February 21, 2025 • 10 mins
SailPoint Technologies Holding CEO & Co-Founder Mark McClain speaks on the company's decision to go public again after its $1.38 billion IPO. He speaks with Bloomberg's Katie Griefeld, Sonali Basak, and Matt Miller
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Sale Point is back on the market. The security company
went public for the second time last week. The first
time it went public back in twenty seventeen, before Toma
Bravo took sale Point private in twenty twenty two. Tomo Bravo,
of course, has been very much looking for this IPO
market to open back up, and sale Point is a
critical part of that. For more on the decision to
go public again, we're joined by Mark McLain, sale Points CEO.
(00:35):
When you spoke to our colleagues over here at Bloomberg News,
you talked a lot about the use of proceeds, the
grand ambition here about going public. At the end of
the day, what do you think the first priorities are
for you? Is it paying down that debt or looking
for expansion opportunities.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I think the primary was to pay down debt sally,
but I think we see ourselves kind of as a
long term growth business, so in some ways it was
putting some fuel in the tank, as it were, and
kind of getting ourselves ready for what we believe is
a multi year growth opportunity. So yeah, it was kind
of get the debt down to a manageable level and
then get ready for future growth.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I do want to talk about the timing a little bit,
of course.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
This is your return to.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
The public markets. You listed on the New York Sock
Exchange in twenty seventeen, then you went private when Toma
Bravo acquired you in twenty twenty two. Now you're back again,
which is a pretty quick turnaround.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
Just talk us through that, yeah, I think, to be honest, Katie.
And by the way, just a piece of data.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
You probably know we were owned by Toma Ravo before
the first IPO, which so it's a little bit of
a back and forth thing.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Not a terribly common story, I guess, but I think
we were.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Kind of, you know, when we did the go private
in twenty two, thinking of a little longer timeframe to
come back.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
And I think two things are true.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
One is we've been forced to have a very good,
you know, amount of growth over the last few years
and kind of shifted to a more profitable profile, so
that kind of desirable scale growth profit profile that market's like.
And then of course the markets have warmed up a
bit obviously in the last three to four months.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
So I think it was.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
That combination of being ready, having kind of a hopefully
attractive profile for the public markets, and then kind of
ready to pull that trigger when the market started to
warm up and we felt like the time was right
to do that.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
You can tell your story mark with your growth, and
you know Wall Street likes to see the numbers. But
in terms of just the elevator pitch, I always find
it so difficult to understand what these software solutions providers do.
And in your notes it says you equip modern enterprise
to seamlessly manage and secure access to applications.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Like, what is that? What does that mean? How do
you tell.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Your butcher what your company does?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
I usually say my grandmother, but you know she's deceased,
and probably the butcher is a better metaphor. I think
at the end of the day, you know, there's what
everybody does all day, every day, and they get this
is they log into systems.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
We all have a whole bunch of accounts and passwords,
so everybody gets that concept.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
What sale Points focused.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
On is ensuring that in an enterprise amid to large
scale enterprise where there might be tens or even hundreds
of thousands of human identities.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
And now increasingly what we call non human.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Identities you know think you know, software programs and now
AI agents is all the rage. All those identities have
access to systems and data, right, that's generally some kind
of an account and a password. Well, keeping all of
that accurate and what's called in the security realm least privilege.
In other words, any identity should have exactly what they
need or it needs to do with the.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Job and no more.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, keeping that accurate and adhering to security policy is
really hard, and that's what big enterprises have struggled with
because all those systems are from different vendors. Right, They've
got Workday and Salesforce and Service Now and Microsoft Apps
and Oracle and all kinds of stuff from twenty or
thirty or fifty years of it. And getting all that
(03:46):
to stay in sync and to be secure and accurate
is a very hard problem. That's what sale points focused on,
is the right access to the right data for every
identity in their enterprise.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
I'm glad you bring up AI. I've been asking chat
GPT to log in into some of my applications and
do some stuff for me, right, rather than just answer
stupid questions and so far it can't. Are you going
to enable that kind of technology? How soon do you
see that kind of thing being able to work?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Well, there are some places you know your chat GBT
Matt is doing this to you, as I guess it should.
But I think at the end of the day, there
is a sense that people want to automate and streamline
things while maintaining security. And that's the tension, right, There's
a there's a tension that's existed forever in the realm
of technology, which is convenience and things go fast and
(04:36):
easy is what business users want, and control and security
is what kind of the protection mindset people want.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Right, So there's always a tension.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
There, and AI is just in some ways the latest,
maybe most dramatic iteration of Wow.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Super cool tech.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
We can do a lot with this, we can accelerate
our business, go do amazing things.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
And the security folks are going.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Oh, tap the brakes, like, not sure exactly if we
understand what access to what data is happening here and
all these controls we put in place to protect our
business and its information might be getting run over in
that realm. So there's a tension there, and we're pretty
early obviously in this dynamic, right, So we're one of
the companies that's kind of in the thick of that
with all these providers of business application technology and.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
LMS and AI models and.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
All that good stuff, and then these security professionals in
these enterprises that are trying.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
To make sure they let their business succeed.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
But do so in a way that protects its information.
And that's just a hard problem, and we're kind of
at the center of helping big enterprises solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
You know, Mark, on the show, we like to have
our guests talk about their business but also about their
market experience. And you've got a lot of credit here
for being one of the first to market this year.
Of course, this is an IPO market that a lot
of investors have been waiting to open back up. The
first week has been choppy. What would you say to
people that are looking to go public right now?
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Is it a good time?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Is the window really small?
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Frankly, that's a good question. We wrestled with it both.
I will give you a little perspective.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That you know, everybody's got their view of what's happened,
even in our case for about a week now, right,
I mean, we priced kind of between nineteen and twenty one.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
On the cover of the S one.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We raised the filing range from twenty one to twenty
three and priced at the high end of that rage
and then upsized our offering. So we did a lot
of things that kind of said we weren't set up
for a big run up. We were focused on getting
out at the right price in the market to kind
of balance two things. Frankly, right, Toma Bravo, our primary owner, wants.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
Good liquidity out of the deal.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
And we want to set ourselves up for long term
market success with a lot of the same long term
investors at own sale point for five years in the
market before, so there was some tension there. And again
I like to say, if you're in my seat, you
didn't do this for a one day pop or even
a week pop. We're thinking months and years of business success.
You know, I won't plan on necessarily this kind of multiple.
We went public the first time at seventeen at a
(06:54):
little over a billion. We sold to Toma Bravo less
than five years later for seven billion.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
So we think we understand something.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
About how to grow once we're in the market, and
we just don't focus on the day to day. My
famous phrase I developed on our first public offering timing
was to our own team internally. I said, look, every
second you spend watching the stock price, you're doing nothing
to help the stock price, right Like, watching stock movements
day all day is what you all and a bunch
of investors do. Our team's job is to go build
(07:22):
great solutions and win in the market.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
And I always say, if we do.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
That well, the stock price will take care of itself.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
If I were the CEO of a company, I would.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Just stare at my stock price all day.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
So I really respect the discipline there. I do want
to get your thoughts on the broader landscape, the broader
competitive landscape, because you're the first cyber IPO in quite
a while. I believe the last one was Rubric back
in April. Do you think that your debut may encourage
some of your peers to come out of the pipeline
and test the public markets.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I think there's and be on security cater but I
think all around the market people have been kind of
watching and waiting.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
Is it time to get back out there?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
And, like I say, depending on how close you are
to our story. In our minds, we thought we were
going to come out at the midpoint of our original
finding range of twenty we've been trading in the twenty
four to twenty five range. In our minds, that's great,
and we think we're going to over time be able
to move up from there if we continue to deliver results.
So I think people were watching us, watching kind of
the market receptivity. You know, can't comment on the volume
(08:19):
or the level of this, but it was kind of
reported that there was an over subscription thing here, I
meaning there's a lot of interest in the investor world.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
I think the market, as you all know, has been
hungry for some more IPOs.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
So I think there's an interest and they're looking for
the right profiles of companies. And then I think back
to your question a little more, Katie. I think at
the end of the day, cybersecurity is still a very
good market, right, if there's nothing else that's true. Everybody's
very well aware we are far from solving this. Matter
of fact, we will never solve cybersecurity, right. It's just
a cat and mouse. There's going to be new ways
(08:50):
of tackling it.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
A very common question we get is AI good for
you or bad for you? And I say yes, right,
like welcome to cyber Right, it's going to be a
tool that helps us do what we do better, and
it's going to help the bad actors do what they
do better. So we're just going to continue to be
helping companies protect themselves against a set of bad actors
Nation States, criminals, et cetera, that are trying to disrupt them,
(09:13):
steal data, you know, et cetera.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
So I think.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
We're very confident that this is a great market. And
then within that back to Matt's question of explaining this
to your friend the butcher, right, identity is a very
interesting subsector of security because it's probably the newest sub sector.
Meaning for decades we've been working on network security and
device security or endpoint security.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
We know names like Palo Alto, we know names like
CrowdStrike and all that.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Identity security is a relatively newer concept, right. There's a
handful of names there, and the market got a little
enamored with this single sign on thing, which is kind
of all the rage of a decade ago, and that's
an important piece. It's far from the comprehensive need though,
that customers have to secure their enterprise and all its data.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
We're still maturing. We're still maturing in this market. All right.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
That's a good place to leave it. Mark, great to
get some time with you. Hope to speak to you
again soon. That is Mark McLean of Sale Point
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Sale Point is back on the market. The security company
went public for the second time last week. The first
time it went public back in twenty seventeen, before Toma
Bravo took sale Point private in twenty twenty two. Tomo Bravo,
of course, has been very much looking for this IPO
market to open back up, and sale Point is a
critical part of that. For more on the decision to
go public again, we're joined by Mark McLain, sale Points CEO.
(00:35):
When you spoke to our colleagues over here at Bloomberg News,
you talked a lot about the use of proceeds, the
grand ambition here about going public. At the end of
the day, what do you think the first priorities are
for you? Is it paying down that debt or looking
for expansion opportunities.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I think the primary was to pay down debt sally,
but I think we see ourselves kind of as a
long term growth business, so in some ways it was
putting some fuel in the tank, as it were, and
kind of getting ourselves ready for what we believe is
a multi year growth opportunity. So yeah, it was kind
of get the debt down to a manageable level and
then get ready for future growth.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I do want to talk about the timing a little bit,
of course.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
This is your return to.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
The public markets. You listed on the New York Sock
Exchange in twenty seventeen, then you went private when Toma
Bravo acquired you in twenty twenty two. Now you're back again,
which is a pretty quick turnaround.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
Just talk us through that, yeah, I think, to be honest, Katie.
And by the way, just a piece of data.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
You probably know we were owned by Toma Ravo before
the first IPO, which so it's a little bit of
a back and forth thing.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Not a terribly common story, I guess, but I think
we were.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Kind of, you know, when we did the go private
in twenty two, thinking of a little longer timeframe to
come back.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
And I think two things are true.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
One is we've been forced to have a very good,
you know, amount of growth over the last few years
and kind of shifted to a more profitable profile, so
that kind of desirable scale growth profit profile that market's like.
And then of course the markets have warmed up a
bit obviously in the last three to four months.
Speaker 5 (02:00):
So I think it was.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
That combination of being ready, having kind of a hopefully
attractive profile for the public markets, and then kind of
ready to pull that trigger when the market started to
warm up and we felt like the time was right
to do that.
Speaker 6 (02:10):
You can tell your story mark with your growth, and
you know Wall Street likes to see the numbers. But
in terms of just the elevator pitch, I always find
it so difficult to understand what these software solutions providers do.
And in your notes it says you equip modern enterprise
to seamlessly manage and secure access to applications.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Like, what is that? What does that mean? How do
you tell.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Your butcher what your company does?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
I usually say my grandmother, but you know she's deceased,
and probably the butcher is a better metaphor. I think
at the end of the day, you know, there's what
everybody does all day, every day, and they get this
is they log into systems.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
We all have a whole bunch of accounts and passwords,
so everybody gets that concept.
Speaker 5 (02:53):
What sale Points focused.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
On is ensuring that in an enterprise amid to large
scale enterprise where there might be tens or even hundreds
of thousands of human identities.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
And now increasingly what we call non human.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Identities you know think you know, software programs and now
AI agents is all the rage. All those identities have
access to systems and data, right, that's generally some kind
of an account and a password. Well, keeping all of
that accurate and what's called in the security realm least privilege.
In other words, any identity should have exactly what they
need or it needs to do with the.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Job and no more.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, keeping that accurate and adhering to security policy is
really hard, and that's what big enterprises have struggled with
because all those systems are from different vendors. Right, They've
got Workday and Salesforce and Service Now and Microsoft Apps
and Oracle and all kinds of stuff from twenty or
thirty or fifty years of it. And getting all that
(03:46):
to stay in sync and to be secure and accurate
is a very hard problem. That's what sale points focused on,
is the right access to the right data for every
identity in their enterprise.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
I'm glad you bring up AI. I've been asking chat
GPT to log in into some of my applications and
do some stuff for me, right, rather than just answer
stupid questions and so far it can't. Are you going
to enable that kind of technology? How soon do you
see that kind of thing being able to work?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Well, there are some places you know your chat GBT
Matt is doing this to you, as I guess it should.
But I think at the end of the day, there
is a sense that people want to automate and streamline
things while maintaining security. And that's the tension, right, There's
a there's a tension that's existed forever in the realm
of technology, which is convenience and things go fast and
(04:36):
easy is what business users want, and control and security
is what kind of the protection mindset people want.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Right, So there's always a tension.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
There, and AI is just in some ways the latest,
maybe most dramatic iteration of Wow.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
Super cool tech.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
We can do a lot with this, we can accelerate
our business, go do amazing things.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
And the security folks are going.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Oh, tap the brakes, like, not sure exactly if we
understand what access to what data is happening here and
all these controls we put in place to protect our
business and its information might be getting run over in
that realm. So there's a tension there, and we're pretty
early obviously in this dynamic, right, So we're one of
the companies that's kind of in the thick of that
with all these providers of business application technology and.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
LMS and AI models and.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
All that good stuff, and then these security professionals in
these enterprises that are trying.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
To make sure they let their business succeed.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
But do so in a way that protects its information.
And that's just a hard problem, and we're kind of
at the center of helping big enterprises solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
You know, Mark, on the show, we like to have
our guests talk about their business but also about their
market experience. And you've got a lot of credit here
for being one of the first to market this year.
Of course, this is an IPO market that a lot
of investors have been waiting to open back up. The
first week has been choppy. What would you say to
people that are looking to go public right now?
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Is it a good time?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Is the window really small?
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Frankly, that's a good question. We wrestled with it both.
I will give you a little perspective.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That you know, everybody's got their view of what's happened,
even in our case for about a week now, right,
I mean, we priced kind of between nineteen and twenty one.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
On the cover of the S one.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We raised the filing range from twenty one to twenty
three and priced at the high end of that rage
and then upsized our offering. So we did a lot
of things that kind of said we weren't set up
for a big run up. We were focused on getting
out at the right price in the market to kind
of balance two things. Frankly, right, Toma Bravo, our primary owner, wants.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
Good liquidity out of the deal.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
And we want to set ourselves up for long term
market success with a lot of the same long term
investors at own sale point for five years in the
market before, so there was some tension there. And again
I like to say, if you're in my seat, you
didn't do this for a one day pop or even
a week pop. We're thinking months and years of business success.
You know, I won't plan on necessarily this kind of multiple.
We went public the first time at seventeen at a
(06:54):
little over a billion. We sold to Toma Bravo less
than five years later for seven billion.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
So we think we understand something.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
About how to grow once we're in the market, and
we just don't focus on the day to day. My
famous phrase I developed on our first public offering timing
was to our own team internally. I said, look, every
second you spend watching the stock price, you're doing nothing
to help the stock price, right Like, watching stock movements
day all day is what you all and a bunch
of investors do. Our team's job is to go build
(07:22):
great solutions and win in the market.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
And I always say, if we do.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
That well, the stock price will take care of itself.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
If I were the CEO of a company, I would.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Just stare at my stock price all day.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
So I really respect the discipline there. I do want
to get your thoughts on the broader landscape, the broader
competitive landscape, because you're the first cyber IPO in quite
a while. I believe the last one was Rubric back
in April. Do you think that your debut may encourage
some of your peers to come out of the pipeline
and test the public markets.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I think there's and be on security cater but I
think all around the market people have been kind of
watching and waiting.
Speaker 5 (07:56):
Is it time to get back out there?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
And, like I say, depending on how close you are
to our story. In our minds, we thought we were
going to come out at the midpoint of our original
finding range of twenty we've been trading in the twenty
four to twenty five range. In our minds, that's great,
and we think we're going to over time be able
to move up from there if we continue to deliver results.
So I think people were watching us, watching kind of
the market receptivity. You know, can't comment on the volume
(08:19):
or the level of this, but it was kind of
reported that there was an over subscription thing here, I
meaning there's a lot of interest in the investor world.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
I think the market, as you all know, has been
hungry for some more IPOs.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
So I think there's an interest and they're looking for
the right profiles of companies. And then I think back
to your question a little more, Katie. I think at
the end of the day, cybersecurity is still a very
good market, right, if there's nothing else that's true. Everybody's
very well aware we are far from solving this. Matter
of fact, we will never solve cybersecurity, right. It's just
a cat and mouse. There's going to be new ways
(08:50):
of tackling it.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
A very common question we get is AI good for
you or bad for you? And I say yes, right,
like welcome to cyber Right, it's going to be a
tool that helps us do what we do better, and
it's going to help the bad actors do what they
do better. So we're just going to continue to be
helping companies protect themselves against a set of bad actors
Nation States, criminals, et cetera, that are trying to disrupt them,
(09:13):
steal data, you know, et cetera.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
So I think.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
We're very confident that this is a great market. And
then within that back to Matt's question of explaining this
to your friend the butcher, right, identity is a very
interesting subsector of security because it's probably the newest sub sector.
Meaning for decades we've been working on network security and
device security or endpoint security.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
We know names like Palo Alto, we know names like
CrowdStrike and all that.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Identity security is a relatively newer concept, right. There's a
handful of names there, and the market got a little
enamored with this single sign on thing, which is kind
of all the rage of a decade ago, and that's
an important piece. It's far from the comprehensive need though,
that customers have to secure their enterprise and all its data.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
We're still maturing. We're still maturing in this market. All right.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
That's a good place to leave it. Mark, great to
get some time with you. Hope to speak to you
again soon. That is Mark McLean of Sale Point
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