by Greg Davis, CEO at Bigleaf Networks
I’ve raised capital through four market cycles, and every serious investor I’ve met opens due diligence the same way: Show me your revenue, then prove you can protect it.
A private, hardened connection does more than keep attackers at bay — it broadcasts operational maturity. Customers share data more freely when they know packets move across encrypted, segregated paths. Regulators grant approvals faster when audits reveal airtight controls. And boards sleep at night because a robust security posture caps downside risk.
Startups that stitch security into day‑one architecture shorten sales cycles, command higher valuations, and reach break‑even sooner. In fact, a NordPass brief underscored that early‑stage companies now face the same ransomware, DDoS floods, and AI‑driven phishing barrages that besiege the Fortune 500, yet they often lack the brand resilience to rebound from a breach.
The Hidden Cost of an Unstable Connection
Most founders worry about catastrophic outages, but the real profit and loss (P&L) bleed usually comes from the gray zone of “unusable uptime.” A video‑based sales demo that freezes because of 250‑millisecond jitter costs more goodwill than a clean 404 page — at least the latter is honest about being down. Gartner famously put a number on that pain, estimating average downtime at US $5,600 per minute; for cloud‑native businesses, the tab rises quickly once latency spikes start throttling SaaS logins and payment APIs. Traditional band‑aid fixes, like dual‑WAN firewalls or BGP failover, only swing into action when a circuit goes completely dark, which misses the subtle packet loss that actually wrecks user experience.
Deploying SD‑WAN flips that script. Instead of treating every packet the same, an intelligent edge continuously samples link quality and steers traffic in real time according to business rules. If the fiber loop on ISP A starts dropping frames, SD‑WAN quietly shifts your video meeting onto the 5G backup without human intervention. Choose a firewall‑friendly platform, and you preserve your existing security stack while adding the self‑healing benefits of dynamic path control.
Bake Private Connectivity into Day One
Founders love to postpone infrastructure spending until “after the next round.” That mindset is lethal when your entire operation rides on cloud commits and remote talent. The launch checklist should therefore treat a private, secure link as non‑negotiable, right up there with payroll and version control.
Start with redundant physical paths. Provision at least two ISPs terminated in separate conduits so a backhoe on Main Street doesn’t single‑handedly halt revenue recognition. Let SD‑WAN or comparable link‑bonding software do the load sharing and automatic failover so users never notice a flap. Engineer a contingency runbook that outlines how the team will preserve business continuity if a region goes dark — pre‑approved data‑protection workflows, alternate collaboration channels, and snapshot‑based recovery timelines. When disaster strikes, people follow muscle memory, not wishful thinking (ideally).
Security lives at the human edge as much as in the routers. NordPass recommends enforcing strong password hygiene, blanket MFA on every SaaS console, and quarterly phishing drills so employees recognize spoofed Slack invites before credentials leak. Cybersecurity platforms and password management tools pair those habits with a stateful firewall, cloud‑based DDoS scrubbing, and encrypted object storage to keep both data in transit and at rest under lock and key. Keep firmware patched, sensors logging, and anomalies streaming to a managed security information and event management (SIEM)—ideally one monitored around the clock by an MSP whose sole job is to escalate before attackers laterally move.
Yes, all of this costs money. Continuous link monitoring alone runs three to twelve thousand dollars a year, and a basic backup‑and‑recovery footprint may land in the five‑figure range. But compare that to the burn rate of a growth‑stage startup idling through a two‑hour outage, or the valuation haircut that follows a public breach notice. Suddenly, the security budget looks less like overhead and more like discounted equity preservation.
Velocity Without Vulnerability
When connectivity is rock‑solid and private, product roadmaps accelerate. Engineers push to stage faster because they aren’t babysitting VPN tunnels. Sales closes bigger logos because procurement teams trust the controls behind the pitch deck. Even culture improves — nothing saps morale like telling a new hire, “Hang on, the Wi‑Fi’s acting up again.”
The market is unforgiving. Competitors backed by the same venture pool will copy your features, undercut your price, and shadow your SEO in months. What they can’t replicate overnight is the institutional discipline baked into a secure, redundant, intelligently managed network. That moat widens every quarter as your telemetry, customer data, and proprietary models compound safely under its protection.
Build now. Sign the second circuit, deploy the SD‑WAN, draft the incident‑response plan, and appoint someone who wakes up thinking about link health every morning. The spend will sting less than the first fundraising dilution and deliver far higher ROI. In a threat‑laden, always‑connected economy, a private, secure connection is the bedrock on which every other growth metric balances.
Greg Davis has served on the Bigleaf Networks’ board of directors since 2020. He has a consistent track record scaling businesses and creating enterprise value through revenue growth, operational performance, and strategic acquisitions. Greg’s technology leadership career spans more than 25 years, where he has led multiple companies from start up to over $100 million in annual revenue.