Passbolt: “Being In Technoport Makes Scaling Easy”

Kevin Muller, Founder & CEO of Passbolt (Photo © Stephanie Jabardo / Silicon Luxembourg)

Luxembourg password manager Passbolt is marking a number of milestones in Q3 of 2022. It signed its 1000th corporate customer, will soon double its FTEs and, after five years at Technoport, has moved into its own premises. Founder and CEO Kevin Muller explains.

Serial entrepreneur Kevin Muller first created the open source password manager tool for the needs of his own company, a digital agency based in India, after it rapidly scaled. A native of Longwy, France, word got out about the platform and his team was invited to participate in the first cohort of the Fit 4 Start programme in 2016.

“We used that time to experiment and reflect on how we could monetise this thing. That was really helpful because it is rare that an entrepreneur can take four months out to think about where you want to go with your business,” says Muller.

The acceleration programme helped them to develop a commercial strategy and, thanks to the transparency and security of the tool, it was rapidly adopted by the developer community.

“Everything is fully organic, based on word of mouth, because if developers love your product, then they will start creating blog articles and tutorials to talk about it,” the CEO says.

“It was only when we left Technoport that we realised how much effort small things can require.”

Kevin Muller, Co-founder & CEO of Passbolt

From 2017, Passbolt was hosted at Technoport in Belval, a business incubator and event space aimed at technology startups.

He says: “The main advantage of being in Technoport is that it makes scaling really easy. In 2017, we started working with me and my co-founder from a coworking space, then we increased our office space four times within four years, each time literally in a matter of days. When we left we were almost 20. I cannot emphasize enough how easy it was to scale our team at Technoport,” Muller says.

Other advantages of the incubator include the opportunity to connect with other players and forge a local network.

The new office, located in Belvaux, not far from Technoport, will enable further team growth. Passbolt’s current 20 FTEs and 10 externals, will rise to around 40 FTEs in the short-term future. The company is recruiting developers to build and scale the product to meet the next milestone: “1 million daily active users”.

They are also hiring senior sales and marketing profiles with a background in product-led, community-driven strategies, cyber security and privacy. The new hires will be central to the firm’s growth. Muller says: “Technoport makes it really easy for entrepreneurs to start and develop their business. It was only when we left Technoport that we realised how much effort small things can require. It’s time and effort you prefer to spend in your core business.”

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