On the TechTO stage ×3
Ivan Tsarynny of PostBeyond presents Customer Success: The Engine of Growth
Watch on YouTube ↗
Ivan Tsarynny of Feroot presents "Value Adding" as an Accelerator
Watch on YouTube ↗How YC Helped Us Raise $2M in 9 Days and Build for Global Scale | Ivan Tsarynny (Feroot, YC W21)
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2015. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Ivan ↗
In their words
I want to build a massive company. So for that, what I needed to have is a star-studded cap table — basically, who are the best CEOs who had exited, and I wanted them to be my angel investors. Because they will introduce me to future investors, and they will introduce me to the customers that I want to get into. And the outcome was, we closed the first two million round in nine days.
Not to criticize Canadian investors — US investors, I meet with them today at 11:00 a.m. and the money is in a bank by end of the day. And usually if it didn't get deposited, it's just because the wire was held until the morning.
I just got a stat from our CTO that in the last 30 days, for example, we protected more than one billion unique users across multiple sites.
when our users are not using the software our customers are not happy and they don't want to deal with us and contrary to that when users are actually using our software customers are happy and they keep coming back and back and back
we actually engage our customer success team somewhere halfway through the sales process once kind of when the customer says yes it's very interesting let's kind of proceed with the procurement process that's the one moment when our customer success team gets involved
find what makes sense the most for your target audience for your target market and then just focus all of our forces on that area
Around the web ×3
Quick answers
What is Ivan Tsarynny known for?
Co-founding Feroot Security in 2017 and running it as CEO. Feroot's research in early 2025 found obfuscated code on DeepSeek's login page with links to China Mobile, a Chinese state-owned telecom barred from operating in the US. The finding was picked up by the Associated Press, ABC News, PBS and CNBC, and Tsarynny testified before a US Congressional commission on data collection by China's tech sector.
What did Ivan Tsarynny do before Feroot?
He was at PostBeyond, an employee advocacy platform, and spoke about its customer success team on the TechTO stage in 2015. He has described Feroot as his second company.
How did Feroot raise $2M in nine days?
During Y Combinator's W21 batch, and by building the cap table first. Tsarynny told the TechTO audience in February 2026 that he targeted CEOs who had already exited as angel investors, on the logic that they would introduce him to future investors and to customers. He said he spent zero time in San Francisco — it was lockdown — and that no customer was met in person before signing.
Where is Feroot based?
Toronto. Tsarynny said on stage in February 2026 that staying headquartered in Ontario was deliberate — it is easy to operate a business there — while the company doubled down on selling into the US, where he found customers and investors made decisions within days.