Cyberstarts, a venture capital firm focused on building next generation cyber companies, announced the closing of Cyberstarts Seed Fund III “with $60 million committed capital to invest in early stage cybersecurity companies.”
This fund was “raised only a few months after the firm raised $200 million for a new opportunity fund in February 2022, bringing total assets under management to $374 million.”
In addition, Cyberstarts announced “the appointment of Doug Merritt, former President and CEO of Splunk, to chair Sunpeak, its new go-to-market (GTM) advisory board.”
Sunpeak will provide Cyberstarts’ portfolio companies “with hands-on guidance from world-renowned technology leaders on scaling GTM strategy and creating repeatable sales cycles to ensure early success.” The addition of this community is “a natural next step in the firm’s mission to build the world’s most important cybersecurity companies.”
Since its inception in 2018, Cyberstarts has “formed one of the world’s most successful venture capital firms focused on funding, launching and supporting early stage cybersecurity companies and entrepreneurs.”
With its entrepreneur-backed model, Cyberstarts’ investors and limited partners (LPs) are comprised of the industry’s most experienced professionals “including Shlomo Kramer of Cato Networks, Imperva and Check Point, Marius Nacht of Check Point, Nir Zuk from Palo Alto Networks, Udi Mokady from CyberArk, Nir Polak of Exabeam and Michael Shaulov of Fireblocks to name a few.”
These investors “provide strategic counsel to portfolio companies and entrepreneurs from guidance on product-market fit to talent recruitment and everything in between.”
Doug Merritt joins Cyberstarts as Chair of Sunpeak, “the firm’s new GTM advisory board to help portfolio companies scale up their business.” In this role, Merritt will “work with Cyberstarts to recruit some of the nation’s top GTM experts composed of CEOs, CROs, CMOs and VPs of Sales to design a measurable, KPI-driven approach to advising, nurturing and scaling early stage portfolio companies.”
Prior to Cyberstarts, Merritt served “as President and CEO of Splunk and also held senior leadership roles at large enterprise companies including Cisco, SAP and PeopleSoft.”
Lior Simon, General Partner of Cyberstarts, said:
“Building the world’s most important cybersecurity companies requires more than capital – it requires a methodical and holistic investment model from day one by investing in the right talent and supporting them across every business function from initiation to product-market fit and beyond. We take a unique approach to mentoring our portfolio companies via our Sunrise and now, Sunpeak communities. Doug brings unparalleled experience in executing go-to-market strategy and will be key to helping our portfolio accelerate business potential, while minimizing risk.”
Doug Merritt, Chair of the GTM advisory board at Cyberstarts, remarked:
“I’m very impressed by the success Cyberstarts and its portfolio has experienced in such a short period of time. I’m excited to work with the team to build the Sunpeak community with top GTM leaders from across the globe and help the next generation of cybersecurity entrepreneurs scale their businesses rapidly and strategically.”
For more details on this update, check here.
