The road to Secfix, Skenify’s pivot and leading startups with calm and transparency

On the Scale SEE Podcast we went through my path from IT technician at Telenor to co-founding Secfix and Skenify. We talked about staying calm under pressure, the failures behind Skenify’s pivot, why startups shouldn’t leave security for later, and how I lead teams.

I got into cybersecurity by accident

Computer science always interested me, but I wasn’t aware of cybersecurity at all. At university only one subject touched on cryptography, and nobody presented security as an industry or a job.

Montenegro had a programme in which the government paid you a small salary for nine months to work at a company, and the best students could choose where to go based on their final scores. I got Telenor, where I started as an IT technician fixing printers and setting up devices for new employees.

There I met the man who ran information security, a very rare role in Montenegro around 2012. I knew nothing about it and was insanely curious, so I kept bugging him with questions until I was fully immersed. He was my mentor and the trigger that got me into this field, although back then I only had a tiny sense of how useful the skill would become.

From Kaia Health to my own companies

I always wanted my own company, but the ideas only came at my first startup, Kaia Health in Munich, where I was among the first ten employees. Digital healthcare is highly regulated, so they needed someone to build the entire compliance programme for cybersecurity and privacy, which I had never done before.

The founders were building AI features before AI was cool, and I bombarded them with questions about the books they read, how they ran things and how they solved problems, until I slowly knew enough to give it a shot when the timing was right.

The decisive moment came with the pandemic, when I moved back from Munich to Belgrade, got married and had a child, and within a month two opportunities opened up.

A friend from DevTech called with a chance to spin off a cybersecurity services company from a bigger group in the Netherlands, and since the risk was minimal and the potential reward high, I said yes and UN1QUELY started. Around the same time Fabiola posted on LinkedIn that she was looking for a cybersecurity consultant, and on the call with her and Grigory we clicked. They were building compliance automation with product, marketing and sales covered and needed someone for cybersecurity, so I started as a part-time consultant, and very quickly that turned into an offer to become the third co-founder of Secfix.

When everything is burning, stay calm

In cybersecurity you are a fire department in a digital environment, and in an incident seconds matter. Panicking only makes things worse, so at work stoicism is the best philosophy for me, because it trains you to keep a cool head, and I now practise it in the rest of my life too.

You have to be the calm voice in the room, because you need clarity: concrete information, who is responsible for what, and a picture of the problem. The same goes for business, where early on an angry customer can break a startup, so I treat it as a top-level incident, calm the customer and my people down, and talk only about the solution.

What matters most is how a co-founder behaves in these moments. If you bring panic or point fingers, you will lose people and customers.

Skenify: two years of failures before the pivot

People see my successes, but behind them are many failures, and Skenify is a good example. We started it with three co-founders from cybersecurity and an automated open-source intelligence platform for investigative journalists, security agencies and HR background checks, and nothing from that product survived the pivot, including its name.

Investors and accelerators told us the market wasn’t big enough, and both co-founders left, one after the other. We burned through most of about 100k from a mix of grant and angel investment without making the technology do what we wanted, and the team was part of the problem, because we all had the same skills when we needed diversity.

Then I brought in someone I had worked with before, and our skills complement each other, because I bring the vision, the cybersecurity expertise and the go-to-market skills while he runs the entire product. Little was left of the grant, but my other businesses were doing well, so I reinvested that money and bootstrapped Skenify.

Many failures led to my few successes, and even one success is enough. You need to fail more times than you succeed to make something, and that is a normal part of growing, as long as you learn from each failure.

Five days by the sea

For the pivot, we locked ourselves in at my place in Montenegro for five days to plan two years ahead, but we mostly hung out at the beach, over coffee and on walks, with him on a bicycle and me running next to him. We needed that time because co-founder fit makes or breaks a company, and as YC says, most companies die by suicide, which always comes down to the founders. On the terrace, everything fell into place in a few minutes, and we had the name, the vision and even a wireframe.

At Secfix we do the same with the whole team at least once a year, because in a fully remote company face time is very important.

Startups ignore security when it is easiest

Startups ignore security as a whole, which breaks my brain, because early on it takes so little effort. Setting up your tools and accounts needs just one or two extra steps, such as two-factor authentication, sharing and encryption settings or an open-source tool in your pipeline, and these are usually free. Even the first tier of Microsoft’s Founders Hub gives you a year of GitHub Enterprise, whose enterprise-level static code analyser checks everything you push.

If you leave it for two or three years, fixing security means architectural changes that can cost a lot, break things or delete data, and since today you can even ask AI for help, there is no excuse for waiting.

A few weeks before this conversation, a very successful HR startup that automates recruitment had a major data breach that exposed recorded calls, interviews and background checks. They had the resources to fix it before, so it comes down to priorities, and once a company at that stage loses the market’s trust, it usually dies or gets sold for pennies.

My day is dictated by other people’s needs

My most important job is being a dad. I also run, although not professionally, since I pay to run, and with so many things messing up my calendar I can’t have routines, so I train first thing in the morning and let an app plan the training.

Between the companies, I prioritise by what is burning and delegate the rest. My calendar stays open so that anyone can ping me on Slack, because nobody should feel I’m too busy, and bothering me is part of their job. I’m there to serve the team, and the people you hire should be smarter than you at what you hire them for. My afternoons and nights are family time, and that is where my energy comes from.

When three meetings clash

If Secfix investors, a Skenify customer and someone from The Security Company all need me at once, I go where my absence would do the most damage. At Secfix, Fabiola runs the fundraising, so if investors expect me, I’m there. The customer then gets the best next person, and I call them myself afterwards. That is why it is important to give people authority, so that each of them can replace you at one part of your job.

Optimism and transparency

Optimism is very important and very overlooked. Before a big deal with a low chance of winning, I hype the team up and tell them: “We’re going to win this. And if we don’t, it’s not a big deal.” You accept the worst case as if it had already happened and then go all in with nothing to lose, and people light up when you lead like that.

The other thing I rely on is transparency. I felt corporate scare tactics on my own skin and don’t want to lead that way, so I open up to my team about my daughter, where I live and my hobbies, and I give every person I hire 100% trust upfront.

How it works at Secfix

• —Every weekly all-hands starts with our current ARR on the screen, new sales and new customers.
• —The monthly reports we send to investors go to all employees too, with burn rate and cash flow.
• —Every Notion page and Slack channel is open, except HR topics and anything under a non-disclosure agreement.

At Skenify we still have many hourly contractors, so by the end of the year we want to build a full-time core team with the same culture, which The Security Company already has.

The question founders rarely ask investors

The question founders should ask investors, and rarely do, is “How can you open doors for me?” Founders usually just want the deal done, so they don’t ask whether it is smart money that will help them with new markets, hiring, sales and channel partners.

• Cybersecurity, children online and Skenify’s road to first place at AIM 2026RTV Herceg Novi
• Leaving Montenegro, lessons from abroad and coming home as an entrepreneurRTV Budva
• Online privacy, account theft, AI scams and what to do when you are targetedUdruženje za odgovorni i održivi razvoj
• Algorithms, personal data, AI in warfare and curiosity about artificial intelligenceRadio Antena M