Logan Bartlett’s Post

Mindset shift that dramatically increases exit probability: "I want to sell my company" → "I want someone to buy my company" Your acquirer IS the customer. They have problems, budgets, and boards breathing down their neck about growth. Most founders pitch features, but acquirers buy solutions to their Monday morning problems. What gap keeps coming up in their board meetings? What capability would save them 18 months? What market are they bleeding to competitors in? Build for that. Position for that. The exit follows. More on this approach: https://lnkd.in/gyKkYdmN

Here's what I keep coming back to about Coleen Coolidge -- she went from building GRC programs at Twilio Segment and Twilio to becoming an investor who actually gets what security teams need. That's rare. Really rare. Most CISOs who go into investing? They fund fancy AI tools that nobody asked for. Coleen? She's backing the stuff that actually helps teams ship faster without breaking compliance. Through Silicon Valley CISO Investments, she's putting money where her experience is. Think about this trajectory for a second. She built security at Twilio through their IPO. If you've never been through an IPO as a security leader, let me paint you a picture: It's like rebuilding your plane while flying it, during a hurricane, while regulators watch through binoculars. She didn't just survive it -- she made it look easy. But here's what really gets me excited. At Black Hat USA 2024's Innovators & Investors Summit, she said something that stuck: "Security should be a business enabler, not an impediment." Simple, right? Except how many security leaders actually live this? Want to know the difference? Most security leaders say no and explain why later. Coleen figured out how to say "yes, and here's how we do it safely." That mindset shift? That's what she's teaching founders now. The wild part is her 19+ years of experience across multiple industries. She's built GRC programs from scratch -- not inherited them, not tweaked them, built them. From zero. Multiple times. Each time getting better at making security invisible to the business while making the business more secure. At Drataverse Summit 2023, she dropped this truth bomb: "The best security program is one nobody notices until they need it." That's not giving up. That's understanding that security wins when the business wins. I've watched a lot of security leaders try to make the jump to investing. Most fail because they can't stop thinking like defenders. Coleen gets that startups need security that scales with them, not enterprise solutions forced down their throats. Here's what you should steal from Coleen's playbook: Stop explaining why something is insecure. Start explaining how to make it secure without slowing down. That flip in thinking? That's worth more than any certification. Want to see what she's building? Follow her work with SVCI - Silicon Valley CISO Investments. She's funding the tools you'll be using in five years, and they'll actually be the ones you want to use. The bottom line? Coleen took two decades of "learning the hard way" and turned it into a GPS for the next generation. That's not just lifetime achievement. That's lifetime impact. Take a look at the nominees: https://lnkd.in/dNNeTQKJ

Oh, nothing says "streamlined product" like a moonshot effort to turn a government into a lean startup... or not. The article details Musk’s aggressive push to drastically downsize the federal workforce, gutting agencies to make them as lean as possible, which sounds more like a product pivot than a public policy shift. The core idea was to reduce redundancy and increase efficiency by slashing tens of thousands of employees, but the actual outcome remains to be seen—whether it’s a heroic reboot or a chaotic bug fix. From a product management perspective, this reminds me that trimming excess and focusing on core features is vital—but you definitely don't want to delete critical functions that users rely on. As a product manager in today’s climate, I’d see this as a wake-up call to prioritize building resilient, scalable teams and to carefully balance lean tactics with strategic stability—especially in environments impacted by world events that demand adaptive agility. Thanks to the insightful and candid reporting from Zoë Schiffer, Leah Feiger, Vittoria Elliott, Makena Kelly, Kate Knibbs, David Gilbert, Molly Taft, Aarian Marshall, Paresh Dave, and Jake Lahut for shedding light on this daring downsizing adventure. #Efficiency #Leadership #Resilience #Government #ProductManagement First published: September 2025

If you're leading a digital product's growth, stop isolating security operations! ❤️🩹🔓 Integrating Security Operations (SecOps) across operations can be what ensures higher commercial ROI and confident, sustainable scaling. With well-integrated SecOps, founders and leaders can see: 🔹 Less friction. 🔹 Earned trust. 🔹 Security-driven credibility. 🔹 Failure cost reduction. 🔹 Future-proofed stacks. Here's the mindset shift: SecOps is _the_ infrastructure for growth! Looking for more info about security operations? Take a look at our dedicated article about it! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dJBjsyZV. If you want to raise the bar on what "secure" means for digital products, contact Capicua 💌 #SecOps #DevSecOps #SecurityOps #SecurityOperations #ProductGrowth #ProductTrust

We spotted a gaping security flaw in a competitor’s product last week. I had two choices. Take advantage. Or quietly help them out. I chose the latter. You see, competition keeps us sharp, but truth be told, when one company slips up, it hurts the credibility of the whole space. We’re all building value for retailers in our own way. The space we’re in is fledgling. So instead of contacting their client and scoring some cheap points, I reached out to the founder and flagged what we’d found. Quietly. Professionally. No “our tech’s better than yours” one-upmanship. Just one founder to another. We’re in a space that’s ripe for M&A further down the track. One day, one of us will be on the phone to acquire the other’s business. When that day comes, I’d rather the conversation start with respect, not bad blood. Ultimately, we all benefit when the ecosystem is strong and secure. A bit of founder-to-founder integrity might not make the crush everyone headlines. But it does build your reputation.

What separates high-performing blue teams from the rest? We just wrapped up the first session of Building Better Defenders — where we explored what truly sets top-performing blue teams apart. Spoiler: it’s not the tech stack. If you missed it, check out our latest blog post breaking down the key lessons, stories, and patterns I’ve seen while working with security teams around the world — from startups to global enterprises — and how the most capable organizations invest in their people first. We hope this gives both managers and analysts a clearer path forward in today’s noisy training landscape — cutting through the hype to focus on what actually builds lasting capability. 🚀 👉 Read the full post: https://lnkd.in/gAYbq97B If you found this helpful, share it with your peers — it might help them tackle the same challenges in building capability and investing in their teams.

𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁��𝗱 𝗺𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟬. It was the famous “Y2K” moment. Everyone feared systems would collapse as the clock struck midnight. We planned meticulously, ran endless simulations, and built strong contingency strategies. That night, we were ready for anything… and fortunately, nothing major happened. A decade later, in 2010, came the biggest failure I’ve ever experienced. Ironically, no one saw it coming. There were no alerts, no playbooks, no war rooms. And that’s when I learned something crucial: 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻, 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻… 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹. The real difference often lies not in the perfection of the plan, but in the ability to act with clarity, adapt fast, and learn when the unexpected happens. In recent years, we’ve seen it again: – A global pandemic that reshaped how we live and work. – The CrowdStrike incident in 2024, disrupting thousands of organizations within hours. – Massive cyberattacks and unprecedented infrastructure failures with no manuals ready. Leaders don’t just prepare for what’s expected. They build the calm and agility to respond when the script breaks. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗸𝗲𝘆. 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽. How do you react when your plans fall apart? #Leadership #Resilience #Adaptability #DigitalLeadership #GrowthMindset #CyberResilience #Reflections #Y2K #CrowdStrike #Storytelling

Illumio 🤝 Microsoft Leveraging an AI-driven platform to prevent lateral movement, contain threats, and ensure resilience at unprecedented scale. Our entire team is thrilled to share that Illumio Insights and Illumio Segmentation have been deployed across the ENTIRE corporate IT environment at Microsoft! Illumio CEO and Founder, Andrew Rubin shares his thoughts on this momentous collaboration in our blog: https://bit.ly/3VyKP3e

Finance that scales with your SaaS. We’re excited to introduce a refreshed HCPA website—purpose-built for SaaS technology companies in cybersecurity and medical technology. Because great ideas don’t follow a straight path. A cybersecurity startup scales differently than a medtech scaleup. Public companies face new reporting and compliance hurdles. Whether you’re navigating fundraising, ARR forecasting, audit, or benefit plan compliance—the complexity is real. What’s new: → Stage-specific insights — from pre-seed to post-IPO → Deep expertise in cybersecurity, medtech, and compliance → Strategies for scaling financial and regulatory operations → Resources that grow with you—from startup to market leader One platform. Every stage. Real solutions. We built this for founders closing their first round, CFOs preparing for audit, and executives scaling to nine figures. For teams protecting critical infrastructure and improving patient outcomes. 🔗 Explore the site: www.herod.cpa What stage are you at? What challenge are you solving right now? Share in the comments — we’re here for all of it. #SaaS #Cybersecurity #MedTech #Startups #Compliance #CFO #Controller #Audit #Modeling

Illumio 🤝 Microsoft Leveraging an AI-driven platform to prevent lateral movement, contain threats, and ensure resilience at unprecedented scale 🎉 Our entire team is thrilled to share that Illumio Insights and Illumio Segmentation have been deployed across the ENTIRE corporate IT environment at Microsoft! Illumio CEO and Founder, Andrew Rubin shares his thoughts on this momentous collaboration in our blog: https://bit.ly/3VyKP3e