ReliaQuest Bowl Places Cybersecurity In The Nationwide Highlight

There are lots of customs and traditions that determine ringing in the new yr. New Year’s Eve parties, looking at the ball drop above Instances Square in New York, toasting with champagne at the stroke of midnight, singing Auld Lang Syne…and college soccer. It’s Bowl Season, child!

Just one of the bowls has a new sponsor. The bowl recreation played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay was recognized as the Hall of Fame Bowl from 1986 to 1995. It has been sponsored by Outback Steakhouse and dubbed the Outback Bowl from 1996 to 2022. When the video game is played on Monday, January 2, 2023, it will be the newly renamed ReliaQuest Bowl.

I am usually opposed to corporation sponsorships of items like race cars, or cycling teams, or whichever. Personally, I truly feel like the athletics normally have a extremely minimal audience and the sponsor branding is so fleeting that it is almost difficult to get the exposure or return on financial investment to make it worthwhile. It is more of an moi issue, or just a particular passion or interest of the CEO, but not essentially a valuable advertising investment.

This is distinct to me. The sponsorship will convey focus to cybersecurity and elevate brand recognition for ReliaQuest in strategies that other sponsorships basically just cannot match. School football has a huge audience in normal, but the holiday break bowl season commonly attracts an even bigger viewing viewers. The ReliaQuest name has been displayed and spoken for weeks major up to the bowl game titles, and it will be heart stage on Monday as the Mississippi State Bulldogs get on the Illinois Battling Illini. ReliaQuest also created a business that will air multiple moments during the ReliaQuest Bowl and will also be aired for the duration of some of the other college or university bowl online games.

Investing in Tampa Bay

There are lots of college bowl online games with heaps of different sponsors, but this one particular has a exceptional Tampa Bay relationship. The recreation is played in Tampa Bay. Outback Steakhouse, the previous sponsor, is headquartered in Tampa Bay. When Outback pulled out and they essential a new sponsor, they discovered a new sponsor also based in Tampa Bay.

I spoke to Brian Murphy, founder and CEO of ReliaQuest, about how the sponsorship offer came jointly. He told me that he was in San Francisco at the time—finalizing a deal to purchase Digital Shadows—when he obtained the simply call.

They described that they had a large amount of curiosity from other manufacturers, but that ReliaQuest does a whole lot with them in the local community presently. Murphy relayed a paraphrased edition of the discussion: “You associate a whole lot. You’re headquartered here. We like the way the makes align, and we consider this could be rather fascinating. What do you think?”

Even nevertheless he was in the center of closing an acquisition offer, he committed to the sponsorship in much less than 12 hours—and the ReliaQuest Bowl was born.

Wave of Momentum

Coupled with the Electronic Shadows acquisition, nabbing the sponsorship for the ReliaQuest Bowl is icing on the cake of a phenomenal yr for ReliaQuest. The enterprise is flourishing, and using a wave of momentum into 2023.

The prevailing storyline for 2022 has been that the overall economy is weak, and the tech and cybersecurity markets are suffering. Home names like Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, as perfectly as key cybersecurity suppliers with hundreds of millions of bucks of investor funding, dominated headlines with information of cutbacks and tens of countless numbers of workers staying laid off. The “sky is falling” narrative drives clicks, but the fact is that most tech and cybersecurity firms are performing fine—and some are simply just crushing it.

ReliaQuest is one particular of those people providers. A person of the crucial distinctions that separates ReliaQuest and other profitable firms from the cybersecurity sellers and tech organizations that are struggling is the underlying culture and the concentrate of the company.

Startups that strive to IPO and companies that concentrate on pleasing traders or shareholders can normally accomplish important brief-time period achievements. Nonetheless, prolonged time period value and the resilience to temperature unfavorable current market ailments arrives from a relentless concentrate on solving challenges for shoppers.

Murphy and I talked about this estimate from Steve Work opportunities, which references a quote attributed to Henry Ford while it is not likely Ford essentially mentioned it):

“Some persons say give the clients what they want, but that’s not my strategy. Our task is to figure out what they’re likely to want in advance of they do. I feel Henry Ford after reported, ‘If I’d request consumers what they wanted, they would’ve informed me a more quickly horse.’ People today really don’t know what they want right until you clearly show it to them. That’s why I under no circumstances count on sector investigation. Our activity is to read through factors that are not but on the webpage.”

Murphy pressured, “It’s how you talk to the problem. We’re not asking shoppers what they want. We’re asking, ‘What issues are you fixing for?’”

He stated, “Nobody asks for a safety operations system. What they will explain is, ‘I will need visibility into my cloud environments, and I have extra than one. I will need to be able to see my cloud environments next to my endpoints.’

In accordance to Murphy, that is the top secret behind the accomplishment of ReliaQuest, and it is the factor that will keep on to accelerate momentum for the organization. They pay attention to prospects and understand about the troubles they need to have to fix and permit that manual and affect where they make investments and what they do the job on subsequent. The base line is that it is about meeting the requirements of the buyer, rather than trying to influence clients they have to have the point you designed.

ReliaQuest Bowl

Cybersecurity and faculty soccer really don’t normally go together. We don’t normally equate Tampa Bay, Florida as a base for tech or cybersecurity providers. But, ReliaQuest is shifting that and the ReliaQuest Bowl will expose the brand to a substantial national audience.

Tune in Monday, January 2, to view the ReliaQuest Bowl. Observe the recreation simply because faculty bowl game titles are a enjoyment aspect of the New Calendar year festivities—but also test it out to guidance a Tampa Bay-centered cybersecurity seller that is flourishing since it is targeted on making a company the appropriate way and delivering what prospects need.