RandomStorm cyber security entrepreneurs launch startup

THE entrepreneurs that launched cyber-security firm RandomStorm have begun again after selling the business for a cool £10m last year.

RapidSpike is the second brainchild of Andrew Mason and Robin Hill, and has officially launched at the Round Foundry Media Centre in Leeds.

The startup brings the pair back round full circle, having previously been in the same offices they used when launching RandomStorm before rapid growth required a move to bigger Wetherby offices. However this hasn’t proved daunting for the pair who have worked together for 15 years.

The new business revolves around digital asset assurance – which sounded a bit impenetrable to me. Thankfully Mr Mason was around (conveniently next door to TheBusinessDesk.com’s office) to explain.

“Basically, Rapidspike monitors and tests digital assets such as e commerce websites,and anything connected to the internet – practically anything with an IP address” he said.

From the outset, it seems a noticeable departure from RandomStorm, which centred around security and at one point counted organisations from Premier league football clubs to swathes of the UK’s local authorities among its customers.

However RapidSpike exists to support and protect the digital assets of a company, just in a slightly different way. It finds the baseline of website performance and the scope of potential customers is massive.

The firm can tell, using inhouse algorithms, what a company’s website is capable of handling in terms of capacity.

“RapidSpike’s algorithms find the baseline of your website’s performance, measuring speed against the average degradation of service, so that we can notify you of slowness on your site, which translates in real terms into the loss of sales.

Mr Mason explained: “A load testing tool can tell you the capacity of the site, how many people are on it at the one time. Theoretically we can make ourselves look like an infinite number of users, but we tailor it to the specific needs of the company and their website.

“We simulate the user journey and sort out any kinks in the process, and can put a stress test on a website until it breaks, showing the customer its weaknesses.

“On days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday, US events in the retail calendar, which are being adopted over here, sites see massive spikes in audience figures and site usage, for example when Tesco site crashed.”

Firms like Apple, whose site is inundated when products are launched, and ticket sales for events like Glastonbury would be of particular use, but any site that has spikes in traffic could be helped by the firm.

Load testing, availability testing and performance management of the site are all services that RapidSpike provides, and with no geographical constraints, the firm has the opportunity to go worldwide, whilst RandomStorm was very much UK-based.

Mr Mason finished: “Ignorance isn’t an option when you have an asset making your company millions”