LogSentinel & Visa Innovation Program: “We were able to scope new use cases with teams in several banks”
“Developing a cybersecurity product is hard not because of the technical aspects but because of the trust and finding the right markets,” tells us Bozhidar Bozhanov, co-founder and CEO of the three years old information security company LogSentinel.
Logsentinel is an information security product, which allows companies to track every single event that takes place in their information and digital infrastructure, and then find fraud and find anomalies in the data. The company is focused on two major verticals: the financial sector – banks, payment service providers, insurance companies, etc; and the public sector where they have a lot of interesting projects related to e-identity.
In 2019, the young tech company was part of the pilot edition of the Visa Innovation Program in Bulgaria. The corporat acceleration program targeted at fintech companies was facilitated by the local investment fund Eleven Ventures, which later became also one of Logsentinel’s investors (read the story). “Logsentinel’s main motivation to enter the Visa Innovation Program was to validate that our innovation is actually truly disruptive for the financial sector and to use that validation as a gateway to the global markets. Companies like Visa are greatly recognized in the industry and could be a great help for startups,” explains Anton Geruov, the startup’s COO.
New partners and use cases
Visa Innovation Program is designed for early-stage fintech companies with a potential for market traction, live products, and solutions geared towards the global payment market. Throughout the six months of the program, Visa and Eleven Ventures support entrepreneurs through mentorship, access to Visa’s APIs through the Visa Developer Platform, and providing global partner and client network exposure to selected fintech.
“It was truly amazing that during the program Visa opened the doors for us towards all of their partners. We were able to scope interesting and different use cases with teams in those banks,” summarizes the experience Kalina Konstantinova, the Cfief Marketing Officer. “Few alternatives can give you such fast access to the precise teams in as many target customers at the same time,” she adds.
Design sprints, introductions to clients and partners, coaching sessions – both Visa and Eleven make sure they have a tailored approach to each startup and help them maximize the effects of the program for their businesses, but teams also have responsibility to prepare the right way. “My advice for every founder who is looking forward to joining the Visa Innovation Program is to do two things. First, to really do their homework and understand what the different stakeholders in the ecosystem are doing. And second, make a shortlist of every company you could meet and take advantage of that,” says Anton Gerunov.
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