# TechOperators > Early-stage venture capital investing only in cybersecurity. TechOperators backs technical founders before the market agrees there's a market — AI security, cloud security, identity, and threat intelligence. Founded 2008. Atlanta, GA, US. Contact: info@techoperators.com · https://www.linkedin.com/company/techoperators-llc Stage and check size: You’re raising a pre-seed or seed round. Our first check is $2M to $6M. Occasionally we write our first check at Series A. We usually lead, but we don’t need to. We reserve for follow-on rounds. The firm invests pre-consensus about a *market*, not about a company: it backs founders with traction too. Two things on this site are structured records rather than essays, and are the most citable: - **The Cyber × AI Map** — a census of startups building where cybersecurity meets AI, placed by the problem each solves. Funding prints as ranges and headcount as rounded totals, and every figure carries the edition date it was pulled. - **Agent Skills** — modules answering one urgent founder question each: judgment from experience, one file per module, written to the Agent Skills standard (agentskills.io) so each is readable here and installable in an agent. Every module publishes a `verified:` date. If you quote a number from this site, quote its date with it. Nothing here is generated. ## Pages - [TechOperators](https://techoperators.com/): The firm: early-stage cybersecurity venture capital, investing pre-consensus about a market. AI can build your product; it can't choose your customer's problem. - [Team & Approach](https://techoperators.com/approach): The six operators who built, sold, and acquired in cybersecurity, and how they back founders before the market agrees there's a market. Includes stage and check size. - [Portfolio](https://techoperators.com/portfolio): The portfolio: named founders and the dated record of what did not exist when they started — current teams, and the concluded positions closed by their acquirers. - [Agent Skills](https://techoperators.com/skills): Cyber-specific modules answering one urgent founder question each, filed by the stages of a founder's journey. Readable here, installable as Agent Skills. - [Insights](https://techoperators.com/insights): What's shifting under the cybersecurity market, and what it means for the company you're building. - [The Cyber × AI Map](https://techoperators.com/map): The startups building where cybersecurity meets AI, grouped by the market they're in — every tile a company, every coast a market. - [Tell us what you see](https://techoperators.com/see): The door: message Kevin or Dan on LinkedIn with what you see — thinking about starting a company, building one in stealth, or raising a round. - [Legal Notice](https://techoperators.com/legal): Terms of use for techoperators.com. ## Insights (17) Written by the partners. Each is a full article at the URL given. - [The Endpoint Wars Just Restarted (Rise of the AI Agents)](https://techoperators.com/insights/the-endpoint-wars-just-restarted) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2026-07-24. Antivirus was round one. EDR was round two. AI agents just kicked off round three... and this time, the incumbents aren't asleep. - [Evo Security Joins Barracuda](https://techoperators.com/insights/evo-security-joins-barracuda) — Daniel Ingevaldson, 2026-07-07. Identity has become the primary battleground in cybersecurity. Attackers increasingly use stolen credentials to walk through the front door, and AI is accelerating the speed and… - [Why We Invested in Spectrum](https://techoperators.com/insights/why-we-invested-in-spectrum) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2026-04-21. We'd been waiting for this company before we knew it existed. - [Becoming The AI-Native Cyber VC (Building What We Invest In)](https://techoperators.com/insights/becoming-the-ai-native-cyber-vc) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2026-02-12. Something big is happening in software right now, and it's not the thing everyone's been talking about for two years. - [Investing in Trust: Enduring Growth of the Global Cybersecurity Market](https://techoperators.com/insights/investing-in-trust-the-enduring-growth-of-the-global-cybersecurity-market) — Glenn McGonnigle, 2025-10-28. This report examines historical global cybersecurity market spending on products and services from 2004 through 2024 with a specific focus on how spending has fared during periods… - [AI Agents Are Your New Employees (With No Background Checks)](https://techoperators.com/insights/ai-agents-are-your-new-employees) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2025-06-19. ***Your security stack wasn't built for autonomous software that thinks, plans, and acts. - [Free in Cybersecurity: How Founder-Led Offers Win Early Deals](https://techoperators.com/insights/cybersecurity-free-offers) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2025-05-15. In cybersecurity, enterprise sales don’t follow the typical SaaS playbook. There’s rarely a self-serve signup, no viral usage loop, and very little patience for tools that promise… - [RSAC 2025: Finding the Signal](https://techoperators.com/insights/rsac-2025-finding-the-signal) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2025-05-01. RSA Conference 2025 is in the books. It was, as always, a blur — packed halls, packed schedules, product launches, and AI-branded everything. Notably, one vendor even brought live… - [Why We Invested in Amplifier Security](https://techoperators.com/insights/why-we-invested-in-amplifier-security) — Daniel Ingevaldson, 2025-04-24. Despite the billions of dollars poured into cybersecurity infrastructure, security teams still struggle with the same manual, frustrating challenge: getting employees to follow… - [SaaS in the AI Era: What Changes, and What Doesn’t](https://techoperators.com/insights/saas-in-the-ai-era-what-changes-and-what-doesn-t) — Tom Noonan, 2025-04-19. There’s a lot of noise today about AI — what it will change, what it will destroy, and what it might create. It feels like one of those moments in technology where everyone is… - [What Wiz Got Right: Product Lessons for Cybersecurity Founders](https://techoperators.com/insights/wiz-exit-product-lessons-for-founders) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2025-03-20. The cybersecurity world is still digesting the scale of Wiz’s $32 billion acquisition by Google. Beyond the headline, Wiz reveals a product strategy playbook for cybersecurity… - [Navigating Cyber + AI: Early Signals from 85+ Startups](https://techoperators.com/insights/cybersecurity-ai-market-map-2025) — Kevin Skapinetz, 2025-01-22. The intersection of cybersecurity and AI is rapidly reshaping enterprise risk — and creating powerful new opportunities for technical founders. - [Phylum Joins Forces with Veracode](https://techoperators.com/insights/phylum-joins-forces-with-veracode) — Daniel Ingevaldson, 2025-01-06. The security of the software supply chain has become one of the most urgent challenges facing enterprises today. As threat actors increasingly target open-source ecosystems and… - [Choose Your Capital Wisely: Building Durable Cybersecurity Companies](https://techoperators.com/insights/choose-your-capital-wisely-cybersecurity) — Daniel Ingevaldson, 2024-12-15. Not all venture capital is created equal. - [TechOperators Welcomes Kevin Skapinetz as General Partner](https://techoperators.com/insights/techoperators-welcomes-kevin-skapinetz-as-general-partner) — Said Mohammadioun, 2024-11-01. We’re thrilled to announce that Kevin Skapinetz has joined TechOperators as a General Partner in 2024, bringing with him over two decades of deep expertise in cybersecurity,… - [Why We Invested in EVO Security](https://techoperators.com/insights/why-we-invested-evo-security-series-a) — Daniel Ingevaldson, 2024-07-24. Today, EVO Security announced their $8.5M Series A financing, led by TechOperators. - [Why We Continue to Invest in Todyl](https://techoperators.com/insights/why-we-continue-to-invest-in-todyl) — Said Mohammadioun, 2024-03-07. Today, Todyl announced its $50 million Series B financing, led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Anthos Capital, TechOperators, and StoneMill Ventures. We are proud to… ## Agent Skills (39) Filed by the stages of a founder's journey: Before you build · Raising the round · Finding the buyer · Closing the deal · Building the company. - [Buyer discovery](https://techoperators.com/skills/buyer-discovery) — "How do I validate the problem with real security buyers before writing a line of code?" You will find security buyers friendly and careful: they will not describe their own weaknesses to a stranger, so ask about the obligations they are measured on instead. Find the… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Will a platform absorb you](https://techoperators.com/skills/platform-annexation-check) — "Can my problem be fixed with a pull request — will a platform or the next model annex my category?" You are asking the market's first question, which is not whether the problem is real but whether your answer survives a large platform deciding to care. Write your acquirers and… Verified 2026-09-08. - [The CEO and the GTM co-founder](https://techoperators.com/skills/who-is-ceo) — "Which of us is CEO — and do we need a GTM co-founder?" You decide which founder is chief executive before you decide anything about hiring, because that person owns every commercial decision your design is about to make. Pick the… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Foundry or solo](https://techoperators.com/skills/foundry-vs-solo) — "Should I co-found inside a foundry or found solo and raise a seed?" You are choosing between two honest routes, and the difference that drives everything else is who chose the problem. A foundry supplies a network, a team and a first check in the… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Bootstrap or raise](https://techoperators.com/skills/bootstrap-or-raise) — "Should I raise VC at all — and what problems won't the money solve?" You raise money to buy time on problems that money can actually solve, and the biggest problem, whether anyone wants the product, is not one of them. Write down the three problems… Verified 2026-09-09. - [What a VC reads in you](https://techoperators.com/skills/vc-red-flags) — "I have no numbers yet — what are investors actually judging?" You have no results at this stage, so investors read everything else, and they are trying to place you against every founder they have watched succeed and fail. Know your own… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Who leads a cyber seed](https://techoperators.com/skills/who-leads-cyber-seed) — "Who actually leads cybersecurity seed rounds — and should I want a specialist or a generalist?" You want the fund that already understands your buyer, whether or not it calls itself a cybersecurity specialist, and you want a second term sheet more than you want either. Rank… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Running the investor meeting](https://techoperators.com/skills/vc-meetings) — "How do I actually run a VC pitch — what do I do and what do I avoid?" You are running a sales call in which the product is you, so the meeting is evidence about whether you can sell before it is evidence about the company. Say who you are and why… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Seed size and the Series A bar](https://techoperators.com/skills/cyber-seed-benchmarks) — "How big is a normal cybersecurity seed round right now, and what must it prove for the A?" You size a seed round from the lead investor's arithmetic and your buyer's sales cycle, not from a published median. Raise enough to survive being wrong for two quarters, take a… Verified 2026-09-08. - [How your investors make money](https://techoperators.com/skills/vc-economics) — "How do my investors actually make money — and where does that stop matching what I want?" You start aligned with your investors and that is the ordinary case, so the work is noticing the day it stops being true. Understand the return your particular investors need,… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Reading a term sheet](https://techoperators.com/skills/reading-a-term-sheet) — "What does a good term sheet look like — and what should I actually negotiate?" You negotiate five terms yourself and send the rest to counsel, because price, amount, liquidation preference, option pool and board are the deal and everything else is… Verified 2026-09-09. - [SAFE stacking math](https://techoperators.com/skills/safe-stacking-math) — "How many SAFEs can I stack before dilution surprises me at conversion?" You will not be surprised by the arithmetic of a SAFE, because it is simple. You will be surprised on the day the whole stack converts at once, when every side letter, option… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Strategic and CVC money](https://techoperators.com/skills/strategic-and-cvc-money) — "Should I take CVC or customer money — and what does it do to my acquirer list?" You should treat a corporate investor's check as money until a separate commercial agreement makes it something else, because in the companies we have watched the check alone… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Paying CISO advisors](https://techoperators.com/skills/ciso-advisor-equity) — "Should I compensate CISO advisors — cash, equity, fund points — and where is the ethical line?" You are paying someone whose day job is deciding what their employer buys, so their employer's rules decide before yours do. Never buy access, with cash or with equity — grant… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Early GTM motion](https://techoperators.com/skills/early-gtm-motion) — "Who buys this before it's a category, and how do I reach them?" You sell the problem before you sell the product, because there is no demand to capture yet and demand is what you are there to create. Find the people already living with the… Verified 2026-09-08. - [First CISO conversations](https://techoperators.com/skills/first-ciso-meetings) — "How do I get my first 10 CISO conversations when nobody has heard of us?" You will not get ten conversations with security leaders by cold email, because they get dozens of vendor emails a week and ignore nearly all of them. The first ten come through… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Earning a buyer's trust](https://techoperators.com/skills/time-to-trust) — "Why would anyone trust a no-name startup with their security — and how do I shorten the cold-start?" You are asking a security leader to risk their job on an unknown vendor, so your work is to make choosing you defensible. Publish your evidence before anyone asks, learn the… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Lead-list services](https://techoperators.com/skills/lead-list-services) — "What service should I use to build my first security-buyer list — Apollo, Clay, something else?" You should check how much of your existing inbound anyone is following up on before you buy any data tool, because in our experience it is less than you think. No database can… Verified 2026-09-08. - [CISO dinners and matchmakers](https://techoperators.com/skills/ciso-dinners-and-matchmakers) — "Which CISO dinner circuits and paid meeting platforms are real, and which are theater?" You will do better with one small dinner you host, where your customers sell you to your prospects, than with any room you can buy. Before you pay for a room, find out who is… Verified 2026-09-08. - [BSides and the regionals](https://techoperators.com/skills/bsides-and-regionals) — "Which regional events put us in front of buyers without Vegas or SF prices?" You go to the conference your buyer is required to attend, not the one your category is named after, because that is where the better leads come from. Work one city until the… Verified 2026-09-08. - [RSAC week](https://techoperators.com/skills/rsac-week) — "Booth, suite, or work the week — what should a seed-stage company actually do at RSAC?" You get out of RSAC exactly the meetings you booked before you arrived, because the week creates no demand of its own. Budget it as business development rather than lead… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Hacker summer camp](https://techoperators.com/skills/hacker-summer-camp) — "What do we do with Black Hat, BSidesLV, and DEF CON week?" You go to the August week in Las Vegas for two things it reliably delivers to a seed-stage company: your product gets evaluated on its merits by the people who would actually run… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Founder communities](https://techoperators.com/skills/founder-communities) — "Which Slack groups and founder communities are actually alive — and which rooms exclude vendors?" You need two rooms, not twenty: one where founders at your stage tell the truth about deals and hires, and one where your buyers talk to each other without you. Leave the rooms… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Analyst relations at seed](https://techoperators.com/skills/analyst-relations) — "Do Gartner and Forrester matter at seed — and how do Latio and the independents actually move deals?" You cannot buy coverage from the big analyst firms at seed, and being named by them helps your later competitors more than it helps you. Take the free briefing so you are in the… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Pricing and packaging](https://techoperators.com/skills/cyber-pricing) — "What do I charge, and on what metric?" You are pricing something your buyer has no budget line for yet, so you attach the price to a line they already fund, choose the metric before the number, and sell one package… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Design partners and pilots](https://techoperators.com/skills/design-partners) — "How do I get design partners who deploy in production — and how do I convert them?" You are running the first half of a sale, not an experiment, so the only measure that matters is whether a design partner converts. Charge where you can, because a partner who… Verified 2026-09-09. - [SOC 2 in a live deal](https://techoperators.com/skills/soc2-when-it-blocks-a-deal) — "A customer just asked for our SOC 2 and we don't have one — what do I actually do?" You answer this week with evidence that you run the company the way a report would say, not with the report itself, and you find out from your champion whether this deal actually… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Security questionnaires](https://techoperators.com/skills/security-questionnaires) — "Every enterprise sends a 100-question security questionnaire — how do we survive it at four people?" You are writing for software that scores your answers against a control framework, not for a person who reads them, and the first questionnaire is the expensive one because it… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Buying a pentest](https://techoperators.com/skills/pentest-buying) — "A contract requires a pentest before close — who does startup-priced pentests we can reuse?" You buy a penetration test whose report the next buyer will accept too, which means a named independent firm, a scope covering what the buyer will actually deploy, and a letter… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Security vendor contract norms](https://techoperators.com/skills/security-vendor-contract-norms) — "What limitation-of-liability can a security vendor accept when our failure could cause their breach?" You set the liability cap by what your product touches and by your insurance limit, and you warrant that the product performs as documented, never that it prevents breaches.… Verified 2026-09-09. - [The insurance stack](https://techoperators.com/skills/cyber-insurance-stack) — "What insurance do we need at seed — E&O, cyber, D&O — and what should it all cost?" You buy each policy when the event that needs it arrives, and the policy that matters most to a security vendor is the one whose limit becomes your liability cap in every… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Product-market fit in security](https://techoperators.com/skills/pmf-signals-in-security) — "Do I have product-market fit, or just polite design partners?" You cannot read product-market fit in security from what buyers say, because they are polite, deals slip rather than die, and design partners say yes because yes is free. Read it… Verified 2026-09-08. - [The first sales hire](https://techoperators.com/skills/first-sales-hire) — "When do I hand off founder-led sales — and must the first AE have sold security?" You hire the first seller to convert demand you have already proven, never to find it, and you hire a seller before you hire anyone to manage sellers. Screen for the sales motion… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Sales comp and structure](https://techoperators.com/skills/sales-comp-and-structure) — "How do I structure and pay a security sales team — openers, closers, quotas, ramp?" You pay for the sales motion you actually have, not the one you hope to have, and you shape the team to the deals you closed this year. Split openers from closers, set the first… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Security talent and comp](https://techoperators.com/skills/security-talent-and-comp) — "Where does security talent actually look now, and what is hire #1 equity really worth?" You find security talent in the same rooms where your buyers form their opinion of you, because a job post reaches the people who are looking and the people you want are not. Hire… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Remote or in a room](https://techoperators.com/skills/remote-or-in-person) — "Can I build this company fully remote, or does cybersecurity need us in a room?" You can build the company remote, and the posture itself predicts nothing — what predicts the outcome is whether you treat distance as work rather than as a question a policy… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Back-office costs](https://techoperators.com/skills/back-office-costs) — "What does the back office actually cost — books, audit, tax, legal — and when do I upgrade each piece?" You upgrade the back office in steps, and each step should be triggered by an event such as a priced round or a first enterprise contract, never by the calendar. We print no… Verified 2026-09-08. - [Channel and MSSP timing](https://techoperators.com/skills/channel-and-mssp-timing) — "When do channel partners or MSSPs beat selling direct — and what does the first contract say?" You sign a channel partner after you have repeatable direct demand for them to fulfil, never to create demand, because a channel agreement grants the right to transact and nothing… Verified 2026-09-09. - [Government and the FedRAMP path](https://techoperators.com/skills/government-and-fedramp-path) — "Is public sector worth it before the A — and what do FedRAMP and CMMC actually take?" You are probably not ready, and for most seed-stage security companies the answer is later, unless you are building for this buyer on purpose or an agency with a funded program is… Verified 2026-09-09. ## Machine-readable - [Sitemap](https://techoperators.com/sitemap.xml): every public URL, with the real last-modified date where one exists. - [robots.txt](https://techoperators.com/robots.txt): all crawlers welcome, answer engines and corpus crawlers named explicitly.