Jordan Mayer, Founder & CEO, Mayday Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is top of mind for almost every company across major industries. Invest: sat down with Jordan Mayer, founder and CEO of Mayday Cybersecurity, to learn about how he started the company and what’s made Pittsburgh a great place to live and do business. “It’s super community-focused. It also has this unique mix of academia, tech, and blue-collar grit,” Mayer said.
What is the vision behind Mayday, and how did the company get started? I came to Pittsburgh in 2015 to attend graduate school at Carnegie Mellon. That experience completely changed the direction of my life. I came from an accounting and finance background, but CMU opened up a whole new world for me. I started to realize how much of our lives are governed by electronic signals flying between pieces of metal, and it blew my mind. I joined the cybersecurity program and found it ticked all the boxes: it evolves constantly, it challenges you to keep up, and it impacts every industry. Even from the start of my career, I knew I wanted to start something of my own. I approached each job with a mindset of being a sponge, learning everything I could. I’m also a firm believer that life is about balance: knowing when to accelerate, when to pause, and when to let things unfold. I’m not built to work for someone else forever, and I wanted to build something meaningful from my own vision.
The name Mayday comes from the international distress signal, “Mayday, help is on the way.” My goal is to bring some color to an industry that’s traditionally very rigid. You picture cybersecurity folks as silent, hoodie-wearing coders, but I think it can be more expressive and creative. Across industries, innovation thrives when you blend design, tech, and passion. That’s the vibe we’re going for with Mayday.
What makes Pittsburgh a great place for Mayday?
Pittsburgh has these tight-knit, walkable neighborhoods like Lawrenceville, Shadyside, Bloomfield, and The Strip. It’s super community-focused. It also has this unique mix of academia, tech, and blue-collar grit. CMU and UPMC drive innovation, but you also have that strong work ethic from the industrial roots. There’s a real ecosystem here that supports small businesses, including support for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs. Not everyone wants to be a business owner, but those who do need community and infrastructure. Pittsburgh offers that.
You’re working closely with Carnegie Mellon University through the Innovation Lab — could you share more about the goals of this collaboration?
When I was at CMU, I had an internship with Deloitte in New York City, and honestly, it was not great. I felt stuck behind red tape, doing tasks like fixing PowerPoints. I wanted to be tackling real problems. I created the Naptic Summer Innovation Lab to give students the experience I wish I had. We received 60-plus applications in just a few days — all of this top-tier talent in Pittsburgh looking for meaningful internships. We now have two CMU interns working with us and are doing an awesome job.
We’re living in an amazing moment in tech. With AI, we can now structure massive amounts of unstructured data and turn that into useful, contextualized insights. That alone is powerful. And when you apply it to machines and workflows, you unlock real value. The key is to do this securely. Although people are adopting new tech fast, it doesn’t mean it’s benefiting them. If security is missing, it can create more risk. That’s where we come in, making sure these tools empower people without harming them.
What are your goals and priorities for Mayday in the coming years?
The mission with Mayday is to change the mindset and approach of cybersecurity from reactive to proactive. Right now, most companies only act when something goes wrong. That doesn’t work anymore. Our approach involves deception technology. We have the Mayday Device, which is a decoy system placed in your infrastructure, either physically or virtually. It looks vulnerable, but it has no business function. If someone is poking around in there, it means they shouldn’t be. When someone interacts with it, we trigger alerts, record logs, and capture everything. That data flows into our secure, AI-driven workflow via Naptic. We contextualize it and deliver the intel to the right people in real time. You can even set up automatic responses — like locking user accounts — to buy time while you investigate. The goal is actionable, real-time intelligence that doesn’t rely entirely on humans, but still respects data privacy. That’s the direction we’re building toward. I think it’s the future of security.
Ultimately, Mayday and Naptic are about giving small teams the power to act securely, intelligently, and fast — without trading privacy for performance.
