For Hysolate, it’s crucial to think ‘out-of-the-box’ during Covid-19

Even though virtual desktops are all the rage right now, isolated ‘workspace-as-a-service’ company Hysolate still had to overcome barriers in their workforce

CTech 09:4027.01.21

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“We are creating a new category around virtual desktops, but face-to-face brainstorming sessions with my team is not possible at the moment, explained Hysolate’s VP Marketing, Karine Regev. While not strictly part of the HR team, Regev is responsible for keeping the structure - and sanity - of 50 employees around the world.

“Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are crucial,” she continued. “All Marketing leaders have shifted their budget to online events and put emphasis on ‘everything digital’.”

Hysolate’s VP Marketing, Karine Regev. Photo: David Garb

For a company that provides a service for virtual desktops, Hysolate was practically in the perfect position to offer a solution for organizations anywhere in the world. However, Regev joined CTech to discuss the impact it had on their day-to-day routines - and how they overcame the unique challenges of Covid-19.

Company Name: Hysolate

Marketing Leader: Karine Regev

Field of Activity: Virtual desktops: Hysolate separates your workspaces to keep risky and personal activities isolated from corporate ones.

Number of employees/location: 50

Professional background of Marketing Manager:

I'm passionate about building and executing the overall go-to-market strategy, creating demand, and telling a simple story around a complex technology.

I bring over 15 years of experience from security and B2B companies, marketing to technical audiences. Today, I am responsible for building Hysolate’s marketing strategy and vision. My goal is to drive market engagement and growth. I oversee the positioning, brand, and go-to-market strategies of Hysolate, promoting its innovative product, and enabling Hysolate’s Sales Team. Prior to joining Hysolate, I was the VP of Marketing at Alcide, a Kubernetes security innovator where I was in charge of developing the company’s brand awareness, demand generation, and team building, leading to a Gartner Cool Vendor acknowledgment and many industry awards. Before Alcide, I was the Marketing Director at Aqua Security, the leading Container Security company, where I worked closely with channels and partners, and for BioCatch, the Behavioral Biometrics company.

On a scale of 1-10, how much did the coronavirus pandemic disrupt operations at the company?

I would say 4. We are an international company with remote employees in the U.S and UK, so we are used to operating in a remote fashion. I can say that onboarding new employees is challenging - I recently hired two team members: with one I managed to have some face-to-face meetings before the lockdown, but with the other everything is online. It’s not simple… The human touch is missing.

Another aspect is what I call Internal PR which I find to be crucial these times. If Marketing and Sales are doing great things but the employees who actually develop the product don’t know about it, then we’re missing out here big time. So although my day-to-day usually focuses on external public relations and media relation management, we also put a lot of emphasis on internal communication since the pandemic hit.

What positive and/or negative impact did the outbreak have on the human capital of the company?

Everybody works super hard and everybody is committed to the success of the company. Obviously, there is a challenge in not meeting prospects and customers in person like we used to, but at the end of the day, we have been working with online meeting platforms for a long time so the switch was relatively easy for us.

What are the two major challenges you are coping with these days?

We are creating a new category around virtual desktops, but face-to-face brainstorming sessions with my team is not possible at the moment. And nothing can replace that. We launched a new product, we responded to market needs, and we’re creating a new category. All while working from home!

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Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are crucial. All Marketing leaders have shifted their budget to online events and put emphasis on ‘everything digital’. But Zoom fatigue is already here and we need to constantly think ‘OK, what's next’? How can I get potential users interested through tutorials, articles, or webinars, get them in the funnel, and get them doing something meaningful on the platform? That’s when creativity comes into play. I constantly think of my end-user, who is working from home or needs to take care of his/her kids, and if I produce content or do an event that I want him to attend - I really need to think of how busy my end-user is and what content or event will actually make a difference for him.

Are you actively recruiting? If so, what is the process and where can the applicants find you?

Yes! Hysolate is a solution that helps companies with remote working, so we are very relevant to the market right now. We have 8 open positions at the moment, in engineering, customer success, QA, and more. We are part of the Team8 family so this surely helps when talking to candidates, and we are also working closely with the HR Team8 team.

Which changes forced upon you by the circumstances will stay in place after Covid-19 is over, and which are you most eager to revert back to normal?

I believe that the hybrid world of employment is not going to change following Covid-19. I expect employees’ satisfaction and productivity to be budget items this year. The gig economy presented us with different types of employees - from full-time to contractors to off-shore employees - and we need to address this unique workforce as a whole.

Security teams will have to be IT teams best friends. IT and Security teams will need to provide solutions that can support this heterogeneous and distributed workforce. The fact that employees can now work from home, from a coffee shop, and from the office means that using their corporate PCs for personal use, and personal laptops for business use, is now the new reality.