In February 2024, we were elated to announce that Jared Phipps, formerly at SentinelOne, was joining the Dazz team as our Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Jared has spent more than 20 years in the cybersecurity industry, most recently as part of the leadership team that propelled SentinelOne to more than $650M in ARR. Dazz co-founder and CEO Merav Bahat caught up with Jared at our Sales Kick Off in Austin, Texas to get his story—from career inception to standing on the NASDAQ stage to flipping pizzas (more on that later!). Hear what he has to say about his journey and what he sees for Dazz in the near future.

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Merav: Tell us a bit about yourself, your career journey, and how you transitioned into sales?

Jared: When I graduated college, my first job was in the US Air Force, and my first assignment was up in Nebraska, at an Air Force base. I was working in a software development shop, reviewing code at my apartment, thinking I probably shouldn't be staring at this code at my house. Like, this is pretty sensitive stuff. So I helped implement a security program, which was really my start in that world. In 2005, I started working on various cyber programs, both on the offensive and defensive side with the Air Force, which was fantastic. I’ve spent the last 12 years working in cybersecurity, most recently with SentinelOne.

Merav: Amazing. So we got ourselves a CRO with a background in coding, which is kind of unique, right?

Jared: Yeah. I don't think you want me coding anything anymore; my son definitely does a better job coding than I do now! But look, I grew up in this space. I've been on the buyer side for a good three, four years, making massive procurements, rolling out really large, complex projects, spending millions of taxpayer dollars. But I think it's given me a unique perspective when I'm working with customers, because I remember what it was like on their side. It's not just about the money that's spent; it's really about the success of the project. People's careers are on the line. There's a lot of pressure in a lot of different facets. So I always keep that in the back of my mind.

Merav: When you think about your career—you said 20 years, which is impressive—anything you're particularly proud of?

‍Jared: It all goes back to the teams I’ve been fortunate to be a part of and entrusted to lead. The relationships, trust, and camaraderie last a long time. I think as far as my career goes, a particular highlight so far would be standing on the NASDAQ stage during IPO. It was something I’d always wanted to do, but at the end of the day, you want to celebrate with the team because it was hundreds of people—a true team effort that got me there. And tons of clients, naturally.

Merav: So fast-forwarding to today. What drew you to Dazz, and how did you first even hear about us?

Jared: I follow the startup scene and have a thing for entrepreneurship—entrepreneurs are a special breed of people for which I have a tremendous amount of respect. What I like about Dazz is exactly what I just talked through with my career progression. For the last 20 years we’ve gotten so much better with speed of application development, speed of delivery for applications—but security has always trailed everything. We’ve been chasing vulnerabilities or findings for over two decades, so when I saw Dazz saying not “here are some more alerts to go triage” but instead, “here’s how to fix all the noise and get rid of it,” it resonated with me. The practitioner side of me says, “Finally someone is giving me the ability to deal with these problems instead of making more noise.” I want less noise, more action.

Merav: Any feedback from folks when they heard you were joining Dazz?

Jared: A number of channel partners reached out and said they’d been following this space, and this company. Those calls have been coming in every day since the announcement, which leads me to believe the market is feeling what I’ve always felt—there’s something there that’s slowing down businesses, and the channel recognizes that. Everything right now in DevSecOps is confusing; there are lots of vendors, they all sound the same, who does what, how does it all come together. Nobody has a clear picture, and so Dazz has the opportunity to come in and provide a very clear picture with tangible results.

Let’s look at ASPM as an example. There are many vendors that have portions of what Gartner probably considers to be a true ASPM solution. For Dazz, ASPM is one capability of the platform. Then we extend into other areas. DevSecOps, vulnerability management, CTEM—we can solve this with a single platform and a single product.

Merav: What about the year ahead? What are the main focus areas for you?

Jared: From the CRO capacity, I’m focused on growth— all starting with the channel. Enabling them, getting the right programs in place, and helping them take this solution to their customers. We need to make sure it’s crystal clear what value we can bring. We're an early stage company, so we need to keep hiring people that know what it's like to be in that environment. That means that they need to be customer-obsessed, customer-focused, just like the rest of the company.

Merav: Here’s a fun one. What is your superpower or special sauce that makes you what you are?

Jared: (laughs): Well, I don’t know if it’s exactly a “superpower,” but from a work perspective, I pride myself on team building– getting groups together that are highly efficient. From a personal perspective, I’m a pretty great pizza maker. I built a custom wood-fired oven brick by brick, and I make the dough from scratch, the mozzarella from scratch—when I get a full free weekend it’s something I really enjoy doing. I had to prove to my wife’s Italian family that I belong.