How This Israeli Hacker Bootstrapped Her AI Cyber Company To Profitability
Tal Kollender, CEO and cofounder of Remedio, used to hack games and smartphone apps for fun as a teenager. Now her AI looks for weaknesses in company networks. (Photo credit: Ohad Kab)
Ohad Kab
Tal Kollender likes to keep things lean. A former teen hacker and cyber defender with Israeli intelligence, she runs a small team of 40 who focus on one of the more mundane tasks for IT security: finding devices on a company network that either have risky misconfigurations like overly permissive access to an app or outdated software that should have been patched.
Formerly Gytpol, now called Remedio, has developed an AI model that acts like a hacker, looking for misconfigurations that might be useful for exploitation and then alerting IT, which can remediate the issue with a single click. To do that, Remedio installs a lightweight piece of software known as an “agent” on every computer, phone and server, so it can get an in-depth look at what’s happening on specific devices. Its software determines what’s safe and what’s not, then updates systems with “zero disruption” to business operations, Kollender told Forbes.
Kollender, 36, bootstrapped Remedio for six years, claiming it has been profitable for much of that time. Now, though, she wants to expand the business at speed, securing $65 million in its first funding round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from TLV Partners and Picture Capital. According to a source familiar with the raise, it values the company at $300 million.
“We just want to grow, and grow exponentially.”
Though the company is planning on developing more AI to automate other security tasks, Kollender wants to maintain a slimline operation. “It’s all about profitability, keeping it lean and how to save any dollar, because I want to stay profitable,” she said.
Lead Bessemer investor Adam Fisher said he’d rarely seen such success from a bootstrapped business “because it’s so easy to raise VC in cyber.” Key to its decision to invest, Fisher said, was the “stellar financial performance and they’re efficient.”
Having hacked online games and competitions to manipulate rankings as a teenager, then gone through unsuccessful fighter pilot training with the Israeli Defense Forces as a young adult in the mid-2000s, Kollender was moved into cyber intelligence operations, where she honed her craft. After the military, she started working in the tech industry, eventually landing a role with Dell EMC as a leader on its IT security architecture team.
She started Remedio in 2019, teaming up with Gilad Raz and Yakov Kogan, cofounders of financial IT provider Digital Fuel, which was acquired for a reported $85 million by VMware in 2011. The company largely grew through word of mouth, Kollender said, and has claimed some major customers along the way, including Amazon, Coca-Cola and Colgate-Palmolive. In 2024, Amazon welcomed what was then Gytpol onto the first AWS and CrowdStrike Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator, and was named the top company of the cohort, credited for its “truly groundbreaking” approach to dealing with IT risk.
Much of Remedio’s success, says Bessemer’s Fisher, is due to Kollender. “Tal is the driving force behind the company,” he said, thanks to her “unusual” combination of strong technical skills and the ability to be “very persuasive with customers and winning them over.”
But word of mouth isn’t enough for Kollender anymore. The investment will largely be used to ramp up marketing, especially in the U.S., and help launch new tools, including one that will tell customers what vulnerabilities need their attention over others. “We just want to grow, and grow exponentially,” she said.
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