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dnsUNFILTERED: Kate Trojanowski, Director of Product Management at DNSFilter
Podcast > Episode 32 | July 21, 2025
Mikey speaks with Kate Trojanowski, the Director of Product Management at DNSFilter about the Zorus transition, the integration of technologies between the two companies, and the importance of understanding the MSP ecosystem. They discuss the significance of customer engagement through quarterly business reviews, the recognition of Kate as CRN's Woman of the Channel, and the future roadmap for both platforms. The conversation also highlights the critical role of DNS filtering in cybersecurity and the collaborative efforts across departments to enhance user experience and product development.
Mikey Pruitt (00:01)
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of DNS unfiltered. I'm Mikey Pruitt joined today by Kate Trojanowski, the product manager of Zoros. I'm so excited. Kate, how are you?
Kate Trojanowski (00:11)
I'm good, excited to be here.
Mikey Pruitt (00:13)
So let's first talk about the elephant in the room. were like director of product, ⁓ VP of product and engineering at Zorris, and now you're part of DNS filter. How's that transition going?
Kate Trojanowski (00:26)
⁓ right now it's a little chaotic just learning all the pieces of both sides and integrating teams and processes, but I'm very excited of how our products can make sense together and the pros and cons and the opportunities that we have. I think team wise as well, it was a match made in heaven. And so it's so rare that you'll see.
products can make sense to come together, but the team and the team cultures also were such a great fit. And so it's really, while there's the immediate chaos, like I'm very optimistic of what we're going to be able to build and do together.
Mikey Pruitt (01:09)
Yeah, have the same sentiment. I've been very impressed at how well the two teams are meshing and gelling together. Like we've already been cracking jokes. had a funny riff about, was it Brandon Hood? One of your engineers, I believe. He ⁓ thought he was anonymously making fun or not really making fun. He was kind of commenting on my beard on a video training that we have. And he didn't notice that anyone reads these comments. So we had to get laugh about that. That was a lot of fun.
Kate Trojanowski (01:21)
Yeah.
He did.
I don't.
Mikey Pruitt (01:39)
Hey Brandon.
Kate Trojanowski (01:40)
Oh
my gosh, Hood, yeah. I had to ping him and I was like, so I don't know where you are and what you're doing, but we're getting live feedback of your comments. He's like, people read those? I was like, yes. Yes, they do.
Mikey Pruitt (01:55)
We have an entire
Slack channel dedicated to him. But we made up and I sent him some fresh DNS filter swag, so all good. He did call me the beard king, so you I mean, I was that like made my day actually.
Kate Trojanowski (02:06)
⁓ and he did. So.
You're like,
I was having a beard day. Thank you for noticing, sir. It's hard to keep this maintained.
Mikey Pruitt (02:17)
Yes.
So regarding the ⁓ technical, the technology from both DNS filter and XORUS, what do you see as meshing so well together?
Kate Trojanowski (02:32)
I think the security posture of DNS filter and how the networks run, but even the threat Intel and its capabilities and the scale at which it's operating is insane. It's really cool to kind of see how it's working behind the scenes, but also know the gravity of the impact it makes with finding the threats 10 days faster.
Just the amount of places you're filtering and the partnerships that you have where you can even get more like security posture in place because of that is really fascinating to me. And to be able to hook that in to where Zorris is really strong at the endpoint level and marry that those two technologies together is really cool.
And then Zorris, where we were going, as you know, is with the cyber site, which is the user-based analytics about what's happening, which I think is a pretty big gap in the security market. Combining that with the power of your threat intel and the data volumes that you have, I think there's a really, really cool opportunity there bringing those forces together.
Mikey Pruitt (03:51)
Yeah, I totally agree. used to be the product manager of DNS filter during the time we built our ⁓ our insights analytics kind of package us in the backend. And we, know, we had big aspirations to build it, but we only have domain data. So it's like we can only give you certain things and it didn't meet our expectations. Like we did a good job, but it would be so much better with data like source has. So this is a
Kate Trojanowski (04:07)
Right.
Mikey Pruitt (04:20)
a really good ⁓ marriage, bringing those horses as you said together. I'm really excited.
Let's just think it. yeah, I forgot my train of thought. We'll leave that in, don't worry. So, Zorus and DNSFilter both are very big in the MSP space. You know, we've been clashing from time to time, you know, competing against each other for the attention and customers in the MSP space. And Zorus has done a really good job of cultivating that ecosystem.
Kate Trojanowski (04:41)
Yes.
Mikey Pruitt (04:58)
And I think UK are a big, big reason for that. So tell me a little bit about your, your MSP strategy and what MSPs love about Zorus.
Kate Trojanowski (04:58)
Yeah.
I mean, MSPs run their business. Their operating model is very different from like a direct customer, an enterprise customer in how they manage things. And so the best thing is just to listen to them. You can learn a lot by just talking to them and hearing their pain points. Obviously I used to work at connect wise, which is a power house in the MSP space for their core stack. So.
There are a lot of good principles there of just, we used to do what we call follow me homes where we would literally go to the MSP business on site and actually observe how they operate. How are their technicians? How does the CEO engage with people? What tools are they running? ⁓ So came to the table at Zorus with a lot of that.
insight and perspective to then be able to look at what Zorus did as a product and see how it could fit in that ecosystem. I think the biggest thing with MSPs and the light bulb moment I had early on is knowing their source of truth because in product and engineering land source of truth is important to know when you're delivering roadmap and how you're executing on it. So.
In visiting a lot of their businesses, the thing I didn't understand when I worked at the lab tech RMM that became Connectwise Automate side was they didn't live in the RMM. They lived in the PSA as their source of truth to operate. And that was jarring for me at first because you put so much focus on your portal and interacting with your product and how are they going to use it.
But everything started with the PSA to alert them and ticket them to then go into this other tool. So when we came on to Zorris, having that already in our minds, it was like, they're not going to log into Zorris every day. This isn't their source of truth. So what's the value prop of what we're doing and how can we make that easier when they are alerted in the PSA to do something? What information are they looking for?
the other aspect of it is, you know, if an MSP is doing a good job, there's not noise, there's not things to be done. It's quiet. And when things are quiet, you go, why do I pay you money? ⁓ so reporting and like pretty UI that's functional is a big element in my mind.
Because if things are smooth and you're doing your job well, the customer doesn't know that, right? So you have to then make it visible. And this is, you know, the genesis of this whole QBR process. Let me help you run your business better. Let me show you all the things like that were handled that you didn't have to worry about where the other layer into Zorris was the reporting. What reports can we show?
to show you what threats we stopped ⁓ and how the product is working in your environment so you know it's doing its job.
Mikey Pruitt (08:41)
So Zorz has like QBRs pretty routinely with your customers, right?
Kate Trojanowski (08:49)
Yeah, in a lot of sense, we have a couple different work streams of how we look at that. You know, we do our quarterly roadmap webinars where we talk about what we're doing, how that's changed from the previous quarter. Cause sometimes you think you're going to do something and then you have to pivot just based on feedback. We do MSP focus groups. So we'll have, you know, all these support tickets or feature requests of people wanting certain things and we'll say, Hey, we got.
We have a UX designer. have a product manager. Let's get on a call and talk about how you think this would work and how we can build it to meet your use cases. And then we do our Discord channel, which is more the live chat. And then we still, I like to have one-on-one perspective. When you're in these group settings, you can get group thinking or.
like one very passionate person. So I think it is important to also touch base one to one and kind of narrow in on what are the problems they have today. What are they hoping to solve, not just with Zorris, but in their business in general, because that can give us the ideas of what to do in Zorris and now DNS filter to the table.
Mikey Pruitt (10:14)
It sounds, yeah, it sounds like the goal of being an MSP vendor is really to be like very lightweight, like ⁓ low overhead in the mind of the MSP in this case, so that they're free to help you better the product that would help them better. And they're free ⁓ to then give their customers good news instead of like, ⁓ like something broke, sorry, we'll fix it.
don't want to get a call from a customer. They want to call the customer with just some information. So you're kind of leveraging that relationship to be a part of it where you're not the problematic part and giving the MSPs the ability to not be that problematic party either.
Kate Trojanowski (11:02)
And that's super beneficial too, right? Because if the MSP gets a problem and the problems with your software, guess who now also gets the problem? We do. We get, and then it goes through support, then it comes to me and now we're full circle. So trying to just get in their mindset and understand where their pains are, it really just helps the whole cycle flow.
Mikey Pruitt (11:27)
So if you can't tell from the screen, Kate has a few devices behind her on her desk. She asked me not to bring that up, but I will.
Kate Trojanowski (11:37)
I mean,
it's just sitting here, so.
Mikey Pruitt (11:40)
So you
have a few, what are those, Windows laptops or something?
Kate Trojanowski (11:43)
have a MacBook and then two different Windows laptops with different configurations.
Mikey Pruitt (11:50)
So you basically have like a piece of your test lab back there behind you. You're like, what's going on? You're like running tests every now and then. You're like, you grab one and like try to work on it? And you're like, this is bad.
Kate Trojanowski (11:54)
Yes. Yep.
Yeah, between, so we don't release any product until I've looked and tested it, make sure it's functioning. And if you do it all on your own machine, well, one, your machine can get corrupted from switching different builds and uninstalling and trying to diagnose things. But two, you want to have more than one environment where you're seeing things work over time.
between testing and then if there's like a weird support issue, we'll have to try to go reproduce how it's working. And so I have a lot of computers to just kind of be in the product and seeing that it's working and operating how we want before it goes out the door. So these are just the three machines in here, but there are others.
Mikey Pruitt (12:48)
Yeah.
Yeah right.
These are the ones I brought with me to the office.
Kate Trojanowski (12:56)
Well, these
just stay at the office for the most part. So that way it's in this VPN network environment because a lot of the test labs before it goes out, you know, it's all locked down. So this is the best way for me to get in if I am working, you know, from home on some days.
Mikey Pruitt (13:18)
So Kate is designing and creating a roadmap and actually hands on testing all this stuff to make sure these bugs in the alpha versions don't make it out to production. Awesome. So you were recently named CRN's woman of the channel. You were made it to the list, and that is a really awesome achievement. So congratulations for that.
Kate Trojanowski (13:33)
As best as possible, yes.
Thank you.
Mikey Pruitt (13:47)
So how do you think this has kind of influenced you or changed your trajectory in the channel, as we say?
Kate Trojanowski (13:57)
⁓ I think it's such a cool recognition to have because the MSP space is like, it's not, it is big, but it's not that big in some sense. It's niche. So to get a recognition, ⁓ for the work that I was doing with Zorris and how that impacted the channel positively was really rewarding. It was actually one of my goals.
⁓ when I left connect wise, I was heavy in engineering operations and execution and delivering roadmap. ⁓ but I left to become product management to, actually decide what, what is on the roadmap. And one of my goals and being in more of a public facing position was to get named into the woman of the channel list. Because for me, I saw that as.
Like that's how you made it in your role and show an expertise in, it's not the only way, but like it's a big way. It's very respected and well advertised. And so it was really, really exciting when I was named to the channel in that list.
Mikey Pruitt (15:08)
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm glad
you got the recognition that you clearly deserve. So congrats on that. And, ⁓ I see it up in the corner. Awesome. So you mentioned a keyword there, which was roadmap. And I'm curious, what do you see on the horizon for, so just so the audience knows the trajectory of DNS filter and XORUS are distinct at the moment, the acquisition announcement, everything.
Kate Trojanowski (15:25)
Yeah, I actually have the plaque right there too. Yeah.
Mikey Pruitt (15:50)
was like two weeks ago as we record this. So we're still on distinct paths. However, there will be some crossover. But could you go into that a little bit? What should customers of each platform expect in the near term and then in the future term?
Kate Trojanowski (15:58)
Mm-hmm.
In the immediate term, we're trying to offer the key benefits of each platform in a simple pattern, right? So today we have a network solution. We're going to swap that to leverage DNS filters threat protection. ⁓ And we're going to be able to do that pretty quickly. So that's really exciting to integrate that into our product.
⁓ And then we'll, course, we'll keep working on Zorris in other ways of just enhancing the usability and the reporting elements ⁓ with CyberSight that we had on the docket previously. And then in the DNS filter side, we're tackling the roaming client, which is what they call, what you call, what we call the agent on the Zorris side.
introducing that DNS pre-check layer of checking traffic before it ever leaves the device, before it hits the network, ⁓ without pointing to a DNS resolver, which is often a pain point of roaming clients today. ⁓ It'll still have the option, to do it through the resolver way. those are kind of the quick wins of like, these are the two things we do really well where it's
Mikey Pruitt (17:22)
do either.
Kate Trojanowski (17:31)
You won't get every single like bell and whistle of those features so quickly, but you'll get like the core functionality. And I think for both customer partner bases, that's gonna provide a lot of value. ⁓ Longer term, it's about bringing the two together into one house. So. ⁓
creating the concept of user analytics and cyber site in the DNS filter platform, but also working in how that threat Intel can take cyber site to the next level of what we were always wanting to do with it, which is what I like to compare to as like the credit card fraud prevention.
Your credit card has all this data analytics about how you spend money. And when something seems not right, whether it's, you know, it's in another state or part of town, that's not your patterns. You get a text message, you get a phone call. Was this you? Should we stop this charge? Right. And it's instant and you don't even think about it and you're protected. If somebody did get in.
Mikey Pruitt (18:35)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Trojanowski (18:48)
You know, they'll reverse the charge. So being able to take CyberSight to the level of, you know, this is the user and their patterns and their normal behaviors. And they might go to a site they've never been to before, but if it's categorized in these ways, we can profile that that's normal. But what if we could also profile it's not normal and send an alert that says, Hey.
something's weird, should we lock down this device and stop it dead in its track until we can see what's at play and potentially remediate if there is foul play going on.
Mikey Pruitt (19:26)
Yeah.
And giving the MSP in this case, maybe the option to enable that by default. if a pattern is out of bounds, for whatever reason, it automatically shuts down the machine. Because if you think about the repercussions of such actions, the best case scenario is that person loses DNS for a while or something. And the worst case scenario is a cyber breach in the news, perhaps the end of your business.
Kate Trojanowski (19:36)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (19:58)
Things like that. So it's like the trade off is significant in in favor of maybe just do this by default just to be safe and check it within, you know, timely manners that you can reactivate everything. Once it's, you know, it's like the verify then trust. It's like the opposite of what everyone's been taught. Trust and verify. It's like, no, no, no, hold on. Let's back up. Exactly. So you mentioned this a bit ago about
Kate Trojanowski (20:15)
No one verify and then I'll trust.
Mikey Pruitt (20:28)
the interface of Zorus and how it is kind of built for the MSPs to give them a real smooth experience in the platform. And that's not just like on the web app, it's also like in the emails that come through, the people requesting access to domains, like how has that evolved over time? Seems like it's a really strong point of Zorus.
Kate Trojanowski (20:56)
where to begin with that? We have an initiative of try to be as silent as possible and white labeled as possible, if that makes sense. Like, so everything we've done operates on how do we make it look like this is the MSP's tool and not a tool that they purchased anything from hiding the tray icon.
Mikey Pruitt (21:10)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Trojanowski (21:25)
A lot of people don't go in their trays these days, like having an extra eye. What is this? What is it doing? Why is it here? Hiding that when they're blocked, we created this experience where instead of you logging a ticket with IT, we just send it directly through their PSA and there's a management interface to allow or deny and that sends a notification back.
to the user's device directly. They never have to get on the phone. They don't have to diagnose where were you when this happened. And we give them all the information. That's actually, we're kind of centered on unblock requests right now. But another concept we took with unblock requests is like, hey, now I have this block domain. It's very obscure. I don't know what it's for, which can be metadata on a page is why it's
Mikey Pruitt (21:54)
Hmm.
Kate Trojanowski (22:21)
got thrown and caused the page not to load. So we created this concept called smart logs, where in the unblock request interface, I don't want to have to go dig this up, pull up the logs that happened at that event time so I can then see what else was going on. And that's when we married in CyberSight.
of show the full URL the user went to that then triggered all these DNS requests. So you could really get to the meat of what went wrong from a single page instead of, you know, in the previous world before we came on board and built those features was I got an email. I had to go back and forth with the customer to get the details.
Then I tried to replicate it, but my policy is different. And so now I'm digging in their traffic logs of just like this wave of mess to get to the root of what happened. And that's probably the center of what we do when you're dealing with blocks, but even in the management aspect of, you know, we like to have standards of how we run and operate companies and managed by exceptions. So being able to centralize.
you know, by default, we're going to block security and we're going to block, you know, alcohol and ⁓ AI is emerging and now there's a new category. I don't want to go customer by customer to make a default decision. I want to decide in one place and let that cascade down. ⁓ so we really took a conscious effort of thinking through experience of those things at every step of the way.
Mikey Pruitt (24:09)
Yeah, I think you have something really powerful where, and you mentioned this too, that the MSP admin is really spending time in their PSA. that's kind of where, if they were to onboard a new customer, PSA is the first thing. And from there, like tendrils can reach out and do things in other platforms like Zorus. And what you're saying now is that not only can that initial ⁓ deployment happen via the PSA, through the RMM type of stuff.
Kate Trojanowski (24:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (24:36)
but also the maintenance of block requests get handled in the same place. This one piece of glass, one pane of glass ⁓ dream that everyone has, it seems like it's pretty close to there with Zoros. That's really cool.
Kate Trojanowski (24:51)
Yeah, you definitely want to integrate into the tools they live in, breathe in, then even if you need them to go to your interface in that ticket you're creating, it should give them the link to the exact place they need to go instead of log in. And then where do I navigate? Because now you're in, they don't live in my product every day. They're not going to remember.
where to navigate and find something. So keeping that as simple as possible, but direct linking them through the alerts for where they need to go.
Mikey Pruitt (25:27)
So let's talk about security for a minute. think this is where DNS filter is going to play a big role in the XOR product using our threat intelligence with the endpoint agent and filtering that data into cyber site. The cyber site piece may be a little further away, but I think just using DNS filters threat intel will be pretty powerful.
Like I feel like the the Zoros customers are getting the best deal, the fastest. Like eventually some of that will come to DNS filter. But I think the Zoros ⁓ platform is going to get a real boost in the very near future for that just security piece.
Kate Trojanowski (26:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, think combining those two and how quickly we should be able to do that is going to make existing Zorius and potentially future, right? Because we still have use cases to keep selling it. Really, really powerful. Really, that makes us quite a product offering by...
inducting your threat intelligence into the mix of what we have going on already. And to be able to do that pretty rapidly, it's definitely really exciting for our partners.
Mikey Pruitt (26:59)
How do you think just like generally, like just DNS filtering generically, how powerful of a security layer do you think it actually is?
Kate Trojanowski (27:14)
I think I actually did a talk about this. It's mission critical, right? It's most people aren't clicking or going to IPs directly. Half of them don't even know what that is, right? When you think of an average computer user every day, day to day, like DNS is going to stop 70 to 80 % of most threats.
Now the threat actors are getting more advanced in their ways to try to go around it with full URLs and IPs and all of that. But generally speaking, at some point in their attack chain, no matter how they might have bypassed it initially, it's still going to hit DNS. So you're still always in the equation. And having an advanced threat intelligence
⁓ dedicated to doing that layer agnostic from your other tools. Like it's fundamental, right? Like you can't, you can have it bundled with these things and you can do the basic offering and put, you know, more than one egg in the basket. But this is the easiest and most robust layer that gets hit.
that makes sense to keep separate and use the most advanced threat intelligence you can have.
Mikey Pruitt (28:42)
I well, of course I totally agree, but I don't totally agree because I work at DNS filter and actually see this a lot. Like on the, the wider internet, think of like Reddit threads where people are like, yeah, DNS filtering. Like you can do that with a firewall or you can run a pie hole instance or something like that. So there's this one piece that's like, I can block DNS queries. Like that is great. That will be helpful. And then there's another piece that I think is bigger. Even is that what should I block?
Kate Trojanowski (28:44)
Hahaha
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (29:12)
Because a human is not going to know that. like having these, you know, machine, ⁓ algorithms figuring out what a website is all about very fast and tying those two things together, ⁓ is, is really powerful. And I actually just posted about this on like LinkedIn this morning. I'm like, why have people still not getting that DNS filtering, not just DNS, but like network filtering. So like XORs can do IP and URL and DNS. Like that combination is.
Kate Trojanowski (29:12)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (29:42)
a very, very, very robust, wide layer of protection. And a lot of people just don't believe that for some reason.
Kate Trojanowski (29:52)
until that's where they get in trouble, right? Like, ⁓ can be frustrating to read different threads of, it's just DNS and well, you know, it meets my needs. And you're like, but does it? Like, the internet is a really big place. Like, are you sure it does that? But I think, you know, as security continues to be evolving and on the forefront,
Mikey Pruitt (29:54)
They gotta get burned first.
Kate Trojanowski (30:21)
It's only a matter of time before everyone kind of gets on board with, ⁓ advance.
Mikey Pruitt (30:27)
So we just have to wait for them personally
to get hacked via DNS to believe, become a believer.
Kate Trojanowski (30:32)
Ugh.
Some people already get it now, right? Thankfully, but it, you know.
Mikey Pruitt (30:37)
Yeah.
That is funny.
Like in our marketing, like we have to do like an education piece to like DNS layer security is important. So, but anyway, bit of a tangent, but, thank you for entertaining my line of questioning. I'm also curious about the collaboration inside of source. So you're like in the product org over there and engineering, you know, product, I don't know if anybody else out there has been in the product org, but you're very highly.
Kate Trojanowski (30:53)
course.
Yes.
Mikey Pruitt (31:09)
tied to engineering. like you're kind of the orchestrator, I guess is a good word. engineering kind of has a way of doing things and you kind of present things to them to do and they will go off and do it. And then there's this support piece that comes in, like this is customer feedback and then there's customer success and sales like, ⁓ we lost a deal because of this. So there's all these things feeding in to the,
Kate Trojanowski (31:11)
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (31:38)
organism of the company. So how does Zorus kind of handle all of that? Or I guess the question is, I'll translate to Kate. All those read to lead to between two keyboards. If you haven't seen Kate on between two keyboards, I think it's an unlisted playlist on the source YouTube, but you can find it. I'll get you. Like there's some great ones.
Kate Trojanowski (31:44)
all roads lead to Cade.
It is.
Yeah, people ask if we'll still record them and I'm like, I'm not opposed to it. It's a lot of extra prepping and work and then camera time. That's not my typical go-to, but I mean, really what we should do is get you down to Tampa and record one.
Mikey Pruitt (32:23)
I'll do, okay, I'll do,
⁓ I'll do between two keyboards. That'll be fun. But you, but like you, you actually told me before this, when you typically get somebody to record that, you don't really tell them anything about it or even tell them that they're going to be on it. Sometimes you just have them sit down and turn the camera on.
Kate Trojanowski (32:28)
You
sometimes
just sit down and, you released this feature, so you should know about it. Which I guess is a point of collaboration. So the way we do things and that I have done things in my career is things start with the ground floor. I'm in the weeds on the floor, like, how are you doing this? I like to be involved and sometimes that's to a fault, but
I think roadmap and strategy and vision break down in the details and there's small decisions, engineering and support everyone can make that will make or break an entire project. And if you're not in tune with that and educating and talking to these guys frequently.
⁓ you might end up with the age old picture of what sales sold, what product thought they were getting, what engineering thought, right? ⁓ you, you have to be making sure everyone's aligned on the problem. And so engineering, first and foremost, the guys that are actually building our vision, right. Oftentimes organizations where they fail is they tell them a feature, but not.
why we're building this and the pain. I like to tell the story of like, imagine you're the IT guy and like, this is what you have to do. And this is what you're dealing with. Like you want to throw your laptop out the window right now, don't you? And they're like, I do. So it's like, that's why global policy needs to do this, this and this. So they don't have to go one by one. And when they have that
Context of the business problem and empathy for the experience Now they're coming up with better ideas than you had on how to solve it like you have your initial This is how this would work that partners told me this feedback and now when engineering is thinking like a product manager now all of the sudden what if you did this and That's where a lot of the brilliance of our features
Mikey Pruitt (34:59)
You're like...
Kate Trojanowski (35:01)
come in, it's engineering really getting the pain and then telling us what's technologically possible that we might not have even thought of. And when you're not involved, sometimes what happens is they think they're solving the problem, but they're not in the context. And so they build a thing that looks cool and it works great in their mind.
but it's not how your customer would use it. And so it breaks down. So that's when I say like to be in the details, I got to make sure we're ⁓ support and sales and markets. That's been my biggest like empathy learning path in Zorris because in the previous larger organizations I worked with, I was always in the engineering side.
we would incorporate and infuse out what we were doing with those other orgs like decently. ⁓ But I didn't have empathy for their roles of what they actually have to deal with day to day, the partners that yell at them, you know, the burn of losing a deal. And so that's really the perspective I got when coming to Zorris in startup mode, because I got to have my,
different hats of like if support has a problem don't interrupt engineering they have priorities they have to deliver the roadmap interrupt Kate and she'll figure out how that fits but then you're interrupted all the time so you learn like my gosh all these other new problems and that's it's the same with every department so I have direct
visibility, like I read every support ticket, not right when they come in, but I skim them. Like I probably can't still do that at DNS filter, I'm guessing, but I like to see the theme and patterns of what's happening. And then I know when it's a real problem, our support guys will ping me and tell me, but even marketing and sales, just being, meeting with them, sitting on their meetings, hearing like where they're thinking and
That just helped me a lot grow, I think, as a product manager to think about those things when we pick roadmap.
Mikey Pruitt (37:27)
And that it's funny. That was actually my last question was what type of advice would you give someone aspiring to be a product manager? Because it is not an easy role. And as you described, you're really playing like air traffic controller with like every department there is. We didn't even mention the executives. Like they like some investor or some executive, like they have an opinion and that has to come into the equation too. So there's all these things that you're juggling.
Kate Trojanowski (37:42)
Mm-hmm.
⁓ yeah, they sure do.
Mikey Pruitt (37:56)
And there is like software to help this, but I've used some of them and like they, they do help, but there's still like a, there has to be like a human filter and mover of, of, you know, rocks around the playing board. So just, could you, do you want to sum anything up to like, what advice would you give someone that wants to be a product manager?
Kate Trojanowski (38:08)
Gosh, well, it's a lot of work. So, you know buckle up and I think you have to like chaos a little bit That's not advice though I Would say be curious and open-minded Don't assume You know the answers because you can read like support feedback or get
partner roadmap request or sales needs this feature, you need to ask questions and you need to get involved to really understand the root of the problem they're having to build the proper experience. So I think it's the biggest piece is get curious and don't assume your answer is correct. Like be open to having somebody have an idea that's way better than your own. And the only way to see that is by just listening and asking questions and getting involved.
Mikey Pruitt (39:24)
You can't build in a vacuum. That was really good advice. At first you were acting like, is, I don't know what to say. And then you were like, how about this perfect answer?
Kate Trojanowski (39:33)
Well there's a lot of like hats you juggle right so you're like waaaahhh I don't know which is the best best advice but hopefully that helps.
Mikey Pruitt (39:44)
That was very sound advice. Well, ⁓ Kate, thank you so much. Before we go, where can people find you on the interwebs?
Kate Trojanowski (39:53)
I'm heavy on the LinkedIn side, so just LinkedIn, KMA, Trojan-O, you can find me there. Or if you're a Zorris or DNS filter partner, you can join the Zorris Discord. It'll probably get rebranded, right? And I'm in there as well.
Mikey Pruitt (40:12)
Yeah, I finally got to use my my actual account. My real name is now in the Zoras discord. Well, Kate, thank you so much for joining me. That was that was a great conversation. Thanks.
Kate Trojanowski (40:14)
Your real name.
Yeah, it was so nice to catch up with you and meet you officially under these positive terms.
Mikey Pruitt (40:31)
Absolutely.
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of DNS unfiltered. I'm Mikey Pruitt joined today by Kate Trojanowski, the product manager of Zoros. I'm so excited. Kate, how are you?
Kate Trojanowski (00:11)
I'm good, excited to be here.
Mikey Pruitt (00:13)
So let's first talk about the elephant in the room. were like director of product, ⁓ VP of product and engineering at Zorris, and now you're part of DNS filter. How's that transition going?
Kate Trojanowski (00:26)
⁓ right now it's a little chaotic just learning all the pieces of both sides and integrating teams and processes, but I'm very excited of how our products can make sense together and the pros and cons and the opportunities that we have. I think team wise as well, it was a match made in heaven. And so it's so rare that you'll see.
products can make sense to come together, but the team and the team cultures also were such a great fit. And so it's really, while there's the immediate chaos, like I'm very optimistic of what we're going to be able to build and do together.
Mikey Pruitt (01:09)
Yeah, have the same sentiment. I've been very impressed at how well the two teams are meshing and gelling together. Like we've already been cracking jokes. had a funny riff about, was it Brandon Hood? One of your engineers, I believe. He ⁓ thought he was anonymously making fun or not really making fun. He was kind of commenting on my beard on a video training that we have. And he didn't notice that anyone reads these comments. So we had to get laugh about that. That was a lot of fun.
Kate Trojanowski (01:21)
Yeah.
He did.
I don't.
Mikey Pruitt (01:39)
Hey Brandon.
Kate Trojanowski (01:40)
Oh
my gosh, Hood, yeah. I had to ping him and I was like, so I don't know where you are and what you're doing, but we're getting live feedback of your comments. He's like, people read those? I was like, yes. Yes, they do.
Mikey Pruitt (01:55)
We have an entire
Slack channel dedicated to him. But we made up and I sent him some fresh DNS filter swag, so all good. He did call me the beard king, so you I mean, I was that like made my day actually.
Kate Trojanowski (02:06)
⁓ and he did. So.
You're like,
I was having a beard day. Thank you for noticing, sir. It's hard to keep this maintained.
Mikey Pruitt (02:17)
Yes.
So regarding the ⁓ technical, the technology from both DNS filter and XORUS, what do you see as meshing so well together?
Kate Trojanowski (02:32)
I think the security posture of DNS filter and how the networks run, but even the threat Intel and its capabilities and the scale at which it's operating is insane. It's really cool to kind of see how it's working behind the scenes, but also know the gravity of the impact it makes with finding the threats 10 days faster.
Just the amount of places you're filtering and the partnerships that you have where you can even get more like security posture in place because of that is really fascinating to me. And to be able to hook that in to where Zorris is really strong at the endpoint level and marry that those two technologies together is really cool.
And then Zorris, where we were going, as you know, is with the cyber site, which is the user-based analytics about what's happening, which I think is a pretty big gap in the security market. Combining that with the power of your threat intel and the data volumes that you have, I think there's a really, really cool opportunity there bringing those forces together.
Mikey Pruitt (03:51)
Yeah, I totally agree. used to be the product manager of DNS filter during the time we built our ⁓ our insights analytics kind of package us in the backend. And we, know, we had big aspirations to build it, but we only have domain data. So it's like we can only give you certain things and it didn't meet our expectations. Like we did a good job, but it would be so much better with data like source has. So this is a
Kate Trojanowski (04:07)
Right.
Mikey Pruitt (04:20)
a really good ⁓ marriage, bringing those horses as you said together. I'm really excited.
Let's just think it. yeah, I forgot my train of thought. We'll leave that in, don't worry. So, Zorus and DNSFilter both are very big in the MSP space. You know, we've been clashing from time to time, you know, competing against each other for the attention and customers in the MSP space. And Zorus has done a really good job of cultivating that ecosystem.
Kate Trojanowski (04:41)
Yes.
Mikey Pruitt (04:58)
And I think UK are a big, big reason for that. So tell me a little bit about your, your MSP strategy and what MSPs love about Zorus.
Kate Trojanowski (04:58)
Yeah.
I mean, MSPs run their business. Their operating model is very different from like a direct customer, an enterprise customer in how they manage things. And so the best thing is just to listen to them. You can learn a lot by just talking to them and hearing their pain points. Obviously I used to work at connect wise, which is a power house in the MSP space for their core stack. So.
There are a lot of good principles there of just, we used to do what we call follow me homes where we would literally go to the MSP business on site and actually observe how they operate. How are their technicians? How does the CEO engage with people? What tools are they running? ⁓ So came to the table at Zorus with a lot of that.
insight and perspective to then be able to look at what Zorus did as a product and see how it could fit in that ecosystem. I think the biggest thing with MSPs and the light bulb moment I had early on is knowing their source of truth because in product and engineering land source of truth is important to know when you're delivering roadmap and how you're executing on it. So.
In visiting a lot of their businesses, the thing I didn't understand when I worked at the lab tech RMM that became Connectwise Automate side was they didn't live in the RMM. They lived in the PSA as their source of truth to operate. And that was jarring for me at first because you put so much focus on your portal and interacting with your product and how are they going to use it.
But everything started with the PSA to alert them and ticket them to then go into this other tool. So when we came on to Zorris, having that already in our minds, it was like, they're not going to log into Zorris every day. This isn't their source of truth. So what's the value prop of what we're doing and how can we make that easier when they are alerted in the PSA to do something? What information are they looking for?
the other aspect of it is, you know, if an MSP is doing a good job, there's not noise, there's not things to be done. It's quiet. And when things are quiet, you go, why do I pay you money? ⁓ so reporting and like pretty UI that's functional is a big element in my mind.
Because if things are smooth and you're doing your job well, the customer doesn't know that, right? So you have to then make it visible. And this is, you know, the genesis of this whole QBR process. Let me help you run your business better. Let me show you all the things like that were handled that you didn't have to worry about where the other layer into Zorris was the reporting. What reports can we show?
to show you what threats we stopped ⁓ and how the product is working in your environment so you know it's doing its job.
Mikey Pruitt (08:41)
So Zorz has like QBRs pretty routinely with your customers, right?
Kate Trojanowski (08:49)
Yeah, in a lot of sense, we have a couple different work streams of how we look at that. You know, we do our quarterly roadmap webinars where we talk about what we're doing, how that's changed from the previous quarter. Cause sometimes you think you're going to do something and then you have to pivot just based on feedback. We do MSP focus groups. So we'll have, you know, all these support tickets or feature requests of people wanting certain things and we'll say, Hey, we got.
We have a UX designer. have a product manager. Let's get on a call and talk about how you think this would work and how we can build it to meet your use cases. And then we do our Discord channel, which is more the live chat. And then we still, I like to have one-on-one perspective. When you're in these group settings, you can get group thinking or.
like one very passionate person. So I think it is important to also touch base one to one and kind of narrow in on what are the problems they have today. What are they hoping to solve, not just with Zorris, but in their business in general, because that can give us the ideas of what to do in Zorris and now DNS filter to the table.
Mikey Pruitt (10:14)
It sounds, yeah, it sounds like the goal of being an MSP vendor is really to be like very lightweight, like ⁓ low overhead in the mind of the MSP in this case, so that they're free to help you better the product that would help them better. And they're free ⁓ to then give their customers good news instead of like, ⁓ like something broke, sorry, we'll fix it.
don't want to get a call from a customer. They want to call the customer with just some information. So you're kind of leveraging that relationship to be a part of it where you're not the problematic part and giving the MSPs the ability to not be that problematic party either.
Kate Trojanowski (11:02)
And that's super beneficial too, right? Because if the MSP gets a problem and the problems with your software, guess who now also gets the problem? We do. We get, and then it goes through support, then it comes to me and now we're full circle. So trying to just get in their mindset and understand where their pains are, it really just helps the whole cycle flow.
Mikey Pruitt (11:27)
So if you can't tell from the screen, Kate has a few devices behind her on her desk. She asked me not to bring that up, but I will.
Kate Trojanowski (11:37)
I mean,
it's just sitting here, so.
Mikey Pruitt (11:40)
So you
have a few, what are those, Windows laptops or something?
Kate Trojanowski (11:43)
have a MacBook and then two different Windows laptops with different configurations.
Mikey Pruitt (11:50)
So you basically have like a piece of your test lab back there behind you. You're like, what's going on? You're like running tests every now and then. You're like, you grab one and like try to work on it? And you're like, this is bad.
Kate Trojanowski (11:54)
Yes. Yep.
Yeah, between, so we don't release any product until I've looked and tested it, make sure it's functioning. And if you do it all on your own machine, well, one, your machine can get corrupted from switching different builds and uninstalling and trying to diagnose things. But two, you want to have more than one environment where you're seeing things work over time.
between testing and then if there's like a weird support issue, we'll have to try to go reproduce how it's working. And so I have a lot of computers to just kind of be in the product and seeing that it's working and operating how we want before it goes out the door. So these are just the three machines in here, but there are others.
Mikey Pruitt (12:48)
Yeah.
Yeah right.
These are the ones I brought with me to the office.
Kate Trojanowski (12:56)
Well, these
just stay at the office for the most part. So that way it's in this VPN network environment because a lot of the test labs before it goes out, you know, it's all locked down. So this is the best way for me to get in if I am working, you know, from home on some days.
Mikey Pruitt (13:18)
So Kate is designing and creating a roadmap and actually hands on testing all this stuff to make sure these bugs in the alpha versions don't make it out to production. Awesome. So you were recently named CRN's woman of the channel. You were made it to the list, and that is a really awesome achievement. So congratulations for that.
Kate Trojanowski (13:33)
As best as possible, yes.
Thank you.
Mikey Pruitt (13:47)
So how do you think this has kind of influenced you or changed your trajectory in the channel, as we say?
Kate Trojanowski (13:57)
⁓ I think it's such a cool recognition to have because the MSP space is like, it's not, it is big, but it's not that big in some sense. It's niche. So to get a recognition, ⁓ for the work that I was doing with Zorris and how that impacted the channel positively was really rewarding. It was actually one of my goals.
⁓ when I left connect wise, I was heavy in engineering operations and execution and delivering roadmap. ⁓ but I left to become product management to, actually decide what, what is on the roadmap. And one of my goals and being in more of a public facing position was to get named into the woman of the channel list. Because for me, I saw that as.
Like that's how you made it in your role and show an expertise in, it's not the only way, but like it's a big way. It's very respected and well advertised. And so it was really, really exciting when I was named to the channel in that list.
Mikey Pruitt (15:08)
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm glad
you got the recognition that you clearly deserve. So congrats on that. And, ⁓ I see it up in the corner. Awesome. So you mentioned a keyword there, which was roadmap. And I'm curious, what do you see on the horizon for, so just so the audience knows the trajectory of DNS filter and XORUS are distinct at the moment, the acquisition announcement, everything.
Kate Trojanowski (15:25)
Yeah, I actually have the plaque right there too. Yeah.
Mikey Pruitt (15:50)
was like two weeks ago as we record this. So we're still on distinct paths. However, there will be some crossover. But could you go into that a little bit? What should customers of each platform expect in the near term and then in the future term?
Kate Trojanowski (15:58)
Mm-hmm.
In the immediate term, we're trying to offer the key benefits of each platform in a simple pattern, right? So today we have a network solution. We're going to swap that to leverage DNS filters threat protection. ⁓ And we're going to be able to do that pretty quickly. So that's really exciting to integrate that into our product.
⁓ And then we'll, course, we'll keep working on Zorris in other ways of just enhancing the usability and the reporting elements ⁓ with CyberSight that we had on the docket previously. And then in the DNS filter side, we're tackling the roaming client, which is what they call, what you call, what we call the agent on the Zorris side.
introducing that DNS pre-check layer of checking traffic before it ever leaves the device, before it hits the network, ⁓ without pointing to a DNS resolver, which is often a pain point of roaming clients today. ⁓ It'll still have the option, to do it through the resolver way. those are kind of the quick wins of like, these are the two things we do really well where it's
Mikey Pruitt (17:22)
do either.
Kate Trojanowski (17:31)
You won't get every single like bell and whistle of those features so quickly, but you'll get like the core functionality. And I think for both customer partner bases, that's gonna provide a lot of value. ⁓ Longer term, it's about bringing the two together into one house. So. ⁓
creating the concept of user analytics and cyber site in the DNS filter platform, but also working in how that threat Intel can take cyber site to the next level of what we were always wanting to do with it, which is what I like to compare to as like the credit card fraud prevention.
Your credit card has all this data analytics about how you spend money. And when something seems not right, whether it's, you know, it's in another state or part of town, that's not your patterns. You get a text message, you get a phone call. Was this you? Should we stop this charge? Right. And it's instant and you don't even think about it and you're protected. If somebody did get in.
Mikey Pruitt (18:35)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Trojanowski (18:48)
You know, they'll reverse the charge. So being able to take CyberSight to the level of, you know, this is the user and their patterns and their normal behaviors. And they might go to a site they've never been to before, but if it's categorized in these ways, we can profile that that's normal. But what if we could also profile it's not normal and send an alert that says, Hey.
something's weird, should we lock down this device and stop it dead in its track until we can see what's at play and potentially remediate if there is foul play going on.
Mikey Pruitt (19:26)
Yeah.
And giving the MSP in this case, maybe the option to enable that by default. if a pattern is out of bounds, for whatever reason, it automatically shuts down the machine. Because if you think about the repercussions of such actions, the best case scenario is that person loses DNS for a while or something. And the worst case scenario is a cyber breach in the news, perhaps the end of your business.
Kate Trojanowski (19:36)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (19:58)
Things like that. So it's like the trade off is significant in in favor of maybe just do this by default just to be safe and check it within, you know, timely manners that you can reactivate everything. Once it's, you know, it's like the verify then trust. It's like the opposite of what everyone's been taught. Trust and verify. It's like, no, no, no, hold on. Let's back up. Exactly. So you mentioned this a bit ago about
Kate Trojanowski (20:15)
No one verify and then I'll trust.
Mikey Pruitt (20:28)
the interface of Zorus and how it is kind of built for the MSPs to give them a real smooth experience in the platform. And that's not just like on the web app, it's also like in the emails that come through, the people requesting access to domains, like how has that evolved over time? Seems like it's a really strong point of Zorus.
Kate Trojanowski (20:56)
where to begin with that? We have an initiative of try to be as silent as possible and white labeled as possible, if that makes sense. Like, so everything we've done operates on how do we make it look like this is the MSP's tool and not a tool that they purchased anything from hiding the tray icon.
Mikey Pruitt (21:10)
Mm-hmm.
Kate Trojanowski (21:25)
A lot of people don't go in their trays these days, like having an extra eye. What is this? What is it doing? Why is it here? Hiding that when they're blocked, we created this experience where instead of you logging a ticket with IT, we just send it directly through their PSA and there's a management interface to allow or deny and that sends a notification back.
to the user's device directly. They never have to get on the phone. They don't have to diagnose where were you when this happened. And we give them all the information. That's actually, we're kind of centered on unblock requests right now. But another concept we took with unblock requests is like, hey, now I have this block domain. It's very obscure. I don't know what it's for, which can be metadata on a page is why it's
Mikey Pruitt (21:54)
Hmm.
Kate Trojanowski (22:21)
got thrown and caused the page not to load. So we created this concept called smart logs, where in the unblock request interface, I don't want to have to go dig this up, pull up the logs that happened at that event time so I can then see what else was going on. And that's when we married in CyberSight.
of show the full URL the user went to that then triggered all these DNS requests. So you could really get to the meat of what went wrong from a single page instead of, you know, in the previous world before we came on board and built those features was I got an email. I had to go back and forth with the customer to get the details.
Then I tried to replicate it, but my policy is different. And so now I'm digging in their traffic logs of just like this wave of mess to get to the root of what happened. And that's probably the center of what we do when you're dealing with blocks, but even in the management aspect of, you know, we like to have standards of how we run and operate companies and managed by exceptions. So being able to centralize.
you know, by default, we're going to block security and we're going to block, you know, alcohol and ⁓ AI is emerging and now there's a new category. I don't want to go customer by customer to make a default decision. I want to decide in one place and let that cascade down. ⁓ so we really took a conscious effort of thinking through experience of those things at every step of the way.
Mikey Pruitt (24:09)
Yeah, I think you have something really powerful where, and you mentioned this too, that the MSP admin is really spending time in their PSA. that's kind of where, if they were to onboard a new customer, PSA is the first thing. And from there, like tendrils can reach out and do things in other platforms like Zorus. And what you're saying now is that not only can that initial ⁓ deployment happen via the PSA, through the RMM type of stuff.
Kate Trojanowski (24:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (24:36)
but also the maintenance of block requests get handled in the same place. This one piece of glass, one pane of glass ⁓ dream that everyone has, it seems like it's pretty close to there with Zoros. That's really cool.
Kate Trojanowski (24:51)
Yeah, you definitely want to integrate into the tools they live in, breathe in, then even if you need them to go to your interface in that ticket you're creating, it should give them the link to the exact place they need to go instead of log in. And then where do I navigate? Because now you're in, they don't live in my product every day. They're not going to remember.
where to navigate and find something. So keeping that as simple as possible, but direct linking them through the alerts for where they need to go.
Mikey Pruitt (25:27)
So let's talk about security for a minute. think this is where DNS filter is going to play a big role in the XOR product using our threat intelligence with the endpoint agent and filtering that data into cyber site. The cyber site piece may be a little further away, but I think just using DNS filters threat intel will be pretty powerful.
Like I feel like the the Zoros customers are getting the best deal, the fastest. Like eventually some of that will come to DNS filter. But I think the Zoros ⁓ platform is going to get a real boost in the very near future for that just security piece.
Kate Trojanowski (26:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, think combining those two and how quickly we should be able to do that is going to make existing Zorius and potentially future, right? Because we still have use cases to keep selling it. Really, really powerful. Really, that makes us quite a product offering by...
inducting your threat intelligence into the mix of what we have going on already. And to be able to do that pretty rapidly, it's definitely really exciting for our partners.
Mikey Pruitt (26:59)
How do you think just like generally, like just DNS filtering generically, how powerful of a security layer do you think it actually is?
Kate Trojanowski (27:14)
I think I actually did a talk about this. It's mission critical, right? It's most people aren't clicking or going to IPs directly. Half of them don't even know what that is, right? When you think of an average computer user every day, day to day, like DNS is going to stop 70 to 80 % of most threats.
Now the threat actors are getting more advanced in their ways to try to go around it with full URLs and IPs and all of that. But generally speaking, at some point in their attack chain, no matter how they might have bypassed it initially, it's still going to hit DNS. So you're still always in the equation. And having an advanced threat intelligence
⁓ dedicated to doing that layer agnostic from your other tools. Like it's fundamental, right? Like you can't, you can have it bundled with these things and you can do the basic offering and put, you know, more than one egg in the basket. But this is the easiest and most robust layer that gets hit.
that makes sense to keep separate and use the most advanced threat intelligence you can have.
Mikey Pruitt (28:42)
I well, of course I totally agree, but I don't totally agree because I work at DNS filter and actually see this a lot. Like on the, the wider internet, think of like Reddit threads where people are like, yeah, DNS filtering. Like you can do that with a firewall or you can run a pie hole instance or something like that. So there's this one piece that's like, I can block DNS queries. Like that is great. That will be helpful. And then there's another piece that I think is bigger. Even is that what should I block?
Kate Trojanowski (28:44)
Hahaha
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (29:12)
Because a human is not going to know that. like having these, you know, machine, ⁓ algorithms figuring out what a website is all about very fast and tying those two things together, ⁓ is, is really powerful. And I actually just posted about this on like LinkedIn this morning. I'm like, why have people still not getting that DNS filtering, not just DNS, but like network filtering. So like XORs can do IP and URL and DNS. Like that combination is.
Kate Trojanowski (29:12)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (29:42)
a very, very, very robust, wide layer of protection. And a lot of people just don't believe that for some reason.
Kate Trojanowski (29:52)
until that's where they get in trouble, right? Like, ⁓ can be frustrating to read different threads of, it's just DNS and well, you know, it meets my needs. And you're like, but does it? Like, the internet is a really big place. Like, are you sure it does that? But I think, you know, as security continues to be evolving and on the forefront,
Mikey Pruitt (29:54)
They gotta get burned first.
Kate Trojanowski (30:21)
It's only a matter of time before everyone kind of gets on board with, ⁓ advance.
Mikey Pruitt (30:27)
So we just have to wait for them personally
to get hacked via DNS to believe, become a believer.
Kate Trojanowski (30:32)
Ugh.
Some people already get it now, right? Thankfully, but it, you know.
Mikey Pruitt (30:37)
Yeah.
That is funny.
Like in our marketing, like we have to do like an education piece to like DNS layer security is important. So, but anyway, bit of a tangent, but, thank you for entertaining my line of questioning. I'm also curious about the collaboration inside of source. So you're like in the product org over there and engineering, you know, product, I don't know if anybody else out there has been in the product org, but you're very highly.
Kate Trojanowski (30:53)
course.
Yes.
Mikey Pruitt (31:09)
tied to engineering. like you're kind of the orchestrator, I guess is a good word. engineering kind of has a way of doing things and you kind of present things to them to do and they will go off and do it. And then there's this support piece that comes in, like this is customer feedback and then there's customer success and sales like, ⁓ we lost a deal because of this. So there's all these things feeding in to the,
Kate Trojanowski (31:11)
Mm-hmm.
Mikey Pruitt (31:38)
organism of the company. So how does Zorus kind of handle all of that? Or I guess the question is, I'll translate to Kate. All those read to lead to between two keyboards. If you haven't seen Kate on between two keyboards, I think it's an unlisted playlist on the source YouTube, but you can find it. I'll get you. Like there's some great ones.
Kate Trojanowski (31:44)
all roads lead to Cade.
It is.
Yeah, people ask if we'll still record them and I'm like, I'm not opposed to it. It's a lot of extra prepping and work and then camera time. That's not my typical go-to, but I mean, really what we should do is get you down to Tampa and record one.
Mikey Pruitt (32:23)
I'll do, okay, I'll do,
⁓ I'll do between two keyboards. That'll be fun. But you, but like you, you actually told me before this, when you typically get somebody to record that, you don't really tell them anything about it or even tell them that they're going to be on it. Sometimes you just have them sit down and turn the camera on.
Kate Trojanowski (32:28)
You
sometimes
just sit down and, you released this feature, so you should know about it. Which I guess is a point of collaboration. So the way we do things and that I have done things in my career is things start with the ground floor. I'm in the weeds on the floor, like, how are you doing this? I like to be involved and sometimes that's to a fault, but
I think roadmap and strategy and vision break down in the details and there's small decisions, engineering and support everyone can make that will make or break an entire project. And if you're not in tune with that and educating and talking to these guys frequently.
⁓ you might end up with the age old picture of what sales sold, what product thought they were getting, what engineering thought, right? ⁓ you, you have to be making sure everyone's aligned on the problem. And so engineering, first and foremost, the guys that are actually building our vision, right. Oftentimes organizations where they fail is they tell them a feature, but not.
why we're building this and the pain. I like to tell the story of like, imagine you're the IT guy and like, this is what you have to do. And this is what you're dealing with. Like you want to throw your laptop out the window right now, don't you? And they're like, I do. So it's like, that's why global policy needs to do this, this and this. So they don't have to go one by one. And when they have that
Context of the business problem and empathy for the experience Now they're coming up with better ideas than you had on how to solve it like you have your initial This is how this would work that partners told me this feedback and now when engineering is thinking like a product manager now all of the sudden what if you did this and That's where a lot of the brilliance of our features
Mikey Pruitt (34:59)
You're like...
Kate Trojanowski (35:01)
come in, it's engineering really getting the pain and then telling us what's technologically possible that we might not have even thought of. And when you're not involved, sometimes what happens is they think they're solving the problem, but they're not in the context. And so they build a thing that looks cool and it works great in their mind.
but it's not how your customer would use it. And so it breaks down. So that's when I say like to be in the details, I got to make sure we're ⁓ support and sales and markets. That's been my biggest like empathy learning path in Zorris because in the previous larger organizations I worked with, I was always in the engineering side.
we would incorporate and infuse out what we were doing with those other orgs like decently. ⁓ But I didn't have empathy for their roles of what they actually have to deal with day to day, the partners that yell at them, you know, the burn of losing a deal. And so that's really the perspective I got when coming to Zorris in startup mode, because I got to have my,
different hats of like if support has a problem don't interrupt engineering they have priorities they have to deliver the roadmap interrupt Kate and she'll figure out how that fits but then you're interrupted all the time so you learn like my gosh all these other new problems and that's it's the same with every department so I have direct
visibility, like I read every support ticket, not right when they come in, but I skim them. Like I probably can't still do that at DNS filter, I'm guessing, but I like to see the theme and patterns of what's happening. And then I know when it's a real problem, our support guys will ping me and tell me, but even marketing and sales, just being, meeting with them, sitting on their meetings, hearing like where they're thinking and
That just helped me a lot grow, I think, as a product manager to think about those things when we pick roadmap.
Mikey Pruitt (37:27)
And that it's funny. That was actually my last question was what type of advice would you give someone aspiring to be a product manager? Because it is not an easy role. And as you described, you're really playing like air traffic controller with like every department there is. We didn't even mention the executives. Like they like some investor or some executive, like they have an opinion and that has to come into the equation too. So there's all these things that you're juggling.
Kate Trojanowski (37:42)
Mm-hmm.
⁓ yeah, they sure do.
Mikey Pruitt (37:56)
And there is like software to help this, but I've used some of them and like they, they do help, but there's still like a, there has to be like a human filter and mover of, of, you know, rocks around the playing board. So just, could you, do you want to sum anything up to like, what advice would you give someone that wants to be a product manager?
Kate Trojanowski (38:08)
Gosh, well, it's a lot of work. So, you know buckle up and I think you have to like chaos a little bit That's not advice though I Would say be curious and open-minded Don't assume You know the answers because you can read like support feedback or get
partner roadmap request or sales needs this feature, you need to ask questions and you need to get involved to really understand the root of the problem they're having to build the proper experience. So I think it's the biggest piece is get curious and don't assume your answer is correct. Like be open to having somebody have an idea that's way better than your own. And the only way to see that is by just listening and asking questions and getting involved.
Mikey Pruitt (39:24)
You can't build in a vacuum. That was really good advice. At first you were acting like, is, I don't know what to say. And then you were like, how about this perfect answer?
Kate Trojanowski (39:33)
Well there's a lot of like hats you juggle right so you're like waaaahhh I don't know which is the best best advice but hopefully that helps.
Mikey Pruitt (39:44)
That was very sound advice. Well, ⁓ Kate, thank you so much. Before we go, where can people find you on the interwebs?
Kate Trojanowski (39:53)
I'm heavy on the LinkedIn side, so just LinkedIn, KMA, Trojan-O, you can find me there. Or if you're a Zorris or DNS filter partner, you can join the Zorris Discord. It'll probably get rebranded, right? And I'm in there as well.
Mikey Pruitt (40:12)
Yeah, I finally got to use my my actual account. My real name is now in the Zoras discord. Well, Kate, thank you so much for joining me. That was that was a great conversation. Thanks.
Kate Trojanowski (40:14)
Your real name.
Yeah, it was so nice to catch up with you and meet you officially under these positive terms.
Mikey Pruitt (40:31)
Absolutely.