Boston venture capitalists Chris Lynch and Cort Johnson of Accomplice have unveiled hack/secure, an investment syndicate that unites 25 cybersecurity entrepreneurs to fund 100 U.S.-based cybersecurity companies over the next three years.
hack/secure also announced the syndicate’s first investment is Boston-based startup Kolide, into which it has injected $1.6 million.
hack/secure’s mission is straightforward: It brings together cybersecurity entrepreneurs to invest in the next generation of U.S.-based companies that can secure the US against an ongoing global cyberwar.
“The world runs on software. It powers everything from the banks that govern our financial system, the computers that fly our airplanes and drive our cars, to the power plants that generate our energy,” said Lynch. “WWIII is already underway, and it’s a cyber war. We believe it will be won with hands on the keyboard, not boots on the ground. The cybersecurity industry is just as important to protecting the free world as the manufacturing industry was to supporting the Allied forces victory in WWII. hack/secure is our effort to ensuring America leads the protection of our way of life and that of the free world.”
The cybersecurity entrepreneurs forming the syndicate serve as lead investors (initial hack/secure syndicate members include Art Coviello, former CEO of RSA; Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid 7; Patrick Morley, CEO of Carbon Black, and Sam King, CSO of Veracode, among others). Using the power of the AngelList platform, when a lead finds a company he or she wants to invest in, hack/secure backs that lead’s investment with up to $250,000 of additional investment capital.
hack/secure is initially launching in four regions (Boston, New York, DC and Austin).
hack/secure’s first investment is Boston-based cybersecurity startup Kolide, a new venture formed by Jason Meller, former chief security strategist at FireEye, and Mike Arpaia and Zach Wasserman from Facebook’s elite security team. The latter two built and open-sourced osquery, which is used to ensure the security of hundreds of thousands of Facebook’s endpoints. osquery is at the heart of Kolide’s technology as well, which focuses on endpoint security and dev-operations.
"Wide proliferation of network encryption has effectively neutered some of the best detection tools security experts have relied on for decades,” said Meller. “Visibility at each individual machine is the only remaining effective way for organizations who care about cyber-attacks to regain that lost sight. Unfortunately, most of the endpoint technologies out there are proprietary, and you are effectively trusting the vendor that you aren't introducing more holes. An open source solution like Facebook’s osquery, which can be scrutinized and improved by every expert in the field, is the solution. A ton of organizations are already making a major investment in osquery because of its current capabilities. When they see the value we add with Kolide, their bet on the technology will be paid off 100-fold.”
Kolide has raised $1.6 million led by Dustin Willis Webber, CTO and co-founder of Critical Stack (acquired by Capital One). Webber is known for key open source contributions and founding multiple successful security startups. His investment is backed by hack/secure, Liam Randall, CEO of Critical Stack, and other security experts from its syndicate.
“Jason approached me with an incredible idea to leverage open source technology at the endpoint to solve some big challenges in a way I had never seen before,” said Webber. “As someone who has built their entire career contributing to and relying on open-source technology, I understood the benefits to that approach instantly. What you have here are the raw elements to break the endpoint market wide-open and I knew that if we could bring in additional open source innovators like Mike and Zach, we’d have something super special here to invest in through hack/secure.”
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