NetSPI has been a leader in the cybersecurity space for over 20 years. The company began as a pure-play penetration testing firm built to serve large enterprises needing scalable security testing. Since then, NetSPI has grown to a team of 350 pen testers worldwide and has expanded beyond traditional pen testing. Today, NetSPI is a trusted partner for proactive security, specializing in cyber threat exposure management. While NetSPI primarily serves customers across North America, it’s rapidly expanding its presence in EMEA.
As NetSPI continues to grow and extend its global footprint, the company is also evolving the way it delivers security solutions to customers. One key part of this evolution is expanding sales channels through AWS Marketplace so NetSPI can meet buyers where they’re at. To learn more about this shift, we spoke with Nicole McCowan, AWS Alliance Lead; Alvaro Warden, VP of Worldwide Channels; and Patrick O’Conner, Partner Marketing Manager about NetSPI’s cloud journey and what it means for customers.
Watch the full video interview here.
Driving Impact with Tackle
In just six months since Nicole, Alvaro, and Patrick took over the cloud motion, the company has seen tangible results using the Tackle Platform to manage and optimize its Cloud GTM strategy. “It’s very easy for us to go into the Tackle Platform, look at our dashboard, and see exactly how much revenue we’ve transacted across each hyperscaler,” shared Alvaro Warden, VP of Worldwide Channels at NetSPI. “Having a single pane of glass view across all platforms has been helpful. It’s much easier than trying to use Salesforce to pull reports manually.”
Beyond revenue visibility, the ability to track co-sell activity has been a key advantage. “We can see how many opportunities have been submitted, and it’s great to have all of that data in one place that we can easily view, access, and track over time,” said Nicole McCowan, AWS Alliance Lead at NetSPI.
For the sales team, the insights from Tackle have been a catalyst for engagement. “We’re seeing that light bulb turn on from AE to AE as they discover accounts with a high propensity to buy through marketplace with the reports coming from Tackle,” added Patrick O’Conner, Partner Marketing Manager at NetSPI. “Even before the Salesforce integration, this was valuable, and now that we have the integration implemented, it’s accelerating that light bulb moment even faster. Here’s to more acceleration.”
By working with Tackle, NetSPI has already reached many key goals. “We’ve been able to hit a ton of milestones and implement a co-sell strategy with our team,” Nicole explained. “We’re excited to see what else we can do with that this year.”
Let’s take a closer look at NetSPI’s Cloud GTM journey to see how it achieved these early milestones.
Expanding Sales Channels with AWS Marketplace
At the beginning of its journey, NetSPI recognized AWS Marketplace as a strategic channel after gaining deeper insight into its potential through working with Tackle. When Nicole joined NetSPI and began collaborating closely with the Tackle team, they worked together to complete a TAM analysis and ROI assessment using Tackle Prospect data, highlighting the significant opportunities that AWS Marketplace could offer.
Seeing the clear value, the NetSPI team quickly realized that marketplace wasn’t just another sales avenue; it was a critical channel to unlock additional revenue and streamline purchasing processes for their customers.
“After we saw the TAM analysis and ROI our minds were blown,” said Nicole. “As part of the channel and partner organization, I knew this channel was one we absolutely needed to open for our reps. That’s the whole point: unlocking additional revenue and opportunities for success.”
Securing Executive Buy-In for Marketplace Success
While the opportunities with marketplace were clear, unlocking its full potential required alignment across the company. Gaining executive sponsorship was a crucial step in NetSPI’s AWS Marketplace journey.
With leadership changes in the past year, the NetSPI team needed to identify the right internal champions who would advocate for marketplace as a strategic channel. Fortunately, when Alvaro joined the company, his prior experience working with Tackle made him an immediate supporter.
“It was awesome to have Alvaro as a new leader come in and be accepting and motivated to go down this path,” said Nicole. “He gave us the thumbs up and said, ‘Absolutely, we want to work with them. We want to go all in on AWS Marketplace.’”
From there, the NetSPI team took a structured approach to aligning key stakeholders. Working with the Tackle team, NetSPI built out a strategy to bring leadership on board, securing buy-in from their CRO, new VP of Sales, and frontline sales management.
Getting the Journey Started with Tackle
With executive buy-in secured and a clear strategy in place, the next challenge was execution. For many ISVs starting their Cloud GTM journey, one of the biggest hurdles is simply figuring out how to get listed on marketplace. NetSPI faced this same challenge, with limited bandwidth from its product and engineering teams to build the necessary integration.
“For me specifically, it was near impossible to get time from our product and engineering teams to actually create an integration that would get us on marketplace as a first step,” said Alvaro. “When I came across Tackle, it was the proverbial easy button. In less than 30 days, we were able to get fully operationalized and actually start transacting on the marketplace.”
With that initial challenge solved, the focus quickly shifted to optimizing NetSPI’s marketplace motion through streamlining operations—that’s where the Tackle Platform comes in.
Maximizing Efficiency with the Tackle Platform
To fully capitalize on the channel, NetSPI needed a way to streamline operations, reduce friction for its sales team, and accelerate deal velocity. The Tackle Cloud GTM Platform has been crucial for helping NetSPI achieve all of this and more, simplifying and accelerating its go-to-market strategy.
“The platform as a whole is easy to navigate and use. It’s extremely user-friendly,” said Nicole. “The Tackle Platform makes it easy to submit marketplace offers. The first few times I went through the process, I wanted to triple check everything, and Tackle’s support team was always readily available. When we needed a change order, which was a bit different from the usual private offer submission process, the Tackle team jumped on a call with me and helped me get it done the same day. That level of support is just tremendous.”
Beyond offer submissions, the visibility the Tackle Platform grants throughout the private offer process has also been a huge advantage. “Getting notifications when a private offer has been viewed, accepted, and where it is in the process keeps our teams and customers fully up to date,” Nicole added.
Alvaro echoed the impact on streamlining sales operations. “The quote-to-cash process is just incredibly seamless. What would have taken our team months, if not quarters, to implement is now fully automated. The ability to track private offers, see where the buyer is in their journey, and have all of that feed directly into our CRM has been indispensable.”
Strengthening Seller Engagement with Tackle’s Salesforce Integration
Enabling its sales team to embrace AWS Marketplace as a channel was a key priority for NetSPI, and Tackle’s Salesforce integration proved to be invaluable in that effort.
“The integration is gold. It’s absolutely awesome. Once we implemented that, I feel like the switch flipped,” said Nicole. “Tackle Prospect is great, and once you have the integration, you can literally upload the accounts and score all of them in Salesforce. It’s just a game-changer.”
With this integration, NetSPI has been able to create detailed reports that give its sales team full visibility into high-propensity accounts, opportunity stages, and even prospective campaigns with SDRs. The seamless access to actionable data has made AWS Marketplace a natural part of its sales strategy, driving adoption across the team.
Maximizing Co-selling Success with Enablement and Partnership
For NetSPI, co-selling is more than just a strategy; it’s a motion the company is embedding into its sales organization with the help of Tackle and AWS.
“We’re going through enablement training, which has been super helpful in getting our AEs up to speed on how Tackle has supported us from the beginning and where we’re at now,” said Nicole. “We’ve been working closely with the Tackle team on tailored enablement sessions to ensure our team understands the integration, the co-sell process, and how to navigate conversations with AWS reps.”
Beyond training, NetSPI has leaned on Tackle for ongoing support, from real-time collaboration in Slack to tailored content that guides its sellers through the co-sell process. “It truly does feel like a partnership with Tackle,” Alvaro added. “Tackle is invested in our success, and it shows. Their expertise and hands-on support have been instrumental in helping us align our go-to-market strategy with the cloud hyperscalers.”
Unlocking Growth with ISV Accelerate
For NetSPI, achieving ISV Accelerate (ISVA) status was a strategic move to amplify its cloud-go-market motion and fully leverage AWS Marketplace. “It was important for us to get to ISV Accelerate status simply because we wanted to get that co-sell flywheel spinning,” Alvaro explained. “This is very much a go-to-market strategy that aligns with our channel-first approach, and we see it as a force multiplier for driving net-new opportunities and increasing market awareness.”
As the first company within the KKR portfolio to be accepted into the ISVA program, NetSPI saw this as both an achievement and a launchpad for further growth. “We’re proud of that and excited to keep the momentum going,” said Nicole. Tackle has been an extension of our team throughout this process, joining nearly every call we had with AWS and providing invaluable support.”
Patrick added that being part of AWS’ private equity program gave NetSPI additional motivation and confidence. “From day one, we had Tackle’s support, which gave us a pep in our step at every stage of this journey. We knew we had strong backing, not just from Tackle, but also from AWS and our private equity partners. Jumping in early on this program has set us up for long-term success, and we’re excited to keep building on that foundation.”
Looking Ahead: Scaling NetSPI’s Cloud GTM Strategy
With the foundational work complete, NetSPI is now in full execution mode, driving deeper relationships and expanding its Cloud GTM motion. “Now, this is where the real work begins,” Nicole shared. “Building out our strategy with AWS, co-sell, and those key relationships will be critical. We’re working closely with our reps to ensure they feel confident and successful in their AWS conversations, identifying high-propensity opportunities, and creating a strong rapport so we can collaborate on deals.”
In addition to relationship-building, NetSPI is focused on increasing brand visibility and marketplace presence. “We want to refine our competencies, leverage them for momentum at regional events, optimize our marketplace profile, and tie our website more intelligently to our marketplace efforts,” Patrick noted.
From a revenue standpoint, Alvaro outlined a clear milestone: “I’d love to see us hit $2 million in revenue booked via the marketplace. Beyond that, we want to establish a reciprocal pipeline with AWS reps, where opportunities flow in both directions. As we gain traction with AWS, the next natural step will be expanding into Azure and GCP.”
