The RSAC 2026 after-action report

Hello and welcome to Mind What Matters, the podcast that combines data security with a dose of real-world talk. My name is Samuel Hill. I lead product marketing here at MIND, and I'm joined by Landon Brown, our Field CTO at MIND.

Hey Landon, today's a special episode for us. It's our post-RSAC feedback episode. So let's start off with that. Landon, how was the week for you in San Francisco?

Landen Brown
Well, we made it. That's the number one goal of any one of these massive conferences, making it to the other side.

Unbelievable. I mean, you look at what our vision is as a company, you look at what we're trying to build and what we've achieved thus far over the past year, from RSA to RSA, and you look at just the design that you and the rest of our marketing team slaved over and put into the booth, it all just came together so well.

It's very few and far between that a plan goes as swimmingly as it did for this RSA. So it was just amazing to see and be a part of. It was great. It was awesome.

Samuel Hill
Yeah, I mean, to go from 2025, when we were in the Innovation Sandbox as one of the top 10 startups to watch at RSA, to this year having a fairly large presence on the show floor itself, plus executive meeting suites and off-sites and all the things we got to do over the whole week, quite the week itself.

I know I was very happy to get home to my own bed after the week as well.

Landen Brown
Yeah, I had the pleasure of accidentally telling Dan George, who is one of our sales reps, that I'm getting back into running. And so I've been running for the past five or six weeks.

That was a mistake because Dan George runs every single morning. So every single morning, earlier than I wanted to be awake, I was up running. But it was beautiful down by the pier. You kind of jog past the Alcatraz museum wharf kind of boat tour area.

So it was cool. I got to see some things I'd never seen before as a byproduct of it, but I definitely overtrained, and now I'm overeating and over-resting to recuperate this week.

Samuel Hill
I mean, you made some positive life decisions, it sounds like, at RSAC. And I know many people that did not make positive life decisions during the week down there, but it's one of those things.

Okay, hey, let's dive into the conference itself. I know, Landon, you had the opportunity to meet with lots and lots of our customers and prospects and spend some time on the show floor. What stood out to you about RSAC this year?

Landen Brown
Well, number one, I'm a little miffed that we talked about Wiz cereal and there was actually no Wiz cereal to be had. I made it a point to go to their booth and I didn't see anything. Instead, they had an agent workshop, which leads into my actual answer to your question, Samuel, which is everything was agentic AI this year at RSA.

It really seems like the market has gone through some evolution in regards to agentic AI, because it did seem early on, when agentic AI started to become a thing, that tools and vendors were trying to bake in agents as summarizers, as incident responders, as investigators.

And then we went through a phase where the market very, very suddenly said, you know, if you're just putting AI in your tool and it's just summarizing alerts or summarizing an investigation, I'm not really interested in it. Then they went through a phase of, I want actual AI solutions rather than AI incorporated into an existing solution.

Now it seems like we've pivoted all the way back. I'm not sure if I made this kind of prediction or thought in our last podcast, but it seems like it was right on the button. It seems like all the tools are back to putting AI agents in their software, and everything was AI-agent-focused, which isn't a surprise, but it was definitely the hardcore theme of RSA from my perspective this year.

Samuel Hill
Well, I walked up to the Wiz booth with a bowl and a spoon, and I'd even bought some milk at the local bodega. So they didn't have any cereal for me either. It was quite awkward.

Landen Brown
I'm sure. Yeah, it did seem like everyone at RSA was eating well this year, Samuel. Not only did Wiz have the agentic AI or the agent builder in their booth, you had, who was the company that had actual takeout pizza? Yeah, Lyra. You could actually order a pizza, but you were ordering an agent as part of their platform. It was very interesting.

Samuel Hill
That's the beauty of marketing at RSAC, right? It's the fact that we remember there were pizza boxes. I know exactly which booth you're talking about, and I know the name of the company, but I cannot remember the name of the company right now.

Landen Brown
This is marketing lesson 101. People will remember the pizza, but they won't remember your name.

Samuel Hill
And that's a problem. That's a big problem.

There's another company, I think it was Dropzone, that had a whole diner setup. I think it was like a fifties diner, roller derby diner kind of thing. They came up with little trays of, it was really weird, they had actual food, like plastic food on there. So like, look, you can order a hamburger or milkshake and stuff. But it wasn't real. It was like, man, that's quite disappointing.

Landen Brown
My kids would love this.

Samuel, from your perspective, why do you think there was such a focus on food marketing from product marketing this year?

Samuel Hill
You know, I think it's interesting at RSAC. There's no food on the floor, and it is a significant way to, you know, we're all human, right?

The adage I remember with our large families, and you probably experienced this too, armies march on their stomachs. They can really only go about as far as the supply chain of food will take them. Same thing with adventures with your children. You can only really go do as much as the snacks and food will allow.

And I think that for people walking around the show floor, there is no food really to be had. You have to leave the show floor to go get something to eat or drink. So yeah, it's just such a basic human necessity. It's one of Maslow's very low hierarchy-of-needs items. And it's a really great way to connect with people.

Even at our booth, we were offering food and drink in the form of a snacks cart going up and down the aisle, offering people a soft drink of choice or some snacks, whether protein bars, meat sticks, things like that, bars, whatever they were.

So people get hungry walking around. I know for myself, it was very hard to break away to go get a meal. So I was living off protein bars or items from the snack cart. Don't tell my boss all those things. That's just kind of a reality of how crazy and busy that week is.

Landen Brown
Yeah, I think it highlights how much we've grown as a company and how many other areas of our company are still operating in high-efficiency mode, is what I would call it.

Hiring really good people always takes time, and you want to take that time because the right people on the bus means the bus is going 100 miles an hour in the right direction. If the wrong people are on the bus, it's the wrong direction, the whole adage there.

But man, I would say that this year we really felt it, some more than others absolutely, in how many hours people put in on the show floor. Sam, I don't think you left the booth except to get water or food, for that matter. The SEs definitely didn't leave the booth for probably the same reasons, unless they had meetings in the suite.

So I think everybody was really feeling that, wow, we're growing as a company and as a brand, and the expectations from the market are growing congruently with that. It's time to really start to push the pedal on growing the team so we have more headcount to cover that.

So it's exciting to see the evolution of that as a company.

Samuel Hill
Yeah. No, I know all of us, I think after the very first opening day, it was only a couple-hour opening window that people were out on the floor, but all of us woke up Tuesday morning and really none of us had voices left. We had talked ourselves hoarse giving demos and talking to people at the booth.

But the testament to the team was just how much everybody rallied to be there, to be present, to really dig in and provide an exceptional experience.

I agree with you, the entire engineering team, I don't think they left the booth except if they had a really important previously scheduled thing. I mean, we had BDRs giving full-on product demos and walking people through stuff and answering great questions and just owning their spot in the booth. And I thought that was just incredibly impressive. Very, very proud of the entire MIND team for an exceptional week, for sure.

Landen Brown
Absolutely. I think one of the other takeaways I took from that is if there's an opportunity to hire right before one of these events, it's the best time to hire because anyone who's not a professional demoer at the company leaves the event a professional demoer at the company.

So you look at Parker, our Director of Technical Account Management, for those listening, who does a demo every day like our presales staff. He's walking away basically being able to do even more. Same thing with our BDRs, like you said.

So it was really cool just seeing the growth of the team and how quickly you can make people a professional in that domain in less than a week with the right pressure. So it was awesome.

Samuel Hill
Yeah.

Okay, so let's go through impressions of the show floor at RSAC, or just off the show floor and from the conference itself in general.

I'm going to start with one of the more odd things that I saw in a booth. I'll start off here. There was one company, and we don't need to name names here, Landon, we can play nice in the sandbox. For those of you who were there, you might recognize some of this, but there was one company that had, you know, remember the agents from The Matrix? They had Neo, right, he was the hero. I forget the names of the agents, but they had Matrix agents, people dressed up standing in character in their booth, just standing there. I thought that was a little odd.

Landen Brown
That is a little odd.

Our booth had the flight attendants, by the way. If I had their names, I would shout them out, our booth ambassadors, because they are the best in the business, rolling the cart up and down the aisle. Yeah, they're the best.

I thought ours was actually pretty interesting. I did find the people in actual astronaut suits a little interesting, for one. It was probably incredibly uncomfortable to be in all day long. But I also watched them walk from their hotel to the conference floor every day, all day long, back and forth to lunch. I saw them out across San Francisco pretty regularly.

That was quite odd. Usually it's like, leave your costume at the booth type of thing. But they wore it everywhere in San Francisco, which is great for their brand. Because when I saw them, I thought of the company every time I saw them. So it's probably one of the more interesting things that I saw this time around.

Samuel Hill
A fully committed, full commitment to the brand theme for the booth that week.

Landen Brown
That's right. There are the zippers in the back and no one's helping them.

Samuel Hill
Yeah, just kind of trying to grab it. That's hilarious.

Okay, so I think we had some predictions. We definitely saw plenty of mascots at the show floor booths. That was one of your predictions, Landon, seeing people that have mascots in their booth. And then also the rise of agentic AI. I know you talked about that specifically.

And we also talked about kind of the brand promise, what people expect. One company that I admire is Torque. Every year they show up with a full commitment to their experience and to what they're trying to communicate. I've never actually seen a demo of their platform, but just looking at them from afar, I would assume it's probably really great. Obviously you've got to dive into the details, for sure. But at the same time, there's an expectation that if they're delivering in this way with their brand and their experience, you would expect their product to back it up too.

Landen Brown
Yeah, you know, I know the Torque team pretty dang well from my time at T3. And obviously, our co-founder was one of the first or second employees over at Torque at the time.

And that is their culture. Their culture is exactly what their marketing is. They have a high-efficiency but very low-stress culture, and it shows in everything that they do. They just have fun there. I think it's one of the things that Torque is really known for, and you can see it in some other brands. But man, Torque takes the cake.

Can you prove to other people that you're here to have fun and you're having fun while building your business? Man, Torque conveys that so well. It's almost contagious. You almost want to get a demo just because you want to be a part of the fun. You want to be a part of that environment that they build.

They don't take themselves too seriously, and I think that does wonders for their brand, honestly, compared to their competitive ecosystem.

Samuel Hill
I mean, they're in a super crowded space. Anything around AI SOC, operationalization, alert triage and investigation response is a very crowded space, but they certainly stand out.

We had an opportunity to spend a couple of minutes with their CMO while at RSAC and talk about brand. He was very complimentary of what we're doing here at MIND, which was kind of nice. It's like when people you admire say something nice about you, you're like, that's really, really cool.

And no, I did not get a tattoo, Landon. Did you get a tattoo at RSAC this year?

Landen Brown
No, I didn't get a tattoo. But I will say I was told a story of a co-founder in one of the adjacent spaces to us who got a tattoo on their buttocks of their company logo and then was fired about a week later, let go by the board actually, and now lives on with this permanent tattoo of a very painful memory in his life.

I'm glad I didn't get a tattoo, Samuel.

Samuel Hill
It's a good call. A mutual friend of ours also had a tattoo of a previous company put on his body. He is now no longer at that company and is leading somewhere else as well. So it's not a wise decision at all.

Well, all right, Landon. Hey, man, this was fun. I know RSAC is always a big investment of everybody's time, everybody's energy levels and all that kind of stuff. So I appreciate you being there and supporting everything we were doing.

Any other last thoughts or follow-up points from the conference, things that you're taking away or want to see next year?

Landen Brown
You know, I think we're moving to an era where the market is asking for realism and tangibility. That's one of the big things that I took away from every conversation we had, from the booths we visited, from the people that rolled their eyes at this statement or that statement, just observing people and their behavior and their responsiveness to the messaging around RSA.

People are getting tired of the fluff. They're getting tired of the claims of AI. They're getting tired of the phrase agentic AI.

They want to see tangible results and tangible outcomes, which I think is a great place to be as a company and for everybody, in my opinion, because it takes much less effort to produce outcomes than it does to promise outcomes and dance your way around them.

So I think that's an exciting spot for us to be in. And I think that's one of the things we're taking away, let's be tangible. Let's let everything that we do in product and presales and postsales and everything that we do at our company be tangible for our customers and our prospects.

So what about you, Sam?

Samuel Hill
Yeah, I thought that was actually interesting in our booth. We had the demo screens up. We didn't have enough demo screens in our booth, candidly. I think we needed maybe a couple more. But people would just kind of wander up. They'd walk right up to the screen, grab the little mouse and start just clicking through and giving themselves a demo in the demo environment that we have.

It's sanitized, it's safe for them to do that, they're not going to break anything. But just them being able to click through, walk through and kind of see how stuff works, that mattered.

I walked up on somebody that had already gotten to our doc site with an integration guide for M365 or something, and I was like, hi, can I help? What questions can we answer for you?

Landen Brown
That's awesome. Yeah, how many companies can say the same? That's incredible in and of itself. I love that.

Samuel Hill
Yeah, but you're absolutely right. It needs to be real. Telling the truth usually wins. And I agree, the market has moved beyond thought leadership about AI. We really want to see the proof in the pudding baked into stuff, delivering actual value.

I even think we saw this, and we're going to talk more about this in the next couple of weeks with some research that we've done, data points showing that security leaders no longer just want visibility into stuff. Don't tell me about a problem I have unless you can also bring me a solution or a way to mitigate it or shift it or whatever we're going to do with that problem that you've identified.

And I think this is a fantastic place for this industry. We saw this financially too. The market has been doing these things for the last couple of years with funding rounds and venture capital, and it's way above my pay grade. But at the same time, you've seen companies that have a real balance sheet and actual profit-and-loss discipline, and they've been able to ride the waves instead of the grow-at-all-costs mentality. If you run out of money, just go get more, just get another term sheet.

Those companies that have not had that discipline have struggled. And I think now we're going to see technically that companies that have not had the discipline to actually build real, tangible outcomes and effectiveness into their product and platforms, those are going to be the ones that struggle in this prove-it kind of future.

Landen Brown
Yeah, it's a great perspective, and I think the rest of this year is going to be pretty paramount to seeing how some of that stuff plays out. So I will be watching, we'll be talking and we'll probably revisit this topic quite often as we continue.

Samuel Hill
You know that is right.

Well, Landon, I'm glad you made it home safely from RSA. It was so great to spend the week with you. And I'm not sorry that I did not join you and our friend Dan for a run in the morning. That was probably far faster than I wanted to move that early in the morning.

But all that to say, a great week was had by all. And we are very much looking forward to the other big conferences we have planned for this year and also RSAC 2027, which feels very weird to say.

So with all that, my name is Samuel Hill, and for Landon Brown, that's all for now.