The Jena start-up receives new financ­ing from Carsten Maschmeyer´s seed + speed, the HDI Group, Smart Infra­struc­ture Ven­tures and exist­ing Investors The Jena IT secu­rity start-up Engin­sight has con­cluded a seven-fig­ure seed financ­ing round. In addi­tion to all exist­ing investors, led by bm|t, the early-stage investor seed + speed Ven­tures of Carsten Maschmeyer, the HDI Group, and Smart Infra­struc­ture Ven­tures also par­tic­i­pated in the financ­ing round.

Engin­sight is an IT secu­rity com­pany, founded in 2017 by Mario Jan­deck and Eric Range. With the cyber­se­cu­rity solu­tion of the Jena-based start-up, com­pa­nies´ entire IT infra­struc­ture can be com­pletely auto­mated, mon­i­tored, and ana­lyzed within a very short time. Infor­ma­tion about secu­rity gaps or con­fig­u­ra­tion defi­cien­cies are shown as well as cyber attacks that are cur­rently tak­ing place in real-time. Even chang­ing sides is pos­si­ble for the cus­tomer: At the push of a but­ton the soft­ware of Engin­sight can sim­u­late hacker attacks and attack the own com­pany. Thus, weak points are iden­ti­fied which can be elim­i­nated before real dam­age actu­ally occurs. Engin­sight thus offers an effi­cient and sim­ple solu­tion for the secu­rity prob­lems of medium-sized busi­nesses to mas­ter the risks posed by the increas­ing com­plex­ity of net­worked sys­tems and the mas­sive increase in cyber attacks.

The cur­rent round of financ­ing brings three new investors on board: the early-stage investor seed + speed Ven­tures from Berlin, the HDI Group from Han­nover, and Smart Infra­struc­ture Ven­tures from Leipzig. In addi­tion, all exist­ing investors also invested. The cap­i­tal will be used to sup­port the company´s next growth steps. In con­crete terms: addi­tional tech­ni­cal staff will be hired and a pro­fes­sional sales struc­ture and an exten­sive part­ner net­work will be estab­lished. Engin­sight has its sights firmly set on Ger­man mar­ket lead­er­ship in the IT mon­i­tor­ing cat­e­gory. In 2017, bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment (bm|t) and the Fam­ily VCs and Busi­ness-Angels Bran­den­burg Ven­tures and Paysmark Ver­wal­tungs- und Beteili­gungs­ge­sellschaft par­tic­i­pated in a pre-seed financ­ing round. At that time, the cap­i­tal was used to finance tech devel­op­ment and ini­tial mar­ket­ing steps. «We want to make the world a bit safer. We work every day with the great­est pas­sion to achieve this goal. The invest­ment as well as the net­work and know-how of the investors will help us to develop the mar­ket even faster», said Mario Jan­deck, CEO and founder of Engin­sight. Co-Founder Eric Range added: «Our offer has been very well received in the mar­ket, so we are now look­ing for many new col­leagues to work with us on a secure IT future for com­pa­nies». Alexan­der Kölpin, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of seed + speed Ven­tures: «We are very pleased to accom­pany Engin­sight in its next steps in an excit­ing growth mar­ket. With their soft­ware, the team solves a highly rel­e­vant prob­lem for a large num­ber of com­pa­nies». Mar­tin Weldi, Head of Cor­po­rate Devel­op­ment at the HDI Group: «Cyber­se­cu­rity is an impor­tant future field for our cor­po­rate clients and the HDI Group is already well posi­tioned in this regard. It is there­fore only log­i­cal for us to invest in a start-up like Engin­sight, which offers intel­li­gent cyber­se­cu­rity solu­tions for companies».

After ini­tial years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence as IT man­agers in larger com­pa­nies, Eric Range and Mario Jan­deck founded Engin­sight in 2017. Their idea to develop inno­v­a­tive IT secu­rity soft­ware drove the first invest­ment by bm‑t together with the angel investors Bran­den­burg Ven­tures and Paysmark. Shortly after the com­pany was founded, mul­ti­ple awards fol­lowed, such as the Thüringer Grün­der­preis and KfW-Award. After only two years, the orig­i­nal idea has turned into an inno­v­a­tive and pow­er­ful soft­ware. Engin­sight makes IT secu­rity sim­ple and ensures secu­rity «made in Ger­many» for more and more com­pa­nies. www.enginsight.com

eed + speed Ven­tures is an early stage investor based in Berlin. The Seed-VC invests in inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­els and new soft­ware tech­nolo­gies in the B2B and B2C sec­tor, mainly in the Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries. Founded by Carsten Maschmeyer, seed + speed, as part of the Maschmeyer Group with offices in Munich, Berlin, Hanover and San Fran­cisco, offers inno­v­a­tive start-ups smart cap­i­tal and unique sales sup­port. www.seedandspeed.de

HDI is one of the major Euro­pean insur­ance groups. Under the umbrella of the Talanx Group with pre­mium income of EUR 39.5 bil­lion (2019) and more than 21,000 employ­ees world­wide the HDI Group is active in Ger­many and abroad in indus­trial insur­ance as well as in pri­vate and com­mer­cial insur­ance. The rat­ing agency Stan­dard & Poor’s assesses the finan­cial strength of the Talanx Pri­mary Insur­ance Group as A+/stable (strong). Talanx AG is listed on the SDAX of the Frank­furt Stock Exchange as well as on the stock exchanges in Han­nover and War­saw (ISIN: DE000TLX1005, WKN: TLX100, Pol­ish trad­ing code: TNX). www.talanx.com

Smart Infra­struc­ture Ven­tures is a ven­ture cap­i­tal fund that invests in the early stages of start-ups in SmartC­ity, energy & eHealth and related sec­tors through­out Ger­many. The fund was founded by ser­ial entre­pre­neurs and suc­cess­ful investors, all of whom also invested in the fund them­selves. Smart Infra­struc­ture Ven­tures is the first pri­vate VC fund in the new Ger­man states. www.smartinfrastructure.ventures

bm|t is one of the first addresses for invest­ments in Thuringia, Ger­many. bm|t invests in start-up teams and com­pa­nies in the Free State with a clear aim of gen­er­at­ing pos­i­tive invest­ment returns. This is how inno­va­tion and eco­nomic growth in Thuringia are financed. bm|t cur­rently man­ages eight funds with a total vol­ume of over 400 mil­lion euros and invests in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in nearly all sec­tors and in all phases of com­pany devel­op­ment — from the start-up and growth phases to buy­outs and other suc­ces­sion sit­u­a­tions. www.bm‑t.com

 

Engin­sight GmbH

Max Taran­tik

Hans-Knöll-Straße 6

07745 Jena Germany

+49 (0)3641 2717814