On 23rd November, Cyber Ireland held an event to Demystify the Cybersecurity Startup Journey. The event, hosted at Dogpatch Labs, Dublin, was targeted towards Startup and Scale-up Founders, as well as Tech professionals who may be considering starting or joining a startup.
Colm Healy, CEO, Coratta, chaired the event. Over 60 attendees got to hear from three Founders on how they started and scaled their cybersecurity companies. Speakers included:
- Brian Byrne, CEO, Mesh Security
- Rahim Jina, COO, Edgescan
- Eoin Hinchy, CEO, Tines
The founders spoke about their unique personal stories on their startup journey towards building and scaling their companies. The insights discussed included:
- There is no one career path or personality type for a founder, however a high-risk tolerance and comfort with uncertainty does help.
- The inevitability that founders will meet unexpected challenges or situations, but it is important to trust that they and their team will be able to work through them.
- The importance of getting their project as far advanced as possible before leaving full-time employment.
- When taking on investment, raise as much as possible from people you can work with.
Colm Healy said ‘It was very encouraging to see the enthusiasm and interest from the attendees in thinking about founding their own companies. There were some great questions from the audience, and we will be running this startup event again next year.”
Kevin Buckley, HPSU Manager, Enterprise Ireland, provided information on the supports available for new entrepreneurs, such as advice on seed and follow-on investment including conducting due diligence and helping management teams and owners to scale their businesses, launching products in new markets, and raising additional investment.
The event was supported by Scale Ireland.