AnchorMyData

Emre Coxeal, a professor at Ohio State University with a PhD from MIT and over 100 published papers, recognized a fundamental flaw in how organizations approach data security. Traditional perimeter-centric models—building "castles and fortresses" around networks—no longer work in a world where data lives everywhere: in the cloud, on mobile devices, across IoT networks, and accessed from home offices. He envisioned security that travels with the data itself, not just protecting the boundaries around it.

In 2019, Coxeal founded AnchorMyData with co-founder (a former student) to build this vision. The company raised a $1.5M pre-seed round from four major VCs that same year. The first two years were entirely focused on product development—getting the technology simple, transparent, and easily integrable into any platform. "It took us two years to get the product to be very simple, transparent, fully transparent and integrable to any kind of platform," Coxeal explained. The team grew to 15 full-time employees, with 11 focused on engineering and development, while he carefully recruited from his academic network, bringing talented former students to Ohio.

In 2021, the company kicked off its POC program with its first customer: one of the world's largest electric car charging organizations. "It was one of the largest basically electric car charging organizations in the world," Coxeal recalled. "We got the connection and it became clear that the need that they have is in alignment with our value prop." After integrating with the customer's cloud platform and minimal customizations, they signed their first contract. That initial quarterly payment was around $2,000—a moment Coxeal treasures enough to keep the check to this day.

Instead of chasing direct sales, AnchorMyData pivoted to a partnership-first go-to-market model. Today, over 20 partnership agreements are active, including MSPs, MSSPs, and technology partners. Partners earn 30-40% commissions in perpetuity on licenses they sell, with some handling full deployment and support (the MSP/MSSP model) while others focus on sales with AnchorMyData handling support. This strategy proved remarkably effective: by mid-2022, roughly one year after launching the POC program, the company had scaled to 33 customers, 3,300 paid seats, and approximately $30,000-$50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. The pricing model—$16 per seat per month with unlimited data—attracted mostly small-to-mid-sized businesses as the fastest-growing segment, with an average customer signing up for 100-200 seats, though some customers exceeded 1,000 seats. Notably, the company achieved zero churn.

In late 2022, AnchorMyData closed a $3M+ seed-plus round (with $250,000 still available) at an $8M valuation cap on a convertible note basis, diluting founders by roughly 30-35%. This capital fuels expansion beyond their current 33 logos toward 50, 60, and 100+ customers, with increased hiring on the business development and go-to-market side. Coxeal remains focused on product excellence—inspired by Elon Musk's advice to prioritize building the best product over spreadsheets—while the partnership model continues to scale efficiently across the MSP and MSSP ecosystem.