There, the companies received support to help them scale all aspects of their businesses, including high-quality mentoring and business services, office space, and access to GCHQ and Telefónica’s world-class personnel and technical expertise.
That support has helped the companies develop substantially, with successes including the securing of contracts with government agencies and projects with major corporations, as well as developing their products and embarking on funding rounds.
The entrepreneurs will today celebrate the end of the programme by pitching their start-ups to an audience of stakeholders and leading investors at a Demo Day in Cheltenham.
At the event, GCHQ, DCMS and Wayra UK will say that later in 2017, they intend to issue a new call for cyber start-ups to join the Accelerator for an extended version of the programme. Further details of the new call will be revealed in due course.
Minister of State for Digital and Culture Matt Hancock MP said, "Our recent Digital Strategy set out our ambition to create a world-leading digital economy that works for everyone and makes the UK the safest place to do business online.
"The Cyber Accelerator is helping to deliver this aim by supporting entrepreneurs and innovators as they turn great ideas into cyber security products and services, and I congratulate all those who have taken part in the first programme and contributed to its success."
Gary Stewart, Director at Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future_ (UK), commented, “This has been a textbook exercise in how to accelerate companies extremely quickly. We’ve been able to take our strengths and marry them to GCHQ’s world-leading cyber expertise, creating a perfect petri dish for these start-ups to scale. I’m immensely proud that we’ve been able to realise the promise of this collaboration, and enthused about moving the partnership forward in an even bigger and better way through a new call for cyber start-ups to join the programme.”