‘I’ve gotten to work with SMBs. I’ve gotten to work with enterprise carriers and everyone in between,’ new Coro CEO Joe Sykora tells CRN. ‘And the SMB market is one that I really enjoy working with. Being a channel person and coming from the channel, it’s part of my heart. It’s part of my DNA.’
Coro, developer of an SMB-focused cybersecurity platform, Thursday unveiled a new CEO with years of experience in the security industry and as a solution provider owner and CEO.
Joe Sykora, who joined Chicago-based Coro in March of this year as senior vice president and general manager for the Americas, is taking over the CEO reins from Guy Moskowitz, who co-founded the company and served as president and CEO.
Going forward, Moskowitz will retain the title of president while remaining on the company’s board of directors.
Sykora told CRN that he knew when he was hired that he would take over as Coro’s CEO. “Coro is 10 years old. [Moskowitz is] fantastic. He grew the company to where it is today. An excellent company. We’re a cybersecurity company for the SMBs. It’s a purpose-built platform for SMB, mostly for the MSPs that serve them.”
Sykora said Coro has grown to the point where it needed to move to a higher level of business.
“That’s really why they went out and got me,” he said. “If you look at my background, I’ve been at some pretty fantastic cybersecurity companies. I’ve been in cyber 29 years now.
I’m not new to the game. After owning my own two solution provider companies, Interspace Computers and Fortress Network Security, I went to Fortinet and was there for a little over seven and a half years. I was there for Fortinet’s IPO. I then went to Bitdefender, which is an endpoint company, and served as CRO, getting them ready to go public. The last company was Proofpoint.”
“I’ve gotten to work with SMBs,” he said. “I’ve gotten to work with enterprise carriers and everyone in between. And the SMB market is one that I really enjoy working with. Being a channel person and coming from the channel, it’s part of my heart. It’s part of my DNA.”
The SMB market has a lot of potential for growth, Sykora said.
“It’s a very underserved market when it comes to cybersecurity,” he said. “First, SMBs don’t have a lot of IT people. They have lean IT. We take what used to need hours, if not the entire day, and with AI we condense that down to less than 30 to 45 minutes, as far as actionable items. And we do it all with one interface. We cover endpoint, web security, email security, security awareness and training. There are 15 different cyber modules purposely built with one interface. This isn’t like many companies who use tech alliances with API integrations for this and that. This is all ours, and we have one interface that it makes it a very simple but yet sophisticated platform for SMB users.”
Coro is channel-focused and primarily works with MSPs, although it does have a smaller amount of business with more traditional solution providers, Sykora said. The company works with ConnectWise and is pursuing relationships with other MSP platforms, he said.
“Everything’s two-tier distribution,” he said. “We’re a 100 percent channel company. Everything goes through channel partners. We have traditional resellers as well because we have an excellent solution if a small business with maybe one or two IT people decide they want to do it in-house. We support resellers and MSPs and hybrids that do both.”
Sykora estimated that Coro has about 300 employees across Chicago, New York, London, India, Australia, New Zealand and Tel Aviv, Israel, the latter being focused on back-end operations.
Sykora declined to discuss Coro’s revenue and the total investment the company has received to date, although Traxn reports the company has raised at least $275 million.
Coro has not done any acquisitions recently except for its 2023 acquisition of network security startup Privatise.
Sykora said future acquisitions are possible but is not a focus for the company.
“Most of what we have was purpose-built, designed by us,” he said. “If you buy something, it normally doesn’t integrate well and offer that single pane of glass. We really do the design on each of our products, each of our modules, so it fits in there. And it’s a very elegant solution.”
Despite Sykora’s experience with the IPO process, he said Coro is in no rush to hold its own IPO.
“Time will tell,” he said. “When it comes to the exit strategy for Coro, it’s going be a three-, four-year thing. I haven’t been here long. We updated the go-to-market strategy. We changed our channel program. We simplified our program. We’re simplifying everything to do business with us. We’re streamlined, simplified, so we’re built for speed. That’s one of the things I always do at all the companies. And there’s no pressure for an exit. We have a board, and we have investors. So whatever comes, comes.”
An IPO also depends on the market conditions, Sykora said.
“It depends a lot on the IPO market,” he said. “It really does. But that is one of the options that we will have in the future if we decide to go that route. And if not, there’s the acquisition path either way. Our goal in life is to become the player in the SMB market when it comes to cybersecurity platforms. That’s it. We’re trying to simplify with our modular design. And it’s an underserved market. We make it affordable as well.”
Coro is always looking to recruit more MSPs, Sykora said.
“I always say Coro is open for business. … We’re looking for MSPs that are growing,” he said. “We’re looking for MSPs that want to simplify their technical stack and improve their offers to SMBs. I find that most MSPs I talk to, it’s a void. They don’t have a good solution that’s affordable. We are that solution. And it does scale up. So we’re looking for MSPs that want a true all-in-one platform with a single interface so we can help operationalize the back end of their organization.”
