Former NSA deputy director George Barnes has made his first funding as a enterprise capitalist for his new job on the VC incubation studio Red Cell Partners. It’s a $3 million seed deal in an open supply cybersecurity startup known as Hunted Labs, he informed TechCrunch completely.
Barnes spent his complete 35-year profession on the spy company, beginning as an engineer, touring from soft assignments in locations like London to struggle zones, he stated. He labored as deputy director from 2017 to 2023.
During that point, the “NSA had positioned itself to really penetrate our adversaries,” he informed TechCrunch. That means to hack, “actually prepares you to be a greater defender,” he stated including that because of this the NSA is so good at “discovering vulnerabilities and 0 days.”
It’s additionally why he was excited to search out Hunted Labs, the brainchild of Hayden Smith. Smith beforehand labored on DevOps and cybersecurity for varied DoD tasks; throughout his final mission for the federal government, Smith was engaged on the DoD’s huge Platform One mission, “which was this large software program manufacturing unit,” as Smith informed TechCrunch.
Platform One permits the division’s programmers to deploy their apps quicker with fewer approvals largely through the use of already secured and cleared cloud or open supply software program (OSS). But one instant query got here up in its growth: who’s penning this OSS software program?
“We don’t know what connections they need to any group or any overseas affect,” Smith stated. “There actually was no product or no instrument on the market that might assist accomplish this at scale.”
Cold electronic mail, huge buyer
The significance of figuring out software program contributors turned highlighted in 2024, when a lone Microsoft engineer found a backdoor in xz Utils, a extensively used piece of software program included in nearly each model of Linux. The perpetrator spent years gaining belief and protecting their tracks earlier than planting this code.
Smith wished to create a business model of the background checking work he did for Platform One. So he despatched chilly emails to potential buyers, and Barnes replied. Smith was shocked to find he’d reached the previous NSA deputy director.
Barnes preferred the concept sufficient to ask Hunted Labs into Red Cell’s paid, three-month “discovery” interval for its incubator. An incubator is considerably like an accelerator, solely the VC is extra like a co-founder, bringing the outfit’s personal concepts for startups to life.
Such offers might contain taking a bigger stake than in a regular seed deal, nevertheless it gives extra mentorship and help. Red Cell declined to say how a lot of Hunted Labs it controls.
In that three months, Hunted Labs refined its product sufficient to land clients and its $3 million seed funding from Red Cell. The startup has additionally already landed a $1.79 million contract with the Space Development Agency, Smith stated.
Interestingly, the area company deal didn’t come from Red Cell’s community. It got here as a substitute from the DoD connections of Smith and former DoD-project safety engineer Tim Barone, who beforehand labored with Smith and is a co-founder of Hunted Labs, together with Smith’s spouse Amanda Aguayoco. (“I’ve a cooling off interval — that’s two years for DoD,” stated Barnes, referring to why he isn’t immediately concerned in gross sales.)
But the founders are recognized to many within the huge division, so not like many Silicon Valley-born protection tech startups, they don’t want such heat intros to authorities patrons, anyway.
“They are acknowledged professionals in their very own proper, and so that really opens doorways,” Barnes stated.
Hunted Labs additionally offers extra conventional OSS software program risk administration, like figuring out the software program in use and recognizing vulnerabilities within the code. In this area, it has loads of competitors like Black Duck Software, Mend.io, and Snyk.
