The Hard Moments That Build a CEO with Mark Thurmond

I was with my family and I got a call at 6:00 in the morning from Steve Vince and from our head of HR, uh, Bridget Paradise, and they gave me the news that Amir passed. And a lot of people were like, "Well, you must have thought that was gonna happen. You must have expected." 100% we did not. But, you know, you talk about getting into the seat, so you're dealing with that at 6:00 AM, and then we have to rally because we've got to do emergency board meetings within the next two hours. We have to inform the board. We have to now create documentation and communications for our employees, for our customers. We had to deal with all the Wall Street ramifications, right, of changing control and all those things. So you go from this super emotional, finding out one of your close friends and, and, and boss has passed, and literally two and a half hours later you are on board calls, on vacation, putting together all of these very big decisions and all these big critical events that need to cascade out before, uh, word, you know, got out that he had passed.

Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management co-founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel, behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business, while sharing the pitfalls to avoid.

Most CEOs come up through product or through finance. Today's guest got the job because of how he sells. Mark Thurman is co-CEO of Tenable, and this is his second time on Revenue Builders. Since we last had Mark on, a lot has changed. In April of 2025, after Tenable's longtime CEO passed away during treatment for cancer, Mark and CFO Steve Vince went to the board together and asked to run the company jointly, and they've been doing it ever since, splitting responsibility, staying aligned, and keeping a public company moving through one of the hardest and most difficult transitions a leadership team could face. He's also been leading Tenable through a bigger shift from the gold standard in vulnerability management to the leader in something new, exposure management. That's not a rebrand. That's asking a massive install base to buy a platform instead of a product in a category Tenable is trying to define in real time while AI reshapes what customers expect. Today we're talking about the rep to CEO climb, stepping into the seat during an incredibly hard moment, what he learned from mentors like Joe Tucci about influence versus command and control, how he and Steve actually run Tenable together, and where he thinks enterprise selling is headed in the AI era. This is Mark Thurman, co-CEO of Tenable. So Mark, you, one of the great things [laughs] that we love about you is your, is your journey from rep to CEO. It's just an incredible arc and, you know, living that with you over the past, you know, several decades has just been amazing. But when you look back, um, at that arc, are there some moments that, you know, you lived through that you recognized them as pivotal but only later?

Yeah. I mean,