Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri On Post-IPO Moves: ‘We Have Much Bigger Aspirations’

With Netskope now publicly traded alongside its top SASE rivals, it’s clear that the IPO will ‘boost awareness for a sustained period of time,’ Beri tells CRN.

Netskope aims to double down on its work with channel partners as the company expects a major lift from its recently completed initial public offering, putting the now-public company on the same playing field alongside its top rivals, Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri told CRN.

The SASE (secure access service edge) vendor completed its IPO in mid-September with a sale of shares at $19 a piece, pricing at the top end of its previously shared range and raising $908 million. As of this writing, Netskope (ticker: NTSK) has a market capitalization of $8.84 billion.

For Netskope, recently ranked as a “leader” by Gartner in both SASE and SSE (security service edge), many of its top competitors were already publicly traded including Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler and Fortinet.

Thus, the “major reason” for the IPO was “to bring broader awareness to the company, so we can then have more and more customers adopt it — and give more partners the ability to ride that awareness to bring it to [customers],” Beri said in an interview.

“When we get to a customer and they look at our platform, we have such a great win rate,” he said. “The IPO really helps boost awareness for a sustained period of time.”

Beri said Netskope fully intends to maintain its “partner-first” commitment going forward with increased investments into areas such as partner enablement. Netskope also wants to signal that, with the IPO now completed, the company is firmly established for the long haul, he said.

“I’ll be here in 15 years doing this, driving Netskope. And many of my team members will be. We really view this as the first inning of our company and what we’re trying to build,” Beri said. “We have much bigger aspirations around the impact we can make — both in the partner community and also more broadly in the industry.”

What follows is more from CRN’s interview with Beri.

What are your thoughts on the outcome of the IPO and how it sets up Netskope for the future?

In the IPO process, what I focused on was get the highest-quality, [long-term] investors. And I ended up with our dream team. These are people whose horizons are not a quarter or a year. They look much further, and they’re a lot more selective in what they invest in. But one is part of the IPO process is, get the ideal book of long [term] investors who believe in what you do — big public, massive firms. That was one of the goals, and that’s what we did.

What are the biggest things you’d want partners to know about Netskope, now that you’re a public company?

We did this the right way to get us to this milestone. But this is just the beginning. I’ll be here in 15 years doing this, driving Netskope. And many of my team members will be. We really view this as the first inning of our company and what we’re trying to build. We have much bigger aspirations around the impact we can make — both in the partner community and also more broadly in the industry.

The IPO is [mostly] about awareness. We spend so much time and effort in our company on the platform, on R&D. I hold R&D sacred. It’s sort of like, ‘Innovate or die.’ We live by that. And so, to bring broader awareness to the company, so we can then have more and more customers adopt it — and give more partners the ability to ride that awareness to bring it to [customers] — that was the major reason for the IPO. When we get to a customer and they look at our platform, we have such a great win rate. The IPO really helps boost awareness for a sustained period of time.

Do you believe the IPO is also a testament to how important cybersecurity is right now in general?

There never will be this notion that the need for cybersecurity goes down. The attacks are constant. They’re more sophisticated, they’re leveraging AI. What’s happening has drawn a lot more nation-state attacks and malicious insiders, and they all want your data. We’re kind of in the bull’s eye of all of those, protecting [customers]. And so for the next decade-plus, that growth rate is one of the highest in any industry. We’re focused on security and networking for the cloud and AI era, and converging them. We’re going to ride that for a long time.

You mentioned you have much bigger aspirations and that this is the early innings for you — what are some of those aspirations?

We’ve always had the goal to be one of the most impactful and legendary cybersecurity and networking companies in the world. We view ourselves as both — we’re converging networking and security together for this new cloud and AI era. In security and networking, I don’t believe that people want one platform. They don’t want 100 — but they don’t want [just] one. Instead, they want a few core platforms. We will always aspire to be [one of those platforms] — and consolidating within the data and network security market, and modernizing it for the cloud and AI era.

We have expanded to be the unified data protection player outside of SASE. We’re doing data protection for data warehouses and data lakes and on-prem and endpoint and email and beyond. We are the new network for our companies — where we run the world’s most-connected, performant cloud network. We’re becoming their new network. Within our space, it is a consolidation of many, many things. And we’ll continue to consolidate in that area. We’ll always evaluate if there’s natural adjacencies. But at the same time, I don’t plan to go become an EDR [endpoint detection and response vendor].

What are the biggest opportunities for partners in working with Netskope going forward?

From a partner view, you’re either all-in or you’re not. And we’ve been all-in since the beginning. Partners for us are the fabric, in many cases, of our business. Our focus has been, how do we make it such that when the partner gets into the customer, they’re going to win with Netskope? The last thing a partner wants to do is bring something in and something in, and it doesn’t work, or it’s just a bunch of marketing. And so the first thing we can do with partners, I’ve always believed, is give them the absolute best platform that will win — that the customer will want. Because that’s what partners want. The second thing is, [we’ve been] very clear that services — how we fulfill, how we go to market — that is always through a partner. We don’t go around partners and take deals direct, like some others may. It’s part of our culture that we’re partner first. The third thing is, we have been investing heavily in partner enablement.

What’s the bottom line on Netskope and what your big advantage is for partners, versus your competitors?

I would want them to be aware that if a customer tries our platform, [the partner is] going to win with us. If you look at our win rate, when you get to a [proof of concept], it’s incredible. Our full focus is just to have them try the product. And so the thing I would tell the partner is, Netskope has the goods. We have the platform, that if customers do a fair test, they’re going to say, ‘Wow, I want that platform.’ And with that partner-first philosophy that we’ve kept [throughout] our history, we’re a trustworthy, partner-first company. We’re going to be here for a long, long time. We’re on the leading edge of innovation, and we have the goods. So as a partner, if I put my reputation on the line and bring them in, I will be rewarded. That’s what I would say to partners. And I think our existing ones have seen that.