No Tech Degree. No Network. No Plan. I Built a Cybersecurity Company Anyway.

I studied English. Today, I work in cybersecurity at one of the better-known banks in my country, and I continue to build StartSecureng, the company that unexpectedly became my way into the industry.

Looking back, the transition from studying English to working in cybersecurity probably seems unusual to some. It wasn't something I planned, and it certainly didn't happen all at once.

Cybersecurity wasn't a childhood dream or a long-game strategy. It found me, mostly through other people who saw something in me before I saw it in myself.

The first person was an employer, back in 2022. I'd applied to join her writing and editing team. I was studying English, so a writing and editing role felt like a natural fit. But she had other plans. She moved me onto her development team instead, convinced I had something to offer a discipline I'd never formally studied. I said yes, mostly because saying no to someone who seemed to know something about me that I didn't, felt riskier than saying yes.

Months later, the same employer introduced me to cybersecurity. Not long after that, she sent me the application link for the CyberGirls Fellowship, an initiative of CyberSafe Foundation that has trained hundreds of women across Africa in specialized cybersecurity skills. I hadn't gone looking for any of this. It kept arriving, carried by someone who kept opening doors I hadn't asked to walk through.

By the time I finished the fellowship, I'd also finished university. An English degree in one hand, a half-formed cybersecurity skill set in the other, and a clear-eyed read of how hiring actually works in this industry: nobody hands a security role to someone without the "right" degree or certifications (no matter how many fellowships she's quietly completed in the background.)

I sat with that for a while and landed on the conclusion that has shaped my career ever since. If people wouldn't give me the opportunity, I'd create it myself. The industry needed more opportunity creators anyway. I decided to become one.

So instead of waiting to be chosen, I studied the market like it owed me an answer. What I found was a gap nobody seemed in a hurry to close: most startups in my country had no security function at all, not because they couldn't afford one, but because most founders didn't yet understand why it mattered.

On an ordinary Sunday afternoon, with no clients, no team, and nothing but conviction, I started a company. I called it StartSecure, later StartSecureng, built on one premise: proactive security rather than reactive, especially for startups who are often targets of attacks. No investors. No warm introductions. No proof that anyone wanted what I was building. I, in fact had some people tell me quite some discouraging things. Glad, I didn't listen.

What followed was the least glamorous part of building anything. Days of reaching out to founder after founder, explaining why their startup needed security, and being ignored. Repeatedly. Some never replied. A few replied just to decline. It stung more than I expected, because I'd assumed the case for security was so obvious that founders would simply see it. They didn't. Not yet.

While the market caught up, I kept building. I started in digital forensics, drawn to reconstructing what happens after something goes wrong, then found myself pulled toward penetration testing instead, the discipline of finding what could go wrong before it does. That eventually grew into application security engineering, where most of my technical identity lives today. None of it was a straight line. It was trial, error, and a refusal to stop learning even when nobody was watching.

Then, slowly, something shifted.

Founders I'd never approached started reaching out to me. Not many. A handful, really. But each one landed differently, because it meant the work was starting to speak in a market that hadn't been listening to my words. I remember the first time it happened: the disbelief, and then a quieter certainty underneath it. I was doing something right.

Three months into running StartSecureng, I took everything I'd built, the client work, the side projects, the unpaid hours of practice, and applied for a job as a penetration tester. I got it. I walked in as the only security person on the team, which meant there was nowhere to hide and nothing to lean on except the work itself. I suspect that's exactly the pressure that built whatever instincts I rely on now.

What happened after that surprised even me. Full-time offers started arriving faster than I could properly weigh them. I became a lead security engineer in one of my roles, handling everything from application, infrastructure and AI Security. Today I work inside one of the more recognized banks in my country, the kind of institution I would once have assumed required a very different résumé than the one I had.

StartSecureng is still alive, though its shape has changed. I had to pause active client work at some point; the full-time offers became impossible to ignore, and a person only has so many hours in a week. But the company never disappeared. It's better now than it was that first Sunday afternoon, built with more skill, more clarity, and considerably less naivety about how long it takes founders to take security seriously.

I want to be honest about one more thing: none of this happened alone. An employer who saw potential I hadn't earned yet. A fellowship that handed me specialized training I couldn't have afforded to find on my own. Women, several of them strangers at the time, who answered questions, opened doors, or simply told me I was on the right track exactly when I needed to hear it. What was the phrase again? '𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴.' From the outside, my career reads like a solo sprint. It wasn't. It was a relay, and I happened to be holding the baton when it mattered.

If there's a lesson in any of this, it isn't really about cybersecurity. It's about what you do in the gap between wanting an opportunity and being handed one. I didn't have the right degree. I didn't have the certifications gatekeepers usually ask for first. What I had was a willingness to build the thing I wanted to be hired for, and enough stubbornness to keep building it after the silence got loud. Given the choice again, I'd do it the exact same way. Mistakes included.