers. It allows you to look at all these different panels that normal blood channels, but don't pick up. So it would allow you to see if there is something going on internally where you might feel good that you don't see yet. So that's kind of a big thing. The second big thing I talk a lot about is this proactive nature of looking at like full body MRIs and full CAT scans, right? Like science has developed.

34:41Steve Vintz: And when you look at how AI has really allowed folks that do these full body MRIs, like Pernobo is a great company that does this. You can go for an hour, do these full body MRIs, and you can look at your brain, your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, your liver, look where arthritis might be in your lower back, your knees, your ankles, and it gives you this full diagnostic layout. And by the way, I talk about this so much, my employees have called it the med pick for your body right you guys know how much i love med pick they're like thermon's gonna talk about med picking your body and so this is the proactive nature of it and so like i look at a meat as the example right unbelievable father three kids unbelievable brother you know three brothers great family guy more money than any human could ever spend in their life and you know we lost him way too early and the thought in the back of my mind always is man if a meet maybe had done an mri or a cat scan and did it every 12 months and truly understood what was going on who knows i don't know whether it would have been different or not but i have definitely become a bit of an evangelist around this stuff i do a lot of reading studying and i i probably drive a lot of people crazy talking about this a lot but it was an eye opener and it is something that uh you know i'm a believer in this escape velocity you know around longevity maybe in the next three to five years where they could spend life for you know 10 or 15 years.

35:58Steve Vintz: And I think you got to be proactive and you've got to, you know, do a lot more pre-work on your body and understanding what's going on, you know, to I think live a long, healthy life.

36:08Mark Thurmond: The other thing too, is, you know, you talk about traveling and going to different countries and staying in different hotels. And if you don't make it a priority, then what happens is you can easily fall victim to making excuses as to why you didn't work out that day, right? Without a doubt. When you make it a priority, you find a hotel with a workout area or you find a hotel that's near a river that you can run on. Yeah. You know, you find hotels that have some sort of capability for you when you land and get to the hotel to work out clear your head, whether it's yoga, it's Pilates, it's running, it's cycling, it's going to the gym, it's going in the pool, whatever it is.

36:48Mark Thurmond: Yeah. Find a way to go do something for yourself and make yourself a priority before you make everyone else a priority.

36:56Steve Vintz: Could not agree more. I mean, I preach this to all my people, especially all the executives that do the crazy travel that we all do. It is something right. And I'm like, listen, there's a difference between motivation and discipline. Motivation can go up and down with cycle. Discipline is you set it and you do it as a behavior and it becomes a habit that you cannot function without. of and you need to be disciplined and so like to me it's a must and i just think when you do it you know you kind of have you go do it for you know two and a half three months it becomes a habit you know you can't get along without doing it when you're on the road and and other aspects of uh of your fitness you know journey and regime but huge believer in it when you say when you say

37:35Mark Thurmond: the med pic part i was just we were chuckling about that but my god it's so true because Because what I find, even with myself sometimes in the past, is maybe some things I just don't want to know. And that's so, with me, with my responsibility, with my children, my grandchildren, that's not okay anymore. Like, a lot of people are counting on me. and it for me it's more of the mental part of you know it's okay not to know but it's not okay not to be doing anything about it and i find that the older i get the more i have to call on my response to whatever i find out because the older i get crap is falling apart yeah stuff's falling off the wheels.

38:26Mark Thurmond: Sure. Stuff is going to happen. So nobody gets out of here alive. Exactly. It's how you respond to what you have available to you. And the technology that like my dad, when I think about my parents, the technology that we have, the technology that our children are going to have, it just makes no sense not to, not to, not to find things out because you have an opportunity to do something about it.

38:57Steve Vintz: Not only do you have an opportunity, you have an opportunity to do it and diagnose it early. I think we all know the situation, right? When you diagnose cancer in that stage one and stage two, the likelihood of living is exponentially higher than when you're in stage three and stage four. And with these new modern technologies, like the full body MRIs and for heart and coronary disease, you know, doing calcium scores and having all this technology, it really doesn't make sense. And I do get pushback, right? And I'll use the med pick, right? It's like a rep not wanting to ask a tough question of a champion.

39:30Steve Vintz: I'm not asking, you know, hey, is there really budget? And who's my competition? Because I don't want to get the answer. Yeah, the same thing is like, well, Thurman, I'm not sure I really want to know. And I'm like, bullshit. You absolutely want to know because if you know, you can fight it, you can correct it. You can take all these steps. I said the criminal part of this, the most devastating part is if you could have had that, and you didn't take the opportunity, and then you get a certain situation, and it might be too late, who knows, then that is to me, that's the bad part. That's the sad part.

40:01Steve Vintz: Like science, technology is there today to extend life, to extend quality of life. And it's all about being proactive in your nature, and proactive in the different steps that you take. And if you're discipline and you do it. Just think about this, Cap and John. You do this every 12 months, which is now this regime. You really, the likelihood of you getting surprised in 12 months of something that might actually, you know, kill you or give you a significant issue was relatively small because you can see it forming, you can see it happening. And so listen, I can talk about this stuff forever, but I'm a big believer in it.

40:34Steve Vintz: And I really think people on this podcast should be, You know, really self-evaluating, making sure they're taking a proactive step to their health, fitness is critical, in my opinion.

40:46Mark Thurmond: Let's switch gears and talk about how AI might be affecting your business. What do you see in AI? What do you think is coming in AI? How are your sales reps using AI to increase productivity, to learn faster, to get a better grip on customer situations, to resonate better when they walk in with a point of view to the customer? Talk a little bit about what you're seeing and where you think it might be going.

41:11Steve Vintz: Yeah. I mean, listen, there is no question about it. It has totally become the number one topic within cybersecurity. There is not one meeting that I go on or my team goes on where the CISO or the CIO does not want to talk about what's happening with the Frontier AI Labs. They want to talk about Glasswing. They want to talk about Mythos. They want to talk about Open Eye Strategy. You know, now you've got all the open source players coming into market at a much lower cost. you now are starting to see some of the first attacks where they're leveraging some of these llms and the sophistication level that's happening there so it is omnipresent right there is there is there is not a discussion even if you're going in for a meeting talking about a specific you know part of your platform they want to start off with hey what's it like partnering with anthropic how are you doing with open ai and then let's talk about how this affects our threat landscape because these cso's are being asked by their board to make sure that their infrastructure and their cyber controls are in place to prepare for an extremely sophisticated attack by leveraging AI.

42:09Steve Vintz: So it is omnipresent. You know, I think the way we've approached it is we are partnering very, very heavily with Anthropic, for instance, where we are now building a cloud into our technology. So we've got Hexa, which is our agentic AI technology that allows you to run on top of Tenable One, our platform, and allows you to go in and change and be able to simplify and be able to modernize your workflows and be able to go in and look at all the different mundane tasks and all the repetitive manual tasks and be able to do it within an agent where you can now speed up time of specific tasks that might have taken you a month or month and a half.

42:49Steve Vintz: We have customers now doing some certain things around remediation and around prioritization in minutes and hours compared to weeks and months. And so you're seeing this evolution really happen in front of you. I think the cybersecurity and more broadly, I think the technology sector, specifically SaaS, it's going to be the companies that partner and innovate with some of these models and with their own AI that are going to be able to build value, going to be able to separate themselves. And the ones that don't and they say, oh, you know, this really isn't going to happen. This is something that's, you know, going to kind of spin themselves out.

43:21Steve Vintz: They're not going to be real subject matter experts from my domain. I know more about it than these different models. Those are the ones that are at risk. If you are not building and innovating and building your code and developing your solutions with these AI technologies, I truly think you're going to have some issues. For us at Tenable, we've seen it as an accelerator in regard to our conversations and what we're seeing in the marketplace right now. And the partnership we've been able to actually build pretty quick, especially with Anthropic and OpenAI, I think are going to pay off down the road for us.

43:54Mark Thurmond: Where are you seeing that your sales reps are using it the most?

43:57Steve Vintz: So for sales reps, what we see right now, and I talk to a lot of my peers, just like you guys are connected, talk to a lot of folks, where we are getting the biggest leverage out of it is really kind of on that back end. So think of things like sales operations, getting quotes done. Think of how we're analyzing and looking at the historical data around forecasting and trending. Think of enablement, where we're able to go in, record all these sessions, look for certain things using AI, where we can modify and tweak all of our content in real time based on talks and Zoom sessions that we've got going on with customers.

44:30Steve Vintz: That's been a huge area of focus. Being able to go in, especially on pre-call planning, that used to take a huge amount of time. You've got a big sales call. You're going to five different sources. You're trying to understand what the mission statement is for the company you're going to. All of those different things that we're all born and raised on that are still critical. I mean, AI automates all that, right? You're able to go in and get these pre-call briefings that are just phenomenal and they resonate. And as you do more and more of it, as you guys know, you're training your little co-pilot there every day with, you know, 10, 15, 20 different commands.

45:04Steve Vintz: These things are just amazing. And we are seeing really significant productivity gains on the sales side of the house, especially for the reps that are really kind of thinking as AI, as an enhancement, and as a co-pilot. They're driving higher levels of productivity, freeing up, you know, non-face time with customers. You know, we want our guys out there doing seven to eight face-to-face sales calls, doing a 10 to 15 Zoom calls. We've got very high expectations in regard to activity. Being able to free up 15%, 20%, 25 % of their week by using AI is phenomenal. And I think you're going to continue to see those type of massive productivity gains for years to come.

45:42Steve Vintz: And we're just in the early stages. There's so many more things that are not just tenable, but I think our industry is going to tackle using AI. It's going to be pretty cool.

45:51Mark Thurmond: a lot of what about the always were you know doing a really good job before they went into an account getting the point of view of the cus bringing a point of view to the customer because they truly did their homework on the customer and that took a lot of time to your point yeah but now even the lazy sales reps with ai can do that pretty quickly right without a doubt it used to be maybe 20 % of your, 25 % of your sales force is going in with a very informed point of view to the customer where they could challenge the customer. And now, you know, if you, if they're not using those tools, I mean, it's pretty stupid.

46:30Steve Vintz: And as you know, John, because it's not just the reps that are doing, and you're right, but when you're talking to customers, they are so much more educated when you're meeting with them because they're doing the same thing you're doing, right? When you're going on a big meeting and they're doing kind of a summary of Tenable and whatever differentiators, what's going on with Tenable on the platform, how is it separating itself from the pack with exposure management? So when you go on these calls, I mean, these CISOs and CIOs are wired. They know exactly what the issues and challenges are within the industry.

46:58Steve Vintz: They know what questions they want to ask. And so if you're not doing that legwork and homework, which is pretty damn easy, you are going to be at a significant disadvantage in front of the customer. So without a doubt. Yeah.

47:10Mark Thurmond: What about the vulnerability? You guys are vulnerability and exposure management. And for the last couple of years, I've had my eye on the cybersecurity industry and its coexistence and its partnerships in AI. What are some of the things that maybe you could debug or take the mystification out of it of those companies that are worried about their own vulnerability, their own trade secrets, their own sovereignty when they interact with this world of AI? What advice do you have for those companies? Yeah.

47:56Steve Vintz: I mean, listen, first off, it's happening and those conversations are actually taking place today. It is still pretty interesting that everyone is still asking the questions and there isn't this 100 % clean roadmap and playbook for every company. You know, so a lot of meetings I go on, the first 15, 20 minutes is the CISO saying, hey, here's what we're doing with Anthropic. We're now part of Glasswing. Here's what we saw when we ran it internally, you know, against our code. Here are some of the things, the good things. Here's some things that didn't make a lot of sense. What are you seeing? What are your peer group saying?

48:28Steve Vintz: So there's still a lot of that. I think, and that will continue to play out, but I think people are getting better and better and those questions are getting answered quicker because I do think Anthropic, OpenAI and the other players are responding quicker and giving more insight. And they're opening up their aperture where they're now communicating with more customers and being more transparent, working with the government, the US government to open up and communicate better. But I do think what you're going to see, especially when you look at customers within cybersecurity, as I kind of said before, you really, to me, the way I view it is looking at like OpenAI and Anthropic, I view them kind of like AWS, GCP, and Azure, where you have this incredible platform, which you don't want to not use it.

49:12Steve Vintz: You want to use it in benefit to help your own business because you don't want to build a bunch of data centers. And so using Anthropic or OpenAI or any of these front AI labs is how do you build that tech into your stack as a platform that is going to allow you to differentiate? And that to me is unbelievably critical and important, as I said. And, you know, the other thing people got to keep in mind is you can't get caught up in the noise and the misinformation, right? If you just look back like February, February of this year, when these models were announced and every SaaS company on the planet got hammered and they went down 40, 50 percent and everyone was saying, oh, it's a SaaS apocalypse.

49:48Steve Vintz: And, you know, these companies are going to go out of business. And then when you realize and you start explaining and Steve, Vince and myself did a lot of this to Wall Street, where we would be calling up analysts and saying, hey, let me walk you through why this is a tailwind, why this is going to be a benefit for SaaS companies in cyber that are actually doing the right things, and what's going to happen to this exponential increase of vulnerabilities and how it's going to speed up remediation and looking at attack paths and looking at multiple parts of the attack surface. And then once you started educating, now you've seen this rise over the last few months of all companies across the board.

50:18Steve Vintz: Stocks have rebounded because I think the analysts, the Wall Street community is getting smarter that these labs are really going to be able to benefit the right type of company that's leveraging their technology, leveraging their models. So that's another thing to kind of keep in mind as we go through this.

50:34Mark Thurmond: I think we've heard, Johnny, the last several months on asking that very same question, and Mark said this, is that I think companies are erring on the side of acceleration and innovation. the ability to innovate and accelerate is so much larger than the risk of some of the other issues out there of somebody taking trade secrets and that kind of stuff it's still something to be concerned about but if you're not using it at all because of that those companies probably won't be

51:08Steve Vintz: around i couldn't anymore because here's we got the thing about cap is the bad guy especially like in the industry i'm in cyber security might be different for infrastructure and other players But what we do at Tenable and with cybersecurity is you have to use this because the bad guys are going to. And by the way, they have no governance committees. They have no data loss prevention rules. They have no board that they need to report how they're doing. They will use these tools, these technologies, any way they possibly can to get ransomware attacks going, get breaches going, you know, and disrupt governments and businesses.

51:43Steve Vintz: And so you have to be on the cutting edge. You have to understand how to leverage it and use it. Have your mindset of how would, you know, an adversary want to use one of these models or an open source model or something coming out of China, all these different things. And it will happen. You're seeing some of the beginning signs over the last few weeks. Some attacks have been reported, you know, leveraging kind of some of these AI open source models. So you have to do it. And if you don't do it, you know, and you're not with vendors that truly take it seriously the way we do at Tenable, you know, those companies, in my opinion, aren't going to have a great outcome.

52:16Mark Thurmond: speaking of that sass apocalypse you know one of the things you know that i've been so impressed with you and your company is like people talk about creating like category creation people talk about it and they'll be like well we're going to move from a product to a platform but you guys actually did it like and can you just for the because everybody's having to do it Now, what are your words of wisdom for those that are moving from product to platform? Some of the things that you have learned and some of the heads up that you would give to our listeners. Because people can talk about it, but pulling it off is another story.

53:00Steve Vintz: Yeah, no question about it. And we've done this transition. People can look at the last three or four quarters, the percentage of our business now coming from Tenable One, which is our platform. And it's been pretty phenomenal. And a few kind of lessons I can give really, really quick is one, it is a true company wide initiative, right? You can't just sit there and be myopically focused on sales and say, I'm going to change these two things in sales. No, it is literally, and this is what Steve and I message every single day. We just had our QBRs last week and we hammered this point. It's every group in the tenable.

53:33Steve Vintz: So it's getting product aligned, making sure they're building and developing the platform the way it needs to be. It's getting that marketing message, right? Omega O 'Leary, our CMO, did an incredible job literally rebranding Tenable, working on creating the exposure management category where we're now number one, not in the top of right, but number one in Gartner, IDC, and Forrester in the exposure management category. So marketing has to do their part, right? You then look at finance. We're going to be billing and charging and pricing and packaging differently. So finance needs to be on board.

54:04Steve Vintz: The tech support needs to be on board, professional services, and then sales, right? And so then it's like, okay, for sales, you got to be specific. And you really got to the refs. And we did this at sales kickoff meetings where it is all about tenable one. And you obviously modify your comp plans to drive that behavior. You then go in and you work with your different sellers on the enablement and the training. You disincentivize other type things that aren't the right thing for the company long term, like selling an individual product. That might be the easy way to get a quick land, but it's not selling the platform, which is going to give you the opportunity to get expansion.

54:36Steve Vintz: and it's the right thing for the customer. Most importantly, all of those things are huge contributors. But what I tell folks is that this is by far going from an individual product company or a few different products going to a platform play is a company wide. You have to be in full sync and every group needs to be on the same marching orders. That's where as co-CEO, Steve and I drill that into every single meeting we go into with every department and our messaging is clean and pristine and it matches so he's saying the same thing i'm saying vice versa and i think you know tenable our employees have done an incredible job responding and um it's pretty cool to see yeah it's fun well done buddy well done i just

55:23Mark Thurmond: want to go back and ask mark day-to-day for your health i know you're doing the body scans you're doing the blood tests and getting the biomarkers and all that day to day. When did you change since Amit's death? Yeah. What one thing did you say? Oh, I'm absolutely changing this.

55:42Steve Vintz: Just kind of two things. One, and this is going to sound so trendy is saunas. I become a massive believer. I don't do as much cold plunging as all the other people, but I live and die for saunas. And I try to incorporate that five or six times. It truly, to me, that is a game changer.

56:00Mark Thurmond: I do five to six times a week myself, brother. Exactly.

56:02Steve Vintz: And it definitely detoxes, cleans it. But to me, the stretching, the mobility things you can do when you're in the sauna, and then the cardiovascular benefits, I think, are awesome. And then the other thing is the diet, right? As I said, and by far, it is not a perfect diet by any stretch of the imagination. I still love to have a couple of beers and a couple of glasses of wine on the weekends. Still with my kids, I'll go to a tailgate to watch one of their college games, and I'll have probably some hot dog and something I shouldn't. But I really stripped out lots of sugars, lots of carbs, tried to be that Monday through Friday, super kind of clean diet, the intermittent fasting, kind of eat my first meal right around that 12, 31 o 'clock time period.

56:38Steve Vintz: You know, all of those things have become kind of mainstream. But I'm telling you, they work because I do my blood every few months. And so far, a couple of things.

56:47Mark Thurmond: Can't argue with that.

56:48Steve Vintz: Yeah.

56:48Mark Thurmond: So, Mark, just one last question on this, you know, strength and determination, motivation. Do you think it's more of a sign of McMahon being able to do so many pull-ups or so many toe touches or so many calf raises or whatever the hell else he does on Monday, Friday? or do you think it's old-fashioned three feet apart lining up and see who wins could you just

57:20Steve Vintz: comment on that for me i mean listen as you know cap you and i are two knucklehead football players college football players so i'm gonna have to go with option two but here's the deal with mcmahon here's what i'm hearing with johnny mack is that he's so obsessed with his golf game now he's doing every bit of training to manipulate his golf swing johnny mack is doing any and everything to become which that's the type of guy John McMahon is, he's doing everything he can to go after his golf game. Now, I'm not sure if that's true, John. That's just what the rumor mill has.

57:49Mark Thurmond: All right. That's a good rumor mill, but it's not true. So does that mean – True test of strength, though, is whether or not – like, Cat thinks he's going to line up against me and we're going to go head-to-head. Like, I said, okay, then go line up against a fucking sumo wrestler. It doesn't matter. But if you can't pull yourself up, you can't even do one pull-up. I can do my follow-up. He says he's not strong. By the way, totally great.

58:15Steve Vintz: But here's the deal, and you know this, John. I was having some fun on the golf thing. But you know the number one test for longevity is grip strength.

58:24Mark Thurmond: Yes.

58:24Steve Vintz: If you look at all the different modalities of how to test for longevity, the number one test is grip strength. A, it shows just core classic strength you have. But then as you get older, if you're going to fall down, you need to grab a railing, you need to do whatever, grip strength.

58:37Mark Thurmond: Or pull yourself up. 100%. Dude, the guy won't get within three feet of me, so I can't get a grip on him. So that's, he has no chance of getting a grip on him. That's because I'm so fast, dude. It's the bike training. I love it. Hey, buddy, you are amazing. You're an amazing friend. You're an amazing example of excellence. So proud for you and everything you've done in your career and what you're doing at Tenable. It's just amazing. and taking the time to, you know, it's not easy to get you on the podcast and you taking the time to do that. It's just amazing, dude. We appreciate you tons.

59:15Steve Vintz: Well, listen, I appreciate being with you guys. Love you guys. Two of my favorite people to be able to spend time with. And listen, this is, I love the forum that you guys have built, you know, with the podcast and the message you guys deliver. We have tons of our tenable people and friends all around the globe that listen to this podcast and take advice, you know, every week, every two weeks. So you guys keep jamming, doing what you're doing. and it's much appreciated and it's awesome seeing you guys. You're amazing. Class hack. Stay strong. Stay healthy, my friend. Back at you, Johnny. You too, my man.

59:44Steve Vintz: See you guys. Cheers. Bye-bye. See you, buddy.

59:49Mark Thurmond: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate, and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies

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