NetGuardians: Beating fraud from the inside

After developing powerful software, young entrepreneurs Raffael Maio and Joël Winteregg, founded NetGuardians in 2007. Their initial idea was to help companies improve security. (i) Over time, the two entrepreneurs improved their technology and decided to focus on defeating and preventing fraud in banking, where there was a gap in the market. In 2014 around $67 billion was lost due to banking fraud, 70% of it committed by employees inside the company. In 2015 the company was named a Gartner Cool Vendor, a worldwide industry recognition for companies that offer technologies or solutions that are innovative, impactful and intriguing. (ii) In the nine years since they had founded their company, Joël and Raffael had raised $6 billion in two rounds of funding. The company employed around 30 people in R&D offices in Kenya, Singapore and Poland. It had customers in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and was breaking ground in Asia. (iii) Now it was time for NetGuardians to tackle some important strategic decisions: Should the company expand to other markets? Should it expand its product offering? Or should it focus on growing its customer base? (iv) Whatever the decision, it would lead to a change in business model that would have a significant impact on the company.