For the first time since its 2020 inception, MSP cybersecurity vendor CyberFox has taken outside investment.

ConnectWise veterans Dave Bellini and Adam Slutskin had self-funded CyberFox, which began as Password Boss during the COVID pandemic. They’ve since grown it into a $25 million revenue company with 24,000 customers and around 140 employees.

The CyberFox founders also attracted the attention of investors and were impressed by reps from private equity firm Level Equity. Level Equity and software growth equity company Radian Capital combined to make “a nine-figure” investment. CyberFox CEO Bellini said much of the investment will go to acquiring or developing AI technology and talent.

“We're at that inflection point now with AI coming on, that we wanted to make sure we brought on a partner that could help us continue to grow out our suite of cybersecurity products for the SMBs and MSPs that service them,” Bellini said. “We see the ability to maybe buy some startup companies that will help us do that and move forward, filling in the entire platform. We want to be the Palo Alto Networks for the MSP channel.”

Dave Bellini

Bellini and president/CRO Slutskin said ConnectWise took no funding while they were involved, and they were following that strategy at CyberFox until Level came calling. The CyberFox execs said they were impressed with the Level team’s knowledge of their business.

“When we were building out ConnectWise, we built it on revenue and we never once took a penny, which to this day everyone's always really surprised at,” Slutskin said. “So we knew how to grow a company without taking money, and that's the path we were going down again, just self-funding.

“Maybe it was a little easier this time because we had money from the ConnectWise exit, but that's how good a job Level did and how impressed we were with them. We said, ‘Hey, these guys are good. We should take on an investment partner,’ which we weren't looking to do.”

Level CEO Ben Levin was similarly impressed by the CyberFox founders.

“Dave and Adam have an impeccable pedigree serving both MSPs and non-MSP customers, given their previous experience building companies such as ConnectWise and Liongard, and we're honored that they chose us to partner with them for the next leg of CyberFox's journey,” Levin said. “With no external capital raised to date, they have become the clear leader in privileged access management, with industry-leading NPS scores and exceptional ARR growth validating this thesis. The entire CyberFox team has been a pleasure to work with and we have immense conviction that this will be a category-defining software company.”

CyberFox’s platform includes CyberFox AutoElevate for PAM, CyberFox Password Manager, and CyberFox DNS Filtering. AI makes cybersecurity both easier and more complicated as it provides tools to aid both protection and attacks. Bellini said a cybersecurity vendor must constantly update and add features to its platform.

“When you think about it, to protect yourself you need about 22 different things,” he said. “It's like an onion, right? You’ve got to keep on covering yourself, because you never know. It's a cat-and-mouse game when the bad guys can get in—they've kind of hacked in. So you always want to continuously perfect your product.”

Slutskin added: “Where all the winners are going to be is – ‘How do we really structure that into something where there's more of a unified view, a unified way to interact with these different security solutions’? That's what we're aiming for. And that's why we are looking at bringing on very experienced, talented AI people.”

Adam Slutskin

CyberFox last week named Os Haque VP of global channels. Haque will lead CyberFOX’s expansion into the enterprise market through strategic channel partnerships.

CyberFox doesn’t sell exclusively through MSPs but MSPs are its main conduit to its SMB end users.

“The MSP is our default customer,” Slutskin said. “We will never, ever compete with an MSP. If [a customer] gets an MSP, we transition that relationship directly to the MSP. And we know that works because 99.8% of the time we never have a conflict. And if one ever does arise, you know, Dave and I are the first two to quickly resolve it. But again, the tie always will go to the MSP. That's our bread and butter. I mean, it's what we grew up on.”