Chris Price travelled to Vilnius, Lithuania, to interview Surfshark’s new CEO, Dovydas Godelis, about the future of cybersecurity… 

Nestled in Vilnius’ bustling stands the sleek glass-and-steel offices of cybersecurity firm Surfshark. Now a gleaming sanctuary for digital innovation, the location looked very different a hundred years ago when it was a sprawling factory belonging to , a Soviet-era hosiery and sock company that once defined local manufacturing.

Today, the only real remnant of the past is the single chimney, complete with a decorative tap, that lies in the grounds, as well as the textured patterning of the brick building next to it, which pays tribute to the old textile firm. Instead, in its place there are now trendy open-plan workspaces, complete with a gym, music room and a relaxation room with some very effective massage chairs. There’s even a room with a , although sadly it was locked during our visit!

Here companies such as Surfshark and its sister company, are headquartered. And it was also here where I sat down for an exclusive conversation with during a three-day visit to Vilnius and Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas.

Having risen through the ranks since joining the company in 2018 when it was a lean startup of just 30 people, Godelis now aims to steer Surfshark into its next stage of growth. I talked to him about hybrid working and the company’s plans to address consumer needs in this era of AI.

One thing I have noticed during my visit is just how many people working in this business are quite new. Having been here since 2018, you must have seen massive changes. What are the growth challenges like when you’re managing a business that’s growing so quickly?

So as an organisation, of course, there are different stages. I think the biggest leap regarding the number of employees and growth happened during COVID, and that was a transformational period because we were not fully adjusted for remote work in that kind of environment, and we still were operating with a startup mindset.

After COVID, we also had the same startup mindset, but we had twice as many employees, and of course there were internal operational challenges. But, you know, it’s nothing that is not solvable. We are in a strong position; we have lots of strong colleagues here growing this business. So I’m happy where we are regarding internal operations and how we are managing. We support this mixed model with employees working from the office and working from home.

Do you think this hybrid model (three days in the office) is a better way of working than fully remote working?

I think if we went fully remote, it would only be a matter of months, maybe a year, before the culture of the organisation collapsed, because it would just be a person looking at a screen, connecting to different Slack and Gmail accounts. We don’t want that. We have lots of strong people who stay here, not just for salary, but for other people and for opportunities to grow. So that’s why we prioritise office first.

The other thing that obviously has changed is the type of company that you are as well. You’ve moved from being a pure VPN company into cybersecurity. What do you see as the main growth areas?

I’d like to correct you there, because our organisation was founded in 2018 by Vytautas Kaziukonis and since day one – and I remember when I joined the organisation, there were about 30 people – he said that Surfshark was meant to be more than just a VPN company.

You know, that’s why it’s not called “Surfshark VPN,” just “Surfshark.” Even though the first solution that we released was the VPN, within a year we released a data leak monitoring solution called Surfshark Hacklock now rebranded as .

And since then, every year or so we’ve released new products. Yet we’re still perceived as a VPN organisation by me and by the majority in the broader audience. We’re still a strong VPN provider, but now we’re expanding into scam protection – that’s another big topic for the broader population.

Do you see yourselves as a direct-to-consumer company like McAfee? Is that where you see a lot of your resources being developed – especially around AI and how you can help consumers spot scams?

We only started building the scam vertical this year. I think legacy players such as McAfee and others have had similar solutions under antivirus – they just position them differently. We didn’t have those solutions, so we’re building them along the way.

We’ve had antivirus for quite some time already, which is a top-notch product from my point of view, but I’m not afraid of those bigger legacy players. I think the end goal is consumer trust. People trust our brand, Surfshark, as we decided to build those new solutions under the same brand and not pivot by creating something completely different.

Regarding resource allocation, there’s no intention to remove our focus from VPN or other security products, because the products support each other. So you can’t say, ‘Okay, now we’ll do 50% less of VPN and more scam protection.’ That’s why we’re growing, because we want to keep the same focus and attraction for the VPN solution. After all, we have lots of existing customers who trust us, and we have many millions more customers who will choose us in the future because of our VPN solutions.

But at the same time, we’re hiring and expanding in order to strengthen the scam vertical and give people what they want.

And is it mainly English-speaking markets that you are focused on?

For us, it’s easier in English-speaking markets, and it’s quite good here in Lithuania to speak English, but we’re not necessarily looking forward to just the US market. Everybody focuses on the US, but maybe this is not where we should focus. We’re keeping our radar quite wide.

Of course, historically, for the past eight years, the Western world has been performing better for us in comparison to the rest of the world. But as we’re expanding into different solutions, I think it’s just a matter of where the problems are and whether or not we can solve them.

How does it work with Nord Security as a sister company because of shared ownership? How do you differentiate those services?

So we are under one group, which is called Cyberspace. There is Nord Security, there is Surfshark, and then there is our support centre, CyberCare. These companies operate completely separately. So there is no clash where we’re going. Nord is also in a phase of repositioning as a next-gen antivirus company; they have their threat intelligence solution. We are leaning more towards specific niche methods such as scam protection, while at the same time maintaining this single-stop security suite app that we’ve been developing for the past eight years.

And is it fair to say that your business is moving more towards mobile devices?

I think the whole market is moving more towards mobile devices. Over time, we have seen more customers come to us through mobile devices, so definitely mobile is a priority. But at the same time, we’re also investing in other platforms.

Apple is a problem, isn’t it, for scam protection and being able to scan text messages in real-time?

The same thing happened with messages. Now you can categorise and read messages from phone numbers which are not in your contacts. So there are some possibilities. We also have the possibility to do call scam protection and are in collaboration with them to get access and do that on our side.

What about deepfakes, because that seems to be a massively growing area for scams. Are your R&D teams looking into that?

It’s a tough challenge as AI is advancing quite fast. But deepfakes are something that we’re investing in to understand and to give solutions to customers, because yes, it’s a problem, especially if it’s targeted specifically at the person.

Our end goal is not to eliminate all deepfakes regarding disinformation, but to take a more targeted approach. I think there are different layers to how to do that, because at the end of the day, if there’s a deepfake asking you to do certain things, this is where Surfshark can step in and tell the user that maybe this is not the right place for you to enter your personal details.

Our goal is to work in the background so that users have complete peace of mind. That’s why they trust Surfshark, because we are an effortless solution for them at an affordable price.

As a product, no. Our focus as a product is not fighting disinformation. It’s more about providing solutions regarding privacy and security.

We’ve been doing that for the past eight years, and we’ll continue doing that for the next 100 years. But regarding disinformation, and as you mentioned – our location – we have concerns. And as an organisation, as a group, we are investing in educating people about potential threats regarding disinformation.

That’s why we’re investing in the conference that you will be attending (Disinfo 2026) because, as Lithuanians, we care about this country, we care about the people, and we’re doing everything that’s in our power to help society better identify disinformation.

So we’re doing that through multiple initiatives. Sponsoring conferences is one thing. We also support and journalists around the world where it’s needed with the Surfshark Emergency VPN.

Chris Price: 

I see you’ve also recently launched a new service called HeyPolo. Can you tell me a little bit about this and how it fits into your portfolio?

So is our newest product in our group, focusing more on physical security (enabling families to share their location and information). Though we have a separate CEO for the HeyPolo product (Edvinas Sersniovas), we provide consultancy because, as a product is growing, sometimes you need people faster than you’re able to hire them.

This is where we step in, because we have additional manpower to help them with marketing the product. So this is how the collaboration works. It’s not that we don’t know what is happening. We are supporting them because it’s in our interest to make sure that the brand succeeds, and then we will integrate them in any possible way that we see best for our customers.

And you’ve recently acquired Optery, a tool that removes your personally identifiable information from data brokers and websites. Is data removal a growing area as well?

Yes, it is. We started with Incogni three or four years ago, and it’s grown a lot in that time. It’s now dominating the data removal service. We saw the opportunity to acquire additional companies. So the first acquisition happened two years ago, when IronWall – also a US company – joined our group.

Their focus is more on B2B and B2G (Business to Government), protecting judges, lawyers, and politicians. And Optery is the second acquisition, also in the data removal vertical. They have a quite different business model; they have a freemium segment, which we’re not covering in Incogni.

We see a real opportunity in diversification, and we think it’s something we will be expanding and growing in the future. The vertical is still not fully established, but we’re building it.

Chris Price was a guest of Surfshark in Lithuania