Scale Like a CEO

Scaling Cybersecurity in Ed-Tech: Insights from Stephen Mirante, CRO of Cyber Nuts

• Justin Reinert • Season 1 • Episode 18

Share episode

Cybersecurity threats are increasingly targeting our most vulnerable institutions – schools, colleges, and universities that often lack the resources to defend themselves properly. Stephen Mirante, Chief Revenue Officer of CyberNuts, joins us to reveal how his company is filling this critical gap with innovative, education-focused solutions.

The statistics Stephen shares are eye-opening. CyberNuts exploded from 100 customer institutions in March to over 250 today, spanning 42 states – growth that underscores the urgent need for specialized cybersecurity training in education. What makes their approach distinctive isn't just effectiveness but empathy. While most cybersecurity training leaves users feeling perpetually inadequate, CyberNuts emphasizes positive reinforcement and adaptive learning that meets users where they are.

Stephen pulls back the curtain on how a rapidly scaling EdTech company makes strategic decisions, from their data-driven approach to expanding sales territories to their philosophy on hiring. "Stop hiring for credentials, hire for passion," he advises, particularly when serving educational institutions that respond best to consultative, relationship-focused partners. His insights on the 60-day ramp period for new hires, deliberately timed to prepare sales teams for the January budget cycle, offer practical wisdom for any growing organization.

The future Stephen envisions for educational cybersecurity goes beyond reactive training to preventative measures that can intercept threats before they reach users. His passion for protecting schools shines through in every response, making this conversation essential listening for education leaders, technology professionals, and entrepreneurs alike. Connect with Stephen at stephen@cybernut.com to learn more about safeguarding our educational institutions from digital threats.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Scale Like a CEO, the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies and challenges of building successful companies. Today, we're exploring the intersection of cybersecurity and educational technology. Joining us is Stephen Mirante, chief Revenue Officer of CyberNuts, a rapidly growing company that's revolutionizing how educational institutions approach cybersecurity awareness and training. With his extensive experience in the edtech space, stephen brings valuable insights on scaling a business in this critical sector. Get ready for an enlightening conversation about growth, leadership and protecting our educational institutions in the digital age.

Justin Reinert:

Stephen, thank you so much for joining me on Scale Like a CEO To get us started. Could you just give me a 90 second intro of you and your business?

Stephen Mirante:

Yeah, so my name is Steven Mirante. I'm currently our chief revenue officer of CyberNuts and basically it was a company that we built roughly about three years ago to really train educational institutions, k-12 schools, colleges, universities on how to best tackle being more aware of what's there to harm them through emails and phishing, and you name it. So cybersecurity is definitely a growing trend in a non-positive manner right now.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, that's great. I was looking into that and it's a market that's probably underserved it is.

Stephen Mirante:

It really is, and over these, just honestly, these last just 12 months, we have really recognized that schools don't have anything that's really out there, really testing and really getting an understanding of how good or how bad are we as an institution on being able to spot malicious threats institution on being able to spot malicious threats.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, it makes me think of so. I serve on a membership association board and we, every couple of months it'll go around that there's emails that go out that'll be like, hey, this is your, this is the chapter president and I don't have access to whatever. I need you to send me this money or send me this information, and I know to dismiss that and fortunately, I think a lot of and I know to dismiss that and fortunately, I think a lot of our people know to dismiss that. But we kind of have to rely on our corporate training, like when we have learned about cybersecurity in business, and so it seems like that's probably another area that may be underserved, similar to that K through 12 population.

Stephen Mirante:

It is, and a lot of schools are doing this very manually right now. That takes a lot of time from IT staff, that they don't. They already don't have the time, and so it's not that it's definitely not in a need for them or a want for them. It comes down to a resource standpoint, and so what we're trying to provide specifically for the educational space is a more automated, school-friendly approach to making these users be more aware of these threats.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah Well, let's talk a little bit about growing your business. As you've been growing, what are some of the challenges that you've faced in kind of adding people to the team and knowing when to add people to the team, things like that.

Stephen Mirante:

Yeah, I think in most organizations, when you start an organization and you scale very fast and this year, proudly to say that, when CyberNut hit their 100 customers just back in this last March, three months later we hit 200. And I can say right now we're already over 250. And it's rapidly growing. And the normal things when you hear that is support right, the normal things when you hear that is support right.

Stephen Mirante:

In me, working in educational software for just roughly 16 years, these schools rely so much on the support side of things and so we ramped up very quickly. We rallied around to make sure we were overly prepared for the influx of schools onboarding, especially right now. A lot of our schools are going back and you've got to keep a good eye on the support aspect. The product is, if it's selling and it's being adopted, that's great. But as these customers, these schools, come on board, you're going to need to be able to support them. So we analyzed, obviously, the requests coming in, the number of institutions being adopted month over month, from a support side first off, and then we're actually just now approaching our scaling up our sales staff as well, just so we can get a little bit more intimate attention to some of these regions across the country.

Justin Reinert:

That's great and as you look at the support side with kind of you've got to add support when you've got the clients. But I'm curious. One thing that I think sometimes can be challenging is knowing when and how many sales folks to add, because at some point they're just all overhead if they're not profitable. So how do you go about that?

Stephen Mirante:

We actually with the K-12 schools. There's actually a lot of resources online that I encourage. A lot of companies that are trying to get into the ed tech space. There are just there's versus another rep may only be able to cover two solely because of what's the number of students within those respective regions. So we look at all of that. We measure how many number of districts are in a specific region, how many different students need to be supported, staff in schools that need to be supported, and look at it from that side before we actually look into the numbers as well. What regions are generating most revenue. So we can double down in those regions and then looking to where we have a lot more of that white space as well, to where we just don't have the time to give them the attention that they need.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, that's interesting. So I haven't had this conversation yet of. A lot of times it's kind of how much revenue are we bringing in and what can we afford? But you've really had this perspective of there's a very kind of explicit addressable market that you have, like how many schools there are, and so you can kind of approach your team building from a from that account perspective. Where I'm curious, there's once you do that math, you're going to say, all right, we need 30 salespeople, let's go hire 30 salespeople. How do you prioritize what regions you hire in first?

Stephen Mirante:

Well, we look at the staff we have here now, we kind of analyze their growth plan equally, and then obviously we do back the revenue into where we have those next right. So if you look at across the country we can say, hey, we're in 42 states, but essentially six of those states are generating 60% of the revenue. But essentially six of those states are generating 60% of the revenue. So then we'll actually be able to divide up those states into the surrounding states to the selective reps. And then when you do that, when you kind of work backwards, you back the revenue number into the number of available customers, Then it'll actually equate back to how many reps you could potentially start with.

Justin Reinert:

I love this super data-driven approach that you have. So, as you bring people on, what are some of the challenges that you face in onboarding and bringing people up and getting them going?

Stephen Mirante:

Yeah, so we've identified here that and every company is different of, of course, but here there's.

Stephen Mirante:

We usually want to give around a 60 day ramp period and so obviously a lot of companies know what that means Ramp.

Stephen Mirante:

Do we hire in January and then hope for the best and it's like, well, that's not really the best. Even though the budgets, the company budgets, may be ready in January, you really have to think about what goals are you going to set for next year? So what we're doing here is that we actually look around to strongly interview and identify around that October standpoint so we can actually hire in November and give them that 60-day, that last two months of the year to ramp. So January 1, they're ready to go, they're comfortable, they're ramped up, they're ready to hit the road and jump on demonstrations. Because obviously, as we scale here in any initial startup which I can say we kind of are, but we're kind of at the three quarters of the way through there they need to be able to do everything right. Not all the companies have a luxury of a dedicated engineer that jumps on with a sales rep. So our sales reps actually have to have a subset of technical abilities to demonstrate and potentially troubleshoot a little bit as well.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, and that is the organizations are different in how they split that up. I was with a tech company a number of years ago and we trained all of our salespeople to be able to demo, at least to a certain point, so that they could handle a majority of the sales process. Unless you're looking at a really big, crazy, complex enterprise sale, and that's when we bring in the heavy guns as you're hiring, what are some of the key qualities that you're looking for?

Stephen Mirante:

Well for us, in the space that we provide, to having some understanding of educational technology and how school districts purchase is to me very crucial.

Stephen Mirante:

Now, 16 years ago, when I originally jumped into education, I didn't have that, and so can it be learned. It absolutely can if the person has the right mentality. So you see all these different posts and articles about stop hiring for credentials, hire for passion, and it doesn't sit more truer when dealing with these schools. There's a lot of back and forth going online on social platforms right now from school district leadership about the simplest of when to call on to schools. You know, having that's where having the educational background is helpful, because they know how to approach from a relationship and consulted minded approach versus just I got to sell some stuff. Because, in my firm opinion, when working with schools and the success that we've had but not just here it really comes down to that consultive heart right, being able to approach these schools there to help them. Whether it's you're gonna be the resource, you're gonna be the solution, and so finding a person that's got that learning passion but that really service minded approach.

Justin Reinert:

Great, yeah, the passion I think is important and it also sounds like something that I talk about a lot is just a growth mindset, somebody who maybe they don't have a ton of that education background, but somebody that is willing and able to pick anything any of that up. That I think a lot of executives in startup environment space is knowing when and what to delegate on the team.

Stephen Mirante:

So I'm curious how you've approached that as you've grown your team. So I can honestly say we're still a lot in the everybody does everything standpoint. Now we do have dedicated lanes right, have sales, you have marketing, you have customer success and you have engineering, support and development on operations right and finance. So you got all these different departments. But even while you're a small team and nimble, obviously having the right people at the head of each of those departments is crucial. But each, each person, has a voice and whether it's product planning or what's next, or what are we hearing in the market, or how are we doing financially right, delegation really comes down to right now, the projects that need completed, right. So when we talk about reaching our sales goals, that's really going to not only be the sales staff but could very easily be the customer success staff from an upsell, cross-sell perspective as we add enhancements that can be adopted by these schools. So, depending on again, that topic or realm within the actual sales goals there. And then, obviously, when we come to growth sales, that's going to come back to our BDRs, our business development representatives and just our sales team. Right, like, how are we going to attack the market this new school year From a marketing perspective. Obviously there's a head, there's a person at the helm there, but it definitely still is a group effort to have our product calls and marketing calls together, because we all have to have the same consensus.

Stephen Mirante:

Being nimble, being a small team and nimble, we all have to still understand and ask like, what are our customers saying? What are we seeing in the market? How are people adopting a competitor right? Being I'm a realist, right Like you always have to look at the competitive nature. If someone's doing it right, doing it better, what's not to say, you can take a few notes from that and really polish your go-to-market strategy. So I'm a big fan of not having to recreate the wheel. If it's working well, just make it your own. You don't have to always think you got to go create some new, fresh way to do it.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, so looking forward, what's the future for CyberNut look like?

Stephen Mirante:

Well, as I mentioned, we're probably on target right now for about 300 school districts, school institutions by the end of the year and, honestly, at this rate it could easily surpass that we're from an overall company mission standpoint, we definitely want to be the number one training platform for educational institutions on being able to identify and help users be aware of what types of threats are out there, so they can not click on things or answer that text message or know that it's really not that person that they think on that phone. So when we look at that, we really kind of want to build out the ability for schools to be able to test their users in a non-punitive approach, being very educational, focused, giving them the ability to have fun with it right, because that's the thing with cybersecurity out there right now a lot of programs, a lot of testing. The organizations can test their users with different programs, but it's very demeaning. It makes the people on the receiving end feel that they're always in trouble or they can never get ahead. So we really want to stay true to our mission on positive reinforcement approach to make sure that they see that they are being rewarded, they are learning, and so we're going to bring also some increased adaptive learning ability, and that means that basically, when their users are testing with our program, our program can actually change based on those users learning path.

Stephen Mirante:

Right, if they're just continually failing, like they don't want to always say like I'm not getting anywhere, this is too difficult. So why can't we develop a program that adapts to them and makes it easier with a subset of training platforms? So ours will do that, but it'll equally so make it more difficult and harder, as it should, for those that are getting really good. So we're going to definitely stay true to that, and then obviously, we'll continue to kind of build out the security side of things. So as different ways to test the users in the cybersecurity realm, we also want to look at different ways that we can be more preventative Instead of just training. We want to see if we can develop things to stop things from happening before it even reaches an end user.

Justin Reinert:

That's great. You've got quite a vision of the future, a lot of work ahead. I'm sure to be able to build that out. Steven, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Stephen Mirante:

Yeah, absolutely. My email is actually stevencybernutcom and that's S-T-E-P-H-E-N at cybernutcom, so feel free to email me anytime any questions you have. I definitely love helping organizations, especially in the educational realm of things. It's a busy time for everybody getting back to school and making sure that their schools are getting started successfully.

Justin Reinert:

Great. Thank you so much, stephen, you're welcome.