Barefoot welcomes us to the company. Before we sit down at the table where our interview will take place, he offers to tap and during the conversation he does not use the word employees, but colleagues. His big vision is to create an international IT company that will remain in Ústí nad Labem and whose core values will be an open corporate culture. Who are we talking about? About the co-founder of GoodAccess, Michal Čížek, who went through the program for business development from the Innovation Center of the Ústí Region (ICUK).

The GoodAccess company best meets the definition of the word startup - it operates in the IT field, shows annual growth, has great potential in the market and has already received several investments from startup funds for expansion into global markets.

VPN FOR EVERY BUSINESS

Ústí GoodAccess offers secure remote access to IT systems. For companies, this means the possibility to create a virtual network, through which their employees can connect to company applications or to virtual storage (cloud). The company does not have to invest considerable resources in building its own security. The advantage of such a solution is the speed of implementation, which is in the order of hours. Not long ago, the company came up with a world-unique product that attracted attention by offering the service for free, without advertising and data collection, similar to Avast's early days.

“AHA” MOMENT DURING MENTORING

The entire team approaches the given product responsibly and humbly. Maybe that's why they joined the mentor program of the Innovation Center of the Ústí Region PLATINN, which helps established companies to grow and solve current problems. 

"I have drawn the curve of our growth in the near future. When our mentor from PLATINN came, he took a pencil and drew a so-called hockey stick on the graph. That is, the exponential, which completely overshadowed our drawn curves and he just said to me: Michal, if you want an investment, you have to be able to think big!” Michal Čížek recalls one of his first sessions with a mentor.

From the beginning, they knew what they wanted from the program for the development of small and medium-sized companies. "For a long time, we moved in the field for end customers and partly in the market for companies. Now we want to focus mainly on services for companies. This requires a change in mindset, which is why we were looking for a person with experience in international trade in the PLATINN network." explains Michal. In the Platinn program, they first completed a free phase, currently they have moved to a paid one. Simply because it's worth it to them.

INVESTMENT, INVESTMENT AND AGAIN INVESTMENT

Where would startups be without investors? The investor was found not only thanks to the Innovation Center, but also with the help of mentors in the PLATINN program. Thus, GoodAccess has already received tens of millions of crowns for its development (mainly expansion abroad), both from traditional funds such as Nation1 and Fazole Ventures, but Komerční banka has also joined the ranks of investors.

"In the world, it is common to combine investment with bank financing. In the Czech Republic, banks do not have a product ready for this, so this step was and is very unconventional from a domestic point of view," Michal describes the meeting itself.

WE ARE NOT ALONE WHO SEES THIS

The GoodAccess company won 2nd place in the competition for the most innovative company of the year in the Ústí Region for 2020, which is organized by ICUK together with the Ústí Region. The fact that the new Avast is growing for us in Ústí nad Labem (and co-founder Michal Čížek himself does not object to this comparison) is not only seen by us. The team from GoodAccess also took part in the Ynovate Startup Challenge 2022 competition, where they took the highest place among the TOP 10 startups from the Czech Republic, which moved them to the Disraptors Summit (imagine the Champions League, only in a startup environment), where they won the audience award.

THE FUTURE IS IN THEM'S FAVOR

The EU is also aware of the importance of IT security for companies, which issued the NIS2 directive at the turn of 2023. Thus, the Czech Republic must implement the Cyber Security Act by the end of this year, which will affect up to 7,000 companies.

"The given directive also talks about Zero Trust technology, among other things. This opens up a huge opportunity for us across the whole of Europe. Because with this technology, we are one of the first on the market to have it ready and tested by real customers." co-founder Michal Čížek explains.

If you are interested in doing business in the Ústí Region, we recommend it the company GoodAccess and the team around Michal Čížek to watch closely. 

The GoodAccess journey with ICUK

• Innovative company of the Ústí Region for 2020 – 2nd place
• Ynovate Startup Challenge - 1st place
• Disraptors Summit - Audience Award
• Participation in the PLATINN mentoring program
• Investments from several investors in the order of tens of millions of crowns