Mr Amer Deeba
Amer Deeba is a GTM executive. He has demonstrated expertise in marketing cloud security and enterprise software. He has been working in Silicon Valley since 1990. Over these years, Deeba has earned the admiration of his peers for his decision-making and creative skills. Deeba is currently advising two companies on marketing strategies and has also helped co-found Stealth-Mode Cybersecurity Startup, for which he is the CEO.
| Mr Amer Deeba | |
|---|---|
 amer-deeba copy.jpg | |
| Native name | Amer Deeba |
| Born | Amer Deeba 1967 Marjeyoun, Lebanon |
| 🏡 Residence | California, USA |
| 🏫 Education | American University of Beirut |
| 🎓 Alma mater | Santa Clara University |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| adeeba | |
| Amer-Deeba-107699925061229 | |
| asdeeba/?hl=en | |
| amer-deeba-39276 | |
Early Life[edit]
Amer Deeba was born in Marjeyoun, Lebanon. His birthplace is a small town in the south of Lebanon. Deeba was born in 1967. He is the youngest in his family and has two elder brothers. He grew up during a particularly challenging time in Lebanon, as the civil war broke out when he was eight years old.
Education[edit]
Amer Deeba attended the American University of Beirut. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering in 1988. Growing up Deeba was fascinated by the technology industry and Silicon Valley. He perceived it as a place of great innovation and wanted to become a part of the change. Deeba applied for a master's degree and got admitted to Santa Clara University.
He studied at Santa Clara from 1988 to 1990. During this time, Deeba worked as a teaching assistant. He graduated with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Deeba was meant to pursue a PhD after his master's. Over the summers, he got interested in developing practical skills and decided against pursuing a PhD. His first job was with Verity, as a software engineer.
Career[edit]
Amer Deeba got his start in the tech industry working as a coder for Verity. He worked with them as a software engineer from 1993 to 1995. He worked on the development of Verity’s search engine, Topic. It was principally developed by David Glazer and Phil Nelson. The search engine was revolutionary because users did not have to rely on limited Boolean operators. Topic was a precursor to the conceptual searches that are common today. Deeba integrated Topic with critical applications like Lotus Notes 4.0.
After Verity, Deeba joined Adobe Systems, also as a software engineer. While working at Adobe, Deeba was responsible for the development of Adobe Acrobat. He was specifically responsible for integrating Adobe Acrobat with web browsers so that the pdf file format could be viewed on them.
In 1999, Deeba got his start as a marketing executive. This job was offered to him by his mentor, Philippe Courtot. The company was known as Signio, but it was later acquired by VeriSign for $1 billion. Signio then became VeriSign’s B2C Payment Services division. After the acquisition, Deeba was made appointed as the General Manager for the division. Under his leadership, the division had a 150% growth.
Deeba left VeriSign in 2001 and joined Qualys (NASDAQ: QLYS). He was initially appointed as the Chief Marketing Officer. He worked in Qualys until 2018. His time at Qualys was filled with lots of professional successes. At Qualys, he was responsible for overseeing the primary aspects of marketing, corporate communications, and branding. When he was promoted as the Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategic Alliances, he also became responsible for corporate development, strategic alliances, and global accounts. Deeba played an important role in getting Qualys publicly listed.
Deeba joined Moogsoft after leaving Qualys in 2018. He joined the company as its Chief Operating Officer. This role saw him oversee the company’s strategic alliances, global sales, marketing, and customer success. In a span of two years, Deeba made the company into a leader in AIOps by transforming it into a SaaS platform and overhauling its marketing strategy. He left Moogsoft in 2020 and joined CyCognito as their Advisor.
He is currently working at CyCognito and advises them on their marketing strategy. The company is a cybersecurity SaaS platform that helps its client secure their systems by simulating hacking attacks. Alongside CyCognito, he is also the GTM Advisor for Monad Inc. Monad is a cybersecurity startup as well that is devising solutions for security issues for big data. At the end of 2021, Deeba also co-founded the cybersecurity startup, Stealth-Mode.
Deeba has worked as a coder and an executive, which sets him apart from most of his colleagues. This enables him to understand the technology he is marketing and package it ubiquitously. For this reason, Forbes magazine dubbed him a rare executive.
Philanthropy[edit]
According to Deeba, education has played a big role in his life. He is actively involved in helping children in developing countries get access to quality education with a focus on technological learning. He is making a change as a Board Member and the Middle East Liaison for Eduarte Courtot Foundation. The foundation was set up by his late mentor, Philippe Courtot’s wife Freya Courtot.
Deeba has a hands-on approach to the daily operations of the foundation. As part of his work, he scopes out schools that could benefit from funding from the foundation. He then visits these schools personally to see how the Foundation can help them. The foundation has helped schools in The Philippines and Lebanon. They are currently looking to expand in Afghanistan.
Personal Life[edit]
Deeba is married to Rosemary Cremesti. The two tied the knot in Lebanon, as his wife is also from Lebanon. Their wedding was a grand event, attended by their friends and colleagues from the US, and their friends and family from Lebanon. Deeba and Cremesti also have a son together named Elias. His wife, Rosemary, also works in the tech industry. She is currently working at UiPath as their Senior Director Global Partner GTM. Before this, she was working at Google, where she managed the marketing aspects of Google Maps and the G Suite.
Quotes[edit]
“As chaotic and crazy as it was to grow up in a war zone, it gave me a great perspective on life. I don’t take for granted the privilege of living in a free, democratic society with civil liberties, peace, and opportunity. I learned to be resourceful and resilient. My experience taught me it’s important to be decisive, and to trust my judgement. It made me prioritize life-long learning and hard work. I have always been willing to stretch beyond my comfort zone to grow personally and professionally.”
- Amer Deeba, Forbes
“[Phillip Courtot] gave me my first opportunity to branch out from engineering to the business side and became my mentor. I learned so much from him throughout the years: How to design and build a technology platform; How to run a business at scale; How to understand the customer’s point of view; How to deal with competitors; How to market a product; How to view things not from the conventional angle but from the correct angle. And much more.”
- Amer Deeba, Forbes
“[Obstacles are] always there, yet I take each challenge as an opportunity to learn. It’s the nature of business. Being involved in taking Qualys public in 2012 was full of challenges. But as you face and deal with all those obstacles and challenges, you learn and hone your leadership skills.”
- Amer Deeba, Forbes
“My leadership style is based on understanding things before I act. That means doing my own research and then talking to people who have relevant knowledge and information, whose opinions are valuable. Then I feel confident about making the right decision.”
- Amer Deeba, Forbes
“Once I’ve made a decision, I don’t look back. I don’t get distracted by others. If you’re hesitant and doubt yourself, you’ll suffer from 'analysis paralysis' and people around you will lose confidence. What’s worse, the people you manage will sense your lack of conviction and may become confused. I move forward with conviction, but if and when I realize I’ve made a mistake, then I pivot quickly.”
- Amer Deeba, Forbes
“In life, my wife gave me the best advice: To be more mindful. With her help and encouragement, I started practicing mindfulness and it’s been very beneficial. Mindfulness lets you be in the present moment. It increases your emotional intelligence. It helps you understand your situations, make better decisions, and become calmer, less reactive, and more engaged. Having grown up surrounded by civil war, I naturally try to anticipate problems so that I can proactively and quickly address them. But too much of that attitude creates unnecessary anxiety, especially when concerns are unjustified. Anxiety prevents you from appreciating the present moment. These mindful qualities are important for business leaders as well, to project calmness and confidence.”
- Amer Deeba, Forbes
“I came in just with $800 and a one-way ticket…I started my teaching assistant job and that was the beginning of my new life. It was my second trip outside of Lebanon. I had been to London before to visit family – I stayed for a month and a half. The trip to the US was just a completely fresh start from the beginning.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Everything was fascinating. I was so homesick at the beginning, but everything was so fascinating from the moment I landed. I remember getting on 101 and seeing all these big green highway signs and everything was so exciting. I mean, after I got over the homesickness in the first six months, I was over it completely, so integrated with school and programs and people and friends and teaching and the research and interviewing for summer jobs, all of that. I just was like, “Okay, this is what I want to do.” And I was supposed to do a PhD, but then I took a summer job and I started coding and programming and I really enjoyed that. So I’m like, “No, I’m not going to go to school. I just want to be in the industry.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“As commercial officer, you’re the customer champion, you’re the product champion. You are the one who is connecting all these pieces together and figuring out how to scale it, how to take it to market the right way, how to position it to the customer the right way, how to pitch it to a new prospect the right way, and how to make the customer journey very unique and different and memorable.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Be a good listener first…Listen to the market, listen to the customer and try to really understand the problem you’re trying to solve is I think the key, the number one thing.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Another very important thing is really understanding how you package technology to make it accessible and available, not just for one customer, but you make it ubiquitous. You make that from the moment they touch you and they connect into your product until they start using it, it’s a process of joy.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“When you’re doing one thing, just be in it, understand it really well. Have that sensitivity to understand things the right way.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“When you make decisions, you use your mind and you are empathetic, also. You have the right balance, not just ‘I’m going to be all based on these numbers.’ Sometimes numbers are important, but you’ve got to take into consideration other things also when you’re making decisions.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Just don’t be scared of trying. The most important thing. Just put yourself out there, and connect yourself with the right people that can really guide you and help you. And, of course, as long as you have the eagerness to do it, you have to have that innate kind of drive in you, that you’ve got to do this. But just don’t be scared. Just scared. I mean, the worst thing that happens? You fail. You fail, you learn. And you learn, you can become a better human being.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Always treat people with respect and with dignity, and never ever be condescending to others. Especially if you achieve success. That’s where humility becomes so important. Always do it with humility, no matter what.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Listening to the customer is my thing, because they usually tell you what you need to do that you’re not doing.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
“Packaging is so important, particularly how you package technology. What I mean by packaging is from the price point to how they connect to your product, to how you start a trial with them, to all that experience. Because it’s all product-led marketing. It allows you to create this kind of beautiful experience for the customer where, from the moment you touch them until they engage with you, they are in awe. They just see the beautiful things that they need to see. They understand the flows that they need to understand. And that’s what differentiates good products from great products from amazing products. Because when you build that experience to the customer, you scale, you cross the chasm faster, you just do everything at another level altogether.”
- Amer Deeba, Ideamensch
References[edit]
- Amer Deeba – Eduarte Courtot Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved May 23, 2022, from https://eduartecourtotfoundation.org/amer-deeba/ Amer Deeba on mentorship with Philippe Courtot. (2022, March 7). Small Business Sense. https://small-bizsense.com/amer-deeba-mentorship-courtot/
- Bloomberg. (n.d.). Bloomberg. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/4358000
- Editor. (2022a, March 25). Go-To-Market executive Amer Deeba on prioritizing mindfulness. The Tech Headlines. https://thetechheadlines.com/amer-deeba-on-prioritizing-mindfulness/
- Editor, A. (2022b, May 23). Amer Deeba – the journey to becoming a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Mass News. https://www.massnews.com/amer-deeba-journey-silicon-valley/
- Griffin, J. (2019, October 11). When the tough get coding. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2019/10/11/when-the-tough-get-coding/
- Junge, S. (2021, November 26). Amer Deeba - Commercial officer at Monad. IdeaMensch. https://ideamensch.com/amer-deeba/
- K., C. (2019, October 14). This Lebanese engineer was just dubbed “A rare executive” by Forbes. 961. https://www.the961.com/this-lebanese-engineer-was-just-dubbed-a-rare-executive-by-forbes/
- Linga, N. (2022, February 10). Inside Amer Deeba’s work with the Eduarte Courtot Foundation - NYK Daily. NYK DAILY. https://nykdaily.com/2022/02/amer-deeba-eduarte-courtot/
- Scott-Briggs, A. (2021, December 16). Leadership in tech – Amer Deeba’s masterclass. TechBullion. https://techbullion.com/leadership-in-tech-amer-deebas-masterclass/
