"You inevitably have a high learning process"

How did you benefit from your time at the CISPA incubator?

Marius Bleif: "CISPA gave us the time and freedom to turn an exciting cybersecurity solution into our own startup. Above all, the mentoring and workshops saved us from typical mistakes as founders."

Tell me about your work as a startup - what do you like, what not so much?

Marius Bleif: "Everything is very unbureaucratic. I think a lot of time is wasted on bureaucracy in corporate structures. The communication channels are short. And I like the fact that you are confronted with many different things. You inevitably have a high learning process. I think that's very healthy. For me, the worst thing would be to realize over a long period of time, I haven't learned anything more, I haven't improved."

But with flat hierarchies, you also discuss a lot in the founding team because everyone is very involved. Everyone has a very high emotional interest in making sure everything works. At the same time, what it was all about is not so relevant in the end and you wish someone had just decided it in the end. It's often banalities that you didn't recognize as banalities at the time."

Is there anything you would do differently today?

Marius Bleif: "We had a high urge for perfectionism too early. Whereas it's much more important to go out there with your idea and get feedback, even if you're not at 100 percent yet. It's difficult, especially in cybersecurity, to test only individual features, but otherwise you're perfecting something that ends up being completely discarded."