Turning ten: Growing a mission-led business into the double digits

When you start a business, ten years feels like a lifetime away. The first year is all about survival. The second and third are focused on growth and expansion. Reaching ten is a long-term milestone that few founders spend much time considering in the early years.

However, as Cyacomb turns ten, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the journey of the business.  I was appointed as CEO of Cyacomb in August last year, so I haven’t been there every step.  But when you’re appointed as the CEO of a fast-moving technology business, you educate yourself on every milestone, every funding round, and every setback, getting to know the business like you have been there from day one. 

The last ten years for Cyacomb have not been without challenges, but this isn’t surprising for a technology start-up.  There have been many learning experiences for the whole team throughout the years, but as we reach this critical milestone, it’s clear we have developed an essential technology for today’s digital world.

A mission-led business
Cyacomb was founded to support law enforcement investigations into Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on suspect devices. What many people don’t realise is that identifying CSAM on digital devices is often a lengthy process, with police forces around the world facing significant backlogs. Traditional manual searches are time-consuming and can unnecessarily expose investigators to illegal imagery that can have a lasting impact on their mental wellbeing, while also creating privacy challenges when reviewing large volumes of personal data.

Cyacomb developed its privacy-preserving technology specifically to tackle these challenges. It enables law enforcement agencies to identify CSAM quickly, accurately and without exposing people to harmful imagery unnecessarily.  Our privacy-preserving technology is used by law enforcement agencies across the globe, helping police forces tackle backlogs and identify illegal material on devices, to ensure perpetrators are caught quickly.

We also support Border Force with the detection of terrorism material on devices entering countries. This ensures criminals are caught at borders, before they enter a country and cause harm. Our technology is mission-led. It tackles key issues that seriously impact society.  From day one, this has not changed, but Cyacomb has definitely made multiple pivots throughout its journey. 

However, having a clear mission has made those changes easier to navigate. Markets evolve, leadership changes and products develop, but when everyone understands why the business exists, it’s much easier to make decisions about where it should go next. This is something other founders and CEOs must be prepared for. Staying static is never the goal.

Another lesson is that your first market is rarely your last. The technology that gets you started often has applications you never anticipated, and you’ll only discover them if you’re prepared to keep listening to customers and evolving. Like many technology companies, we initially focused on a specific audience – law enforcement.  But over time, we realised our technology could help a much broader range of customers.

Today we are working with organisations to help them identify illegal material on company-owned devices.  CSAM is growing at a very concerning rate and it’s a crime law enforcement can’t tackle alone. All organisations have a part to play.  Our recent partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) helps support this. 

Together, we are helping organisations identify known CSAM on corporate-owned devices using privacy-preserving technology. Rather than exposing images or videos during the detection process, secure matching techniques are used against databases maintained by the IWF to identify potential risks and provide a simple risk-based assessment.

Moving into the next decade
As the CEO of Cyacomb, what matters most to me is knowing that the technology we’ve developed has helped investigators work more efficiently, supported organisations in strengthening safeguarding practices and has contributed to making the digital world safer.

The next decade will undoubtedly bring new challenges. Artificial Intelligence will continue to reshape digital investigations, while online harms will evolve and organisations will face increasingly complex regulatory and security requirements. However, we will tackle these challenges head on, as a team. 

The businesses that succeed aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets or the fastest growth. They are the ones that continue learning, continue adapting and continue solving problems that genuinely matter. If the last ten years have taught Cyacomb anything, it’s that building a lasting business isn’t about predicting the future perfectly.  It’s about staying curious enough to evolve, disciplined enough to earn trust and committed enough to never lose sight of the mission that inspired the business from the beginning.