Some of D.C.'s newest cybersecurity investors have found their next portfolio company: Polarity, a D.C.-based commercial human memory-augmentation and collaboration platform. (If you read that and thought "WTF is that?" this company's tech could help answer that for you without leaving your browser.)
Strategic Cyber Ventures led a $3.5 million investment in the company that sets out to automate search engines. Tenable Network Security co-founder Ron Gula also invested in the round through his new investment fund, Gula Tech Adventures, which he co-founded with his wife, Cyndi.
Polarity was founded in 2014 by former intelligence officers and incident responders as a way of providing a safe way to transfer materials and automate search engine results. Its software is currently used by some of the world's largest financial institutions. For example, say you're in a listserv email conversation and someone you don't recognize pops up in the chain. With Polarity installed, the technology will automatically scan your previous accounts and searches and see where that name looks familiar. And it makes it easier to transfer over secure data and information to others on the security team when, for instance, someone leaves a company or position.
That's what Gula said he did when he was testing out the new software. He couldn't remember where he knew someone's name from in a listserv chat and then Polarity's technology recalled all of his mutual LinkedIn connections and other relevant information to help Gula remember.
Polarity plans to use the funds to support product development and hiring for the company's engineering and technology development teams along with sales and marketing. This is Strategic Cyber Ventures' fourth investment since it launched in February 2016, and its second in a local D.C. firm.
This innovation is what caught the eyes of SCV Chief Operating Officer Hank Thomas and Gula, both seasoned cybersecurity experts. For Strategic Cyber Ventures, the decision to invest just made sense. Thomas said the group has been working to build a portfolio that is like a "super-max prison." "We're not building bigger walls around your security system, but building a complement of companies that can integrate with each other," he told DC Inno.
Thomas said Polarity folds into their other SCV investments better than they had planned. "The common theme is that none of these companies claim to prevent anything from happening, but they do allow you to hunt for the adversary quicker and either deceive, divert or contain the adversary on your network," Thomas said.
Gula's venture fund Gula Tech Adventures has invested in 15 early-stage companies across the Mid-Atlantic all focused in the cybersecurity space. Although it launched officially in January, the new venture includes a lot of personal investments that Gula made in cyber companies throughout 2016 with his own funds. "What we’re doing at Gula Tech Adventures, we’re focusing on folks who are leaving the intelligence community and doing different things like this," Gula told DC Inno.
Gula also notes that Polarity's software just had a special something to it: "As a former vendor, I ran Tenable for 14 years, integrating topics is really really difficult. But I look at this problem of getting all of the data that you have to people who need them as a huge problem, and Polarity makes it real easy."
Both Gula and Thomas see their venture funds having a pretty "hands-on" investor role. They'll have board seats and serve as advisors for Polarity co-founder CEO Paul Battista and his team. "We want to find teams that are led by world-class people because the technology is always going to have to evolve," Thomas said. "We're not doubling down on technology. We want a team that wants to grow."
Prior to this investment, Battista said the company was pretty much bootstrapped with some angel funding behind them. They had other investment opportunities, but ultimately decided to go with Gula and SCV because of each one's investment philosophies.
"When you're a new product, you need to find folks who 'Get it,'" Battista said. "A lot of folks are going to understand the business model and the profitability, but the people who really understand what you're going after and what you're selling, they're going to be the best from an investor perspective."
Image used via CC0 Public Domain — credit Homestage
