How Innovation and Culture Drive Business Success at Netskope

Sanjay Beri, CEO and Co-founder of Netskope, can trace the roots of his business values back to age five. His mom was a door-to-door salesperson for “everything from Amway to Avon,” and he remembers packing products and going door-to-door with her. “When people talk about their journey, it all starts with the values and culture that get instilled in you,” he explains. “And for me, those values were ‘we’ve got to go earn it and go get it.’” 

Sanjay began his technology career at age 16 working at a help desk to earn money for university. At university, he was able to leave for jobs temporarily and went to work at Microsoft, where he discovered a passion for IT and network security. “And, I loved building,” he adds.

He worked “at the big corporates,” as he calls them, including serving as General Manager of Juniper Networks. Sanjay’s background offered “a combination of building and entrepreneurial drive, married with all the different stages of a company, from inception to large scale, at larger companies all the way to the middle,” he shares. He helped found his first company in the late 1990s, Ingrian Networks, one of the world’s first data center encryption companies.   
 

Innovating with Impact 

After gaining this broad technology, business and security experience, Sanjay says that he “left to do what I love. To take all of those learnings — and the passion I have of building and creating impact and being an entrepreneur — and put it into what I hoped would be my biggest professional legacy.”

About 12 years ago, that vision came to life as Netskope. Now a global SASE leader, Netskope helps organizations apply zero trust principles and AI/ML innovations to protect data and defend against cyber threats.

Sanjay not only wanted to build a company, but do it in a way that he thought was right. He explains that when Netskope was founded, the world was at a networking and security inflection point, with remote work, mobile and cloud all in the beginning stages. 

He shares, “I realized that one of the biggest transformations in security and networking is about to happen. And I wanted to be the company that brings that to bear in a solution and a platform and do it the right way with the right culture and the right people.”

The reality is that in our industry, you have to innovate, or you die.”

In addition, Sanjay and his co-founders recognized the importance of continuous innovation. “Our industry moves so quickly in networking and security, and criminals and attackers don't wait. Frankly, they prey on old legacy systems and companies,” he says.

“I am drawn to doing what we do, because building is often synonymous with innovation,” he continues. “It is the notion that we want to create something that can defend enterprises and help them stay ahead of attackers and have an impact. And that's innovation.”
 

Creating & Sustaining a Great Organizational Culture

The founder and entrepreneur notes that when he talks about building, he means “building companies and culture, too.” Sanjay explains that an ideal organizational culture in technology is one that exemplifies innovation, but also “a culture of being the good people, who are open and collaborative, and create a good place to work.”

We feel like our company embodies the culture we want – open, collaborative, transparent.”

Sanjay believes that the purpose of creating a great culture is business survival and success. “It’s to have a long-lasting impact on an industry where many large corporations, to be blunt, get stale. The innovation stops, and they milk cash cows.”

For him, building that culture from the ground up with the key characteristics he was looking for was the best path to success versus “trying to take a company and change the culture to be open and collaborative.” 

As they continue to grow the company, Netskope leaders are looking to maintain their culture with employees who “live, breathe and exemplify the core cultural traits,” which include collaboration, openness and innovation. 

“In too many organizations, their biggest roadblock is actually the politics, the bureaucracy, and the fact that people can't collaborate,” he says. “In our industry, that is the attackers’ nirvana because they want people to be held up by those things so they can take advantage of it.” 

Sanjay adds that to sustain a great culture, it cannot be just “written on the walls.” At Netskope, they review everyone every year based on their core cultural traits. He adds that as you scale a company, “you're going to deviate in some places for whatever reason, but you need to make sure you course correct when you do.” 

They are also looking for innovators because they “cannot ever rest,” and want to maintain their competitive advantage, according to Sanjay. To sum up what they are trying to build and maintain culturally, Sanjay says that it’s about “making sure that what we do and how we treat our people… espouses a company where people want to be.”
 

Focusing on Top Tech & Security Priorities in 2024 

As CISOs and CIOs try to implement new technologies like AI in a secure manner, Sanjay thinks that they have to enable a culture that he calls “yes, and.” He explains that “it would be great if you could say yes versus no because it lets the company stay competitive… So, you need the ability to say ‘yes, and here are the guardrails.’” He shares further that technology and security leaders have to strike a balance between “giving a blanket yes or a complete no.”

Moreover, he believes that executives are trying to digitally enable their organizations in a way that “consolidates, converges, simplifies and saves money” – an additional challenge. As they try to modernize and minimize security risks this year, CIOs and CISOs may also be asked “to cut or keep budgets flat,” according to Sanjay.

The other top priority that Sanjay sees on the horizon is “this notion that attackers prey in times of uncertainty, in times of organizational change. If they see any sign of weakness, it's an opportunity to attack.” This means that executives “cannot take their eye off the ball against all of the change happening in the world,” he explains.

It's very clear that data is your new oil or your new currency.”

Finally, Sanjay believes that data protection is a top priority in 2024. He shares, “When you look at any organization, in addition to their people, their data is the value. That's how they monetize.” In his view, protecting your company’s data is a critical issue today and will only become more important as time goes on. 

On top of these priorities and challenges for the industry, Sanjay is personally focused on research and development. “I'm a big investor and believer in R&D and the platform,” he explains. “We invest nearly half of our company into R&D, which is not normal, but innovation is the core of our industry, and we will put our foot on the pedal there.”

As their leadership tries to anticipate customer needs in the years to come and “skate to where the puck is going,” as Sanjay says, growth, recruiting the right people and maintaining their culture are critical. 

“I believe that in our world, there is no single platform for networking and security. So we want to make sure that we integrate, drive openness in the industry, and continue to drive our ecosystem of partners globally.” 

Sanjay is delivering a keynote session on “Executive Strategy for Network and Security Convergence” at the upcoming Global CISO Executive Summit, September 16-18, 2024, at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar in San Diego. Apply to join the summit designed for CISOs with global teams and responsibilities, or if you are already a member of the Evanta CISO community, sign in to MyEvanta for more details.
 

Special thanks to Sanjay Beri and Netskope.