SentinelOne Partners to Get Competitive Advantage Boost from IPO
This investment will help partners differentiate themselves from competitors, SentinelOne says.
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Channel Futures: Are there specific plans for the money raised by the IPO?
SentinelOne’s Ken Marks: We will continue to build and invest in R&D, and expand geographic and vertical coverage. But certainly, from my perspective, running the global partner ecosystem, it’s really going to help us expand on the top five priorities that we have in expanding our partner base and leveraging the channel.
CF: What are those top five priorities?
KM: One of them is really focused on partner development. And what that means is really zeroing in on the partners that want to build SentinelOne practices and how we can really double down and invest in them to help them differentiate themselves from their own competitors. The second one, which is extremely important for us, is really activating the technical partner community. And we’re doing that through a combination of things. On Friday, we launch our first outcome-based training modules for pre-sales engineers at our partners. Those are all self-paced, no-cost training offerings … where they can really take away skills in building out their practice when they complete those education modules. That’s a big investment. We also recently launched something that we call our Paladin program, and that’s the best-of-the-best engineers from our top partners around the globe. It’s a specialized community where we give them extra training, extra care and feeding.
The third one is really delivering consistent and effective communications to partners. We’re now in our second quarter of a consistent drum beat that gives us three headquarters-based touch points with our partners each month. That’s going extremely well with our partners who get bombarded with information every day. And they really appreciate that.
The fourth one is driving partner-generated pipeline, which is extremely important to all of us. We just launched our new partner program on June 7 and one of the big pieces is the incentives. We’re incenting partners really for all the different phases of the sales cycle. So we’ve really focused our incentives on the steps in the sales cycle to motivate partners along the way.
And finally, we’re investing in tools to help with our operational excellence and accountability with the partners. A couple of things we’re investing in now are an improved partner portal so partners can self-service and get lots of assets, and do co-branded marketing campaigns. We also rolled out a couple other tools to help with the ease of doing business. And we also built a very robust rebates and incentives tool.
CF: Will there be an increased focus on extended detection and response (XDR) in the coming months? If so, will that create new opportunities for partners?
KM: There will be an increased focus across the entire Singularity platform. And the goal for us is really to invest in the partners that want to build a SentinelOne practice across XDR, across the entire Singularity platform, so that they can actually differentiate themselves against their own competitors in the market. So the ones that want to build a SentinelOne practice, we’re certainly here to invest in them, invest with them so that they can be differentiated as they go to market themselves.
CF: Who are SentinelOne’s main competitors, and how will going public give SentinelOne and its partners a competitive advantage?
KM: There are lots of people out there that provide pieces of our platform. Of course, CrowdStrike is out there, Carbon Black and multiple vendors. Also some of the legacy vendors, like McAfee and Symantec. We think with this investment and the continued approach we have with our partners across those five priorities, we can help them be different. So if they build the practices, they understand the Singularity platform, they integrate it into their own services, businesses and what they’re bringing to market. We really think this helps them differentiate themselves instead of just being the status quo.
CF: Zero trust is the big buzz word all over the cybersecurity channel. What does that mean to SentinelOne? Does that come into play in your plans? And are you also hearing from your partners about that?
KM: We hear from our partners a lot about all of the hot topics like XDR and zero trust. And really for us, we’re staying focused on providing the best visibility and antonymous solutions. So you can call it zero trust, you can call it XDR. What we’re really trying to do is just help our customers protect their most valuable assets. So, of course, the answer is yes. We are looking at how our platform fits into the zero-trust story, the XDR story. But at the end of the day, because we’re becoming such a data-focused company, we’re really trying to help our customers protect their environments. So we’re not really looking at the different buzzwords in the market, but really the underlying solutions and the problems that we’re trying to solve for our customers.
CF: In the months ahead, are partners going to be able to tell a difference, or see changes and benefits?
KM: We just launched our new partner program, and with a lot of the updates and changes we’ve done in conjunction with what we were planning, the good news for us is we’re ahead of the curve. So it’s not “let’s announce what we did today and then let’s roll it out to the partner ecosystem over the next three, six or nine months.” We’re there now. So the increased enablement assets that we’ve made available, the increased incentives, all of that is available today for our partners to take advantage of.
CF: Have you received any feedback from partners about going public? Are they happy about it? Do they have any concerns about it?
KM: I think the overarching sentiment is, “Keep doing what you’re doing, IPO or not. We believe that your strategy of being so partner-minded and partner-centric, not having a confused go-to-market between direct and indirect,” and the whole mentality of helping them to be different [from] their competitors, the message has just been “keep doing what you’re doing right.” So now it’s really, “Let’s just move faster.”
CF: Is there anything you would like to add?
KM: We’re not just hiring and bringing on every partner into our program. It’s really around that focused partner investment. We’re really thoughtful of the partners we’re bringing into the different areas around the world, because the one thing we don’t want to do is become overdistributed. So it’s focusing in on the partners that are strategic, wanting to build their practices and wanting to be different as we expand and grow.
CF: Is there anything you would like to add?
KM: We’re not just hiring and bringing on every partner into our program. It’s really around that focused partner investment. We’re really thoughtful of the partners we’re bringing into the different areas around the world, because the one thing we don’t want to do is become overdistributed. So it’s focusing in on the partners that are strategic, wanting to build their practices and wanting to be different as we expand and grow.
SentinelOne partners will benefit from Wednesday’s successful IPO launch, which raised $1.2 billion.
That’s according to Ken Marks, SentinelOne’s vice president of worldwide channels. SentinelOne’s stock now trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “S.” It began trading at $46 a share, more than 30% higher than its $35 IPO price.
SentinelOne’s Ken Marks
Last November, SentinelOne raised $267 million in Series F funding. Since February 2020, the company’s valuation has tripled, exceeding $3 billion.
The company protects enterprises from ransomware and other malware. It helps organizations secure their data using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
SentinelOne outlined key elements of its growth strategy in its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. That includes continuing to innovate and enhance its cybersecurity and data platform.
In a Q&A with Channel Futures, Marks talks about what SentinelOne partners can expect from the IPO.
Channel Futures: What made this the right time to launch the IPO?
Ken Marks: One, the market for cybersecurity and the need to protect our customers is never as important it is today. So we felt that with our technology, the growth in the customer base, and the relationships we’re building with some of the largest partners around the world, the time was right to hit the public markets and just really help us accelerate the priorities that we have with our partner community today.
Read the rest of our Q&A session with Marks in our slideshow above.
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