Ben Spring

"Who TryHackMe is" (youtu.be/aH0RMysu9lI). We have quite an intense culture, it's not for everyone - but it means everyone here is so talented and hard working. This video from our TA team captures just how impressive our people are. When I look back at what we've built and achieved this year, no company our size comes close. If you clock watch at work, don't love Mondays, and finish at 5 on the dot, you're in the wrong job. If what you watch excites you, we're hiring (link in comments).

@chrija I’m the founder of TryHackMe - bootstrapped to $30M ($50M est 2026). Will be in Victoria if you want to meet.

In London on Wed/Thu. I know this question has become a bit of a meme ... but ... who should I meet?

Will be in San Francisco attending Unprompted Con March 2nd to 5th - if you're at the event, or in SF, and want to meet - DM me.

@eastdakota @did0f @Cloudflare How much would you sell that domain for?

@did0f @Cloudflare I own n.et. Still need to figure out something fun to do with it.

Let's share cool domains. I start with @Cloudflare.

@zeyu1337 Agreed - but most of the talent is not in London. I'd take being closer to talent over an optimal timezone.

london might be the optimal timezone - catching up with APAC in the morning and SF at night. thoughts?

[FREE AI pentest on your web app] I'm looking for 10 CISOs, CTOs, founders, engineering leaders, or similar roles to beta test our AI pentesting tool. Fully automated and typically covers >80% of most web apps. In exchange we'd like honest feedback and a testimonial if we find real issues. Apply: lnkd.in/ekKgJ8H7 (if you know someone, please tag them)

In 2025 TryHackMe gave >$268k in bonuses. In 2026 it'll be $536k. Done through PUBLIC quarterly performance reviews - creating an environment that rewards A-players & pushes out low performers. Details below 👇 We've introduced quarterly performance reviews (rolled out to product and engineering first), that stack ranks the entire team from top to bottom. The formula for stack ranking is done through a number of factors: (1) business impact, (2) peer reviews with a personalised scoring system, (3) squad KPIs, (4) % accelerator/decelerator controlled by department heads. This formula has gone through two tests per department to ensure we have it right. One learning from the tests we ran was that we need to give feedback to people who give peer feedback (as they're way too generous), and its sometimes tricky to set squad KPIs (not all squads have easy to attribute KPIs, or are mission-driven not metric-driven). Top performers bonuses are calculated by: (% of salary base) + (% based on company quarterly performance) + (% extra if team goal is hit) I only want A-players at TryHackMe, and A-players only want to work with other A-players. After 3-6 months of discussion and iteration on the formula and process, we've now rolled out quarterly performance reviews. This is inspired by Revolut's performance based culture, and Frank Slootman's "Amp it up" methodology. Highly recommend Frank's book, and Revolut's performance deck. I want an environment that REWARDS top performers, and pushes out low performers - who are also the most vocal (cough cough Glassdoor). I believe this structure does this, and that performance-based quarterly bonus structure will reward (and hopefully retain) our A-players. The top half of the teams quarterly performance are published to the entire team, so everyone recognises the best for that quarter. I love it because it also allows us to give really constructive feedback. Much of the time feedback given to staff in 1:1s is unstructured. However now we can break down a staffs score, and give them actionable feedback every quarter. If a member of staff is in the bottom 2 each quarter, its a signal to look at whether the staff is a good fit for the company. It helps constantly raise the bar of the entire team; something our team deserves.. to work with the best people. It works because if you're a high performer and work really hard, you benefit from it a lot. If you're in the middle, you have strong reason to work really hard and climb to the top. Its worth noting that: (1) not all teams get quarterly bonuses (some are annual). (2) Sales & Customer Success are also compensated differently.

@zeyu1337 lets do it

hey would you like to jump on a quick call?

@robotryer Yes I am 👍

@springjben You still in line for a NEO?

"Who TryHackMe is" (youtu.be/aH0RMysu9lI). We have quite an intense culture, it's not for everyone - but it means everyone here is so talented and hard working. This video from our TA team captures just how impressive our people are. When I look back at what we've built and achieved this year, no company our size comes close. If you clock watch at work, don't love Mondays, and finish at 5 on the dot, you're in the wrong job. If what you watch excites you, we're hiring (link in comments).

My 2026 Goals - Take TryHackMe past $50M ARR - Launch AI Pentester that performs 500 real-world pentests (launching soon) - Build in public more. More public speaking (DM to invite). Get better at both. Others minor ones - Would love to work with first-time founders (free / to give back) - Angel invest in 1 company (see past investments on my blogs "about" section) - Win tennis box-league

[Hiring] AI Pentesting - we're building an autonomous AI pentester & growing our small, talented team. Looking for agent devs - but if you're a hobbyist obsessed with agents and cyber, reach out anyway. Talent is rare, but passion & aptitude > skill experience. Know anyone that would be interested in getting involved in any capacity, please connect us or share this post. Referrals get $2500. Apply: tryhackme.notion.site/AI-Engineer-Pe… To address previous misinformation: (1) no THM data is being used to develop our agent, (2) I do not believe AI will replace pentesters (the role will change, not go extinct) and we're updating content to reflect the changes we're seeing in the industry (through secondary research but also the 1000s of clients that use THM officially).

Within 24h of the CRITICAL n8n vuln (CVS 9.9 RCE) going live, our team developed a free lab on it.. on CHRISTMAS EVE! The team here works so hard - some came back from annual leave to work on this (voluntarily). So many companies and teams would not do this.. it shows how thoughtful, talented, and hard-working the people at TryHackMe are. We really wouldn't be able to support our millions of users without them. A huge thank you to those @ THM who worked on this today. Thousands of people will benefit from this. Looking forward to seeing feedback from our users!

7pm, entire leadership team, day 2/2. Working hard planning. No one is building like us. #996

@aymanalabdul What yields 10% (other than S&P500)

Best tip I can give first-time founders: Get to $1M liquid outside the business as quickly as you can $1M invested at ~10% = ~$100K/year That’s baseline survival secured so you can keep building forever

@lennysan @JoinEdgeCity Lenny! I lost by $200! Had a bid for $2600, someone got it for $2800. I'm happy to pay $2800 if you want to give 2 of these offers away, and I'll donate it to the same charity?

@springjben @JoinEdgeCity 🙌🙌🙌

Win a 1:1 Substack coaching session + bougie tea experience with me ✨🍵 All proceeds going to charity @JoinEdgeCity, which provides grants for young people to take risks and pursue their wild ideas & projects. Check it out: my.onecause.com/event/organiza…

@gonzalo_io @tferriss @netflix 100%

@springjben @tferriss @netflix I would add “Super Pumped” to this list. The story of Uber

What is the best documentary or docuseries you've recently watched on @netflix? Or in the last year?