Our guest in this episode of Ace Founder is Chris Woods, founder of CyberQ Group.
Few founders come with a career story quite like Chris’s. A penetration tester turned cybersecurity director who spent 30 years working across Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, the European Space Agency, GCHQ and the Qatari military — before coming back to Birmingham and betting on himself.
Nine years later, CyberQ Group is VC-backed, growing double digits year on year and counting trillion-pound organisations among its clients.
This week we get into the story behind CyberQ Group, why cybersecurity is no different to protecting a physical building, how passion beats big company budgets when you’re starting out, and why Chris believes we’re entering a new dawn for cybersecurity that most businesses aren’t ready for.
📚 What We Talk About:
00:42 Why being a solo founder is lonelier than anyone tells you
06:15 From a pub in Birmingham to penetration testing at Fujitsu and HP
14:02 The James Bond obsession behind the CyberQ name
18:30 Why cybersecurity is the same as protecting a physical building
26:00 How CyberQ got into a CEO’s office using nothing but a conversation
34:00 The four types of threat actors — and what actually motivates them
42:00 How AI is making attackers more powerful — and what defenders are doing about it
48:15 Why passion is the biggest competitive advantage a small business has
54:00 What raising VC money really does for your credibility
💭 Key Quotes:
“Everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die. That’s what being an entrepreneur is.”
“The real measurement isn’t the hack — it’s your response.”
“You’re small, but I’m passionate. Your problem is the world to me. And I actually care about you.”
“We’re small enough to care and big enough to cope.”
“We’re at the frontline. Locked and ready to go.”
🔗 Resources & Links Mentioned:
