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They didn’t even have a UI yet, just a backend and a product vision sketched out in their minds. But what they lacked in polish, they made up for in pure energy. They spoke quickly, ideas tumbling over each other, and it was clear they saw the world through the lens of possibility.
Their story was unusual. Cenk had grown up in his family’s cybersecurity business, absorbing the challenges of securing customers’ systems from an early age. Can had just come out of a startup that had been acquired, and it was his former founder who told me: “You have to talk to Can.” The two were childhood friends, and you could sense their bond instantly, the shorthand in their conversations, the deep trust in each other’s instincts.
From the start, they knew the problem they wanted to solve. Application security was only getting more complex, but there was no single place for security teams to see and control everything. The hard part wasn’t believing in the need, it was deciding who to serve first. Small customers or large enterprises? They were entering a market so new it didn’t even have a category name yet. Creating one would take persistence.
And they kept going.
The turning points came one by one, each with its own story.
I still remember the call after they closed their first U.S. customer. It wasn’t just a win; it was proof that Kondukto could compete in the world’s most demanding market. The founders had flown across the ocean for meetings, pitched tirelessly, and refined the product based on feedback. That deal changed the way they thought about their own potential.
Recognition from analysts followed, putting Kondukto in front of the industry’s most influential voices. For a young company in a market that didn’t even have a defined category yet, that mention was more than validation.
It was a signal to the biggest players that Kondukto was here to shape the future of application security.
Then came the people. Suphi joined and, almost instantly, felt like a third founder, someone who could translate vision into motion. Not long after, Andreas, the former head of growth at MongoDB, brought the kind of enterprise scaling playbook most startups can only dream of accessing.
And then there was the day they landed one of the world’s most valuable companies as a customer. For months, the team had navigated technical evaluations, security audits, and procurement gates that would make most startups give up. When the final “yes” came through, it wasn’t just another logo. It was proof that Kondukto could win at the very top of the market.
Partnership talks often test a founder’s conviction, but with Invicti it felt different.
The visions aligned so naturally that it shifted from “Should we?” to “How fast can we make this happen?” What began as a commercial relationship evolved into a strategic alliance, culminating in today’s announcement of Kondukto joining forces with Invicti.
If I could go back and tell those young founders in the co-working space everything they would go through, the sleepless nights, the global wins, the critics, the moments of doubt, I know exactly what they would say: “We would take the learnings and we would do it all over again.”
This chapter may close with Invicti, but Kondukto’s mission is only getting started. With new resources, global reach, and the same relentless drive, they are poised to protect the world’s software supply chain and empower enterprises everywhere. And I can’t wait to see what they achieve next.
