Last year global venture capital investments totalled $389.5bn (£294bn) – and none of it went to tech entrepreneur Charles Preston.
Preston is the founder of Manchester-based cyber security firm usecure and it has an impressive annual recurring revenue (ARR) of £3m, 45 staff and 10,000 global customers – with zero VC investment.
The 45-year-old said he’s flattered he get ‘3-4 VC approaches every day’ but has chosen to bootstrap his business instead.
Since founding his cyber security business in 2016 the tech founder has politely rebuffed ‘thousands’ of VC approaches.
The only funding usecure has ever taken is a ‘modest’ amount of seed investment from angel investor Tony Bolland, who described the firm as his ‘favourite Manchester headquartered SaaS company’.
Preston said: “That was only because I used to work with Tony earlier in my career at AppSense. By the time I set usecure up at the age of 37 Tony had become an angel investor.
“When I started the business I had no idea of how you grow a technology company.
“Companies with little or no revenue were attracting astronomical multiples. I didn’t understand that.”
The CEO said the advent of GDPR had catapulted usecure’s growth and the rise of AI meant their expertise was needed more than ever.
“Cyber breaches are normally caused by a lack of understanding or knowledge,” he said.
“We help businesses manage their human layer so they view their workforce as their biggest asset.
“Everyone can be targeted by a cyber attack. The number of attacks is increasing and they’re getting a lot more sophisticated. AI is a whole new challenge.
“One of the things we used to train people in was how to spot a phishing email. They often came from abroad and tended not to be that sophisticated.
“AI dissolves that problem because they can create phishing emails in perfect English. This is an ever increasing challenge for business.”
Preston said while VC is right for some companies it hasn’t been the right time for usecure up to now.
“You can scale if you have investment,” he said. “If you haven’t got lots of capital behind you, you scale through the channel.”