Young-Sae Song has been marketing for tech startups for over 20 years. He has a wealth of experience in what it's like to work for a tech company in Silicon Valley, and I was given a chance to interview him about his job and industry in general. This interview (edited for clarity) will provide us with an inside perspective about having a tech career, as well as some tips for students!
Could you give us an overview of your professional journey?
I studied industrial engineering for my undergrad and then studied finance and accounting in grad school.
I originally started out in hardware when I got into tech, but over the years, I moved over to software. It's been a journey, and a lot of it was driven by what I found to be my personal interests, so it was less of a mapped-out plan than I had when I was younger. I just found software and tech a lot more interesting than accounting and finance, which I didn't have as much interest in.
I wanted to work in the technology industry because I felt like there was a lot more innovation, and the pace of innovation was much faster, which was what I liked about technology.
I saw that you handle the marketing for these tech companies. Do you work with programming in your job?
Not so much. I work with a lot of programmers or coders, but I don't do the actual coding myself. One of the things you'll find is that tech companies, especially, have a lot of very good technical people.
However, when you want to promote the company or the product you've built, you have to explain it or market it to a non-technical audience. That's where my skills come into play. I can take the technical innovation part of it and translate it into a message that the general market can understand.
Let's say you build a product as the coder. Your customer wouldn't necessarily be another coder. It's a business person trying to solve a business problem, so they're trying to grow their company, increase security, reduce costs, or things like that. There's usually some business value that's driving a technology purchase.
That's what I do a lot with the companies I work for, but you have to know what the code does, even though you don't have to understand the actual code itself.
What's your favorite part of the job?
I work with smaller companies, primarily startups.
I've worked in bigger companies, but what I like about smaller companies is that we're usually working on something much more innovative than an established product or technology.
The second thing is that because the companies are smaller, you can do many more things rather than being very good at one simple task. Now I have to be good at ten different things where I work. It's much more variety in the problems and challenges I face daily.
For example, in the company I work for now, I came up with the concept of the SaaS security control plane, which doesn't exist today. No one knows what it is or why they need one, making it very hard to convince a market to buy and sell it, much less make it a household name. There's nothing called a SaaS security control plane except for my company right now.
Do you need cybersecurity skills for your job in marketing?
A little bit. If you are being hired as a coder, you would need to be very good at cybersecurity. But on the marketing side, you don't need to. You don't need specific cyber security skills, but you need an excellent understanding of companies' cyber security problems. I am not a hacker, nor could I defend against hacking.
For example, you have a Mac. The marketing people couldn't build the Mac; engineers built the Mac. Marketers know why people buy a Mac, how to promote it, and how to make it look fantastic so that people will want to buy it.
What's your daily work routine like?
I have a lot of meetings. Especially since I do a lot of zoom meetings, it takes up many hours every day. We talk about projects and make decisions.
The other big part is creating a lot of content by writing and presenting because a lot of marketing is content based. I have to create information for people to consume, such as to read about or listen to.
The third, big chunk of my day is working with other companies. Think of them as if you're Apple. You sell your products through companies like Best Buy. I would talk to those types of companies and ask them, "Hey, do you understand how to position us?" or "Do you know how to explain it?"
How have cybersecurity and computing changed since you started in the industry?
The internet took off in the late nineties, so it's only been about 20 years. When it started, there weren't as many problems with cybersecurity, and the initial challenges were more about vandalism.
People made DDoS attacks, or they just tried to break in. It wasn't like they were stealing millions of dollars in cryptos or anything like that—the Internet's a key component of our daily life.
It's much more global nowadays, and it's all about making money for cybersecurity. With computing in particular, if you think back to the late nineties to where it is today, computing has come so far. You know, your iPhone is way more powerful than the desktops that we used to have back then.
But then again, that expands the attack surface for cyber security criminals. Right now, they don't have just your desktop to attack; they have your desktop, your iPad, and your iPhone.
What are some aspects of your job that you think people don't know about or wouldn't have expected?
There usually isn't a master plan that will work perfectly. We have an idea and a general direction that we want to go, and then we do our best to try to achieve those goals. Sometimes startups are successful, and sometimes they're not.
People don't really understand startups because it's not just a straight line from A to B, but you're going all over the place.
Do most startups fail, or do some of them become big?
I would say, in general, most startups fail. But when I say that, I include everything from review sites. I would say a lot of them fail.
Do you notice anything different about startups that become successful?
I don't think there's a magic formula. I think some of it is luck, but my opinion is that the startups that are solving big problems with good technology will be more successful than the ones that aren't.
I think the ones that fail are not necessarily going after a big enough problem, or they have a product that doesn't work that well. Or, it just turns out that not enough people care about the issue.
If you had a startup that sold, for example, routers, how would that startup compete with the big-brand reputable companies?
That's an excellent question, and there are a couple of things. The startup would fail if the product is the same and doesn't do anything better. The startup would not have a chance unless it were unique.
There is a case where you're buying a router, let's say a firewall today from Palo Alto. I have the firewall, and it can do the same thing, but it costs only 20% of the big-brand cost. They could be successful in doing something like this, but something about the router has to be better.
It has to be either better, faster, or cheaper is the general rule for a new product. The SaaS security control plan is something new that nobody else does. That's how we're trying to get people's attention: we're trying to do something that we don't think other companies are doing.
Do you have any advice for students who want to go into cybersecurity or computer science?
Of course, you have to do well in your classes, get good grades, and all that stuff. In the interviews, if you're looking to stand out, you have to come across as a person because that's what they'll remember. They'll remember you as a person with a personality versus others who aren't that way.
If you think about it from an interviewer's perspective, if they come to a school to interview eight to ten people daily, everyone will have excellent grades. They're going to have taken the same courses as you.
The difference, if you want to stand out, is that you have to make sure you come across as a natural person. I would make sure that, especially for technical roles, you also focus on the things you like to do outside of tech and computer science to show that you're more well-rounded, like hobbies. It's important to not forget about the non-technical stuff in your life and your interests.
In Short:
If you were a marketer for a tech company, you would still need to know a bit about the technology as you would be in charge of convincing other companies to buy YOUR product and not others.
You don't need a deep technical knowledge, but you'll want to understand the purpose of the product, its benefits, and what it does.
Most startups fail. If you want to create your own startup, make sure it tackles an important, relevant issue that many people care about. Distinguish yourself from existing companies by making your product better, faster, or cheaper.
Focus on your life as a whole, not just your technical skills related to the position you want. Show that you're well-rounded.
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