Behind the Scenes with Haydn Brooks: Making Supply Chains Safer From finding his co-founder to securing funding, Haydn Brooks, CEO, Risk Ledger, a London based cybersecurity company, shares the real challenges and wins of launching a startup in the digital protection space.

What inspired you to start your business?

I had been working within the supply chain security domain for a while as a consultant. I was building supply chain risk processes for a lot of large enterprises, and found they always came across two problems when trying to understand the risks of security breaches in their supply chain.

The first was that the supply chain risk process was inherently inefficient. I witnessed some organisations taking over 5 months to approve a vendor and allow their businesses to work with the services they needed.

The second was that the process was rarely effective at reducing the number of successful breaches that were happening in the supply chain. I saw a great opportunity to not only make the supplier risk process a lot more efficient, but make it more effective at stopping cyber attacks in the supply chain too.

What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?

It's hard to pinpoint the single biggest challenge, I've experienced different challenges at different stages when building Risk Ledger. Finding a co-founder, raising money, winning your first customer, building and managing a team…I think weirdly my biggest challenge has been learning to sit back and feel proud about the progress we have made.

Often you can get caught up in one problem after another and it can be hard to celebrate the wins. I am still learning that you do have to celebrate the wins to stay motivated and feel your progress.

How did you secure your initial funding?

The first few investment commitments were from a variety of places. When I went full time on Risk Ledger and changed my LinkedIn to say that, I had a few old school friends reach out and ask to invest. We also took part in a startup accelerator called Cylon. Here they ran a demo day where we met Seedcamp, who would go on to eventually lead our pre-seed round.

Related: The Tech Revolution in Logistics: How Two Graduates are Shaking up Supply Chains

How do you handle failure or setbacks?

I take a break from whatever I am doing, and find some friends to laugh about the setback with. Once they have brought me back down to earth and given me some perspective, I get back up and try again.

What advice would you give to someone starting their own business?

Pitch your idea to everyone who will listen. A lot of early stage founders don't want to tell people their ideas in case they get stolen, but I don't see this happen a lot. Talking to people about your ideas gets you feedback which is probably the most vital thing you can receive when you are just starting out - you want to know all the reasons why people think your idea won't work so you can make sure that you build it in a way that means they are wrong.

How do you stay motivated during tough times?

I am not sure one can stay motivated for the entire time of building a company. I suppose I deal with this in two ways. Firstly I keep going, even if I don't feel motivated. I ask myself, what are the 2, 3, or 5 things I could do today (no matter how big or small) that can help move things forward?

Secondly, I have tried to build a good team around me so that when any one of us isn't feeling too motivated, the others can help. Building a company is a team game and you need a team around you who can pick up your slack, and for whom you can pick up theirs.

Share your tips for achieving success…

Make a plan. Decide where you want to be in 5 years time and work back from there. Write it down. Break it up into actionable tasks and start completing them.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes, learn from them. And don't be afraid to take risks - some of the more amazing things that we have achieved have come from one of us at Risk Ledger saying "well let's just give this a go, what's the worst that can happen".

Don't neglect your network. Talk to people, discuss your ideas, and ask them for help.

Related: Curiosity Unleashed: How to Drive Innovation and Growth in Your Business