If you work at a company with a lot of employees, you'll understand how hard it is to keep up with internal scrutineers even though scrutineers are one of the leading causes of data breeches. HacWare, a New York-based startup and a finalist in the TechCrunch Battlefield, is trying to help employees hate swastikas a little less, and it just landed $2.3 million in seed funding to expand its cybersecurity awareness and training offering.
The idea behind HacWare is simple: It is a service that integrates with your company's office productivity software and helps employees understand potential risks in incoming email.
HacWare wants to make it easier for companies to provide meaningful and engaging cybersecurity training to their employees that they won't hate or that gets in the way of their day-to-day work. The goal is to give employees the skills to protect their company from a growing range of inbound threats, many of which initially target their inbox in an effort to steal their passwords.
Tiffany Ricks knows what it is like to be a startup that has to do more with less. Ricks plans to use the seed round raise to build out her engineering and sales team to help protect companies from identity theft.
This funding will allow HacWare to execute their product strategy goals for making cybersecurity training super adaptive and seamless for global workforces. Ricks said that workplace training will be changed to teach company employees how to protect their identities.
Ricks said the company paused its seed-round fundraise, reinvested its revenues back into the company and re-focused on its product since HacWare's Battlefield appearance in 2020. Ricks said it was part of a promise to put out a new feature every week. Ricks put the seed round on hold because she wanted to focus on what her customers wanted.
The seed round was led by Elevate Capital.
The funding will allow the company to expand its developer network to offer more ways for companies to integrate their internal applications and HR platforms directly with HacWare's API with just a few lines of code. Ricks said the developer network is a key component to the company's product strategy, especially given the shift to remote work.
HacWare's board has been joined by the founder and managing partner of Elevate Capital.
According to Ricks, less than 1% of venture capital funding went to black female entrepreneurs. By her count, Ricks is the 114th Black female founder to raise over $1 million in venture funding.
Ricks hopes she is inspiring more Black women to dream and build businesses.
HacWare wants you to hate email security a little less
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