Building a Cyber Security Company from Israel: Aki Eldar, CEO of Secure Islands (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you get that customer?

Aki Eldar: 2010.

Sramana Mitra: The financial crisis has settled a little bit. I was raising my eyebrows that you got a financial institution. A little bit of time had passed from the calamity.

Aki Eldar: They had a huge problem. We were the only one that could solve their problem.

Sramana Mitra: Who at Credit Suisse knew about you?

Aki Eldar: Nobody.

Sramana Mitra: How did you find this opportunity?

Aki Eldar: We try to penetrate all over and we were able to set up a meeting with Credit Suisse in order to present our solution. When we presented it, they said, “Very interesting.”

Sramana Mitra: It was outbound. You were hitting up all of these enterprises and telling them about your solution. Credit Suisse had some awareness about the problem and it was just perfect timing.

Aki Eldar: Absolutely.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next major milestone? Your investors let you survive through the financial crisis. Now, we’re in 2010.

Aki Eldar: Slowly, we gained more and more customers. The next major customer was UBS, which is Credit Suisse’s competitor. They knew what we were doing at Credit Suisse. More and more customers in different verticals became our customers. The journey from 2010 takes time until implementation and proving ourselves. Since 2010, we were able to double each year up to another significant milestone for us. More or less until 2011, we were bootstrapped. We self-financed.

Sramana Mitra: You had angel financing before though?

Aki Eldar: Yes. In 2014, Credit Suisse Next working out of New York decided to invest $10 million in Secure Islands.

Sramana Mitra: That was your Series A financing?

Aki Eldar: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How much angel financing did you take earlier on?

Aki Eldar: Not a lot. It was a few millions.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a substantial amount of time – 2008 to 2014. That’s six years. You managed to survive that part partially with bootstrapping and some amount of fundraising.

Aki Eldar: It’s not just survival of the company, but we were also able to keep all our core employees. Nobody left the company.

Sramana Mitra: How big was the team?

Aki Eldar: We were 12 to 15.

Sramana Mitra: That’s not an easy payroll to sustain for six years.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a Cyber Security Company from Israel: Aki Eldar, CEO of Secure Islands
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