Accelerating the Future of Cyber Security – Jason Chen and Lindsey Polley, MACH37

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstrong TV. I am really happy to make you all aware today of a project.

I've known about for some time called Mark 37. We're going to tell you all about it. I have two key people.

From the project to to introduce you to help you with it. Let me first introduce you to Jason Chen Jason. Welcome.

Welcome to Tech strong TV. How are you? I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me on. Good. Hey, if you wouldn't mind give people a little bit of your background.

Sure. So hi everyone. I'm Jason Chen on the CEO of Mach 37 in CEO of venturescope parent company over Mach 37.

I am a four Town four times startup founder and had been working in the startup accelerator space for about 15 years now kind of before accelerators and incubators all became kind of common buzzwords within the startup ecosystems. I was kind of a one-man show and then over my career have evolved to running multiple different types of accelerators having been a Founder myself in realizing everything that needs to go into doing a startup and recognizing all the support that is needed to be successful have been active in the accelerator space for a while as it means to to give back to Founders and to help them make their dream come true with their business. Excellent.

We're going to jump more into Mark 37 in just a second. But first I want to introduce our second guess and she's Dr. Lindsey Polley that I get that one, right?

Yep, Dr. Lindsay is also with Venture scope and and Lindsay maybe a little bit about you. Yeah, thanks for having us Alan.

So as you said Dr. Lindsey Polley, I'm currently the director for disruptive Technologies at Adventure scope as well as the director for cyber and space intelligence at Mach 37. So my career began back at the Rand Corporation.

I worked on their Science and Technology projects as a code lead for their defense. So DOD DHS and IC projects worked in their cyber cell also got pulled into what became their emergent Technology Group. So we worked on anything from hypersonics to AI spoof being and then of course more recently things like misinformation disinformation platform.

Topics currently like I said working with venturescope supporting some of our DOD clients and also at Mach 37 supporting our cybersecurity and cyber adjacent startups in navigating how they are pitching their project or products and how they are getting additional investor funding. I love it. You know.

so I wasn't aware of the venturescope was the Parrot of the Mark 37 accelerator. So, you know, my let's spend a little bit of time kind of explaining Venture scope and what it is and does. Sure, either one of you.

Yeah, I can jump in on that island. So venturescope was founded back in 2007. It is an innovation strategy and Venture in advisory investment firm.

We work with public and private sector organizations to apply different Innovation methodologies internally oftentimes to help them to develop internal new capabilities, right and to apply a lot of the lessons that are taught through accelerators such as Mach 37, bring those basically in-house to large organizations to help them develop those new capabilities. We also do a lot of emerging text out scouting Lindsey actually leads that work for us. And so we help advise large organizations on build by partner decisions when they're kind of scanding the landscape of emerging Technologies and seeing what's out there.

What should they consider building on their own internally? What should they license or acquire or what should they go out and potentially partner with a young startup that's doing something truly disruptive to see if they can kind of bring those resources their resources to bear in catapult that company forward a lot faster. So we do a lot of work with a large organizations helping to advise them on that Mach 37.

Just since you brought it up was actually founded in 2013 By The Commonwealth of Virginia. It was operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia for about six years. They then brought in venturescope and given that we had operated accelerators worked with a lot of startups invested in startups.

Our team has a lot of founder experience. They basically brought us into operate the program starting in 2017, and it was actually in 2018 where we had discussions with the Commonwealth about acquiring Mach 37 from it privatizing it so that we could basically move it into You know the next phase of its life and tweak it to modernize it and bring some new things to bear with it. So we actually ended up acquiring majority ownership of Mach 37 in 2018.

And then we acquired the remaining shares of my 37 and 2020 in operate it solely through ventroscope at this point, but we still work with in our partner with the Commonwealth of Virginia as well as a lot of other public sector organizations. Excellent. So let's you know, I think a great segue.

I you know, I've been involved in the incubator accelerator. Marketplace for a long time. I actually one of the companies I started still secure was started in a Mobius incubator back in Colorado.

And then I was there when Tech starts which to me was kind of the first accelerated that I was familiar with techstars was started by my friend Bradfield and David Cohen and you know early on I was really inside it right privy and helping and all of that. Of course as I think you said Jason it's become incubator accelerators become much more. Accepted known.

It's a past that people go by it's a preferred path people go by now to launch their startups. What was the special source for Mark 37, and I remember when it was launched even Was that it was in that Northern Virginia, Washington DC Beltway region? And so there was always this special relationship to the Federal.

Marketplace and all the dead brings which you know, Dr. Lindsay Dior expertise and and your background with rent, right? It kind of lends itself to the city the idea of DOD and space and you know, all of the Kind of things that the federal government is really digging deep on.

You know that that's actually very true Allen when mock was stood up by the Commonwealth who is intended to take advantage of being, you know geolocated right with the federal government and taking advantage of that that Tech that cyber Tech Corridor in Northern Virginia and frankly even up into Maryland what we actually found when we took over the program is that there had been a fair amount of contact with the federal government civil DOD National Security you name it, but that it actually didn't have a ton of inroads a lot of the companies that had gone through Mach 37, you know during this first five to six years they were interested in working with the federal government. But a lot of attraction that they had to date was actually focused very much a lot more into private sector and so fast forward to you know, where we are now and since we've taken over 37 That is still the case where a lot of the companies that go through mock are very focused on the private sector, but we had made some intentional inroads into trying to develop deeper relationships with the federal government. That's one of the things that Lindsay is helping to lead as well to basically see if you know if we can help those companies get adopted and find use cases within the federal government coincidentally, you're probably already aware of this, you know over the last year two years or so, there's been a bigger emphasis on Dual use Technologies.

And so that has benefited Mach 37 and the Outreach that we are doing with the federal government and and it is benefited obviously the founders and the startups that we work with and trying to put them in front of the federal government. I still think there's a lot of work to be done there the federal government in some plate pockets is doing a good job of figuring out how to work with early stage startups, but I still think there's a fair amount of room for improvement, which is exactly where mock 37 is stepping in to see if we about Absolutely. Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry. You had Dr. Lindsey.

Yes. So piggybacking off of what what Jason said about duel use. So the point of the federal government bringing in do we use right is to make these systems and networks and capabilities more resilient.

So one way that we do that as an accelerator is making sure that our startups coming in are what we say Mission aware but Market focused so they're aware of these different missions that might be applicable to their particular capability, but they are focused on getting Market traction and getting a lot of their funding from the market. That's how you develop a healthy startup ecosystem that can serve the government and the you know, the private sector as well. And it makes the government and you know the dod Etc less dependent on on contractors for being able to fulfill in develop new types of capabilities by using these, you know exploiting what we have what we can in building what we must type of a mentality.

That's where mock 37 I think stands out among other accelerators. you know, I I think it's almost more than a dual role. It's really become a public-private partnership.

Yeah, right, especially insecurity. Right what we deal with things like a software supply chain security and that's bombs and these things you know, we've always had miter very involved in that sort of kind of quasi-governmental, you know, it goes back and forth the nest and so forth, but you know, which the sea sign the executive board is coming directly from the White House. I really pulled security front and center there Dr.

Lindsey. I want to explore Your Role more though, repeat your title if you don't mind and and share with the audience what exactly is it you're doing Yes, so dual currently dual-hatted adventurescope. I'm the director for disruptive Technologies while at Mach 37.

I'm the director for cyber and space intelligence. so at venturescope really in both in both capacities, I'm supporting the stakeholders that we support through both entities de-risk their decisions around new technologies for both investment purposes and roadmap development purposes to by providing them Market Intelligence on either new capabilities or non-traditional Market players and benchmarking those players and those capabilities against each other so In in a nutshell we are helping these these entities really understand where they fit in the emergent technology and Innovation ecosystem and help identify which capabilities they can best leverage to meet their end goals. Now that is executed a couple different ways for venturescope.

There's a portfolio of options for how we support these stakeholders, but one example that we can talk about is we have embedded teams that support some of our our DOD efforts and these teams actually sit with the you know, software development teams and help identify new tools that might be coming online how to better secure their software their software Stacks how to better secure their software development pipelines and make those development teams more agile and flexible so that they can meet the needs of warfighters in the moment that they, you know need a specific tool. instead of waiting six months In the Mach 37 capacity in addition to sort of taking that that Venture scope roll into mach37. I also directly Mentor some of our cyber focused or cyber adjacent startups to help them better articulate their product offerings to the defense and the dod and you know the prime stakeholders.

so Actually, so it you minor thing Mark 37 had a distinct cyber Focus. But is are there other kinds of startups that are not necessarily cyber focuses. That's kind of what I'm hearing.

But historically Allen you my 37 when it was sort of it was the Cyber accelerator it pivoted very very quickly very very hard into cybersecurity, which I think Mach 37 is is known best for since we acquired mock 37 since 2018 as Lindsey kind of alluded to earlier those cyber adjacent spaces that we feel you know, security is important is where we've expanded a lot of our work a lot of the tech scouting that we're doing in a lot of the companies that we're trying to source and bring through mach37. I would say that, you know, probably 60% 70 60 70 percent of the companies that go through mock are still a very very specific cyber security oriented company, but we had been sprinkling in a handful, you know, every cohort that are in those tangential spaces, right? So by tangential space, you know un Where security is important unmanned systems Quantum Computing AI machine learning neural networks those sorts of areas.

So as a result That given cybersecurity is a horizontal given some of those cyber, you know tangential spaces are also horizontals. It has expanded our deal flow. It has expanded to a significant degree the number of Technologies and emerging technologies that we are looking at to Source our cohorts and and that's exactly why you know, Lindsay has those cool titles that you heard her mention.

I think she has the best titles in the company and she definitely has some of the best work that we do. So yeah, very cool point. To your point Alan earlier, you know, you're talking about how the private sector and commercial or I'm sorry commercial and government are becoming more intertwined and that's where you know, we can't just be focused on cybersecurity more anymore because cybersecurity is now part of everything and I think space is a great example of that.

We've seen the government commercial intertwining of those capabilities and those efforts not only become more aligned but materializing, right and we're seeing like the additional launch capabilities that are coming on with these these Partnerships developing. So this whole trend of the new commercial space economy that you're hearing about is not just great for you know, people who are 3D printing rocket boosters, but it's also a great opportunity for the Cyber and cybersecurity Community because now we have a whole entire new domain with its own types of you know, similar but different Architecture archetypes or architectures and tools that need to be secured in you know, increasingly innovative ways. guys You know, I want to make sure we we left enough time here for people out here who you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs there's all in within the tech world.

There's a lot of tech people who hey, they want to start their own they have they think they have a great idea. What's the best way to engage Mark 37? What's the on-ramp here?

Well, if the email us at hello and Mach 37 calm that's a great way to get in front of our Ops Team that'll definitely get in front of me. It'll get in front of Lindsay or get in front of our other operations director and our CEO that's an easy way to do. So, but they can also swing by if they're in the area, you know, we are active trying to become more active coming out of covid attending events.

We're going to be hosting some events this coming year in 2013. Excuse me, 2023. We're going to be celebrating our 10 year anniversary.

So we're in the early stages of planning some a big event to to make note of that. So yes, you know being cyber we are definitely accessible digitally, you know, but we recognize that you know, it's always better to meet folks in person and frankly from an accelerator standpoint. That's one of our key value props.

It's kind of being that congregator, right? And so we would encourage anyone who's listening. Who is interested in you know either, you know bringing their startup to Mach 37 and having it go through Mach 37 or if there are potential Mentor or investor or someone working at a large prime or some with the federal government.

We would welcome them joining us at our events getting to know our teams our team and getting to know our alumni and seeing how we could work together. Love it and just for people out there. It's the website for the program is mock.

com. That's correct. All right, Jason, Dr.

Lindsey. Thanks so much for being our guest here on techstrong TV. Keep us posted especially as these events are coming up and we could do some coverage.

Oh, that would be great. Thank you very much for having us down our pleasure. All right, we're gonna take a quick break on Tech strung.

We'll be back in a moment.