ByteChek Founder AJ Yawn Brings Self-discipline to Every little thing He Does

AJ Yawn doesn’t appear like a person who works 15 or 16 hours a day. He doesn’t appear like a person who, as of March, had labored seven days per week and not using a time without work for precisely two years. Regardless of the grueling tempo, Yawn, CEO of cybersecurity compliance startup ByteChek, doesn’t look haggard or sound exhausted. Reasonably, he’s younger, match, and photogenic, and he’s laser-focused on altering how corporations deal with compliance.

The toil is paying off, too. ByteChek, which Yawn based in 2020, raised over $3 million this winter throughout its seed spherical of investing, and it has grown its clientele by 40%.

His secret? It comes all the way down to the 2 topics that crop up time and again in dialog with Yawn: eager consideration to psychological well being and self-discipline.

Prioritizing Psychological Well being
“Take breaks,” he recommends. “Do not verify your telephone or electronic mail for the primary hour of the day. [Instead], meditate, work out, learn, clear your thoughts for the day. Then no telephone an hour earlier than mattress. Holistic drugs, restorative sleep.”

The opposite aspect of this coin, in fact, is an iron self-discipline. “I do not do half work,” Yawn says. “I work like a lion: a weeklong hunt, then full relaxation. My group is aware of that once I take breaks, they’re breaks — no telephone, no electronic mail.”

It is arduous to think about a digital, COVID-era work setting that does not depend on “half work,” normally underneath the identify of “multitasking.”

Word, although, that ByteChek’s mission is itself a type of multitasking. “ByteChek needs to construct a world the place corporations can shortly construct belief with prospects, prospects, and buyers with out having to leap by hoops and months of time,” Yawn says. This implies a single built-in answer for SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.

Traditionally, compliance options have been protracted, painfully analog affairs. An organization needed to rent a CPA agency that billed by the hour and farmed out the testing to varied mission managers, who oversaw a sluggish, handbook verify. Charges would pile up because the mission dragged on. ByteChek’s compliance platform exists to make such corporations pointless.

In different phrases, ByteChek exists to “make compliance suck much less,” Yawn says.

Altering How Compliance Works
On the coronary heart of the corporate is its proprietary inside testing instrument, constructed largely by Yawn himself, that checks danger administration and different capabilities by a shopper’s cloud setting by customized logic and AI. This eliminates the necessity for an exterior auditor.

Compliance and data safety are totally different capabilities with totally different requirements, however organizations can use compliance to point out what safety measures are in place. “[Your auditor] may solely must see a pattern of databases to see in the event that they’re correctly encrypted,” Yawn says. “Compliance is not about being proper 100% of the time, like infosec is. It is about, ‘Are the processes in place to verify this management works?'”

Do not take that to imply that the corporate is sloppy. ByteChek makes use of the American Institute of Licensed Public Accountants (AICPA) SOC 2 commonplace. In actual fact, AICPA chosen ByteChek for its infosec Startup Accelerator, giving Yawn and his group key mentorship and publicity, in addition to a $25,000 funding. The corporate’s rigor, in different phrases, is excessive.

Bringing a Disciplined Group Strategy
Yawn by no means anticipated to be a startup CEO. He anticipated to be a profession officer in the USA Military. After ROTC and a basketball profession at Florida State College, Yawn enrolled within the Military Sign Corps, the place he made captain. (The Sign Corps handles Military communications, together with digital communications.) He was deployed for 18 months of his six years within the Military, together with 9 months in Jordan alongside the Syrian border. The Sign Corps was a cushty match for him. His father had been a Marine, and he himself had been a tinkerer as a baby, fixing computer systems and taking aside robots. The bodily self-discipline and group politics of basketball additionally transferred effectively to his navy profession.

It was within the Sign Corps that Yawn started to appreciate the large significance of compliance testing. All of the work was handbook, and Yawn’s each try at instituting any fundamental automation was held up by the Military paperwork’s creeping tempo. When he left the Military so he could possibly be residence when his first son was born, he went to work at cybersecurity agency Coalfire as a principal guide. By round 2018, with about 500 SOC 2 examinations underneath his belt, Yawn started to contemplate beginning his personal firm: “I wished to deliver software program to this drawback.”

All of this prior expertise went into his imaginative and prescient for a brand new startup. Braveness, an urge for food for danger, and a soldier’s sense of main on the job all undergird ByteChek’s operations. Maybe paradoxically, Yawn’s navy expertise additionally gave him a robust sense of empathy. His philosophy is proudly “folks first,” and that applies to his shoppers as a lot as to his eight staffers, his buyers, and others.

“We neglect concerning the human behind regardless of the job is,” he says. “They is perhaps drained. They could have children.”

In addition to, he provides, “Safety’s a group sport. You possibly can’t develop an organization if folks do not wish to work there!”

“We had a scenario not too long ago the place a CISO wanted assist with a buyer or investor – with a 3rd occasion,” Yawn shares. “He was struggling to speak the worth of compliance testing to them. I noticed that he was burdened about their upcoming assembly, so I requested if I might be a part of him on the decision” as backup. 

It had solely price Yawn an hour, and it made no distinction to ByteChek’s backside line, however people-first means people-first, and Yawn, ever the officer, is happy with his phrase.

In fact, the opposite aspect of that coin is self-discipline. Nobody at ByteChek is required to work a hard and fast variety of hours, however Yawn exhorts his group to do “deep work” — “to dam their calendar, flip off Slack notifications, electronic mail, and many others., and simply lock in.”

“Focus is a superpower,” he says. “We encourage an elite stage of focus at ByteChek.”

Translating Relationships to Traders
One other main concern for Yawn is range, not solely in compliance however in tech finance. “In the event you do not appear like 98% of your opponents,” says Yawn, who’s Black, “it is going to be an uphill battle to get funding. I spotted [during the first rounds of investment for ByteChek] I used to be losing time explaining who I used to be.”

Yawn, who by no means made a chilly name throughout these early rounds — as a substitute relying completely on his potential to community — finally acquired introductions to Black angel buyers, who took an opportunity on him. “I had a cash goal, not a threshold for Black buyers,” he says, “however I am having a lot extra success with buyers who appear like me.”

For Yawn, funding is a relationship, and whereas he is adamant that Black funding outfits will not be charities, he does see them as mentors for a brand new technology of feminine and minority tech entrepreneurs.

It is sorely wanted. “There is a 3 million job scarcity in tech proper now. We’re not going to fill it by hiring simply white males,” he says. The truth that management in tech and compliance is nearly completely white and male worries him. However general, he is optimistic. The $3 million he raised in two months was overwhelmingly from Black buyers.

In his phrases, “We acquired us.”

PERSONALITY BYTES

What is the No. 1 secret to your success? “I meditate day-after-day. Psychological well being is so vital. Neglect your marketing strategy — are your mentals OK? If we will create a military of workers involved with psychological well being, our outcomes shall be higher.”

In the event you weren’t in compliance, what would you be doing? “One thing in management, possibly in sports activities. I might most likely be both teaching basketball or nonetheless within the Military.”

Your favourite factor to do exterior of labor? “Spending time with my children. It is humbling: They do not care about ByteChek. They wish to construct Legos and run within the park. Apart from that, a buddy of mine has a ship, and typically I will exit on the water and produce my work with me. You possibly can’t not have enjoyable on a ship.”

One thing your colleagues can be shocked to find out about you? “I am afraid of birds. Critically. I noticed the film ‘The Birds’ as a child — it shook me.”