Make no mistake about it, life is challenging for corporate IT managers these days. Not only must they now deal with ongoing cyberthreats, but an increasing number of employees are connecting to the corporate network with their personal devices, like iPads and Android phones.
That trend — known in tech speak as BYOD or Bring Your Own Device — doesn’t appear to be slowing down. And it’s creating an opportunity for Satish Shetty, a former software engineer at Microsoft and McAfee who founded Codeproof last year. As Shetty sees it, many businesses were simply unprepared for the explosion of personal devices in the workplace and the security issues that came along with it.
Codeproof, which helps corporations better manage mobile security, is already off to a fast start after launching service last month. And Shetty is certainly entering a hot area, since we’ve already seen one Seattle mobile security startup, Mobilisafe, acquired this fall.
Here’s more from Shetty for our latest installment of Startup Spotlight.
Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “Codeproof makes mobile device management and security so easy that absolutely anyone can set up and manage security and administration of multiple phones and tablets in just 5 minutes.”
Inspiration hit us when: “In the beginning of 2011, a Gartner/IDC review of the mobile marketplace predicted that there will be 10 billion devices by 2016 — more than projected world population at that time 7.3 billion. That kind of expansion in our addressable market creates a lot of elbow room for startups plus I always wanted to build a security startup.”
VC, Angel or Bootstrap: “Currently, Codeproof is bootstrapping. Our Android and iOS clients have only just launched, so it is early days. We are contemplating rapid growth and discussing funding opportunities, while also attending to business to business as well as an organic consumer growth models.”
Our ‘secret sauce’ is: “Delivering cross-platform security and management via the Cloud.”
The smartest move we’ve made so far: “Codeproof was conceived, designed & built on the cloud from day one. The cloud is the future, and Codeproof is betting the farm on it.”
The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: “Our console is developed in Silverlight — probably not the best decision. Actually, the original plans called for a HTML5 console and we even prototyped it that way, but we didn’t have strong HTML5 dev, so ended up developing in Silverlight, which gives very rich UI and works well with our cloud WCF webservice. In our next update, we plan to port the console to an HTML5 app so that admins can launch our console from more platforms (OS X or Linux). We already started working on it. ”
Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: “Though I am a Gates fan, I would pick Bezos for Codeproof. I believe cloud and mobile will dominate tech in two to five years, and Amazon is headed in right direction. Today, Codeproof uses Amazon EC2 and RDS backend plus we exclusively manage Amazon Kindle fire devices.”
Our world domination strategy starts when: “Already happening! Since we launched, we have 400+ new customer registrations every day from all over the world. We’re already managing more than 6,000 devices in just a week or so. This is without doing any ads, just word of mouth.”
Rivals should fear us because: “Codeproof was designed for tomorrow, with a strong, scalable platform. It will take years for others to catch-up.”
We are truly unique because: “I believe we have a truly unique offering in that Codeproof is the only honest cloud-based SaaS service, and our easy setup and low overhead is perfectly situated for small businesses and even individuals/families.”
The biggest hurdle we’ve overcome is: “Making Apple’s iOS MDM protocol work over the cloud. This was challenge was necessary for Codeproof to overcome, as we needed to support multiple OS types within a single console account.”
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: “When you have an idea, do very thorough homework and research before jumping in. Preparing a 10-slide deck will help — by preparing a presentation, you’ll understand the competition landscape, what secret sauce you are bringing in, and your go-to market strategy. Make a good decisions on your growth model (scalable backend, cloud, bigdata..etc depending on your app/service). Always think about your future and long term technology framework and build on top of it. Make a prototype and validate the unknowns (gray areas) at the very beginning, especially the core stuff. Once you start, stay focused and be positive through-out the journey!”
