"Winning trust, and making powerful connections"
Chris Wallis, CEO of Intruder, explains how completing the NCSC's Startup Programme was a turning point for his organisation.
It's October 2017, and Chris Wallis has his computer perched on his lap, on a packed Megabus as it hurtles down the M40 towards Cheltenham.
He’s on his way to meet technical experts from the NCSC, having been selected to take part in their programme for startup organisations. Chris’s startup, Intruder, was in its early days so he was saving as much money as possible, taking the bus instead of the train, and staying in a friend’s shed rather than forking out for a hotel.
Chris would use much of the funding from the programme to fuel his business and recruit his first Chief Technical Officer. These early sacrifices have paid off. Intruder, an online vulnerability scanner that finds cyber security weaknesses in an organisation’s digital infrastructure, has grown into a 31-strong startup with over 2,500 clients across the globe, and has secured £1.2m in Seed investment since graduating from the NCSC’s startup programme in 2018.
How did the NCSC scheme help Intruder?
Chris founded Intruder to help organisations spend less time detecting threats. Within 2 years of launch, it had a modest two-person team and 12 paying clients. Chris was also considering focusing on building an easy-to-use platform for the SME market, so when the NCSC revealed that 'protecting SMEs' was the focus of its next programme, he knew his startup was on the right path.
“We suspected it was a problem worth solving, so when the NCSC thought it was a problem too, it helped us to double down and commit to that market,” he says. “The stars were aligning. If the NCSC hadn’t put that challenge out there, I’m not sure we would have focussed on SMEs.”
The funding from the programme also helped Intruder make a game-changing addition to the team. “That money helped us bring on our CTO, who we wouldn’t have been able to hire otherwise. He helped us become a product-led business rather than a consultancy service, and that was a real turning point.”
Beyond funding and an understanding of the market, the NCSC provided Intruder with introductions to potential clients, as well as unique access to experts from within the defence sector. “As a really small, early-stage startup, it helped us win trust and make really powerful connections” Chris says.
And long after the programme finished, Chris is active in a chat group where alumni from the scheme routinely share advice and problems, something he says is unlikely to have come about without the programme. “There’s a real sense of community between cyber security founders, and people are really willing to take time out of their day to help each other out,” he says.
What next for Intruder?
Intruder had around twelve customers when it joined the NCSC Startups programme. Four years after graduating, it has around 2,500 customers all over the world and it’s growing rapidly in the US in particular. Chris believes that Intruder's growth can be partly explained by the fact that it’s not tried to pivot, or to do too many things with its lean team. “We’ve just kept doing more of the same, but better, and have focussed on product improvements rather than adding new products constantly.”
Intruder intends to carry on with its global push by using its growing team to make more product improvements that will help it become the number one platform for vulnerability management.
If you're interested in getting access to cyber security experts from industry and the NCSC, we’re still accepting applications for the NCSC For Startups 2022 intake. You can find out more and apply by visiting the website, or you can get in touch by emailing [email protected].
Chris Wallis, Intruder CEO
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