VIDEO — 13 Apr 2026

One LinkedIn message, Secfix’s Series A and lessons from building startups

A podcast conversation on Unframed Talks: from Telenor and Air Serbia to co-founding Secfix via LinkedIn, its Series A and running several startups.

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Unframed Talks 006

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In episode 006 of the Unframed Talks podcast we talked about my road from summer jobs on the coast through Telenor, Air Serbia and Etihad to Munich, and about the LinkedIn message that led to Secfix. We also covered sleep, the founder’s job, the Series A, choosing investors and a startup that did not work.

Summer jobs on the coast and my first computer

In short, I am an incurable optimist. I am a husband, father, son, friend, entrepreneur and colleague, and I think that optimism has helped me be better in all of those roles.

I grew up on the coast, where everyone looks forward to the tourist season, so from about the age of 14 I rented out sunbeds and made coffee on the beaches, and later worked as a barman and waiter. Technology fascinated me from my first computer, including the satellite receivers we all hacked with new decryption codes, so computer science in Podgorica was an obvious choice.

Telenor, Air Serbia and Etihad

In my third year of studies, an American Chamber of Commerce internship placed me in Telenor’s IT department, and because I treated it as a full-time job, it led to a traineeship and a full-time post with the then most desirable local employer, which left little room to grow.

At 22 or 23 I did not yet feel ready to build a business, so I wanted to prove myself first as an employee who always gives more than is asked. If an employer does not value that, I change employers and keep working the same way.

After about two and a half years at Telenor, where I had moved from IT administration into information security, I had hit the ceiling in Montenegro. I got a job at Air Serbia in Belgrade surprisingly easily, because so few people worked in information security then that people from physical security applied too. Air Serbia was part of the Etihad Airways group, so I often went to Abu Dhabi on secondments and sat on the group’s Information Security Advisory Council.

Corporations taught me how my field works in huge systems and what kind of environment I do not want, with political games, unwritten rules and people ready to report a colleague for a long break.

Security problems came every day, and the worst fear in my field is that someone is already inside and has not yet been found. It happened that an attacker with a spoofed address or a lookalike domain sat in CC on an email chain, reading confidential conversations because everyone thought the right person was copied in.

Munich, Kaia Health and learning from founders

After a short spell at a software company from Novi Sad, I wanted a bigger stage in Europe and ended up in Munich, which was hard for me, far from my loved ones and from the sea.

My last company there was Kaia Health, a healthcare startup where I was among the first ten employees and shared an office with the co-founders, who had already sold a company. For months I took them to lunch and coffee, asked which books they found interesting and watched how they ran meetings. I saw that a founder has to be involved in everything, from marketing and sales to technical development, and learning has never been easier, because I ask Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini the same question.

The most important skill, for at least one co-founder, is recruiting, a nose for people. At Secfix, which recently raised 12 million, I did the final founder interview, a half-hour vibe check on a human level. I have made hiring mistakes both ways, and if I have to choose, I take someone with fewer skills and a better character, even if one in ten lets me down, because I can teach and mentor that person.

UN1QUELY and Secfix in the same month

UN1QUELY and Secfix happened independently within a month. One of my best friends called with the chance to found a software development spin-off of BrightMarbles that would add a cybersecurity service, which he wanted me to build. The company provided all the resources and we invested nothing, and since for me every attempt ends either in success or in a lesson, it was a no-brainer.

In the same month I was already talking to two people I had met on LinkedIn, Fabiola from El Salvador and Grigory from Russia, who lived in Munich like me. Fabiola’s posts kept appearing in my feed, and when she posted that they needed a part-time cybersecurity consultant, I thought it cost me nothing to say hello and wrote to her. At our first meeting I felt more positive chemistry than ever before.

I expected Secfix to be a side gig, until they told me they had pre-seed funding and wanted me as the third co-founder. I told everyone involved at once that I would sit on two chairs, a cybersecurity service and product that complement each other, and that transparency let me start two businesses in one month that have done very well over almost five years.

LinkedIn as a business identity

A well-maintained LinkedIn profile is the digital identity of anyone in business. I learned from people who interest me and posted regularly when I had something worth sharing, so everything about me was one click away. I can no longer count the opportunities that have reached my inbox this way, including the startup that has raised 17.5 million in total.

My day starts when I go to sleep

Asked how I keep up with everything, I said my day starts when I go to sleep, because good sleep shapes the next day. I took that seriously thanks to Brian Johnson, the longevity guru, whose principles are simple and take discipline: quality sleep, regular physical activity and good food.

My daughter is five now, and when I was starting those businesses my wife was about to give birth, so for six months we barely slept while I ran two companies. I woke up with 30% energy, like a phone left off the charger, at a time when I had to make serious decisions and set an example for my employees.

Rest, good food and training change the quality of my decisions. Rested, I see at once who could do a task better and delegate it, or I find a better way and do it three times faster, and when tired I would take the same task on grudgingly and spend three hours on what should take half an hour, so the time I invest in all three comes back to me.

The founder’s job

A founder’s primary job is keeping the company alive, with enough money in the account and revenue or investment on the way, followed by recruiting and delegation. Until the Series A, founders stay in sales, because a direct line to a founder is the only edge a young SaaS product has over an enterprise one, and today a company is roughly ready for a Series A of ten million or more at about 1.5–2 million in annual recurring revenue.

Skenify, iPets and Montenegro’s innovation law

Two years ago, with the Innovation Fund and a new law on innovation, a private company in Montenegro could redirect up to 300,000 euros into an idea-stage startup, because the state would write off its profit tax up to that amount. Before that there were only grants of perhaps 20,000–30,000 with no support afterwards.

Early on I joined the advisory board of Digital Den, our first accelerator of that kind, and since there was talk of changing the law, we quickly started two startups with around 100,000 euros each, so the core team worked for equity and the money paid freelance developers.

Skenify is an autonomous penetration testing, vulnerability scanning and risk management tool: a company verifies its domain, and AI agents analyse its vulnerabilities from the outside and the inside. I built it for myself, as the product I would use every day, and I think Secfix succeeded partly for the same reason, because I guided its product team as its ideal user. iPets is in the pet industry, because I wanted something fun outside cybersecurity.

Setting priorities

I have no weekends or holidays, and every day, after training, breakfast and coffee, I open my laptop to see where the fire is, which is my only filter. Direct messages from people who might escalate something come before anything else, some emails wait for days, and calls from my parents or my wife always take priority.

I keep time for strategy and for repeating the vision clearly, because people in a company do not know what is in the founder’s head. Running is my therapy, and my best ideas come to me while I run.

Secfix, the Series A and choosing investors

Secfix is a security compliance automation platform that connects through APIs to tools such as Google Workspace, AWS, GitHub and Jira and checks a company’s systems for misconfigurations and gaps against the regulations of its markets. Many customers need a certificate such as ISO 27001 to win a contract with a big bank, insurer or airline at all, so the first contract they win pays for our product.

A Series A comes once a startup has proven product-market fit, meaning it can sell, the product works and customers stay, and then it scales what works, usually by ten times. Investor fit matters too: smart money means an investor who becomes a strategic partner and helps with new markets, hiring and clients. Some VCs are so corporate that they put in 5 million based on a ten-year projection and are never heard from again, and that is dumb money.

Smart investors invest in the founding team, and we turned some investors down. Choosing an investor is like choosing a co-founder, a business marriage, so during our last round I went to Munich several times to meet them, and since their team had already done the due diligence, we mostly got to know each other.

Raising money from Montenegro

Location matters to investors because of legal risk. They know how things work in Germany, Austria and the EU, and a startup from Montenegro means another month of legal due diligence, so it is easier for them to go with local companies. I hope that ends when Montenegro joins the EU, and with Skenify and iPets I want to prove that large rounds can be raised here. Until then a founder from here has to go to the investors, preferably European ones, at events such as Bits & Pretzels, Slush and Web Summit.

Failures, lessons and my view of an exit

As an optimist, I take failures calmly and analyse each one for its root cause. Personally, I count the years when I did not look after myself as a failure, and I have been correcting that in recent years.

In business, when we founded Skenify and iPets, we also rushed into another startup whose product I still think should exist. The timing was bad, I lacked the time it deserved, there were too many co-founders who had never checked their fit, and we could not raise money, so we shut it down. I took about 30 lessons from it, above all about co-founder fit and about validating a product before building it.

For me an exit only means new resources, so when one of these startups has one, I will set aside my share and open a fund for ten or twenty new startups. A certain amount is enough for my wife, my child, a roof over our heads and a decent life, and the rest can go to the community, philanthropy, healthcare and education.

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