The tech industry has been grappling with massive layoffs over the last year, with tech giants like Shopify laying off 10 percent of its staff, Wealthsimple laying off 13 percent, and Hootsuite laying off 30 percent. Yet in the midst of these cuts, rising inflation, and fears of a looming recession, the cybersecurity sector seems to be prevailing as one of the most in-demand and fastest-growing industries in the world. With the cybersecurity market valued at $156.24 billion in 2020 ⁠— and expected to reach $352.25 billion by 2026 ⁠— Canadian startup Flare Systems is demonstrating why this sector is flourishing. 

Flare is a leading digital footprint platform used to identify external threats to an organization by monitoring the clear, deep, and dark web. While the system constantly scans the internet to discover, prioritize and remediate possible vulnerabilities, Flare’s scientific methodology combined with their AI-driven data collection system is helping security teams truly understand their digital footprints. 

Founded in 2017, Flare has grown its business exponentially. After landing their first customer in 2018, the team managed to raise $1.1 million during their seed funding round by the end of 2019 and expanded their team to 13 employees. 

“After our seed round, we were cautious with our money, and this allowed us to have a bit more runway. We were also able to receive government funding, and that helped us to extend our runway for two years between our seed round and our Series A,” described Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Mathieu Lavoie. “It was tough when we were first trying to raise money and figure out what’s the right way to go. But, I honestly feel like we were very lucky to be in a country that encourages research and development.” Lavoie explained that the government’s funding helped Flare get through rough patches. 

By 2020, the company joined the Catalyst Cyber Accelerator’s first cohort, although Lavoie admits he was initially skeptical about participating. “We didn’t want to be the company that keeps doing accelerators and incubators. We wanted to make sure that we were actually growing our business,” said Lavoie. 

But, thanks to the Catalyst’s mentorship, connections to a growing network of cybersecurity investors, and experiential learning opportunities, Flare doubled its monthly revenue in the span of about three months.

“It’s not often we have the opportunity to go in front of prospective clients and be fully transparent about where the company is at, its weaknesses and problems, and hear their feedback,” said Lavoie. “They told us what they didn’t understand about Flare, what really resonated with them, and that was very helpful.” 

From managed security service providers to investment firms, Flare continues to help companies understand their online footprint. In 2021, Flare assisted a large North American bank to reduce their incident response cost by 95% through their GitHub Monitoring. After a former employee at the financial institution uploaded private information on the code hosting platform, Flare alerted the bank’s Cyber Threat Intelligence team, who immediately launched action and controlled the incident within 30 minutes. Through their successful impact, Flare was recognized in 2021 as one of the most innovative companies in the CyberTech industry by FinTech Global and won Gold Globee in Security Software Startup of the Year.

As tech companies, from startups to large corporations, face economic challenges, Flare has continued to “snowball,” as Lavoie puts it. In June 2022, Flare announced that they raised $9.5 million in their Series A Round. Flare has also grown to a team of 50 employees, doubling their staff in just one year since October 2021, and they have now expanded operations from Quebec to Toronto. 

Ready to scaleup your company like Flare? Join a future cohort of the Catalyst Cyber Accelerator.