In a world of infinite content and algorithmic sameness, reach is cheap — but resonance is rare. Today's best brands aren’t just selling products — they’re building worlds.

Don Jeter is the Chief Marketing Officer at Torq, one of cybersecurity’s fastest-growing startups. Recently featured in Forbes for building one of the industry’s most distinctive and disruptive brands, Don brings a world-builder’s mindset to B2B marketing. He sees brand as the most overlooked moat in business — built on belief, not features. It makes products memorable, customers loyal, and competitors irrelevant.

In this talk, Don will share how intentional world-building, emotional architecture, and creative conviction can transform your brand from a marketing function into a long-term strategic advantage.

We talk to CISOs, but practitioners decide whether your product wins. In this fast, framework-first session, Nick Muy breaks down the real people in cybersecurity—SOC analysts, SecOps, AppSec, GRC, vuln management, threat intel—and shows how their goals, pain, and daily workflows differ across industries (FSI vs. SaaS vs. retail/CPG).

We’ll map who buys, who uses, and who champions, then connect it to how boards and audit committees actually see security. You’ll learn why standards and regulatory pressure (think PCI DSS and its ripple effects) create urgency, how to align messaging with the right operator persona, and where value creation really starts.

Expect vivid “from the trenches” vignettes, simple visuals you can steal, and a clear path to refine ICP, packaging, and sales motions—so you stop pitching to a monolith and start winning real deals with the humans who matter.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, the confluence of marketing expertise and cybersecurity acumen is emerging as a cornerstone of effective business leadership.

Drawing on my personal journey—from a product marketer to the CEO of a dynamic organization—this paper explores how the principles of marketing and the imperatives of cybersecurity have been integral in shaping my professional evolution and strategic vision.

I detail how early experiences in product marketing instilled a customer-centric and data-driven mindset, while my immersion in cybersecurity highlighted the critical need for resilient, trust-based operations. Together, these disciplines have informed a business model where marketing is not just an afterthought but the fulcrum around which innovation, brand integrity, and security converge.

This narrative aims to spark a broader discussion on the symbiotic relationship between marketing and cybersecurity, and how their integration can drive sustainable growth and competitive advantage in an increasingly complex digital world.

Marketing as the Foundation of Business Strategy Marketing isn’t just about promotion—it’s about deeply understanding customers, their pain points, and their decision-making processes. A strong marketing foundation helps shape product development, sales strategies, and overall company positioning. As a CEO, leveraging marketing as a central pillar ensures that every business decision is made with a customer-first perspective, leading to stronger product-market fit and sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways

Cybersecurity as a Trust-Building Mechanism In an era where data breaches and AI-driven fraud are rampant, cybersecurity is no longer just a technical concern;it’s a brand imperative. A company’s ability to communicate trust, security, and resilience can be a key differentiator in the market. My background in cybersecurity has reinforced the importance of proactive risk management, transparency, and customer education in building long-term trust with clients and stakeholders. The CEO as a Marketer and Risk Manager The transition from product marketer to CEO revealed that leadership is about balancing growth and protection. A CEO must be both a storyteller—articulating a clear and compelling vision—and a risk manager, ensuring that the company’s foundation is secure. Integrating marketing and cybersecurity principles enables a CEO to scale a business effectively while maintaining the integrity and trust necessary for long-term success."

Everyone talks about Product-Market Fit (PMF) as the milestone to watch. But for B2B founders—especially in complex categories like cybersecurity—PMF is not the signal to scale. Instead, it's the point where a new challenge begins: can this product be sold repeatably, by someone other than the founder?

In this session, we break down the myth of PMF and the chaos that follows when founders scale prematurely. You'll walk away with a framework for testing repeatability, validating your GTM, and building a sales engine that actually works—before hiring the wrong team or burning through cash.

>Why PMF doesn't equal repeatable revenue (especially in B2B) >The hidden stage between PMF and scale: the repeatability gap >How to test sales motion before building your sales team >Common growth-stage pitfalls and how to avoid them >What "founder-product fit" and "sales-model fit" really look like

Building a cybersecurity startup isn't just about having a good idea or great technology, it's about thinking clearly in a highly complex, fast-moving, and crowded environment. In this talk, we'll explore the mental models and first-principle thinking frameworks cybersecurity founders can use to make strategic decisions, identify real opportunities, and avoid common pitfalls. We'll examine how to think about market structure, buyer psychology, product wedge, and long-term defensibility through reusable lenses that apply across different segments of the industry. Rather than focusing on trends or one-off tactics, this session is about how to reason from fundamentals - how to choose what to build, how to position it, and how to design a company the market rewards. Whether you're early in your journey or already scaling, this session will help you replace guesswork with clarity and pattern recognition. You'll walk away with strategic models that can be applied to navigate pricing, product-market fit, ecosystem dynamics, and go-to-market choices more effectively.

> Gain 10+ mental models that can be used to think through product, market, and strategy decisions as a cybersecurity CEO > Learn how to apply first-principle thinking to complex go-to-market and product development choices, especially in crowded categories > Understand how to identify high-leverage opportunities using concepts like data gravity, control points, and ecosystem positioning > Discover how to avoid common traps by seeing the invisible incentives driving buyers, partners, and competitors

VulnCheck is a seed-stage cyber startup in the vulnerability management and threat intelligence sector. This executive Q&A will explore the early-stage marketing strategies that catapulted the company from sub-$2M ARR to $6M with a path to $15M ARR - in under two years with minimal headcount and two straight quarters of profitability with under $8M invested.

Tom Bain, the CMO at VulnCheck, will unpack the strategic and tactical shifts that scaled to power VulnCheck's exponential growth.

Tom will join Nina Korfias, Managing Director, U.S. PR for Marketbridge, to discuss which integrated marketing and communications strategies are essential for startup success, establishing brand credibility and positioning team members as industry experts from day one.

The session will educate attendees on how VulnCheck aligned GTM priorities and marketing's role across growth stages, focusing on integrating PR, content, and demand-gen for efficiency and competitive advantage. Drawing from real-world examples in the cybersecurity sector, the talk will advise on how to balance immediate pipeline needs against long-term brand development.

Tom will share specific frameworks for measuring marketing ROI against aggressive growth targets to attain competitive advantages, secure large contracts, and get more funding as needed for scaling.

This session features a real-world case study for founders, marketers, and investors showing proven strategies to accelerate business growth while avoiding costly marketing mistakes.

The duo will advise on the following:

• Throw out every playbook: Don't just "do the things" that you've done in the past. Starting from scratch is refreshing - it enables you to call your own plays.
• Be authentically transparent: Hard to fake, but critical to build a sustainable business.
• Scale efficiently: It doesn't mean spend no money - and it doesn't mean the alternative is boiling oceans. Instead, assess what you think are the right things to do, do them, and reassess quickly.
• Commit to research-driven thought leadership: PR rooted in research and compelling insights that support the industry you are in is a game-changer. You need street cred to stand out.
• Show it, don't just say it: Don't abuse the megaphone with bragging. Prove your point, show the data, articulate the implications. Again and again.
• Lean into the right message at the right time: Adapt your value-prop for increasingly sophisticated buyer personas and audiences - and in the right channels.