OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK– Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Youssef Mohamed (Linkedin), founder and CTO of cybersecurity startup Buguard.

My name is Youssef Mohamed and I’m the founder and CTO of Buguard. Buguard started back in 2021 as a professional services company and then we evolved to include a products and solutions portfolio. We mainly provide offensive security and governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) services to our customers, as well as dark web monitoring and solutions to help our customers prevent data leaks and impersonations for C-suite employees. We’re based in Egypt and we recently raised USD 500k in a seed round led by MENA VC firm A15.

I started in cybersecurity as a security engineer back in 2017. I started freelancing because in the industry we have something called “bug bounties”: Big companies asking security engineers to find vulnerabilities in their systems and reporting them in exchange for monetary rewards — possibly up to USD 10k per bug. So I did that for companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Snapchat, and others — it was very rewarding. I then took up cybersecurity positions in several companies like Zinad, PwC Singapore, and PayMob. I still do bug bounty freelancing in addition to running a blog and Arabic cybersecurity podcast providing security content, because it’s my passion.

The reason we started Buguard is that startups typically don’t get big companies’ attention for cybersecurity services due to budget restraints. Throughout my career, I noticed we focused on a single type of customer and few companies cared about startups. But the fact of the matter is that these smaller businesses hold our data; we use them on a regular basis. What if they were to get hacked? That happens. That’s why we started Buguard: To provide cybersecurity to all companies, regardless of their size and budget.

There were many challenges when I started Buguard. Initially, I started working in the UA market as it is huge and you can find customers who can evaluate your company based on your technical skills. But in our neck of the woods, it’s different. You need references and a big client base to begin working. That’s why Egypt was a tough market to compete in and we started working abroad until we built a solid enough client base and team. Currently, the challenge is more about hiring talented candidates as we are very selective since our mission — which includes companies or banks — is critical.

My advice to anyone starting their own business is to be patient and focus on the work. Don’t give up early on — hard work pays off. There are several people I personally turn to when I am in need of advice. Mostafa Menessy (Linkedin), the CTO of Paymob, is one of them. I consider him my technical adviser. Being the founder of a startup is a very lonely journey until you find a great team to rely on.

The main KPIs we consider are how many customers we’ve helped and have on board and how many problems are reported to us from customers. We also look at any problems that may exist within our team — we are trying to maintain the same family-like dynamic we have and for that we must solve any issues in the early stages.

Buguard was initially bootstrapped, since we’re a profitable company. The funding round we just closed was our very first. But we didn’t go to them for just the money: A15 is a great group of minds when it comes to business — and we needed their help with that. Having the support of Karim Beshara for example is a great plus. As for the funding, it will help us expand faster than originally planned and expedite this growth regionally beginning with KSA and the GCC before eyeing global expansion.

If I had to exit my business, it would be through an IPO. We are currently working on multiple product portfolios, including a brand protection platform, a service management platform, and enhancing our dark web platform —- because there’s market demand for it. So yes, the IPO would be the best option for us.

I’ve been in the industry since the age of 15 so my family is very supportive. I started off doing it without charge, because it’s been my passion. By the age of 17, I was making revenue so it made my parents very proud.

One of my favorite podcasts is Business bel Arabi . It’s great — I try to listen to all their episodes as I love what they’re doing. In my own podcast, Radio Hack, which focuses mainly on cybersecurity, I try to invite leaders from all over the globe to discuss topics and answer questions from within our industry and community. We have invited leaders from the region and other foreign guests like John Hammond (Linkedin), one of the most popular security engineers in the world.

What inspires me is being good at what I do, like hearing that my customers are satisfied. Currently with Buguard, enhancing and producing quality makes me proud, and pushes me forward. It’s really a mindset: I love finding flaws and loopholes in major systems — that gives me the motivation to keep going.

In my freetime, I like hacking and learning about new topics. When it comes to sports, I like to play padel in the little spare time I have.

One local startup that’s doing a great job in the fintech industry in my opinion is PayMob. They’re doing a great job — the executive team is very talented and they have great leaders within the organization when it comes to security and development. They’re growing very fast while maintaining their quality, which I respect. Menthum is another example: Ismail Sarhank (Linkedin) and Himanshu Shrimali, the founders, are doing something very unique.

If I hadn’t started Buguard I would probably be leading a security team. Probably at one of the organizations I previously worked at, like PwC Singapore or Facebook. But thank god that I have focused on Buguard because my ambition is to build something and have a second family to work with. Helping multiple security teams is better than managing just one.

The Egyptian cybersecurity startup scene is full of talent and companies are growing. The weakness, however, is that industry players in Egypt focus on services rather than products — except maybe for two or three companies including us. This is upsetting because we have the talent: We have the best coders and security engineers competing all over the world but our country does not have a very successful industry yet. That pushes us to work on our products to become top leaders without changing our brand identity because we are proud to be Egyptian.

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