From scrap to security: How CyberCrunch built success in an industry before it really existed

When CyberCrunch CEO Joe Connors joined the company in 2012, the e-waste industry as we know it didn’t exist.

Back then, Connors was an accountant. Several of his clients ran scrap companies. One of them was Serdar Bankaci, who in 2010 founded CyberCrunch as a modern answer to the “junk disposal” problem. 

Bankaci had the ability to see value where others saw only scrap, Connors said. He remembers challenging these skills by showing Bankaci a phone, a printer and a laptop and watching him accurately name each item’s resale value on the spot, again and again.

“He always talked about reuse,” Connors said. “I found it fascinating.”

He also had the realization that Bankaci was a couple of years ahead of the curve when it came to e-waste. Recognizing CyberCrunch’s potential, he left his consulting practice to join the company as VP of business development.

What began with one truck and an empty warehouse is now a 30-person team serving nearly every major hospital in Greater Philadelphia, among other clients.

As devices shrink and regulatory pressure rises, CyberCrunch has positioned itself as one of the few regional players offering what Connors calls the four pillars modern enterprises now require: recycling, data destruction, reporting and sustainability documentation.

From hauling to data wiping

Despite the rise of data breaches and corporate security requirements, Connors says most people still don’t really grasp what CyberCrunch does. 

When the company started charging people to pick up their e-waste, they were at odds with most scrap companies that would pick up old laptops and computer towers for free. But scrap companies that treated e-waste like any old junk weren’t providing the service that CyberCrunch developed: It not only takes the old devices, but also wipes the data left on them.

As devices have gotten smaller and more powerful, CyberCrunch pivoted away from the old scrap-driven model of hauling heavy TVs and equipment. The value was no longer in metals but in the data (and the risk) stored in laptops, phones, SIM cards and solid-state components. 

“We moved quickly to servicing the data and making sure the data was destroyed,” he said.

The idea of “destroying data” can sound abstract because data isn’t a physical object, which often leads people to assume the safest approach is simply smashing devices, Connors said. CyberCrunch’s work goes far deeper. He explained that they can either wipe devices for reuse or reduce to the size of a grain of rice when physical destruction is required, exceeding federal guidelines for data sanitization.

Connors said the real transformation for his firm came when companies realized that getting rid of a device meant dealing with what was inside it, not how much it weighed. 

Devices became more personal, more mobile and more powerful, carrying entire corporate histories in the palms of employees’ hands. “Now it’s much more tangible, but it’s also a lot more scary,” he said.

The industry that didn’t exist in 2012 needed standards, reporting, downstream accountability and secure destruction at scale. CyberCrunch built itself around that new definition of e-waste, years before most companies recognized it.

Honing the model before taking outside funding

For the first several years, Bankaci and Connors bootstrapped the business while they figured out what the industry would become. Connors wasn’t willing to take outside money until he was confident the model worked. 

“I didn’t know that we had a business,” he said. “I don’t mind wasting my money, but I’m not going to waste somebody else’s.”

That changed around 2017, when the partners set out to raise roughly half a million dollars to turn CyberCrunch from a scrappy operation into a scalable one. 

One longtime acquaintance who Connors said “bugged me for five or six years to invest” became an early investor. Shortly after, Ben Franklin Technology Partners came in with additional funding, giving CyberCrunch the early institutional backing it needed to grow.

“As a matter of fact, Ben Franklin gets paid off this year,” he said.

CyberCrunch raised an undisclosed amount of additional funds earlier this year and is now close to securing financing to expand further.

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Finding the right clientele

The CyberCrunch strategy is to zero in on mid-sized to large companies where it can make the biggest and fastest impact: organizations large enough to have meaningful device turnover, but small enough to move quickly.

“Our focus is any service-based company, 500 to 20,000 employees,” Connors said. Mega enterprises, he added, move too slowly and require too much time to navigate. “I’m not going after Ford Motor Company or GM.”

The shift to Windows 11 created a wave of ostensibly obsolete devices at these companies. “When you upgrade to Windows 11, half of your peripherals have to be replaced because they don’t work,” he said. More turnover means more devices to wipe, repurpose and process. 

Not to mention more demand for documentation and sustainability reporting.

While emissions disclosure rules and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) expectations are in a state of flux, CyberCrunch’s combined recycling, sustainability tracking and reporting capabilities have increasing value as organizations are feeling pressure from employees and customers to understand where their devices go and how they’re handled, Connors said.

CyberCrunch’s bet is that reuse, rigorous downstream oversight and strong reporting will differentiate the company as the market matures. 

“In theory, my claim to fame is that I don’t know how to do anything except make money,” Connors said. “Have I been successful? Wait and see.”