ForgePoint Capital Fund II: Investing in the Protection of the Digital World
February 19, 2020
- Blog Post
I’m proud to share that ForgePoint Capital has reached a significant milestone by closing its second fund with $450 million in capital commitments. Fund II, the industry’s largest fund focused exclusively on cybersecurity, enables us to continue to invest in early-stage and select growth companies addressing the most pressing security challenges facing individuals, businesses and governments.
Global prosperity, national security and individual privacy depend on a secure digital world. Consider, according to CybersecurityVentures, cybercrime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015. They also predict there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021, up from 1 million openings in 2014. Hence, securing the digital world is an increasingly difficult but crucial endeavor.
Our Approach to Cybersecurity Investing
While some venture firms include cybersecurity as an investment theme, we have a singular focus on the market, driving unparalleled domain expertise and insights into emerging industry trends.
The unique makeup of our team includes experienced cybersecurity professionals, proven company builders, serial entrepreneurs, seasoned investors and military veterans.
The team has cultivated an extensive network of trusted relationships to form the ForgePoint Capital Cybersecurity Advisory Council with 60 active members that includes entrepreneurs, CEOs of private and public cybersecurity companies, chief information and risk officers of major organizations and former governments security leaders. The council brings together diverse perspectives and experiences across the industry to collaborate and advise on the most current and pressing needs.
Security professionals understand the market is fragmented and thus look to collaborate with venture-backed startups to satisfy emerging information security requirements. Our investment strategy is to build a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class solutions that are also complementary, filling the current critical gaps and moving the industry closer to a holistic approach to cybersecurity.
ForgePoint Capital Fund-I invested in these 17 companies: 4iQ, Anitian, Appthority (acquired by Symantec), Attivo, Bayshore Networks, BehavioSec, Bishop Fox, CyberCube, ID Experts, IronNet Cybersecurity, LoginRadius, NowSecure, Prevoty (acquired by Imperva), Remediant, ReversingLabs, Trusted Key (acquired by Workday) and Uptycs.
ForgePoint Capital Fund II
With Fund II, we now have $750 million under management and will focus on some of the most critical areas in cybersecurity today including cyber intelligence, privacy, security services and infrastructure protection.
We have already made several investments out of the new fund, including:
- Cysiv – an enterprise SOC-as-a-Service company spun out from Trend Micro. Read more about why we decided to lead their $26M Series A round here.
- Huntress Labs – founded by former NSA and U.S. Intelligence Community researchers, Huntress Labs provides advanced threat detection to managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) for medium-sized businesses. We led their $18M Series A round. Read more about it here.
- Secure Code Warrior – a Sydney based global secure coding company that allows developers to think and act with a security mindset. Read more about their $47.6M Series B round here.
We are dedicated to forging success, relationships, change, and the outcomes of our portfolio companies. As successful long-term investors, we understand the point at which these multiple relationships converge to forge innovation and look forward to working with the next transformational cybersecurity companies who share our mission in protecting the digital world.
If you are interested in learning more about ForgePoint Capital and our team, please feel free to read more on ForgePoint Capital Fund II or follow us @ForgePointCap.