CHICAGO — Have you ever wondered what it would take to build a membership-organization from the ground up and launch events to connect a community in-person?
Gianna Whitver can tell you how to get it done. She is the Co-Founder of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, which she and her Co-Founder, Maria Velasquez, have built from the ground up for fellow cybersecurity marketers.
In 2020, after years of connecting to share best practices and ideas for marketing to a niche and highly skeptical audience, the two decided to start a Slack channel for other marketers in the cybersecurity industry. That group started with just 10 people, and when it hit 1,500 members in 2022, an in-person event was launched.
The two organized a conference and committed to an 80-person event in Arlington, Virginia — ultimately 218 people bought tickets. At that point, Whitver knew one of the two women needed to quit their job to focus on the care and keeping of the community. Whitver took the leap.
Since then, the Cybersecurity Marketing Society has grown to 4,400 members, three events and summits hosted throughout the year, and a digital community that’s fostered through continuous connection points.
Trade Show Executive caught up with Gianna Whitver to find out more about co-founding the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, building community based on needs and launching events.
MADDY: Take us back to the beginning. What did your career path look like before you founded the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, and what experience most shaped your decision to embark on an entrepreneurial journey?
GIANNA: Immediately before the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, I worked as an in-house marketer at a security company. Before that I worked in commercial real estate investment and development, and before that I worked at IBM, which was on the proposals, RFIs and RFQ side of the house. So I had worked in complicated tech products — we sold servers at IBM, there was middleware, there was technology — but I had never worked in something like cybersecurity, and I had just come from a couple years in commercial real estate investment and development before I got into cybersecurity.
So I was getting punched in the face a little bit. It was so complicated, so technical, so fast-paced. Everybody had so many acronyms that they wanted to use, and I just had no clue what was going on for a lot of it. Well, I had some clue, but I very much needed a lot of help learning the industry and learning our product and things like that.
My career path has always been winding. My first job out of college was IBM. When I was in college, I was a traveling flower saleswoman (I took as many internships as I could). After IBM then I got into real estate — I was the third person at a commercial real estate investment and development firm. And while I was doing that, I was working for South by Southwest, helping them identify interesting startups. One year they had a cyber track and I was like, “Oh, so cool, I love cyber” — as much as a layperson can. I was like, “Oh yeah, strong passwords, so cool!“
So I had identified a cool cybersecurity company to come apply to pitch, they got in, and they got to go to South by Southwest. What I did was go up to them and talk to the guy who worked there — the Chief Strategy Officer at the time — and I said, “Hey, do you need any marketing help? Because I think what you do is really cool.”
He was like, “Maybe.”
And I emailed him every two weeks for the next four months until he gave me a job. That’s how I got into cyber, and maybe why it was a lift for me. I wasn’t working in development or IT, I wasn’t a security or technical person. I went straight from basically this world of buildings into cyber.
MADDY: What gaps did you identify in the cybersecurity marketing space that inspired you to create this organization? How did you know it was the right time to make the leap?
GIANNA: As for how and why we started the society — I actually started the society with my co-founder Maria Velasquez. I met her at the beginning of my career in cyber. We had met online, or she had done an interview at my company or something like that, and she was so awesome and helpful and willing to share with me and answer questions. She was absolutely amazing at marketing automation. I was just learning how to set that up and I was new to the industry; she had been in it for a while.
I worked at a threat intelligence company, she worked at a data diode company, so we didn’t compete. And we would just call each other. I’d be like, “Hey, what do you think of my persona document? Do you think this is what a CISO is like in this vertical?” And she’d be like, “Hey, what did you spend on RSA? What ROI did you get?” We were basically sharing market and industry intelligence with each other from the perspective of marketers — not as cyber folks, but as marketers in cyber — because cyber was just such a different beast.
A couple years later, we were catching up on the phone and said, “Hey, when I would call you and you would call me and we’d talk about the industry and share with each other — why not start a Slack group?” It was 2020, so everything was pandemic. We thought, why don’t we start a Slack group and bring more friends in the industry together so we could all share more, learn more, and get better at our jobs together.
We created it for us. The previous story kind of covers it, but the gaps — my gaps — were like: I don’t know what a CISO is, I don’t know why people are yelling at me, I don’t know why this campaign didn’t work, I don’t know why everything’s so expensive. One fun fact about the cybersecurity industry is that when you buy stuff, a lot of it is very expensive because our personas — our buyers, the security practitioners — are very, very hard to reach. They’re purposely skeptical, purposely avoidant of advertising, purposely trying not to click on things or be contacted by folks who might be threats or trying to scam them. It’s the security industry.
So, it was such a hard journey to get to a place of feeling comfortable in this industry as a marketer. We created it for us, created it for ourselves. I didn’t know how different this industry would be compared to others. And the right time to make the leap was when we saw our very first conference in Arlington in 2022 and saw how it made people feel and how it helped people.
MADDY: For young professionals who may be considering founding their own organization or event, what was the hardest part of getting started, and what ended up being easier than expected?
GIANNA: The hardest part of getting started is getting started. As marketers, we’re very lucky because we have those skills, and with AI, things are easier to start now than ever. But when we started, I built our website — it took 38 hours — and we did it ourselves with WordPress, with a drag-and-drop builder, with our own domain. We did the whole thing ourselves. We eventually got the cheapest version of HubSpot and set that up. Getting people to join was pure hustle — LinkedIn DMs for as many folks as we could reach, talking about it, etc.
It grew organically for years and years. We did outreach and hustled, but really the growth lever ended up being word of mouth. People were like, “This is amazing. I got my job here. I hired someone. You saved me money. You shared information on a vendor I was considering. You helped point me toward great partners.” So it grew on its own for most of the Society’s history.
The hardest part of getting started was getting started, and then keeping it going. It’s like — you can’t just set it and forget it. Anyone who says it’s easy — it’s not easy. You have to care for it and feed it and keep it alive. It’s something that you grow and cultivate. We care a lot about our culture in our community. It’s a very positive, friendly place where we don’t allow any selling. So, you always have to make sure that what you produce, and the culture inside the community, matches the vision of the culture you want. As long as that culture is awesome and you’re providing real value, you’ll keep growing.
As for what ended up being easier than expected — I still get delighted seeing the referral sources. We have a mandatory “how did you hear about us” — we’re marketers, of course we do — and I keep it as an open text field alongside a dropdown. We have 4,400 members, and for the last probably 3,500, they’ve told us where they heard about us, and a huge amount is still word of mouth. Growth is easier than expected as long as you’re providing a great experience. I did not expect it to grow as fast as it did. We didn’t even expect this to be a business to start — now it is a business, and we treat it like one. But we started it solving a problem for us. All we do is create a great experience for folks, and it grows.
MADDY: The Society has events connected to it, including CyberMarketingCon, the CMO Summit, and the CyberCEO Summit. What has surprised you most about stepping into the events industry?
GIANNA: Stepping into the events industry, I had experience on the other side — as the buyer. I had literally spent millions and millions of dollars over the courses of my budgets throughout the years, choosing and deploying capital into events. We would sponsor RSA, Black Hat, cybersecurity financial summits, things like that. On the flip side of things — actually hosting events — I am absolutely still surprised by how expensive things are that wouldn’t be expensive outside of a venue. Food has a cost, buildings have a cost, that’s expected. But I am constantly surprised at some of the pricing for things that I’d say are probably 10x cheaper outside of a venue.
The other thing about the events industry is how rewarding it is. That sounds corny, but it’s so nice to see the members get together in person, because we have a great culture in our community. Our events often feel like family reunions — like 700 of your friends are basically there. And that’s something that I think, while not surprising, is really something I feel.
Our events are so warm and so community-driven — much different than the feeling and vibe when I was on the flip side of things in the cybersecurity industry.
MADDY: How have live events helped to accelerate the Society’s growth and engagement compared to relying on digital-only community building?
GIANNA: Our community grows digitally — we’re now at about five applications to join a day, according to our latest data from the last six months or so, which is a lot. Someone on my team told me it was about five a day and I was like, “Whoa.” We don’t let all those people in, but still.
In marketing, you have to be omni-channel. We just hosted a webinar today where they were talking about having to be across multiple channels — your member, or anyone’s buyer, has their attention spread across so many channels now. For us, we have newsletters, we have our Slack, we have our LinkedIn, we have our socials. We’re going to do a TikTok eventually. Those are the digital things. And then in-person events — either us attending or us hosting, because we also do regional events now — these are accelerators.
For folks who are maybe not digitally native, or who would never participate in a Slack community in a strong way, or who are lurkers, or who have never heard of us for whatever reason — if we’re there in person and they see us, and we show up with the same vibe, culture, energy and value that we share with our digital community, it’s a great opportunity to get in front of new people who would have maybe never stumbled across us otherwise.
Our digital machine is awesome and self-sustaining, but events are a lever to that growth motion. People who would never stumble across us digitally — maybe they don’t search in the right places, maybe they had no concept that we could exist — we can run into them at in-person industry gatherings. They hear about our conference, and a conference is a known thing. If you’re not a big online person, you might not even realize there are digital communities out there for you. But a conference — yeah, you go there to meet people and to learn. That’s standard fare, and I think that’s also why our conference is part of that acceleration. It’s reaching folks who are maybe not digitally focused but are in-person-networking focused.
MADDY: What advice do you give to young professionals who are brand new to the industry and trying to find their place in it?
GIANNA: The cyber industry has a lot of space for a lot of different types of people — there are so many categories. Networking, networking, networking is absolutely key. I just heard about the SISO event a few months ago, showed up on a whim, and the community was so friendly and helpful — everyone was willing to talk. I think now you can get as smart as possible on the industry on your own, and then make sure you’re networking and making great connections with folks in your industry. Make sure you’re putting yourself out there to meet people, and always provide value back when value is given to you.
Also, for anyone who’s a young or early-stage professional — make sure to follow up with the people who have taken time for you. Even if they weren’t directly part of your next step or success, anyone who’s willing to take a call with a young person or an early-stage person wants them to be successful. So, it’s very satisfying for them to hear, months or even a year later, that someone achieved something, got a role, got a job. Keep those connections going. Don’t lose them.
MADDY: What’s one mistake you’re glad you made early on because it taught you something critical?
GIANNA: In the early days of the community — maybe even the first 20 or 25 people — we didn’t have a gate. Anyone could join by clicking a button on our website. We turned that off really fast, and I’m really glad. I noticed quickly that all these people who were not security marketers were getting in. We were able to reverse it — when I say “early on,” it was literally probably the first 30 people or so. Some folks came in who were not marketers, and I realized quickly that if we didn’t put up a gate, this would get flooded.
I’m really glad that we’ve gated the community and kept it as a walled garden, because that is what has kept out a lot of the problems you see in other communities. We’re not for everybody. We’re as friendly, open and positive as we can be, but we’re not a space for selling. We’re creating authentic, sales-free places for people to authentically connect. We are not a place for people to sell, shill or spam, and I’m really glad that I saw that early on and was able to quickly take action. It was a really defining moment — I can clearly remember when that happened, about six years ago.
MADDY: What’s a day-in-the-life detail about being a founder that people outside your experience probably won’t expect?
GIANNA: You spend so much time on boring stuff. It’s not all fun. It’s not all hanging out with members and launching cool things. A lot of it is frustration or dealing with administrative stuff, which is not my strong suit. Thankfully, I have some team members now who are taking on more of that. You also have to learn about governance, management, cadence — things you might not have had to think about as an individual contributor or non-founder.
And we also have to be very, very careful with what we spend. At previous marketing roles, I had a $1.8 million budget, a $2 million budget — plenty of flexibility to do crazy, cool things. Here, we have to do crazy, cool things but think about how to do them in a more sustainable way.
MADDY: To wrap things up — what’s something we might be surprised to learn about you outside of work?
GIANNA: Before this — in 2019 — I had actually quit my job to work on a platform to connect beekeepers, landowners and farmers. I really love bees. I love all types of bees: native bees, native pollinators, even wasps and things like that because they’re pollinators too. But the managed honeybee industry is so fascinating to me. I did that around the same time I started the Society, and that one was a labor of love — just like the Society has been.
I just think the bee industry is really cool. I know way more about honeybees and life inside a beehive than your average person — I could still talk bees with beekeepers. They’re colony insects, bugs that live in a group, which is so cool. They have a society. They just have all sorts of really cool things about them. That’s something people would probably be very surprised to learn about me.
To get more articles like this, sign up for TSE’s free Young Professionals Newsletter.
