Eyal Worthalter

Eyal WorthalterOct 28, 2026

The best AEs in cyber might have the hardest time selling AI. Been noticing this a lot lately and it's kinda changing how I think about the AE role. In early stage cyber you basically never go to the first call alone. Even if you're technical. You bring your SE because the buyer wants to see somone on your side who gets their stack, and the demo just lands better when they (ie the SE’s) run it. That's where the SDR / AE / SE pod came from, and for SaaS cyber it works. AI is a diffrent animal 🦄 AE does the demo on their own. SA shows up later when it's time to talk implementation with IT. And the SDR seat is getting thinner because there's so much inbound nobody has time for cold outbound anyway. So the AE is going back to full cycle. Less prospecting, way more discovery and qualifcation. Most of the job now is figuring out which inbound is an actual buyer and which is a team playing with a POC and no budget. Quick version: Cyber = SDR books it, SE on every call, demo is a team sport AI = inbound/AI books it, AE demos solo, qualifies and then brings in the rest of the team. SA comes in for implementation The ones I'd worry about are actually the strong cyber AEs. They got really good inside the pod. Years of having an SE next to them and a calendar someone else filled up. Take that away and it's a different job. I’m not saying the classic pod is going away, just narrating how I’m seeing the job evolve. It’s cool to be in sales at this point in time. Everything is changing.

Eyal WorthalterOct 27, 2026

Player-coach VPs of Sales: I was completely against them in cyber. AI is changing my mind. 2 years ago a cybersecurity founder offered me his first VP of Sales seat. He wanted a player-coach. Carry pipeline, build the team. The company: • $3.5M ARR • $150K+ deals • 9-12 month enterprise cycles • Direct plus VARs, no channel motion yet • 1 AE, 3 more to hire • Founder-built HubSpot, no RevOps I passed. Big red flag. I was right. Deals that size mean multiple exec meetings, solution design, and hard negotiations. Every hour I'd spend closing is an hour not spent building the motion, coaching reps, or designing direct and channel comp. Then there's the rep I'd be hired to lead. Carry a number next to him and we're competing from day one. Bad juju. I told the founder to hire one more strong AE and bring in a fractional VP to build the playbook. He disagreed. Hired someone who left less than a year later. They are on their 2nd VP now. I'd give the same advice to any enterprise cyber founder today. BUT: *AI plays are built differently* Look at the revenue curves. Anthropic went from about $9B in run-rate revenue at the end of 2025 to $47B by May. Cursor went from $100M ARR to $2B in about 13 months. When revenue moves like that, nobody hires and ramps reps fast enough. The deals show up before the team does. Someone senior has to close them. The market also moves under you. Buyers, pricing, and competitors shift every few months (weeks??) A playbook written from the office is stale before it's rolled out. The leader sitting in live deals sees the shift first and rewrites the motion that week. A senior leader can also comment on market direction and respond to the latest news better. In an AI hockey stick, carrying a number is part of leading. It's how you learn the market fast enough to coach it. Your startup probably isn't Anthropic. But if pipeline is outrunning your hiring plan, the logic holds. Using AI tools well helps too. Hours back on research and forecasting. Useful, but it's not the reason. The comp conflict still needs solving. Decide who owns which accounts before the VP's first day. But if you are doubling every quarter does it even matter? If you're hiring a player-coach right now, ask yourself one question this week. Is it because your market is moving faster than you can build a team, or to save a salary?

Eyal WorthalterNov 2, 2026

What does Anthropic's S-1 reveal about Cyber GTM? I have an opinion I’d like to share and get your thoughts. The filing splits customers by annual spend. About 250 pay $10M or more. 1,900+ pay over $1M. Then a long tail still running pilots. Here’s my logic: To get an account from pilot to eight figures, two things probably need to happen. The productivity gains have to turn into real value. And security has to sign off. The first one is just Claude doing its own thing and getting connected into the organizations workflows, improving them. The 2nd one is the one that made me think about cyber sales No CFO signs a $10M AI bill until someone in security and IT has looked at it. Which puts cyber right in the path of the biggest technology investment thousands of companies will make. Probably why so much of our industry is wrapped in AI right now. The funny thing is that all our customers know that the fundamentals haven’t changed: Patch. Segment. Protect credentials. The basics are still there. If you sell security for AI, you don't need my theories. Enjoy the year. The part I keep chewing on is what this means for sellers who don't have an AI story. My half-formed theory: it might be a better spot than it looks. Your buyer is stuck in the middle. Leadership wants the company AI-ready. That leaves maybe 10% of their week for everything else, and they know everything else still matters. If that's true, the seller who wins is probably the one who's easiest to say yes to. Quick to deploy. No dedicated admin needed. Fits what they already own. One price, one quote, no six-person review. Maybe even framed as part of getting AI-ready, so you end up as a line item when the AI budget gets rolled up? I could be wrong on this. Things are moving fast enough that I'd rather think out loud than pretend I have a playbook. If you're selling outside the AI bucket right now, are your buyers making room for you as part of the “AI readiness” budget? This is my November discussion with cuber sellers. DM if you have a strong opinion.