LimaCharlie Secures 5.45 Million in Seed Funding

I usually write about cybersecurity, cyber insurance, product-led growth, and venture capital, but in this post, I would like to share some personal news.

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Today, LimaCharlie, the Security Infrastructure as a Service startup I am a part of, has announced a raise of 5.45 million dollars in seed financing in an oversubscribed round led by Susa Ventures, with participation from Xerox Ventures, CoFound Partners, Long Journey Ventures, Sands Capital, StoneMill Ventures, as well as an existing investor, Lytical Ventures.

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about it. For once, we are incredibly fortunate to be growing at the time when many great companies, one after another, are announcing hiring freezes and staff layoffs. Most importantly, there is a strong need for changes in the cybersecurity space.

As outlined in our press release,

“Today, more and more security professionals are dissatisfied with traditional vertical black-box solutions and the need to attend multiple demos before they can test a product. Mature security teams are looking for the flexibility to access the tools and capabilities they need, when they need them, and for however long they need them. They are looking for solutions that are built for scale using an API-first and infrastructure-as-code approach. They want to remain in control of their security posture, while optimizing cost, automating manual processes, and keeping ownership of their data.”

Here are the five reasons why I as a product person am excited about this opportunity to grow.

Believing the future will be product-led

I am a big believer that the future will be people-focused and product-led. LimaCharlie follows the PLG playbook — we use product as a vehicle for growth, allowing people to experience value quickly and on their own, without having to talk to a salesperson or go through weeks and months of complex implementation. There are not many product-led companies in cybersecurity today, so it’s exciting to be building the future of the industry.

Being product-led means giving technical cybersecurity professionals such as security engineers, security architects, and detection engineers, the ability to use tools that they confirmed can solve the problems their companies experience.

Democratizing access to professional security tools

LimaCharlie is democratizing access to security infrastructure by allowing cybersecurity professionals to get started with powerful tools and infrastructure for free, without having to do the capacity planning or put in their credit card. No minimums means that you can build a security product or start your own security services without going through lengthy contract negotiations or planning five years ahead. We believe that making security infrastructure more accessible will lead to innovation in the industry and, ultimately, benefit all of us.

Listening to customers

As we are essentially defining a new market segment, we are following good product management practices such as continuous discovery. We know it’s critical to understand the customer problems instead of taking orders and building features to match the competition.

Instead of building to fit an existing industry three-letter acronym, we focus on designing best-in-class security primitives that constitute the core parts of the modern security stack.

Taking an evidence-based approach to security

At LimaCharlie, we know that security is a process, not a feature. The best way to build a security posture is to build it on top of controls and infrastructure that can be observed, tested, and enhanced. It is not built on promises from vendors that must be taken at face value. This means that the exact set of malicious activity and behavior you’re protected from should be known and you should be able to test/prove this. It feels great to be a part of the company that is taking an evidence-based approach to security instead of perpetuating the fear-mongering and fluffy marketing tactics that are so common in the industry.

Being transparent

LimaCharlie stands for transparency. Having come to the industry from the outside (fintech), I was genuinely surprised by how hard it can be to understand pricing, find technical documentation, or even get an idea of how the security product works. Radical transparency and the product-led approach allow us to be open about what we offer, and enable people to make better decisions without wasting time and effort requesting quotas and asking for help.

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It’s an exciting time to be a part of the fast-growing team changing the way cybersecurity tools and infrastructure are delivered.

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