Kelly

Unified Google Proposal — Present Combined GDC/GCE to Rohan

Aligned Kelly and Bjorn on presenting a unified GDC/GCE proposal to Rohan (Google senior director) instead of negotiating separately. Reframing from pro-serve/ticket model to value-driven partnership with a large fixed annual fee ($8-9M).

Mar 4

Set Google GDC meeting strategy: build direct relationship and manage attendee roles

Peter decided to attend the Google GDC executive meeting himself (without Greg), bringing Max, Brady, and Nathan. Will personally manage Nathan's participation to protect Brady's roadmap presentation. Kelly directed to tell Google 'Peter has this covered.'

Feb 17

Committed to creating CVE remediation value driver for GTM

Committed to creating a value driver for CVE remediation work after learning that remediation volume jumped from 1 to 86 per week. Timeline is ~2 months to develop the story after validating the new process is sustainable.

Feb 6

Google Partnership Strategy - Build Rapport with Tissa

Decided to shift the Google contract renegotiation strategy from confrontational to collaborative. Peter will personally meet with Tissa (Google) to build rapport and empathy, framing CIQ's financial pain as a shared problem to solve together. Greg will be excluded from this meeting to ensure a non-antagonistic conversation.

Feb 5

COGS data access unblocked for Ryan - Bjorn to grant via Kelly

Convened Bjorn and Ryan to resolve Ryans 6-month block on accessing official COGS data. Ryan had been forced to recreate the data independently, which conflicted with Bjorns H1 directive to use a single official source. Bjorn agreed immediately and will email Kelly Marlin today to grant Ryan full access.

Jan 21

Google TDX Work - Funding Requirement

Rejected doing Google TDX work if it only means 2-3 months of paid engineering time. Set requirement that the work must add headcount to CIQ to be worth pursuing - otherwise CIQ is just spending scarce resources on Google priorities instead of its own.

Jan 16

COGS Visibility - Escalate Finance Data Access via Bjorn

Committed to scheduling a tri-party meeting with Ryan and Bjorn to secure finance data access (loaded rates) for Ryan's Intelligence Hub. Finance (Marlon, Kelly) previously denied Ryan's direct requests.

Jan 15

Google Scope Change - Hold the Line on Commercial Terms

Decided to personally join the Monday lunch meeting with Tissa to lead negotiation on Google scope change. Google was trying to bundle Rocky 8 and 9 into one version (reducing from 8 to 5 versions) and push release next format without updated commercial terms.

H1 Planning Framework - 3-Lane Model

Pushed for the team to focus on ICPs, goals, and milestones rather than getting lost in metrics and mid-level tactics. Established a 3-lane framework (GTM, Value Drivers, Engineering) to align all work.

ICP Consolidation - RLCH and RLCAI into Fuzzball

Consolidated RLCH (Rocky Linux Confidential Hardened) and RLCAI ICPs with Fuzzball ICPs to simplify GTM. RLCH targets regulated industries, government, power distribution. RLCAI targets AI-inferencing and compute-heavy industries. Rocky Pro kept separate for mid-market RHEL/SUSE/Oracle replacement motion.

H1 Planning Framework - 3-Lane Model

Introduced a new 3-lane planning model to address GTM and Engineering misalignment. Top Lane (GTM): marketing campaigns, messaging. Middle Lane (Value Drivers): the why - market state change, ICP, business significance. Bottom Lane (Engineering): deliverables driven by Value Drivers.

Google Scope Change - Hold the Line on Commercial Terms

Google is pushing scope changes that bundle 8 versions into a 5-version contract, omit EOL dates, and include undefined dev streams. This creates scope creep risk and jeopardizes the Extended LTS revenue stream (~$300k/year per product). Decision to personally attend the Monday meeting with Tissa (with Max) to hold the line. Greg will NOT attend to preserve escalation path.