You have recently completed a successful funding round with your start-up, ENTRYZERO, and secured new investors. What does this step mean for your company? What are the next goals you’ll be focusing on as a result?
Dr. Mohamad Sbeiti: We are delighted to have secured this investment. It is a vote of confidence in our vision and in our current market position. We are particularly pleased that the investors are from Germany, from this region. The funding gives us a degree of security to achieve our goals. The investment is intended to strengthen three pillars. Pillar one is product development. This involves further enhancing certain features of our product, in particular the AI-powered cybersecurity platform. The second pillar is the team, which we intend to expand even further in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as in sales. And the third pillar – which is the most important one in the context of this investment – is the market. We want to expand our presence even further, particularly in Germany, so that in around 18 months’ time we can start thinking about international expansion.
In the fourth quarter of this year, we plan to launch our product ‘Wingman’. It’s a sort of AI-powered digital elite hacker. It’s a tool that proactively identifies security vulnerabilities within organisations, enabling them to fix these before real hackers can exploit them. That’s what we aim to achieve with this investment. After all, IT security is no longer a niche topic. In the past, only techies worked with computers; today, everyone does. And that is the aim: to make IT security accessible to everyone and, with our product, to have a digital partner at your side who takes care of everything for you when it comes to protecting your IT systems.
You say that IT security is relevant to all businesses. Who would be interested in your AI-powered cybersecurity solution?
Samet Gökbayrak: Cybersecurity is, of course, a cross-cutting issue and fundamentally relevant to all businesses across various sectors. We are in the process of identifying certain sectors in which we are well positioned and where our product is a better fit than in others. Regardless of the sector, there are certain parameters: our approach is particularly helpful where there is a complex IT infrastructure. This applies, for example, to companies that have several subsidiaries – ideally international ones – and which have decentralised IT infrastructures, where the situation can be somewhat confusing. This is the case, for example, when the central authority – the Chief Security Officer, for instance – does not have a complete overview but must ensure that the entire organisation is secure. This applies, for example, to universities and research institutions, the healthcare sector, but also to distributors and supply chains.
You chose Bochum as your company’s headquarters because you studied there and know your way around. Bochum has a strong cyber ecosystem. What role has this environment played in your development?
Dr. Mohamad Sbeiti: That’s right, we live in the Ruhr region, but we’ve both been to Bonn and other places. We could have set up the company elsewhere, but we deliberately chose Bochum because, in our view, Bochum is very strongly associated with IT security. The city now describes itself as the capital of IT security. We’re really looking forward to the whole region functioning as a hub for IT security. It helps us both directly and indirectly with our marketing that we can say we come from this region, from Bochum.
Samet Gökbayrak: And we can say that this ecosystem isn’t just something that exists on a PowerPoint slide – it’s a living, breathing ecosystem in Bochum and the Ruhr region. We’ve felt that from day one. In the initial phase, we received funding through the StartUpSecure programme run by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. Cube 5, as an incubator in Bochum, played a major role in this and helped us secure this funding. In addition, Bochum Economic Development, for example, supported us in establishing international connections with companies and at trade fairs such as Vivatech Paris. We also feel the strength of the cyber ecosystem when we invite our business partners and bring them together with the network. And last but not least, Business Metropole Ruhr, from whom we received an invitation to Manchester last year. This led to contact with a professor at the University of Manchester, who is now working with us in our company. In short, this is the ecosystem we celebrate. And we try to give something back at every opportunity, because we know that an ecosystem must be nurtured in both directions.
Dr. Mohamad Sbeiti: What inspires us most here in the region is this slogan on the A40 – ‘Ich komme aus Wir’ [meaning: ‘I call you home’ or ‘I come from Us’]. It’s genuine: the can-do attitude and the mutual support that exist here in the Ruhr region. In our previous jobs, we’ve also experienced different atmospheres, even when it came to shared goals. But here we really feel it – this collaborative approach and the fact that people support one another. That’s why we think ‘Ich komme aus Wir’ is a brilliant motto.
The founders of ENTRYZERO
Dr. Mohamad Sbeiti is a cybersecurity expert with over ten years of experience in technical and management roles. He studied IT security at the Horst Görtz Institute at Ruhr University Bochum and earned his doctorate in IT security and communication networks at TU Dortmund University. He has led security consulting and attack surface analyses for companies such as CARIAD, Volkswagen, T-Systems and Deutsche Telekom. He also initiated research collaborations with Ruhr University Bochum and the Rhine-Ruhr Competence Centre for Machine Learning.
Samet Gökbayrak is a strategy and business development expert with over ten years of experience in international business development. He studied computer science in Bochum and business informatics in Essen and at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He began his career at MHP, the Porsche subsidiary and leading automotive consultancy. As a member of the Deutsche Telekom Executive Board, he drove the market launch of innovative IoT technologies and helped shape the group's technological ecosystem. He was responsible for group-wide programmes focusing on cloud and IoT technologies.
From left to right: The founders Samet Gökbayrak and Dr. Mohamad Sbeiti © Bochum Wirtschaftsentwicklung/ Donna & Blitz
