#66: Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue)

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:00:00]:
From hospitals to education to manufacturing business, everybody's business is digitized. Everything's on a on a mobile device or a laptop. So if that is digitized, cybersecurity becomes the number one way to protect not just data, but your clients, disruption, making sure things work. It's literally the alarm system of your of your your your digital business, so it's not a nice to have. It is, man, you better have this. Otherwise, there's gonna be some problems.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:28]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the lay of the land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and our guest today is Tony Petricola, a lifelong Clevelander who is extremely passionate about the land and now a 3 time Cleveland founder as well. In the midst of the 1st Internet wave in 2001 and in an effort to make website development easier for those organizations looking to create their first online presence, Tony started his first company in Cleveland called 10th Floor, which developed a web application management software solution and was later acquired by Bridgeline Digital out of Boston in 2008. In 2014, Tony started vloan.com for Union Home Mortgage in the direct to consumer financing world, which was a direct competitor to Rocket Mortgage. And most recently and where we spend most of our time in the conversation today, in 2019, Tony cofounded and is president of Agile Blue, a cybersecurity technology company. One of the many things we discuss are the nature of technology waves, which Tony has been successful in identifying over his endeavors, spanning the Internet, direct to consumer financing, and cybersecurity.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:54]:
I very much enjoyed hearing Tony's perspective on the Cleveland ecosystem, the ever changing landscape of cybersecurity, and how he's planning to navigate it and help organizations stay ahead of threats with Agile Blue. Please enjoy my conversation with Tony Petricolo. I've been looking forward to to this conversation. I think it's always really fascinating to hear, from someone who's started not just more than 1, but 3 businesses here in Cleveland. So to get your perspective on on the ecosystem we have here, very much looking forward to diving into that with you. Thank you for coming on, Tony.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:02:35]:
Thank you for having me, Jeffrey. I appreciate it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:38]:
I think it's always helpful just to start with the path that that brought you here and through the lens of of entrepreneurship. And and so maybe you can just tell us a little bit about what that that path was for you and and and what drew you to the world of of start ups and and building your your own companies.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:02:56]:
Yeah. I appreciate that. I definitely I don't know why. I definitely don't use the word entrepreneur with me. I don't know why. I got my start at Apple as a systems engineer back in way back in 1997 before Apple was even remotely cool. We we we were still really bad back then. And, obviously, that culture there is is incredible about, you know, starting your own businesses and things like that.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:03:18]:
So I was with Apple for a few years and then came back to Cleveland. I lived in in Chicago and came to Cleveland and, with some other folks, couple other folks, started a business called 10th Floor, and and this was 2001. So if you think about it, we're trying to build trying to build the Internet. Right? That's what we did. We we built websites, or as people call them back then, web pages for people. So that's how we got our start. And, to be to be very candid, it was just a business that we put our heart and soul into and grew it, and it was amazing and had amazing people, amazing customers, and, we're lucky enough to, to be acquired. So that kinda got got me started into, the world of starting a business and growing businesses.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:58]:
And you you stuck with it. You know? It didn't it didn't deter you the process of of taking something and and building it from 0. What about that kept you wanting to try again? And maybe tell us a little bit about Veloan and and kind of what transpired after that.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:04:15]:
It's obviously an incredible challenge to build something from the ground up. Like, day 1, you're sitting at your desk or wherever you're sitting. Fake wood desk because you're not, you know, rich enough to have a real wood desk yet. And you gotta think about everything you gotta do, man. Like, you could get an email address and meet first of all, try to find the domain that works. Right? Everything's taken. And, you know, all those little things. But, you know, you see something literally being started from from the ground up, but you gotta have a great idea.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:04:41]:
So with 10th floor, it was literally building people's websites back in back in 2001, so, obviously, tremendous demand. When it came to Vloan, under the umbrella of Union Home Mortgage here in Cleveland who does tremendous work, you know, you see their advertising everywhere, great philanthropy they do. It was creating a a retail competitor excuse me, a consumer direct competitor to to Rocket. So you think about that. You're taking on a behemoth, someone everybody knows. Actually, it's almost a verb like like Google. Right? Rocket Mortgage. So to to create something from the ground up with tremendous people in a very staid industry, but really coming up with ways to make things more efficient was a great challenge as well.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:05:21]:
And that led me, into, I mean, look, let's let's just be candid. Cybersecurity is, is is is pretty crazy right now, and it's not just because of what's happening in current day with the Russia Ukraine war. Small and midsize businesses are just getting clobbered, absolutely clobbered with cybersecurity, whether it's stolen data or maybe even worse, operational disruption. So that's why we started AgileBlue to, create a product for the small and midsized business to detect cyberattacks, hopefully, before they're, they're compromised.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:54]:
So I'm pulling a bunch of threads here. Cybersecurity is obviously it sounds very important. My my guess is most people have not thought about or engaged with the concept that much other than if something bad happens to them, where it's probably too late, or they may be read about a bunch of credit data getting leaked and and these sorts of things. Like, talk us through a little bit of the backstory here. How would you describe cybersecurity more at a macro level and its importance and the aspects of somewhat to someone, like, fully uninitiated?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:06:31]:
It it's a great question. You know what's funny about cyber? Rarely does it have its own budget. You know, usually, it's under the CIO's IT budget. It's not its own budget, and rarely does it have its own executive running it. Right? You know, its own CISOs, you know, the, the chief information security officer. So those are rare, especially in midsize and small businesses. Right? Maybe larger ones have it, but the but the midsize and small don't. So, if they look at it as an as an expense, of course, I would argue being a business owner is not an expense.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:07:00]:
Like, look. Lawyers are expensive, but you gotta have them. Accountants are very expensive, but you gotta have them. Whoever else you depend on for critical information, you gotta have them. Cyber is if you think about every business, no matter what you do, hospital to and and obviously COVID just just accelerated this, but from hospitals to education to manufacturing business, everybody's business is digitized. Everything's on a on a mobile device or a laptop. So if that is digitized, cybersecurity becomes the number one way to protect not just data, but your clients' disruption, making sure things work. It's literally the alarm system of your digital business.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:07:41]:
So it's not a nice to have. It is, man, you better have this. Otherwise, there's gonna be some problems. So, you know, what we do, we monitor our clients' entire digital infrastructures 247. So the whole point is to know there's a potential breach before there's a breach. And let's just say something does happen, knock on my fake wood desk here, it's to know something happened. How many times you read in the Wall Street Journal that a business was was hacked in, like, November, and it's like, that's 5 months ago. Where have you been? Well, they've either been hiding it, or they just didn't know.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:08:13]:
And, actually, there's a law in Congress actually getting passed right now. Well, maybe. Who knows what Congress does? That's gonna make it gonna put a timeline, a time limit, for businesses to say to their customers and their stakeholders, we've been hacked, and it's gonna have a have a pretty stiff penalty with it. So where I think we're start if if you see laws and regulations pick up like this, which they are everywhere else in the world except the US, you're gonna see much more attention paid to cybersecurity.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:39]:
If we make our way back to the the founding of of AgileBlue, I I'd love to get a a fuller picture of considering your your background spanning web pages to mortgages to cybersecurity spanning multiple industries. What was the founding insight you had there? Why focus on this particular challenge as I'm sure you were contemplating a lot of things at the time trying to figure out what you wanted to do next? What what what were the questions you were trying to answer, and what what really drew you and and led you to the opportunity that AgileBlue is now working to to solve?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:09:15]:
Well, it's it's market need. I mean, look at, one of the greatest businessmen entrepreneurs of all time, like a guy like Elon Musk. I mean, this guy's trying to save the climate, get us to space, bore holes into the ground to make transportation, you know, below ground even easier. You're talking about incredible ideas, but, really, those are extraordinarily disparate as well. Right? The guy's mind's going in a 1,000,000 directions. Well, my mind doesn't. I'm not built like Elon. I'm a neophyte compared to him.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:09:43]:
But in all three of those instances where we were in the markets during those times, 2,001 with websites, 2014 with consumer direct, you know, mobile device, your mortgages. What we look at as the next wave of wars is cyber. You know, we're we did feel we're in the tremendous position. So all three of those businesses saw a wave coming, a lift coming to that industry, and it needed a change, a digital change. And we were there, you know, in o one with 10th floor. We were there in 14 with Vloan and and now with cyber. And I think this war that you just saw kick off, I mean, obviously, it's very kinetic now, unfortunately, for the people of of Ukraine. It's very kinetic, but it began cyber.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:10:25]:
It began with critical infrastructures being taken down in the Ukraine, and I think that's the next war footing you're gonna see is cyber wars, right, which still have tremendous impact on populations.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:37]:
So it it's one thing to identify the wave there, and it's a whole another thing to get on the surfboard and and ride it. How do you get up to speed in in this space recognizing the opportunity that's there, and what kinda takes you from 0 to 1 as you think about maybe what your your first break was with Agile Blue?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:10:56]:
Yep. Smart people. Right? Surrounding yourself with with with subject matter experts who know the business. You look at mortgage, you've never seen a more complex industry. That what they deal with, mortgage people, from valuations to numbers to what's down payment, PMI, and all of these things. Like, it is mind blowing. And a lot of it is still done on paper, believe it or not. It's mind blowing.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:11:18]:
So it's surrounding yourself with really smart people who know that industry. And, hopefully, you're coming in with just maybe some ideas to make things a little bit easier, better, more secure in in a digital realm. And that's what my 3 companies basically did is they they allowed us the ability to, to do that. It's just take things maybe and and innovate them a little bit a little bit more. When you look at Agile Blue right now, it's not like we're just the most innovative cybersecurity company in the history of mankind, but we think we're solving a tremendous problem for a lowest common denominator, small and midsized business, and and giving them a chance to, you know, hopefully, beat back some of these hackers.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:56]:
So I I think it's always helpful to have a a common vocabulary when when discussing some of these things. And there are a few terms that I think might be important to define as we just work through Agile Blue in a little more depth. Maybe you can just describe as we maybe approach it from the lens of breach detection, like, what is SoC? What is XDR? What what are the risks that you are helping to mitigate? And we'll just set the stage there and and and work from that.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:12:25]:
Yeah. Well, you know, all these acronyms, man, they, they probably you know, people listening probably think they just mean more money. I don't know what they mean, but they mean more money for me. SOC is security operations center. So, you know, again, small and midsize businesses can't afford to have a 20 fourseven team of people looking at data to see if they have a potential cyberattack. So like anything else in this world that's an as a service or people outsource, we're that outsource security operation center as a service 247 globally for our customers, and we have customers globally. And that allows us to do things like XDR, which is extended detection and response. So when we first start seeing I'm gonna give you a great example.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:13:06]:
We're like an alarm system. Like, you know, if you're at your house and you have an alarm system, I see your window in the background there. If somebody starts trying to open it and and, you know, do a little bit of a home invasion on you, hopefully, you got an alarm that goes off, or you're able to defend yourself and have a big crazy dog or something. But as those alarms start going off, think about it digitally. That's what our technology's doing. It's knowing somebody's creeping around outside. It's knowing somebody's probably by that window and maybe just about to start opening that window. So it's that early detection because the earlier you're able to do anything, you're able to mitigate your risk, and that's what cyber is all about is mitigating risk.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:43]:
So I I think that's a a perfect segue to to maybe really step by step take us through from start to finish what the process looks like for breach detection. You know, when you're when you're monitoring the the the the shady character in the window, like, what what are you actually looking for? What how do you parse signal from the noise? Because there's an incredible amount of of noise with regards to monitoring these systems and knowing what is a legitimate threat versus what is just, you know, out there as as data.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:14:15]:
I mean, there is just terabytes and terabytes of noise every day of the week. So, you know, really good technology, machine learning that understands anomalous behavior. So we all know normal behaviors of your devices, of the way you actually interact with your with your computer and software every day of the week, but that anomalous behavior allows us to understand where there could be a potential issue. Then you see these gangs, these ransomware gangs. I mean, these people have their businesses. They have HR departments, marketing departments, recruiters that recruit their hackers. I mean, these people are so well funded. It's such a big business, and they're creating ransomware as a service.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:14:53]:
They're creating technology for other hackers to use to hack. And, it's our job to detect that ransomware and ransomware as a service. Again, those early indicator, those early warning system lights that go off to let us know that something could potentially be happened to one of our customers.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:10]:
When you both starting the company and also today, how do you stay abreast what the threats are? The, you know, the space technology generally changes so quickly. The cybersecurity world, I think, changes even more quickly. And it seems like it's often for the defenders a reactive thing rather than something proactive. And and from the hacker's perspective, the nefarious actors out there just constantly innovating in bad ways to to kinda leverage the the gaps that that they've identified. How do you think about the the space and how quickly it changes and and trying to ultimately get ahead of of where the threats come from?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:15:57]:
Yeah. Well, a, they're coming from everywhere. B, yeah, you're right. It's changing throughout the day. So how do you stay in charge? Because you're not on offense. Right? We're not offensive players right now. Right? We are we play in defense. We think we're pretty pretty good on defense, better than the Browns were this year.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:16:14]:
We think we're pretty good on defense. And that's all we can do, man, is we just gotta continue to grow our defense, which is our technology, which is our people, and try to stay a step, a step ahead. Now easier said than done. Hackers are smart, persistent capitalists. No matter what country they come from, they're capitalists. Right? You know, they're trying to make a dent. They know they can make a dent, and and the US and and global systems are digitized. So the the the the playing field is not like, you know, a 100 yards or a 120 yards by by 53, like a football field or something like that.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:16:49]:
It is so expansive. It's incredible. So the best you can do is play d. The best you can do is work with somebody who can help, and then, you know, you have to, you have to rely on good technology and good people. You can do things like threat hunting, but even when you're threat hunting, you're still looking for things that could be potentially already happened. Right? So it's a defensive it's a defensive game, and, sometimes, the defensive guys get beat. It's unfortunate, but sometimes you get beat. The whole the whole point, though, is to, is to just make sure you're mitigating their risk.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:23]:
So I I think it would be helpful to just get an overview of where the business is today. I know you've you've recently closed on a on a funding round here in Cleveland for about $2,250,000. Congratulations on that, and would love to, you know, understand and and go a bit a little deeper on that process. But, you know, where is Agile Blue today? What does your organization look like? And we can work from from there.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:17:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the round was a little closer to, right at 3. Look. We we had the ability, my cofounder and and and me, to find some partners that make a difference, not just with dollars, but experience and connections and networks and things like that. So we actually, worked with a group of individual investors throughout the United States to come into this round and and also some folks in New York, through Tribeca, which is a, man, just tremendously smart guys, understand cyber, who came in on this round as well. So we we thought it was more advantageous to where we are in our life cycle. If we ended up doing an a round, this would probably be pre a round.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:18:28]:
You might look at this at something like that. But, yeah, we wanted guys who are gonna we wanted a team of investors who are gonna be able to bring more than just capital. I think capital's out there. It's how can they help grow the business through their knowledge, through experience, through networks, And that's really what was the most important thing to us at this stage of our of our of our funding.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:48]:
So as you think about that transition as a a capitalized company versus working through the earlier stages, What what were you trying to prove or validate in the market up to this point? And then we can follow-up with that. You know, what was the vision you were painting when you when you raised this round of financing for the future?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:19:07]:
It's a great question. Number 1, that the model's gonna work and pay off. Right? So that it has the ability to scale. You know, you're not looking for a million of ARR or 2,000,000 of annual recurring revenue. You know, you're trying to you you have big you have big goals. So can the model sustain it? Number 1. Number 2, can you can you you have great technology that people want to buy and and and use. Right? So you gotta have some early customers who have good names, who can put the technology through the paces, not just to be a referenceable customer, but also to give you some confidence that you can, you know, you can help these people when they're about to get attacked, whether they're a hospital or a bank or anything like that.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:19:44]:
Trust me, you don't wanna be the on the receiving end of a call knowing one of your customers got hacked. Right? You just don't want that. So it's proving all that out. And then when you think you understand your model and you think you know how you know how to scale it and and you have that that strategy placed, it's finding that partner to help get you to that next level and then, obviously, doing that whole thing again. Okay. Now how do we go from x to this y that's way out there, and what do what kind of partner do we need to get to that next level? And that's when organizations can continue to look around. Is it a strategic? Is it is it a is it more of a venture capital firm? Is it are you at the stage to bring in private equity? You know, you have options, and you gotta understand them all because dilution hurts and equity you know, giving up equity hurts and convertibles hurt and but you don't look at it like that. You look at it as these are my partners to help grow my business.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:20:35]:
And instead of looking at it, in a negative spin, it's a tremendous spin. Again, not just from capital. I don't just speak capital. It's gotta have all these other, elements to it that will help grow this business.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:46]:
And so as you were, you know, recruiting these these partners essentially to to help you build that business, what what was the vision you were painting for the future? Like, when you think about the the vision for the future 5 years from now, you know, what what is, in retrospect, the impact that you're hoping to have as it relates to to this industry that you're working

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:21:07]:
in? Probably less than than a than a 5 year vision, maybe more like a 3 because, you know, you can only fool yourself thinking thinking that far out.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:14]:
Because it's hard to think a few months in advance, honestly.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:21:17]:
Yeah. We're on Elon Musk, man. He's already he he's mapped out to, like, 2038. I'm I'm worrying about, next Sunday. You know, it's a it's a little bit different mindset. But, you know, the picture we're painting is we are literally an invaluable platform that small and midsized businesses don't necessarily have access to but need for the sustainability of their business. And, you know, when you can tell a story like that that you have a model that works for the small guy, you have a model that can repeat for the small guy, and more importantly, that that person's gonna place their trust in you, that's a great model. And if we can paint that story for our investors and also work with them on how do we expand that through partnerships, not just in the United States, but globally, how do we bring this product to other parts of the world that, believe it or not, have have a harder time with technology than than we do sometimes in the in the United States? And and other other countries in this world are growing even faster than the US because they were third world countries before or just getting on the digitization boom and different things like that.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:22:19]:
So we've seen a lot of success, globally, and, with that success, they know they need more cyber products. So that's the vision we paint, and I think our investors like that, and they know we can scale. I think they know we can scale. We're a couple of guys who've done it in the past, and, you know, there's nothing that substitutes for a great team. So you can have great technology, but if the team is not good, you got a problem. We happen to have really solid technology and fantastic people, and that's, you know, that's, yeah. You feel blessed every day to know that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:50]:
Yeah. I I definitely do wanna ask you more about recruiting and and your approach there, specifically here in Cleveland. But we'll we'll circle back to that one. A few other thoughts, questions I have just about kind of the nature of the work you're doing and and how you think about the space. One of them is, you know, as difficult as it is to parse signal from noise from the data itself, My perception working a little bit on the compliance side just at my own company is there's just as much noise from cybersecurity vendors out there. Right? So how do you think about competition? How do you think about differentiation of the product? And where where do you see, from specifically the competition perspective, where your your moat is?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:23:38]:
It's a great question. So I always answer it like this, and I and what I'm about to say, I stole. This isn't a Tony quote original. But, you know, definitely don't obsess over customers. We obsess over our customers. Okay? So competitors are gonna be there. Can't obsess over them. Let's focus on our customers and what they need.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:23:55]:
So that's that's that's really important point, and we try to live that every day. Sometimes you can get blinded by that, but we try to live that every day. 1 of our competitors, and not really a direct competitor, but in this space, huge company, tremendous success, really good tech, they have a tagline, and it says, we stop cyber attacks, and I love that one, because my follow-up always is, no, you don't, because if you did, everybody would use it, and there'd be no more cyber attacks, period, and that's it. Everybody would be safe. So we know that's impossible, and it's marketing taglines like that that give small and midsize businesses, you know, they're gonna push back a little bit. Like, well, these guys have been hacked, and, you know, maybe they were using it, so why, you know, why wouldn't we? We don't tell our customers that. I can't predict they're not gonna get hacked or attempted. What I can promise them, though, is 247, we're gonna be monitoring them.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:24:43]:
We're gonna let them know when something looks looks, looks like it's, it's getting anomalous. And if something goes down, we're gonna be able to move fast with them to help mitigate their risk. And that's that's the promise we can make to them, and that's the promise we've lived on now for the last couple of years for for our clients. So competitors tend to say, we're the greatest, we're gonna stop everything, we're the baddest. Fine. What that is, great marketing, probably expensive, and it probably doesn't always work. Right? We've seen that. Nothing works foolproof a 100% of the time.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:25:14]:
I think we speak very plainspoken to our clients. A lot of our clients can also be the CEO of a 200 person company, and he or she is so busy running a business, if you got on the phone with them and started talking about SOC, XDR, they're just gonna hang up. You gotta talk about how their business needs protection, needs monitoring, and just and just speak to them like like like like it's plain. That's how you obsess over a customer, not over a competitor.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:40]:
Given the impossibility of solving the cybersecurity problem, the the ever growing threat scape, the inevitability of of something transpiring for for a given organization. How do you, as an organization, deal with the accountability? Right? If something is going to happen, and I'm I'm sure you've had situations perhaps where where it has, how how do your customers respond? And, you know, you mentioned holistically taking them through this process of identifying a threat. Maybe that threat is legitimate. Maybe something has actually happened. How do you work through those situations when it it is actually a threat?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:26:22]:
To be candid, I mean, it's it's at the forefront. So over the last couple of months, Log4j was a was a is still affecting companies globally. There were some proactive things we could do for Log4j, run some some some scans and some tests to see where our customers had some vulnerabilities, and it's getting out ahead. And, by the way, if something went down and transpired, it's getting on the phone with that customer or email, however we're we're we're we're communicating immediately. Here's what we're seeing. Here's what's happening. Here's what you have to, you know, you have to think about doing. So it is all about speed with that customer and just letting them know exactly where they lie.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:26:58]:
Customers are very smart people. They read the Wall Street Journal. They watch CNN or Fox or whatever. They know cybersecurity is an issue. If the government can't keep people out of the Department of Defense, they know they can get beat with their cybersecurity for their business. What they're looking for is honesty. They're looking for a partner, and they're looking for if something goes down, to know they got a partner that's gonna notify them and be able to take steps very quickly. That's what I think they're being realistic about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:29]:
What are what do you find, rather, are the biggest misconceptions people have about I think, maybe both cybersecurity at large and and maybe the the nature of the work that you're doing? What do people not get?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:27:42]:
Yeah. No. I think at the end of the day, they think, well, credit card's already been stolen. My my name's all over the Internet. What do what do I what do I care? Believe it or not, for a business, it's not just about the data. That's a huge part of it. I'm not trying to minimize it. Think about brand reputation.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:27:59]:
If you have a history of being hacked or been hacked, and somebody finds this out, and and they you have a competitor, maybe they go to that competitor instead. So brand reputation. I still think the biggest is is is less on the data stealing and more on the operational, disruption. Small and midsize businesses, the more you disrupt their business, and by by midsize, I mean under 2,000 employees, the more you disrupt their business, they have a hard time coming back from that. Right? I mean, there's businesses that have gone out of business, and I'm not gonna be here big doomsdayer and say everybody's going out of business. Not not at all. But it can happen. If your operations are down 2, 3 days or more or just a day, what does that do to revenue? What does that do to your clients and how they they perceive you? What about your employees? So the operational effects could even be more disastrous than just the stole the stealing of data or paying a ransomware.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:28:50]:
Those are all very important. But more and more, we're seeing businesses disrupted, and that's actually taking a bigger toll. Especially these days with logistics, with supply chains. It's affecting the world since COVID. You're seeing a lot of activity on supply chains, and you're seeing a lot of disruption there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:07]:
Are there and this this is really just out out of curiosity. Are there threats that you are able to gain insight into by having kind of a multitude of of organizations that you're working with that only come to to light at scale that you don't even see at an individual organizational basis?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:29:29]:
Not necessarily, but the correlation of data, and what I mean by that is not just looking at a laptop or a server or the cloud, but taking all the data we're seeing for an organization and maybe one that's in a specific industry, such as, you know, when nonpacha or pacha ransomware was attacking health care, this might have been like q 4, when you know that's attacking them, you can focus on your health care customers and and try to get out ahead of it. Right? Since the Russian Ukraine war started, the Conti ransomware, which is a Russian ransomware gang, has been proliferating huge. In fact, they had an internal strife where some were for the war, some were against it, and the ones who were against it took their source code and published it on the Internet. So they had a little internal war going on there. But now you're seeing that proliferate tremendously, right, because of the war. So, you know, hackers are also very opportunistic, and they definitely attack in in industry groupings as well. So not necessarily at scale. It it does help, but understanding the industry and then correlating all that data to see all the activity happening at an organization's digital infrastructure.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:35]:
What have you found that is maybe the most surprising from an industry perspective of who are, like, the most prepared for this and who are the least prepared at an industry level?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:30:47]:
Oh my goodness. I don't I mean, I would like to say you hope government, health care, financial are the most prepared. I might argue that they're not, and we'll leave it at that. But the people who are responsible for life or death I mean, someone died during COVID when a ambulance, was hacked. The GPS, this was in Germany, not the United States, was hacked, sent the ambulance on a wild goose chase, and the person had COVID, needed to be put on a respirator, they didn't get to the hospital fast enough, and the person actually passed away. That's where where where hacking is not just stealing of data. You're talking life and death. And by the way, if you can shut down grids and power and water and and the resources we need to live, forget about making our lives uncomfortable.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:31:31]:
What about the elderly or folks who have issues that need those things to live? That's where life and death starts coming into things. So, again, on those critical infrastructures and and on health care, you hope those are the folks most protected. And, by the way, a lot of them work really, really hard at staying safe, but they have big targets on their backs. Right? And they have a lot of attack surfaces as well. So, you know, those present a big challenge.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:57]:
You did just outline the the severity of the stakes there. I I was gonna ask, you know, what what keeps you up at night as you think about growing Agile Blue and and thinking about, you know, that that 3 year time horizon and and the growth you have to have? What what are the things that you foresee as the biggest challenges and that that you worry about?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:32:17]:
It's just it's just anything happening bad to one of our clients. I mean, I I'll just put it like that. I love our clients. I I really believe if you obsess over your clients, you'll have a tremendous business. And if anything happens to any of them, which could happen, you know, unfortunately, it's that's what keeps you up at night. That's what makes you, you know, worry and wonder and and and but but continue to drive forward to create technologies, put together a tremendous team to try to stay ahead to keep these folks, you know, as secure, and monitored as possible. That's that's all you can do, Jeffrey, and I'm sure you see that in your business. I'm sure every business tries to focus on their customers, and that's all you can do.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:32:54]:
You just don't wanna see anything bad happen to your customers. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:57]:
No. Absolutely. It's interesting. I think that just the the nature of the business you are in specifically is about the mitigation of those bad things, which may be, like, abstracted is what a lot of businesses are about. But very, very explicitly, it's about mitigating those those risks.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:33:16]:
Yeah. I mean, a bad thing has to happen for us to be in business, unfortunately. Right? But, you know, there's a lot of bad people out there, and there's evil people out there as we all know. And, it it does employ a very large percentage of us to, try to mitigate that. You know, you have your police force and and fire, and they're doing all amazing things. And then you got, you know, the dig you know, the people on the digital side trying to keep everybody as secure and safe as possible. It's it's very difficult work, and the people who work really hard at it, man, I'll tell you, they're passionate about it, very passionate about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:47]:
What what has been the the hardest part of of building the organization so far?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:33:52]:
You know, I think just like anything, and I can relate this to 10th floor back in 2001, b loan, in 14, it's it's the people. I I don't care what business you're in. It's about the people. If somebody says it's not, they don't understand business. And you wanna hire good people, people who care, people who wanna grow, and people who have a tremendous sense of culture. And that's what you want at your company. And when you're in Cleveland, I love Cleveland, okay? Obviously, started 3 companies here. Love it.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:34:21]:
Sometimes you do have to expand. Like you said, you came here to Cleveland. You gotta expand your recruiting, and now you have to have a little bit more open mind of where people actually work. As a somewhat older person, you know, sometimes you think, everybody's gotta be in my office, and I gotta see everybody every day. Yeah. Well, life doesn't work like that anymore, and you gotta be a little bit more flexible to where people are, not only geographically, but how they choose to work, meaning they might wanna work from home and work digitally and not be in the office. So those things I I will say this. It's made things harder, but it's actually leveled the playing field where we now can recruit people from all over the place, giving us more access to talent.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:34:57]:
And Cleveland has talent. Don't get me wrong. Great talent, awesome people, smart. There's cyber talent here. There's just not enough. Right? There's everybody needs cyber, so they're all poking at the same people. So we do need to expand our our, our geography.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:12]:
I'll I'll pull on this reflections and and learning thread a bit more. You know, if you thought about the early days, you know, whether it be Agile Blue, 10th Floor, Vloan, when, of course, you were working hard to build at just that rapid pace. If I said you you have to go back and do it all again, like, which part of that building process would you be like, oh, god. I don't want to have to go through and learn these lessons again when you think about building these companies and and the products, respectively?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:35:41]:
I'm gonna tell you something. The greatest thrill is signing your first deal, and the greatest thrill is every deal you sign after that. Like, you know, by nature, I'm I'm I'm a little bit more aggressive, and I'm a sales guy, and and there's nothing more fulfilling than that. The worst thing you have to do, especially as a young company, because all young companies see this, and if if if you're a young company and you say you haven't, then you're lying, is an unhappy customer, and you gotta deal with it. And that customer, you know, if you don't deal with it correctly, whatever the problem may be, That could be your brand. That could be your reputation. You know, you lose a customer. If you lose it the right way, and you just understand it's not the right circumstance, that can help.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:36:23]:
You can learn from that. But if you're a jerk to them, and you don't go, Ah, we'll find new customers. By the way, you're going out of business, just because that's gonna get around.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:31]:
And let

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:36:32]:
me tell you something. At 10th floor, you didn't have to worry about that. You know, there really wasn't chat rooms and social stuff. Now, if you mess up, before I was able to probably tell my wife what happened, it's already on Twitter, Facebook, and whatever book that I don't even know exists, to take down your business. So today, it's even more important to love your customers. I'll also say this. Building accounting systems is a pain. It's a pain.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:36:54]:
You gotta have them out. But building accounting systems, that could be a little bit of a pain for a startup. So those are the that that that's the 2 things I would say.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:03]:
That's fair. I think that there's a I I feel that one. Yeah. Totally.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:37:08]:
Right? It's just like, come on. Terrible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:12]:
Yeah. So just thinking more reflections on the the Cleveland ecosystem at large, what what is your take on on what we do well here and and maybe where we need to to do better?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:37:25]:
Yeah. You know, a long time ago, when I was at 10th floor, the city of Cleveland was looking for someone to redo their website. You know, we were one of the people they considered. We're a local company. There were some other local Cleveland companies too that did great work, and they chose a company out of Denver. And when I saw that that that bid got assigned to that, you know, I'm also Italian and have a heavy temper, and I I lost it. Right? So I did this op ed thing in Crane. They did this article, and I said, this is ridiculous.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:37:49]:
Like, Cleveland organizations, especially the larger ones, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, don't necessarily support the start up ecosystem as much as other areas that I've seen. And let me give you an example. Some of the bigger companies in town, you would think there'd be programs to say, okay. You know, we we know you might not do all your cybersecurity with these guys, but can you do a piece? Can you do a, you know, can you do a proof of concept? There's some companies that do, but there's a lot that don't. So the the only thing I don't think Cleveland does tremendous is I don't think the larger companies work hand in hand with the startups and the smaller companies who are looking to get big and hopefully be a provider to them. I don't think they do. Companies in Cleveland wanna go with the sure thing, and that might just come down to being, you know, more Midwestern, little more adverse to risk. You know, if somebody went with IBM, they're not gonna get fired.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:38:40]:
If they went with Agile Blue and something happens, they might get fired. Right? So I think that's how they think. Now the thing about Cleveland that's amazing is just how genuine everyone is. It's just a great place, tremendous ecosystem. People talk like it's a cheap place to find labor and stuff like that. It's not cheap. Nothing's cheap, especially for good people. Right? These people here are great, and and the more you can build your team around the folks here in Cleveland, you know you have people who are passionate.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:39:07]:
They're die hards about everything. You know you're gonna build a culture that you want. I just wish some of the larger organizations would work a little bit more tightly with the start up community because I think it would open their mind a little bit more, and it would give these companies a leg up to really push to the next level. I'm not saying all of them do, but I but I do believe a lot of them do. And that's my my my story from back in 2004 when they chose a company out of Denver. I still haven't gotten over that, obviously, like, 18 years later. So Oh,

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:34]:
I'm I'm gonna dig up that article for sure. It's probably somewhere there.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:39:39]:
This was Crain's a long time ago.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:40]:
Alright. No. I look forward to reading that. Because I I think it's it's it's helpful to to have that that lens. Right? We can we can do better.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:39:49]:
Totally. And I didn't even care if it was my company. Be be a competitor, but be a Cleveland company. Let's see those jobs, like, circulate here. Let's, you know, let's have that that talent done here. And people always say made in America. Awesome. It could also be made in Cleveland.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:40:03]:
Right? So why not work more with companies who are building the ecosystem here? I think there's gotta be some pride in that, but I I don't think there's as as much as you, as you think. That'd be my only that'd be my only thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:15]:
Yeah. That just kinda sparked interest in, do with Agile Blue, do you ever sell to governments, like, local governments? As a as an industry that you may have had, outlined is is not the most prepared for the the coming wave of of cyber threats. Who who are you selling to?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:40:35]:
We do. We do have some, state, and federal government clients. Really, we're selling to to midsize businesses in financial healthcare, PCI, meaning they're collecting commerce and things like that, so credit cards. That's where we tend to focus our business. We have a lot of law firms too. Law firms are, you know, they have a lot of data, man, a lot of confidential data. Everybody wants law firm data, but, you know, law firms could be somewhat unprepared as well, and, it's just, you know, by nature of their structure. But we do work with governments, both here in the United States and, outside the United States.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:41:09]:
Got it. When you, took your business out, did you get a lot of help from proof of concepts, early engagements, working in the ecosystem in Cleveland with some of the larger companies to help get you going?

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:23]:
Yeah. On that front, I I think we were incredibly fortunate. At ACTUAL, you know, we we got off the ground really only because we worked very closely with university hospitals here in Cleveland, with MetroHealth here in Cleveland to to ultimately not only validate conceptually what we were thinking about in the space from, you know, a credentialing perspective, the thesis we have, if you will, about about the problem space and how much friction there is in the process of onboarding doctors and and clinicians at health systems, but actually building the product and getting it to a point where at a minimum, we're meeting the base requirements for for credentialing, for privileging, for onboarding a clinician in compliance with all of the regulatory considerations. It's not a a low bar that was set by what we're trying to build as an MVP. I mean, frankly, we would not be here today as a company without the the early partnerships that we had here in Cleveland. So I I we I think we were really fortunate on that front, but I I think other companies would benefit a lot from from having the opportunity to have those kinds of partnerships upfront.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:42:31]:
Yeah. I also think, you know, larger companies, like you just mentioned, building the product, the proof of concept, the MVP, You know, they see a lot of things, so their advice could be very, you know, instrumental, in in helping that company get to the next level. So I'm glad to hear it worked out for, for you guys. No doubt about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:48]:
Yeah. No. Incredibly grateful for the the time and effort. And, yeah. I don't I don't know what the the right model at scale is for that across like an ecosystem, but it I mean, ultimately, I think you just have to align the incentives. Right? Are are the are the larger organizations, what what are they gonna get out of it? You know, as much as we'd love for them to do it altruistically and and just to help the startup ecosystem and in the city respectively. But even here in Cleveland, like, what what do what is, what are they getting out of it? What are they learning from the process financially? What is their upside? You know, just thinking through those kinds of of models because it I I think it does matter. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:26]:
And I I think a lot of them have the the the proclivity to do it and maybe just don't have the the right models to to follow to do it.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:43:34]:
Yeah. No. Absolutely. And, yeah. And and I don't mean to say, hey. You just need to buy from Cleveland Companies and that's it. The Cleveland Company can't satisfy what you need. Go elsewhere, my friend.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:43:44]:
I have no problem with that. But I just think there needs to be a little bit more thought to how they could potentially grow these this ecosystem. And and, and by the way, it does happen with connections. Right? Connections help. But not everybody has tremendous connections, especially young folks just getting started. Right? So some of these young entrepreneurs sometimes need a little bit of push like that, and there's nothing wrong with it. Look at the great entrepreneurs of this world. They've all had introductions to, you know, whether it's VCs in California or wherever wherever they started, and they got some pretty big bumps.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:44:15]:
Right? So there's nothing wrong with that. It only it only helps the organization grow.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:20]:
And I will say as a as a relatively newer comer to Cleveland, one of the things that I have found genuinely most positive about it is is the accessibility of people here. I find if you're genuine in your your your outreach just to to learn or to to meet someone or or to network, people are receptive, and and we'll we'll open the doors that that you're trying to open.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:44:44]:
I would completely agree with you on that. And, again, that goes back to what I said maybe 10 minutes ago. People are just genuine here. They really they really are, and they they do care. And you don't get that in every city. Right? So, that's something Cleveland's very blessed with. No doubt about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:58]:
Yeah. So maybe I'll we'll book in this conversation. I'll open the floor to you a little bit just to kinda speak your mind. One prompting closing question is having kind of identified a few of the waves in the past. Yeah. I know you're currently riding the the cybersecurity one, but what what do you see out there from an industry perspective in the future? What waves, have your attention? Any any other closing thoughts?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:45:23]:
You know, just being selfish right now, I I love the promise of Bitcoin. I love the promise of cryptocurrency. Not all of them. Some of them are scams. Some of them's fraud. Some of them, you're gonna lose your money. But the decentralized nature of currency and transactions and decentralized finance, I think, is tremendous. And I think it is definitely the wave of things.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:45:45]:
And, you know, don't get caught up in the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana or whatever you're into. Understand the promise it has. You know, you look at these applications, and there literally could be the rails of the next next wave of thing. You know, the Mastercard, the Visas, the rails, how things happen, and and that is really exciting to me. I will say this. I think regulation, and I can't believe I'm saying this because I'm not a huge, huge fan of regulation, some regulation with the crypto markets could be good, and I think we might see that actually. I think that could be actually a a a real path forward. So, look, I think I hope cyber I'm I'm involved with cyber for a long time.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:46:20]:
I hope our business flourishes and grows. And then if I have one last thing I might do before, I move to Florida, pull my socks to the knees and, you know, start complaining about everything, is getting a little bit more involved with cryptocurrency and some projects maybe around DeFi, because I think that is very exciting stuff and and and a wave to the future. There's that is that is there. You can see it. It just needs a couple more things to fall in place. And I can honestly say this. I follow the industry. I study it.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:46:49]:
I do a lot within it personally. I think we were actually almost targeting and getting to the next level of some things. And then this war broke out, which really took a lot of attention from things away and really refocused people's priorities, as it should, of course. But I do believe we're literally on the doorstep of this next wave with decentralized finance and the blockchain. And I'm actually president of InfraGard here in town. We actually had a blockchain meeting, in q 4. We had a lot of great folks from Chainalysis talk. Bernie Marino spoke.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:47:21]:
We had a we had a great speaker lineup. And the enthusiasm for a Zoom meeting in December it gathered was was tremendous. So not only is there an appetite from from me, I can tell you the appetite is very, very broad.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:35]:
No. I I I share the excitement. I've been following the space for a while. I guess the the question I would ask you about it specifically is, and I'm sure you get some semblance of this question, but given how much of the recent ransomware is paid out and enabled by cryptocurrency in a way that maybe historically through, you know, wires or or institutionalized banks could be, you know, pro you know, prohibited, remediated, addressed in a way that allows for some recourse. Mhmm. I I think it's a little overblown, isn't my perception, but but how do you think about the the growing role of crypto as a cyber threat?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:48:17]:
A, it's a little overblown. I agree. B, there's a use case there. Right? Because it's easier to transact in Bitcoin anonymously if you do it right. Now the Colonial Pipeline, remember, they stored it in a, exchange, and the FBI was able to reverse, I can't remember the dollar amount, so so don't kill me on that one, like, 4, 5, $6,000,000. They were able to reverse that transaction. So that's you know, getting the FBI involved early can help. They can actually get money back.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:48:42]:
Now is this gonna deter cyberattacks? Obviously not. There was millions of cyberattacks before there was crypto, right, before 2008 and before crypto started being exchanged on exchanges or used actually as a transaction mechanism. So, look, is it facilitating a little bit? It's made it easier. There's no doubt about it, but these guys are smart. If they wanna take you down, they're gonna figure out a way to get monetized in some way. So that's the way I'd answer that. But, yeah, it's made things a little bit easier. But I tell you, when the FBI reversed some of the colonial stuff, that was a big wake up call to the bad guys saying, this might not be, as foolproof as you thought, or you just need to think a little bit smarter by not storing the sign in exchange.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:49:22]:
Right. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:25]:
Well, I'll I'll close it out with the question that we ask everyone who who comes on the podcast, which is not necessarily for your favorite thing in Cleveland, but for something that other people may not know about. Your your favorite hidden gems,

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:49:39]:
if you will. My favorite hidden gem in in in Cleveland. Man, it's hard now because I think everybody is experiencing Cleveland, especially from the, you know, the food angle and the and the local area angle. I'll I'll just say this, and it's because of my background. There's nothing more, I think, exciting, not well, obviously, when a Browns or Indians win, yeah, that'd be great. I'm just talking about from a a feeling is a summer night in Little Italy. There's nothing like the smell, the food. I don't eat a lot of desserts, but I do when I go there.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:50:12]:
An espresso to end the night, great wine. La Dolce Vita opera night. Like, you know, you think about opera in Cleveland. I used to be on the board of the Cleveland Opera when there was an opera. This is a long time ago. Man, they do it on Friday nights in the summer. Like, come on. That is just awesome.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:50:26]:
Right? So I think that's a gem that, of course, everybody knows Little Italy. How many people actually go there for opera night just to do something different and really just experience it? It's, I'll tell you what, I think that's a gem. And, again, not just because I'm Italian, not just because my dad came here from Italy, but I I I just love it. I just love that place.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:44]:
Oh, no. That's that's awesome.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:50:45]:
What what what's yours?

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:47]:
Oh, well, I mean, the beauty of the whole podcast is I've I've collected this, you know Sure. Hundreds of these hidden gems now. For for me, it really every time I think about it, it's the metro parks. I mean, across the board, I Cleveland is underrated, but the the metro parks are extraordinary. Totally.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:51:05]:
I just wish we did more with our Lakeshore. I really do. That's that's the only thing you can say about it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:10]:
Go ahead. Don't get me started on that. But yeah. I bet.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:51:15]:
Jeffrey, thank you so much for having me. I had fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:18]:
Me as well. Me as well. If folks have anything they would like to follow-up with you about, what is the best way for them to do so?

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:51:25]:
Yeah. Just check us out on agileblue.com, and, you know, there's many ways to get in in touch with us. I appreciate, you having us on tonight.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:33]:
Awesome. Well thank you again Tony.

Tony Pietrocola (AgileBlue) [00:51:34]:
Thanks Jeffrey. Take care.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:37]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey at layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter at podlayofthelandor@sternfa, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with The Up Company LLC.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:20]:
At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.