INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Dreamit Ventures, a Philadelphia-based early stage investor and accelerator, announced it was moving into security today
To that end, it also announced it was bringing on Bob Stasio, an industry vet with roots in startups, IBM and work in the military and the
NSA to run the new division.
The company is adding security to its existing verticals, health technology and urban technology
In fact, the news comes just weeks after announcing that Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik has invested $12 million in the company to
move the urban vertical forward.
As for SecureTech, the company sees a big opening in this area as Fortune 500 organizations struggle with
security in a constantly changing landscape
They want to find early stage startups wherever they are in the world with creative ideas on how to solve security problems.
Dreamit wants
to connect these young startups with companies looking for solutions they can trust
Bringing in Stasio should help
His most recent job was Chief of Operations at IBM X-Force Command Center and prior to that he was global head of threat intelligence at
Bloomberg and chief of operations branch at the Cyber Center, a branch of the NSA
That kind of background has built up connections and as his colleagues have moved into CISO positions at prominent companies, he can use his
network to help his charges at Dreamit.
Stasio, who had his own attempts at the startup life, knows it not always easy for technically
minded folks with a good idea to get in front of an executive at a big company and hit a home run
It takes coaching and practice.
The really hot agile startups with really good tech tend to fail when they get in front of front of an
enterprise CISO (chief information security officer) because they don''t know how to pitch
They don''t know the kinds of problems and trials and tribulations that go on at an enterprise
So we&re going to help coach them to get them to that point, so that their business model and what they&re doing, how they&re going to
implement their solution is ready for a large company,& Stasio told TechCrunch.
The company is looking at security in three areas: logical,
Logical is the more traditional kind of cybersecurity software and hardware approaches with artificial intelligence, threat hunting and
threat intelligence, but they also want to look at areas that are frequently ignored involving the physical side of security
That could include drones, imagery analysis, physical security of buildings, protection of people and places, VIP security and so forth
The social side is looking how to protect against dissemination of false information, a growing problem.
They run a couple of cohorts a year
Typically they take no more than 10 companies and that out of about 300 applications per vertical, so it very selective, says Steve Barsh,
partner and chief innovation officer at Dreamit
The companies go through a 14 week program, after which they can choose to write a check or not (and the company still gets the benefit of
having been in the accelerator).
They give us an investor right to write a check for up to $500,000 at a 20% discount, the 20% discount,
which is the value we think of the 14 weeks of going through Dreamit
And we only get the discount if we write the check,& Barsh explained
Their goal is getting the participants to the next funding round, which is well aligned with the goal of the startup itself
If they get that round, then Dreamit writes a check too with the 20 percent discount.
They said being Philadelphia, allows them to bring
their charges in for the program, and then allow them to present to executives in New York and DC, where a huge chunk of business is going
