There are not many people, even in Silicon Valley, that can put both PayPal and SpaceX on their CV.

One is Elon Musk, a serial entrepreneur who built up PayPal before putting it on the public market, selling his shares to eBay, and founding SpaceX, which specialises in the modest trade of space exploration.

But a lesser known player in the PayPal story is Branden Spikes. A rare native to Silicon Valley, Spikes began working with Musk at the web software company Zip2 in 1997 as a lead systems engineer.

After Musk’s move on to PayPal in 1999 Spikes followed, working at the payments company as director of IT for over two years. The pair then went on to Musk’s next venture SpaceX, where Spikes spent almost a decade as chief information officer.

And then, at the start of 2012, he bailed.

You’ve really made the grade

Most people would be eager to hang on to Musk, an entrepreneur who appears to have the Midas touch when it comes to Silicon Valley start-ups. But Spikes’ ambition is somewhat more daunting than exploring space. In short, he wants to fix the Web.

Sitting in a central London restaurant near Haymarket, the hopeful entrepreneur told CBR that his interest in cybersecurity dates back way before his days as one of Musk’s right-hand men.

"Before I was of legal age to be arrested I was in trouble for hacking," he said. "After learning so much [working with Musk] I thought it would be the next challenge to start a company, and then it became a question of: ‘To do what?’"

The "what" turned out to be Spikes Security, which after three years in gestation is rolling out across Europe and North America with the goal of protecting users from the dangers of web browsing.

Right now web users can expect a toxic mix of phishing links, drive-by malware downloads and spam adverts for products not suitable for a family website – even as they visit trusted websites.

The response? A product called AirGap.

Sitting in a tin can

From the user’s point of view AirGap operates much like a browser, with the back-end creating a virtual machine for each session. This in turn renders and delivers the content requested by the user, sanitising it along the way and making it safe.

That, at least, is the plan. At present the product is not quite in the shape Spikes wants it – at least not for consumers. "If you ran it you probably wouldn’t like it," he told CBR with an apologetic shrug. "You’d say: ‘Screw this.’"

As Spikes knows, the layman expects his Internet fast and accessible. But the banks, airlines and government agencies already working with his firm are willing to put up with some inconvenience in order to prevent themselves being attacked, and so many have signed up.

For Spikes Security working with corporations has allowed it to prove the product works and refine it for plebeian use. Gaining some customers also helped the company to garner investment, something it has struggled with in the past despite its founder’s pedigree and contacts.

"You have to have more than a good idea [to gain funding]," Spikes says, arguing that the market is not as gung-ho as it was during the Dotcom Bubble he lived through earlier in his career. "You need a shipped product and customers deployed."

Stepping through the door

Right now the firm is shipping its product as a box to firms that need to solve the Web problem, but the future for the firm is in the software services side of things, particularly in terms of supporting its users.

Whether it will eventually list on a public stock exchange or be acquired by some security giant is something Spikes is ambivalent for the time being. So far the firm has been funded some $11m (£7m) from a handful of venture capitalist and the founder’s pocket.

For Spikes the importance is in the mission. "I think the freedom we take for granted online is really valuable," he said. "You’re not going to make hackers go away but I think we can make it considerably less profitable for them."