Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Fabiola Munguia, Requestee: I'm Fabiola, originally from San Salvador. I've been in Germany for eight years and am studying for my Master's in Management and Technology at TUM. My co-founder, Grigory, is also from TUM; he studied for his Master's in Management there. Before that, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in Hanover. We've known each other for a long time and have worked on several university projects together. We realized that we get along well and complement each other, which is why we wanted to do something cool together.
Grigory worked in the automotive industry, in purchasing, and there he saw how difficult it is to purchase these pentests. It's a very traditional business where you have to contact and verify many vendors. Then you have to negotiate with them to get proposals, which can sometimes be very, very long. They can be up to 50 pages long. Furthermore, the proposals from pentesting companies are very difficult to compare.
Grigory discovered the problem, and we started working on it together. We've made great progress: We are on Xpreneurs, we have partnerships with AWS and we are in the Hubspot accelerator program.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Fabiola Munguia, RequesteeImagine you're a startup with a business-critical web application. This means that if something happens to this application, your business will be disrupted. That's why, before launching such an application, you typically conduct a pentest. A pentest involves hiring an ethical hacker to attack the application and find vulnerabilities or security holes. If they discover any, they submit a report with all the important information.
As easy as ordering pizza
The problem is that many small and medium-sized companies, or startups in general, don't necessarily have the time to worry about who they're using to conduct their pentests; the market is very opaque. And the process of ordering the test is also cumbersome: It can even take months to receive and accept the offer. That's why we want to simplify the process with our solution, solving everything with an all-in-one platform where you can create an order within seconds and immediately receive offers from already verified pentesting companies.
Our USP is that we only work with verified companies. We have a very thorough process for this, which we follow before even accepting someone on the platform. We conduct a background check, look at the clients they've worked with, read their reviews, and ask about the quality of their services. With this rigorous process, we relieve small and medium-sized businesses of the burden of verifying the companies themselves. Our goal is to create trust and user-friendliness when purchasing pentests. We want it to be as easy as ordering a pizza.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Fabiola Munguia, Requestee: Of course, there are also competitors who offer to provide pentests. The difference with these platforms is that at Requestee, we only work with certified companies and not with freelancers themselves. Many of our clients prefer to have a pentest conducted by an external company rather than a freelancer. A company has a reputation, a profile, and it's also much better from a liability perspective to work with a company.
The right business model for Requestee
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Fabiola Munguia, Requestee: Our first challenge was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem. Cybersecurity is generally a very broad and complex topic—it's not easy to understand the underlying problems because there are so many. To do this, we had to engage intensively with customers, conduct interviews, and ask why this aspect of pentesting is a real pain point.
The second problem was finding the right business model. We started with a traditional marketplace business, where you charge a fee to the vendor when something is sold. After several iterations, however, we realized that we could improve our model by providing more information about pentesting firms to users for free. We're currently testing this. We'll also soon be launching a supplier directory, something like LinkedIn for pentesting firms. This means that if you want to search for pentesters in Germany, Requestee is the first port of call, as there's no other website that provides more detailed information.
The third challenge, of course, is the coronavirus crisis. It's essentially turned our entire business upside down, and we had to pivot a lot to survive this crisis. We usually did our business at conferences, pitched there, and tried to acquire clients. Now we had to do everything online. But that also helped us a lot because it forced us to automate our sales processes. We started with webinars and blogs and are now covering our online business as well. Our goal is to be the go-to source for pentesting and everything related to home office security. People should be able to simply go to our website and find information there.
Target: 100 pentesting companies from Germany
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Fabiola Munguia, Requestee: Our goal is to have over 100 vendors from Germany listed on our platform by the end of the year. A double-digit number of pentesters has already been verified. We've also already conducted several pilot projects with companies that actually needed pentesting. We're also participating in an AWS program for startups, which is helping us develop our first MVP.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Fabiola Munguia, Requestee: Munich is a startup ecosystem where everyone knows each other. However, it's difficult for foreign founders to build a network from scratch. The Technical University of Munich and Xpreneurs played a major role here by enabling us to connect with founders and companies with experience in marketplaces or cybersecurity. We believe that such communities are a critical building block for a rapidly growing VC and startup ecosystem. This is exactly how Silicon Valley emerged.
Munich Startup: Apple or Android?
Fabiola Munguia, Requestee: For the phone, I'd say Android, because it simply has more apps, and I simply love the Android camera. I use it for all my social media posts. In the office, however, we also really like using Apple, especially when it comes to hardware.
