Shlomi Ashkenazy is a cybersecurity B2B marketer who works on positioning, messaging, and marketing at Rein Security. Ashkenazy also describes themself as a startup advisor and podcast host.
Shlomi Ashkenazy is most useful for cybersecurity B2B positioning, customer research, category narratives, and product marketing.
Best for
A cybersecurity B2B SaaS company seeking paid advisory or content on positioning, category design, and usage-led marketing.
Not for
A high-reach sponsored content package sold on impressions and engagement to a broad security audience.
Key takeaways
Positioning should come from buyer interviews, not founder intuition.
A category only holds if it is built into the product.
Marketing should teach people to use more of the product, not just want it.
Check first: Confirm podcast name, earlier work, and audience data before contacting them.
Main ideas
Positioning should come from buyer interviews, not founder intuition · A category only holds if it is built into the product · Marketing should teach people to use more of the product, not just want it
Audience
2,936 LinkedIn followers · More than 92 CISOs interviewed (self-described; practitioner access, not an audience count)
Shlomi Ashkenazy is a cybersecurity B2B marketer who writes about positioning, customer research, category narratives, and product marketing.
The posts connect those ideas to practical examples: interviewing CISOs to uncover buyer priorities, carrying a category story into product names and sales conversations, and teaching prospects how to use a product.
Ashkenazy also describes themself as a startup advisor and podcast host.
Ask for the podcast name and any signature books, shows, or earlier work beyond these posts.
Ashkenazy’s distinctive contribution is treating positioning as something companies must learn from customers and reinforce throughout the product and customer experience—not just state in a campaign.
In one post, they describe asking CISOs about their current process, ideal future, and vendor priorities, then show how unexpected answers shaped company narratives.
In another, they use Tenable’s Exposure Management naming across its platform, features, sales, and marketing to show how a category can become tangible.
Their toothpaste analogy extends the same practical lens to product use: marketing can teach behavior, not only create demand.
Their posts also range beyond marketing advice: their Claude Mythos commentary argues for controlling what AI agents are allowed to do rather than chasing every vulnerability, while acknowledging that the technical claims are not all verified.
Follow their work for concrete, example-led arguments about cybersecurity marketing and the connection between customer insight, product choices, and brand narrative.
Ashkenazy writes about positioning cybersecurity and B2B software companies.
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Their arguments return to a few consistent claims: build positioning from buyer interviews; embed a category in the product, not just the marketing deck; teach people to use the full product; and focus on knowing the audience rather than debating B2B versus B2C labels.
At Rein Security, they apply this thinking to AI agent security, arguing that protection should enforce what agents are allowed to do instead of chasing every new vulnerability.
They also describe their working style as broad and hands-on, spanning positioning, content, go-to-market systems, product marketing, and partnerships, and show up in cybersecurity marketing communities in person.
Positioning should come from buyer interviews, not founder intuition
Ashkenazy’s method is to interview buyers at length and let recurring themes define the narrative.
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They say they have conducted more than 90 one-on-one CISO interviews and distil them into three questions: how do you do things today, in a perfect world how would you do things instead, and what matters most when choosing a new vendor?
The value lies not in individual answers but in recurring patterns, which become message pillars and category language.
Ashkenazy says founders cannot argue with what buyers say, even when they dislike it; answers may concern technology, trust, partnerships, or culture.
At a secure-access company, interviews showed that VDI headaches were CISOs’ top pain point.
The finding became a core narrative pillar despite the founders’ resistance.
At a SaaS security company, CISOs’ wish for full control over misconfigurations shaped the positioning; Ashkenazy says the company later exited for $300 million.
At Cybellum, champions repeatedly said they wanted a community for the then-new field of device and product security, not more technology.
That insight shaped the positioning.
The same research instinct runs through their later in-house work at Rein Security, where customer calls are described as reshaping the roadmap and narrative.
A category only holds if it is built into the product
Ashkenazy argues that a category claim weakens when it lives only in ads or on a website.
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Narrative, positioning, and category are embedded in product architecture, feature naming, onboarding, sales enablement, and the exact words a sales team uses with customers.
Every touchpoint either reinforces the story or dilutes it.
Category design, then, is an operating task, not a copywriting task.
Ashkenazy calls the long-run payoff of that consistency “Compound Brand Interest” and says whether a category name is perfect matters less than whether it is applied consistently.
Tenable created and owns the category of Exposure Management and carried the term into its product surfaces: the platform is named the Exposure Management Platform, features and use cases are named around exposure, and sales and marketing messaging repeats it. For Ashkenazy, that repetition—not the marketing campaign alone—is what makes the category stick.
Marketing should teach people to use more of the product, not just want it
Ashkenazy distinguishes demand-led marketing, which creates the desire to buy, from usage-led marketing, which shapes how much of a product people actually use.
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They argue the second is underrated and directly affects upsell, retention, and long-term growth.
Top-of-funnel content, in this view, should show prospects how to use the full scope of a product before they become customers.
This framing gives companies a reason to fund “how to use it” material for prospects, not just existing accounts.
Colgate, Crest, and Sensodyne have used the same image for decades: a toothbrush fully covered in paste, even though a pea-sized amount is enough.
Ashkenazy argues that this conditioned people to overuse the product and multiplied sales.
As a parallel, prescription weight-loss brand Ro ran street ads showing people injecting the drug, which they say primes potential customers for the needle before they reach the store.
Ashkenazy challenges the common advice that B2B brands should borrow from consumer marketing.
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Looking at brands often cited as proof, they argue the shared factor is not a consumer mindset but a deeper understanding of the audience.
Wiz combined technical B2B credibility with entertainment and fun in a grey category; Salesforce owned CRM and made a heavy, complex category feel light and simple.
Labels get in the way: the task is to build the right brand for a specific customer, sometimes understanding what that customer wants before they articulate it themselves.
Ashkenazy notes that GEICO and Lemonade made insurance fun for different generations and Apple sells simplicity and a following.
These look like consumer moves only because they are familiar, they argue; the same audience-first logic works in B2B.
Wiz’s 180-degree shift in cloud security, pairing technical credibility with entertainment, is their main illustration.
Security should enforce what agents are allowed to do, not chase what is broken
In a post they describe as a departure from their usual marketing writing, Ashkenazy argues that AI capable of finding thousands of vulnerabilities and chaining exploits makes patch-based security obsolete: you cannot patch faster than something can find flaws you did not know existed.
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Their alternative is to stop asking what is wrong and start defining what is allowed: set a behavioral baseline for an agent, and stop it in real time if it deviates, before anything happens.
Ashkenazy says they are not verifying every claim in Anthropic’s demonstration, only accepting its direction, so the argument is a strategic position rather than a tested result.
The post links to a longer write-up and ties the opinion to the product thinking at Rein Security, where they work.
The reference point is Anthropic’s Claude Mythos demonstration—AI that can find zero-days, chain exploits, and escape its own sandbox. Ashkenazy argues that whatever Mythos finds, an agent attempting something it has never done before should not be permitted to proceed.
Their priorities: build the whole marketing function hands-on, and be present in the community
Ashkenazy’s account of their working life is deliberately broad.
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In a satirical day-in-the-life post at Rein Security, they list positioning and messaging, AI-powered go-to-market engineering, an LLM-assisted content operation, AI video production, website, SEO and AI search, sales enablement, product marketing, PR, partnerships, events, campaigns, and category building.
The humour doubles as a statement of working style: Ashkenazy presents themselves as an operator who handles the range of work rather than an outside strategist, while keeping a human check on machine-generated content.
They also emphasize being present in cybersecurity marketing circles, including smaller invite-only settings.
The day-in-the-life post includes asking ChatGPT to rewrite the same sentence 14 times, an LLM content machine that still needs a human to stop it “saying insane things,” and a customer call that reshapes the roadmap and narrative—and tests their composure. On the community side, Ashkenazy posted about a last-minute trip to RSA Conference with spare tickets to a private, invite-only CISO side event, and about speaking at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society’s CyberMarketingCon in Austin alongside Don Jeter, Michael Lyborg, and Ingrid Woodley.
Shows what category design looks like beyond the marketing deck, tracing one company's category name through the product itself.
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Shlomi Ashkenazy uses Tenable as the example: the company names its platform the Exposure Management Platform, builds feature and use-case names around the word "Exposure," and repeats the term across sales and marketing.
The argument is that a category is strengthened less by repeating it in ads than by embedding it in product naming, the roadmap, and everyday sales conversations.
Shlomi Ashkenazy calls the long-run payoff "Compound Brand Interest" and treats product surfaces as brand channels.
The piece reasons from one public example rather than presenting measured results.
For brands planning a campaign
A practical checklist for a product marketing engagement: audit where the chosen category term appears—in the product, feature names, onboarding, and sales enablement—then fix inconsistencies.
Explains one of Shlomi Ashkenazy's own framing ideas, "usage-led marketing," for anyone weighing how much content should teach people to use a product.
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Colgate, Crest, and Sensodyne have used the same image for decades—a toothbrush fully covered in paste—even though a pea-sized amount is enough.
Shlomi Ashkenazy argues that this conditioned people to overuse the product and lifted sales.
Prescription brand Ro offers a parallel: street ads show injections that prepare people to use a needle.
The lesson for B2B is that top-of-funnel content should show how to use a product, not just why to buy it, because fuller usage drives retention and upsell.
For brands planning a campaign
Makes the case for including "how to use" content aimed at prospects—not just existing customers—in a content plan.
Shows how positioning research gathers material for a narrative directly from buyers.
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Shlomi Ashkenazy describes one-on-one interviews with more than 90 CISOs and shares the three questions that produced the most insight: how do you do things today; in a perfect world, how would you do things instead; and what is the most important thing you look for in a new vendor.
The account details concrete outcomes.
VDI headaches surfaced as the top pain point for a secure-access company and became a narrative pillar despite the founders' objections.
CISOs' wish for control over misconfigurations shaped the positioning of a SaaS security company that later sold for $300 million.
At Cybellum, the recurring theme was the need for a community, not more technology.
For brands planning a campaign
Reuse the questions in discovery interviews with a client's customers before writing positioning, giving an advisory engagement a concrete method rather than just a deck.
Takes on the common B2B question—should we copy consumer marketing?—and shows how Shlomi Ashkenazy approaches brand strategy.
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Shlomi Ashkenazy challenges the idea that B2B brands should imitate B2C.
Wiz, Salesforce, Stripe, and Adobe are often cited as proof; they argues these companies win by understanding their audience, not by being consumer-like.
Wiz paired technical credibility with fun in a grey category, while Salesforce made a heavy category feel light and simple.
The conclusion: B2B, B2C, and other labels mostly get in the way; the work is to build the best brand for a specific audience.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful when a client wants to import consumer tactics wholesale: it shifts the discussion to what the buyer actually wants, rather than which camp a brand belongs to.
The clearest example of the story Shlomi Ashkenazy is building now—and how a funding announcement can carry a category claim.
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Announcing a $25 million Series A (with $35 million total funding), Shlomi Ashkenazy leads with the claim that Rein Security is becoming "the security layer for the agent economy."
Revenue grew 8X and the customer base 5X since launch; the post names Dun & Bradstreet, Swimlane, and Lemonade as users.
It ties the round to a broader shift—companies replacing workflows with AI agents—and to named marketing hires.
The post uses company news to reinforce a positioning claim, not just report the funding.
For brands planning a campaign
A model for turning funding or product milestones into a category narrative; also a reference point for how Rein Security handles campaigns involving competitors or partnerships.
Shows Shlomi Ashkenazy writing technical commentary tied to a product thesis, offering a way to assess their range beyond marketing posts.
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Shlomi Ashkenazy steps outside usual marketing topics to argue that AI capable of finding thousands of vulnerabilities makes patch-based security obsolete.
The proposed alternative is to enforce what is allowed rather than chase what is wrong: set a behavioral baseline and stop any agent action that deviates, in real time.
The argument draws on the direction of Anthropic's demonstration rather than verifying each claim, as they openly acknowledge.
The post links to a longer write-up and tags Rein Security colleagues, tying the opinion to the company's product thinking.
For brands planning a campaign
Relevant for campaigns that need thought leadership linking cybersecurity marketing to product direction. It also shows Ashkenazy writing beyond the marketing lane.
Shlomi Ashkenazy says they have interviewed more than 90 CISOs and uses three questions to find narrative material: what the buyer does today, what they would do in a perfect world, and what matters most when choosing a new vendor.
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The approach surfaces a secure-access company's VDI pain, a SaaS security company's need for misconfiguration controls before a $300 million exit, and Cybellum's insight that its champions wanted a community for device and product security.
Open-ended customer questions that give people room to talk, followed by a search for recurring themes across interviews.
For brands planning a campaign
A cybersecurity B2B SaaS company could use this as a structured first step for positioning: run a CISO interview sprint, then turn recurring answers into message pillars and category language. The examples show how the output changes product narrative, not just ad copy.
Shlomi Ashkenazy argues that a company's narrative lives in product architecture, feature naming, sales enablement, onboarding, and sales conversations—not only in marketing.
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The worked example is Tenable, which built and reinforced the 'Exposure Management' category by naming its platform, features, and use cases around exposure. They call the long-term payoff 'Compound Brand Interest.'
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for a company deciding whether its category claim is more than a marketing slogan. The approach assesses product naming, sales language, and customer-facing materials, then aligns them around one category story.
Shlomi Ashkenazy questions the common B2B advice to copy B2C branding.
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They look at Wiz, Salesforce, Stripe, and Adobe, arguing that the shared factor is not 'B2C-like' marketing but a deep understanding of the audience.
Wiz combined technical B2B credibility with entertainment; Salesforce owned CRM and made a complex category feel simple.
The conclusion: build the right brand for the customer rather than choose a label.
Shlomi Ashkenazy notes that this departs from their usual marketing posts and that Rein Security's product work partly prompted their response.
For brands planning a campaign
For a SaaS brand trying to stand out in a same-same category, this offers a way to assess differentiation: identify the audience-specific move competitors have not made, rather than copy a general B2C tactic.
Shlomi Ashkenazy uses toothpaste advertising to explain usage-led marketing: repeated ads showing a full toothbrush conditioned people to use more toothpaste than needed, multiplying sales.
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They connect this to GLP-1 ads that prime people for injections and argue that B2B companies should invest in top-of-funnel product marketing that shows customers how to use the full product. That conditioning supports upsells and retention before a prospect becomes a customer.
For brands planning a campaign
A product marketing engagement could include content that teaches the full scope of a product, not just demand generation. The practical questions are what usage behavior the company wants to normalize and where prospects can see it.
Shlomi Ashkenazy's Rein Security posts focus on the agent economy.
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One announces a $25 million Series A, $35 million in total funding, 8X revenue growth, and 5X customer growth, with Rein positioning itself as the security layer for enterprise AI and naming Dun & Bradstreet, Swimlane, and Lemonade as users. Another, on Anthropic's Claude Mythos, argues that the CVE treadmill is over and security should shift from chasing 'what's wrong' to enforcing 'what's allowed,' using behavioral baselines to stop unexpected agent actions in real time.
For brands planning a campaign
This gives a concrete example of category creation around AI agent security. A cybersecurity company selling into the same shift could borrow the framing: monitor agent behavior, define allowed actions, and stop deviations rather than only patch known vulnerabilities.
Field and community presence in cybersecurity marketing
Shlomi Ashkenazy posts about attending RSA Conference and hosting a private, invite-only CISO side event, as well as speaking at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society's CyberMarketingCon in Austin with Don Jeter, Michael Lyborg, and Ingrid Woodley.
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The posts show community participation and peer networking.
For brands planning a campaign
For brands considering an event or community activation, Shlomi Ashkenazy shows how to show up where cybersecurity marketers and CISOs gather, including smaller invite-only settings. That could support a co-hosted session, field research, or a community-led campaign.
In a humorous day-in-the-life post at Rein Security, Shlomi Ashkenazy lists work across positioning and messaging, AI-powered go-to-market engineering, an LLM content machine, AI video production, website, SEO and AI search, sales enablement, product marketing, PR, partnerships, events, campaigns, and category building.
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The post also describes using ChatGPT to rewrite a sentence repeatedly and watching customer calls reshape the roadmap and narrative.
A self-described typical workday, presented as a satirical list.
For brands planning a campaign
For a company that needs one marketing leader to cover strategy and execution, this post shows the range Shlomi Ashkenazy claims. It also maps the workstreams a positioning or category engagement could touch.
Ashkenazy's clearest business relationship is employment at Rein Security, the cybersecurity company building controls for enterprise AI agents, where the posts show them building the marketing function from scratch.
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They also reference Cybellum as a company where they helped shape product-security positioning, and a conference speaking slot at CyberMarketingCon. Ask whether any sponsorship or affiliate relationships apply.
Rein Security
Employment
Ashkenazy says they joined Rein Security and lead its marketing, building the function from scratch across positioning, messaging, website, SEO, sales enablement and product marketing.
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They also write about the company's product direction. One post announces the company's $25M Series A and 8X revenue growth.
Ashkenazy cites Cybellum as a company where “we” realized that champions in device and product security needed a community more than technology, and says that insight shaped the positioning.
Ashkenazy announced they would speak on stage at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society's CyberMarketingCon, held November 15-18 in Austin, Texas, alongside other cybersecurity marketers.
Shlomi Ashkenazy writes about how cybersecurity and B2B software companies should position themselves, in a body of work consistent enough to read in any order.
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Start with the post on interviewing more than 90 CISOs, which lays out the research method behind the other arguments.
Then read the Tenable example to see how a category claim carries into product naming, sales language, and onboarding, followed by the toothpaste piece on usage-led marketing and the B2B-versus-B2C essay, which connects them through an audience-first stance.
The Rein Security posts, including the Series A announcement and the Claude Mythos argument, apply the same thinking to AI agent security: they argue protection should define what an agent is allowed to do rather than chase every new vulnerability.
The day-in-the-life post offers the clearest picture of range: positioning, content, go-to-market systems, product marketing, partnerships, and events handled by one person.
Readers looking for strategy arguments rather than tactical checklists will find the most to follow here; the short LinkedIn essays offer positions and examples rather than deep long-form case studies.
Val Tsanev works the same founder-to-CISO gap Shlomi Ashkenazy writes about, but from the interview side.
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Tsanev's posts describe facilitating thousands of one-to-one meetings between cybersecurity founders and CISOs and hosting a podcast on cybersecurity go-to-market. Both treat direct conversations with buyers as the source of positioning and argue that a vendor's message lands only when it maps to what the buyer already cares about.
Tsanev's material is interview- and event-driven, built around what founders and CISOs say in recorded conversations, and leans toward enterprise sales process and champion-building. Shlomi Ashkenazy writes shorter strategic arguments about category, brand, and product narrative, using CISO interviews as input rather than as the published product.
Sandra Roberts writes about translating security work into business terms, listing CISO priorities such as demonstrating business value, adapting to AI, data protection, security culture, and compliance.
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Shlomi Ashkenazy approaches the same problem from the vendor side: how to explain security to executives, boards, and long-tenured leaders who outlast a typical CISO tenure.
Roberts writes for security leaders' own agendas and long-term roadmaps, including areas like quantum readiness, rather than for the companies selling to them. Shlomi Ashkenazy's posts are aimed at founders and marketers deciding what to build their narrative around.
Steve Hunt's posts describe the credibility gap between security leaders and the executives who hold budget, using a lived example: a CISO who commands a room of security professionals but waits for a three-minute slot on the exec agenda.
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Shlomi Ashkenazy addresses the matching problem from the marketing side, arguing that positioning must be built for a specific audience, not a B2B-or-B2C label.
Hunt focuses on coaching security leaders to operate in business language and promotes a structured assessment for that work. Shlomi Ashkenazy focuses on the vendor's narrative, category naming, and product surfaces, and describes hands-on marketing execution rather than leadership development.
For a campaign aimed at a small, focused practitioner audience rather than a reach play, Shlomi Ashkenazy may be a fit.
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The only measured audience figure published in the posts here is 2,936 LinkedIn followers, observed October 9, 2026.
That tells you scale, not who those followers are.
Ashkenazy writes for cybersecurity founders, product marketers and CISOs.
They describe interviewing more than 92 CISOs about marketing and present that access as a source of positioning insight—the clearest signal that the surrounding audience includes security buyers and the people who sell to them.
Posts address founders and marketers directly, describe a typical day spent on positioning, messaging, GTM engineering and sales enablement at Rein Security, and offer spare tickets to a private, invite-only CISO side event at RSA Conference and a speaking slot at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society's CyberMarketingCon in Austin, November 15–18.
Rein Security's Series A post names enterprise customers Dun & Bradstreet, Swimlane and Lemonade, placing the conversation among security buyers, though the post measures no audience.
For a campaign targeting product marketers inside mid-size security vendors, ask for a recent audience survey or other documented source covering job titles and seniority, plus recent impressions and engagement for posts on positioning and category design at similar depth and format.
LinkedIn followers
2,936
LinkedIn profile account record · 2026-10-09
CISOs interviewed (self-described; practitioner access, not an audience count)
Shlomi Ashkenazy’s posts show public appearances and advisory-style work, not packaged placements.
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They announce a stage talk at CyberMarketingCon in Austin on 15–18 November and a last-minute trip to the RSA Conference.
They also describe their work as a startup advisor and podcast host following one-to-one interviews with more than 90 CISOs, and outline the marketing remit they run at Rein Security.
The posts do not specify sponsorship formats, deliverables, rates, audience terms, or a booking route.
Buyers considering a sponsored post, webinar, event slot, or paid advisory engagement should ask directly whether sponsorships are accepted and confirm the terms before planning.
Brief: a cybersecurity B2B SaaS company wants to strengthen its product marketing and category narrative through a paid advisory or content engagement covering positioning, category design, and usage-led marketing.
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Decision: a strong fit on substance, with scale as the main constraint.
The work makes the case.
Shlomi Ashkenazy documents an interview method for building positioning from buyers’ own words: three questions asked across more than 90 CISO conversations, with themes turned into message pillars.
VDI pain, for example, became the narrative for a secure-access company, while a desire for control over misconfigurations shaped a SaaS security company’s positioning.
That is usable discovery work, not just a deck.
The Tenable piece shows category design extending beyond marketing: the category term carries through platform and feature names, sales language, and customer conversations, with the long-term payoff framed as “Compound Brand Interest.”
The toothpaste and prescription-weight-loss examples make the case for top-of-funnel content that teaches people how to use a product, not just why to buy it—a specific, defensible content-plan position.
Ashkenazy also takes a clear stance against importing consumer tactics wholesale, useful when a client is tempted to copy a competitor’s tone.
The Rein Security posts show the same approach at a live company, including a funding announcement used to advance a category claim about securing AI agents.
The evidence does not establish reach.
The only measured audience figure is 2,936 LinkedIn followers.
Treat this as an expertise-and-deliverables engagement—interviews, category language, message architecture, and a content plan—not a distribution buy.
When to choose a specialist
Need: a high-reach sponsored content package—sponsored posts, a webinar or event slot, or a content series sold on impressions and engagement to a broad security or general B2B audience.
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A close variant is a company outside cybersecurity buying promotional posts on the strength of Ashkenazy’s brand-strategy writing.
Decision: a weak fit based on the published posts.
The evidence points to practical limits.
The only published audience figure is 2,936 LinkedIn followers.
The posts provide no data on impressions, engagement, geography, job titles, or seniority.
They also do not specify sponsorship formats, deliverables, rates, audience terms, or how to book a paid placement; no media kit or partner policy appears.
The published work consists of LinkedIn text posts, so buyers have no evidence of other formats, such as video, talks, long-form articles, or podcasts.
Several strong examples—a $300 million exit following one positioning choice, 8X revenue growth, and work with Dun & Bradstreet, Swimlane, and Lemonade—present outcomes through Ashkenazy’s own framing, not results a sponsor can use to build a media plan.
For a campaign targeting a broad security or general B2B audience, ask for platform analytics and confirmed placement terms before planning around reach or a paid placement.
A worked campaign example
A worked angle for the good-fit brief: an eight-week positioning sprint for a cybersecurity SaaS vendor, delivered as advisory plus content assets rather than a sponsored campaign.
Weeks 1–2, buyer research.
Run a structured interview sprint with the client’s customers and target CISOs using the three questions at the heart of Ashkenazy’s method: how do you handle this today, how would you do it in a perfect world, and what matters most when choosing a new vendor?
Summarize recurring themes in a memo, marking the strongest two or three as candidate narrative pillars.
Weeks 3–4, category audit.
Inventory every place the chosen category term appears—product and platform names, feature and use-case names, onboarding, sales enablement, and account teams’ language on calls—and flag inconsistencies.
The Tenable pattern shows how product surfaces and everyday sales language reinforce a category, not advertising alone.
Weeks 5–6, message architecture.
Turn the interview themes into positioning, message pillars, and a short set of proof points.
Agree which claims the company can substantiate.
Weeks 7–8, usage-led content plan. Build top-of-funnel material that shows prospects how to use the full product, and name an owner for each asset.
Campaign angle to open the engagement: a short, interview-driven report on how security buyers work today versus what they would want in a perfect world. The client publishes it to introduce the new category language, then follows with a “how to use it” content series for prospects.
Set two conditions before signing.
First, agree on success measures—for example, customer interviews completed, tools and personas audited, and assets shipped—because the public outcome examples reflect Ashkenazy’s own framing rather than audited results.
Second, keep reach out of scope or supply it through the client’s own channels.
Choose Val Tsanev when the bottleneck is not the wording but access to the buyers who will judge it.
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Their posts describe five-plus years at Execweb facilitating more than 4,000 one-to-one meetings between cybersecurity founders and CISOs, and a podcast built as "Conversations with Cybersecurity Founders" for founders selling into large enterprises.
If a positioning sprint needs to be tested with enterprise security buyers and repeated in front of them, Tsanev brings the room.
By contrast, the posts about Shlomi Ashkenazy show a method for extracting messages, but not a standing buyer audience.
The renewals post also offers a useful category-brief question: "if my product disappeared tomorrow, could my customer get 80% of the value from something they already own?"
It’s a hard stress test for a new category claim.
Their account of legacy vulnerability management and standalone SOAR being cut for being defensible rather than defective explains why category language must answer a platform-consolidation argument, not just a feature comparison.
The posts show them convening conversations and drawing out patterns, not building message architecture, naming a category, or producing product-narrative assets.
A client hiring Tsanev for a campaign to position a product still needs someone to write the positioning.
The evidence is limited to one podcast announcement and one essay; ask for a positioning deliverable and access to the podcast episodes before hiring.
Choose Sandra Roberts when the goal is to educate security leaders on issues they already track, rather than redesign a category.
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Both posts address a CISO readership: one lays out business-value communication, AI adoption, data governance and privacy, security culture, and regulation as areas CISOs must manage; the other argues that quantum readiness is a board-level roadmap problem, not just a CISO-term problem.
It covers the "harvest now, decrypt later" risk and the mismatch between short CISO tenure and long board tenure.
For a campaign built around steady, credible explainer content that keeps a vendor in front of security buyers on governance, compliance, and long-horizon risk, that framing is a better fit than a positioning exercise.
The posts offer little comparable craft in positioning, category design, or message architecture.
Both are list-shaped summaries pointing readers to a longer article; neither shows how a narrative was built, what changed for a company, or who made the decisions.
Hiring Sandra Roberts for a campaign to position a product would buy topic credibility and CISO-oriented framing, not a positioning method.
That makes Roberts a substitute for one part of the work, not a replacement for Shlomi Ashkenazy.
Choose Steve Hunt when the audience is security leaders and the subject is the credibility gap between the security function and the executive room.
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Their long first-person essays name a problem, describe its symptoms, and propose a method—a structure well suited to thought leadership: "Inside security, you're a hero.
Outside, you're 'that security guy.'" Hunt writes as a thirty-year observer of the pattern, explains why more slides and stronger ROI analysis do not fix it, and describes teaching security leaders to translate risk into the language of business outcomes.
If the client’s product helps CISOs get budget, hold influence, or speak to a board, Hunt is closer to that problem than a general positioning engagement.
Both posts promote Orbit, Hunt’s framework, and read as a pitch for it.
A vendor selling to the same buyer should expect the content to carry a competing offer, not just the client’s message.
This is not product marketing or category design: hiring Hunt for a message-architecture brief buys a different craft.
The posts offer no information about category naming, product-surface language, or usage-led content planning.
Shlomi Ashkenazy's nine LinkedIn posts cover positioning through CISO interviews, category design carried into product naming, usage-led marketing, B2B versus B2C branding, AI agent security commentary, and conference and community appearances.
The posts here have no publication dates, and they are a selection rather than full-lifetime coverage.
Several posts reference events and a funding announcement that place them in recent work.
No talk transcripts, long-form articles, media kit, sponsorship terms, or audience analytics are published in the posts here, so statements about formats and reach are limited to what the posts and follower count of 2,936, recorded on 9 October 2026, show.
Topics and similar-creator judgments in this profile reflect the ideas, format, and teaching approach visible in these posts, compared with posts from three other writers used only for comparison.
Gaps worth further research include any signature book, named podcast, earlier roles, and audience data beyond the follower count.
