Ep. 198 Bobby Varma, Chief Executive Officer of Princeton Identity | Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast

Speaker A: When we first launch our solutions in the market, really focused on physical access control. Right now you hear about physical access. Physical uh, access control with a different terminology. Right. The PAM M PIM is coming out right now, which is physical identity access management, where you starting to see um, a much holistic solution. So from AI, uh, you know, we were thinking, we were, when we were selling their solution, we were really focused on physical access control. When you talk about primary security, security, right. How do you manage people coming in from outside, um, primary security to now, you know, going internally, your, your turnstiles, your doors, access. Now with the whole AI revolution, you know, hardware that sits on your racks are, is extremely expensive, millions of dollars. So now the physical security has kind of really taken a different meaning which is now from you know, uh, outside to your doors to your cages and all the way to your racks. Right. So it's a really different dynamic regarding how do you sell it. So and, and majority of the data centers really do care. Um, I think rack security has become more uh, prevalent than even the physical security from the doors itself. Hi, this is Bobbi Varma from Princeton Identity. You are watching Data Center Go to Market podcast.

Speaker B: Hi, it's Joshua Feinberg, host of the Data Center Go to Market podcast podcast. And today I'm um, welcoming a guest from a sector of the data center industry that we really don't get to talk about all that often, physical security. I'm welcoming Bobby Varma who is CEO and founder of Princeton Identity, based in Princeton, New Jersey. Bobby, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you Joshua. It's really nice to be here and thank you for having me on your podcast.

Speaker B: Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm thrilled to be having you here as well. So you have a really, really interesting background coming from the standpoint of research and being a research scientist and building identification tech to leading enterprise business biometrics and getting involved in business development. You mentioned when we were originally planning this, some GTM challenges go to market challenges around reaching the true economic buyer. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you're approaching that at Princeton Identity?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so you know, coming from, as you said, kind of alluded to fact, technical background, um, so really we kind of lean in from a technology perspective. So the challenge that we're seeing right now in go to market strategy is really kind of looking at, um, not just managing or identifying one uh, key stakeholder, we're looking at multiple key stakeholders in this case from data center perspective, um, you know, really trying to convince CISOs uh, VP of Security and facility and as well as legal because of the PII concerns that exist there. Right. So you have to have all three of them agree. Even one of them um, doesn't agree. The whole entire, you know, sales process stalls. Um, the other aspect of it is because as I said, we are in identity management specifically around biometric, iris on the move technology, um, really focusing on how biometrics, um, helps them with audibility, reducing risk versus adding risk. So again, that's been a great challenge for us as we go to market, um, with our solution.

Speaker B: So you're finding on these dense decision committees that there's a CISO cybersecurity officer, there's a VP of security, presumably that would report to the CISO and legal counsel, general counsel. Do you find much of a difference when you're engaging with an enterprise that has its own data centers as opposed to a data center operator like a colocation or hyperscale provider? Or do you largely find a lot of the same people?

Speaker A: No, actually, uh, you know, we do. We find a huge difference. Right. So when you talk about enterprise level, for example, we're dealing with uh, a large enterprise right now. Uh, the decision process is usually slightly different from that perspective. Um, because in that case, you know, you do have to worry about uh, working with CISOs and VP of facilities and in legal. But when it comes down to co locators, it's uh, a different selling process. Right. Because from that perspective the, what they're looking for is slightly different. So from an enterprise level perspective, they care about security, they care about compliance and audit trails, whereas from the co locators they're more concerned about, hey, um, the operational efficiency exists. So uh, for example, if I actually have um, many of our vendors coming through, I want to manage my vendors. But more importantly from a compliance perspective, if we're auditing trail and you know, managing the employees and the contractors coming through, we want to manage their time and then be being able to invoice, uh, the right tenant in the, in, in those co locators, right in the data center. So again the uh, what they're end goal is very different and so how you sell to them is very different. It's very challenging from that perspective. Right. So biometric plays a completely different role when it comes down to colocators with compliance and auditing and um, invoicing and time and attendance versus enterprise. They care about security, multifactor authentication, um, making sure that nobody can get access to their enterprise level, um, um, data center.

Speaker B: So that's really interesting to see the differences between the kind of business model, whether it's their own data center or whether they're running single um, tenant or multi tenant facility. I'm curious too, do you see much of a difference in uh, geography, where they're located, where their facilities are located? Do you do business internationally or just in the US and within the US are there differences across states and how they approach biometrics?

Speaker A: Oh yeah, absolutely. I would say internationally it's like sometimes it's easier I think. You know in the United States we see a lot of um, concerns around BIPA laws and GDPR laws, privacy laws. Right. So it depends on, depends on which state you're selling. So when you start to think about um, Illinois, um, California, New York may have more stringent um, you know, regulations around biometrics and PII concerns and um, utilization of facial recognition where um, you know, may have other states like Texas, um, we see um, in a lot of the cases in Florida this seems to be a little bit more open regarding biometrics and use of biometrics for their application.

Speaker B: So shifting gears a little bit, when I was learning a little bit more about your background in Princeton Identity, it looks like you joined about roughly 10 years ago, which was right around the same time that I pivoted from working with a lot of managed service providers to co location operators. And I know when people were talking about a data center 10 years ago, colocation facility 10 years ago, very, very different than how it is today. Especially that post generative AI period that started in 2023 to present. So with all of that in mind over this past year, how have these high density AI workloads in the broader AI revolution and generative AI adoption um, forced you to adjust your roadmap for growing Princeton Identity?

Speaker A: Yeah, and that you know that's been a hard adjustment because again we have been ah, you know when, primarily when we first launch our solutions in the market really focused on physical access control. Right now you hear about physical access, physical uh, access control in a different, with a different terminology. Right. The PAM PIAM is coming out right now which is physical identity access management where you're starting to see um, a much, much holistic solution. So from AI, uh, you know we were thinking, we were, when we were selling their solution we were really focused on physical access control. When you talk about primer security. Right. How do you manage people coming in from outside, um, primer security to now, you know, going internally, your, your turnstiles, your doors, access, um, now with the Whole AI revolution, you know, hardware that sits on your racks or is extremely expensive, millions of dollars. So now the physical security has kind of really taken a different meaning, which is now from you know, uh, outside to your doors to your cages and all the way to your racks. Right. So it's a really different dynamic regarding how do you sell it. So and, and majority of the data centers really do care. Um, I think rack security has become more prevalent than even the physical security from the doors itself because again, um, you know, as you talk about co locators, tenants are, are hu and tenants want to make sure that nobody touches their racks. So again, um, from that perspective we're seeing uh, a different way of selling and more importantly adoption of the technology.

Speaker B: Speaking of AI and the technology itself, I understand that biometrics use a lot of deep learning to continue improving over time. Have you found that this changes a little bit depending on whether you're talking about inference or edge or where the clusters of technology are actually located?

Speaker A: Um, yeah. So, you know, so the, the great thing about when I say iris, iris on the move technology specifically, um, you know, it's almost like a QR code the way we kind of do it. So it, you know, from an evolution perspective, uh, once a person is enrolled, um, usually that biometric is valid till the age of, you know, till the age of 90 or 120. Right. Or whatever, however prolonged life they actually have. So we are seeing for example how people manage from a technology perspective. So if you actually have edge, uh, and in this case, you know, Joshua, it's, it could be edge data centers or edge from a perspective of how you manage, uh, your, your devices at the edge. Um, again from a perspective of you're talking about enterprise or data centers at the edge, automation has become extremely important and we kind of play a big role in automation of enrollments, automation of employees. Um, and then when you talk about edge devices, how do you manage data at the edge? Right now the expectation is you want to be able to um, enroll large number of people at the edge and manage them. And not only that, um, what happens from a perspective of if you actually have um, network, uh, drops. Right. How do you manage information and data at the edge from that perspective as well? Do you still, um, if you don't allow employees or vendors to go in, it creates a havoc. Um, and how do you manage the date, you know, the racks internally? So again, it creates a huge audit. Um, you know, I would say it creates a huge security risk. Right. So I think that's you know, um, again, you know, addressing from both aspects of it.

Speaker B: When I think about when I first learned about identity management and Identity Access Management. 13, 14, 15, about 12, 13 years ago, I was working with a small company that I guess say probably a little bit more like staff augmentation. And it wasn't especially a high margin business, so there were limits on how deep we could go and the value of the accounts and things like that. Um, in a highly complex space like biometrics, I imagine alignment and managing expectations are extremely important. My first foray into working in identity management was classic inbound marketing. Thought leadership, content marketing. How do you successfully educate buyers before they ever hop on a sales call? Because if we're having this conversation. Ten years ago, ceb, the corporate executive board that's part of Gartner, found that roughly half of the journey was over before you got to meet a prospect. At the time was like 56, 57%. Uh, in the early 2000s it was like 83% with generative AI now it's often they're like 90% of the way through research and decision making. How do you educate them to make sure that you have a productive conversation with them when they're in the formative stages of figuring out the priorities.

Speaker A: So if you remember, you know, in the past, as you said, like you could sell, you can send them marketing information, you can send them pitch decks and you know, and they would look at those and actually say hey, by the way, okay, we want to have a conversation with you. As you said, 90% of the sale happens before that. Right? Or 80% of the sale happens before that. So right now, uh, you know, the, the, the influence and stakeholders are extremely, you know, they are self educated, right. They understand the technology extremely well. So it's not about marketing, it's more about how does your technology add value from a compliance perspective. Um, how does your technology does integration with our current software, um, be PACs or uh, or SIEM M, you know, or um, how do you create audit trails that are meaningful from a business intelligence perspective where they can actually have understanding of the, what the risks they're taking and how do they managing risk. Um, and that's become more of conversation um, before you even get to a point where they want to even look at the solution to buy it. Right. Um, the other aspect of it is, is um, understanding more from a perspective of total cost of ownership. Right. So they're starting to understand exactly what does this mean from operational efficiency. So those conversations are taking at a Much earlier phase versus by the time that they have made a decision to even uh, buy, you know, your solution.

Speaker B: Do you ever in these accounts run into any silos where the physical security people are different, different priorities, different budgets, different chain of command than, than the cyber security and you have to bridge those two worlds or. I sometimes have had people on the podcast who specialize in operational technology and they have different issues and different fondness for cyber security depending on the context. Do you run into that in your category with identity biometrics?

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. As I said earlier, you know, you kind of, you have three masters to please like from legal to CISO to VP of your security. So. Absolutely. So when it comes down to VP of security and facilities, they tend to hold your budgets. Um, they want to understand how the technology is installed. Right. Um, how do they manage their uh, vendors using access control. And then you actually have CISOs. It's all about compliance. Right. So they are the ones who may not have the budget but they have the vetoing power. Right. So really kind of trying to influence them from a perspective of look, um, you know, if we install this and into your ecosystem it's easy to manage your um, you are able to integrate with your current systems easily. Easily. Um, it's, you know, they're more concerned about bug fixes, they're more concerned about um, making sure there's not many UI changes. So you know, how do you influence them and convince them is completely two different um, beasts so to speak.

Speaker B: When you look at what's worked for you over the last several years and throughout the significant part of your career where you've influenced business development strategy, what has been your single favorite non negotiable go to market lesson? What's been most impactful for you?

Speaker A: You know, um, it's been, I always say to my business development people, it's not about um, you know, selling the whole shebang, right? So people walk in there and say hey by the way, I am going to sell you know, 2,000 endpoints or sell $10 million worth of, of solution. I think it, I always talk about land and expand, right. Um, landing with uh, what we know which is from our perspective physical access control, physical security and from the perimeter and then expanding to as I said to you know, your, your cages to your racks and potentially integrating now with your, into logical and digital which is you know, integrating with your um, uh, er, employee related employee systems, HR systems as well. So again you know, uh, convincing the end user this technology is really valuable and can really help you Reduce risk. And then once they see that then the, then the expansion is much quicker, much easier. Um, and then there's a trust factor that comes with the trust factor from the end user comes along with it. Um, and you become their subject matter expert. So again you know that's what I've learned and this is something that I constantly talk about and um, you know with my, with my um, sales team

Speaker B: as well with where the education and the trust building happens on a specific path to a journey that gives you the best land and expand opportunity.

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And also Joshua I would say but also like uh, you know like when I said in the data center's perspective, right, you actually have a, ah, from primary security to your cages to your racks and then potentially integrating. Um, when they actually discuss this businesswoman people discuss this. It's also very specific. Selling from physical security, perimeter security. You want to really go after what they specifically need. Um, and what we have come to realize for us is because we come from physical security perspective, we tend to um, focus on security and as we start to do that when they build that trust with us, when we start to get to a point where they were actually implementing it at your racks, audibility is really important. They already have built a great trust and they explicitly um, ask us how do we implement and also come to us to with various different requirements that help us build our product as well.

Speaker B: That cuts to the heart as well of a overall trend that we see going on across the data center industry where the sales profession is being forced to become a lot more technical. No uh, one needs anyone to read the website or the slides to them anymore. They're really expecting if you want access to come in and present looking a lot more like a teacher consultant, a subject matter expert, trusted advisor, maybe even a thought leader. I often talk about that education is the first cousin of trust. Is that kind of trend impacted what you do with both hiring and upskilling existing talent?

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Um, so we do, I mean again from uh, when you know, uh, when you talked about the question regarding, I think you said hireability, do we do the same exact thing regarding the trust? Yes, absolutely. I think when we actually go for you know building that trust is really important. And when we are looking at people again that having um, authenticity right. And, and how they interact with the customers also how, when we actually hire people with how authentic they come across and also how, how technically savvy and sometimes they may not be, they may not know a specific thing about your technology, but the, the learning Curve. We also look at how fast they can learn because it's really important, especially nowadays with, as you said, understanding the technology and being able to communicate that value proposition versus I have a widget that I'm trying to sell, right? Understanding the, the end customers need. Understanding your technology and how do you marry those, um, is really important. That means you need to have understanding of your technology, um, and how to marry those with their, their the end customers needs.

Speaker B: What's a good a market playbook that you see some of your peers in the industry continue to use very aggressively, but you know deep down inside that it's already starting to lose steam, maybe even fail. What are they stubbornly refusing to let go of? Even though the world has changed and CISOs and VPs of security and GCs don't pay attention to it anymore.

Speaker A: Um, so if you know, biometrics and coming from, you know, understanding a bit of world of our identity, especially biometrics, I think it's been touted so often that um, that uh, biometrics is, is for convenience, right? I think that that's completely changing. Right? Um, and everybody you think about from a um, biometric technology solution provider, they really lean in with convenience and that's really changing. It's not about convenience anymore. It's about security, identity verification, um, being able to really marry how biometric plays a role into compliance, um, and providing positioning biometrics more as a physical identity access management, providing zero trust, um, and it, you know, and really communicating how biometrics is adding value from that perspective versus it's just a convenient way of getting in your doors or convenient way of accessing something else. So really focusing on identity verification,

Speaker B: uh, it sounds like a lot of the messaging, a lot of the education and trust building gets heavily contextualized depending on the stakeholder you're talking to.

Speaker A: Yes, it does.

Speaker B: Now Bobby, uh, you started your career as a scientist. Why does brilliant technical content often fail to connect the dots with actual enterprise value? Why isn't technical content a slam dunk for generating sales pipeline?

Speaker A: Why is it a slam dunk?

Speaker B: Why is it not a slam dunk?

Speaker A: Oh, well, it's not stunned. Um, I think, you know. So for example, I'll give you, uh, as a biometric company, right, we really focus on hardware components like let me tell you about optics and far and frr, which kind of get lost, you know, when you're trying to communicate the value proposition. So instead of, you know, focusing on those, those metrics, you know, more m importantly, what we're learning Is uh, that's great. People do understand the technology and believe that you have a good technology. I think they're more concerned about how are you going to inter. Integrate into um, as I, as I said, their PAC system. How is it, what is the network topology of it, what's the um, operational, uh, how is it going to be? Is there operational safe fail safes that exist in, you know, as part of that too? So we're seeing those type of conversations happen more often versus let me just tell you, specs regarding our technology. And so that doesn't, you know, you start to see that um, those uh, you know, glass eyes, you know, people are starting to kind of gloss over and yeah, yeah, that's great. But how is that going to really add value? What I'm trying to do.

Speaker B: Do you and your business development team see yourself getting actively involved in what would at least in some contexts be considered learning and development or professional development that you're providing for your prospects and clients or are they still getting that elsewhere?

Speaker A: You mean acting as a subject matter expert?

Speaker B: Yeah, coming in and actually teaching courses that are almost strong enough that you could charge for them on a standalone basis or have accreditations. Uh, do they lean on you for that or are they typically getting that kind of training and development elsewhere?

Speaker A: No, um, I would say as a small company, as we do. Right. I mean they do, they lean on us quite a bit. Um, you know, have we thought about actually adding as value and charging? No, not at this point. Right. We, we do just because as I said to you earlier, we want to build trust with large enterprise level customers or end customers. Right. Really, uh, working with them. And that is one thing I would never want to outsource. Right. That's one thing we definitely provide as value to our uh, end customers. So even working with um, partners that we actually have, we walk hand in hand with the first deployment. For example, we will do a weight glove service where it's really important to kind of um, communicate with our end users how to do the enrollments, how to do the configuration, how to um, you know, connect and integrate with their current systems. Right. We, and the, and the. So we do hand in hand with our, our partners as well as customer service. Right. Where uh, it means training, training our partners, training on end users on our solution. Um, we know our technology very well, we know our solutions very well and so we tend to you know, work and become our subject matter experts to our end users. And interestingly, um, you know, we also work with our customers when technology does in many cases it may not be relevant in the application they're thinking about and will provide additional information where they do may have relevancy. So for example they may be not wanting to work with biometrics. They may need um, in certain cases primary security or certain doors that are not very secure. They may just be open to using cards or mobile credentials. Um, and we will definitely, you know, discuss that with them and it's um, and something that they can implement easily and we will work with them where they actually do need two factor authentication and high security regarding biometrics. So again really providing a holistic solution and working them with them as a trusted partner partners as well as subject matter expert. When it comes to identity management, do

Speaker B: you see a lot of that training happening more post purchase once you're in an active engagement? Do you see a fair amount of it happening pre purchase as uh, a quasi sales function? What's been most successful for you?

Speaker A: No, actually. So yes, both I would say, um, you know, where as a matter of fact I was just working with a customer yesterday, um, where they have implemented our solution and as a matter of fact um, love it. And they came back and one of the, you know, uh, I had conversations with them regarding where else can we really add value? Um, and during the conversation we came to realize, oh, um, there are things that we can customize for them that are very relevant when it comes down to doing audit logs for their contractors. Um, so again having those conversations now suddenly becomes an upsell for them. Right? Because suddenly now they're saying oh, if you could do that. We believe we can um, uh, add more value, but more importantly we can add more endpoints or certain applications. We never now suddenly it makes our job so much easier. I mean they were spending close to um, you know, few hundred hours per month managing that piece of information right now they can get from our reporting very easily, um, as soon as we do the customization for them.

Speaker B: So from like a chief revenue officer perspective, it looks like land and expand. It looks like cross sell and upsell. From the standpoint of the client, it's actually customer success, customer education, customer marketing, right?

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And this is something we have learned. We have had customers, Joshua, for five, six, seven years who have walked hand in hand with us. Where we've grown with them, they're grown with us. Um, you know, as the new technology also comes on board and um, as they do start to do integration with their various different software partners, they have brought some of those um, uh, concerns and issues or where they're seeing, um, you know, where they're falling apart and they're, they brought those concerns to us, right? And saying, can we resolve that or can your technology resolve it? And because of the fact that we are very customer focused and we really want to make sure their end customer is happy with our solution. And also it helps us kind of build our product roadmap because again, we hear these needs and we can start to kind of build our product roadmap. So the next time we, we do have that conversation with the customer, said, by the way, we have these additional features which you talked about six months ago, and now we have the ability to add that. In a lot of the cases they will say, okay, great. Now let's say where else can we add your technology for the various different applications? Um, again, it helps us build that trust and more importantly helps us increase our sales.

Speaker B: That's exactly what I was thinking. As you were describing, it kind of that spectrum along how different kinds of interactions at different parts of the journey have varying degrees of trust. If they see your sales team as someone that's worried about quota and presidents club and things like that, very, very low level of trust and likelihood of them sharing those golden insights with you, extraordinarily low. If they see your salesperson more as an expert on cybersecurity and identity, uh, management and biometrics, it goes up quite significantly. So a lot of it is hiring positioning culture.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is. And then, you know, I always especially uh, and I know I always encourage my business development people or salespeople to um. Really the other aspect of it, Joshua, is that really understanding your customer needs in data center, you know, um, like I said, for example, when we first started selling biometrics in general, we uh, talked about primary security and how do you secure your um, your facility and assets. Um, but never thought about from a perspective of how do you manage people from a compliance. Right. Um, how do you make sure the right people are coming in? Um, not only that, who's getting access, who's not getting access, why they're not getting access. That becomes a big concern from them when it comes down to compliance. And it's a very manual process which we can automate using our technology and really provide them information on not just oh, card got swiped or um, but now we can bridge that gap where just not from the card but person who was there and why didn't they get access. We can provide those additional nugget of information that really helps them mitigate their risk and also Help them with their compliance needs.

Speaker B: Most data center GTM teams are flying completely blind. 83% of your buyer's journey is happening before they even speak with someone from your sales team. The Data Center Go to Market podcast is powered by DCSMI M. We've studied over 1900 industry leaders to build a data a diagnostic framework that identifies exactly why deals fall apart and revenue stalls. Stop guessing and start benchmarking. Subscribe now to our weekly Data center gtm briefing at www.dcsmi m.com briefing Again, that's DCSMI m.com forward/briefing. B R I E F I N M G. So you operate within a niche, within a niche, maybe even uh, a uh, third level sub niche within cyber security. What do salespeople that are new to this space struggle with the most when they're first getting involved in working on these kinds of accounts? What do they misunderstand about how these kinds of executives and stakeholders actually make commercial choices?

Speaker A: Yeah, you know what, that happens in a lot of cases when we uh, have first time like business development. Salespeople come from other cultures or um, uh, other um, verticals. They generalize the sales. Right? So you, what you do is you kind of generalize. You're generally selling to every stakeholder. Right? As I said, we have three different stakeholders, you know, we have to sell it to. Specifically when it comes down to CISO and VP of uh, Security, um, and facility, it's a different selling process. That's um, one aspect of it. There's different needs, as I kind of alluded in the past. Right. Um, VP of Sales, VP of uh, Security and facility cares about um, access control, installation, whereas CISO may really care about integration. What touches my network. Um, that's one aspect of it. The other one is really selling into. And I think you said this earlier, now there's different types of data centers that exist, right? People with hyperscale enterprise level. Now you actually have um, um, you know, uh, data centers who actually have uh, colocations which have tenants and operators. Right? It's a different need that you're trying to fulfill for where you're selling from different levels of different data centers, from enterprise to colocation to 10 people who are actually tenants versus operators and as well as within that, who are the decision makers from IT to VP of uh, security. So kind of really teaching and understanding that sales process. Who are you selling to? What are their needs? How are you fulfilling their needs? How you marrying those needs with the value proposition of the solution becomes extremely

Speaker B: critical for Those kinds of roles. What have you found to be a really good talent pipeline? What are the companies that are usually if you get a LinkedIn application or a CV from someone where you're really excited, is it like an msp, is it an mssp, Is it someone that's coming from an identity management company? Company from an incident management company who's like a perfect fit of the two or three that you'd be most excited about interviewing?

Speaker A: You know, um, and just recently I had to hire um, business development and senior sales leaders in this, in this space. So I would say. And I've hired people across the board, right. People from physical security, but people from biometrics. Um, I think where I'm getting more excited, most excited about is, um, when people come from very, from that specific vertical. I think the biggest challenge is um, um, really understanding, as I said, those um, needs and discerning who you're selling into and understanding who are the stakeholders within that vertical. Right. As I kind of pointed out with data centers, you have it, vp, you actually have tenants, you have operators. Right. So understanding the whole entire landscape and what are and when and who needs what is really important. Um, so that, that's when I become very excited right now. Somebody who actually has the uh, the experience with that within that sort of certain vertical and the aptitude to learn technology. You got a perfect match. Right. Being able to kind of come up to learning curve and sell it in that vertical. Understanding that vertical could be more exciting.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's interesting too that you're zeroing in on vertical because a lot of the enterprise sales leaders from huge Fortune 1000 companies are consistently segmenting their commercial teams by vertical. Um, especially when they're operating on a global basis. They have teams work with manufacturers, telecommunications, financial services, government. So you're seeing that even on a relatively small scale being much more effective.

Speaker A: Yeah. And especially if you're, like I said, if you're selling a uh, technical, uh, solution, it becomes more imperative than ever.

Speaker B: What's a sales or marketing campaign that you've tried in the last few years that you were really excited about that just didn't end up working as expected. And what did you learn from that and what you're doing going forward?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I would say sales and marketing, huh? Ah, you know, um, when it comes. And I think I kind of said generalizing. I think when we, and we're changing that strategy. As a matter of fact, right now you'll be seeing our new website coming out soon. Um, but really focus on where we have lacked is really pushing the technology, really pushing biometrics, um, really pushing, coming from a product perspective versus more holistically from a needs and solution, um, I think that's where we have seen a lot of challenges, um, and really focusing on um, you know, very specific verticals as I alluded to, and specifically their needs and then kind of marrying that with where we see our value proposition. I want to kind of talk about the value proposition because value proposition doesn't mean technical specs, doesn't mean how accurate you are. It's more from a perspective of how do we fulfill their compliance needs, how do we help with their operational efficiencies, how do we create um, more business intelligence that they can really um, you know, sink their teeth into and, and, and communicate that to, to their um, C level, um, and really provide value in their organization. So I think really focusing on those type of value, that type of Pali value proposition versus let me tell you about our technical specs or uh, our biometrics and how great our biometric and technology is.

Speaker B: You mentioned website, you mentioned value being kind of subjective in the eye of the beholder of the particular stakeholder. Is this the first website, significant website redesign that you've done since generative AI has become such a big deal. And if so, I'm super curious as to when you're thinking about what the website needs to look like given that people are spending so much time having conversations with Copilot and Gemini and Claude now.

Speaker A: Oh yes, absolutely. We're taking that in consideration right now. Everything, it's you know, um, everything has to look very sleek. It looks, has to look more futuristic. Right. It's again the type of, and you know, Joshua, people buy because of the way they feel. Right. It's more about that too. As well. Right. Um, as, as consumers we do. Right. So if you go across a website that actually has more of that, that futuristic, um, you know, uh, a solution, more solution oriented, ah, really focusing on more dynamic website. When I say that um, you know, it's not just about the words and slogans, more about hey, does it really communicate um, the value and, and, and the application and also applications in more concise way. Right. And utilizing obviously AI and you know, you're talking about Gemini and ChatGPT and, and Claude being, being really relevant when it comes down to you know, communicating your value proposition and communicating your um, your applications and that becomes very, very um, important.

Speaker B: Yeah. What's fascinating with that is that companies your size, I really see three different viewpoints there's one viewpoint that says that if organic search is really collapsing and people aren't clicking through any more on Google, let's defund the website. Let's not worry about that at all. Like uh, and let's put all the effort into reaching them where they are with lots of content on LinkedIn, lots of content on YouTube, lots of ads, lots of conferences. Um, but that doesn't really tell the whole story either because so many times they're making a decision before you ever get to that first conversation.

Speaker A: Yes, I agree, but I think even think about it, you know, I'm. And you're on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. You think about it. Do I think what LinkedIn does is, I think does create visibility from, you know, um, and say, oh, you know, you come across that company quite a bit. But I think if you think about it even now as buyers, right. Where do we go first? Right. Um, and now we, instead of going on Google, we use AI, right. And being able to. Now how do you create where you type in something into your AI and say, hey, I want to look at, let's assume a biometric company that provides solutions in the data center world. Um, you know, what are the beings used? What, what technologies are being used? I think, um, and I did that recently. Right. Um, and now AI, how you put the information where AI pulls that information is changed. Right. It's not about Google searches and um, and the type of words you use and um, how do you communicate your solutions either on your website, on LinkedIn becomes more relevant.

Speaker B: A conversation with someone that builds infrastructure for mostly colocation facilities in neo clouds a couple weeks ago and we were talking about how in many ways Claude and Gemini are substituting for analyst insights. There's probably a lot of pressure now on traditional analyst firms to reinvent themselves. But back in those days a significant part of a, uh, marketing leadership team was analyst relations. Is there going to be someone whose job it is to have generative AI relationship building? I guess to a certain degree. Everyone's kind of in this arms race now to figure out how they surface when their prospects and future clients are asking for advice and insights to make sure they show up?

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's something that we're struggling with as, because again as a small company. Right. A majority of our sales and majority of our implementation has happened because of word of mouth. Right. Um, and we are really leaning into marketing now. Um, and it's a completely different world. Right? Outbound marketing is a completely different world. Um, it's not the way you used to do marketing. Right. Um, so we're learning as we're going along and definitely Generative AI is playing a huge role.

Speaker B: Where I see a lot of companies too grappling with is deciding how much goes to broadreach, reaching the entire part of the market, knowing that, oh well, we created this great piece of content. But okay, yeah, we're getting visibility in front of students, we're getting visibility in front of companies that are too small to afford our solution. It's the wrong people, it's the wrong country, what have you. And then most of these platforms, um, kind of patterning after what Google figured out in the early days, 2000s and what meta, what Facebook figured out in the early 2000 and tens is, oh, you don't want broad reach. We're happy to sell precision reach. And you call it account based marketing and ads and outbound. And I think there's a lot of companies that are going to be continuing to have to dial things in because they're many times spreading themselves too thin and just getting a lot of frustration from sales teams that like, yeah, these leads aren't hitting anywhere near our icp.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I agree with you and I think that we struggle with that too. Right. Not only just from a perspective, but if you think about it, from identity management, Biometrics is becoming more relevant, um, in the identity space. Right. Uh, where if you think about it, Biometrics has so many, you know, applications. I mean, um, you know, we, every time we talk to a customer, they think about the fact that they can use Biometrics in every application you can think about. Right. From physical to logical to time and attendance. Right. So again, as a small company we really have to dial in and say to ourselves, okay, we. Where, which market? Which segment of the market? And not only that, who are we selling it to? Right. And what is our specific value proposition even to uh, you get to down to a point of where you start to kind of hone into uh, uh, who, you know, um, the value pairs proposition that you're creating regarding even the decision makers. Right. So do you sell it to in certain cases, do we sell it to um, your employee relations or HR or do you go sell it to your uh, security or do you go sell it to your it? It's a different value proposition for all of them. Right. So we abandon time and attendance and then we really focus on security. So again, even within this certain sector and vertical, you kind of get to a sliver of which, um, area which Application you really want to go at. You can't go across every application and every um, you know, every lead.

Speaker B: I think a lot of that too is the state of the marketplace that we're in right now with globalization, trends, hyper competition, extreme relevance, like being pseudo relevant, being able to cover a lot of areas. As a relatively small company, it's so much more important to know exactly the path. And I know product managers spent a ton of time on trying to continually figure this out, sales enablement, connecting all the dots. And I think that's what I hear across the board is companies trying to figure out this whole orchestration motion of getting everyone on the same page and feeding what's learned from the early stage, the middle stage, the late stage, the post sales into all of these models and the roadmaps and continuing to stay a couple steps ahead, which at the end of the day for a small company, I think what's working best is trust. Getting to that magic unlock with saying Bobby, like we love what you're doing. There's this one little thing that's missing and if you could get that over the finish line in the next quarter, like we for sure want that. We have multiple friends and other companies who would want that feature and it's really, really hard for them to give you that magical insight like that if there's not trust.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Trust is number one I think also. But also hyper focusing. When I say Joshua, it's like hyper focusing like, like I said like. So for example, in pharmaceutical you can go across um, in the compliance from a perspective of like logical E signature all the way to physical security. Right. But really focusing on where your product really plays a role versus you can come to a customer. We have gone to customers where they can say hey, by the way, we can go from um, management of our access control to management of our logical, to management of our um, SSO to management of our um, HR data. You know, and they love our solution. They say we can, we do it all. And we realize no, because as you said Joshua, for that every time you make some customization that means you're taking your technical people away from doing something else, which we can really add great

Speaker B: value to in a SaaS company. That's where you start to look a lot more like custom software developer and less like SaaS and less like having a repeatable solution.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think repeatable solution and that's something that we look for like pattern. So if we start to hear that type of, of feature request from various different customers across, um, you know, that vertical then becomes part of our roadmap. If we don't, if it's just one customer, um, unless they are spending enormous amount of money, we tend to kind of, you know, add it to our list, our growing list that we could potentially put on roadmap. Until you see a pattern, you know, we kind of, uh, do that, um, because again, for a small company like us, time is extremely valuable and resources are limited. So you have to kind of put your eggs in the basket that gives you the greatest return.

Speaker B: Uh, that makes a ton of sense. Bobby, the final area I want to ask you about today is when you look into your crystal ball. What do you think changes over the next 12 to 24 months about growing a company like Princeton Identity? What do you think stays the same? What do you think is different, but at a macro trend? What does the near future look like for you?

Speaker A: You know, where I see the biggest, um, convergence right now is physical security with logical or digital. Right. I, um, think that's where you're seeing, uh, the, you know, more and more, more and more end customers requesting, um, and that's where you know, we're working towards. And you will be seeing that quite a bit in the market in the near future, um, where you want to be able to. So for example, if a employee, um, is let go, um, you want to be able to track that from digital perspective, digital identity, all the way to physical identity. That means the employee no longer can enter that facility automatically. This happens versus trying to put that information in three different, um, you know, databases to get the end results. So we're seeing that the marriage of like physical security with logical and digital security, um, integration with okta and enter id, we're seeing that, um, as well as um, automation is another big trend we're seeing. So when I say automation is, um, instead of have operators who can enroll you, um, being able to do enrollment, um, provisioning automatically, um, without actually having a person in the loop. Right? So automatic automation is happening, especially in the cases of where you actually have data centers which are at the edge and in remote areas. How do you make sure the, your employees and your vendors get enrolled in that? Um, so again, being able to do that, um, seamless is becoming another big trend. Um, I think those are the, I would say two biggest trends. The third one would be just, uh, providing, you know, integrations our technology or various different security technology being integrated into your data center.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: ah, you know, data center, single pan, um, um, software. Right. I think that's the last step. Right. So being able to holistically provide information on your IP cameras, on your, on your access control. And so again having that capability is becoming the becoming m. You know, more and more ask with our end customer than ever before. So you know, integration with logical access, uh, physical access, automation and then you know, being able to provide a more holistic solution using a single pan, um, where they can manage all, all, all of their solutions, all of their um, technologies.

Speaker B: So it's a combination of helping them get more value out of their existing security investments, prepare for a world with increasing automation, whether it's edge or whether it's a 2 million square foot hyperscale facility with 20 cars in the parking lot. Those are happening.

Speaker A: Those are happening. Yeah, it is, it is good.

Speaker B: I was going to say communities are talking about that quite loudly.

Speaker A: Yes and yes. Right. I think, uh, yes, they are and we are seeing more and more of those demand and if, if companies like us don't keep up with the demand, you know, we'll be left behind. So we definitely listen and I think, I believe that's, you know, where you'll, you'll be seeing um, quite a bit of change in the next, I would say 12 to 14 months.

Speaker B: Bobby, from our talk today, if someone in a leadership role across data center tech or facilities or construction or real estate is watching this and they're also struck struggling with getting access to reaching the right decision makers, what do you think is the first step that they should take today to get them back on the right path with that?

Speaker A: Um, regarding Princeton identity or just in

Speaker B: general, just in general, if they're really, really struggling to get to the right conversations internally and their team is being given the run around, there's sarcasm, rolling, eyes being ghosted, just not being treated very nicely, relaxed relative to the expertise they bring to the table, what would you advise in a peer setting for someone at a CEO, uh, chief, commercial, chief Revenue Officer level to think about in terms of the one biggest action that they could take today or tomorrow that would start to improve their outcomes in those kinds of situations?

Speaker A: You know, just recently somebody gave me um, a great advice regarding that too. Right. Um, I would say ask the right questions. Right. And questions that I really provide, um, that gives you good outcomes. Right. Question, really question and understanding and also understanding your um, landscape. So when it comes down to, from it, from a perspective of CEO, coming down that perspective really. Um, and maybe I, you know, I'm trying to understand like did I understand your question properly when you ask that question? Right um, am I going, am I heading in the right direction?

Speaker B: That's a perfectly valid question for them to be figuring out as well is are they actually heading in the right direction to be seen as an expert and an advisor and get out of the vendor box and stay out of the vendor. So many companies I see at your stage as well, even at your size, they want a closer, more direct relationship and uh, a lot of times going through intermediaries and a lot of that is all basically the same issue as perception, positioning, getting access to the right people.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I would say that too. I think for us, I think one of the things that I do, you know, I always encourage people to kind of get in front of your um, end customer because if you're not heard, if you're, if you're not heard, getting in front of them, really understanding their needs and being able to communicate how you can help them more about. Here let me regurgitate all the various different solutions that we, we carry in in our basket is, is definitely different. Right? Um, being heard from a perspective of am I being in the right? And I think asking questions when I say that I can't, I can't stress that enough. Right. Um, being able to really tease out what um, matters to them is, is really important because the minute they, it resonates with them and you're using the same lingo as far as basically iterating the question, the needs that they actually have and the, and the type of problems they're trying to solve, perk up. And they said okay, well how can you provide? It's all about, you know, as human beings we want somebody to help us or provide us the greatest value. So again, being able to iterate their needs and then providing solutions based upon their needs really help our end customers listen. But also more importantly in organization it helps as well when um, other people want to listen when you're actually providing value based upon what they're looking for.

Speaker B: And it sounds like the uh, their part T H E I r is and contextualizing it and personalizing it for them is probably one of the more important aspects of all that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is, it's definitely personalizing, hyper focused listening. You know those are, those become um, become really important.

Speaker B: Bob, I've really, really enjoyed our talk today. I've learned so much about the category how you build business, business development teams, how you uniquely position education, how you get various kinds of stakeholders on board, uh, the differences and how those stakeholders interact depending on their business model or even their geographic location. I've really, really enjoyed this. And on top of that, as an extra bonus, I get to chat with someone. That's right. From the state where I grew up in, where my IT career began, where with Rutgers and everything. So, so cool. Just in and of itself. If someone wants to follow what your working on, if someone wants to reach out to you, is LinkedIn a good place to start?

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. You know, reach out to my LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Bobbi Barma. Um, please do. Um, and you know, um, happy. I'm very responsive, so happy to chat with anybody, um, you know, who needs to understand, who wants to know a little bit more about what we do as well as, you know, just in general regarding identity management and biometrics.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We'll for sure include a link to your LinkedIn profile and Princeton, uh, Identity's LinkedIn company page and Princeton Identity's website. So for anyone that wants to follow along and learn a little more. Um, but yeah, really, really enjoyed our conversation today. I've been speaking with Bobby Varma, who is the founder and CEO of Princeton Identity in New Jersey. Thanks so much, M for joining, Bobbi.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you, Joshua. It was wonderful. And thank you for having me again. And um, I really enjoyed this as well.

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