So you’ve built, sold and successfully delivered a product.
From the outside, it may seem that startup success is therefore guaranteed. However the reality is that this core purpose is only a part of what it takes to build a successful company.
“Running a business is bloody hard!” Ben Armstrong tells TechBlast a little more than four months after launching cybersecurity startup Cytix in Manchester.
“My understanding of business was very much that as long as you can sell and deliver, the rest takes care of itself.
“While in part that’s true, I totally underestimated the size of the iceberg underneath the surface of being a business owner.”
He teamed up with former NCC Group and Secarma colleague Tom Ballin – the ethical hacker to Armstrong’s commercial brain – to solve the shortcomings of traditional security testing by integrating this into a company’s workflow.
Cytix has developed a software-as-a-service vulnerability management platform and clusters of dedicated pentesters to help customers identify and resolve vulnerabilities. It has signed clients regularly since launch, with more than 17 customers actively trialling the product already.
The company – which raised £230,000 from SFC Capital earlier this year – has taken on a developer in Matt Milan, also ex-Secarma, and a marketeer so far. It has ads out currently for another developer and a tester.
“At first I found fundraising very hard, until I realised that I had Manchester on my doorstep,” Armstrong (pictured centre) said.
“From December I started to attend events aimed at educating founders on fundraising. This helped immensely and I can’t stress how great Manchester has been as a knowledge base for all things raising.
“We opened the round on the 1st Feb and were able to confidently answer investor queries using documentation we had already prepared.”
Cytix was part of the first cohort of the DiSH accelerator in Manchester City Centre – run by Plexal in a space managed by Barclays Eagle Labs – and has now taken office space inside the building to continue its growth.
On SFC’s investment, he adds: “We raised £150k from their SEIS fund and £80k from their regional BBI fund.
“We actually had a number of term sheets in the end, but we felt that at this stage SFC had the most to offer as a venture partner.”
Cytix has also joined the fifth cohort of Exchange, the tech scaleup support scheme at Department Bonded Warehouse, and is currently forecasting an ARR of £400k in its first year.