Investing in Aikido
Aikido: Bundling Cyber Security for SMEs
After years of unbundling, bundling is sexy again.
B2B software’s new mantra is about efficiency, value for money, simplicity and focus — and cybersecurity is no exception.
This is especially true for SME and mid-market companies. This segment is not served well by the plethora of complex, expensive and deep point solutions, tailored to the needs of large enterprises. The status quo is a DIY mix of open-source and commercial vulnerability scanners, which only cover a few factors of application security and represent a huge headache for the staff responsible for security. The job of selecting, configuring and syncing these scattered tools isn’t just expensive, but also complex, inefficient and often not a viable solution to their growing platform’s security.
Enter Aikido, the all-in-one platform for software security
Aikido eliminates the need for numerous infrastructure point solutions by bringing together nine third-party tools into one unified platform. Built for developers, and designed for growing SaaS companies, Aikido simplifies the cybersecurity process, reduces noise from false positives, and improves workflows. It’s a cost-effective approach that fits extremely well with the new SaaS zeitgeist.
Wit this founding team, it was love at first sight 😍😍😍
Aikido’s co-founder and CEO, Willem Delbare, is an exceptional technical talent as well as a sharp company builder and leader. He’s a serial founder with two successfully acquired saas startups under his belt, who has experienced the pain of complex and costly security systems himself. Willem has built the dream team with Roeland Delrue (COO) and Felix Garriau (CMO) joining on the ride as co-founders.
“Throughout my career, I’ve built multiple SaaS startups and wasted hundreds of hours piecing together a patchwork of tools needed to secure a new platform. In starting Aikido, I saw a better way to identify critical breaches whilst downgrading the distracting ‘non-issues’ that waste an engineer’s time. We’re the only company in Europe doing this, demonstrating a renewed energy for startups in the continent.” Willem Delbare, Co-founder & CTO
One platform to rule them all?
With its smart bundling approach, dev-centric design, and focus on serving the underserved, we believe that Aikido has the potential to reshape the cybersecurity landscape and become the trusted brand for SMEs.
The rise of cybersecurity for SMEs and the trend towards saas consolidation paves the way for Aikido to quickly reach scale, and with over 1000 total installs in just one year, the future looks bright.
We couldn’t be more excited to co-lead their €5M seed round together with our friends at Notion and an impressive roster of angel investors, including Christina Cacioppo (CEO of Vanta), Raif Jacobs (former CFO of Deliveroo), and Patrick Pichette (former CFO of Google and Board Chair of Twitter).
