Ontic Technologies Inc. has bolstered its legal firepower with the hiring of Austin-startup veteran Scott Shepherd as its first chief legal officer and the appointment of Tom Mars, former general counsel for Walmart Inc., to its advisory board.
The Austin-headquartered startup has expanded rapidly since closing a $12 million series A funding round in April. The company has raised a total of about $18 million.
Ontic — which provides a digital platform that helps companies, schools and other organizations analyze data to anticipate possible physical security threats — now employs 67 people, 27 of whom are based in Austin. That's up from 59 employees in July, when the company created the Ontic Center for Protective Intelligence and named security expert Fred Burton to be the center's executive director. Ontic has employees working remotely throughout the United States, as well as an engineering team in Noida, India.
The company’s platform works by combining real-time data — such as social media posts, news articles and public records — and historical data to assess threats. It also provides research, investigating known actors identified as threats and discovering those that could pose danger.
Shepherd previously was the first in-house attorney for Austin-based ScaleFactor Inc., which announced in June it was shutting down due to plummeting sales it attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic. He also was chief legal officer at Khoros LLC, an Austin marketing-technology company created through the merger of Spredfast Inc. and Lithium Technologies LLC. Shepherd was vice president and assistant general counsel at Spredfast.
The University of Texas School of Law alumnus' legal experience includes stints as a Texas assistant attorney general and partner at Austin law firm Brown McCarroll LLP. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps for about 22 years, on active duty and the Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.
“We are pleased to welcome Scott to Ontic, whose proven legal expertise and leadership will serve our company and Fortune 1000 clients well, as we continue our growth trajectory and transforming this vital security sector,” said CEO Lukas Quanstrom, who co-founded the startup in 2017 with Gagan Jain and Thomas Kopecky, in a statement. “Likewise, we are honored to have Tom Mars as an Ontic advisor. He brings an invaluable breadth and depth of experience, from helming legal affairs at multinational retail corporations and state law enforcement roles to representing individuals and corporate clients in complex litigation proceedings.”
Mars was with Arkansas-headquartered Walmart (NYSE: WMT) for about 11 years, serving in the roles of general counsel, chief administrative officer and executive vice president. He is a trial lawyer for Mars Law Firm, which has offices in Arkansas and Atlanta, and has “has represented a number of high-profile student-athletes in matters involving the NCAA’s transfer rules,” according to his firm’s website. Mars also previously was director of the Arkansas State Police and a police officer in Lynchburg, Virginia.
“The pandemic, racial justice activism and political unrest have spurred a pileup of lawsuits against employers in state and federal courts,” Mars said in a statement. “This increase in litigation, combined with a dramatic increase in threat-related data, only compounds the number of ongoing threats and potential lawsuits corporations face on a more consistent basis from employees. The demand for a physical threat management solution like Ontic has never been greater.”
