Ex Employee Intelligence on Cloud and Cybersecurity Competitors 

The Brief 

A cybersecurity company needed pricing and capability intelligence on the professional services offerings of its direct competitors. Rather than relying on publicly available information, they wanted to speak with people who had worked inside those organizations, selling or delivering cybersecurity services within the past year. One qualified participant was needed from each of nine target companies: Akamai, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, F5, Google Cloud, Imperva, Microsoft Azure, and ZScaler. 

Recency and Role Requirements 

The brief was precise in ways that made standard recruitment channels insufficient. Candidates had to have left their employer within the last 12 months, eliminating anyone whose knowledge of pricing structures or service models might have drifted out of relevance. They also had to have been directly involved in customer-facing work rather than internal support, with roles spanning sales, customer success, professional services, and field enablement. 

Sourcing and Validation 

Sourcing ran through LinkedIn Boolean searches calibrated to surface recent employment transitions within cybersecurity and cloud ecosystems, alongside internal expert databases and referrals. Each candidate went through screening conversations to verify the depth of their experience with service pricing and delivery, not just their employment history. All nine companies on the target list were covered, with one validated expert per firm delivered to the client. 

• 9 experts sourced, one per target company 
• 12-month recency filter applied across all participants 
• 9 companies covered: Akamai, AWS, Cloudflare, Fastly, F5, Google Cloud, Imperva, Azure, ZScaler