How I hit $3m in ARR

please welcome Jamie akhtar to the stage [Applause] hello hello so we're gonna hear um a stories here but it's going to start off with my own personal story a little bit about me and my background how I came to create cyber smart also a little bit about what we do as a company but before we get into all that I spent the last 15 years basically working in technology cyber I have a Building Technology products running Tech teams or helping companies do all

the fun stuff around data protection in reality it's more like I spent 10 years figure out what I want to do in the last five actually building it so I've never actually been employed I've never worked for anyone I think I'm probably unemployable probably a lot of us are unemployable in this room actually and I think that's really where my story starts is like trying to figure out like what it is we want to do as a company so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our kind of Journey some of the lessons we learned along the way some of the the pitfalls on there too firstly starting off with

the first first four years of that Journey so like a lot of it I found was like about self-discovery it's like figure out what is my role as a CEO as a Founder um like where do I want to take this company and then I'm gonna touch a little bit on product Market fit but not a huge amount there's been some amazing presentations already around that today but really want to dive into kind of what this journey looks like I mean someone already I showed this presentation yesterday someone that I was like the hero story you know like you got your trials and then it all goes

well at the end I think this is more and I like to fix stuff but it's not about fixing you it's really about showing you where I went wrong along the way and how I how I basically ultimately resolve that stuff and the key takeaway the number one thing is this isn't about like growth facts or techniques or some kind of magical trick that's gonna double your Revenue it's really about starting with like inspiration motivation within your team having a really cool idea about what you want to take the company and using that to basically build the people around you that are going to drive your company

forward so that's kind of the core message I want you to take away from today so here we go starting out me and my co-founder 2016 um as you might have guessed I'm from London so staring in London Sky every every founder looks like this you know so like like just gazing into what you could achieve Etc no longer my co-founder come on to talk to that about uh in a few minutes anyway but essentially it's about like looking out starting out with like

what's your job your number one job as a company and I used to think my number one job was essentially building an amazing product like just but a kick-ass product that's going to solve this really big problem and it's going to like change the world like Steve Jobs said put us a ding in the universe and like I was that that's what motivated us and I was like okay we're just going to build the best product anyone's ever seen and there's as a the Google campus one one of their accelerators and obviously you know it's not it's not as simple as that and someone actually one

of our First Investors um gave me this piece of advice they said your your job as a Founder is to raise money and hire good people obviously investors they want you to take their cash so this is why they're saying it but ultimately it's about like okay you just got to get loads of cash in the bank hire good people and then that's it you're gonna build a great company um this is as a recent recent event so a bunch of great people obviously it's a bit more than that so my kind of working definition is you've got to be able to set the vision where your company is going and this is something that

constantly in flux as well you've got to get the cash and raising money doesn't mean from investors you can get cash from lots of sources customers is always the best but also you have other options too and then hire the good people um but obviously anyone that's been on this journey will know that there's something that happens before that and we heard about it yesterday and Todd was talking about this doing unscalable things and that's you've got to do everything before you hire any of those good good people or raise the money so you're kind

of like on this journey figuring out what you're going to do so your your first role really as a Founder is to get to product Market fit now I had had like a bunch of slides on product Market fit like loads and loads of stuff loads of good content happy to share it around afterwards but I've cut it down to just a couple a couple pieces um so I can talk a little bit more about team and Leadership so obviously there's been a bunch of graphs that look like this like here's our Revenue growth all this stuff I don't think it really actually it tells you the square root of nothing about how we got there what the journey

looked like really it's you know the trials and the tribulations you go for as a Founder to achieve this is um is completely different so we we talked a lot about like you know things to get you there but I think the core here is like looking at what really happened so I'm going to take you through rewind like six years ago so like in the first year of the company or one thing you'll you would have noticed that you can just see it as a fishy of the company not even on that chart because we didn't have a product or any customers we spent the first year like figure out what we

wanted to do like throwing ideas against the wall we're going to launch like a cyber subscription box and that's such a silly idea but like it was just a bunch of random ideas but then we started to like get out there refine our idea talk to people about it trying to assess if there's any demand for what we're trying to build um so that's kind of where we really started with like hunch and insight and trying to figure out like is this really a problem worth solving um then we built an MSP so an MSP is like a better version of an MVP a

minimum sellable product so like instead of trying to build something that does technically what you want it to achieve try and build the first thing that you can get in the hands of a customer and start charging them for it because then you're really going to learn whether or not it's delivering value for their customer might not be possible for everyone like if you're in deep Tech or something but for many of us in B2B SAS or btsas you can build stuff pretty quickly that you can start selling so we were working on this um on a very iterative approach but essentially like

you know it was it was pitching by day and building by night like I just worked every day every night every weekend building the product um Rory was in our office at the time um and he probably saw me like working every single day um that was sent and but like it was just a case of like learning really quickly and iterating and I think that's kind of the key to that early stage um so that's what our journey looks like and every story told in hindsight is

like almost linear and it's like it looks like this nice graph that like flows from one station in reality it's just like a show you know like you've got my co-founder leaving there you've got like firing a bunch of the team you're like replacing half of the company not being able to to raise cash like almost running out of cash um all that kind of crazy stuff happens but you know when you look back it kind of looks looks kind of kind of neater um and this is really just the first four years I'm Gonna Come on talk about leading through some more challenging

times once you've reached these days so this is kind of like your your first job as a Founder is getting to to that stuff so

a couple of bits so these are like ones that are left in on the product Market fit um just maybe they could be helpful for people so with our product we got to this point where it was like basically not delivering the value that we wanted to for our customers and and we tried lots of different stuff like oh maybe it's the people maybe it's like the way we're presenting the product maybe it's the marketing it's the sales one of the things I found was really helped for us is to do like this product maturity assessment so it's kind of like I thought our vision was super clear and obviously was in my head but not to

everyone else in the company that were building the product so um we did this we had someone come in and they just basically did a quick assessment and provided us this and gives a good idea of what we needed to move towards so if you haven't done something like this and you're trying to figure out like where to take your product it could be a good good lens to look through the other thing we did um that helped us to with the product Market fit piece is talking to our customers really simple questions we've done a lot more since then but these were two that we started with they're basically like how how happy are you

with the current product after now I'm not happy would you be with if it got removed so those are pretty good kind of calibrations and saying asking obviously why what what is the value that you see but the other really interesting data point was the team um so we we run a an okr cycle that had weekly um confidence reporting in there so here's like one of our uh ones towards the end of 2020 and you see that I think this actually indicates we're and you'll see on the next slide we're actually

doing really well at this time but the goals we're setting ourselves we're just pushing the teams just enough that though I had to be outside their comfort zone um but not to the level I mean I'd like more more greens on there but this is how the team personally reflect on their own progress and you can see this is through 2020 you can see like 2020 is where we started to to tick up so this is our most important metric it's the number of people that we're protecting with our our platform so um you see that through that 2020 period is actually

when we started scaling the business but people still didn't yet feel confident and I came over time as they started to settle into to the value we're delivering to our customers as well so you see there again another really straight linear this looks so predictable type graph obviously the reality is just completely different um I love this this graphic because it's kind of like it does describe the Journey of being in a startup especially when you're in this middle bit and you're just like what the hell is going on like I don't know if I'm doing the

right thing am I going left or right are we are we delivering value doing it will be hiring the right people you just kind of question everything and to be honest I went on that right side we're still on the left side so we're still like squiggling around somewhere um it's a non-linear journey I think is it's the important thing and the second is also pmf is not product Market fit is not a solid it's not like the best things you get to and you're done like your your product is constantly evolving your customers evolving the market is

changing all that stuff is evolving right so even if you think you're close to that it's gonna you're gonna have to continue to level up and change your view of the world and if you're trying to create a category you are the one through a change change that definition as well so a couple of bits there around pmf so I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the startup odds and this stuff is either going to be like terrifying or quite exciting but like you look at some

of these failure rates of startups and I guess the first thing is great that everyone's here this is good we're all made it through at least one of these stages so like this is um can be a really scary thing to look at but I think it's something we all need to like face uh look into that Chasm and face and we need to understand what could happen to make us fall off our path so I've got some startup stats here this is quite an interesting thing I think it's called autopsy startup

autopsy to analyze all the reasons so I'm just going to talk mostly about the first one which is about the team stuff and I actually I would change that definition because if you're a Founder not having the right team is 100 your fault like you you are you've got to hire the right people you've got to lead them and so not the right team is a bit of a weak excuse for you failing um in my opinion so I think we're going to dive a bit more into that and how how you can create the right people and the right team around you as well but after

those two two graphs and just stay positive I think is is another big takeaway um like when you're you're one person when you're five people 50 people 500 people just stay super positive so three three quick tips last bit of this section um and things that I do personally so this is the kind of wrap-up of my personal stuff um so number one laser focused I mean I'm pretty sure all of us have this like super Focus anyway you need it to be a Founder but just be identifying stuff

that isn't working for you or that we'll all have that extra stuff that we're doing on top of the core activities just like stripping that out super important um probably the number one and you'll hear about this throughout this presentation is around the resilience so um within here I think this there's probably three more practical things you can do because obviously just like grow fix skin isn't isn't unactionable um the first one is putting you and your team outside their comfort zone and you see those okay allies are a good way of doing that but just like you know putting people in more senior positions

giving them more responsibility than they used to the second I think is taking difficult decisions as early as you know you need to take them like deferring decisions is like a killer for businesses and the more you take them the more the more resilient you become as a company and the last one is something you should embed in your culture and that's build a culture that is willing and Embraces failure and but if you do these things you tend to grow Faker skin over time well that's what we found at least but the most important

one is taking offers on the journey and I think that's the thing that's really going to drive you through all the challenge and the struggle and The Strife because if you're sitting there and you're trying to run this company alone it's just you your vision and you are the driving force like pretty soon you're ever gonna run out of steam or you're going to hit a block that you can't overcome yourself so like bringing others with you on that Journey like at the start those four of us we paid everyone 500 pounds a month that's like 600 bucks that was that we call it pocket money that's how we

started the company and then we all had 25k salaries for like a year so like get creating that early camarader and like the fact that we're trying to do something for a purpose is really really important to keep us going and obviously since then a lot of Lord and mega stuff so far so anyway some good some good stuff just enjoy the journey along along the way like do fun events team events whatever I'll talk a bit about remote stuff in a minute as well um so we're going to whiz through some of these last bits but these are where

we're going to get on some of their content um so the last two years been like absolute hell like for us I'm sure from loads of people in the room like three things here and this one's like incoming the recession one um but like that's awesome that we're all standing here and we've made it to this far um but we've still got a little bit more to go so I'm going to start firstly talking about the pandemic and how that was a good chance for us to Pivot and I think any any massive you know change societal change like this is a good chance to reflect on like what it is

you're doing um so for us that that meant like it was such a bad time because like our team were all in the office and they were working from home so all the communication broke down our customers were like like the deal times went up and like our churn rate we were worried about that and our product didn't really fit the need for what what people needed at that time it's like we were basically flapping around we didn't have any idea about what we're going to do so we use this as a chance to Pivot and the the key to that was really around like clear

communication because if we didn't communicate clearly we would run out of cash and fell so it's like okay this is what we got to do um so here's one of the slides we used which was kind of like okay we've got to switch gears we had like a bunch of activities we're doing lots of experimentation this is just the two things we're going to do um the first one is like our Core Business which was going really well and second was exploring some new stuff as well so we were like basically we're gonna have to reshape the whole business in order to hit these goals uh we use an analogy we use these a lot they kind of can be hit or miss so like I guess try

it with your team um but on on this one talk about rocket Factory we've got a basically stabilize our current rocket which kept blowing up all the time um and for a security software you don't want it to blow up second one is we've got to build a new rocket and the third one has got to make sure that the factory is running running nice and smooth um but I think and this actually delivered like awesome results like the pivot and the communication um and all that stuff I'm constantly repeating it every week um was was super helpful but the other

thing that's super important is the people side of things and another big takeaway is just that you've got to support support support your team I'm sure you've all been doing this last two years you're going to have to keep doing it for the next two but like basically being there and having a human touch to anything you need to do whether it's really difficult uh decisions like letting people go or even just changing the direction of the company like there's a lot of anxiety and fear about what's going to happen in the next like couple years so like you know it's not about like you know comforting people

and telling them it's going to be fine but like just understanding that they're going to have a human reaction to this stuff as well I think is is super important um so we ended the year like 2021 on a on a real high we'd hit our goals it was great and then obviously the Ukraine crisis happened that directly impacted like five of our team members so who were in Ukraine and it had like shock waves throughout the whole company so we had to like figure out how how do we support them so we basically just said

whatever they need I think this slide's gone a bit funky you can't really see it but like basically whatever they needed financially physically like extraction whatever we would we would provide that because that for us was like our number one priority this is our team they've given us years of their life to like build our product and to create create the company we are today like we have to be there for them but like the impact of that like cascaded through the whole company um but we did everything we possibly could and thankfully we managed to get

everyone to a good place um and and power through that which is good but we also managed to improve performance which is crazy like we were obviously expecting we're just gonna like you know put our product on hold for a little while just sort this stuff out but actually people people did really well and now they're in a really good place as well so that was a really important one but then obviously just as we're coming out of that sorry it's a bit small on here but just as we're coming out that now we're like this recession thing this looming you know

ominous thing um I'll I'll tell you I just show you a couple of slides and this is kind of a format we use quite a lot during some of these challenging times which was like firstly be like super honest upfront pragmatic about the challenges that you're facing as a company and what's going on in the world like don't lie or try and hide that and secondly like reframe it in terms of like what what's working well like remind people what is working well um and where your why your position well in order to take on these challenges or

if you need to change what you need to change in order to meet them my last bit on the recession is I think if you read any of the VC doomsday posts at the minute which are like you know you've got to like conserve cash Etc I think if you're nailing these three things then you can keep growing sustainably so the first thing having the right people we've got the right people around you you're not overhead count and you're cool uh having solid unit economics if you don't have solid unit economics you should be pulling back but if you do then you should probably be doubling down on that and the last one is make sure you've obviously got cash and

support and that can come in many formats so last few minutes I'm going to whiz through some tools probably not in too much detail um so talk it a little bit on raising a little shout out for founder path who gave us a load of cash and are going to give us loads more we've raised about 10 million in cash and we're going to raise a lot more probably than 10 million in the next few weeks but found a path has been super helpful in giving us cash and continues provide us cash great terms as you can see that and super quick and

when the UK we were so surprised um that's our actual dashboard that screenshot yesterday so like you just go in and you slide it and you click give me cash and it drops in your bank account it's the coolest thing ever um and then you get this like scoring thing as well which actually this is my favorite bit they've got this unit economic that's our actual dashboard so they've got this unit economics dashboard and it's got like all your key metrics we use a bunch of tools but this one's quite useful and it's got the scoring in as well so I'll talk a little

bit about raising cash um so that's like a snapshot of our cap table we've got 50 people on a cap table is huge um Angels VCS um employees Founders but just as a high level some funny emojis there anyway so this is this is like a mix of the investors and just like think about your investor types and I'd say if you're not exporting angels yet you don't have them on your cap table and they could be advisors only to give you cash or it's on your cap table

angels have we found have been the most helpful in terms of helping us figure out what to do the business and just being there to support um as you go down this list less helpful um more cash less helpful so and also more expectations as you go down I mean your friends and family are like okay cool you know you're not homeless like you're still doing it you're still doing well so um I'm going to skip over this last bit which is like okrs if you're not using okay let's check out our chaos they're very cool

um I'm just gonna come down here because I think coffee is soon coffee breaks soon um growing your team so last but on the team uh obviously no one's an island um so on your culture like try and create your culture from day Zero like when we're like zero people like one one person it's like think about what kind of company you want to work in and like build that for for me that means like people come to work they do good stuff and they have a smile on their face they're happy to be there

um a couple of things we've done with the team as well Freedom days in the UK we had like severe lockdowns like three months you couldn't leave the house type thing and we had like this Freedom Day we gave everyone the day off took them on a boat um so that was great you know obviously no productivity but like massive long-term gains um doing a retreat we had about this yesterday as well like just if you're especially a remote team like get everyone away once a year somewhere you can do it for about 2k a person

um but it's definitely worth the budget and basically the whole theme of this presentation you see I'm not talking about any growth hacks or tricks but like if you do all that stuff then the results come like people will do the right thing for the business they will drive the numbers you have to take difficult decisions along the way um and obviously continue setting that Vision you know they are never looking into Skype it just like that's we're actually past three million I think this deck was a little better but um about four and a half now so and we should hit

about six minutes by end of year so like just continue focusing on like doing what you do um so quick run through this stuff this is fashion might eject me off the stage anyway so in the last 20 minutes you've heard about like my personal Journey about some of the stuff that I felt epically on and managed to like pick up about constantly holding like that light up for your team inspiring them motivating them dealing with challenging situations and helping the team to do

that as well and a few a few Tools in there as well um last thing I'll leave you with there's something I read on the internet I can't remember where I read it but it said like be a startup and being a Founder is not a Sprint or a marathon it's actually both it's like literally running as fast as you can for as long as you need to to get to your destination so I think this is all about like how you execute smartly as a Founder um so go forth do do some great stuff hopefully see you again next year thank you all very much [Applause]

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