Building Trust Management Platforms: Insights from Vanta's CPO

Jeremy Epling, Chief Product Officer at Vanta, brings a wealth of experience from his time at Microsoft and GitHub to his current role leading product, engineering, and design at one of the fastest-growing security startups. In this in-depth interview, Jeremy shares valuable insights on product management, career growth, and building trust management platforms.

The Evolution of Product Management at Microsoft

Jeremy's career began at Microsoft, where he spent 16 years working on products like Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Azure. He reflects on how product management evolved during his tenure:

"I think one of the biggest ways it changed was probably some of the ratio stuff we talked about earlier, like having a larger span of control. You're working with more engineers, thinking about more of the business and these holistic experiences. Design got a stronger voice, which I think was like a very good thing around not just the visuals and making it look pretty, but actually like what are the flows, what's the experience, driving that partnership a lot more deeply."

He notes that there was an increased focus on business outcomes and revenue, as well as more direct customer interaction, especially with enterprise clients. However, Jeremy also acknowledges that these changes happened more slowly at Microsoft compared to other companies in the industry.

Lessons from Satya Nadella's Leadership

Jeremy had the opportunity to work under Satya Nadella's leadership at Microsoft and shares some key takeaways:

"I think he's really good at creating clarity and priorities. And I think the company before him was often focused on, yeah, we need to hit the revenue goals, but it was kind of just like do everything all the time. And I think he kind of really went in and said, no, these businesses matter more than these other ones, and we're going to really rightsize these efforts."

He highlights Nadella's focus on cloud computing with Azure, his willingness to experiment with new products like VS Code, and his successful approach to acquisitions, including Minecraft, LinkedIn, and GitHub.

The Transition to GitHub and Vanta

After leaving Microsoft, Jeremy joined GitHub as VP of Product before eventually moving to Vanta as Chief Product Officer. He explains what attracted him to Vanta:

"I felt like I wanted to do that like build it, scale it again. And like that's what just like really gets my juices flowing. Um and Christina had reached out again then. I was like yes like let's like let's talk more. And yeah, it was interesting process. It was I don't know like nine weeks we probably went back and forth."

Jeremy emphasizes the importance of cultural fit and alignment with the leadership team when considering a new role. He was impressed by Vanta's transparency during the interview process and the strong culture built by CEO Christina Cacioppo.

Vanta's Approach to Product Development

At Vanta, Jeremy has implemented several strategies to drive product innovation:

1. Focusing on customer experience: "I think that in my opinion I've tried not to throw too much shade here. I would say like most security products have a pretty terrible customer experience and when I talk to most CISOs I feel like they agree. They're like yeah we just kind of like put up with it you know because like the data is at least good. Um and I think that's an area where we've differentiated from day one."

2. Empowering design: "We had a design team, but I brought in Deb. She's like an amazing design leader. Um, and we've really invested in building up and giving design a much stronger um, place at the table."

3. Hands-on leadership: "Every week I'm in at least one of those where like I am seeing demos from the team where we're walking through Figma files, you know, I um, or it could be like live demos. So, to me being like really hands-on and giving that specific feedback is really important."

4. Building a strong platform: "I kind of think of as like we're trying to make this thicker platform horizontal layer with like smaller apps on top of it. So when we want to ship a feature like you know commenting or notifications or any of these types of things or enhance it it just kind of gets better everywhere."

5. Embracing AI and new tools: "We encourage people to really try things out, we put a couple guard rails. I would say the biggest guard rail that we put on, especially as a security company, but I feel like the number one question I hear or as someone who is helping answer questionnaires we can see through our data is like, are you training on our data? And so, we do not do that at Bant."

Advice for Aspiring Product Managers

Jeremy offers valuable advice for those starting their product management careers:

"The biggest thing I would say if you're brand new is find the core customer problems that you need to go solve. Like go talk to the customers, find out where their most acute pain is. Like what is their daily life? Like I would almost create a map of saying like this is what their daily job looks like and like how they could use a tool like Vanta to go make it easier."

He emphasizes the importance of understanding customer pain points, mapping out their workflows, and tying solutions to clear business value. Jeremy also encourages new PMs to get involved in sales calls and learn from top-performing account executives.

The Future of Vanta and Trust Management

Looking ahead, Jeremy is excited about Vanta's growth and the opportunities in the trust management space:

"We are hiring a lot in product engineering, design, but not just there. We're hiring in go to market um, and marketing and all these different roles, sales. So would love to talk to anybody that gets excited by Vanta, wants to build things in an AI forward way, wants to really think about how to build awesome products that people love that are well-crafted and great and wants to join a business that's joining just doing tremendously well."

As Vanta continues to expand its product offerings and tackle new challenges in security and compliance, Jeremy's leadership and product expertise will undoubtedly play a crucial role in shaping the future of trust management platforms.

For those interested in learning more or exploring opportunities at Vanta, Jeremy can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter (@JeremyEpling).

Article created from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-eelkFXF-w