Strategy Decisions

Coached David Godlove on sales-focused approach for AMD Fuzzball presentation

Feb 6, 2026 · strategy · medium92% confidence

During the AMD Fuzzball overview meeting, coached David Godlove via DM to maintain a sales mindset rather than defaulting to engineering transparency about product limitations. Emphasized that the goal was to make AMD want to recommend Fuzzball, not to give a technical peer review.

People: David Godlove, Whitney Wickesberg, David Yonkovit, Matt Bettinger, Chris Wolford, Bjorn Hovland

Approved RLC+ and Pro product hierarchy with new naming and de-risked launch cadence

Feb 6, 2026 · strategy · high88% confidence

Approved a new product hierarchy: Stock Rocky (pure community mirror), RLC+ (free with NVIDIA/AMD drivers), RLC Pro (paid tiers). The RLC name now signifies CIQ value-add. Also approved a de-risked 3-phase launch cadence: Phase 1 (Feb) bundles RLC Pro + RLC Plus NVIDIA; Phase 2 (Feb) RLC Pro AI; Phase 3 (Mar) RLC Plus AMD partnership. Identified backporting vs roll-forward policy gap as a pre-launch blocker.

People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland, Max Spevack, Brady Dibble, Brian Dawson

Committed to Anduril attendance with Max

Feb 2, 2026 · strategy · medium83% confidence

Committed that Peter and Max will attend Anduril events and meetings that are valuable.

People: Max Spevack, Chris Wolford

Advocate for in-person Anduril POC kickoff in Seattle

Jan 31, 2026 · strategy · medium80% confidence

Decided to advocate for an in-person technical kickoff meeting in Seattle for the Anduril POC, with both Peter and Max attending. Set clear boundaries on duration - a day or two is fine, but two weeks would break February delivery dates.

People: Max Spevack, Bjorn Hovland, Greg Kurtzer, Ramesh

Position Bjorn as escalation point for Tenable business readiness

Jan 31, 2026 · strategy · medium82% confidence

Decided to position Bjorn as the escalation point for Brady to resolve Tenable business-side roadblocks on the Nessus plugin integration. Technical pipeline (Sam's work) is ~95% unblocked and can deliver data within weeks, but business side may not be ready.

People: Max Spevack, Bjorn Hovland, Brady Dibble

CVE automation is February #1 priority

Jan 31, 2026 · strategy · high88% confidence

Decided that CVE automation is the single most important priority for February. Max should focus on it rather than splitting attention with RLC-AI. RLC-AI has a viable backstop (Peter can threaten to release current version) but CVE automation requires Max's focused leadership.

People: Max Spevack

Quality investment must serve velocity

Jan 30, 2026 · strategy · medium88% confidence

Quality and automation investments are acceptable if the thesis is this will massively increase velocity in 3 months. Quality for its own sake is not the priority. Every quality investment should have a velocity payoff hypothesis attached.

People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Justin, Peter Nelson

Aggressive goal-setting philosophy - undercut estimates, force innovation

Jan 30, 2026 · strategy · high88% confidence

Set targets that seem impossible (e.g., 2 months instead of historical 6 months) and let the team figure out how. Success is not just hitting the target - its learning and attempting new approaches. The managers job used to be to pad estimates; now its to undercut them.

People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Peter Nelson

Focus CVE automation on top 5 priority packages first

Jan 30, 2026 · strategy · high90% confidence

Stack-rank the CVE priority package list and start automation with just the top 5 packages. Drive open CVE count for those 5 as close to zero as possible before expanding scope. Report closed-by-automation separately from will-not-do.

People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes

Do not pursue RedHat EULA violation for LTS kernel patches

Jan 30, 2026 · strategy · high90% confidence

Decided not to access RedHat EUS SRPMs directly (which would violate their EULA) to obtain CVE patches for LTS kernel work. Instead, continue with NARF-based CVE automation that sources patches from Debian, Ubuntu, Alpine, Arch, upstream commits, and other legitimate sources.

Approved Professional Services strategy pivot

Jan 30, 2026 · strategy · low80% confidence

Approved Ryan proposed PS strategy pivot: align PS with Ramesh product-first vision, discontinue unprofitable standalone training deals and custom engineering work, focus only on product-aligned services (Rocky Linux migrations, dedicated support engineers/TAMs, HPC services) delivered through third-party vendors to scale without increasing headcount.

People: Ryan Smith, Ramesh Srinivasan

Escalated Visa support model concerns to Greg

Jan 30, 2026 · strategy · medium82% confidence

Escalated concerns about CIQ support arrangement with Visa to Greg and Bjorn. Questioning why CIQ is on the hook to support Rocky Linux (which CIQ does not build) for Visa, rather than having Visa use RLC so CIQ can actually fix their issues.

People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland