Poppy Dowell is Cyber Security Accelerator Program Manager at Wayra UK- the startup accelerator programme set up by Telefónica in 2012. The programme works to help start-ups develop, in part by collaborating with third-party investors and industry specialists – like us. Poppy has kindly agreed to talk about her role in Wayra, the industry hubs in which it operates, and her work with the GCHQ Cyber Accelerator…
Identifi: Hi Poppy. To start with, we’re interested in finding out a little bit about you and your role in Wayra. What was it that attracted you to Wayra in the first place?
Poppy Dowell (PD): I was working on the innovation team in my previous role at Atkins, so that attracted me to viewing things a little bit differently. I realised that innovation – working out how the future’s going to look – was more fun than business or IT change in, shall we say, a ‘normal’ company. When I saw the role at Wayra advertised, I thought, “this is the perfect opportunity for me to move into an industry which is more innovative and future-looking.”
Identifi: So, Wayra is aligned with GCHQ who, by nature, are very secretive, and then you have Telefónica, who are quite open and actively marketing, eager to make a big noise about the accelerator – how does that balance work?
PD: Usually, partners of GCHQ can’t announce they’re partners. However, the nature of this project and the need to attract start-ups to it means that we’ve needed to be very public about the fact that Wayra and GCHQ are working together. Because of that, GCHQ has been very conscious of being transparent and open with regard to this partnership, which has been amazing to be part of.
“It’s definitely been a learning curve for both sides.”
We have a great guy, Norval [Scott, Head of Communications and PR], on our Wayra team. He deals with all of our PR, and he’s just been incredible with all of this, managing the comms relationship between GCHQ and DCMS and making sure everything goes smoothly. It’s definitely been a learning curve for both sides though!
Identifi: What’s your role within Wayra, in a nutshell?
PD: Predominantly, I run the cyber accelerator programme, but I also support some of the other Open Future accelerators we have around the country like Oldham and one in Birmingham. Basically, I help the companies get access to whoever they need to support their business. I introduce them to investors, help them articulate their pitch better, bring in technical experts: pretty much anything they need, I try to make happen.
Identifi: Could you give us the official line about why Wayra exists, and what kind of benefits you give to businesses that come into the accelerator?
PD: The official line is that we believe innovation can come from anywhere, so we have made democratising entrepreneurship our mission, not just in London but throughout the UK. We help identify, develop, promote and scale UK based start-ups by leveraging Telefonica’s global resources.
For example, a new business can find it incredibly difficult to get access to the right network. If you want to get investment, you need to have around 50 hours’ worth of meetings, and you’ll probably then only get 1% to invest out of that, and that can take months and months. For a startup, time is of the essence, and if you don’t get money you’re not going to survive.
If you’re in an acceleration programme, we can speed that up because we have access to those investors, we can help schedule those meetings, and we can do it much quicker than you’d be able to on your own. So that’s one of the main benefits.
Pitching, especially for cyber companies, can be really very difficult. They have to articulate what they’re doing in a manner that everyone will understand, and a lot of seniors and board level members of investor companies still don’t really understand the sector. We help codify their key messages and help them communicate what they do in a way that will be attractive to investors and partners.
But really, we can help them with any support they might need or issues they might face – from legal to financial to talent management. It’s a network that helps them accelerate their business launch and growth.
Identifi: What does the Wayra network look like? You’ve mentioned mentoring…
PD: We try, for all of our main cohorts, to have a mentorship board that is usually made up of an alumnus of ours, an investor, and some other commercial partner in that industry who can support them and give them access to their networks as well.
We have some coaches who will come in and run workshops on customer development, pitch practice, business modelling, investor readiness and so on. Then we have a huge number of mentors who also give up their own time and will come in and do one-to-ones with them based on their speciality. We also get investors in to do one-to-ones. There are a lot of people who want to get involved, which is one of the reasons we are running a nine-month programme this time, because the previous three-month programme was extremely intensive.
Identifi: How hands-on is the programme at your end? Do people come in with a fully formed business plan, or more of an idea? What level are the businesses at when they apply to the accelerator, and how instrumental you are in shaping them?
PD: It very much depends on whether they’re joining one of our Open Future accelerators – which are more pre-acceleration – or the main Wayra programme. For our pre-accelerator, we will take early-stage companies who have a fully formed idea, but probably not much traction so far. For our main Wayra programme we would invest in the companies and so we are looking for businesses that are more advanced with some level of traction, whether it be trials, investment or customers.
“We’re looking at tech companies who have at least a viable product or service, not just an idea or theory.”
For the cyber accelerator, we’re looking at tech companies who have at least a viable product or service, not just an idea or theory. It has to be something that we see as being scalable, and also something that meets the challenges that have been identified by GCHQ & the NCSC, these are available for the companies to look at on our website.
In the first cohort we had a company who completely pivoted from their initial idea during the accelerator. We had others that were much more developed and had investment already.
Identifi: The company that changed so radically – did that come out of conversations with their team within the accelerator, or was that part of the business advice you gave them, or did they just decide to do something else?
PD: Basically, they had a product which wasn’t in the cyber sector, and they wanted to see if it would work, but they didn’t really know a huge amount about cyber security, as such. They got really great technical mentoring from GCHQ, they had hours and hours of discussions, and through that they completely pivoted their company.
They separated from the original company and created this amazing new start-up – Elemendar. Their tech is AI that looks at cyber threat reports from analysts and extracts the most important information, turning it into structured information – not what the analysts have put on the front page, but what the AI understands is most relevant to the user.
Identifi: The cyber sector is so fast moving, isn’t it? The technology changes on an almost weekly basis. If you’re talking about cyber security in particular – how are you supposed to keep up with millions of people creating new tools to hack into sensitive information?
PD: It’s very difficult. That’s why the government’s looking more towards the startup community for help – it’s not something it can do on its own, and the more people who are working towards these challenges the better.
Identifi: And you’re attacking this from a commercial perspective?
PD: Yes – well, we’re part of Telefónica, so we are a commercial business not a charity, we ultimately want companies that can support the parent business. In addition, data is hugely important to Telefónica – we estimate that 10% of the world’s data flows through our networks, so cyber security is important! From another perspective, though, the startups won’t be successful if they aren’t looking at things commercially.
Identifi: There seems to be a lot of rapid development in the cyber security space, but a lot of people leading it come from an academic perspective. Are you coming at the problem from a more commercial angle?
PD: Exactly. GCHQ has so many amazing technical experts that can really support businesses with their development. Telefónica has this huge cyber security department who also come in and help them, and then we’ve got access to a huge number of people who can also help them develop their product and put it into reality. Wayra is really good at understanding the commercial benefits and how our customers think, and helping them identify the right markets and customers for their business.
Identifi: What are the biggest challenges for the startups who come to Wayra – when they’re starting and growing a business?
PD: Each company will be facing a different challenge at different times, so we try and make the programme as bespoke as it can be, to help them with whatever challenge they’re meeting at that point.
For the cyber companies, one of the really good things about having GCHQ on hand, and having access to the Wayra network and all of our contacts, is that they get a great opportunity to check out their product’s market fit and adapt it. If you haven’t proved that your product can integrate well and work in the way you have claimed, then it’s really hard to get anybody to let you have that opportunity.
Identifi: If someone was reading this and thinking they’d like to apply for the startup accelerator, what advice would you give them?
PD: Apply. It’s a great programme. The networks businesses can access and the relationships they’ll make with the other startups will be beneficial for the rest of your company’s life and after. We can help them with access to almost anything they need access to. The access to GCHQ is almost impossible to get without it.
Identifi: Would they need to do any prep? What do they need to consider before they apply?
PD: I guess the prep would be to work out how their company can be scalable, where they really see their fit in the market and the size of the market. Then the other thing we would look for is the passion of the team – the team is more important than the idea, almost. If you have a really strong team the company will go far. Even if the idea doesn’t work, they’ll make something work.
Identifi: Obviously recruiting well is imperative for startups. Have you seen common mistakes – or common positive choices – that people have made while recruiting?
PD: Cyber security hiring is a huge challenge, not just for startups but for corporations too. There’s a huge skills gap, and as a startup you haven’t got the money that a corporation has to try and attract the best people. For a startup the main value is the vision and the founders. They really have to be passionate – they’re selling themselves to potential hires, almost. If you’re in that position you’re persuading people to take a pay cut because they believe in you and they believe in the business. You get the best people by being someone people want to work for, and most people will stay because they really believe in the company and the founders.
Once again, we’d like to thank Poppy for discussing her work and the amazing opportunity it offers.
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