Exit Five Meetup + Live Pod In NYC: How The CMO Of Varonis Runs Marketing

At the Exit Five meetup in New York City last week, 125 B2B marketers came out for some fun and networking and a live pod recording with me and my guest, Rob Sobers, CMO of Varonis.

Rob joined the company almost 15 years ago as a “technical marketer,” and has since helped take it from startup through its 2014 IPO, and has served as CMO since 2022. He’s also one of the most helpful and kindest members of our executive community. Before marketing, he spent 10 years as a software engineer, including time at Fog Creek alongside the teams that built Trello and Stack Overflow. He still writes JavaScript and CSS today.

A few hours before the event, Varonis announced it was being acquired by Proofpoint in an all-cash deal valued at $6.3 billion. Rob was heavily involved in the deal, running on no sleep, and still battled through NYC rush hour traffic to come share his knowledge with our group.

Here are a few highlights from my chat with Rob that are worth taking into your 2027 planning.

1. Every Leader Should Be Shipping Work (Not Just Managing People)

Every manager on Rob’s team is an expert at their function, and they still do the thing they manage. His Creative Director runs the creative team and is still deep in Figma designing, and his Field Marketing leader still runs events by herself as needed. Rob still runs webinars himself. In his words, “No job is beneath me.”

I LOVE THE WAY HE THINKS ABOUT MARKETING. Rob would rather understaff than overstaff. Extra people create work at the bottom of the priority list and what he calls a “communication tax,” meaning more meetings than you need. The flip side is recognizing when your team is dehydrated and it’s actually time to add people.

In addition to shipping, knowledge sharing is built into the culture too. Every Friday the team runs an AI Show and Tell, where people demo the skills they made and the boring processes they automated away.

Leaders also own their own plans. Rob shared that every one of them writes a strategy memo each year before planning kicks off.

2. Use The “Reasonability” Test Instead Of Obsessing Over Tracking Every Data Point

Rob believes in a reasonability test over having to track direct response conversion for every touch point in marketing. Some ideas are just obviously good, like a podcast, a blog, or a place to host your top customers. Forcing a pipeline number onto them only frustrates your team without making the marketing any better.

Varonis lives this. When they moved their HQ to Miami, they built an executive briefing center where they fly in top customers to talk about the roadmap and invite them to give feedback in person (full kitchen, barista, the works). The person running it has one goal: get as many key executives through the doors as possible.

Rob’s content lead, Lexi, built a Capture the Flag game for security practitioners. Her KPI is player count, not pipeline, because the game passes the reasonability test: Rob’s audience loves these challenges (he’s says it’s “like catnip” for this ICP), so there’s no need to prove each player turned into a deal. More players is the top-line goal.

3. Keep Content Fresh, So AI Can Tell The Right Story On Your Behalf

Winning AI search is becoming a major priority for Rob, and for him it’s about sentiment as much as visibility. Old content can keep reinforcing an outdated version of your company long after you’ve moved on. So the job is to audit what’s out there, fix the negative, and double down on the positive. (Rob called out Firecrawl as a useful tool here. It scrapes your existing content and monitors it for changes.)

Your website is part of this too. It now has two audiences: humans and agents. More research is happening through AI before a person ever gets involved, and if your site isn’t structured so agents can easily understand it, you’re going to fall behind.

(Shout out Alex Gould for your recap post with this insight – Alex been following Exit Five for a while, came out to see what the hype was about, and wrote up his own notes on LinkedIn from Rob’s talk. Appreciate, you Alex!)

4. The more automated your marketing gets, the more human touch stands out

Rob’s says that when it comes to trade show booths – you’ve already paid for the space, so use it to earn attention. The brands that stand out on the show floor are the ones willing to get weird, bold, or memorable. Rob also made the point that the more automated marketing becomes, the more valuable human touches feel. Simple things like handwritten notes, bagels, cupcakes, and thoughtful direct mail stand out when everyone else is scaling outreach through automation.

Are You Craving More In Person Events?

Exit Five is a remote company, so I love that I get to spend time with my family all the time, but it’s been great to have a reason to travel more. The day before the meetup, Dan, Matt, and Allison locked us in a random WeWork on Broadway to plan 2027, including what to double down on and what to cut (even some stuff that’s working). Inspired for what’s ahead – let’s keep it rolling.