It's great to have some touch-all blazers here with Cody Cornell, CEO and co-founder of Swomley. So, why, Cody? Thanks Rose for sharing your time here for our impromptu podcast. Yes, well, let's hope we get the quality in the wonderful Marriott business.
Yeah, interestingly enough, I went to a security founders event which they do at Blackout RSA every year. We were kind of talking through the places that everybody has meetings as a starter founder around RSA because you don't have any space. You can't afford a meeting room. So apparently it's a rite of passage to know about all the secret spots to two meetings as in the mezzanine level at the marquee or the back of the Starbucks or there's these different places where everybody knows they can go when you don't actually have a stuff.
Yes, this feels good. It's normal. Well, how'd you see that at home here? Well, first of all, congratulations on being named as our Mail Trail Blazer of the Year.
Thank you. Obviously, keen to find out a bit more about you and Swomley and find out, you know, what you think got the full marks on this particular accolade. So, I can ask you a few questions. I had a little look at a new background.
So, interestingly enough, starting career as an electrical technician for the US shoe-scart. So, how did that come about? So, I grew up in Royal Montana. Most people think about Montana.
If you go to the beautiful western part of the state with the mountains, I grew up in the park with this flat, full of cows. So, I wanted to go to the boys, right? For better or worse, and honestly, it probably wasn't fairly prepared to go to college based on my ACT scores and things like that. So, I joined the service.
I actually joined a year before I graduated high school. I kind of pre-committed, spent five years in the Coast Guard. First duty station was actually on the floor star, which is out of Seattle, which, you know, when I joined the Coast Guard, I wanted to see the world. Instead of seeing it around the equator, I actually saw it the other way around.
I went to Antarctica and the Arctic. And, you know, this is a mistake, thanks, but my last duty station was involved in working. And, obviously, in the federal space, there's lots of opportunity in them. So, got into federal contracting, got into security right there, working, you know, in the DC metro.
Yeah, because I see that I was also stint with the Department of Homeland Security because you moved into the porter world. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of my career was either working in the SOC as a security ambulance or deploying the tools that a security ops team would need, right? So, you know, hit the SAM or endpoint or vulnerability management, spend a number of years deploying those, you know, enterprise tools for the DOD, for KHS, and several different, you know, commercial organizations as well. So, yeah, you know, I really started building some lane for ourselves.
You know, we were security-owned. So, we didn't like copying and basing and doing a lot of this really real work. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't why I got into security.
But he also had to do it. There's no compliance perspective for me. I'll just practice respect if you have to do these things, but we felt like there was a better way to do it. And that's really, you know, what inspired us to get started this evening.
Yeah, and you kind of, but your first startup, per se, was from a professional services in that MDC space. And I'm assuming that some lane grew out of that experience for the class of this part. Yeah, in many ways, right? So, it'd be the first developers we hired to help us make other tools work.
We actually, you know, they started building that this from my platform. You know, I can take credit for that. I'm not a software developer that they actually did that work. But also the funding, right?
So, I mean, one of the things I really think about is that domain experience that I got during that period of consulting with these organizations, they were experiencing the pain point that some lights also work, you know, give us credibility, give us real insight, but also, you know, obviously give us the capital that we use to start the business. So, if you look for it, you look for it. Cool. So, that was the beginning of it.
So, this is all that security, orchestration, automation response. You're all seen as the only US model. So, clearly, you're doing well. You've had a level of earthquakes and killing the bad unicorn, which sounds very exciting.
And I'm like, in the press release announcing the win, why she was on the LinkedIn post? It describes you as fearless. So, I'm curious to see why your team is describing you as fearless. I mean, I'm trying to think helicopters.
Oh, no. No, no, no. When I was on a boat, I worked in a machine reel. They didn't let me get outside much.
So, you know, there wasn't much perilous work that I did that was in the coast guard. There were definitely people that do that work. That was not me. I don't know.
You know, it was a, I think more of a cliche. The fearless leader, I think, is a common cliche. So, I appreciate the characterization for system maybe slightly annoying at times. But fearless maybe not.
Definitely. Taking risks is, it's terrible. You know, honestly, and thankfully, you know, we persevere and continue to grow. But fearless by a characterization I would give myself.
I think other people giving you that particular label is not this early bad thing. So, they're obviously seeing something that is there. I didn't know being an entrepreneur. Why are you scared to read some type?
It is. I mean, you know, just putting yourself out there when you've come from a backdrop of public service and big organizations like American Express, like the M where there's something you don't have a safe net. You know, together is once you start an environment. I think on the flip side though, you know, other people that are thinking about it.
You know, other people that are thinking about sorting around the business, the advantage we have is security folks. Is there's such a shortage of people? I mean, one of the very reasons why we built the product. Not just a great reason, but one of the reasons that we did, there's always a lot of job opportunity.
And I think, you know, people that are kind of on the fence right now thinking about, should I, maybe should I start that thing that I've been thinking about? The truth is, you can try it, but it doesn't work. If you're not, you get a job. There's probably a job out there for you.
And I know when we were recruiting early on to bring on our first, you know, teams and individuals to help us grow the business. It was always hard to keep people to start. I mean, you have four kids or, you know, you have a spouse or a mortgage. Those are real things that you have to think about.
But most of these individuals should get a job in the self of the home. And, you know, as an employer, that's terrifying because then you have to have a reason, you know, you have to keep people excited to stay with your organization. But on the flip side, you know, you can probably take that risk. Because you do have a safety net.
It might not be, you know, a Fortune 500 organization, but there's an organization out there that finds you. And considering the staffing trends we have, you probably will probably make that risk. Yeah. So definitely it's a skills, definitely a skills, definitely a skills, but a lot of people can sell.
So from your perspective, challenges that you faced over the times that you've been hunting for place, it's 2014, you know, your palm tree, it was to be funding. Thank you so much for sharing it. It's always good, you know, people think about that. That's a lot of money.
Yeah. So he's kicking back now in the Caribbean, but obviously you've got a big team and we've got big plans. I think I'll do almost 60 meetings this week. So I'm sure it'd be fantastic.
But yeah, definitely not the case. But yeah, I mean, it has been, you know, in the roller coaster, right? There's days I talk about the team a lot about like the emotional roller coaster that it is, right? You can have, you know, your highest pie on the same day that you have your lowest low.
And it is an emotional roller coaster. Yeah, I have. There's some amazing people on the team. My wife is terribly supportive.
I couldn't do this. These things, but I did have like that infrastructure to make us reality. No way, you can comment spend in a weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks a year away from home is if somebody is taking care of the rest of everything else in your life and supporting you to do that because you do have to travel to drop in the hat and is that you know, I couldn't do that without that's affordable in the office and outside. So I mean, that's super important.
And I think sometimes under appreciated, you know, for better words, you know, I get a little bit of press from time to time. You know, probably should be able to put a few other people in that because they definitely got a reality. And what do you say? From challenges is obviously a juggling that having the mic outside of the main and maintaining that any other challenges that you've faced.
You know, the challenges that change over the years, right? I mean, I remember trying to raise our first first dollars into the business and someone saying, I don't think that's a thing. Like, automation is something, right? You know, there's probably been a billion dollars acquisitions today buying automation companies.
So I think we've there by this thing check. You know, now it's different, right? It's about scaling organization. It's about building a culture that, you know, people are excited to be a part of because finding the right people is so important.
So, you know, I use the air quotes that you can't see on a podcast of culture. It's kind of a hard piece to find, but you know, building and finding and having an organization that people really are a lot of part of is a lot more difficult than I thought. I used to be a capacity problem, right? Or it was always a capacity problem.
But it was about, you know, just having enough people. And now it's different. You found all these amazing people that have done so much work throughout the years. How do you keep them excited?
How do you make sure they're worth my analysis is reasonable, but also, you know, you're accomplishing your goals that you've committed to your customers and your team and your investors and everything like that. So it's the challenge now of scale and that's scale for us international. We have, you know, staff in Europe at least and Australia and Singapore and we're scaling the different functions and those functions become more specific, more specialized. And, you know, that's the change.
It used to be utility, but it used to do everything. And now, you know, people are, you know, it's exciting. You know, people have years of experience doing very specific things. It's amazing to see what they're capable of that as ometsis.
And, you know, just because I think we should manage trying to accomplish what they do. So it's like that. That's super exciting. It's so important.
And obviously, it's a little bit about challenges. What would you say you're most proud of all the last one that's so years to set up the company. There's two things that I get really, really excited about. One is the, I had this problem of just struggling to keep up with what I needed.
He wanted a database sent to see somebody that I've never met before because some of you lose because one of our sales reps was at the all and customer success. He got the use cases, you know, worked with them because use cases going at the new there. Experiencing the feeling that I wish I would have had was all and seeing that happen. Like just seeing people use a product the way that I thought they would and having the positive passion on their day to day.
Is super highly. That's super fulfilling. The other is, you know, I always wanted to own a business. I was thought to be like a sandwich shop or something like that.
Not a tech company. So it's, you know, at the stage that we're at, it's truly a family. Like, you know, we have people be out there, bring their kids in because, you know, the spouse is sick or they had to go drop the car off and you got to be pissed. And you realize that, you know, it's not just the business.
It's the family's individuals that are, you know, part of that. That's super satisfying. I think that's awesome. So definitely.
So just with the other things, I mean, you talk about culture there. I know it's again a quote from a person who's talking about culture. Is it just Max, Bree Snacks and Bingo? There's not, there might be Bree Snacks, but obviously it goes well beyond that.
And I, I put that, not as a ding at, but obviously the Hichester world, the Greek, C-Minteric, all this stuff, stuff where it's going to get really warm and fuzzy. But, you know, you're saying you thought it'd go big for the mat. I mean, I think you, it is more than just the things that give away for free, right? It's, you know, people come to work because they like the people that they're with more than they like the free snacks.
And, uh, some days on the speed of people who are going to be walking in the office, they're like, I haven't done it yet. You know, this is, it hasn't happened. But yeah, it is. It's, you have to build an environment that we want to be part of part of that is the office ice and do they get a good momentum.
Do they feel welcome and, you know, do they waste you can take a private home call and like there are some, you know, we're called material things that you can provide that makes your day better, right? You know, the fact that I, you know, I'm not unreal day if I can pick up lunch because today it was busy as a good thing. But, you know, people, people want to do the work and they want to do it for people. But they, you know, you can't, you can't kind of smooth that over with, you know, free beer and poo's ball.
Like there's, it's, it's possible to do as much as you want. I wish I could because that's how it's not easier to buy beer and put a few poems table in. That it is to actually see, you know, the cognizant of, you know, how it's hard. We need how much we expect people to work and, but also, you know, and what that does down on a daily basis and how that affects families and all that.
So, yeah, well, it's a really retiring theme is saying when you talk about the kind of people that you want to work with here. We call you is loving what they do and passion. Yeah, people want to try actually. Yeah, Jenny, you're off.
And it's only recurring theme having spoken to the man issue, her grub, now shift left. I was a speech ever play yesterday. It was after obviously with folks, high banner of single books, everybody's saying very much to say things. So it is definitely seen as being, you know, security seen as a very black and white environment, you know, like, so threat with it.
Don't threat with it. You know, with information, it feels like dehumanizing. But it can somewhere could be taken about. What are you doing?
You're taking out the risk and you're taking out the human touch in years you don't need it. So you can keep the passion together. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the people who get into security, especially security, obviously not to do very much.
That's all they're excited about. That's all they're passionate about. If you can take it off their plate, you're giving them more if it's still like day and more feeling life and more feeling career. That's what they want to do.
It's not it's not fun to manage a spreadsheet to send emails to create tickets. Like that's what you're doing. You want to do investigation. You want to hunt into a virus.
You want to reverse engineering, reverse engineering malware. Those are activities that require creativity and innovation and things like that as opposed to just, you know, let's take this box and fill it. Let's move this rock to here. That's not the feeling work.
You have to do some of that to understand how everything works. But it quickly becomes out exciting. It was a death of all that sounds it. And so what's exciting for you wise?
I think the sort of market is still super new. I think there's a lot of innovation will still come in the weeks, months, years, years, the future. We have a lot of work that we want to do because we don't feel like the public is in soles. We still feel like organizations have too much security technologies for all that they're struggling to manage.
There's too many gaps from a staffing perspective they're trying to keep up with. And we also think there's definitely a watershed numb coming from a surface area perspective via 5G or via IoT. There's a lot of surface area that we're happy to manage. And really automation is in the few meaningful ways that we're going to make a depth on that.
I know you also have other partnerships as well. That's the obvious to be part of this web landscape. Now with security, really security is no matter. Woman on an island.
Right. You've got to look at the whole infrastructure and work with people with perhaps have an IoT solution. Perhaps looking at the point. G Spain.
Right. I'm making that. So I'm actually going to be seeing a few more of those coming through this. Absolutely.
Integration is core to what we do as an automation company. Hundreds of integrations, thousands of actions that we can take into the party systems. We're adding them, if not on a daily basis, so weekly basis, we're adding new ones. That's core to what we do.
And if it's one of the value problems we provide our customers, they're able to integrate with other technologies. They themselves might have the time or resources to actually integrate with. Something that we do as one of the values we provide. And we're focused all for it.
So we can do it quickly. We can do it free questions. So I mean, all criteria for an thing with respect is about agility is around innovation, diversity and leadership. And certainly we've spoken about the players touch up on those.
Is there anything else that you'd like to say with regards to what you feel like to be doing special? I think the thing that is pretty unique for automation is it's not just about security. It's not about brand protection, but it's also about quality life. It's a very people-centric problem.
There's not been a lot of innovations happen specifically around the people components of security. So I think continuing to look through what we're doing, look through that lens as we continue to work and enhance what we're doing is super-fording. We don't think there's a humanless future for cybersecurity because, or from an adversary perspective, there's always been innovation and change. It's never going to be once we solve the problem and segment stays the same.
So there's always going to be this changing environment that we're going to have to adopt and adapt to, I guess, probably a better term. And I think that's super-fording. This isn't a do-it-once and it's done. This is a stuff that's going to go on for a long time.
It's going to be a really big thing. We're in a lot of people in the organization side for the first-day of literature. So we're excited to be one of the many ways that people are going to combat. Simpio, hoping for very much time.
Congratulations again for being shared out. It was an untranquelizer of the year. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.
It's not enough. Thanks.