has disappeared When you need developers to build applications to accomplish relatively simple tasks. No-code and low-code development let you build simple (and sometimes not-so-simple) applications and bring them to market dramatically faster. I swear, half my life is in the hands of Zapier right now: I book a meeting, all sorts of things happen automatically in the background to make sure our meeting is on the correct calendar, gets transcribed, and the video call for the meeting is stored and saved. Labeled with your company’s name.
The convenience of creating low-code and no-code apps comes at a price, though: In order to work, they require access to some very sensitive data. If someone wanted to access my data, they could try to hack my email, or they could hack one of the many automated programs associated with my email account. When more and more applications run essentially on the same underlying architecture and code, they become a very tempting target for hackers and others with malicious intent.
Enter Norcode Securitywhich monitors no-code and low-code applications for security vulnerabilities and mitigates breaches.
The company recently raised $8 million from Acrew Capital, Meron Capital, and Flint Capital, and the team has been kind enough to share a (lightly edited) platform they use so we can get a sneak peek behind the scenes.
We’re looking for more unique promotional materials to tear down, so if you’d like to submit your own, here’s how to do it.
slides in this deck
The company has kept the platform, which contains 21 slides, intact except for a few components.
- cover slip
- team slides
- No-code application example
- “Who Uses No-Code Apps”
- Macro Trends: The Low-Code/No-Code Trend
- Threats and Attacks Decline
- question slide
- Threats and Attacks Slideshow
- Attack Vectors Slideshow
- task slide
- Solution slide
- building slides
- TAM slide 1
- TAM Slide 2
- TAM Slide 3
- listing slide
- contest slideshow
- Verify slide
- (REDACTED) VERIFICATION POINT SLIDE
- timeline slideshow
- contact rail
3 things to love
Nokod’s deck has a lot of cool stuff and some stuff that confuses me a lot. As always, I’ll have my doubts and feedback on OldManYellsAtCloud.gif soon. Now, let’s take a look at the slides that got me excited.
Give me a T! Give me an E!
Well, I’m not going to spell out “team” in the subtitle, but this is an example of a company that understands its strengths. In early-stage companies, a founding team with an unfair advantage is an immediate superpower. Nokod covers all the bases in this regard:
(Slide 2) Extraordinary founding team. Image Source: no code
Both co-founders have previously started and exited companies in the cybersecurity space. This is a great way to grab the attention of investors. Relevant experience and successful exits scream “unfair advantage”. Even after just reading this slide, I’m not surprised the company managed to raise money.
Beyond the obvious, this slide shows that the founding team understands what’s important in the funding package: If you have incredible traction, lead with it. If not, highlight your experienced team.
The problem is clearly stated
(slide 9) An elegant overview of current issues. Image Source: No code.
A good fundraising story does a great job explaining what the problem is and why it’s worth solving. Not everything on this list is well explained. That said: without googling, do you know what PII is, or indeed why collecting and storing it might be a bad thing?
The company could have struggled to explain the impact of some of these issues, and why low-code and no-code applications are particularly vulnerable in these cases, but I got the general idea of the message: The cost of adopting no-code and low-code applications – The downside of code is that people may not always know exactly what’s going on, and if something does happen, it’s hard to figure out exactly where people who aren’t good at it got into the system.
Better listing slides than most companies
(Slide 16) Let’s sell this thing. Image Source: no code
This listing slide clearly presents the profile of the customer: how to reach them, what the business model is, and their geographic location.
Developing a coherent market entry strategy can be surprisingly difficult. This is the question I debate most with my pitch coaching clients.Some vague, hand-waving “build it and they’ll come” theory works when you’re focused on product, but if you’re raising money to acquire customers, you can’t just shrug your shoulders and say, “We’ll figure it out when we Get out when you get there.” You’re not get There.You are raising funds to execute, so you yes There.
This listing slide clearly shows the profile of the customer: how to reach them, what the business model is, their geographic location, and even who the decision makers within the business are. I’m not sure how many midsize companies have a CISO or Director of Application Security. I suspect that many times these decisions are made by the CTO rather than a dedicated, well-defined security role.
Still, as an investor, I can look at this and get an outline of the plan. My next question is: “Okay, tell me about your process. How do you actually make a sale?” The story should be consistent and outline a good sales funnel – like, “Leads come from We get to the decision maker through A, B, and C, and then we have a 25% chance of closing the deal. But we doubt that we can improve that percentage if we do Y and Z.” Such an answer would qualify for me, Even more so if the company already has paying customers and can point to the sales process it used.
In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things the Nokod could improve or do differently, along with its full promotional material!
