Overview:
Think of it like Zendesk + Linear, but built for security@ inboxes. Instead of bug bounty emails and DMs splintering across Gmail, Slack, GitHub issues, and a Google Sheet of payouts, you get one place that auto-sorts reports, spots duplicates, assigns severity, tracks SLAs, and pays researchers. The AI drafts polite acknowledgments and remediation summaries so your engineers get clean tickets and researchers feel heard. It’s the “bounty discipline” of HackerOne/Bugcrowd, without their platform fees or lock-in—aimed at small teams running a VDP or private bounty on their own.
The Trends:
Early-stage startups are increasingly adopting bug bounty programs (public or private) to supplement limited internal security teams, driven by measurable payouts and enterprise adoption of crowdsourced testing. (1, 2)
Private and boutique bounty programs (managed programs or invite-only scopes) are growing as companies prefer targeted researcher pools and more control over triage, scope, and payouts. (3, 4)
Triage automation, SLAs, and faster time-to-triage/response are becoming program differentiators—organizations track triage time, payment time, and remediation SLAs to improve researcher experience and program ROI. (5, 6)
Generative AI is being adopted by both researchers and platforms for report writing, triage assistance, and platform features—accelerating report quality but also changing attacker/defender dynamics. (7, 8)
Researcher retention and equitable payout practices (transparent rewards, competitive bounties, swag/bonuses) are prioritized to attract skilled hackers; average and high-severity payouts have risen in recent reports. (2, 1)
Your Answer:
What it is: a lightweight, startup-focused bug-bounty triage and SLA tracker that centralizes vuln intake, deduplication, triage rules, severity scoring, researcher comms and payout tracking — without charging a platform fee.
Pain solved: eliminates chaos for early-stage teams — one inbox for reports, automatic duplicate detection, consistent severity/SLA decisions, and clear researcher updates so security work doesn’t get lost in engineering backlog.
AI productivity: auto-drafts acknowledgments, remediation summaries, and suggested fix notes for engineers; templates are customizable so comms are fast and diplomatic, improving researcher relations and speeding resolution.
Core features for MVP: webhook/email/GitHub issue intake, rule-based triage engine, duplicate clustering, SLA timers/alerts, payout ledger, researcher portal, and basic analytics (time-to-ack, time-to-fix, payouts).
Business model: low monthly subscription tiers for startups + optional SLA/white‑glove retainer for boutique programs; add-ons include managed triage, legal template bundles, or per-report processing for high-volume customers.
Go-to-market: target security-conscious seed-to-Series‑B startups via VC partnerships, security slack communities, and partnerships with boutique bug-bounty managers; offer a free onboarding trial with baseline SLA templates.
Differentiators: built specifically for small teams (not enterprises), no platform cut on researcher rewards, faster time-to-value than large platforms, and integrated AI to reduce triage labor by 50%+.
Success metrics & expansion: measure reduction in duplicate reports, median time-to-ack/fix, churn and ARR; expand later into continuous attack surface monitoring, marketplace of vetted researchers, and compliance reporting.
Your Roadmap:
MVP goal: deliver a lightweight web app that centralizes reports, auto-triages duplicates, sends researcher acknowledgements, and tracks SLAs/payouts.
Backend: Airtable (database) + Make.com/Make (automation) or Zapier to ingest reports (email/form/HTTP) and run triage rules.
Duplication & severity: implement simple fingerprinting (title+endpoint hash) + CVSS-lite scoring rules in Make/Integromat; store status in Airtable.
Researcher comms & AI: use OpenAI API or ChatGPT plugin to auto-draft acknowledgements, status updates and remediation summaries; add human review before send.
Payouts & SLAs: track deadlines in Airtable, use automated reminders (email/Slack) and Stripe for one-off payouts or invoices via PayPal/Stripe Connect.
Launch: offer 2–3 monthly plans (managed triage hours + platform access) and pilot with 3 friendly startups; collect feedback and iterate.