It’s been a massive year for SafeStack Academy, and today I’m thrilled to share that we’ve raised a seed round of $2.3m NZD to help us bring our community-centric approach to cyber security education to the world.
We’re honoured to be backed by a strategic group of New Zealand and Australian investors, led by Australian venture capital firm Jelix Ventures and including Carthona Capital, K1W1, New Zealand Growth Capital Partners’ Aspire NZ Seed Fund, and NAB Ventures.
Launched in July 2020, SafeStack Academy provides a community-focused online education platform for software development teams around the world.
Combining high quality qualifications to support the entire software development lifecycle, hands-on labs and an interactive community, the platform has reached over 60 organisations in its first 12 months and achieved half a million NZD in annual recurring revenue.
This investment puts SafeStack in an ideal position to build on our early traction and expand the team to accelerate our international growth.
It’s never been more necessary for organisations to be secure online, yet security education remains out of reach for many due to cost, complexity, or minimum seat requirements. We’re looking forward to changing that.
So what does this raise mean for SafeStack?
With a growing team of 14 specialists split over New Zealand and Australia, SafeStack is dedicated to growing security skills and culture across entire engineering teams.
We’re committed to building security through the entire SDLC and including all the roles we rely on to build great software
If you’ve tried our Secure Development programme, you’ll know we take a different approach to this type of training.
Instead of targeting specific programming languages and technologies, we teach secure design and architectural practices that integrate earlier into the software development lifecycle, securing a wider range of teams and technical environments — approaches that have been recommended by the latest drafts of the OWASP Top 10 and NIST 800-218.
With a simple to navigate subscription model — charged per learner, per year — it’s easy for entire teams to start weaving security into their development practices, whatever their size, maturity, or budget.
Making application security training available to as many teams around the world as we can is super important to us, and it always will be.
We know the basics are needed too, and sometimes smaller, fast-moving organisations need something new to help them
We’re pleased to keep offering our Security and Privacy Awareness programmes to help organisations upskill their teams on the essentials of these topics.
We’re creating a security movement based on inclusion and empowerment — not fear, uncertainty, and doubt
We’re as committed as ever to creating a sustainable security culture based on empowerment, not fear. Our approach helps teams build the confidence and peace of mind to innovate, grow, and go faster, safe in the knowledge that they’re building security into their ways of working.
Finally, some words of thanks
To our early supporters, mentors, advisors, and investors — your belief and gentle encouragement is phenomenal and we love having you as part of our community.
To those companies who have already joined us as customers, thank you. Your support means the world to us and we’re proud to be working with you.
To our growing range of partners around the world, thank you for being our champions and helping raise our mission to a global audience.
And to those companies we have yet to meet, we look forward to saying hello and making you and your team into the cyber security superheroes we know you can be. Whether you’re a potential partner or a team in need, we’d love to hear from you.