Choir of angels lands on small business cybersecurity startup Apollo Secure in $600,000 pre-Seed raise

Sydney startup Apollo Secure, which focused on helping small business deal with the complexities of cybersecurity, has raised $600,000 in pre-Seed funding.

The round was by 24 investors from Sydney Angels with support from Brisbane Angels and a consortium of investors from Angel Loop.  

Apollo Secure is an automated platform for startups and SMEs to achieve and maintain security compliance at an affordable price. The SaaS platform offers several key security features often priced out of reach for most small businesses, including a security policy generator, security awareness training, vulnerability scanning, dark web monitoring and a security controls library.  

Damien Cantelo founded Apollo Secure in 2022.

He said smaller companies often fell behind on data security and compliance, because of the prohibitive cost of existing solutions and/or because they lack of knowledge and training required to protect their data and customer data too, even though they face increasing regulatory scrutiny and compliance obligations in the wake of major data breaches by the likes of Optus and Medicare. 

Cantelo was pleased to find a broad group of backers at a time when many founder were struggling to find funds. 

“While the broader investment market has been tight, we’ve found a collection of pro-active angel investors who understand the need for what we offer and are willing to back the team,” he said.

“Our early customer up take has been very encouraging and we look forward to continue helping more businesses to be  more secure and compliant in these uncertain times.”

Apollo Secure’s client base includes Surf Life Saving NSW, with CIO Matthew Ingersole saying it’s a solution that can be easily implemented across the largely volunteer organisation. 

“Surf Life Saving NSW is using Apollo Secure to allow our Surf Clubs to evaluate their cybersecurity  readiness and implement practical measures to enhance the protection of IT assets,” he said.

“It’s a great way to get our clubs to improve their cyber maturity with little effort and minimal investment.”