Faraz Siraj - The Golden Doodle Effect

Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and the secrets of partnerships and the channel. My name is Michel. I'm head of marketing at Chanex, and I'll be your host for today. I'm very happy to chat with Farraz Siraj, Vice President of Global Partnerships and Alliances at Fortra.

Faraz, great to see you again. How are you? I'm doing great, Michelle. How are you?

I am doing really, really well. I had a nice Easter weekend. Still recovering from RSA. We uh we just briefly touched on that.

But yeah, ready to go another week. Looking forward to this one. Yeah, yeah. I I I think I'm still recovering from RSA too.

The entire cybersecurity world is still recovering. We'll try, we'll try to keep this a nice and chill conversation. We'll we'll make it work. It's really great to have you here.

Could you maybe start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and uh a little bit about Fortra? Yeah, that'd be great. Um thank you. I've been in technology for about 30 years.

Um, been from the early days of the internet, convincing people to get email and websites to uh high-end cybersecurity. I was always on the go-to-market side. I've worked for large companies, startups, as well as medium-sized companies. And I have seen how this business has evolved over time.

And it's exciting. It's also challenging because of the landscape that we live in. And so I pivoted to channels about 16 years ago from a sales background. And I've done this at many companies like Cisco and RSA and Code 42, and now I'm at Fortra.

Excited to be at Fortra. We are a bigger company that has a vast portfolio of cybersecurity solutions, and we grew through acquisition, and uh, we have a great value prop for our partners. So excited to be here with you. Awesome.

And I'm sure we'll touch on that value prop uh later on in this conversation, but I want to start a little bit with tech and the impact that tech evolution has on how you partner. You mentioned like convincing people that that email was a thing they needed. Um, I actually vividly remember a video from, I think it was the mid-90s, where a Dutch person on the street was asked whether he'd be interested in a mobile phone. And he just looked at the interviewer with this blank stare and said, Why on earth would I ever need to call people on the go?

So I think that resonates because it's kind of the same angle, right? These technological evolutions are so massive. So if you've seen like these multiple generations of technology introduction and adoption, how has that impacted how you think about today's cybersecurity channel opportunity? Well, that's a big question.

And let me start first by talking about your point where you said the person on the street in uh in the Netherlands was wondering why they would ever need to talk to somebody on the phone on the go. You asked somebody that now, they would call you crazy to talk to somebody because they text now. They they don't even want to talk to somebody on the phone. So when I think about the landscape today, it's just crazy because of all of the unknowns and the parameters that you're in.

Remember, many years ago, you would have a network and the network would have a perimeter and you could guard against everything from that perimeter. And if you broke the perimeter, well, then there was a problem. But that was it. Now you have so many different vectors like cloud and uh as well as things like AI that can break into your, you know, into your crown jewels, so to speak.

That is what makes it challenging. And so we are in a crazy time, and we need to do our best to be able to protect against those kinds of kind of vectors that come out from the unknowns. We offer a lot of solutions to do that, but you have to look at it one by one, and you can't do it all, and we have our ways of doing it. I think the word vectors makes a lot of sense in this context, right?

Because the entire landscape changes and there's so much that we don't even know that we don't know. And I think that offers an opportunity, but also a challenge when it comes to channel, because it makes sense to vastly expand your channel and MSP network to cover all those vectors. But then also, how do you continue to control that? And I think there again, it comes back to the relationship building part of partnerships and the channels.

But that seems like a huge challenge when you basically have to change the way you approach risk and security every single week. Absolutely. And remember, we are just a vendor. We're just trying to provide software.

The channel and the partners are the ones that are the trusted advisors to the customer. They're the ones that are providing the multi-solutions, and they're the ones recommending, advising, you know, the solutions. And we have to partner with them to be able to make an effective outcome for our customers, joint customers. So the channel is so important because we need to partner together to make sure that we do this in an effective way.

Yeah, I love that answer. And I wonder how it plays into the fact that you're in an organization now that's built up out of acquisition. But I've taken a look at your LinkedIn profile. We've had a conversation about this, and a lot of companies you work for are like, oh, I worked at this company acquired by this, acquired by this, acquired by this.

So you've been helping these companies that became part of bigger organizations along the way. That obviously impacts your partner ecosystem as well. How do you make sure you set your partners up for success if you're constantly adding parts, consolidating parts? Like, how do they survive that kind of growth?

Well, it's all about setting the right expectations and putting forth the goals of your outcomes. You always need to think about the customer and the partner, because how are you going to go to market? And you have to go to market through the partners to get to the customer. And if you're not thinking that way, then you are off.

You need to be able to be in a motion where you are thinking about what is the best business outcome. And for me, it's through partners. And the companies I've been with and I'm with, it's through partners. And so we want to go through partners because it exponentially grows your business.

It gives you validity and it changes the business outcome. So you need to be thinking in that mindset to go through partners. And so at Fortra, we acquired many companies. Some of them were not partner-friendly.

And so we have adjusted and made them partner friendly so that we can go to market together. It's still a journey. It doesn't just happen overnight. We have to do that over a uh multi-year journey.

And we're in the process of doing that. I think that really aligns strongly with the difference between calling yourself like partner-driven or calling yourself partner first, or right? Uh and this is a distinction I keep hearing coming back. It's like, oh, when you're partner driven, it could be that you're in a direct deal, and then at the very end you ask your prospect, hey, what partners do you work with?

Let's let's co-sign them on the deal, right? Because it has to be partner driven. But I feel like the modern approach, and I love hearing that from you as well, is really far more about building that baseline of using partners as a conduit for successful long-term sales. And I think what that also requires is people like you that have that vision that can come in and say, how do you transform a company that's built up of parts and transform it into almost like a one plus one is three kind of solution by moving towards a far a partner first model?

So when you walk into an organization uh at the start of that process, what are the first signs that show you that the business is truly ready for this channel first change? Well, first it all starts with technology. Do we have the right tech? And do we have the right tech that can be adopted by partners?

I would never join a company that doesn't have the right tech. I mean, if you are doing something, it's got to be worthwhile to be able to be represented, not only to the customers, but also to through partners, with partners, alongside partners. And after that, we have to look at what the landscape looks like. And I evaluate how much business is currently being done through partners and what is the goal.

And we evaluate, or at least I do, where do we want to be from a growth perspective and really look at how partners can help. Partners can really help. They're not a fulfillment vehicle by any means. They are the ability to represent your product, be your product, um, you know, do all of those things, such as how to advance your product.

So I look at all of that and I map out a journey. And I'm telling you, it usually takes at a minimum, minimum 18 months, but usually three years. Three years is usually what it takes. And, you know, we're talking here, and I'm thinking about this.

This is a lot like a body transformation. You know, when people go and they want to make a body transformation, they don't think about how long it takes. You know, they show up to the gym and then they do a couple of exercises, and then then they're like, huh, I don't see a change. And you know what, you know what?

Hang on, stop. You gotta do a lot of things. You gotta eat right, you gotta go, and you gotta do this, you gotta do that, you gotta do this. And so it takes time and you gotta measure your success along the way.

And you have a big goal, but you have to look at what the small wins are along the way. It's the same thing with channel. You have to look at how you are going and you have to measure your successes along the way. So I hope that makes sense.

Oh, it makes total sense. And I think that analogy maps on so effectively, but it also gives some unique insights that people could think about if they want to continue the body transformation analogy. This just popped into my head like when you're doing a body transformation, most often you're not just focused on one hard metric. There's a bandwidth of elements, and those elements there are subject to change.

Same thing with building a strong partnership. You can't just say, okay, our goal is, let's say, an additional 3.45 million uh in uh partner through partner revenue per year, and then when it's 3.46 or 3.

42, say that the entire partnership is ruined because of that. It's just not as simple as that, and you need to take into account um uh unexpected changes, but also that there's a bandwidth of success, so to speak, when actually going into a partnership, whether that's with your body or with an MSP or a tech partner. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And my favorite day of the year is January 2nd at the gym because you see all these people show up and they all think they're gonna make a change because they have a New Year's resolution, and then by January 15th, they're no longer there.

And so you have to stick with it. And one of the things that has made me successful is that I map out a plan and set expectations to say this is not gonna happen overnight. We have to take time and we look at wins along the way, and we're doing that at Fortra. I made that pretty clear when I joined, and everybody at our leadership level knows that.

I gotcha. Yeah. I wanted to say you need to set up like the partnership meal prep handbook, but uh I was thinking the the flip side of this obviously is like cheat days, right? What would you say are red flags for uh in this partnership process?

What should people watch out for uh throughout this long-term process of building these effective partner programs where they have to say, okay, this is something we need to focus on. This might be an issue uh in the future. I think the biggest thing is not valuing the partnership and not valuing the, I guess, the benefits that a partner brings. I think you said it earlier is treating partners like fulfillment.

The best way to do a partnership is to be engaged at all times. And that means getting involved early in the sales cycle, whether it is from them or from us. When you are engaged at the early start of the sales cycle, you can truly make it a partnership where you're working with each other to win the customer. The wrong thing to do is to do the deal yourself and then bring the partner in at the last minute.

You know what? Might as well just do it direct. Because what value is the partner gonna provide, except for paper? That is the wrong way to do it because you're not developing anything.

Um again, it's just like doing a body transformation. You're at the at the very last minute, you're gonna try to all of a sudden start taking a protein shake, you know? Uh you you gotta be in it from from the beginning. Yeah, it's such a good point.

And I think also the aftermath of it, right? Taking that that protein shake only at the end, that means that you're not used to doing that, right? You haven't built up that uh um, how could you say that that discipline throughout the process, which means it's going to be harder to maintain. Same thing with partnerships, right?

If you only pull them in at the last part of the process, you're not building that strong relationship where you can weather the storm, the positives and negatives together throughout the process because the process is unknown to them. Yeah. I I really like this. It's almost as if these relationships with partners and building these programs align to things we actually do in real life.

I think people sometimes forget that, right? Yeah. And, you know, it's about friendships. And, you know, partners are not idiots.

They're just like you. They're just like me. They go and have chicken wings at a bar just like you and I do. Okay.

They are real people and they are salespeople, they're business people. So trust them. And and that's what it's all about. It's all about trust and working together.

And trust me, they want to win just like you do. And the valuable intel that they can provide will only help. But you have to earn it. And it's it's like dating.

I mean, like go out and meet somebody, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna win them over. Yeah. It's so interesting because I'm hearing this analogy come up more often. And I recently had a guest come on who said, um, it's like it's like relationships.

Yeah, you need to care for each other, but you're not going to expect there's never going to be friction. Right. And and this is what I mean. It maps on to our real relationships because that's what it is.

But at the end of the day, in a relationship, whether that's a marriage or a relationship with a partner, if everything goes correctly, you're both striving for the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Absolutely. And I mean, like if you are in a relationship or have been like me, you have ups and downs, but you get through it. And the it's the trust in each other that you know that you're going to get through this. So yeah.

Yeah. It's so simple if you break it down like that. There's so many good anal analogies here, but I want to move from uh analogies to frameworks because I've heard you talk about framing successful partnerships through the lens of the four Ts. Can you dive into this a little bit?

And how did that come together for you? Why does it resonate so strongly? Thank you for that. I've done this for a while.

And what I've learned over time is you have to make things simple and you have to put emphasis on things that people can understand. And I do have four T's that I, you know, explain to everybody and I live by from a leadership perspective, from a partner perspective. And this is a go-to-market channel four T's. It all starts first with technology.

That's the first T. And if you are in this business, you will not get anywhere without great technology. What does your technology do? How does it help?

How do you represent it? How do you go to market? How do you solve problems? That's where the first T comes from.

If you don't even have that, let's forget it. We're moving on. Okay. That's the one.

That's the first one. Technology. The second one is also very important when you're partnering and it's transparency. And you have to have transparency with your partners in order to win.

You have to have that relationship that will make it happen. Now, look, I didn't choose the word trust because I'm assuming trust, but transparency means ups and downs. Transparency means that you are uh honest with each other and you are sharing the journey to solve these customer problems together. So that's why that is so important.

The third one is 3x growth. I'm not kidding when I tell you that if you are in cybersecurity, you can do 3x growth year over year with a company like Fortra, with all of the portfolio items that we have, you have the ability to grow. And that's a business item. Now, I could have said 10x growth, right?

But no, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's also a T. I'm not gonna do that. So I wanted to be sure that we made it realistic and we made it bigger.

And it's not two, which is also a T, it's three. So I thought that three X growth is achievable, and it is, and we have partners that are doing that globally, year over year. So that is something that every partner would want to do. And the final T is so important as well, and it is together.

This is the hardest industry to be in right now when you are looking at the threat landscape and you cannot do this alone. You have to do this together. And we are open about this. We know it.

We can only do so much. We are a software company. We don't do services and advisory and all of the trusted advisor stuff that happens when you're working with a customer. We need to do this together.

We have other vendors that we work with and we do this together. We have partners. We need to be open and honest about our capabilities, but we also need to make sure that we are doing this um in a joint fashion. And the word is together.

And um that's just my philosophy, and call me, you know, a dad guy, but like that's the that's my vision. I wouldn't call you a dad guy based on this at all. I think the most important thing with models and frameworks is that one, they're memorable, and two, they speak to the heart, right? And for me, my takeaway based on what you said now, uh, there's a couple of things.

I think the first one is, and that really is gonna continue to stick with me, and I might steal it from you, is that you don't use the word trust in these conversations because basically what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that trust is inherent. It's table stakes for these relationships, so why should we still talk about it, right? Which I find interesting because ironically, tech still isn't. There's still companies that oversell, that don't practice what they preach, that that fudge their storylines, right?

But I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I feel like companies are becoming more and more transparent in how they go to market as well, as in really being clear about what they can and can't do. Is that something you see as well? Yeah.

Well, for my company, we do that. We are very clear and transparent about what we can and cannot do. We don't do IAM. I mean, like we we get people that ask us questions all the time.

But there are companies that try to say that they do everything. And and that's where it comes out that you're not being honest, you're not being transparent, you are trying to pigeonhole a solution. Oh, we'll partner with somebody and get you that solution. That doesn't work.

So you have to know what your capabilities are, and then you have to know what you are able to achieve with partners. But if you can't do it, you can't do it. Yeah. I think that's also um a critical learning point for building an effective ecosystem is when you know what you can't do and you know which companies do that really well, that means you also have an effective ecosystem play and your alliances become super valuable in your go-to-market there as well.

And I think that turns competition into a value add. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And uh I I think that really does have to switch the perspective in companies that feel like they're they're working against each other as opposed to working together, because indeed you can you can't be everything for everyone.

That's never going to be the case. No, you can't. You you absolutely cannot. I and I've worked for one of the largest tech companies in the world.

And even there, you have limitations as to what you can do. I mean, they want you to walk in and you can buy it all from them, but you really can't. Not everything. And when you think about security, okay, relate it to what security is like for your home.

And depending on where you live and who you are, it depends on how paranoid you are. Now, you could be one person that is just happy with door locks, right? Or you could have a lot in your house where you are more paranoid, where you can get door locks, you can get, you know, uh ring, you can get cameras inside the house, outside the house, you can get, you know, barbed wire, you can get sharpshooters on the roof, you can have a panic room, you can have a guard dog, you can have a gun, you could have infrared lasers, you could do whatever you want.

You could have a moat. Okay. So you could do whatever you want. And all of those technologies are not represented by the same company.

They're all from different companies. But guess who represents all that security? Partners. Yeah.

So you you have to realize what you're protecting. And uh you have to be able to bring it together. It's such a great point, and I'll definitely get back in touch with you if I need to find someone who can build me a moat. Uh but uh uh no, do you know what there's something I notice when we're talking, and I'm I'm really enjoying this conversation, and you've spent decades helping companies grow through partners, building these programs, leading these programs.

You're obviously still energized by this work, you're enthusiastic. What is it about the channel today that keeps you so excited, that keeps this work fresh? Oh my gosh. Wow.

Um, I I love this question. It's working with people. I I see the opportunity. And uh one, I could take down opportunities working direct with a customer.

That's there. That's great. But you know what's even better is to do it with a partner and win together. That's back to my teak.

When you win together, you know what that does in business? It exponentially grows your business. It brings forth more opportunities. And so why do one-to-one when you can do one to three to five to six opportunities that are going to be there in the future?

And that's the beauty of being in the channel. That's the beauty of working and winning together because you establish friendships and business partnerships that will grow each of our businesses. You know, one of the things that I truly recognize about myself is that I have the personality of a golden doodle. I just want to be loved by everybody.

Okay. And I just want to please and make it work. And so when you do partnerships, that's it. So let's work together, let's win together, let's have happiness together.

And so you will exponentially grow your business through the channel rather than doing it direct. There is, I I have not met anybody who has told me or that is intelligent that has told me that they could they what prefer to do it direct. It has to be through the channel. And with my golden doodle personality, we will make it happen.

So you're going to have to uh you're gonna have a hard time convincing me not to name this episode the golden doodle effect. I'm sure we'll get like uh a hundred thousand views. No, I think those are are really words to live by, and I I fully agree, right? It's it's uh it's about using human relationships as a force multiplier.

It's just benefits all around. One other point. Sorry, I'm so excited because of what we're talking about. It's uh it is human relationships.

It's not AI generated. I'm real. Woo-hoo! I'm real.

Uh it's about touching the customer, it's about solving problems, it's about that interaction uh that's not gonna go away. And so we have to do this and uh on a on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, I I fully agree. And every time I talk to people in the channel, it makes me so happy to hear that they all seem to agree about one, the value of AI, and two, the that humans are indispensable in this formula and might even become more important as the technology commoditizes and AI solves the admin white noise that we all have to deal with, where those person-to-person relationships can actually help people decide between one or two, right?

And I love that because I I think I'm kind of like you where the people part of it is for me what makes the difference and it's where you build those relationships for life, but also know indeed how to be transparent, how to have a conversation, how to point in the same direction together, which is harder than it seems sometimes. Yeah. Absolutely. Speaking of togetherness, we always ask our guests to nominate the next guest on the podcast.

For us, who should we have next? Well, that's a great opportunity for me to recommend. And I will tell you, I have known this person, John. His name is John Adale, for uh about 15 years.

He's a huge channel advocate. He was my partner for many years, and now he's on the vendor side and we collaborate all the time. He's part of my inner circle that we share uh stories about and we discuss how to do the channel business together. So, John Adaleo, he is the vice president of Global Channels at Hacker One.

I would implore you to speak to him. I'm already looking forward to this. And also, I I feel like cybersecurity has the coolest company names in any any industry I've ever been in. The Hacker One is uh is up there.

No, that's fantastic. I'll definitely reach out to him. To wrap this up, do you have any final insights, tips, tricks, analogies that you'd like to share with the audience? Oh, I've kind of shared a lot of my stuff already.

What I will tell and advise everybody is always be learning. Um, I am I love learning and I don't have all the answers. Uh, look forward to learning. Well, I look forward to teaching as well, but life is a journey and you are always learning no matter what age you are at.

And so the playbook is always being developed. And the playbook gets adjusted on how you go to market every day. Trust me when I tell you 20 years ago, the playbook was totally different than what it is now. And so you have to adjust along the way.

And so always be learning and then implement what you can do to make yourself more effective. I think that's fantastic words to live by. Um, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and uh for this wonderful conversation, taking the time to speak with me. Absolutely.

Michelle, uh, before we go, there is one other T that I don't discuss very much, but I save it for the end, and that is thank you. I love it. Thank you. The fifth T, but we're gonna do the sixth E, and that's thank you, dear listeners.

Thanks for tuning in. And uh see you in the next uh see you in the next episode. This was fantastic. Thank you so much, Brad.