After eight years under the guidance of company founder Vytautas Kaziukonis, Surfshark has entered its next era with a new CEO – Dovydas Godelis.
In his own words, “Vytautas was more of a visionary at the strategic level”. Godelis, though, is looking to “stay very close to the employees”, retaining the singular vision that’s bound them together, and him to the company, for years.
So what does this mean for the future of Surfshark? I sat down with the company’s new thought leader to see what he envisions for the future, and what the driving forces will be behind his decision-making.
“My first answer was, ‘thank you, no.’”
Godelis was quick to concede he didn’t jump at the chance to take control at Surfshark. “My first answer was ‘thank you, no.’”
Despite over seven years in the company, most recently as COO, he hadn’t seen himself as the leader it would require. Regardless, it was the wish of Surfshark Founder and former CEO Kaziukonis that Godelis would replace him.
“He said, ‘Well, this is the way it will be, because the best leaders are the ones that don’t want to be a leader,” something Godelis claimed his predecessor had observed among his staff throughout his tenure on top.
Under Kaziukonis, Godelis rose from being an advertising specialist to Head of Paid and Mobile Marketing, Head of Growth, and finally COO before taking full control on March 17, 2026.
“The one thing that I don’t want to change is myself.”
As COO, Godelis admits he has already fixed many of the things he wanted to change at the company – leadership issues, structure, and decision making. Despite now having product and personnel under his purview, Godelis is keen to focus on simplifying what Surfshark already has.
“I think our weakness is that we have lots of things already. We should allocate more time and invest more in existing products.”
I still think there is so much potential with existing products to make them better.”
Dovydas Godelis, CEO of Surfshark
It’s a fair point. In the past three years alone, Surfshark has launched everything from a private search engine to a popular Alternative ID tool, not to mention the Incogni data removal service and recently launched HeyPolo location tracker – separate products but under the same company umbrella. A little focus on core business might not be such a bad idea.
“I still think there is so much potential with existing products to make them better,” chimes Godelis, “if you put everything on [the user’s] plate, there might be lots of confusion.”
“We want Surfshark to be the Revolut of cybersecurity.”
Don’t mistake Godelis’s quest for simplicity for a lack of ambition, though. Throughout our conversation, he regularly compared his vision to that of credit cards, “Why do people use credit cards instead of cash?” he started, “Because it’s seamless”.
“We want Surfshark to be the Revolut of cybersecurity,” Godelis explained, “one single app for everything you need to protect yourself.”
Revolut didn’t reinvent banking when it launched. Instead, it took a widely used concept, made it simple. It gave users the flexibility to choose what they wanted, and cheaply too.
Our mission is to build the most beloved cybersecurity products for everyone.”
Dovydas Godelis, CEO of Surfshark
Areas outside of ‘traditional’ banking, such as stocks and crypto, already existed. What Godelis finds most impressive about Revolut is the company’s ability to weave those functionalities and more into a one-app solution without overwhelming users.
Translating that approach to Surfshark won’t be simple, though. Surfshark’s array of functionality might all sit under a cybersecurity header but weaving together the likes of the VPN, antivirus, dark web monitoring, email aliasing, and more, and all the customisations and settings for each, will be a tough task if simplicity is paramount.
How to do that, without removing functionality, while still staying true to Surfshark’s mass-market appeal, will be quite the challenge.
In Godelis’ words, “Our mission is to build the most beloved cybersecurity products for everyone.”
“Our mission is to build the most beloved cybersecurity products for everyone.”
As ever, the problem for VPNs is that, as Godelis explains, “It’s hard to showcase value, you just have to trust it.”
If a VPN is doing its job, a user won’t notice it at all. That’s why, according to Godelis, underlining VPN’s use to new customers “starts with education”.
The theory goes that if more people understand tools such as password managers, antiviruses, and VPNs, the daily benefits become clearer. And, by keeping Surfshark at a low, accessible price, and including other key tools such as Antivirus, Surfshark gives itself an advantage by becoming an obvious entry point as the one unified protection solution Godelis is so keen for.
The only wrinkle is that some entry-level products still undercut Surfshark, because they’re free. And, if those free products seem to work, then customers might not realise what the real costs to them might be.
If you were happy with Everlink and Nexus that we introduced last year, there will definitely be something more.”
Dovydas Godelis, CEO of Surfshark
Bringing privacy to the masses is what Godelis intends to highlight and, for him “the first layer of defense is a password manager.”
Password managers, he thinks, give the practical benefits of password protection and storage, while also moving users away from insecure, more easily accessed solutions. While Surfshark is yet to offer such a tool, Godelis recommends 1Password.
Alongside this, he recommended a VPN and an antivirus. A password manager, then, is the one tool Surfshark is yet to introduce to complete its trinity, which begs the question – is there one on the cards? On that, Godelis kept his cards close to his chest.
Instead, he chose to drop a teaser on Surfshark’s server network technologies.
“If you were happy with Everlink and Nexus that we introduced last year, there will definitely be something more.”
The additions of a password manager and yet more ingenious infrastructure sound a long way from simple, though.
So, which is it to be from Godelis – more products for more customers or the Revolut-like one app to rule them all? It sounds like the next few new releases will show the way.
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