Local cyber startup gears up for commercialization, hiring

Cybersecurity company Efflux Analytics plans to bring its product to market in November, after winning $10,000 in a state pitch competition earlier this month.

Two-year-old Efflux is located at the bwtech@UMBC cyber incubator in Baltimore County. Its technology automatically tracks and analyzes threats hiding in a company’s networks.

What started out as a team of two co-founders has grown to an eight-member company made up of former active duty military and former government employees, said Adam Bixler, one of the founders and chief operating officer of Efflux. The startup is currently working privately with eight customers ranging from large, publicly-traded to smaller, private organizations.

Bixler said Efflux has already made it through a seed funding round and most of the money raised came from friends and family, as well as some angel investors. Bixler declined to disclose the total amount raised in the seed round.

"Our next major step is building out general availability, making our technology more commercially available," Bixler said. "We also want to ramp up our team and bring on more paid customers. We'll have to raise a Series A round to be able to scale the company the way we want."

Bixler said the prize money from Maryland's Cyber Day will help in the meantime. He said the Efflux team was surprised to even be selected as a finalist for the competition.

"The companies selected to pitch all had really strong presentations," Bixler said. "And the prize money is extremely helpful...we will likely be reinvesting that into some additional features for our customers."

The money will allow the company to outsource some components of development and bolster its marketing efforts as it works toward general availability, Bixler said. And as Efflux scales up its operations, he said the goal is to grow the company to about 25 employees by 2017.

Cyber Day, hosted by Cybersecurity Association of Maryland, Chesapeake Regional Tech Council, Startup Maryland, the Maryland Department of Commerce and Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation brought local investors and cybersecurity companies together for a day of pitches and demos.

Read more at http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2016/10/19/local-cyber-startup-gears-up-for-commercialization.html