Barmak Meftah’s Post

The good news keeps coming. Another awesome day for all of us at Ballistic Ventures! We launched our first incubated company WitnessAI a month ago. I am so excited to announce the launch of our second incubation GetReal Labs! The inherent dangers of the sinister use of synthetic media and Deep Fakes will soon become a huge threat vector that will be exploited. Fake images, video, audio and text content have ramifications well beyond just financial and brand damage. They are an existential threat to our open democracy as we know it. I am so proud that my partners Ted Schlein and Roger Thornton saw this problem. We decided to start this company with the world leading authority in this area Dr Hany Farid. Congrats to the entire GetReal Labs team!! Ted Schlein Roger Thornton Jake Seid Kevin Mandia Nicole Perlroth Agnes So Michelle L. Kincaid Jim Brennan Hany Farid Ballistic Ventures https://lnkd.in/gD68mJJB

I can’t begin to express my enthusiasm for the news today! I first met my good friend and business partner, Kevin Mandia , in 2010. We had just sold Fortify Software to HP and my partner, Ted Schlein as part of Kleiner Perkins, had led a round of funding in Mandiant and had introduced Kevin to me. I think I speak on behalf of anyone who has ever met Kevin, that my first impressions were a down to earth, humble and high integrity guy who was incredibly smart and truly mission oriented and passionate about his vision of helping organizations at their most vulnerable time, when they were breached. His empathy, hard work and expertise were the foundation of what went on to become the world’s preeminent incident and breach response company. After achieving great scale, Kevin masterfully guided Mandiant (part of Google Cloud) through two successful acquisitions, first by FireEye and then after a spin out, by Google Cloud. When we first formed Ballistic Ventures we knew Kevin was the first person we would call to join us as a founding partner. He has been with us since the founding of Ballistic and we are so proud to announce his transition from a Founding Strategic Partner to a Founding General Partner as we activate Fund II. His experience in building one of the most iconic cyber companies from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of employees will be incredibly useful for any founder who aspires to do the same. I could not be more excited to share this chapter of my career with my good friend, Kevin Mandia! Ted Schlein Jake Seid Kevin Mandia Roger Thornton Michelle L. Kincaid Agnes So David Hahn Nicole Perlroth Ballistic Ventures

I am so incredibly excited to welcome my good friend Nicole Perlroth to Ballistic Ventures as a Venture Partner. Nicole has been with us since the inception of Ballistic as one of our strategic advisors helping our portfolio companies with their overall messaging and positioning strategy. She is one of the most prominent voices in cyber security and we couldn’t be happier to have her investing with us! Welcome aboard, Nicole! Jake Seid Roger Thornton Ted Schlein Michelle L. Kincaid Kevin Mandia Agnes So David Hahn https://lnkd.in/gwYQsz5T

Today is a great day for all of us at Ballistic Ventures. When my partners and I founded Ballistic three years ago, we all had a very focused strategy to help mission-oriented and audacious founders in the early stages of their journey realize the full potential of their ideas. In venture speak, this translates into Seed and Series A rounds. In addition to that, having been founders ourselves in the past, we decided to selectively incubate and create companies from whole cloth, especially in areas where there is new adversarial innovation or a fundamental inflection in compute architecture resulting in new attack surfaces. I am happy to announce WitnessAI is coming out of stealth today as one of our incubations. There is no debating the fact that the use of large language models and generative AI has and will continue to rise exponentially. My partner Roger Thornton and I had a theory over a year ago that providing a framework to allow companies to have observability and control over the SAFE use of AI would become essential! The goal of WitnessAI is exactly that. Allow employees to enjoy all the goodness of AI but do it within the framework and guardrails of what their enterprises would deem safe. I am also elated to announce an amazing $27.5M Series A round being co-led by GV (Google Ventures) and Ballistic, with my good friend Karim Faris joining us on the board. We have a very strong team led by Rick Caccia, one of the best technology executives I have known. We are big believers in all the great innovations AI will be able to offer and now do it in a safe and risk-mitigated way. https://lnkd.in/gUTbTfhF CC Ted Schlein, Jake Seid, Kevin Mandia, Agnes So, David Hahn, Michelle L. Kincaid #GenAI, #LLM, #Cybersecurity, #AI, #Funding, #Launch

My partner Jake Seid summarized our excitement around Mimic well! My partner Ted Schlein led this round for us with one of our key advisors and longtime friends, Derek Smith and Bob Blakley! Early detection of ransomware has been the holy grail of how to best prevent this threat vector. We are super excited about Mimic’s technology and market potential! Ballistic Ventures

I am super excited to see everyone at RSA this year. Proud to be sharing the stage with my partner Kevin Mandia along with my other partners Jake Seid, Roger Thornton and Ted Schlein. I am especially excited to be one of the judges at RSA’s Launchpad with my good friends Enrique Salem and Sarah Guo! https://lnkd.in/gEZe5rph Ballistic Ventures Cecilia Murtagh Marinier

Congrats to the team at Aembit for this awesome recognition and to my partner Jake Seid who is the lead on this deal. We were believers in Aembit’s vision very early on and it’s awesome to see that vision turn into a great company!! Ballistic Ventures

What a journey it has been! Starting companies, venture funds or for that matter any idea or concept is extremely difficult and challenging and yet when you see these ideas grow and blossom into finished products or services that help create jobs and in our case make the world a safer place, it is so gratifying. I am proud of my co-founders Ted Schlein Kevin Mandia Jake Seid and Roger Thornton. I am also proud and thankful to our partners Agnes So Michelle L. Kincaid for being the backbone of our success. Our BallisticX advisory network and our entire CISO network help guide us through this journey. Our mission remains the same, helping audacious and brave founders realize the full potential of their dreams of making our digital world a safer place! Thank you to everyone who helped us launch Ballistic! $360M Fund II. Onwards!! 💪🚀 Ballistic Ventures

ArmorCode Inc. Is growing! What an amazing lineup of new additions to the executive ranks! Proud to be part of this team and on their journey! Ballistic Ventures