Tech Startup Investment: Insights from Link11's Cybersecurity Journey

Management Summary

How do you scale a cybersecurity startup to global relevance while fending off increasingly complex threats? In this blog post, we explore the strategic growth, funding path, and international scaling efforts of Link11, a DDoS protection pioneer from Germany. This article is based on part 2 of our podcast interview with Link11's co-founder, Jens-Philipp Jung, and serves as a central piece in our SEO content cluster on tech startup investment. It offers insights for B2B founders, executives, and investors in the DACH region and beyond.

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What Is Link11 and Why Does It Matter for Tech Startup Investment?

Founded in Frankfurt, Link11 started as a hosting company and pivoted into cybersecurity, focusing on DDoS protection. The pivot, driven by real client pain points, reflects a core lesson for tech founders: solving a real problem at scale can lead to significant traction.

"We never started out thinking we would become a global DDoS protection provider. But necessity and our customers’ problems shaped our journey." — Jens-Philipp Jung, Co-Founder of Link11

The company is now trusted by global enterprises and has infrastructure spread across continents, managing high levels of uptime and traffic load with custom-built tech.

How Did Link11 Secure Funding for International Expansion?

Link11’s growth was largely self-financed in the early stages, a route many founders underestimate. Only after building substantial revenue did they consider venture capital. Their disciplined approach enabled them to retain control and scale on their own terms.

Startup Funding Strategy Takeaways:

• Build revenue early to reduce investor dependency

• Use profitability as leverage in funding conversations

• Expand only after validating your product in your home market

Link11’s choice to reinvest profits rather than raise early capital is unusual, but not impossible. It highlights a viable path for technical founders in B2B cybersecurity.

How to Scale a Cybersecurity Startup in the DACH Region?

Scaling in Germany and the DACH region presents both unique challenges and untapped advantages:

Challenges:

• Conservative buying behavior in B2B

• Long sales cycles

• Regional compliance requirements

Opportunities:

• High demand for security due to increasing cyber threats

• Talent availability in engineering and data science

• Strong regional market before going global

"The DACH market forces you to be robust, scalable, and extremely compliant. If you get it right here, you can go anywhere." — Jens-Philipp Jung

What Are the Best Startup Growth Strategies for Cybersecurity Scaleups?

1. Build Resilient Infrastructure Early: Link11 developed its own network stack to reduce latency.

2. Invest in Automation: The team focused on automation to keep up with threat evolution.

3. Focus on Real-Time Monitoring: Downtime is not an option. Systems must detect and act autonomously.

4. Customer Education: Clients don’t always understand threats; education becomes a sales tool.

"Cybersecurity isn’t just about having a product. It’s about being ten steps ahead of the attacker."

People Also Ask (PAA)

What is Link11?

Link11 is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, specializing in DDoS protection and real-time infrastructure defense for enterprises.

How can cybersecurity startups secure funding?

By demonstrating revenue traction, solving a clear enterprise problem, and building a product that scales regionally before seeking global funding.

Why is the DACH region important for cybersecurity startups?

Because of strict regulatory environments and high enterprise security budgets, it serves as a proving ground for scalable solutions.

What makes Link11's infrastructure unique?

They built their own networking stack for ultra-low latency and high reliability across international data centers.

How do startups compete in a crowded cybersecurity market?

By focusing on performance, automation, trust-building, and differentiated service offerings.

Featured Snippet

Question: How can startups scale a cybersecurity business in Europe?

Answer: To scale a cybersecurity startup in Europe:

• Validate your product in your home market

• Ensure GDPR and compliance readiness

• Build automated, low-latency infrastructure

• Educate customers on cybersecurity value

• Use early revenue to fund growth before raising capital

Learn More Here:

• 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching to VCs (According to a VC)

• Navigating the German Venture Capital Market in 2025

• Germany's Booming Startup Ecosystem

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Automated Transcript

Narrator Dorsey Jackson [00:00:05]:

Welcome to StartupRad.io. Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:00:20]:

Hello, and welcome everybody. Welcome back to our second part of my interview with Jens, CEO of Link11. Welcome to startuprate.io, your startup podcast from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, your go to podcast for startup tech and innovation insights. We continue our interview with Jens Philipp Jung, CEO of Link11, a leader in DDoS protection and one of the top by German, periodical kabitai, business periodical, I would say. If you'd ever wonder how to scale a tech business or navigate tech challenges of cybersecurity in today's rapidly evolving market, this episode is for you. Let's dive into Jens entrepreneurial journey, leadership lessons, and innovations in the cybersecurity space. And please keep in mind this is part two, so you should also listen to part one. Part one and part two are supported by our enabler, HESTN Trade and Invest and the enterprise Europe network.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:20]:

You can learn more down here in the show notes. Jens, that's it. Welcome back.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:01:26]:

Hi, Jens. Very nice to be back.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:29]:

Totally my pleasure. We may add for our audience that even for us, it's a second recording. So, we had approximately twenty four hours in between, but we keep going with our content here. We talked last about, cybersecurity and your look on things, and now I would like to shift a little bit more on the, focus of risk of your company. Running a tech company like Link eleven must come with a fair share of risk. How do you manage and mitigate those risks, both in terms of strategy and cybersecurity?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:02:06]:

Yeah. I mean, especially also in the past twenty four hours in the cybersecurity space, a lot happened because we basically see every hour many, many attacks, being it on our customers, but also on us as a company because we are also some kind of high quality target to say so. And, therefore, it's very important to manage the cybersecurity risks and, also, obviously, from a business strategic standpoint. And as a organization, I mean, we also some kind still of some kind of start up culture and some kind of start up atmosphere. And while you are very young as an organization, you you you think very late at towards risk. Right? I mean, you want to build something. You want to you are the pioneers, and and you want to create something. So risk is something which come a little bit later, as soon as the company gets more mature.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:03:02]:

But what I see as a very positive, involvement currently is that more and more requirement in terms of risk management systems, especially in the cyber space. So for example, the ISO framework, what gets more and more, famous and more and more required from the market. And such frameworks, help generally all companies, but also, obviously, us in terms of risk management, risk mapping, and being it from strategy risk, from cybersecurity risks, and business continuity risks. We, as Sling eleven, we not only have the ISO framework, which is, like, already a lot of work and and all who went through this knows that. A lot of paperwork, which also typically is not loved too much from start ups and in the, start up and scale up phase. We have also done, like, cybersecurity frameworks, like PCI DSS, which is an framework introduced by the payment card industry. This is where p s PCI stands for. Or another one, SOC two, which is, like, on very US centric framework, but gets more and more important in the European sector.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:04:11]:

And these frameworks help us natively, to be more secure and also to risk or or also to manage our risks much better. But even before such frameworks, I mean, we always think about what if scenarios, what what could happen and create predefined plans and also often fire drills and tabletop exercises because we operate a twenty four seven network, and something could always fail. So we already think about, okay, what are redundancy concepts in the in in our infrastructure? What are, like, what are the playbooks and the fire drills that we need to perform if something breaks?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:04:51]:

Actually, I will I'll be linking the cyber map of Kaspersky. This gives you a real time view of attacks and only the time you've been talking. I have witnesses here on the life map more than a quarter of a million attacks. So just to give you a sense of depth, here, could you share an example when you took a risk in the business that ultimately paid off, meaning less in terms of cybersecurity and more in terms of, like, strategy projects?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:05:26]:

Yes. I mean, two big risks what we have taken in the past, was our add on acquisitions. I mean, as Link eleven, we had a strategy to grow organically, but also at a later stage to acquire other companies. And these acquisition of other companies, obviously, you have their due diligence and you try to find out what is great and where are some red flags in this company. But every due diligence report has its limitations, and there are already things which are uncertain. You you don't know how sticky is the customer base after the migration. You also only have partially insights into the real production code, and and and various other things. You you also don't know or you only have partially insights about what is the stickiness of the people, do all the key people stay on board.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:06:24]:

And this is always a kind of big risk because, I mean, making these acquisitions, paying, many millions for being the owner of the company. Therefore, also, the the amount you invest is is a huge amount, and, this is always kind of risky situation. And how to mitigate is is that, well, well defined plans, what if scenarios, trying to to understand the business as good as possible, trying to anticipate potential risk, potential issues as good as possible, creating, mitigation plans. And also in terms of risk mapping, understand, okay, if certain risk actually, will be materialized, which we all don't hope. Right? What is the actual impact? Right? Is it like from a criticality scale? How how serious is it? And this helps you then to also get a good feeling, from making such transactions and, at the end, also signing the deals because you should never sign a deal if you have a bad feeling.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:07:37]:

Mhmm. Everybody who don't who does not think, that, takeover could be a destroyer of value or a company, they should look into some prominent examples like AOL, Time Warner. I I do believe you, after some time looking into that, you do get a sense of how this could take down two companies. Talks about companies and takeovers here. What is your approach to competition in the tech space? How do you view competitors, and what strategies do you employ to stay competitive?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:08:13]:

Tech is, generally speaking, a wonderful sector. And why is it so wonderful is because the biggest advantage is not in the tech sector is that size doesn't always matter. Right? Very often, you have small innovative teams which are working, like, in a speedboat approach, which can develop groundbreaking solutions, which will beat all the incumbents. So this is also kind of our initial start. When we when we came into the market, I mean, we were a team of basically two people. It was Karsten and myself. And, with the great skills of Karsten, it was able to develop a solution, a technical solution, and software, which was better than everything else, but was the only market. And this is a great advantage because if you're seeing in other industries, imagine you want to open an furniture store.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:09:11]:

Right? There are so many entry various entries to get into this market. You need a plot. You need many of these, maybe distributed network, multiple locations. It's very, very difficult. But in tech, I mean, basically, you can you can create a company by yourself and now even easier with all the AI tools. So, generally speaking, great advantage is that even it's a fast moving environment, you are able as a very small and capable team to develop groundbreaking solution and beat the incumbents. And if you and this is not only right at the end what we say, but also, actually, the feedback what we get from our customers and even the analysts. So a couple years ago, for example, we had the benchmark study from Forrester Research who has tested various solutions in our area, and, it turned out that link eleven, is not only the one with the fastest mitigation of tedious attacks, but only the one with the best best wrestled, when it comes to overall mitigation capabilities.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:10:21]:

And this was basically achieved with a very small development team compared to our competition.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:10:27]:

I was wondering for our audience, how would you approach competition in your industry? Drop your thoughts below and let's discuss. Jens, how does Link eleven integrate AI and machine learning into its cybersecurity solution and what impact does it have it on your competitive effectiveness? Because it I kind of get the feel, sometime down the road, not sure how long it'll take, you'll have AIs looking for vulnerabilities, exploiting those vulnerabilities, and on the other side, having AI trying to act as fast as possible to plug those vulnerabilities. We're not there yet, but we can both see it. Right?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:11:11]:

Oh, it's actually in the very near future. We already see, like, early attacks designed and generated by AI in the matching, like, deep fake, for example, or phishing attacks, or calling, fake attacks. They they are all AI generated. So this is, like, in a very, very new future. On the same side, luckily, on a good side, we are already using AI for quite a long time. There is a fun story behind that, because Karsten, who is, like, an info, IT, informatic student and also mathematics student, he has a great passion for machine learning algorithms and iron, all of that. And because we had the issue that the DDoS attacks could come on every day and night, customer has developed a solution which is capable to detect and mitigate these attacks by themselves. And the reason for it was because he want to sleep in the night.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:12:12]:

And this, was then the fact and this is quite a funny story. Right? Because we we did not develop machine learning and an AI, or we did not leverage machine learning and AI, because it's fancy, it's cool, let's get higher revenues, or better better, multiples and fundraising or fancy marketing materials. It was basically because the, yeah, the developer of the solution wants to sleep into the night and not get it wake up by tedious attacks, which he manually need to adjust and mitigate. And, yeah, this this algorithms are still in place and, mitigating thousands of attack, every day, fully automatic and, protecting I mean, at the beginning, it just protected our infrastructure. Now these algorithms are protecting millions of web assets every single day.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:13:01]:

Are you scared that somebody can would be able to find a hole in your algorithms?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:13:08]:

Well, I mean, it's always a cat a cat and mouse game. Yeah. Game. So, obviously, if we if we stop at a certain point to improve and to develop ourselves, then then it could happen that over the course of time, there will be vulnerabilities and and issues. But currently, we are very optimistic that what we have built has a very high quality standard and, that that that there are no kind of big issues which could be, which could be used and which could impact the quality of the service. So I would say, currently, not too too big concerned, but also because we work on it every day very hard.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:14:03]:

Yes. I I do believe that's something you work on it very hard, but something in the back of your mind, you can never really dismiss it. Right?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:14:13]:

Yeah. I I mean, this is also kind of the motivation which which pushed you forward. Right? And when you think about, okay, you have solved the problem ultimately, then you usually stop working on it, improving on it. But in cybersecurity, it's like an ever ever going evolution. It's like with learning. You can never learn enough.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:14:36]:

Going a little bit from link 11 into you as an entrepreneur. And I was wondering what has been the most rewarding part of your entrepreneurial journey so far and what keeps you going?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:14:50]:

Well, you know, in, like, part number one of our interview, I already said some nice words about my family and the the this is also exactly the reason why I'm that super motivated and and and work or or try to work as hard as I can. It's because of my family, and there is nothing no no greater rewards you can get, than when your wife says, Jesus, proud of you, or your children looking up to you, this is really what what motivates me like hell to to give even more and more. That's more worth than any money on earth.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:29]:

Mhmm. Exactly. No. What do you think in there? I was wondering if you would have a time machine. I would be wondering would you could when you can go back and give yourself an advice, when you start link 11, what would it be?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:15:47]:

Basically, it's two points what I would give my younger self as an advice. And one number one is in terms of hiring, don't hire too fast in terms of don't make a decision for a hire if you are not % sure or at least very sure that this is the right hire. So really hire the best talent, and and making there some errors will, at the end, cost you more money, more time, more sleepless nights than if you would just wait a bit and waiting for the for the right, and perfect match. So, like, putting more emphasize on this. And the second point is build a great peer network. Especially when I founded the company, which is, like which was 02/2005. Right? Quite a long time ago. I mean, nowadays, you have much more communities, events.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:16:51]:

You have these accelerated programs and so on. But this this was something that didn't exist back in these days. And the peer network is very, very crucial because you want to share ideas, you want to share best practice, you need a network to get some intros. So this could be also over the investor potentially, but the best advice always build it up by yourself. Right? Extend your network, meet with people. This this helps a lot.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:17:23]:

Mhmm. And from personal experience, I can say it's it's pretty tough to, tell somebody who's a teacher to really tell them what you're going through, what drives you. But, another entrepreneur, they usually get it pretty fast. Right?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:17:44]:

Yeah. I would say so. Absolutely. I mean, it's like always if you I mean, there are these these life coaches who say, like, well, you're actually the sum out of the five or your your characters, like, the mix of the five persons with whom you spend the most time. And, therefore, if you if you have a great peer network, it's also very valuable from, self development perspective. Mhmm.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:18:13]:

Now can you, we've been already talked about time machine. We, we've gone back, in the question before. Now let's get a tiny brief view into the future. What's next for link 11? What are some upcoming projects and innovations you're excited about?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:18:33]:

Yeah. We have two two main work streams. One work stream is about in our product innovation and why we are currently covering very successful the DDoS attack mitigation, which is, by the way, after ransomware, the most second, highest attack in terms of amount of attacks on global governments and organizations. We are also and beside of the DDoS, we are already providing solutions for web application protection, being it mitigating SQL injections and database attacks and similar stuff. But what we now also will introduce or what we are currently working on is, yeah, more towards network based solutions, zero trust, as I already explained right at the beginning. Some solutions in this sector and area, combined with the great visibility of actually what you have as a sweat landscape in your organization because many companies don't know what vulnerabilities they have. And and we are developing solutions which give them more insights. This is like track number one, our product expansion.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:19:44]:

And track number two are some very, nice m and a activities, what we have in the pipeline. Obviously, I have very hard limitations what I can say here about them because they are all under strict NDAs. But this is definitely, a track where we have nice traction, where we speak with a couple of very interested entrepreneurs and companies, great technology, great markets, great customers. And we are working there on building a pan European cyber champion.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:20:21]:

And to to get this right, you are the acquirer, and you talk to potential targets, takeover targets.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:20:28]:

Yes. Exactly. Being at and and some of them, it's even a kind of a merger situation because companies, have maybe the similar size. But you need to know I'm a strong believer that together you could achieve more than loan. And especially in the European region, we have the situation that very often we are fighting against American competition. And while the Americans are usually very large, the the European counterparts in many areas are much more tiny. This is not only in cyberspace, so, it's it's also in various other industries. But I would say in in cyber, it's maybe a little bit more extreme, than others.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:21:16]:

And, yeah, therefore, I'm a strong believer in turning forces and building on on a larger group of organizations.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:21:24]:

I know a lot of investors and consultants and also entrepreneurs are listening right now. If they would like to pitch their company towards you, can they approach you via LinkedIn?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:21:36]:

Oh, yes. Absolutely. That would be amazing. So whenever you have an an interesting start up opportunity, if you're an investor, PE, please reach out to me.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:21:49]:

Mhmm. We'll be back after a short ad break and talk about you, your company culture, and your thought leadership. Hey, guys. Welcome back. This is the second part of the second interview with Jens, CEO from LinkEleven, a DDoS cybersecurity company. And I was wondering, Jens, you are a thought leader in tech and cybersecurity space. How do you approach public speaking and sharing your expertise with others?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:22:26]:

Luckily, I have some help, from my lovely colleagues, to be honest. So I have a team member who helps me with organizing everything, arranging everything, come up with ideas, and even even assist with, like, the content. So this is a great help because it takes some time. Right? I mean, this is the true story. It's it's it does not come for free. You need to invest a lot of time and energy into it, so it's great if you have some helping hands. And while we have an internal colleague for that, I also know some of my entrepreneur friends have agencies for that, which could also be a great way. Generally speaking, I think as a thought leader, it's always great, or I love all I love it also very much to share knowledge and get connected with others.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:23:18]:

So it's kind of my natural, pattern and, what I what I really like. So this is something, which which is quite nice, and, I hope I could do it more. The the the biggest constraint is obviously the time commit you need to put into it.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:23:36]:

Mhmm. What is your main channel to to dispute your content? Is it that people can follow you on LinkedIn? Is it a newsletter?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:23:47]:

Well, I have some LinkedIn followers, but in the past, Oh,

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:23:52]:

you have almost two and a half thousand. That's not some. I wouldn't say that's many.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:23:59]:

Okay. Could always be more. Right? No. I mean, in the past, this was more like quite classic on conferences, industry conferences, cyber conferences, and similar stuff, including, coverage in newspapers, large large, media articles. So for example, if I'd set and similar stuff. But indeed, nowadays, gets more shifted and focused towards social media channels. And in my case, I only use LinkedIn, because of the time constraints. But, yeah, that's that's a nice channel, and, I I think it's very, very comfortable and could only encourage others to to also use it, and even use it much more than I.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:24:50]:

Great. Of course, we link your LinkedIn profile if somebody wants to follow you or pitch you a startup, as we said before. We've been talking about merchants and acquisition. And I was wondering, how do you maintain a culture adopting or merging with another entity? Do do you already have a playbook? Do you have some methodologies you would like to do? Because I could imagine it's quite difficult, especially if you're both about the same size.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:25:24]:

Yes. Absolutely. I mean, size definitely makes it, a little bit complex. But not only if it's the same size, also if the size is very different from each other. Because if one company is, like, in a typical start up mood and culture and the other one is already organized, that this could also create some tension. Another level of complexity comes when we speak about cross border transactions. And, yeah, you need to know our first transaction was in Canada, Vancouver with nine hours time difference. The second one was in Israel, which is also not around the corner, obviously, closer than Canada.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:26:00]:

But this makes it also this brings also an additional level of complexity into it. To be honest, I think the best way of what we have as a kind of playbook is trying to to merge also the kind of cultures. Because if you if you try to put over a % of the culture you have currently and and and erase everything what they have built over many years locally, this will this will end up in no good scenario. So what we always try is, like, keeping nice local culture and combining it with the culture of Link eleven. And What we also try to achieve in all of our targets, because we know culture is such important, we always do some kind of culture assessment before we sign the deal. So looking in I mean, there are some old SIMD research, what you can do, some desk research to find out what is the culture of the company. You speak with former employees. You speak with actual employees.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:27:09]:

And trying to understand, okay, what is the culture and how how we can integrate this culture into ours. And also if there are some red flags in terms of culture, it's, very important. So yeah. And, and this helps us to understand the culture in advance and then having, like, a nice playbook how to integrate this culture. What of their components do we want to keep locally and what what are the global link 11 culture components we want to roll out?

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:27:37]:

I was wondering how important in terms of evaluating the culture of company is for you to look into boards, forums, and websites where employees can evaluate their employer.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:27:56]:

Well, unfortunately, very often, you only read in these forums the bad things. So you you need to be quite careful about putting too much emphasize on it. And you you only read the frustrated comments and very rarely like, wow. That was amazing. That was amazing. So but it's it's, it's, it's a it's a piece of the puzzle, which you want to look into it. What what we like more is really like trying to speak with former employees and to understand, hey. What was the motivation why you have left? How was it? What was good? What was negative? Like, in these one on one, conversations.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:28:35]:

I would say, like, the desk research where you look into forums and and reviews, it helps a bit, but not not too much.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:28:47]:

I was wondering how you deal with moments of doubt because every entrepreneur knows that. What usually helps are peers. What personally helps me is, quite some time of silence just thinking about it. I was wondering how do you deal with that?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:29:06]:

I mean, in such moments of doubt, your family is always a great source and a great help, to to give you motivation and and, the maybe the necessary push also to make a decision. But as I mentioned earlier before, it's important to have a peer network peer group network, and this could also help you very much. Right? So if there are also situations, reach out to persons who potentially already were in the same situation, who have experienced the same situation. Usually, everybody is very happy to to share his knowledge. And you would be surprised, actually, how happy some people are to share their knowledge and how easy it is to get some good advice from from people who had been in the same situation and ask about how, hey, how, were you able to solve the situation. And, yeah, that that that has to get good ideas. It has to to get you confidence that you are on the right way or also open you the eyes that you are on the totally wrong way, which is, sometimes even more valuable than the confirmation that you are on the right way. We

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:17]:

should make an inside joke. In German, you say, if you're on the wrong way, you're on the what way?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:30:22]:

Mhmm.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:28]:

Not being on the wood way. What do you think are the most important skills and quality an entrepreneur needs to succeed? A will to an idea, what do you want to reach, and a will to work very hard to get there?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:30:45]:

I mean, you cannot achieve any great outcome alone. So people management, identify talent, motivate talent. This is, like, one of one of the key skills you need to have at a at a certain stage. So and it's quite sad that I mean, such things you don't learn in school or at least not in the schools I was. I mean, if you go to a nice, a grade business school, they they will teach you such things. Right? And and they are super, super important. And I would say the next next super important thing is about you need to be able to have some kind of capability to sell your solution. Because there's a saying which is like selling solves basically every problem.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:31:35]:

Right? If you if you are able to sell your solution and you you you could sell every problem. You have enough revenue. You have enough growth. And and with enough revenue and enough growth, you also get into profitability. So this is some great thing. So my recommendation yeah. Be very good in talent management, talent talent identification and hiring. Be very good in selling.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:32:01]:

And, yeah, beside all of that, I mean, obviously, you need to have sector and product expertise. It's difficult to sell something where you have no idea from, and it's difficult to to build a build a company, with something where you have no idea from. So for me, for example, it would be very difficult now to build an insurance start up even if I know how to find talent and manage them, even if I even if I have some kind of talent to sell something, I have zero experience in insurance sector. So, this would take long time, and I would be definitely the wrong person for such a startup ambition.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:41]:

I would add one piece. Either you're talented to sell something or you get a cofounder who is.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:32:49]:

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Which comes back to point number one. Right? Finding and identifying talent and, getting them on board.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:32:59]:

We now went through a lot of questions. Finally, the last one. What is the legacy you hope to leave behind with Link eleven, and how do you envision your company's impact?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:33:14]:

I would be very happy if I'm able to, yeah, inspire some some people to found their own business or to improve their entrepreneurial life career. So this would definitely make me very, very happy. And, beside of that, I mean, we are on the mission to building a European cyber champion because we are very sad that there are so few cyber companies in Europe. It's definitely underrepresented sector compared to other countries, and we have great engineering here. We have huge demand for such solutions. We are in uncertain times. We're facing, yeah, global geopolitical threats. So this is our this is our mission to build this European cyber champion.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:34:02]:

I would be super happy if we are able to succeed and to build these these organization within in the next five years and and and having there at the end some kind of really legacy organizations which is able to to achieve and be successful over quite a long time. I think this would be very nice for a German start up and ecosystem.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:34:29]:

If you, our listener or viewer, enjoyed today's interview with Jens Philipp Jung, want more insights from the world of startup tech and entrepreneurship, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. What's one lesson you've learned in your entrepreneurial journey and think that is crucial for success, share with us below, and we'd love to hear thoughts. Jens, that's it. Thank you very much. Best of luck by building a European cybersecurity champion. And, of course, I hope I'm on the on the press distribution list for everything you do in the future. Right?

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:35:03]:

Thank you very much. And, yes, you will be. Absolutely. So looking forward. Thank you for your time. It was great being your guest.

Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:35:11]:

Totally my pleasure. Have a good day. Bye bye.

Jens-Philipp Jung | CEO and Co-Founder Link11 [00:35:14]:

Bye bye.

Narrator Dorsey Jackson [00:35:19]:

That's all, folks. Find more news, streams, events, and interviews at at www.startuprad.io. Remember, sharing is caring.