Today’s Best Advice Q&A comes from Jerome Gigot, vice president of marketing at Ambarella. He shares the best advice he’s ever gotten, gives tips to security industry pros on the rise and singles out the voice to whom all others in the sector should always listen.
Security Sales & Integration: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Jerome Gigot: A piece of advice that always stuck with me was “people won’t remember what you told them but they’ll remember how you made them feel.” This advice applies to life in general as well as in business and it’s always top of my mind in any interaction with customers, partners and coworkers.
This also guides most of my hiring decisions. If someone makes me feel uneasy, no matter how smart they are, I will keep on looking for a more genuine candidate. Business remains a person-to-person human interaction and, as artificial intelligence can already advise the best logical course of action in any setting, the human touch and establishing those real connections will become ever more important and a key attribute to business success.
SSI: What advice would you give to those looking to achieve success in the security industry?
Gigot: From a SoC manufacturer standpoint, the security industry has always been a bit of a mirage for newcomers. Because it is so fragmented and the basic technical requirements seem quite achievable, countless startups as well as established SoC companies have tried to use this industry as a way to get their technology to market and show business traction.
However, most of them have found out the hard way that the security industry is easy to enter but hard to succeed. The heart of the security industry is formed of very durable companies with excellent engineering teams and a dominating market presence.
Any newcomer needs to be all-in on this industry and understand that this is a long-term effort to build the technology stack and business relationships to be able to really thrive in that space with the big players. There are quick wins in the security industry, but success only comes to those who are committed to it for the long haul.
SSI: If you could point to one person in the security industry and tell up-and-comers, “Make sure to listen to what they have to say,” whom would you pick and why?
Gigot: Rather than a specific person, I always found that my most insightful discussions were with the chief technology officers of the leading companies in the industry. I could name for example Johan Paulsson at Axis Communications, Dieter Joecker, formerly with Bosch Security and then Oosto, Mahesh Saptharishi with Avigilon and now Motorola, and Raj Misra from Verkada.
By their positions and experience, those visionaries are excellent at picking out the noise from the real trends of the industry. I would talk to them any chance I can and ask them what they think about the latest trend or technology.
Eventually, those are the decision-makers who shape our industry and decide when an experiment becomes a product and when a product becomes a must-have. And back to my point in the question above, those CTOs are the real sounding board for any newcomer technology company in this industry, to gauge whether a new technology will just be a cool experiment or if has a real chance to become a pillar of next-gen security system.
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