Outpost24

Outpost24 is a pioneer in the cybersecurity space. Today, it helps more than 2,000 customers in over 40 countries identify and manage the cybersecurity threats that matter most across the whole technology stack – with one single solution.

Security teams can now assess their endpoint, network, application, cloud and user password security for full asset visibility and risk-based prioritisation.

Outpost24 has a global reach with over 200 employees and close to $50 million in annual revenue. But way back in 2016, this future wasn’t guaranteed.

At this time, Outpost24 had leading tech and a loyal customer base in a growing market. But its over-ambitious growth plans, siloed decision making and broad offering were barriers to further scalability. It was at this point that Monterro stepped in.

Where other investors might have lacked the confidence to back a company that was “a small fish in a big pond”, for Monterro, Outpost24 had huge potential to succeed internationally.

“First of all, they had a great customer base and their main tech offering was working very well. Secondly, it was an interesting sector,” says Martin Henricson, Managing Director at Monterro.

“We have the experience. We have seen this before. Monterro dares to make this call to invest and see things through because we know it will work.”

What makes this story unique is Henricson’s visibility into both sides of the partnership, stepping in as Outpost24 CEO. This paved the way for Monterro’s first, crucial step: transparency. 

• Creating a strong management team

Before Monterro, company-wide decisions were made in silos and very much by top management alone. Without a strong management team to drive the strategy forward, the company wasn’t aligned on its vision, and internal talent was wasted.

Henricson set out to make connections within the company to identify any rising stars.

“We immediately found some motivated and engaged employees that we could develop for the future. They also had a lot of good connections and a big network in the company that we could work with. We then brought in a CFO and a CPO to help make a management team to carry the company forward.” says Martin Henricson.

• Setting a clear strategy for growth

The next step for Henricson and his management team was to align the whole company on its new vision for growth.

When Monterro first partnered with Outpost24, its growth predictions were unpredictable and unrealistic as a relatively small company with a broad cybersecurity offering.

Monterro’s significant experience in partnering with companies like this allowed them to take Outpost’s offering and carve out a clear direction to make the company more competitive.

“The first thing we needed to do was zoom in and focus. We actually closed some offices in certain countries in order to spend enough on others. Then, it was about bringing people together under a clearer strategy, and aligning everyone in the company around the new direction.”

• Developing the product strategy

In the 5 ½ years Henricson was CEO at Outpost24, there was hardly an area the new strategy didn’t touch: from pricing and international outsourcing to marketing and sales. But the main focus of their strategy was simple: the product.

They quickly realised that competitors in cybersecurity tried to offer as many services as possible, and that to remain competitive, Outpost24 had to focus its offering around risk prevention and vulnerability management.

“We needed to be extremely strong and concentrate on one offering and we decided this would be in the ‘identify’ space.”

“We wanted to make sure you could identify risks, problems and vulnerabilities prior to something bad happening to our customers. And we needed to be able to do that across the full stack. Not just within your own network but across everything else that you’re composing for your customers.”

• Four add-on acquisitions

When partnering with a company, one of the main things Monterro focuses on is to build a more competitive portfolio.

For OutPost24, Henricson and the team identified four target add-on acquisitions that would significantly strengthen their product offering:

• SecludIT (an award-winning cloud infrastructure security pioneer)
• Pwnie Express (an innovative WiFi access point and Bluetooth device security company)
• Blueliv (a leading cyber threat intelligence platform that helps companies take a proactive stance by looking outside their network to respond to the evolving threat landscape)
• Specops (a leading provider of password management and authentication solutions)

Making these add-on acquisitions “allowed us to accelerate our product roadmap for internal application security testing, password management and user authentication, and threat intelligence-led security assessment capabilities.

“They helped us focus on our goal of providing full stack security assessments across technology layers and all of our customers’ key assets.” says Martin Henricson.

• A stronger, more focussed full stack offering that includes endpoints, identity theft and covers the cloud.
• Growth in revenue from $7.8 million to about $50 million.
• 30% AGR.
• Increase in employees from 75 to 200.

“Often tech companies of this size have a lot of in-house knowledge and understanding of how to run their operation, but are short sighted when it comes to creating a clear growth strategy. This is where having a partner like Monterro is useful." says Martin Henricson.