Sean Forkan, chief revenue officer at Black Duck, is coming up on his six-month anniversary with the application security company. Forkan sat down with editorial director Sharon Florentine to talk about Black Duck’s application security journey, the challenges and opportunities, and how to make the deluge of AI-generated code both secure and compliant. Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.Sharon Florentine: So, Sean, thanks for taking the time! How about you tell me about yourself and your role with Black Duck.
Sean Forkan: I'll start with a little bit about me, and then I'll talk about Black Duck. So I just celebrated my six-month anniversary with the company. I joined in the middle of November [2024]. Prior to that, I was recently leading go-to-market and sales for Carbon Black, while it was still an asset under VMware; I did some time at VMware, worked for a bunch of vendors -- Cisco, Oracle, Symantec, Veritas, and the early part of my career was spent in the consulting space, so working on kind of large transformation deals in Europe, Canada, U.S., so I have a pretty diverse background, and I've been at it over 30 years.When I joined the business back in November, I was really excited for a couple of reasons. One, the strength of the product position. To join an organization ranked as a top right-hand quadrant product by Gartner for many, many years in a row was extremely compelling. And then I felt that was a really good fit between my value system and what the board and Jason Schmitt, our CEO, were looking for. So it has been six months here and it's been a ton of fun, lots of work to do, right?Black Duck was part of a bigger software company called Synopsys. I had lots of relatable experience having run Carbon Black within the big VMware-Broadcom umbrella. And I know that there's some advantages, but also some challenges. And we're trying to lead the charge around true scale application security.The history of Black Duck is helping customers protect their crown jewels when it comes to software applications. So anything that really had to be both compliant and secure through the whole open source transformation that took place years ago, that's the company's legacy pedigree. Now they're taking that and really applying it to a world where we've got this onslaught of AI-generated code that we've got to make sure is both secure and compliant, and do so in a world where software is truly becoming regulated. We think we're in a good spot relative to the market, and having lots of great conversations with the channel community.Sharon Florentine: That's fantastic. So what was Black Duck’s position in the channel before you started? And what are your goals for the channel and partners? Where do you want it to go?Sean Forkan: Yeah, so I'd say the whole legacy of the parent company synopsis was very much a direct-to-end-user type of sales motion, and they had customers in the order of hundreds, right? As Black Duck, we have clients in the 1000s, right? And so you just can't get to those customers and service them properly with a direct force. And so prior to me getting here, there was a recognition that the channel was going to become increasingly important to us, and when I arrived in November, one of the things that I did was I went on a bit of a listening tour.I put in a lot of miles from London and Paris and Frankfurt, in the U.S., Washington DC, East Coast, West Coast, in Asia and eventually, Japan. And one of the things I heard from the team is that we want to grow and we want to grow with partners, but we weren't sure how. And so in the January timeframe, I brought together my leadership team, and with the help of an outside consultant, we put pen to paper on what we thought was our three-year strategy and vision. Anchoring that was a stretch target of trying to double the business in three years. We picked three anchors that were going to drive creative growth: A focus around people and culture, because we want to make sure we have strong teams that are highly motivated, trained, enabled to be successful. We want to have a coaching culture. And then the second pillar was delighting customers post-sale and turning that into a competitive advantage. And the third was really embracing a channel-first mindset.One of my core beliefs is that answers live within the business. And so we said, hey, channel's critically important to us in our go-forward market. It should drive accelerated growth. What do we need to change in terms of course and speed in order to tackle that? And so we developed a bit of a framework, and we assembled three teams around the world, and we said, 'You are closest to the customer and partner in your geography. What is it that we, as Black Duck, need to do differently in order to capture the opportunity?' And so we've got that feedback and we're in the process of actioning that in no particular order.One of the things we want to do is be very transparent with our partners around our go-to-market motion. And so we have a small set of very, very large accounts that we've had a legacy direct relationship with. Think hyperscalers, where they expect a direct relationship, and we're going to be transparent, these are the accounts where we'll be direct and then we'll have a segment of the business that's likely about customer choice. We're definitely embracing channel partners, but if we're pulled by the customer because they want to go direct, we'll support that. And then we'll have another segment, which we won't take direct, and we'll only do it through a channel partner. And so we're going to have that sort of clarity within our field organizations, as well.We're changing how we do planning. And so, when we think about going into our new fiscal year, we're talking about one of the key growth drivers being new logos for us. And so we're being thoughtful about looking at my most recent quarter, if I look at my new logo business, 80% of that business was transacted through partners, and that's a much higher percentage today on the balance of the business.So we make sure that we're embracing that and really being thoughtful about what the strategic setup partners are that we're going to go really invest in and double down on. Early iterations of the channel program, we tried to, you know, sign up everyone. And, of course, you can't take a pie and really slice it that thin. So, the coaching we gave to the team is, 'Hey, let's have fewer, bigger strategic bets,' and we're already starting to see that pay off.Sharon Florentine: That's fantastic. It sounds like you're really covering all the bases in a smarter way than trying to do everything for everyone. This approach seems more targeted, but at the same time very comprehensive and hitting all of the right areas.Sean Forkan: I'd say that's fair. The other thing is that there's a much better acknowledgement of the role that distribution can play in the relationship, as well. If you look at, you know, our relationship with Carahsoft, with the U.S. federal government and SLED, it's, it's very strategic. And so, by spending time with Carahsoft, we're able to leverage their partner community and make sure they're supported, trained right there, they're aware of all the benefits of our current program, which will evolve based on partner feedback. But we're doing a much better job, I think, as a team, of understanding the role and the value of distribution. When I started, distribution was holding floppy drives and CD-ROMs. That's not their world today. So, we're being very selective in the distributors that we're picking around the world, and making sure that those relationships are really strategic and value added on both sides.Sharon Florentine: How many partners do you currently have in each geography?Sean Forkan: Yeah, we are around 600 worldwide. The focus is to pick strategic partners in each of the major geographies, and then really leverage distribution for the balance.Sharon Florentine: How can channel leaders build a channel program that's stronger and more robust? How can they strike the right balance between retention versus new business?Sean Forkan: Yeah, so there are a couple of things to kind of unpack in that. One is, how do you build a successful channel program? One of my core beliefs is that you don't build the solution in a vacuum. And what I mean by that is, as you think through how you want to evolve your channel program, get some outside-in perspective. So, whether you're talking to, you know, Optiv or a massive distributor, you need to ask, 'Hey, if we're trying to build a really good program, what would it mean to you?'The second tenet is that you have to lead from the front. If I left building a successful channel to my channel leader, Tom [Hermann], who does a wonderful job, he would be an island of one, as opposed to being part of a larger team and everything we do. We're making sure we recognize the top sales rep of the quarter and the top channel person of the quarter. When we do strategic planning, right, we make sure that that's an equal position, right? I talk about, you know, channel and channel growth, you know, every opportunity I get and what the standard of good looks like relative to how I expect my sales leaders to partner with Tom and each of the geographies. And that is important, because without a channel mindset in the business, it's kind of doomed to failure.On retention -- once again, we have this conversation often where, when you're thinking about retention, the first thing you have to know is you're in a SaaS world in many ways, independent of the channel piece. It starts with a mindset, particularly in the sales organization. And what I mean by that is, if you're in a hardware vendor or a perpetual licensed software vendor, you declare victory once the purchase order comes in. SaaS is when the work starts. So the purchase order comes in, and for that moment in time that the PO shows up, the team, culture-wise, mindset-wise, direct sales, customer success, services, channel, system engineering, all need to be thinking about how to make the renewal. And that's a terrible term in the SaaS world. It's not a renewal, it's a re-compete, right? It's funds to re-earn the right to that customer's business. Because, you know, sometimes I liken it to owning a car versus renting a car.You own a car and you get this big maintenance bill, and you're like, 'Man, that sucks, but I own the car, so I'm stuck with it.' If you rent the car and your maintenance bill goes up, you just give back the car. And so we try to reinforce that across the business, I'd say, where we still have work to do.Specific to the channel and retention: Making sure we are retaining the right partners and enabling them to have a similar mindset. And believe it or not, where I think we're the furthest along, in the six months that I've been here, is in some of the work that Tom and my customer success peer, Girish [Janardhanudu], who have partnered in parts of the world where we're not going to have critical mass. They've gone into the market with a really thoughtful approach to invest in resources that speak the language, and they're going to be in the geography, But we're also going to include all the other necessary components to make sure that the customer has a successful purchase experience, adoption experience, value experience, and it's not a one-and-done; we're going to come back and say, 'Hey, are you using it? Are you getting value? Are you aware of these new features and how they might solve this particular unmet, underserved need?' And in certain parts of the world, we have to do things differently, and I really do see an emerging set of best practices that we'll be able to take to major markets like the UK and America over time, in terms of how we think about partners very differently, very strategically. It's not just about passing paper or doing a renewal differently, but really helping us in that customer lifecycle journey, and delivering value across the [lifecycle] from the point when the PO shows up to when we were successful on the re-compete.Sharon Florentine: There's a lot of uncertainty in economic markets and just about everywhere nowadays, and it seems like a lot of organizations are turning to the channel to help them navigate that. What are your thoughts on how the channel itself can navigate these crazy economic times we're having?Sean Forkan: I was having a conversation with my international leader this morning about this. We're really leaning into them for that deep experience in each of the geographies we operate around the world, especially where we don't have presence; we just did our board of directors meeting last week, I feel we're in a good spot in the market.When you think about any business, whether you're a farmer or whether you're a bank, or whatever -- software, in and of itself, is becoming increasingly important to how you innovate, how you grow, how you think about your business, and with our role in the market around securing it, despite the macro headwinds we're actually seeing, I'd still say there's robust interest in what we do. You know, when I talk to colleagues who are in CRO jobs in different parts of the market, they're definitely under pressure. Projects are slowing down. But I don't see any future where software is not going to be at the core of almost any industry.And so I think from that perspective, we're very well positioned. And when we work with partners, there are nuances. Like, if you are in Asia, there are certain countries in Asia that have, based on the tariff situation and politics, said, 'Hey, we want you to not purchase U.S. products.' And so we're working with the teams and with the partners to say, 'How do we, how do we make sure we're showing up with the right message, with the right tone, in the right language, and really staying anchored on those customers' unmet, underserved needs.In full transparency, there will be certain countries where the new logo business will certainly be under pressure, and so then we take a step back and pivot to customer retention. Let's make sure we're delighting our customers and continuing to grow, you know, annual recurring revenue. But maybe it's not on the new logo side. Maybe it's expansion with existing customers and keeping that renewal base whole. So, that's what we've been doing thus far. We're learning every day.
Sean Forkan: I'll start with a little bit about me, and then I'll talk about Black Duck. So I just celebrated my six-month anniversary with the company. I joined in the middle of November [2024]. Prior to that, I was recently leading go-to-market and sales for Carbon Black, while it was still an asset under VMware; I did some time at VMware, worked for a bunch of vendors -- Cisco, Oracle, Symantec, Veritas, and the early part of my career was spent in the consulting space, so working on kind of large transformation deals in Europe, Canada, U.S., so I have a pretty diverse background, and I've been at it over 30 years.When I joined the business back in November, I was really excited for a couple of reasons. One, the strength of the product position. To join an organization ranked as a top right-hand quadrant product by Gartner for many, many years in a row was extremely compelling. And then I felt that was a really good fit between my value system and what the board and Jason Schmitt, our CEO, were looking for. So it has been six months here and it's been a ton of fun, lots of work to do, right?Black Duck was part of a bigger software company called Synopsys. I had lots of relatable experience having run Carbon Black within the big VMware-Broadcom umbrella. And I know that there's some advantages, but also some challenges. And we're trying to lead the charge around true scale application security.The history of Black Duck is helping customers protect their crown jewels when it comes to software applications. So anything that really had to be both compliant and secure through the whole open source transformation that took place years ago, that's the company's legacy pedigree. Now they're taking that and really applying it to a world where we've got this onslaught of AI-generated code that we've got to make sure is both secure and compliant, and do so in a world where software is truly becoming regulated. We think we're in a good spot relative to the market, and having lots of great conversations with the channel community.Sharon Florentine: That's fantastic. So what was Black Duck’s position in the channel before you started? And what are your goals for the channel and partners? Where do you want it to go?Sean Forkan: Yeah, so I'd say the whole legacy of the parent company synopsis was very much a direct-to-end-user type of sales motion, and they had customers in the order of hundreds, right? As Black Duck, we have clients in the 1000s, right? And so you just can't get to those customers and service them properly with a direct force. And so prior to me getting here, there was a recognition that the channel was going to become increasingly important to us, and when I arrived in November, one of the things that I did was I went on a bit of a listening tour.I put in a lot of miles from London and Paris and Frankfurt, in the U.S., Washington DC, East Coast, West Coast, in Asia and eventually, Japan. And one of the things I heard from the team is that we want to grow and we want to grow with partners, but we weren't sure how. And so in the January timeframe, I brought together my leadership team, and with the help of an outside consultant, we put pen to paper on what we thought was our three-year strategy and vision. Anchoring that was a stretch target of trying to double the business in three years. We picked three anchors that were going to drive creative growth: A focus around people and culture, because we want to make sure we have strong teams that are highly motivated, trained, enabled to be successful. We want to have a coaching culture. And then the second pillar was delighting customers post-sale and turning that into a competitive advantage. And the third was really embracing a channel-first mindset.One of my core beliefs is that answers live within the business. And so we said, hey, channel's critically important to us in our go-forward market. It should drive accelerated growth. What do we need to change in terms of course and speed in order to tackle that? And so we developed a bit of a framework, and we assembled three teams around the world, and we said, 'You are closest to the customer and partner in your geography. What is it that we, as Black Duck, need to do differently in order to capture the opportunity?' And so we've got that feedback and we're in the process of actioning that in no particular order.One of the things we want to do is be very transparent with our partners around our go-to-market motion. And so we have a small set of very, very large accounts that we've had a legacy direct relationship with. Think hyperscalers, where they expect a direct relationship, and we're going to be transparent, these are the accounts where we'll be direct and then we'll have a segment of the business that's likely about customer choice. We're definitely embracing channel partners, but if we're pulled by the customer because they want to go direct, we'll support that. And then we'll have another segment, which we won't take direct, and we'll only do it through a channel partner. And so we're going to have that sort of clarity within our field organizations, as well.We're changing how we do planning. And so, when we think about going into our new fiscal year, we're talking about one of the key growth drivers being new logos for us. And so we're being thoughtful about looking at my most recent quarter, if I look at my new logo business, 80% of that business was transacted through partners, and that's a much higher percentage today on the balance of the business.So we make sure that we're embracing that and really being thoughtful about what the strategic setup partners are that we're going to go really invest in and double down on. Early iterations of the channel program, we tried to, you know, sign up everyone. And, of course, you can't take a pie and really slice it that thin. So, the coaching we gave to the team is, 'Hey, let's have fewer, bigger strategic bets,' and we're already starting to see that pay off.Sharon Florentine: That's fantastic. It sounds like you're really covering all the bases in a smarter way than trying to do everything for everyone. This approach seems more targeted, but at the same time very comprehensive and hitting all of the right areas.Sean Forkan: I'd say that's fair. The other thing is that there's a much better acknowledgement of the role that distribution can play in the relationship, as well. If you look at, you know, our relationship with Carahsoft, with the U.S. federal government and SLED, it's, it's very strategic. And so, by spending time with Carahsoft, we're able to leverage their partner community and make sure they're supported, trained right there, they're aware of all the benefits of our current program, which will evolve based on partner feedback. But we're doing a much better job, I think, as a team, of understanding the role and the value of distribution. When I started, distribution was holding floppy drives and CD-ROMs. That's not their world today. So, we're being very selective in the distributors that we're picking around the world, and making sure that those relationships are really strategic and value added on both sides.Sharon Florentine: How many partners do you currently have in each geography?Sean Forkan: Yeah, we are around 600 worldwide. The focus is to pick strategic partners in each of the major geographies, and then really leverage distribution for the balance.Sharon Florentine: How can channel leaders build a channel program that's stronger and more robust? How can they strike the right balance between retention versus new business?Sean Forkan: Yeah, so there are a couple of things to kind of unpack in that. One is, how do you build a successful channel program? One of my core beliefs is that you don't build the solution in a vacuum. And what I mean by that is, as you think through how you want to evolve your channel program, get some outside-in perspective. So, whether you're talking to, you know, Optiv or a massive distributor, you need to ask, 'Hey, if we're trying to build a really good program, what would it mean to you?'The second tenet is that you have to lead from the front. If I left building a successful channel to my channel leader, Tom [Hermann], who does a wonderful job, he would be an island of one, as opposed to being part of a larger team and everything we do. We're making sure we recognize the top sales rep of the quarter and the top channel person of the quarter. When we do strategic planning, right, we make sure that that's an equal position, right? I talk about, you know, channel and channel growth, you know, every opportunity I get and what the standard of good looks like relative to how I expect my sales leaders to partner with Tom and each of the geographies. And that is important, because without a channel mindset in the business, it's kind of doomed to failure.On retention -- once again, we have this conversation often where, when you're thinking about retention, the first thing you have to know is you're in a SaaS world in many ways, independent of the channel piece. It starts with a mindset, particularly in the sales organization. And what I mean by that is, if you're in a hardware vendor or a perpetual licensed software vendor, you declare victory once the purchase order comes in. SaaS is when the work starts. So the purchase order comes in, and for that moment in time that the PO shows up, the team, culture-wise, mindset-wise, direct sales, customer success, services, channel, system engineering, all need to be thinking about how to make the renewal. And that's a terrible term in the SaaS world. It's not a renewal, it's a re-compete, right? It's funds to re-earn the right to that customer's business. Because, you know, sometimes I liken it to owning a car versus renting a car.You own a car and you get this big maintenance bill, and you're like, 'Man, that sucks, but I own the car, so I'm stuck with it.' If you rent the car and your maintenance bill goes up, you just give back the car. And so we try to reinforce that across the business, I'd say, where we still have work to do.Specific to the channel and retention: Making sure we are retaining the right partners and enabling them to have a similar mindset. And believe it or not, where I think we're the furthest along, in the six months that I've been here, is in some of the work that Tom and my customer success peer, Girish [Janardhanudu], who have partnered in parts of the world where we're not going to have critical mass. They've gone into the market with a really thoughtful approach to invest in resources that speak the language, and they're going to be in the geography, But we're also going to include all the other necessary components to make sure that the customer has a successful purchase experience, adoption experience, value experience, and it's not a one-and-done; we're going to come back and say, 'Hey, are you using it? Are you getting value? Are you aware of these new features and how they might solve this particular unmet, underserved need?' And in certain parts of the world, we have to do things differently, and I really do see an emerging set of best practices that we'll be able to take to major markets like the UK and America over time, in terms of how we think about partners very differently, very strategically. It's not just about passing paper or doing a renewal differently, but really helping us in that customer lifecycle journey, and delivering value across the [lifecycle] from the point when the PO shows up to when we were successful on the re-compete.Sharon Florentine: There's a lot of uncertainty in economic markets and just about everywhere nowadays, and it seems like a lot of organizations are turning to the channel to help them navigate that. What are your thoughts on how the channel itself can navigate these crazy economic times we're having?Sean Forkan: I was having a conversation with my international leader this morning about this. We're really leaning into them for that deep experience in each of the geographies we operate around the world, especially where we don't have presence; we just did our board of directors meeting last week, I feel we're in a good spot in the market.When you think about any business, whether you're a farmer or whether you're a bank, or whatever -- software, in and of itself, is becoming increasingly important to how you innovate, how you grow, how you think about your business, and with our role in the market around securing it, despite the macro headwinds we're actually seeing, I'd still say there's robust interest in what we do. You know, when I talk to colleagues who are in CRO jobs in different parts of the market, they're definitely under pressure. Projects are slowing down. But I don't see any future where software is not going to be at the core of almost any industry.And so I think from that perspective, we're very well positioned. And when we work with partners, there are nuances. Like, if you are in Asia, there are certain countries in Asia that have, based on the tariff situation and politics, said, 'Hey, we want you to not purchase U.S. products.' And so we're working with the teams and with the partners to say, 'How do we, how do we make sure we're showing up with the right message, with the right tone, in the right language, and really staying anchored on those customers' unmet, underserved needs.In full transparency, there will be certain countries where the new logo business will certainly be under pressure, and so then we take a step back and pivot to customer retention. Let's make sure we're delighting our customers and continuing to grow, you know, annual recurring revenue. But maybe it's not on the new logo side. Maybe it's expansion with existing customers and keeping that renewal base whole. So, that's what we've been doing thus far. We're learning every day.
