French Fashion to AI | Benjamin Netter

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The Founder

 

Episode Topics:

• Investing in protecting your startup
• Loopholes in the world of mock phishing
• The low-hanging fruit to grab
• Always fashion involved French
• Tech can be tech, the outcome is very human
• Not the be all end all

 

Rick Jordan  

Hey, what’s shakin’, hey, I’m Rick Jordan today, we’re going all in. I’ve got today somebody who’s in my industry, you know, but he actually created this platform where I’m like the guy that puts the puzzle pieces together and cybersecurity. But even more important than that this dude likes to get inside the minds of hackers. Okay, and protects employees against cyber attacks through really what I think is necessary, which is like virtual crisis mode, you know, kind of planning as if everything just went to crap, though. Today I’m welcoming, welcoming founder and CEO of Riot. Benjamin netter. What’s up, Ben? 

 

Benjamin Netter  

Hey, Rick, how are you? Man? 

 

Rick Jordan  

I’m good. I’m very, very good. So this riot was not your first venture. Right? It was FinTech and fintech. I mean hundreds of millions of dollars in euros being transacted. How did you start that company? And then even more importantly, when you were there? How did that lead to Riot?

 

Benjamin Netter  

I mean, I’m on the tech side. So prior to FinTech, I was working in fashion. So you know, tech is everywhere. You just adapt I mean, so I met the right person to do the FinTech company, someone who had a strong background in finance, and especially financing companies. And we decided that that would be the tech part of that. And that’s how we got started. And I mean, cybersecurity is probably the closest to this to tech I got, I mean, it makes a lot more sense that I work in cybersecurity. Now I have a strong coding background. So I’ve been coding for like 20 years now. So it makes a lot more sense that I work for a cybersecurity company working for fintech.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Now for you, though, you had a did you Did I hear you right that you said you you were in fashion before that?

 

Benjamin Netter  

I started in fashion. Yeah. We were doing a wake-up. Wake up. Yeah. I mean, you know, I’m French. So I was always specially involved at some point. For three years, 

 

Rick Jordan  

Did you’re wearing a T-shirt? I’ve never guessed that. 

 

Benjamin Netter  

What do you mean? 

 

Rick Jordan  

I wear a black T-shirt every day. Exactly. That’s funny. So I’m interested in that. But so I mean, the FinTech cybersecurity, that makes sense, right? Because you’ve got all the needs for what Riot does right now and preventing hackers from getting in and compromising employees that you need in FinTech, because you’re protecting millions of dollars a year now, or millions of euros a year, and but how was that transition from fashion into fintech? Where did that come from?

 

Benjamin Netter  

Just meeting the right person. Yeah, I was looking for the next adventure. So I met someone I thought was the next guy. I wanted to propel the company when it started.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome. Yeah, cuz I mean, it’s, it’s very easy to make that journey. And I mean, that’s kind of a true entrepreneur, right? Because you just see the opportunity. And it doesn’t matter if it’s in a completely different industry than yours. Because that man through entrepreneurship is just problem-solving. Right? It’s asking new questions. That’s what entrepreneurship is. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you know that it helps people. It can be in any industry because a lot of industries help people.

 

Benjamin Netter  

Yeah, exactly. And I was running this company for like six years and at some point, and so we had this cybersecurity issue with the employee clicking entering his password on the wrong page. And so I started working on riot waking up two hours earlier in the morning and working on that before I went to my real, real job. And I launched so my goal was to launch an attack on the team at that point, and the first time I launched the attack, the first person who clicked and entered its password was the CFO and so on. was like a wake-up call, you know,

 

Rick Jordan  

no doubt man that there was something there. Yeah, no doubt the CFO was first CFO was Bob right? Bob the in every company that claims on anything.

 

Benjamin Netter  

It was a girl.

 

Rick Jordan  

Nice. You were like in my head with that one. I like it above that. Here’s, so let’s be real, right? Because I mean, in the US, right? You’re in Paris but in the US. There are a lot of phishing simulation companies, right? They seem to be popping up all over the place. And they’re great, you know, but some of them are bootstrapped. Some of them raise money. I know you raised a $12 million series A this year. How did you land that capital? What was your strategy to land that capital?

 

Benjamin Netter  

I mean, we were making money. So you know, it’s always the same with VC firms, you make money, and you don’t want to raise money. And that’s where they come knocking on the door, hey, I got this, this fund that we just raised, and we want to invest in your company so that we can actually happen. So basically, we were, we were almost profitable. And at that point, but, you know, you know, it’s still a startup we want to grow, and we want to spend more money than we actually heard, and we want, we want to go faster. So we had two ways to do that.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, that’s good. You’re able to show cash flow, you’re able to show revenue, you know, even though you might have been operating at a loss because you’re a startup, that’s important for people who are listening to catch on to because so many think that the days of, you know, like in tech, where you have this idea, right? And you’re trying to pitch this idea, but there’s nothing tangible to that idea yet. It’s like I want to do this. It’s like it’s much harder to get any sort of investor, whether it’s VC seed, or even friends and family to get involved in what you’re doing. Because there hasn’t been anything done. Yet. You have no proof of concept at this point. So you weren’t you were almost profitable. You weren’t profitable, but still, you had cash flow. That’s important for any VC for a man.

 

Benjamin Netter  

Yeah, exactly. That’s, that’s how it goes. They don’t really take risks. Do you know? They look at the money and when it makes sense, the universe. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s an eight-off stage. I mean, but during the pre-seed and seed round, it was a different story.

 

Rick Jordan  

For sure, that’s a different type of investor to precede and seed, you know, versus VC. VCs need to have a little more meat to chew on, I think. 

 

Benjamin Netter  

Exactly. Yeah. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah. They also know that they need to exit. 

 

Benjamin Netter

There are also small teams. 

 

Rick Jordan

I bet. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. That’s awesome. Man. That’s exciting. Because I mean, you got this. I mean, we’re looking at this. What? There’s one thing I want to know. And I’m curious about this, because there’s a lot of, as I said, in the US, right, maybe not in the EU, but in the US, there’s a lot of fishing simulation, companies that have just popped up out of nowhere. And all of them pretty much seem to do the same thing. You know, they all have the basic set of features, there’s only maybe one or two that are really differentiating themselves. How are you doing that? How are you rising above the noise?

 

Benjamin Netter  

So there are a few answers to that. The first one is, our competitors are pretty, pretty weak in France. So we’re still very, we’re growing rapidly because they’re just not there yet. That’s answer number one. And obviously, when I was in my previous company, I tried to sign up for those competitors. And their onboarding process was extremely painful for small companies. So that, that was another opportunity that I saw was that most, most of these companies, they’re focusing on enterprise customers. And I mean, cybersecurity is a problem. And you know that even better than I do, but it’s a problem, even for smaller companies, and they don’t have the solution to cover those problems. Because if you want to target small companies, you have to make a bit of product. And that’s why we’re focusing on making your product that can be sent from the body. Your product has to be extremely good if you want 50 people company signing up, and onboarding themselves directly from the website. 

 

Rick Jordan 

Yeah, for sure. 

 

Benjamin Netter

That’s the reason. So basically, France, France market was not as mature as the US market. And we were targeting a different kind of companies than they were.

 

Rick Jordan  

Dude, I gotta tell you, if it wasn’t for Riot, man, if I was a hacker, I’d be going after companies in France right now. Because if it’s not that mature, I didn’t know that you educated me today. Because like I said, they’re these phishing simulation companies that simulate these things in the US, they’re all over the place now. You know, so you’re grabbing on it. It’s almost like in France, it seems like it was probably five years ago in the US, you know, if I could compare the timelines there. But there’s one thing that you said, Man, that really caught me because you said the second part, the biggest thing like I think you would do well, in the US because of this, no joke because of this. One thing is that you made tech human. You had you saw a difficulty because of the painful onboarding process. And Tech can be tech but tech, can be exciting, but still, it’s supposed to accomplish something that matters to human beings, right? That the outcome is actually something very human and very relational. And that’s the importance of tech is that it helps accomplish that. Tech is not the be-all and end-all. So you saw this thing and I’m impressed, man, I want to give you props as the best thing I’ve ever heard from any tech companies is that we, I saw a pain point with how we interacted with people. It had nothing to do with the tech Self, it had to do with zero with actual riot and what it does in the phishing simulations, you saw the pain point and actually onboarding customers, and solve that. That’s brilliant, but a way to go.

 

Benjamin Netter  

And I mean, I’m not gonna name names, but I talked to this big company that everyone knows. And they set up a call in, like, three weeks, three weeks, 123 weeks later, they’re, you know, you want to be safe today. I mean, when we got asked, I was like, I want to be safe right now. I mean, I want to target it now. And I installed the program tomorrow or something like this. And they set up a code three weeks later, and then there’s the pricing coming three weeks after. And so you’re like, two months later, and you’re still gonna have the product. I was like, That’s not normal. I want the product.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. But I just got done watching the movie Founder. It’s an older movie with, you know, maybe like 10 years old with Michael Keaton. It was about Ray Kroc the founder. Well, really the person who built McDonald’s, because it was the McDonald’s brothers that founded McDonald’s. But it was Ray Kroc, that took a global and started the whole franchise system. But the McDonald’s brothers because it was back in the 50s, they had these carhops, right? They were driving things, the idea of fast food didn’t even exist. And it would take like 20 minutes for the, for the server to go out to the car, take the order them cook the food, bring it back 20, sometimes, maybe 30 minutes later, but that’s the biggest thing that they eliminated that McDonald’s is still famous for today, in founding the idea of fast food. It’s like, why are we wasting time when people pull in and the only reason they’re here, is they stay in their cars? They’re literally here just to eat food. So they eliminated that and like, Here you go. Hamburger french fries. Coke in 30 seconds. Yeah. And that’s the same principle. It’s like they met people where they were they eliminated the biggest problem in food service, just like you eliminated the biggest problem in tech. You know, why three weeks’ bread? It should be like, three hours. Let’s get going.

 

Benjamin Netter  

I had no idea. And maybe we were a small company compared to other companies to talk to but

 

Rick Jordan  

whatever. Take what you have right now, man, dude, even press me today. Where can everybody find you? You know, what’s the website for Ryan? How can people connect with you individually?

 

Benjamin Netter  

Try to end up with Tom and Benjamin’s letter. Again. Reach out on LinkedIn. Easily accessible. Is it find me I’m everywhere.

 

Rick Jordan  

Awesome. Dude, this was fantastic today because we hit on some very human things that can apply to any business. Thanks for being on my man. Appreciate you. Thank you