When DC Inno last checked in with online cybersecurity training company Cybrary in 2015, it was just celebrating its debut and unveiling a program to help teach D.C.-based Iraqi refugees cybersecurity techniques.
But that was three years ago, and the company’s covered a lot of ground since then.
“[We’re] bigger than ever before,” Cybrary’s CEO Ryan Corey told me. “We’re growing super-fast, revenue is really scaling … we’re really seeing customer growth. It’s a really good place to be for the business.”
“WE HAVE A KEEN EYE ON CONTENT QUALITY.”
In fact, the company raised a $3.5 million Series A round in September 2017. Arthur Ventures, Tenable Network Security founder Ron Gula and other existing investors participated in the round.
Cybrary’s also received considerable awards attention, winning “Startup of the Year” at The Golden Bridge Awards in 2016, among other accolades.
For the uninitiated, the Greenbelt, Md.-based Cybrary looks to bolster its users’ career development progress by giving them access to high-quality, free online training in the cybersecurity market. It’s essentially an online library of courses (hence the name), covering a host of pertinent topics. Users can search by skill type or career level to ensure they find a resource that fills their needs, and all they have to do to access them is create a profile on the site.
“[Cybrary’s] for someone who wants to move to the next level,” Corey said.
So far, there’s been plenty of users who identify with that descriptor. Currently, Cybrary boasts 1.6 million registered users with 200,000 taking training classes every month.
It’s a refreshing turn of events for Corey, who created the company after noticing a skills gap in the cybersecurity arena when he worked for a classroom-based IT and cybersecurity training company in D.C.
“We were [winning] international awards for sales volume, but even though we would win those types of awards, there were low numbers of getting people through those courses,” Corey said. “I became very aware that having a $5,000 [price tag] on a training course will keep people out.”
Ryan Corey. Photo Courtesy Ryan Corey.
So, he decided that his company would strip courses of potential barriers attendees would cite as reason for not joining.
“Look, we have to remove all friction, and let’s bring a lot more entrants in and more current participants up, and that was the main goal from the start,” Corey elaborated.
“Free” is a huge element of Cybrary’s ethos.
“It is now and always will be,” Corey said. However, the company still does make money. It has its Alliance partnerships with top IT and cyber companies and Cybrary Insider Pro Membership, which users can access for a fee, and bundles team plans for businesses.
Trainees and businesses aren’t the only ones who can find value in Cybrary. There’s also opportunity for instructors to create their own course or post their tried-and-true instructions, allowing them to get exposure to “the largest user base in cybersecurity,” Corey said.
Interested teachers do have to apply for inclusion on Cybrary. “We have a keen eye on content quality,” Corey said. “The learning content development team runs curation process; [we’re] not allowing anything that’s garbage. We want great content — we just need to make sure it’s quality.”
Courses aren’t the only thing Cybrary offers. There’s a job board, a blog, forums and other educational resources for those who want to give their learning an extra boost.
This suite of offerings was the result of many years of hard work and courting investors to ensure the company got off the ground.
“It was very, very difficult at first,” Corey said. “The only revenue metric that [investors] consider traction is revenue, [although] Cybrary came out of the gate growing faster than today’s unicorn companies in terms of user growth.”
Sometimes, however, it just takes one cheerleader to make a difference for a startup. In Cybrary’s case, that was Justin Label of Interloop Capital.
“Justin saw it, bit into it right away and basically strong-armed us into an angel round,” Corey said.
From there, Cybrary dug into the D.C. ecosystem, raising its institutional seed round with the help of the Baltimore Angels, the Dingman Center Angels and a number of other angel investor firms.
Funding is once more on the docket, Corey hinted, saying “we would probably see a funding announcement later this year, early next.”
