Two former Softcat execs say they have achieved their “fairytale ending” after selling their cyber start-up to Sophos.
Softcat alumni Matt Helling and Adam Louca founded Arco Cyber in October 2022 alongside Datamango CEO Graham Sawell.
Helling has previously characterised Arco’s solution as a “control tower for CISOs”.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen this afternoon, Helling said Sophos is “putting a lot of money behind us to allow us to go after what we set out to do”.
“For all existing and new partners, it’s all upside for them – they’re getting access to something that’s running a lot faster than we could ever do on our own.”
“Clout and comfort”
Sophos first came knocking last summer under the guise of a potential strategic partnership, Helling revealed.
This was more than two years ahead of the five-year time horizon the trio originally had in mind.
But running a bootstrapped cybersecurity start-up is “a tough life to live”, Helling conceded.
“We had to weigh up whether we thought we’d completed enough of the job, and whether it was the right place for the team and the platform to go,” he said.
“We were a bootstrapped organisation.
“It’s very hard to compete in this market when you are running in that bootstrapped manner, just because other people are able to run faster than you – although the business was starting to perform really, really well, and we were starting to generate some good opportunities.
“And then this came up, and we were like, ‘well, actually, the strategy for what they want out of the business is the same as what we are looking to get had we brought some money in’.
“This gives us the clout and the comfort of being under a massive brand like Sophos.”
“Democratising the CISO”
Sophos intends to use Arco to bolster its vision around ‘CISO Advantage’, which it bills as a new category of security “built to scale the knowledge and decision-making framework of a world-class CISO”.
“The vision that [Sophos CEO] Joe [Levy] had for that business, and what he’s put into place, couldn’t have been any more closely aligned with what we were aiming to achieve in our vision for the business, Helling said.
Boasting around seven partners including Softcat, Arco Cyber’s vision is to “democratise the CISO”, Helling said.
“There’s so much pressure on CISOs, or anybody that’s responsible for cyber security in businesses today. In the organisations that have those people in place, there’s a lot of pressure on them to make the right decisions without the right data at their fingertips.
“At the core of what Arco does, it pulls in all the required data to give the answers to where gaps and inefficiencies exist, and then how to create clarity around your cyber programme.
“That’s one side of it.
“But then you’ve got 90% or 95% of businesses in the UK and globally that just don’t have a CISO in place. How can we help, through our partner and MSP channel, to bring a level of service, platform and outcome?”
“Our families have had to carry the weight”
Helling admitted that boostrapping a cyber start-up has left its mark on the personal lives of Arco’s seven employees.
“In any bootstrapped organisation, no one gets paid very well, there are no benefits, and everyone has to wear every hat under the sun,” he explained.
“You’re in the trenches with it, which we’ll look back at fondly.
“All our families have had to carry the weight as well. This just gives us what I can only class as a bit of a fairytale ending.
“We’ve managed to exit a business into a great organisation that has a shared vision of what we’re trying to achieve, and a shared view on what the issues are in the market and how we can help resolve them.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
