CISO Executive Network

Michael joined the team to further build community around the most senior cybersecurity executives across the US.  CISO ExecNet offers a way to showcase solutions from top providers, and enables CISO members to share best practices in an engaging and supportive environment.

Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)

The Digital Engagement Summit

Digital Engagement Summit, a first-of-its-kind online event for Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing executives, has been bringing together hundreds of the best and brightest leaders since September 2022. 

The Digital Engagement Summit brings together the visionaries who will lead the way forward. They share experiences, ideas, and techniques: delving into how post-covid business events are forever changed… and how the best organizations are re-inventing themselves to optimize for audience engagement.

Founder

Cybersecurity Gatebreakers Foundation

I volunteer my time to help CGF because I became passionate about its mission while working with cybersecurity executives, solution providers and government agencies.  

CyberSec is an adversarial business–just like the military and law enforcement–counterparties are bad actors. That means the “good guys” need as many smart minds as possible tackling challenges.  

To do so, leaders need to know just how important (and easy) it is to hire, train, and mentor the next generation of cybersecurity professionals… and bring them from diverse backgrounds to fight the next generation of cyber warfare.

Strategic Advisor

Data Connect Marketing

This is my own contract consulting outfit where I do what I do best: Go-To-Market Growth Strategy.  That’s usually a blend of Marketing, Business Development, and Operational leadership with real roll-up-my-sleeves hands-on work.  I help the leadership team think through ICP, personas, pricing, positioning, product-market fit, sales process, and presentations to drive real value for the business. 

Most often specialized in B2B Enterprise SaaS scaling from $2-10M, but I have run product segments within IBM as large as $250-300M.

Chief Strategy Officer

Engagez

As CSO, I work on a blend of marketing, business development and operational projects.  I have been deep into evolving the strategy around defining the “Digital Engagement Platform.” Working with analysts, clients, prospects and investors daily, we have taken 1000s of lessons from a long history with virtual events to create the experiential engagement platform that will power the “future of work” with persistent digital campus environments. 

Working closely with the CEO and founders, I do my daily best to: 
▪ Explain the business’ key value proposition to investors and constituencies 
▪ Strengthen brand, communications, and demand generation efforts 
▪ Support business development efforts with global clients and partners
▪ Build a world-class enterprise marketing organization

The digital campus is the always on virtual HQ that is the online home to events, webinars, e-learning, partner management, employee engagement, virtual offices, and more. It’s about building immersive experiences (2D, 3D, Metaverse, etc.) for the current hybrid work reality.

Data Connectors

Joined a company whose sole source of revenue was putting on large, in-person gatherings roughly six weeks before local governments made that particular activity illegal, THEN:

▪ Led an expansion that resulted in the best years (revenue, profit, purpose) in the company’s history
▪ Built an amazing network of 100s CISOs, CIOs as well as deep relationships with cybersecurity executives from the Secret Service, FBI, etc. 
▪ Employed the magic of marketing to upgrade “vendor-con” history to a community-focused mission that brought real executive interaction
▪  Recruited, realigned and motivated an all-woman sales team while tripling investment levels and delighting new logo and existing clients with real value-add 
▪ Scaled a team from scratch that did the work of three times as many staffers and turned out content, demand gen, conversion, awareness, and community in under 6 months 

...all during THE existential crisis that was COVID, by changing it from a “selling sponsorships” business into a “provide access to a community of decision-makers” proposition. 

["Chief Strategy Officer" was a title invention to cover broad skills of serving as a CMO, CRO and Operations Exec in one go.]

Avanan

I helped to create the “cloud email security supplements” segment of the cloud security market by deeply understanding WHY customers needed to better secure Microsoft Office 365.
 
▪ Re-positioned the business to capitalize on a big market opportunity
▪ Tirelessly wrangled analysts to build a new market segment 
▪ Explosively built up Gartner Peer Insights reviews from zero to #1 in ~3 months
▪ Accelerated demand, lead, pipeline through SEO/M, digital ads and hard work
▪ Invigorated a 1M+ B2B Enterprise SaaS email marketing database to drive results

Joined at Series B, when the company had a vague “cloud security” position and fuzzy value proposition. Put the company on track to its eventual acquisition by Check Point Software.

Chief Marketing Officer

Semarchy

I was instrumental in getting Semarchy on the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave for MDM Solutions, where it is a current leader. To accomplish this, I worked very closely with a brilliant CEO / Founder/Technologist/Musician (who is now a good friend) to re-position Semarchy as the “Intelligent Data Hub”, and better align the company position, product, and brand to the needs of the changing market for Data Governance and Master Data Management (MDM).

▪  Company spokesperson leading GDPR efforts and our strategic value there 
▪  Re-christened core product as xDM and presented at major WW industry conferences
▪ Built, ran, and managed a global Client Advisory Board that drove product innovation
▪  Developed a talented, globally diverse marketing team and promoted them regularly
▪  Modernized sales & marketing structure, bringing process/rigor around CRM, pipeline, marketing automation, media relations, client success, career development, and demand generation.  

…as the company's first CMO - all while trying my best as a first-time dad and melding the culture of a French technology firm with a smart yet funky Silicon Valley vibe.

Socure

I was the founding VP of Marketing, when the company was Series A, pre-revenue and helped it grow from (just me) to a meaningful marketing team and ~$7M revenue. Worked with the founders who had a crazy/brilliant idea about the intersection of social media, facial recognition and AI for Digital Identity Verification and Fraud Detection.  I helped to develop a real product-market fit and substantiate the segment with press, analysts and the larger FinTech ecosystem. 

▪  Initiated marketing automation/CRM (HubSpot) + built 25K contact email marketing db
▪  Captured ~25 press mentions, articles in big trade pubs and mainstream media 
▪ Translated a heavy tech message into a consumable brand and demand gen campaign
▪  Developed the personas, ICP, positioning and messaging for initial GTM 
▪  Built channel and event marketing (Money 20/20, Payments, LendIt, Transact) success

… working to integrate a completely new concept into a crowded FinTech and KYC/consumer identity security market with big players, mostly focused on $100K+ ARR deals to large, tier-1 banks and financial institutions.

Vice President of Marketing

Trifacta

I did this as a full-time contract position when they needed a fast VP Marketing replacement. 

Parachuted in to lead and grow an existing marketing team, shortly after the original founders brought in a professional CEO. It was a great opportunity to work at the *very* center of the Silicon Valley network with brainy academics and tier-1 VCs. 

▪  Presented meaningful progress for board meetings and decision checkpoints
▪  Oversaw a website rebranding, augmented digital demand gen and event strategy
▪  Matured AR, PR, messaging, demand gen from “start-up” to “enterprise” grade
▪  Overachieved lead generation targets: 140% attainment, $10M pipeline
▪  Streamlined budgets, team assignments, and planning for a fast 20% increase in ROI

… all while living in NYC and traveling back & forth to SF every week! (I do not recommend this) Trifacta was a commercialization of the open source “data wrangler” project, and had $100M invested at the time. It was later acquired by Alteryx.

Vice President Marketing

I love to bring together *community* via interactive and engaging strategic marketing.  I've done this successfully in Cybersecurity, B2B Marketing, Data/Analytics, AI, etc.  

I've been a ‘Chief Strategy Officer’ multiple times (working definition): Bring together Go-To-Market activities (Marketing, Sales) and strategic direction (global positioning, message, execution) in a sophisticated way that appeals to intelligent B2B executives. 

Lived and worked (+recruited, hired, and managed teams) across three continents, with a ”growth-hacking” (READ: “scrappy when needed”) approach to demand generation, communications, press and analyst relations that has driven solid pipeline, measurable results and actionable advances to product, brand, position, and messaging strategy. 

Spokesperson, speaker, and author communicating thought leadership and advancing content for innovative market solutions. 

- Authored 50+ articles in major pubs like Forbes, MarTech Advisor, InfoWorld, ITProPortal, etc.  
- Specialized work Demand Gen (lifeblood = leads for most B2B SaaS Orgs!) 
- Implemented CRM, marketing automation, ABM, digital campaigns with > 30% conversion rates
- Recruited, built & managed Lead Development (LDR) Teams: driven over $100M pipeline

Performance Marketing | Marketing Automation | HubSpot | Enterprise Software Sales Management SEO | Digital | Marketing Analytics | FinTech | MarTech | AdTech

"Full stack" marketing executive who can go toe-to-toe with the CTO or CPO at the best SaaS solutions, armed to the teeth with data and analytics to put clients first.

More here:  https://muckrack.com/michael-hiskey/articles. 

I’m a fan of streamlining branding, focused messaging, and improving positioning – often morphing my job to “Chief Product Evangelist” and “Storyteller of Client Success.” Always focused on the needs of clients, I have led teams in sales, customer success, and even product development. 

TL;DR – learned everything I could from ~10 years at IBM, and applied that to start-up life including data/analytics and FinTech/security. Grew my team in Brasil from 0 to 73 people in 2.5 years.

If you are anywhere near the NorthEast Annual #Cybersecurity Summit by CxO Security Forum today, look for our interview on the local Fox affiliate news!

Michael H.

I love to bring together *community* via a content-forward, strategic marketing approach.  I've done this successfully in Cybersecurity, B2B Marketing, Data/Analytics, AI, etc.  

‘Chief Strategy Officer’ (working definition): Bring together Go-To-Market activities (Marketing, Sales) and strategic direction (global positioning, message, execution) in a sophisticated way that appeals to intelligent B2B executives. 

Lived and worked (+recruited, hired, and managed teams) across three continents, with a ”growth-hacking” (READ: “scrappy when needed”) approach to demand generation, communications, press and analyst relations that has driven solid pipeline, measurable results and actionable advances to product, brand, position, and messaging strategy. 

Spokesperson, speaker, and author communicating thought leadership and advancing content for innovative market solutions. 

- Authored 50+ articles in major pubs like Forbes, MarTech Advisor, InfoWorld, ITProPortal, etc.  
- Specialized work Demand Gen (lifeblood = leads for most B2B SaaS Orgs!) 
- Implemented CRM, marketing automation, ABM, digital campaigns with > 30% conversion rates
- Recruited, built & managed Lead Development (LDR) Teams: driven over $100M pipeline

Performance Marketing | Marketing Automation | HubSpot | Enterprise Software Sales Management SEO | Digital | Marketing Analytics | FinTech | MarTech | AdTech

"Full stack" marketing executive who can go toe-to-toe with the CTO or CPO at the best SaaS solutions, armed to the teeth with data and analytics to put clients first.

More here:  https://muckrack.com/michael-hiskey/articles. 

I’m a fan of streamlining branding, focused messaging, and improving positioning – often morphing my job to “Chief Product Evangelist” and “Storyteller of Client Success.” Always focused on the needs of clients, I have led teams in sales, customer success, and even product development. 

TL;DR – learned everything I could from ~10 years at IBM, and applied that to start-up life including data/analytics and FinTech/security. Grew my team in Brasil from 0 to 73 people in 2.5 years.

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