Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Alex, thanks so much for joining us.
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Thanks, Keith. Appreciate the opportunity,
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited to talk to you because we're going to talk about a company called RaySecur, which is addressing a very critical gap and security that absolutely needs to be addressed. So talk about RaySecur, and what the company does.
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Yes, our recent here, we provide the ability to see inside of everyday items. And what you see behind me is one of our scanners that allows you to walk up to it just like a standard copier. But instead of copying documents, you can hold an item in the field of view, you can see what's inside of it in real time. And the gap that we're addressing in the market is, you know, if you think about the medical imaging space, you walk into a hospital, every hospitals got an x-ray CT, and an MRI and ultrasound, different tools for different types of imaging, in the security space, or the industrial space, that those options don't really exist today, X-ray is pretty much what you see at airports. And that's sort of what the industry has been using for the last 100 years. We're here to change that paradigm with something that provides you MRI, like imaging, but at a fraction of the cost that's much easier to scale across all sites and a corporation really provide that comprehensive security.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So talk about the background story of RaySecur, like, how did the company come to fruition?
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
So we're actually founded out of a spin out of a Canadian National Lab, it's one of the world's leading optics and photonics research centers, through their entrepreneur residence program. And the background technology for our scanners actually leverages about over a decade of work, developing what are called terahertz imaging systems that use high frequency radio waves to see through items that originally deployed in space and satellite applications. And were one of the first companies to commercialize these and security and industrial imaging. Now, in terms of entities that are using your technology, what are some examples of companies or organizations. So interestingly, we kind of jumped in with probably the most extreme use case right off the bat, which was screening male for GA world leader. And that was our first deployment with our first beta system. And they've been using the system for over the last three years detecting threats almost every day. From there, we've really branched out into the corporate fortune 500 space. So today, we're used by four of the five largest US corporations, we've got over a dozen fortune 500 customers that are using our systems to keep their people and their assets safe. And those span pretty much all key verticals, because they're faced with the same security challenges. So we're deployed with international stock exchanges, banking and financial services, companies, pharma companies, even social media and traditional industrial companies are using us to protect their employees. And then on the government side, one of the case studies that we can talk to is the 2020 presidential campaign. So we're actually deployed by the P Buttigieg. Presidential campaign to screen mail for the candidate as he was running for election. And that was done not by a security expert, but by a volunteer college campaign staffer who was tasked with screening all the mail and correspondence. And our systems were used to keep the candidates safe and up and running throughout the campaign.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, you touched upon the types of customers that you're working with. So let's talk about this. This, you know, the use case here. So why does this matter?
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Yeah, so this matters, because if you think about it, the problem that we're solving is really the fact that you've got physical goods and deliveries coming in out of facilities each and every day. And if you think about it, the cities are really good. And we call it locking the front door. As you walk in the front door, you're going through badge access controls, multiple layers of security screening, every piece of digital traffic that gets sent to a company goes through multiple cyber scans for cyber threats. But yet mail, Uber deliveries, Amazon boxes, all this stuff shows up each and every day, and it goes right in and gets delivered to the recipient without any kind of security scanning. And that's a huge risk for both corporations and large government entities.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Yeah, and it is a thing that when you think about it's like, you talk about packages being delivered, they just get shuffled right into executives or workers. And that's just that's, that's not safe.
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Now, it's not an actually, if you look at the official data, I mean, almost 10 times a day, right? You've got the US Postal Inspector responding to these kinds of dangerous mail events. Oftentimes, they turn out to be hoaxes. You know, a recent example is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He heads up the, you know, the Coronavirus task force for the US government. He's got round-the-clock Secret Service protection at the highest level. But there's a great piece in New York Times that talks about him still, you know, getting a letter that's been security screened, he opens it up, and he's covered in a white powder. You know, thankfully, it turned out to be nothing. But that just illustrates the security gap, that now we're helping our customers address and do that in a very, very scalable way, where before, they might have had 1x Ray system, you know, at a corporate headquarters, but 100 other sites around protected, we now have the ability to deploy the scanner that you see behind me to all of those sites to very quickly scale and effectively solve this problem for you know, a large fraction of our customers. So what's the current stage of RaySecur in terms of you know, size of the company and growth plans ahead in terms of hiring, so we were fortunate enough, we just closed our Series A round at the end of last Last year, that was led by a Boston based venture fund. Over the last couple of months, we've doubled the company. In terms of headcount, we've got some really aggressive growth targets that we're striving to hit both in terms of sales deployments. So we're at this inflection point where both on the corporate side, and then more recently, on the government side, we're growing the team to be able to meet that demand. But then across the organization, not just on you know, when it comes to sales, but if you look at the work that we're doing on the technology side, both in the hardware development, building out our AI tools and software capabilities, r&d, and manufacturing, really, across the board, we've got a lot of exciting things going on. And we're not just scaling the company from a commercial standpoint. But we're being recognized, I think, for a lot of the cutting edge work that we're doing on the tech side, whether it's recent r&d 100 award, or AI dev were World Tech award that we received last year, right, a lot of what we're doing is pushing the limits in terms of technology and the capabilities to deliver those solutions. And I think we're you know, we're rapidly seeing the work pay off as well.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, in addition to the funding, that you talked about, there's a lot of momentum at race secure. And I think your advisory board really speaks to that as well. So talk about the advisory board and what's happening there.
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Yes, I think the advisory board is just testament to you know, the magnitude of the problem that we're helping to address, and really the gap in the industry that we're helping to solve. So over the last couple of months, we've really added some, you know, crucial names to the advisory board, including the former head of the US Secret Service, and the chief security officers from both Microsoft and Starbucks, along with the former head of Amazon robotics. So you again, across the spectrum, whether it's security or advanced technology, right, we're bringing industry leaders to the table that really, you know, set the stage for the next phase as RaySecur grows.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So once someone joins the team at RaySecur, what's it like to work there? Like, what's the day to day culture like?
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Yeah, so we're very entrepreneurial. Many of us, especially, we'll call it the early founding team, right? We're all coming out of other startups. So you know, this isn't the first go around, very experienced, team, very entrepreneurial culture, you've got a lot of folks that are really, really passionate about our mission, which is keeping people safe. And doing that in the safest way possible. We've got a super diverse team with, you know, multiple backgrounds, whether it's, you know, former military veterans threat experts to PhD scientists to, you know, sales folks that are coming out of, you know, verticals, whether it's pharma, or banking and finance, so super diverse team, super passionate group of people, everybody's experts in their own domain, but yet everybody's willing to roll up their sleeves and do whatever it takes to get things done. So it's really a great environment. Things are changing every day, right? We've got unique and challenging opportunities that you know, no day is the same. So that makes it a really, really fun work environment.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So there are lots of opportunities out there for people to explore, which is a good thing that job markets very active. So why is now the ideal time to join RaySecur?
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Yes, I can't, as I mentioned, terms of our growth trajectory, right, we just closed a large funding round. We're at this inflection point where the company is really taking off, it's a great opportunity to still get in at a relatively early stage, but to have you know, that supportive, we've already made inroads in a lot of key verticals. And now it's all about expanding and building upon that success. And I think we're just going to see this snowball continue to build momentum here over the next couple of years.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities that RaySecur, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which has all their job listings there, go to venturefizz.com/raysecure, and you'll see all their listings. Alex, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company.
Alexander Sappok, RaySecur
Right. Thanks, Keith. Really appreciate it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
