Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Gryphon CEO John Wu (Part 1)

Gryphon is a very interesting company in the B-to-C Cyber Security space. This interview discusses their go-to-market strategy and equity crowdfunding strategy in significant detail.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Gryphon.

John Wu: I’m the CEO of Gryphon. We’re an enterprise-level type of network protection for homes and small businesses. We make it easy to add a layer of network protection to protect your family from all sorts of online threats. That could range from network intruders and hackers to inappropriate content that your kids may be accessing online, and giving you that control and visibility to your home network.

We’ve been introducing lots of different connected devices into our homes. We feel that every home should have some layer of network protection that is easy to set up, easy to use, and affordable. The reason I started this company is that my daughter was on her iPad and she was searching for princesses. This was when Frozen had just come out. Inappropriate content came out.

With all these different connected devices that we’re introducing into our homes, it’s making it very difficult for parents even if they’re technically inclined to manage these devices at home.

Sramana Mitra: So B2C cyber security is the general category in which you play.

John Wu: Right.

Sramana Mitra: How do you go to market?

John Wu: We go direct to consumer. We introduced the product in 2018 and have been growing ever since. As of today, we have sold more than 60,000 Gryphons protecting over 350,000 different devices in tens of thousands of homes.

Sramana Mitra: What is the form factor of your product?

John Wu: It’s a mesh WiFi router. You either replace your current WiFi router in your home or you can add on to your current network. As long as you put all the devices onto the Gryphon network, all those devices are protected, managed, and controlled.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a secure router that replaces a router from Xfinity for example.

John Wu: Exactly. We have an app that you use. You download the app, create a login, and scan the secure QR code on Gryphon. The Gryphon is then paired with the app and allows you to control your home network.

Sramana Mitra: What is the price point?

John Wu: We have three models. The lowest cost is $79. If have a small 2-bedroom house, you can use that. We also have a high-end model which is for $279. That one gives you better coverage and better throughput. These are mesh routers so you can actually create a larger network by meshing multiples of these Gryphons together into a single network.

Sramana Mitra: How are you generating awareness for the product and for this category even? The market is very large, but when you double-click down to the addressable market, you need people to be aware that you can do security control within the household. You need fairly technical people as buyers. The addressable market size drops because of those constraints.

John Wu: We think of it in terms of the problem we’re solving. If you think about it, a lot of parents are facing the issue of protecting kids online. Nine out of 10 parents will tell you that that’s one of the things that they’re concerned about and that they’re struggling with. How do we bring awareness to this? We know there is a pain point. Now we got to let people know that there is a solution. A lot of our customers are partners in this. We have lots of word-of-mouth going on. Once they use the product, they tell their friends about it.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Gryphon CEO John Wu
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