Madeline Lawrence: Chief Growth officer at Aikido announcing their $60m raise at a $1bn valuation!

0:00Madeline Lawrence:Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. I'm here with Madeline from Akido. Akido has just announced an insane$60 million Series B becoming Europe's latest unicorn. That's the third unicorn of the year already. And we are only two weeks in. And not only have you become a unicorn, but you are the fastest European cybersecurity unicorn to reach that status formed less than four years ago. So my first question is, how have you done it? I have a lot of gray hairs that could fill a lot of time on that. Yeah, we started three years ago, three years and a few months ago, maybe three years and some change ago.

0:43I think the biggest thing that we did was just never stop building. I think we deploy a new version of Aikido 60 times a day. We have around 21 former founders on our team, of which 12 are actually on the technical side. So we have group CTOs, essentially, for all the product that we build. And just our mindset has been, we can't outpay the big, you know, players in the US or Israel in the space, we can't out network them. We are based in a Belgian village. It's a gorgeous village, mind you. So all we can do is just outbuild and really aggressively market ourselves and just not stop. And hey, who would have guessed that a village of around 200 ,000 people is a great place to build a big business because there's nothing else to do but do that.

1:33And yeah, it's a very exciting time. And we have a lot more to achieve and grow into.

1:37Madeline Lawrence:And it's a super interesting story because, as you say, from a small village in Belgium, you're operating in this sort of like cybersecurity space, which is almost exclusively dominated by West Coast US companies and Israeli companies. and in terms of Europe, we haven't got many companies like you, like Akito. Why do you think that is? And why do you think Akito has been able to be so successful despite not having those big ecosystems around it? Yeah. I mean, we do have a few unicorns in the cybersecurity space, but nothing within software security, nothing within our category of code and cloud and runtime security.

2:13Definitely want to give a heads up to Tynes, who does security workflow automation. They became a unicorn last year based in Ireland. or NordVPN on like the IT security side. I mean, honestly, I think what you see in cybersecurity is it's such a tight network and there's these really defined playbooks. I mean, even think about the aesthetics of cybersecurity and you're probably thinking it's like a hacker with a hood on sitting next to like a dark window with all these kind of green little network pixels around them. Like everything from how cyber looks to how it feels to how it's built and sold has just been so defined and repeated.

2:50And that playbook is you've probably worked in cybersecurity in the Israeli army, or you've worked at Palo Alto networks. And then you get out of there and with your, you know, your, your, your teammates or your former colleagues, you start a cybersecurity company and you sell right back to that network. So it's always just selling top down to your existing network. It's enterprise only. It's very much using the same people over and over, which, which I mean, there's a lot of very successful companies that have done that. But we have had none of that access, none of that pedigree. We have no cyber background.

3:25So we had to think and do very differently. We had to figure out a PLG model. We had to figure out a freemium model. We had to figure out how to build trust when we have zero connections and zero experience in the cyberspace. And it was difficult to do that, but we did and the engine worked and it has allowed us to grow super efficiently to where we are today. And I was reading that you've grown, you've grew revenue 5x in the last year.

3:51Madeline Lawrence:Do you think you can maintain that level of growth? Ideally, we can exceed it. I mean, there's always, of course, the challenge of big numbers. The goal right now is to cross 100 million in the next 18 months, which I believe is feasible. I'll have a lot more gray hair by then, but that's the ambition. And you mentioned that you've been doing a lot of product-led growth. is that going to be the you know and i mentioned you know the 5x revenue growth but you saw 3x growth in terms of customer numbers yeah so when i read that and i thought okay 5x revenue but only 3x customers either you're going after more customers perhaps bigger enterprise deals or maybe you're successfully upselling your existing customers is it which one is it and how is that affecting your overall go-to-market yeah um so right right now i would say it's mainly driven by just closing bigger deals.

4:40That's happened very naturally. So we started out with like security for startups, you know, fixing security for scale ups and developers. And that was cute. And that very much got us to that product market fit. But then, you know, we're in a replacement industry, like cybersecurity exists, code security exists, cloud security exists. What is our right to win there? And we've had to go up against all of these incumbents time and time again. And at that point, our product just continues to get better and better and better. And when we were initially just selling to startups and scale-ups and really solving security for the SMB market, we realized that we were also able to step up and close and effectively win over incumbents in the higher full fat mid-market up into the enterprise market.

5:25We closed some amazing logos this year. We've got Revolut joining us as a customer. We have Visma. We have the Premier League, if you're a football fan, also choosing Aikido. Growth still remains inbound, actually. So we grow 85 % via inbound. And we just see more and more that as kind of brand recognition is kicked in, as I think as well, sort of pedigree of logos who have chosen us and trusted us has kicked in. It's easier for these larger organizations to come speak with us, experience the product and us to win. It hasn't actually required us to radically change our sales approach or our brand positioning.

5:59that will definitely be something in the future that we'll have to think about. I don't want to think about it right now. But yeah, it's just we're closing bigger deals faster. And we do have a growing cross-sell motion through our full platform suite within those customers.

6:12Madeline Lawrence:And I remember watching that super viral video that you did of your rebrand. You know, only scans. Yeah, you rebranded yourself to only scans. I saw another one where you were like selling toilet roll. you've done like these quite funny growth hacky type things like what was the rationale behind launching some of those things oh man well the first rationale for only scans was me having a lot of beers and sending what is now a pretty infamous voice message to like our designer at the time being like we've got 48 hours till till april fools and we got to do something um i think our like the direction like our marketing and our brand positioning i think it comes very much from who we are as a team.

6:58Like me at a personal level, I worked in venture for a very long time. I also went very viral early on from more of the parody things I would do. I actually pulled a very big April Fool's stunt back in the day when I pretended to quit, become a stealth founder, which was sort of like my first experience going viral, or I did like a very viral, like how to understand venture capitalists through their shoes. And what I recognize through, you know, standing out in venture, as I'm sure you're intimately familiar, is difficult. And everybody takes themselves very seriously. And it's all about like paradigms and first principles and blah, blah, blah.

7:33And it's not so different in cybersecurity, you know, than it's all about, you know, risk and, you know, securing the networks. And we were like, you know, we just got to be different. Like developers just want to build fun features. We are building for those developers for the future of engineering. So we need to act and bring like a totally different perspective and feel to securing, you know, just get it done, go back to doing what you love. If you use Aikido, you can do, you can build more fun features. And so that culminated in personality is really proprietary. Developers and users are humans first, are people first, you know, bring a great experience, be refreshing in the industry.

8:12And that just became a real core brand value and also really helped us to grow very efficiently and become a little bit unignorable in those community segments.

8:20Madeline Lawrence:And did you see an immediate uptick or inbound from that campaign video from that April Fool's? Yeah, absolutely. I think that was the first time, because like, what was that? That was like, this April? Yeah, this April, that was maybe the first time that everybody in our industry interacted with aikido um including competitors uh and you could see you know we have all the sort of likes and reach but the amount of sends it got like how many people like dm'd it to each other and the amount of inbound we got even from you know really aggressive and direct competitors being like aikido fair play and at that moment it was like okay you know this this problem this can scale you know this took us one day maybe like 5k to make that video but it was putting ourselves out there doing something unexpected bringing having fun in a really dry industry and uh and yeah so we had a ton of organic uh definitely helped with brand recognition and became something that we try to do maybe every six weeks it's hard to force creativity but years help yeah we've had a lot more with our toilet paper rolls or when we met the president of france macron and we did our liberty fraternity cyber security my french is bad uh you know video was one very viral as well um and a few more coming up uh for the for the fundraising announcement as well oh super exciting and i also wanted to talk about a bit of vc actually because i know that you started your career super early in vc it's kind of the first thing i think you went into and then you went into tech and you you know you're obviously crushing it in your current role how did you find that transition from you know investor to operator oh man just wish i did it earlier honestly um yeah I started in venture and it's like 19 right like starting uh joining joining a bunch of crazy people like myself starting a micro fund like right out of university um I think I called myself the youngest VC at the smallest VC in Amsterdam which was true and then going on to join one of the most established are the most established VC in the Netherlands at the time and expanding to Berlin and whatnot and I got to know Willem who is our CTO and CEO at Aikido.

10:30He was a scout for the fund where I was at. He was a horrible scout. And I was like, man, you are just really bad with money. You should just go back to building. And that's when he actually, I was the first investor that Aikido pitched to. And it was called Doomsday Security at the time, which as much as I love MF Doom, was not the vibe. And I was initially going to join right when they started, but I hesitated because I was still like, I can build my career and unsure and I'm climbing the ladder. And I said no in those first few months and regretted it. And then I quit just because I was like, you know what, I'm really tired of my business being other people's business or business, like literally and figuratively having to know what all my other VC friends are doing and looking at and having to be constantly talking about other people's ideas and other people's things.

11:15I just so wanted to do it myself. So I quit to do something like, I don't know, learn how to goldsmith or some niche, you know, stupid plan. And Willem texted me the same day like still you should join us so i up and left moved to belgium within two weeks with my cat and um and it has just been figuring it the fuck out excuse my excuse my friends with with the whole team for the past three years amazing and you've had this amazing journey

11:40Madeline Lawrence:you're now at this big milestone of the six million dollars the unicorn valuation talking about the 60 million dollars around itself what kind of what gave the investors who are backing you this time i think it's dst the conviction to to write that check of that size and to come on board yeah um dst global would be i think they would consider themselves a very discreet fund if you go to their website i think that speaks for itself um tom tom stafford is the gp that that led the investment in aikido um he's been i think a midas list investor three three to three to seven times, one of those ranges, with a lot of also defining European companies.

12:21And the introduction to DST Global came from Nick, the founder of Revolut, who's an investor in Aikido, with kind of stunning, you know, quite a high recommendation to work with DST. And we had the privilege of choice between the different lead investors at the end of the process. But I think the, yeah, DST's model of just, it's a very large fund. And like, they're not going to get out of bed for any kind of company or opportunity that they don't believe can, can create, you know, the entire category in the future. And they have seen it and been a part of it from meta to cursor to, you know, insert any generational company.

13:01And so it just clicked, you know, it was like, there's, there's no looking down or risk aversion. It's just how can you do better, more, faster and thinking about that opportunity.

13:14Madeline Lawrence:Yeah, amazing. They're such an interesting firm. They're such a low profile, but with such an amazing track record. It's like very contrarian to so many other VCs who are constantly trying to take up as much airtime as they possibly can. And talking about, you know, growth, the 60 million kind of war chest that you've got, how are things going to change for you in your role in growth? And what does that look like in terms of both products, but also geography focused, the way that you sell? How are you mapping out 2026 and using that 60 million to get you to that next stage? Oh, yeah. We're going to spend a lot of money.

13:48Our growth has been super efficient right now. I mean, we got to where we were with having raised 23 million to date. I think, you know, people like to make a joke about how the Dutch are cheap and we're Belgian. so that the Belgian are cheap and pragmatic. And so, you know, it's always been a focus on, you know, make sure we have good unit economics, make sure the product has strong retention, make sure that what we're doing is scrappy. You're not just going to throw a lot of money on something and hope it works. And I think that that mentality has allowed us to build a super efficient, you know, inbound engine, 85 % inbound.

14:25That's unheard of in cybersecurity. We, our average time to close for our mid-market deals is 22 days, also really unheard of. And now what we're going to have to do is essentially become unignorable in the markets. We know that if we get into a deal, we have an outstanding chance to win it. So it's just grow pipe, grow pipe, grow pipe and grow brand recognition. So that's going to be a lot of late nights for me. We are going to have to figure out a more outbound motion. I don't want to get, I think that the ceiling on inbound and developer adoption as like our core engine is infinite. But we can't let the muscles atrophy on building an outbound motion.

15:07So that's a big focus right now. As well, a little bit more about enterprise readiness without killing or betraying our more community and bottom up and SMB customers. How do you please everybody? You don't. So we're not going to have to figure out where our edges are and how we best kind of speak to those different groups. And then finally, I just moved to the US. So I've been, you know, in Europe most, most all of my life, I'm a dual citizen. So I'm calling in from San Francisco. We're going to be opening up a hub as well for our sales team in Chicago. 50 % of our revenue is already from the U.S.

15:39So it's going to be really getting into the right networks at the right tables here and effectively growing the outbound motion in our AE and BDR team in the U.S.

15:50Madeline Lawrence:Amazing. Well, it sounds super exciting. And I also saw that today you're launching a new product. Yeah. Infinite, can you touch on that and what that means for the business? yeah Aikido infinite um sounds a little stupid but who came up with the name this girl uh yeah so um we have traditionally had a platform that is Aikido actually is a martial art it's a Japanese martial art it's the most defensive martial art um we actually just chose it because it sounded cool and starts with an A so we're at the top of every list but there is a little bit of a story that makes sense and uh so in Aikido you're never supposed to attack you only use the you know defense is the best attack.

16:28And our platform to date has been, you know, we scan and integrate across the software development lifecycle as you're writing or generating code to reviewing it in PRs to testing that in a staging environment or to testing in production. We have recently launched Aikido Attack, which is autonomous penetration testing. So essentially AI agents, right, that red team and offensively test your application like a hacker would. And what Aikido infinite does is it connects that core that we have so that platform that secures and monitors and remediates issues across your code and cloud and runtime environments and it connects it to our offensive so our keto attack and to form at every release we can kind of mini penetration test and then remediate software as it's built so you don't have to wait a year or a quarter to pen tests to fix issues and you don't have to be reactive to blah blah blah essentially this is our first step to building really self-securing software so as you are you know committing code the software itself deploys its own test finds validates its own issues and remediates them within the same release loop um which is very exciting amazing and how closely linked to this

17:44Madeline Lawrence:is the rise of sort of like AI developer tools from Claw to Loverpool to Cursor. Is that a lot of the customer and the clientele that you're targeting is people using these tools alongside Infinite or is it a different part of the market? I think Infinite is going to really have a stronger product market fit to start within the enterprise segment where, you know, you can't risk, risk, risk, risk, risk window is zero for these big, big organizations that really need to make sure that everything that they are pushing to production is secure. And that's already have really, really large in-house red teams, like offensive teams that are testing software and things like this.

18:26And so for them at every release to make sure that that software is tested and validated and remediated with, you know, almost a zero lag time, that will be the strongest product market fit. Of course, a lot of the vibe coders and the future developers, or even just indie developers or small teams can use Aikido and can use Infinite as well. I think we're like number five or number four most popular security app worldwide on GitHub. And we have around 100 ,000 teams and individuals that use Aikido for free and can stay on for free. But specifically for the idea of self-securing software and Infinite, I believe that will be more adopted in the enterprise suite where you just need to have that continuous and incredibly efficient testing within the build loop.

19:12Madeline Lawrence:Got it. And look, we're just running out of time, but I want to ask two more questions. One's a positive, one's a negative. Let's start with the negative. What has been the hardest or lowest point of the journey so far where you've kind of hit a wall or you just feel like you can't break through? And then you, of course you have, but it's been a really tough moment to have to go through. Personally, or like as a company overall? Well, I think maybe your journey in the company. Yeah, I think right now would be as exciting as it is. Right now would be probably the hardest moment for me. I'm sitting in my apartment building, but upstairs in my apartment is like a classic.

19:53I just have a mattress on the floor. I'm getting up every day at 5am to work on the same time zone as my team. And I'm completely alone here in San Francisco. Nine hours is a pretty significant time difference. Yes. And it's not like I'm, you know, non-operational. I'm very much still, you know, myself, a very strong individual contributor that needs to work with my team. And as exciting as it is, and as I'm ready to kind of go back into the handshaking, kissing babies, networking kind of mode that I had to do a lot in the venture side of things, I do feel a little bit isolated. and you know maybe the maybe a bit of my PTSD as an investor is like raising money is actually a scary thing because you're like damn now we have so much more to do and so much more value to build in order to sell and and make the right return for our shareholders so it doesn't feel like a moment necessarily of celebration it just feels like okay there's so much more to be done yeah

20:56Madeline Lawrence:Yeah. Well, it sounds really tough, like a really tough environment to be in right now. So, um, you know, respect, uh, respect to you for kind of, for the hustle, I guess it can't be easy. Um, that's the worst problems. And then on the flip side, what has been the best moment of your journey so far at Kido, the moment where you've felt the highest, you've seen the biggest success and you've just felt like this is amazing. So we do like one big team event per year where we fly everybody in to Belgium. And we just finished our last like full team event. It was a week of December 15th to the 20th, cutting it very close to the holidays.

21:41At that point, we're 180 people now within three years. Actually, most of our team members don't know the unicorn news. and they won't until a few hours before it's published tomorrow. So it was, yeah, seeing everybody together, seeing us start from literally a one-room office where we were making toasties for lunch and a one-bathroom office as well to 180 people from all around the world that were speaking and building relationships together without us intermediating it. This sounds really cheesy, but you're a few months of wind down and you're like, oh, look at social communication. It was just awesome.

22:22You know, when you see it all together, it hits.

22:24Madeline Lawrence:Yeah, no, it's an amazing, you've had an amazing journey and it's been such a short period of time that you've gone from, yeah, what must've been a very small scrappy thing to a global company. Well, look, Madeline, thank you so much for joining me and thank you so much for taking the time and sharing the news. It's a phenomenal result. And I love telling the stories like this of like small, almost like small European tech hubs that create these giants and they go to fly the flag for the rest of that, that village in Belgium. It's an amazing story that you really can build anything from anywhere when you get the right group of people together.

22:57Madeline Lawrence:So thank you so much. I always call Belgium the armpit of Europe. I bet they love that. Yeah, it's good from there. It's gorgeous, but I can make it. Well, thank you so much for your time and the coverage and looking forward to seeing you again. Yeah, my pleasure.