North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver. If you're wondering where purpose-driven leaders direct their time, team, budget, and energy, you'll find out here on the North Star Leaders Podcast. I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of this show.

Remember, purpose isn't what you hang on the wall. It's what you do when the choice is hard. Today I am so happy to be joined by Gautam Mahendru.

Gautam is SVP of marketing at CrowdStrike, the global cybersecurity company. Gautam, welcome to the show.

It's so good to have you. To start us off, what's the most energizing part of what you do that others would never guess from the outside is so energizing or inspiring?

Gautam Mehandru

For me, in the job that I do and the job that I've been doing for the last 20 plus years, it's the people around me. There's literally people that give you energy. There's also the others that actually take energy or suck the energy out, but it's the givers and I meet so many of them.

The teams that I've led, my teams that I'm currently leading, get to meet with a lot of partners and customers and clients and repeat buyers and stuff. I think those people, meeting them face to face, actually, even in a post-COVID world, getting to meet with people face to face, those things give me energy. Then even from a work perspective, I love winning at work.

When your company is winning, it does give you energy because you know that you're making an impact in that sense.

Lindsay Pedersen

I know you started as an engineer and you moved through product management and sales before landing in marketing. That progression, how does that shape the kind of marketer and leader that you are, that you've moved through these various functions?

Gautam Mehandru

It's been an interesting journey for me. It's been sort of the zigs and zags have been intentional in most cases. In some cases, the timing and opportunity met and I was like, yeah, let's do it, right?

Why not? But yeah, I'm an engineer by trade, started off doing engineering and then I quickly realized what I don't enjoy doing because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was like, hey, let's do what I've been trained for and went to university and spent four years doing this, got all these bills to pay.

Let's do that. Then navigated through that to learning more about the product, doing a bunch of stuff in product and then carried a bag in sales for a couple of years as well. Obviously, the last decade or so has been marketing, but it's been intentional to kind of get enough about a lot of things in what makes a business work, right?

From a product side, from a sales side, from a marketing side, and have that sort of general manager mentality on how to sort of grow a business and what's important and stuff. So that's how my journey sort of happened over the last 25 years or so, and I wouldn't change it for the world. I mean, yes, I did take some moves here and there that were like, okay, that's interesting, but it's all been learnings.

It all sort of happens for a reason and it's got me to where I am right now and I'm happy with where things have landed.

Lindsay Pedersen

Where does your engineering background peek through today as a marketing leader?

Gautam Mehandru

For me, it's I go back to first principles, you know, a lot in everything that I do. Apply logic, try and apply logic and data to the things that are happening and you know, it's the left side and the right side of your brain coming together. So I think as an engineer, it's like you get trained to think logically, you get trained to sort of go back to the five whys.

Why is this happening? Okay. This is happening because of this.

Oh, well you go back to the next. Why is that? Why is that happening then?

So it's just attacking and addressing the problem in sort of a logical way and going back to the first principles. That's been helpful because I truly think none of the functions having done all of these are hard to do. You know, you can learn a lot of these things that, you know, you get experience in doing them over the years and experience helps, but I think you can tackle just about everything if you just take sort of a logical approach towards it.

So that's been my philosophy and maybe that's the engineer in me, but that's how I think.

Lindsay Pedersen

Is first principles an engineering principle?

Gautam Mehandru

It's not, but you kind of like think about things, you know, in a logical way. As an engineer, you're taught logic, right? Like okay, this is how you approach a problem.

You got to solve it. Problem solving becomes natural and then you kind of look for logical ways to address it. So I don't know if it's like an actual thing you learn, but it's the approach in engineering school, whichever part of engineering you're learning.

So that's how I've sort of approached it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, totally. I've heard you joke that marketing is spelled D-A-T-A, which is sort of related to this. When is a moment when data was a make or break asset for a big win?

Gautam Mehandru

I mean, I think when this is probably more true now than ever before. I mean, it's the new currency, as everybody says, and we've been saying it for a while, but I don't know what exact moment in time in my journey, but once you started to see how much data was available and how you can actually drive insights from that data to be able to drive decision-making, it became pretty straightforward that regardless of what role you're in, if you're a marketer, you're an engineer, you're in sales or you've got to like use the data and understand, because outside of the data, I mean, the rest of it is the point of view, right? And the point of view lacking or absent the data is just your opinion.

So I think that for me, it was like, well, opinions are a dime a dozen right now. Let's back them up with data. And it really allows you to create that sort of story and that narrative backed by some facts.

And there's so much data now in every company, over the past sort of five, 10 years, it's been insane amount of, in fact, there's too much of it that folks are trying to figure out how to like, how to read the data efficiently. And with AI, there's a whole lot of more AI slop data that people are swimming in. So, but yeah, I mean, data is important in everything we do, and that's been sort of my mantra moving forward.

And whether it's marketing or other roles as well, that you got to be able to spend the time and be disciplined about the limited resources, time, money that you have, and you got to do the right thing with that. And the data should help you with that.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it supports your goal. It supports what you're driving toward. Talk more about AI.

We were talking before I pressed record, we were talking about kind of continuously insisting that we're learning and becoming smarter about what's important right now. How are you doing that? How are you availing yourself of the like astonishingly rapid pace of how things are changing with marketing?

Gautam Mehandru

I mean, things are changing, period. Marketing is obviously experiencing change. Every function is experiencing change.

And I think the fundamental thing that I'm telling myself and I tell my teens as well is that, you know, be curious, lean in, because this kind of a transformative shift that's happening is once in a lifetime. And I don't have a crystal ball. Nobody does, because things are evolving so fast that the next 30, 60, 90 or the next 12 to 18 months, it's a bit like exciting, but it's a bit scary as well, because, you know, there's two sides of the coin right now, where it's like we're all going to lose our jobs or, you know, we're not.

It's actually a tailwind and it's going to help us sort of focus on what's really important, which is the human element. So I'm staying curious, number one. And I told my team as well, stay curious.

You're not going to get replaced by AI, but you probably will get replaced by somebody that's leaning into AI a lot more than you are. So do yourself a favor. It will be important for you to all lean into AI.

Everybody's dabbling in AI and every sort of function that they are and they should. But the amount of sort of it's scary how easy it is to create like completely useless crap out there right now with AI. So you need sort of humans to discern what's good or what's bad, right?

Because there's so much crap out there. Five minutes, I can do something that used to take me a long time. But you got to figure out how good or bad it is.

And that's something that comes with experience, with gut, with intuition, with sort of knowing what AI doesn't know and context specifically. So I'm staying curious. I'm trying to navigate what I'm using AI for, trying to navigate what the team is using AI for over and above the, hey, let's prompt, get something edited and move on.

Right. So that's been done. Last year was the year of a lot of that stuff.

I feel like we're like in the messy middle right now of AI, right? We're still experimenting, but some workflows are happening and those workflows are important to understand and put in place. And then I think, you know, the next year would be, we're going to see a lot of these workflows in place and a lot of sort of productivity gains, a lot of efficiency gains, you know, you talk to probably a lot of people like myself and others, I mean, there are, I think everybody is on their journey.

They're not at the starting point anymore. I feel like I'm sort of in the middle right now and what we've been able to do and what I still would like to do and be able to like, take it further. So it's not going anywhere.

So unless you're living under a rock, you're already doing and figuring out how this is going to help you in your business, help yourself in a bunch of different ways. I mean, my kids are talking about AI, it's like, it's crazy.

Lindsay Pedersen

I know, it runs circles around us. It's interesting that the way you put it, that you can create astonishingly useless stuff in zero time and at zero cost and how like that, which is kind of another way of saying slop, and it makes me think of what you said earlier about first principles, because the lack of friction between a person and the creation of crappy stuff, that friction is gone. And therefore, like, what's the anchor point?

Like, what's the thing that allows you to discern and adjudicate? Like, what actually is not crap and actually solves problems for people? And so it's almost like with the influx of the volume of crap or slop or pick your gross word, gross four letter word, crap, slop, the need for that logical, why are we doing this?

Go back to the five whys or the North Star principle. It seems like that becomes more critical. Am I getting that right?

Gautam Mehandru

Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, it's how do we sort of when there's so much noise that looks and sounds similar and it's all coming at you with a sort of like a tsunami of crap or slop, whatever the right word is, how do you sort of figure out? I mean, imagine being a buyer, imagine being a consumer.

You and I are consumers as well, right? I mean, you know, you're going to your favorite LLM and it's telling you stuff. You go to the next one, it's telling you stuff and you're believing it in some cases.

In some cases, you might have to like figure out, look, this is not exactly right. And it's lost context of what I was asking and it's hallucinating now and whatnot. It's the same in business right now, too.

So you can tell now for over a year of doing this, what's been written by AI, how it's been constructed. And a lot of it sounds similar with a lot of different companies because they're all using it. And how do you stand out when everything is the same now, even more than ever?

Like, you know, software is being coded by AI. So what is the defensible note for a company moving forward? I don't know.

I think, you know, the brand is definitely one of them. Trust in the company, which is related to brand is another because a lot of products will be very replaceable with each other. I'm just saying that, I mean, you know, not to make a point, but you're going to have to figure out a way to stand out and not just be another MeToo product that's out there.

So I think that's really what folks should be focusing on as they think moving forward and marketing the same thing, like content creation, you know, how we create the content, how we get our narratives out there, what's our point of view. Very similar in cybersecurity. It's a very noisy industry.

A lot of sort of folks just it's a sea of AI right now, as you can imagine, everywhere. So you've got to stand out. And doing that will require you to be sort of going back and thinking about how do we, what is our sort of differentiation in this, you know, something that looks and sounds very familiar for a lot of companies.

Lindsay Pedersen

Speaking of competitive moats and brand, talk about the tension between building brand awareness and building near-term sales. What is that tension like for you?

Gautam Mehandru

This is like such a interesting question. I would have answered it differently a couple of years ago. I mean, it leads me to the role of even a head of marketing or a CMO in a lot of these different companies.

Things have just changed dramatically and they're changing even more. It's unfortunate sometimes, depending on the company and stuff, that you kind of have this short-termism, right, for expectation of CMOs, you know, what have you done for me lately? And you're being looked at from a 30, 60, 90 day perspective on sort of pipeline and revenue.

And how do we sort of make sure that that happens? Brand is a long-term game, right? You don't see the benefits of it right away once obviously you've established it and stuff and connection between brand and demand remains a mystery for a lot of folks to be able to understand.

And it definitely obviously is there, but it's hard for financial minded folks to be able to understand how that shows up on a line item, so to speak. So I think that that's where spending a lot of time and a lot of marketing leaders as we get together and connect saying, you know, how much are you spending on brand? How much are you spending on demand?

Well, demand is right now for a lot of companies, I would say, is obviously the biggest driver because pipeline gives you the permission to do the things that you want to do on the other side of the house as well. I feel like that's becoming a lot more, as long as you're meeting the numbers, you can do the other stuff as well because that's the long-term game, whether it's the things that you got to do to further the brand, you got to do to differentiate ourselves, create a category. There's like all these things, but it's very near term focus is always on pipeline and the numbers because that's really what's important.

And it's even more important right now with the way that things are changing. So I think the CMO role has fundamentally evolved as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

What are your tricks to holding that on one hand there's short-termism and the necessary focus on this quarter's numbers? And then on the other hand, there's the long-term trust that engenders good customer acquisition and prevents your margins from eroding and that kind of thing. How do you, what are your tricks to try to achieve these competing goals?

Gautam Mehandru

I think, I mean, every company is different. Every CEO is different. Their knowledge and their sort of awareness and their appetite for what marketing should do is different.

You know, I've been in big companies and small companies, companies that have an established category or product market fit. That's not a problem. They've just got to like drive demand.

There's companies that it's like, Hey, nobody knows what we do because there's no established category. So we've got to spend some more time on that. So this is my eighth stop at CrowdStrike and obviously, you know, different company, different stage, different sort of dynamics, but over my career, it's just, I've evolved my playbook based on where the company's at in their journey.

What is the need of the hour for the company and then balance it out, right? In some places it's like, you know, very heavy demand and then, you know, light on brand, cause you know, that's not really what's important right now. In some companies it was earlier stage and you are trying to write your narrative and you've got product market fit, but nobody knows whether you're a vitamin or a painkiller or, you know, you need it or you're nice to have.

Gartner doesn't talk about you or your category and Forrester doesn't say anything, so how do you kind of get into the considerations that when nobody knows who you are, what you do? So you've got to like play the game depending on what's needed. And I think that's what a lot of the marketing leaders do, depending on whether it's, they got to spend more time on one part of marketing versus the other, but alignment with your CEO or whoever the leader of the organization is, is critical, right?

Cause if you're focusing on one area a lot more and not on the other, you know, there's gotta be alignment, right? And I think marketing is about having stakeholder alignment with your CEO, with your CFO, cause you need to be able to spend to be able to either generate pipeline or to even spend on things like brand that, you know, would be harder to understand for folks and play the short game or the long game or a bit of both. Right.

So it's very situational, I would say, and I've done it differently in different companies.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, totally. It's rooted in stage. It's rooted in what the short-term versus long-term the priority depends on where the company is in category awareness and brand awareness and just life stage and funding.

And I'm wondering, have you ever been in a role as a marketing leader where there's been too much short-termism and it's hurt your efforts as a marketer?

Gautam Mehandru

I think a lot of marketers have, whether they admit it or not, they probably have. And short-termism exists because boards and CEOs and a lot of sort of folks that are evaluating the company based on growth at all costs, you know, we're trying to just drive the business forward and, you know, you gotta just do what's needed. I've been in a role that where it's hurt, hurt is maybe not the right way or not the right word, but I think that there's probably over-indexing on one part versus at the cost of the other, right, because marketing is a revenue generating function.

You know, we create awareness and pipeline and ultimately doing those things cost money and how you spend that money is a big part of what being a marketing leader is. So doing it to over-index on one versus the other is one way to sort of look at it, but eventually both helps, right? I mean, you know, you just talked about brand is something that helps you reduce your customer acquisition costs, increases the margins, all of that stuff is true, right?

When you peak out on your demand, you know, your brand is what helps you differentiate and becomes a defensible moat for a lot of larger companies and stuff as well. So you absolutely have to do both. And it's different from B2C and B2B as well, right?

I've only been in the B2B world, so I'm giving you my opinion. So short answer is, I mean, yes to, have I over-indexed? Absolutely.

You know, that's what the need was. Could I have spent more? Could I have done some more on the brand side?

Yes. But it's a collective decision that you make with the leadership team and the board, and that's when you sort of figure out, okay, this is what's needed. This is what I need to do now.

And then you move from there.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, sure. And even really mature companies with strong market share have margin and revenue pressure every quarter, at least the ones that are publicly traded. It's like, there's no such thing as an end to that tension.

And it's probably a productive tension between short-term and long-term.

Gautam Mehandru

There is. And productive tension is needed in business, right? I mean, there's productive tension always with sales and marketing, that's needed as well.

Productive tension between, you know, how much you're spending on one side of marketing versus the other. And I said, tension is good. And, you know, conflict is bad, you know?

So I think that's, uh, that's important.

Lindsay Pedersen

How do you know?

Gautam Mehandru

I mean, you know, sales and marketing, I always say sales and marketing, and I've sort of had the privilege of working with, you know, great sales leaders, even as a marketing leader, and I still do, it's nuanced. So you've got to have a little bit of tension because as you sort of look at a journey of a customer through the eyes of say pipeline, right? I mean, a lot of CMOs look at marketing.

The big M is driving top of the funnel. Then you pass it on to sales. And then it's like, Hey, here you go.

I've sort of given you what I've given you in terms of MQLs. And now it's over to you. And then the sales leader, the conversion rates are what the conversion rates are and the things don't convert, you know, deals don't happen.

And then it's like back and forth. So I think that now in the new world, right? A lot of marketing leaders, you know, nobody talks MQL, people talk pipeline, right, and the pipeline is basically not just generating it, but it's also progressing it, it's also driving to see what kind of coverage, so it's the same language that you're speaking.

You're sort of focusing on a couple of different ends of that spectrum. But good leaders, I think, you know, look at it end to end. And that's what I aspire to do or try to do here in the job as well.

But there's always like, when you deliver something to somebody to take it further, there's always that, Hey, you know, was it good? Was the handoff good? Did you sort of do the thing that you were supposed to do with it and stuff?

So, so I think that it's a go-to-market thing, right? I don't even like calling it sales and marketing anymore. I feel like it's a go-to-market system and pipeline is not just a number.

It's a process. You know, you have an active process that you sort of manage as a go-to-market team, because it's not a static number. It's a process on how things come in, how things stall sometimes, how things progress, how things move forward and convert or not convert.

So I think that requires total alignment between a sales leader and a marketing leader, or else it's just won't work.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's also more fun that way.

Gautam Mehandru

I mean, absolutely. It can be like super fun and it can be like, you sort of kind of sometimes step out of your lane a little bit. And I encourage people to say, Hey, just step out and learn what's happening on this side and they can learn what's happening on this side.

And that makes the language that we use as common understanding is good. There's some empathy that gets built saying, Oh, okay. I didn't realize that this was happening as well.

So all of that stuff I think is important. So, you know, I encourage people and to step out of their swim lanes a little bit, just to understand what's going on outside of the world of marketing. And they can sort of let people into their world as well.

And it challenges the team as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

And it's that idea of curiosity that you brought up earlier, like that cultivates curiosity and empathy and solves problems.

Gautam Mehandru

It does. And, you know, you can't teach anybody that right. You can just fundamentally remain curious.

And that is the number one thing you got to look for when you sort of hire people or talk to people, they have the experience, but are they able to still be curious? Right. I mean, after all these years of doing marketing, I think the playbook is changing.

And we started talking about this earlier. Like, am I fundamentally remaining curious to understand AI and how it's evolving marketing and what marketing will look like in two, three years? Heck, I don't know, but it's going to be very different.

Right. I know that for sure. And am I going to lean in and understand what's happening and what we need to do differently, where people are seeing successes, talking to, and the community helps, right, the community of marketing leaders out there, what they're doing, how they're seeing success.

Are we replacing SDRs or BDRs, whatever you want to call them with agents? I don't know. Maybe there are some that have had success.

So I think that's just being curious and you have to then adapt to your situation. Cause if you're a hundred person company, there are probably things that you can do because you're building from scratch. If you're a 10,000 person company or a hundred thousand person company, you have to adopt things in slightly different ways than those, some of those smaller companies, but adapting is going to be needed because that how fast things are changing.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Oh my gosh. This has been so great.

I have a few rapid fire, quick answer questions for you as we finish. Are you ready? I think so.

Gautam Mehandru

I think so.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. What is the most recent song that you've blasted?

Gautam Mehandru

Blasted. Okay. I don't blast, uh, what's blasting in my cars.

Cause I have two girls is a whole lot of Taylor Swift, but I'm not blasting those from my own listening, but yeah, that's what's playing all around the house and all around the cars. If I were to listen to something, I'd probably listen to Ed Sheeran or something.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. But you're not a Swifty. You're only a Swifty by inheritance from your daughters.

Gautam Mehandru

By association. And yes, it's kind of like, you know, it's too much right now. So I'm hoping they're going to grow out of this phase.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. What is your favorite meal to cook for your family?

Gautam Mehandru

I wish I did a lot more of that. I don't. I, the only thing I make is reservations and, that's actually quite value add.

Yeah. We love to go out to eat on the weekends and stuff as a family, the four of us. So that's something that I try different kinds of food.

And so that's what we do.

Lindsay Pedersen

So that's the kind of meal that you make as the reservation. Okay. What is an app on your smartphone that you're surprised not everyone uses?

Gautam Mehandru

Oh, that I’m surprised that everyone uses. I don't know. I think all the apps that I have on my phone are things that everybody does use.

I mean, I don't have anything that I'm using that I don't think everybody else uses the normal productivity apps, which I'm sure at this point, everybody uses my travel apps. I do have chat GPT, which I use a whole lot of time. My chat GPT agent knows a lot about me and my life and my kids.

So it's a planner for us as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Awesome. Okay.

What is a memorable splurge purchase?

Gautam Mehandru

Okay. Well, let's see, I did buy an expensive watch last year, which was a memorable splurge purchase. I wanted to reward myself and I saw it.

That's a memorable splurge purchase.

Lindsay Pedersen

What's your favorite way to work out?

Gautam Mehandru

I wish I did more of that right now, but I have two girls. They're competitive swimmers. So I would love to just try and keep up with them in the pool.

Cause we do a lot of sort of pool, beachy vacations. And so that's something I like to do. And if I have the time though, tennis is a sport that I love and that would be something that I want to continue playing.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. One last question. What's your favorite kind of candy?

Gautam Mehandru

That'll be candy eater, to be honest. Maybe I'll have an occasional chocolate. I think we bought some Dubai chocolate recently just to kind of see what the rage is all about.

So I had that. It was good, but I'm not a big candy eater.

Lindsay Pedersen

Well, let me ask you a different one then. Okay. How about what's your favorite salty snack?

Gautam Mehandru

Salty snack? I'll just probably just any kind of like chips. I would have whatever chips that we have in the house.

So any flavored chips, they're not good for us, but you know, you've got to have them, sandwich and chips.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. But let me give you one more then. What's your favorite thing to do on a Friday night?

Gautam Mehandru

Friday night is family night. So we either stay in and order in, or we go out to eat. We try a bunch of different restaurants, trying to give the kids sort of experience in different kinds of foods.

So if there's a new place in town, in Seattle, we'll go there. But we usually eat as a family together, Friday night, where if I, especially if I've been traveling or whatnot, I'm typically always back on Friday. And then it's depending on how tired everybody is, but we eat out or eat in together, the family, and then maybe watch a movie or something.

Lindsay Pedersen

Sounds awesome. Okay. Well, as we finish up, where can I send listeners who want to learn more about you or about CrowdStrike?

Gautam Mehandru

Well, CrowdStrike, I mean, it's easy. CrowdStrike.com. There's a ton of information about what we do.

And I think folks probably have heard about CrowdStrike. For me, LinkedIn, that's probably the easiest place to get in touch with me. I love connecting with people from sort of all walks of life.

Just so, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn. Happy to connect. If I can help in any way with anybody or connect people, I'd love to do that as well, because that brings me joy.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for listening to this episode of Northstar Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a Northstar Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com.

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