Cybersecurity Accelerators: Seizing Opportunity in a Shifting Landscape with Jennifer Addie and Jason Chen | SecOps Vision 2024

Hi, I am Jennifer Addie, and with me is Jason Chen. And we are from Venture Scope, and we also own and operate Mach 37, a cyber accelerator, uh, based out of Washington DC in Northern Virginia. Um, Jason, do you wanna tell him a bit about Mach?

Hi everyone. I'm Jason Chen. I'm the CEO of vent scope and CEO of Mach 37.

It's great to be here with you today. Thanks for for joining us. Uh, just to give you a little bit of background, um, Mach 37 is a cyber accelerator.

And if you're not familiar with accelerators, you're probably asking yourself what does that mean? And so Jen and I are here today to talk to you about that. So, you know, when you, when we talk to a lot of people about acceleration, and people are very interested, um, and they wanna know the role of accelerators in cybersecurity and what accelerators actually do.

So the question of what is an accelerator, uh, and what is an incubator and how do those differ, uh, comes up a lot. So we figured we'd baseline with that, you probably already know, but if you're new to it, this may help. So essentially, an accelerator is, uh, basically a program to which new founders and companies apply, and it is a pressure testing type of program, usually about three months long, but sometimes it could be longer.

And in it is a variety of different, um, workshops and curriculum to help them fill in any gaps that they might not have to help them get to market. It's for sort of early to growth stage companies, and the intent is to connect them with a really vast network of different POCs across technology and investment and business in order to get them the, the data that they need to form and, you know, iterate on their product as well as find customers and investment traction. Incubators and accelerators in particular have become very, very popular over the last 10 to 15 years.

Thereabouts. Uh, you may already be familiar, there's been a very, very big upswing in entrepreneurship and, and folks starting their own companies, their startups, particularly tech startups. So, long story short, um, incubators and accel accelerators are stood up to help foster productive supported environments for entrepreneurs and their ventures.

But as Jen started to, to explain, they do it in very diff in slightly different ways, and sometimes folks will get a little bit confused about them. And, but to add to that confusion, there's also something new, uh, within the past couple years called a startup studio. So let's just step back for a second and let you guys know a little bit more about this stuff.

Right? So Jen already explained kind of like what the high level overview of the accelerator is, kind of with that pressure tested three month, you know, time bound environment, you know, boot, boot, kind of boot camping for, for startup founders. An incubator is much more laid back and chill.

Think kind of like your coworking space, kind of where you can go there. And you have resources that have on a lot of entrepreneurs and startups need everything from mentorship, maybe even some, some programs, some workshops, um, other entrepreneurs around you. So you have peers, but the difference is that it's kind of, kind of like a buffet, right?

There's no set order to it, and you can kind of take from it what you want. Whereas, as Jen was explaining an accelerator, it brings a lot of the same resources and more to the table for the entrepreneur and startup, but bounds it in a very time constrained bootcamp, uh, pressure tested environment that has a set curriculum, as Jen was explaining, to help you go from point A to to B and usually that point B, particularly for early stage startups and why they look for early accelerators that f that help focus their time and energy and support for early stage startups. A lot of that is some early customer discovery to help identify product market fit for startups, introduce them to mentors who, as we at Mach 37, like to say, can help, help provide brokered introductions for entrepreneurs and startups to potential customers, potential channel partners, and of course investors.

Because as you all know, most founders don't have a whole lot of capital, right? They quit their job, they're maybe pulling it, pulling finances from their 4 0 1 k, or maybe they're borrowing from a family or friend, right? They don't have a long runway.

And so kind of helping the founders and the startups refine those core principles and elements of their business in a very, very, very short period of time is critical. And so an accelerator help does that. On the accelerator side of things, accelerators usually don't just take anyone and everyone.

They're providing a very high benefit, um, resource intensive, uh, select environment for these entrepreneurs, right? The potential customers, the potential channel partners, the investors, they're out there. They're out there in this startup world, they're scanning it, looking for some really interesting technologies, solutions that are solving key problems.

And obviously very, you know, good well-rounded founders, which I want to get to in a second, and Jen and I can get to. But an accelerator's value proposition to the investors and to cut early potential early adopting customers and channel partners is basically, they've helped filter through a lot of what's out there already. So another key differentiator for an accelerator is that startups need to apply most of the time to, in order to be accepted into an accelerator.

Our accelerator mop 37, we kind of do a, a push pull where we are scanning the landscape because we want to be smart about the key problems that are in industry and the unique and interesting technologies that are out being built to, to, to solve those problems. But we also have an application process. So I, I won't need to go into too, too much detail here, but basically we see roughly 600, 1200 companies per year just for interest in our accelerator.

Some of those are inbound via applications, some of them are us going out and doing it, but at the end of the day, you're seeing several hundred accelerators are seeing several hundred startups, if not a thousand or more per year. And they're usually only accepting somewhere between five to 10, six to 12 startups per cohort on average. So the key point that I'm making is that accelerators also differ from incubators and that it's just not an open free for all.

Accelerators are providing a unique service. They have a multi-sided market, not just to support and help the entrepreneurs, but also to support and help the broader ecosystem that I'll say again, right? The potential early adopting customers, the channel partners and the investors.

And so this eco, this accelerator has a role, an important role for all of them to help de-risk the development and investment and buy-in and adoption of early technologies. And as a result, the accelerators are, are usually pretty selective about the companies that go in. And like Jason said, that helps find, you know, the, the needles within the haystack, or maybe even the needles within the pile of needles.

There are so many new companies coming out, particularly within cyber in a lot of the emerging and deep tech areas. When you look at the volume of new companies coming out, how easy it is to begin a company, uh, it's much harder to differentiate which companies might actually ha you know, be able to have some traction or get investment or make it through the gauntlet that is, you know, the founders' journey. So accelerators are, you know, engaging more and more with this growing entrepreneurial landscape, and they are connected with a lot of different, um, elements of the ecosystem.

So Jason mentioned in investors, that's a really big part of a really big group of, uh, interest group who want to look at these companies. Should they invest in them, should they help them along? There are a lot of other people in the ecosystem and they're watching for these companies as well.

So whether you're in, you know, another business, big business, you might be looking, you know, to build, buy or partner with a company on, on new emerging technologies. If you need to get ahead in certain elements of cyber, it's hard to, to build all of those in-house. So an accelerator is a great place to go because the accelerator has already gone through, you know, a lot of of different companies and separated out some that they assess might be winners.

And that assessment process has been honed over time as they look at all the different criteria about what, how do you evaluate the technology, how do you evaluate the, the founders and the team, and how do you, you know, look at them in a way to help them grow and connect with the ecosystem. So the accelerators provide a, a value to the businesses and the community, a value to the investors in terms of de-risking and pressure testing and really assessing the team on a day-to-day, you know, uh, you know, engagement level. It also, it provides a value to technologists.

There's so much new technology, it's hard to keep up with it, and it's hard to sense what new gaps are forming and what new tech is coming online to solve that, those problems. So technologists actually love, uh, engaging with cybersecurity accelerators for that reason. They get to show up and hear about all the new things that are being invented, and sometimes it just sparks new, new thinking that they really hadn't been been paying attention to because the tech landscape is so, so broad.

Uh, the speed at which the technologies coming online is another big issue. It's hard to even keep up with the news every day, let alone which new technologies are coming online and the implications of those technologies. A lot of these startups and accelerators are doing a lot of research on the implications of that tech.

So as they do their tech scouting, they have to be informed on the industry in order to, to assess those companies. You can't just pick a few companies because they have quantum in the name. You have to understand what's happening within quantum technology in order to, to make those, those deeper assessments.

And so, you know, coming together with an, with a cybersecurity accelerator at one of their events, or connecting as a mentor or just, you know, engaging, you know, with the ops team or, or the startups, it's a really great way to get a sense for what's happening in some of these emerging tech areas, uh, because it's changing so rapidly. I think everyone's seen what's happened with generative ai. A lot of the folks who were in cyber, we've been watching AI for a long time, you know, a lot of folks knew that was coming, but look at how it's changed the landscape of technology just in the last year across every industry.

And I think that's one of the most unique elements of, of cybersecurity accelerators is cyber's a horizontal. Uh, we might be great startups out there in like the food industry or, or fashion or aeronautics, but cyber cuts across all of them. And so whether it's identity or secure transactions or pushing the edge of, of encryption, you know, cyber is there.

And so when you're, you're engaging with cybersecurity accelerators, you're often, um, able to support other elements of business that might not be directly cyber through the technologies coming through those accelerators. The other thing I'll add, uh, real quick to, to what Jen just said, and she kind of alluded to it already, is, is a, there are accelerators, but then a cyber or cybersecurity accelerator, the other kind of difference it has besides the hyper focus on those, those technologies, even though they're cut across as a horizontal multiple industries, the other thing is the community, right? I, I think we've already hit on that, the multi-sided market and kind of how accelerators provide, uh, various services to the broader ecosystem.

But it's an important thing for, um, founders, cyber founders or, uh, potential, you know, support organizations, other support organizations in the ecosystem, and obviously industry and government to know that if they're going to go work with a cyber accelerator like Mach 37, they're gonna have a curated network, and that network is critical for the founders, right? I already, uh, explained kind of those brokered introductions. Well, we like to say at Mach 37 that that's really where the acceleration happens, right?

So Jen has explained, you know, high level the curriculum, that kind of three month time bound program where these founders will come in anywhere from a day or two to even in some, for some accelerators every day, and they'll sit through hours of workshops. And sometimes those workshops are just like you might think, right? Where someone's got some PowerPoint going on and it's kind of providing a lecture.

Some of them are a little bit more informal, you know, back and forth, interesting conversation and dialogue, which is tends to be our preference as a, as a side note. Uh, but long story short is that the founders will spend a good chunk of their time in workshops learning about various elements of a business, what makes a successful business, and how this grow, launch, grow, and scale it. And so to that end, you know, whether it's their, uh, customer segmentation, uh, clearly articulating and defining their value proposition, their product dev, uh, their go to market strategy, their marketing and sales tactics and the like.

There's, as you all know, there's lots of different things that go into running a business. Usually the accelerator will hit on pretty much all of those via these workshops, but companies coming into them are gonna have very different, uh, degrees of maturity on each of those elements. And so via these workshops, the accelerator is kind of putting polish on companies where they're already strong, but then where they might have challenges or weaknesses or gaps, or areas where they have a lot of room for growth, the accelerator via that curriculum and via that pressure time-bound, um, experience is trying to quickly, you know, get them, build up those challenges or weaknesses into at least a baseline level of competence that the ecosystem is willing to accept.

And so that's great. That is excellent. That is a key, uh, service and value that an accelerator provides to startups and entrepreneurs.

But the acceleration, just to go back to what I was trying to say earlier, right? The acceleration, the verb, the action, so to speak, of the accelerator that comes through the network. And so if you are a cyber or cybersecurity, uh, founder, and you're looking at an accelerator, uh, to, to help launch your venture, that access to that curated network is key, right?

Because what do I mean by that? The mentors, right? They're typically folks who have deep expertise in any one or multiple cyber areas like Jen was talking about, quantum versus perimeter defense, you know, identity management, privacy, you know, there's a very long list here, right?

Um, and so those mentors come from public sector, uh, medium to large businesses, right? Typically cyber and cybersecurity companies, right? Whether they are executives or mid-level, mid-level management or even working level, but have deep expertise, they have awareness of the industry and in particular, awareness of the customer landscape to help advise a cyber founder on how to build his or her technology and get it to market.

And then similarly, right? There's lots of investors out there. Investors see lots of technologies, right?

They are coming to the accelerator as we explained, because they hope the accelerator has helped filter, right? And it, and helped filter the landscape a little bit. And so there's high potential companies in that accelerator.

Well, similarly, the accelerator is providing that filter back to the founder, right? So in the founder, instead of having to do all this research to try and identify investors who are hyper interested in their particular cyber technology, the accelerator will have its Rolodex of investors who are particularly interested in those areas as well. So we can help match, make much, much faster.

And those brokered introductions, as I said earlier, right? Connections to known public and private sector organizations that have an interest in learning about early stage technologies adopting them, or as a channel paring channel partner, helping to support the early adoption of those companies, right? Or investors angels, venture capitalists and the like to help, uh, finance them.

Knowing that all those types of ex of companies are there. And knowing that those companies can reach a slightly more targeted network is how as a founder, you can kind of a cyber founder, you can shortcut into the best, um, uh, you know, communities that you need in order to either get the support, get the adoption or the financing that you need in order to continue building your venture And that community. It looks like sort of a gorgeous Venn diagram, right?

You've got your founders and your entrepreneurs, you have your investors, you've got your, your businesses, whether it's Fortune 500 all the way to small business. You've got academia, you've got government, you've got technologists and, and, and mentors even beyond those groups. And so when you think about the way the community comes together, that's one of the most critical aspects of what most industries and most, you know, broader communities need, is connections between folks that are, might have different focuses, but yet similar interests.

I can't tell you how often, uh, we hear about how, you know, cyber accelerator or cybersecurity accelerated events allow people to connect with others that they didn't realize they were solving the same problem. And so, uh, right now, because technology is evolving so quickly, it's hard to find people who, uh, like similar niches or have expertise in certain areas, or even contemplating, you know, the effect of one particular technology on the future of business. And these are great places to have those discussions.

So as tech continues to, uh, you know, move at a faster pace and operate at, at this scale that maybe we've never quite seen before, for example, you know, we've used Quantum as an, as, you know, the example we said earlier. But what is that gonna do in terms of computing power, encryption, identity, you know, national security? All of these questions are huge.

And so bringing experts together as they think about this problem from different angles or the potential from different angles, um, makes a really stimulating discussion. It makes for a, a more trusting community, and it also helps people start speaking sort of their different languages. If you haven't worked with government, you realize they've got lots of terminology and things that maybe you're not using in business.

And vice versa, academia is doing great research. Um, but they wanna know who can we hand it off to, to commercialize this and put it into the market and do some tech transfer? And so when you look at all the different stakeholders and all the different members of the community, uh, they often find that one of the best parts of any cyber accelerator is the conversations that they have there, uh, uh, not just around the founders and the amazing things that they're inventing, but also how all these different technologies apply to their, their businesses and their futures.

And so, you know, that's what we'd encourage if you haven't connected with a cybersecurity accelerator to do so in, in the sense that not only will you have a broader network of people to talk to about these things, but you can also share your interests and your needs. Accelerators are constantly collecting problems you're looking to solve and you know, interests that you have. And we, we work with a variety of different stakeholders to say, what are the new technologies you're looking for and why?

What problems are you solving? What are the things on the horizon we're not thinking about yet? So cyber security is prepare potentially a little bit more anticipatory than a lot of other accelerator areas because they are trying to look ahead in the future and predict how some of the technologies that haven't even quite been invented yet might change the landscape of humanity.

Um, just a, a small effort right there, but it's a really stimulating, exciting thing to be part of. So one of the things that, that accelerators are trying to do is maximize the opportunities for everyone who's involved. Yes, accelerators are focused on the entrepreneurs and the, and the founders who are going through the program.

But when you look at the role of entrepreneurship and new companies in the world at large, they're responsible for pushing us forward into new tech areas, uh, making us more secure. Historically, if you look at, at entrepreneurs and, and new companies, they often account for up to 80% of recovery after economic downturns and recession. And so, you know, ensuring that the progress and, and basically the security of society is a little bit of, of the reason why accelerators, um, are so eager to connect these communities, is to make sure that, that we are all bringing our best together to, to solve these problems through different angles.

So if you're listening to, to, to me and Jen, and you're saying, gee, so kind of sounds like accelerators are centers of gravity, the answer is yes. Right? And so, uh, you've heard a lot about how, uh, we try to help founders and their startups, you've heard a lot, uh, about how we try to connect with the broader ecosystem.

What does that actually look like? So we've hit on the mentorship, right? And the matchmaking that we can make, right?

Jen underscored the networking opportunities that accelerators provide. And so just to kind to give you a little, some optics on that, what does that mean? Well, there's the obvious networking that we can provide where we connect you with, uh, an early stage founder, right?

And, and you get to work with them via the mentorship and advisor relationship, which, um, very altruistic, very usually rewarding for both parties. But going to a lot of what Jen said, what does that actually look like? A lot of times it's through events.

So at least pre and, you know, post covid, or at least in the covid world that we live in now, right? So accelerators will typically do, you know, five or so events per cohort, assuming the cohort is in person and not virtual, uh, which is another thing we can then talk to in a few minutes, right? A lot of, a lot of accelerators side note, a lot of accelerators have started to provide virtual programs due to covid.

So they eating their own dog food, right? They basically have pivoted, right, in order to, to remain, um, uh, uh, uh, um, effective and value add, they base and, and, you know, basically maintaining that role, they, they pivoted a lot to providing virtual workshops. So that is an avenue.

But assuming, uh, the accelerator is still physically active in the community and EV has some or all of their companies geo-located with them, uh, the accelerators will usually run several events, right? And those events are where you will obviously, you know, get to here and meet a lot of the startups. They'll have tables laid out with their marketing collateral, maybe a, you know, monitor up with, you know, an instance of their, of their software product running in the background, right?

But you'll, the accelerator will usually try to create an environment of knowledge sharing and networking. So they'll have a guest speaker or a fireside chat or a panel of experts, and then there of course, there's usually some finger food and maybe, you know, maybe an open bar, right? Something to obviously help, help make the, the environment, uh, very social and, and informal and fun.

And so kind of as a, as a benefit and a thank you to everyone, accelerators will usually host these events to help jumpstart a lot of that networking and give people an opportunity to meet in person and in particular in the cyber and cybersecurity, in, you know, ecosystem world where, you know, there are a lot of folks who are in early stage startups that are operating, you know, kind of in stealth mode. Um, reality is a lot of folks are very introverted and insular, right? And so, you know, at least for speaking for Mach 37, 1 of the things we really like to do and get a lot of enjoyment from is actually kind of creating these fun social events where we can kind of let people come and reap the benefits of being part of this community, have some fun, meet some good people, share some, some really interesting knowledge about the, the ecosystem, about the technology landscape and bluntly network and expand opportunities for their businesses as well, right?

So that's a little bit of an altruistic benefit that we try to provide to the broader ecosystem. One of the other things that comes up a lot from the community is they might be in one industry or had a career in a, you know, a standard business and they're thinking of dipping their toe in somewhere. Maybe they're thinking of, you know, becoming a founder and starting a company.

Maybe they're thinking of investing in startups, but don't want to make the wrong decisions. Uh, some folks just wanna mentor and share what they know and, and to give back because they were helped so much along the way. So when they have questions, uh, around like, how do I do that?

And what's the right type of company to set up? And all those types of, of questions, it's a great way to start exploring those options. The entrepreneurial side of our society is growing, uh, partially because of the internet and the fact that we can just, you know, set up an LLC in just a couple of minutes, but also because people have resources at the tips of their fingers that didn't before, and they're able to generate their products and partner with people and communicate much more readily.

And so now that that foundation has been laid and there's a very strong, you know, backbone to becoming an entrepreneur or becoming an investor, a lot of folks, uh, want to democratize it, which is fantastic. And so, um, that's another reason to engage with the network, is talk to people who've done it before. Talk to people who can advise you on, you know, the different routes you can take.

And it allows you to imagine that future and posture for it, uh, in a way that, that, you know, you wouldn't be able to do as easily, you know, alone on, on the island type of thing. So, uh, we encourage entrepreneurship. Jason and I are entrepreneurs ourselves, uh, and having wonderful careers, you know, before that time, but it's a very re rewarding experience as is investing.

So, um, and that connects our community in, in very deep ways as well. Now, that's one of the other things we, we would like to encourage, um, and I think most cyber security accelerators do. So I know we only have a couple minutes left.

So one thing I did wanna mention, uh, given the topic of, of, of this session is this shifting landscape. And so one of the things that Jen and I have seen at Mach 37 with respect to accelerators is a kind of a new model that they're working with the ecosystem. We kind of explained a traditional one, right?

But real quick, um, for some of you who, who are out there in, in, in the, the cyberspace right now listening to us, depending on where you are, you might find that this new development of interest as well, and that is a lot of those ecosystem partners, particularly large organizations, are actually knocking on accelerator's doors and saying, Hey, um, I see all this cool stuff you're doing for the entrepreneurs in the startups. Um, can you help us do that inside our organization? And so we've had a lot of folks reach out to us, and we have, we are friends with other accelerators as well, who are basically being called and put on contracts to go inside large pub public and private sector organizations and run essentially internal accelerators.

Everything that we just explained applies inside a large organization, right? If you're a 30,000 to 100,000 international multinational corporation, you have your own ecosystem, right? Whether it's a public or private sector.

And there's, without going into it, since we don't have a whole lot of time right now, right? There's basically a lot if, a lot of parallels. And so a lot of accelerators, uh, are going into these organizations to help these large organizations do the exact same thing for their entrepreneurs.

We like to call them intrapreneurs, their internal innovators, to help them take their ideas and quickly develop them in a pressure tested, you know, resource constrained and, you know, quick, um, uh, uh, time to market, so to speak, and to basically, um, provide the similar role so that the large organizations can benefit from it as well and, and push out new services, new, new products as quickly as possible. So, and there's a lot more there. I know we're, we're wrapping up, uh, but I hope we provided a lot of background information for you about accelerators, particularly into the cyber and cybersecurity realm.

And whether you're a founder, whether you are an investor, whether you are working in the public and private sector, and you're interested in connecting with accelerators, I hope we've provided, uh, a lot of background for you so that you can, um, you know, hopefully jump in, get your feet wet, connect with us, connect with other accelerators, and help, um, you know, help the founders, help your organization have a lot of fun and help your own professional career as well. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you.