Where I help.
Every engagement starts in one of the areas below. Most end up touching two or three of the others. None of them are pre-canned. They're questions I've spent real time answering for myself and many other customers.
Anyone can build a deck. The hard part is making it all run.
I work with two kinds of clients, enterprise tech and security leaders and the startups building product for them, on the decisions that make things actually run.
- 26 yearsof building enterprise products and working with customers
- 45%of the Fortune 100 as Twistlock customers
- $410Mexit from Twistlock, starting from 0
- 20+patents · author, NIST SP 800-190 · former CNCF governing board member
> About
Who am I?
I'm John Morello. I've spent my career at the intersection of enterprise technology, security, and product. 14 years at Microsoft consulting for the F100, DoD, IC, and the White House and then working on product for Windows and Azure. CISO of an S&P 500 company. Co-founder and CTO of Twistlock, where we grew to serve over 400 customers, including 45% the Fortune 100, and exited to Palo Alto Networks for over $400MM.
I ran product for Prisma Cloud at Palo Alto Networks, an 80 person org across product, security research, and government affairs, and helped grow the business to >$200MM ARR. I authored NIST SP 800-190, hold more than 20 patents, and was a Cloud Native Computing Foundation governing board member. I've been at it long enough to know what makes enterprise tech and security teams, and the startups building for them, successful.
Customers I've directly worked with
> Practice
> 01 · Technology & Security Programs
Stand up a technology or security program that actually aligns with the business.
For CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs who inherited a program that needs work, or who are building one from the ground up. What to prioritize in the first year, what to insource versus buy, and how to frame investment and risk decisions so the board can actually follow along. I've done this from both sides, as an S&P 500 CISO and a product CTO.
> 02 · Realize Actual AI Benefits
AI: "everybody who's against it is too against it and everybody who's for it is too for it."
The gap between "AI powered" marketing and actual product capabilities is enormous. I help teams cut through the noise, pick the AI investments that pay off, and drive actual adoption across engineering, operations, and security. Grounded in over 25 years of watching enterprise tech vendors overpromise.
> 03 · Technology & Security Strategy
Realistic, achievable plans delivered quickly.
The strategy your CEO signs off on, your teams can execute, and that survives (or at least adapts to) first contact with reality. Planning that's thoughtful and comprehensive but doesn't take man-months of meetings.
> 04 · Technology and Vendor Selection
Buy technology you'll actually use and rationalize what you've already bought.
Enterprise IT and security portfolios have more overlapping vendors than most markets. Many customers have multiple tools where one would do the job. I help enterprises run evaluations and POCs that stress products, negotiate from a position of understanding, and consolidate without losing capabilities they need.
> 05 · Technology Architecture and Design
Design and build tech stacks that work with your tools, teams, and environments.
Choosing the right technology is only the start. I help customers design how it integrates with the rest of their systems, think through how to deploy it successfully, utilize the telemetry it emits, and identify quantifiable measurements of results. I help customers build real solutions for cloud, security, and AI.
> 01 · Ideation
Is this a real market, and if it is, why hasn't someone already built it?
Before anyone writes a line of code, I help founders check their ideas against how enterprise buyers actually make decisions. Sometimes the idea is right and the timing is wrong. Sometimes the timing is good but the idea needs refinement. I help founders think through the questions and approach to knowing.
> 02 · Product-Market Fit
Enterprise tech and security have short buyer lists and a long sales cycles. Early signals are hard to read.
I help founders design the right 'first 20' customers program: who to talk to, what to build, what to instrument, and what to prioritize. At Twistlock, those first 20 customers taught us more than anything else and set the direction for succeeding with the next 400.
> 03 · Product Strategy
Roadmaps are easy. Choosing what to say 'no' or 'later' to is not.
Picking the right features and focus to win against a well-funded competitor or giant incumbent is hard. I've been on both sides of it: building the challengers in Twistlock and the first release of Azure, as well as running the incumbent's product for Prisma Cloud and working on Windows.
> 04 · Product Marketing
Enterprise buyers are overwhelmed with indistinguishable claims from countless vendors.
I help founders talk the way their buyers actually talk, position honestly against the alternatives (including doing nothing), and build the core set of assets that moves a sales cycle. The point is to sound like you, communicate concisely and clearly to buyers why you're different, and do that consistently.
I help you build on this by leveraging AI with a product marketing 'harness' of thoughtful prompts, a clear and current knowledge base, and consistent voice to efficiently scale high quality content production.
> 05 · Technical Selling
A great product with a weak technical sales function loses to a mediocre one with a strong one.
I help founders build the sales engineering orgs that let their product win in a hostile POC: the hiring bar, the comp model, the demo, and the escalation path. I've done enough of those POCs myself to know what makes a good one and what makes a great one.
> 06 · Customer Success
Great customer experiences are built around great systems.
I've built customer engineering functions from ground zero to supporting hundreds of customers with a few globally dispersed engineers. I help you create the right processes for managing escalations and feature requests, make docs a competitive advantage, and choose the right systems and tools to make it all work efficiently.
> Engagements
How this works.
The engagement shapes are the same for both audiences. I keep the roster small on purpose. Most work is a monthly retainer; some is a short, focused dive. What you get in either case is my direct time and expertise, not a deck someone else built nor an AI proxy.
Retainer
Monthly cadence, one or two topics at a time, typically for a few quarters. Ongoing meetings, async review, and direct access between sessions. Work products that directly support your mission. This is the usual approach.
Deep dive
Two to four weeks, one specific decision, design, or product launch. Ends with clear guidance and the artifacts to act on it.
Full Bootup
For enterprises, designing the strategy, program, or key technology deployment and seeing it through to reality. For startups, low-level help from ideation, to launching the MVP, to getting the first customers, and everything in between. One of these at a time for 1-3 months.
> Note
I don't take equity only engagements and I don't ghostwrite content. If I'm not a fit for what you need, I'll say so on the first meeting and point you to someone who is.
> Contact
The best introduction is a specific problem.
Send an email about the problem you'd like help solving. If it's a fit, we'll set up a call.
- john@runtimepartners.us
- linkedin.com/in/john-morello