Founding CTO (Cybersecurity / Fintech / Trust-Critical B2B)

Startup Wise Guys (SWG) is one of Europe’s most active B2B accelerators. In Founders Club, senior builders team up to validate real market pain and ship the first scalable product version in a 12-week online execution program.

If you’ve spent years building secure systems, compliance layers, risk controls, or payment rails for others—this is your chance to build a company around a trust-critical problem you understand deeply.

This is a co-founder opportunity. The goal is to help you become (or join) a founding team and launch a venture.

• Validate a trust-critical B2B pain (security, fraud, identity, compliance, risk)


• Design a credible MVP (security by design, auditability, data controls)


• Build core product & foundations: CI/CD, security baseline, logging, access control


• Define “trust proof” strategy (security posture, compliance roadmap, buyer needs)


• Prepare investor-ready technical narrative (defensibility, roadmap, risk handling)

• 7+ years in software engineering with strong cyber/fintech/security exposure


• Experience with secure architectures (authN/Z, encryption, logging, threat thinking)


• Comfort shipping MVPs with responsible guardrails


• Founder mindset: ownership, urgency, and long-term commitment


• ~10–12h/week for 12 weeks

• 12-week build sprint (validation → MVP → iteration)


• Weekly execution cadence (~10–12h/week, clear deliverables)


• 500+ mentors across B2B, GTM, fundraising, and specialist domains


• 440+ alumni startups / 40+ countries (network, intros, benchmarks)


• CTO toolkit for trust-critical ventures: MVP scope, security narrative, investor story

Note: The program includes a participation ticket after acceptance to ensure commitment and cohort quality.

Apply if you’re ready to stop being “the security/fintech CTO for others” and build your own product company.