We turned down €3M buyout to build a cybersec of the future
It’s not good to be a millionaire (sometimes)
I’m writing it down in November 2022. True crisis is looming over the horizon and is about to strike in 2023. With the crisis a rain of opportunities will come. It simply is not a good moment to cash out if you are in new technologies and just started.
What’s the situation?
We do Cybersecurity 2.0 — AI powered anomaly detection. As simple as Google Analytics. Just one line of code protects your websites (or servers) and it’s called A-Irene.
It’s named after Marie Curie’s daughter Irene. We are now testing our tech, creating benchmarks for future clients. But you can sign up on a list — to get free services — now https://a-irene.com/.
Anyway, pitching VCs wasn’t on our minds this year. We only pitched to one investor earlier this year. Nevertheless, recently we’ve been approached with a proposal of a buyout. For three millions Euros, we give up majority stakes of the company and remain in the business to build a product.
After a short deliberation we refused and this is what happened:
Endorfine boost
- We are feeling great. Both of us (Me and Rafał) get a boost of energy as someone saw an opportunity to acquire our tech,
- It’s not a side hustle anymore. External validation gave us a better understanding that it’s the right moment to launch. It’s not perfect but we want to show it to the world,
- We feel stronger. We’ve strengthen the bonds between founders as it was something that demonstrated starkly how we view the future. Quite often, you see in pitch decks grand declarations that have never been tested. We had opportunity to test our vision, ability to build internal communication over important topics and mutual trust.
4. We had to cancel Ferrari’s orders. Sad but true (no, just kidding). Now we understand that we want to work together. Not get rich quickly — but to have this journey that can lead to something much greater.
5. We believe in Irene (our product) even more. It was an important test. We want to deliver “cybersecurity with one line of code” solving problem of anomaly detection
6. We are elephant hunters not rabbit hunters. And it’s FKng good to know who you have in your team if you commit for several years to build a business. We want to exit one day but Irene can be 100x or 1.000x bigger and we tested our beliefs and passed!
SignUp! - Let’s build cybersec of the future together!
We are launching now! Starting with free service of uptime monitoring and web telemetry. With a single line of code you can install our tool on your website, so we can monitor your server uptime (alerting if it’s down).
Uptime — a complimentary service you will get by just signing up on our waiting list. It monitors your website and sends you emails each time your www is down or unaccessible. What usually costs hundreds of dollars per year you’ll get for free.
Telemetry — shows you anomalies in your website traffic (malicious traffic, bots, UI/UX change of patterns). It also captures how different is your traffic throughout the day or week. It is still in testing and tweaking phase and will be rolled out early 2023.
Sign Up here, join the list, get free server monitoring service (worth $300/year) for free as soon as we launch.
