Advising for

Venture capitalists and Security Start-ups

Start-up and Founder Advising

Leading a start-up is exciting and challenging. You’ve got a great idea and an initial team, but you don’t have the ability to hire full-time experts in all the areas you need. Experienced Kopidion team members can help fill this gap by serving as advisors.

The typical model is one to two days a month of high impact help, which keeps costs low for the expertise you gain. We can serve as personal resources for the founder(s) and, if desired, interact with various members of your team.

We have deep experience in many areas of security from visualization and interface design to reverse engineering, analytic development, and network traffic analysis, as well as business aspects of security product development, sales, marketing, customer success, and VC engagement. We are security researchers and technologists, but have also led large organizations, managed multi-million dollar budgets, and can help you communicate better with potential customers and investors.
 
We’d like to see you succeed. Contact us if you want to have an initial discussion.

Venture Capitalist Advising

Making an investment in a young cybersecurity company is high risk and potentially high payoff proposition. Kopidion can help inform your investment decision.

We focus on Seed and Series A rounds of investment, but are also happy to assist pre-seed investors. The level of depth is up to you. We typically conduct two levels of analysis. A quick assessment as you evaluate potential candidates entering your pipeline and a deeper due diligence look if you are seriously considering an investment.

We’ve developed a reliable system of metrics and assessment criteria to quickly and effectively analyze a potential investment at the level of depth you prefer. We look at such factors as:

• Leadership Team – Does the team have the right security and technology expertise to succeed? We directly and indirectly know many of the people in the information security community and are adept at analyzing the security-related credentials and potential of teams.

• Technology – We’ll ask the hard questions about how the technology works, assess proof of concept software and hardware, product maturity, and the product development timeline. We advise on whether claims are realistic or unrealistic and if the technology is high-potential or vaporware.

• Market – To say that the cybersecurity marketplace is crowded is an understatement. Does the company stand-out and fill a true unmet market need or are there numerous better positioned competitors?

• Intellectual Property – Does the company have sufficient intellectual property and sufficiently novel talent and technology to prevent a competitor from duplicating their technology and business model? We will also assess the work factor required to overcome the moat.

• Business Model –  Some cybersecurity business models are promising, many are not. We can assess scalability, growth potential, exit strategy, and other important business concerns from an infosec community veteran perspective.

• Red Flags – Over the years we have developed a keen sense for promising companies, but also for detecting red flags that warn of hidden pitfalls.

Kopidion team members have experience in all sides of the security start-up equation, We’ve lived the start-up life ourselves, coached founders, and advised VCs. This rare combination gives us the ability to do the job right.

The failure rate of the typical start-up is high. Kopidion will help improve the odds of a high-payoff investment. We’ll analyze the company, meet with the founders, evaluate the technology, and give you an honest appraisal of potential risks and rewards quickly and effectively.