165: Building Cybersecurity Products People Will Pay For ft. Mark Carney

About this episode

Mark Carney discusses the challenges of building cybersecurity products that customers are willing to pay for, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and operational realities.

The dangerous gap between “like” and “buy” It’s safe to say that Mark’s career has given him a well-rounded perspective. He’s built products, sold products, serviced products, and advised on products in the cybersecurity space. This 360-degree view has made one tough, but important truth obvious: “People can say that they like what you do, but that’s very, very different than them getting out of their pocketbook and spending money on it. That is two different scenarios, completely different scenarios.” This is how it goes in many social or professional settings - people are nice. They will be supportive, offer suggestions, say that it’s great and never buy. Mark learned to find design partners who would be brutally honest about budget, replacement vs. net-new spend, and whether they’d actually pull the trigger. 120 CISOs in six months When building Secure Blueprint, Mark didn’t send out async surveys or run a few user interviews. He talked to 120 CISOs over a 6-month period. It’s worth noting that in these conversations, he wasn’t asking about UI preferences, he was mapping their operational reality: Budget cycles and how they allocate CapEx vs. OpEx How they report progress to…

People in this episode

Guest: Mark Carney

Topics covered

• cybersecurity
• product development
• business strategy
• user research
• customer feedback

Keywords

• like vs. buy
• design partners
• CISOs
• budget cycles
• operational reality

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Secure Blueprint

More episodes of People of Product

• 171: The Part of the Experience AI Shouldn't Own (ft. Mike Halvorsen) · May 12, 2026 · 39 min
• 170: Preparing Your AI Workbench (ft. Chris Geoghegan) · April 14, 2026 · 43 min
• 169: Treating AI Like A Foundational Technology (ft. Jimmy Fortuna) · March 16, 2026 · 48 min
• 168: Vibe Coding In The Real World (Ft. Crema's Senior Devs) · February 23, 2026 · 32 min
• 167: Good at It Doesn't Mean Energized by It (ft. Nathan Ott) · January 15, 2026 · 43 min
• 164: Fear Is Not The Enemy of Growth ft. Aaron Nordyke · September 25, 2025 · 40 min