Cult Products

Mike Walters is a serial entrepreneur who understands what it takes to build a category leader. After seeing his first employer acquired for over $100 million, he co-founded Netwrix and eventually sold it to private equity. Now, as the Co-Founder of Action1, he is tackling one of the most persistent problems in IT: patch management.

In this conversation, Mike shares the hard-earned lessons from his first startup. He details why he had to kill his own product "babies" to find the one solution that would scale to tens of millions in revenue. He also provides a provocative take on the current state of software development. He discusses how "vibe coding" might disrupt the entire SaaS industry and why distribution is becoming more critical than the code itself.

Beyond the founder journey, Mike dives into the technical shifts required to survive the AI-powered cyber arms race. He introduces the concept of Endpoint Takeover Prevention. He explains why assuming your own system will be hacked is the only way to truly protect your customers in a world of automated threats.

What You'll Learn:

• How to identify which product ideas are worth focusing on when you have too many
• Why patch management remains a critical vulnerability despite being an unsexy category
• How AI vibe coding tools are decreasing the intellectual property value of traditional code
• Why distribution and data gravity are the new defensive moats for software companies
• How the Endpoint Takeover Prevention architecture protects users even if the vendor's cloud is breached
• The specific advice Mike would give his younger self about the power of specialisation

Episode Resources:
Mike Walters on LinkedIn
Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast, Phill Keaney-Bolland sits down with Deepak Gupta, the technical co-founder of Gracker.ai, to dissect the rapidly evolving world of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Deepak shares insights from his journey as a software engineer and cybersecurity expert who realized that even the best products fail without a strong distribution strategy. He explains why traditional SEO is moving toward a model where AI agents act as your salesperson, recommending specific solutions based on the deep context of a user's problem rather than just a list of links.

Deepak breaks down the "Growth Hacker" mentality behind Gracker.ai and why focusing on a specific cybersecurity niche is essential for training LLMs to recognize your brand. He also provides a three-step framework for founders to improve their AI visibility immediately, from cleaning up their website's value proposition to engaging authentically in communities like Reddit and LinkedIn.

What You'll Learn:

• Why LLMs prioritize problem descriptions over simple keyword searches
• The difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO in a multi-platform AI world
• How to use proprietary data to benchmark your AI visibility against competitors,
• Why AI agents are becoming the new "affiliate managers" for B2B sales,
• The reason a niche focus makes product development and customer acquisition easier
• How different LLMs like Copilot and ChatGPT cite different types of sources,
• Why participating in communities for education is better than self-promotion for AI training,
• The single piece of advice Deepak would give his younger self about thinking wider

Episode Resources:

• Deepak Gupta on LinkedIn
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Most cybersecurity strategies rely on the "trust but verify" model, which allows applications to run unless they are known to be malicious. Rob Allen spent nearly two decades cleaning up the wreckage of that approach while working for a Managed Service Provider in Ireland. After witnessing a "double extortion" attack that changed the stakes of ransomware forever, he joined ThreatLocker to help organisations move toward a philosophy of deny by default.

ThreatLocker now protects 65,000 companies globally by ensuring that only approved applications can run, effectively neutralising zero-day threats and unknown malware. In this conversation, Rob shares the internal mechanics that power this growth, including the legendary 60-second support response time and the "pitch off" culture that ensures every employee understands the mission.

He also provides a grounded perspective on AI, explaining why a 15% error rate in security decisions is catastrophic and how ringfencing provides the necessary guardrails for the rise of agentic AI.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the move from "trust but verify" to "deny by default" is the only way to stop unknown malware
• How the "double extortion" ransomware model changed the recovery landscape for businesses
• Why AI should be used for categorisation but never for final security allow or deny decisions
• The internal culture of ThreatLocker, including the 60-second support alarm and random pitch-offs
• How ringfencing technology allows organisations to adopt agentic AI safely
• Why even the most highly trained security engineers fall victim to AI-crafted phishing attacks
• The benefits of moving toward Zero Trust Network Access to close vulnerable ports

Episode Resources:

• Rob Allen on LinkedIn
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Scott Schober, CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems, explains why cybersecurity founders need transparency after his company suffered a hack. This conversation follows Scott's journey from a sixth grade hobbyist in his father’s basement to a leading voice in the industry. After a targeted attack cost his company $65,000, Scott chose to share his mistakes publicly through his book Hacked Again.

We discuss the shift from traditional advertising to building a personal brand as an educator. Scott provides a reality check on the current state of digital identity, detailing why the 90 day password rotation rule creates more vulnerabilities than it solves. The episode also looks at the looming threat of quantum computing and its ability to compromise existing encryption standards in seconds.

What You'll Learn:

• How building a personal brand through books and education can replace traditional advertising spend.
• Why total transparency about security failures builds more trust with customers than perfection.
• The structural problems with 90 day password rotation policies and why they increase risk.
• How to transition a multi generational family business to meet modern cybersecurity demands.
• Why quantum computing is set to compromise current AES 256 encryption in seconds.
• The strategy for developing high stakes safety technology when experts tell you it will fail.
• Why multifactor authentication is the absolute minimum requirement for every login today.

Episode Resources:

• Scott Schober on LinkedIn
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Most organisations believe they have a handle on their cyber risk. They have green KPIs, patching reports, and a CISO in post. What many of them do not have is a clear view of what is actually critical to their business, and that gap is where the real exposure lives.

Matthew Treagus has been helping people use technology to do interesting things since the eighties, starting with a maths teacher who lent him a computer and a curiosity that never quite went away. Over the decades, he has co-founded a digital agency, been a Partner in a management consultancy and led transformation efforts at a diverse range of businesses. He was CIO and Chief of Staff at Oxford Biomedica - a life sciences business. He now works as a fractional tech exec for a number of organisations. He was a contributor to the NCSC/DSIT Cyber Governance Code of Practice.His approach is grounded in empathy, commercial thinking, and a persistent belief that security works best when it is designed in rather than bolted on.

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland sits down with Matthew to explore why the language of risk is so often misused, how the CISO role needs to mirror a business-partnering function, and what happens when organisations treat their most critical machines as a footnote in a quarterly report. They also get into agentic AI, technical debt, supply chain thinking, and why becoming consciously incompetent is actually a step in the right direction.

What You'll Learn: 

• Why "risk-driven" is often used as an excuse to ignore risk rather than address it
• How the CISO is a business partnering role not a policing one -and why that framing matters
• Why secure-by-design thinking removes cost and friction rather than adding it
• What the 94% patching story reveals about how organisations misread their own data
• How information hygiene problems become significantly more visible once AI tools are deployed
• Why organisations often focus on the wrong systems when asked what is critical to their business
• How the Cyber Governance Code of Practice reframes security as a board-level discipline
• What it means to move from unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent as an organisation
• Why the minimum viable corporation exercise is worth doing even if it feels uncomfortable

Episode Resources:
Matthew Treagus on LinkedIn
Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
Yaya's Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Most cybersecurity founders build for a problem they've studied. Itzik Alvas built for one that had already beaten him.

As former CISO of a large healthcare services company and responsible for the formal security of Microsoft Defender Cloud and Office 365, Itzik had been on the receiving end of non-human identity breaches before most of the industry had a name for them. When he left to co-found Entro with his partner, Adam, he wasn't guessing at the problem. He had lived it.

Non-human identities, which are the credentials applications use to authenticate against resources, databases, and infrastructure, are now the second most frequent attack vector in cybersecurity. For every human identity inside a company, there are, on average, 144 non-human identities. In a company of 1,000 people, that's 144,000 credentials most security teams cannot see, cannot track, and cannot manage. Entro was built to change that.

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland sits down with Itzik to trace the full founder journey: from idea validation to seed funding, from stealth to market, and from the CISO buying decisions he once made to the sales conversations he now leads. Itzik talks through why he conducted 200 customer interviews before writing a single line of code, how early design partners became Entro's first paying customers, and why the explosion of AI agents turned out to be not a challenge but a gift.

What You'll Learn:

• Why non-human identities became the second most common attack vector and why most teams still can't see them
• How Itzik validated the Entro concept with 200 CISOs and practitioners before building anything
• What crossing from buyer to seller taught him about trust, budget, and decision-making
• Why referrals from validation interviews became Entro's most powerful early growth engine
• How to turn early design partners into paying customers without a finished product
• What the rise of AI agents means for non-human identity security, and why Entro was already positioned for it
• Why delivering something broken early is better than waiting for a polished beta
• How to build a founder network inside the cybersecurity industry

Episode Resources:

• Itzik Alvas on LinkedIn
• Entro Website
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Every security product either lightens a CISO’s load or quietly adds to it. Ryan Lindley has seen that reality from every angle, from early hacker curiosity to years inside startups and enterprises, and ultimately from the CISO seat itself, where tension, politics, and personal risk are part of the job. His perspective comes from living with the consequences of security decisions, not just designing or selling tools around them.

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland speaks with Ryan Lindley, Co-Founder and CEO of Aegis Cyber and former CISO. They talk through why the CISO position is still evolving, how reporting structures and culture shape outcomes, and why influence and people skills matter as much as technical depth. Ryan also shares what earns his trust as a buyer, what design partnerships look like when they truly work, and the kinds of sales behavior that shut doors fast. Underneath it all is a clear message for builders and sellers: listen carefully, respect the human realities within organizations, and build relationships meant to last.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why the CISO role still carries ambiguity and how that impacts decision-making
• How CISOs reduce internal tension through culture, influence, and security champions
• What founders miss about “security friction” and engineer context-switching
• What a “control plane” for governance can unlock across GRC, risk, and compliance
• Why so much compliance evidence fails the “reality test,” and what better looks like
• How CISOs should approach AI adoption, governance, and downstream liability
• What good design partnerships look like when value flows both ways
• How to earn a CISO’s trust in sales and what gets vendors ignored or blocked

Episode Resources:

• Ryan Lindley on LinkedIn
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Every founder reaches a point where the problem they are working on stops being abstract and becomes personal. For Dr. Damodar Sahu, that moment came from seeing how fragmented privacy systems, rising data breaches, and unchecked data movement were quietly eroding trust across enterprises and societies. From his early career in large organizations to building a company during the pandemic, the pattern was clear: privacy was being treated as compliance paperwork rather than a foundation of trust. Data Safeguard was built to change that, using unified privacy automation and responsible AI to reduce risk before breaches turn into financial and reputational damage.

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland speaks with Dr. Damodar Sahu, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Data Safeguard, about the future of privacy, ethics, and intelligent systems. Damodar shares his journey from Odisha to global leadership roles, why privacy must be approached as trust rather than secrecy, and how unified automation replaces fragmented tools. They further dive into founder-led sales, design partners, and partner ecosystems, offering a grounded B2B GTM perspective shaped by real customers, real feedback, and long-term relationship building.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why data privacy now defines digital trust, not just compliance
• What unified privacy automation replaces inside fragmented enterprise systems
• How responsible and ethical AI reduce data breach risk in practice
• Why founder-led sales are unavoidable in early B2B GTM
• How design partners help founders earn credibility before enterprise scale
• Why partner ecosystems create leverage when teams are still small
• What founders often overlook about trust, relationships, and the human side of building

Episode Resources:

• Dr. Damodar Sahu on LinkedIn
• Data Safeguard Website
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Every founder looks for the moment when the work finally clicks. For Arjun Bisen, that moment came from seeing how risk and intelligence work were handled inside government, Google, and Stripe, and realizing how manual and fragmented those systems still were. Overwatch was built to change that, using AI agents to monitor cyber and fraud threats at the speed attackers operate.

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland speaks with Arjun Bisen, Co-Founder and CEO of Overwatch Data, about the path from diplomacy and global security into startup life. Arjun shares how Y Combinator helped unlock enterprise trust, what it takes to sell honestly in a market burned by overpromising vendors, and how Overwatch found traction by focusing on repeatable use cases, proof of value, and the customers willing to build alongside them.

What You’ll Learn:

• What Overwatch’s AI agents automate across cyber and fraud threat intelligence
• How Arjun’s background in diplomacy, Google, and Stripe shaped Overwatch’s approach to risk
• Why Y Combinator mattered for enterprise credibility and recruiting
• The early “BERT moment” that sparked the company’s direction
• How to think about product roadmaps when the technology shifts every quarter
• Why proof of value beats polished messaging in security markets
• A practical definition of product-market fit for enterprise startups
• What founders consistently underestimate about the human side of building

Episode Resources:

• Arjun Bisen on LinkedIn
• Overwatch Data Website
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Cybersecurity teams deal with complex, emotional, high-pressure work every day, yet the industry still leans on generic padlocks, fear-driven messages, and copy-paste visuals. For Sara Carty and Kelly Allen, Co-Founders of Unboring, this gap between the reality of cyber and the way it is marketed became impossible to ignore.

Sara brings 15+ years in high-growth tech startups and ongoing doctoral research in Cyber Diplomacy, giving her a deep view into how influence, trust, and communication shape cyber decision-making. Kelly adds over a decade of award-winning cybersecurity marketing experience, where her sensitivity to tone, emotion, and cognitive load shaped her belief that different minds create better stories. Together, they built Unboring as a place where human insight, neurodiverse thinking, and clear strategy come together to help cyber companies communicate with more relevance and originality.

In this episode of the Cult Products Podcast from Yaya, host Phill Keaney-Bolland speaks with Kelly Allen and Sara Carty, Co-Founders of Unboring, about why cybersecurity marketing has become repetitive, how emotional awareness strengthens messaging, and why bold creative only works when tied to a clear value proposition. They break down the role of brand as a stabilising system for teams with different working styles, the impact of ICP clarity on sales and marketing alignment, and what actually works at events when everyone claims to be “AI-powered.”

What You’ll Learn:

• Why cybersecurity marketing became predictable and how to break out of the pattern
• How emotional and neurodiverse perspectives strengthen brand storytelling
• Why bold ideas must connect to real product value
• How consistency and simple systems help teams with different working styles succeed
• The role of customer research in shaping strong value propositions
• Why clear ICPs reduce wasted effort across sales and marketing
• How brand shows up in overlooked parts of the business: onboarding, invoicing, internal comms
• What actually works at events when everyone claims to be “AI-powered”
• How clarity, focus, and repetition build brands that last

Episode Resources:

• Kelly Allen on LinkedIn
• Sara Carty on LinkedIn
• Unboring Website
• Phill Keaney-Bolland on LinkedIn
• Yaya’s Website

Cult Products Podcast is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so