A cybersecurity education platform is going into hyperdrive with its largest funding effort yet.
College Park-based Cybrary, which runs an online cybersecurity career development database, announced Wednesday that it secured $15 million in Series B funding.
The fresh capital brings Cybrary’s total funding to $23 million as it passes the 2.6 million user mark and reports revenue growth of 800% in the last two years.
Co-founder and CEO Ralph Sita said the startup plans to focus on growing and servicing its content creator network, now 1,700 strong.
“That’s people working on our platform mostly for free, contributing to all our 2.6 million users new courses, grades and advice,” Sita said. “We’re going to highlight them more and enable them more and bring them the recognition they deserve.”
He said Cybrary is developing analytics, reporting and authoring tools for creators of the cybersecurity training courses, who are joining the platform at a rate of 10 to 15 per week.
Meanwhile, he said about 2,000 users sign up per day and the company provides nearly 167,000 hours of learning per month. It has about 10,000 hours of content on the site.
The funding round was led by Austin-based BuildGroup and included participation from existing investors Arthur Ventures and Gula Tech Adventures. BuildGroup Managing Director Gray Hall and Gula Tech Adventures President Ron Gula will join the startup’s board of directors as part of the deal.
“We were looking not just for investors – investors are fine – but people that had hands in the dirt, that had started and exited a business,” Sita said. “That’s what we found with BuildGroup.“
Hall served as CEO of cybersecurity firm AlertLogic, growing it to about $120 million in revenue before exiting. Gula co-founded and served as CEO of Tenable Network Security, which raised $300 million in venture capital and went public last year.
“These are people who solved the same pains that we had felt, and partners that would be around for a series B and series C, making sure we’re able to focus on our business,” Sita said. “We’re looking to do what they’ve experienced. They have done it before, so there’s no point for us to reinvent the wheel when they’ve got multiple wheels in their shed.”
He said the funding will also go toward new hires, as it nears 70 employees by yearend and plans for up to 120 by the end 2020. It moved into a new College Park office in April, but plans to move again into a larger nearby space in July.
Cybrary, a 2019 Inno on Fire winner, is looking for all kinds of technical positions, including product development, data science, user experience and engineers; and it’s hiring for sales, management and content creation positions as well.
“It’s a new ballgame and a new intensity,” Sita said. “It’s healthy intensity, just like competition. Staff stepping up, management stepping up, investors stepping up – you have to bring your A-game all the time now, everybody does.”
