The Cyber Market: Funding Challenge

One of the key challenges facing cyber startups is funding. So what does it look like from the other side? We invited Jens Holzapfel to join us and give his perspective on among other things the cyber market. 

Jens is a founder and investor, an expert in defense tech and security solutions, currently raising funding for a cyber-only fund. It was a huge pleasure to welcome him to the stage at Next Door Security to share his immense expertise with our community.

His talk covered:

“Despite the great talent pool that we have, we have a disadvantage. Only a fraction of global cybersecurity funding ends up in European companies. Most of the investors investing in Europe are not European and there’s a big funding gap for growth funding”, he says.

“Only a fraction of global cybersecurity funding ends up in European companies”

“We have great talent but many founders feel the need to move to North America to scale their business. Politically, this is, of course, not sustainable, because given what’s going on in the world around us, it’s a good thing to actually keep some innovation in Europe.”

Bonus info: Get relevant domain advice

Bonus advice to startups also focused on, well, advice. Founders are given a huge amount of advice, solicited and otherwise. For founders focusing on defence and security it’s important to make sure that VCs offering advice on this sector have deep, relevant and up to date domain expertise.

“You actually need to understand the industry,” says Jens. “You need to understand the technology and the players. All of you who have fundraised have heard, ‘Oh, we are not only bringing capital to the table, we have a great network, we can open your doors, you can call us anytime.’ I think it’s not always the case.”

“You actually need to understand the industry”

“It’s not always the case that cybersecurity founders need VCs for general support. They need VCs to get them into the right room with big clients or follow-on investors. And this is where the specialists come in because they come from this industry and can probably help you more than generalists.”

👉 Download Jens’ slide deck here

Building a cyber community

As a cybersecurity startup and a strong supporter of building ecosystems, we love to facilitate conversations around how to best nurture a cyber startup culture in Denmark. A heartfelt thank you to all of you for making time to join us and sharing your expertise with us.

Thank you once, more to our partners. None of this would have been possible without generous sponsorship fromIndustriens Fond and our community partners TechBBQ and Danske Tech Startups // Danish Tech Startups 🇩🇰 🚀. Thank you for the trust and for helping us launch the first of what we hope will be many events like this.

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