MGMT Boston - W5, Q2 25 - Pentera / Bosch Ventures & Nethopper
Pentera / Bosch Ventures & Nethopper on The Lantern
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TLDR:
Pentera - building a leader for automated security validation, arming every organization with the ability to test the integrity of their cybersecurity defenses
Shiva Raja, Senior Technical Solutions Architect at HYCU - R-Shield is HYCU’s newest consolidated backup offering to backup & protect enterprises in a more comprehensive way
On The Lantern..
Adam Jackson, Partner at Bosch Ventures - Bosch Ventures is a venture capital team investing in hardware AND software startups, specializing at the growth stage (Series A-C) here in Boston
Chris Munford, Founder & CEO at Nethopper - this team is building private AI for all, bringing AI to your data and keeping privacy intact
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Shiva Raja, Senior Technical Solutions Architect at HYCU
MGMT Boston is thrilled to be spotlighting HYCU - one of Boston’s top startups throughout this month of April - in conversations with different members of their leadership team.
Welcome Shiva Raja, Senior Technical Solutions Architect at HYCU, Inc. to share what their product & engineering org is focused on in 2025..
Shiva has been with HYCU for almost 7 years, watching it scale from the first Purpose Built Data Protection Solution for Nutanix to their most recent R-Shield release.
🔍 What’s going on inside HYCU’s product & engineering orgs in 2025? 🔎
HYCU is focused on supporting hypervisors like VMware, Nutanix, and a newer partnership with Dell (amongst others).
Their big focus for 2025? A renewed focus on Backup security.
Since ransomware attacks have become more prevalent, backups are playing a critical role as the last line of defense (and an integral part of security assessment and posturing).
HYCU has now brought all of their capabilities together into a consolidated offering called R-Shield.
This new industry leading offering includes..
1.) Prevention - air gap backup security (aka zero trust architecture)
2.) Fortification - fortify your backups through immutability (once a backup is written it can’t be edited or deleted)
3.) Backup Monitoring - monitors the change rate over a period of time, tracking anomalous data using real time notifications, and scans the content of backups for malware or ransomware
4.) Remediation Measures - ensure that all existing backups are fully validated and able to be restored
5.) Quick Restores - data backed up through HYCU can be restored back to an on-prem environment, public cloud, or alternate data center as needed by customers
🤝 How can we help HYCU grow on the technical side in 2025? 🤝
This highly talented team is expanding rapidly and Shiva would love to meet more Boston Solutions Engineering builders interested in HYCU. Reach out!
Pentera
Founders: Arik Liberzon and Arik Faingold
Founding: 2015
Mission: Reinventing security validation
Employees: 200 & ~20% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Series D & $250M raised
Investors: Evolution Equity Partners, Farallon Capital, Insight Partners, K1, and Blackstone
Key Customers: Blackstone, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, and Hibank
Glassdoor Rating: 4.9
Valuation (estimated): $1B+ (shared in the March ‘25 Series D fundraise announcement)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Pentera is building a leader for automated security validation, arming every organization with the ability to test the integrity of their cybersecurity defenses. This late stage growth company allows enterprises to see their current security exposure(s) at any moment and any scale.
Here are some key highlights about growth stage cybersecurity leader Pentera:
Pentera (originally called Pcysys) was founded in 2015 by Arik Liberzon and Arik Faingold. In the cybersecurity realm, penetration testing was labor-intensive and in desperate need of automation. Arik, Arik & team built a platform to automate real-world attack simulations, aiming to help organizations rethink how to validate and monitor their cybersecurity defenses.
With over 88% of organizations experiencing breaches in the past two years, the need for effective security validation is paramount (src). Cybersecurity budgets as a percentage of IT spend has grown from 8.6% in 2020 to 13.2% in 2024 (src) and is nearing $200B in annual spend (src).
In a world of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, Pentera helps ensure organizations are well protected by providing insights into vulnerabilities and prioritizing remediation efforts in an efficient way, categorizing & streamlining alerts down to their root causes. Their platform simulates real-world cyberattacks so enterprises can validate their security posture.
Through automated security validation across internal networks, cloud infrastructures, and external-facing assets, Pentera has a number of offerings. Pentera Core validates internal network security controls, Pentera Surface assesses external-facing assets exposed to the internet, Pentera Cloud evaluates cloud-native infrastructures for vulnerabilities, RansomwareReady™ tests resilience against ransomware attacks, and Credential Exposure identifies compromised credentials from various sources.
Enterprises across industries have leveraged Pentera’s platform to enhance their cyber defenses. Blackstone has utilized the platform to ensure robust defense mechanisms for continuous security validation. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is safeguarding customer data through continuous testing and Hibank was able to shed expensive third party consultants who only conducted periodic assessments for critical applications.
In April, the company announced their Distribution Attack Orchestration architecture and AI-reporting capabilities. These new updates provide visibility into how adversaries can exploit the enterprise attack surface, while AI-based reporting aggregates the trends security leaders need to prioritize to reduce exposure across the organization.
Pentera has grown ARR by 300% since December 2021 and their customer base has reached 1,100 enterprises. The company will be investing its recent $60 million Series D fundraise into expanding its presence in North America, investing in AI-driven automation, and exploring strategic acquisitions to enhance the platform offering.
This growth stage startup was named one of Fast Company’s 2023 Most Innovative Companies, a Deloitte 2023 Fast 500 company, one of Inc. 5000’s Top 10 Fastest Growing Private Cybersecurity Companies, and received the 2022 Black Unicorn Award for their growth & market leadership.
Operators to Know (Locally):
Tyler Bascom, Senior Director of Sales Development, Americas
Cooper Fuller, Director of Customer Success Americas
Clint Harrington, Team Lead, Business Development
Melissa Pinciak, Sr. Field & Channel Marketing Manager
Thomas Pore, Director of Sales Engineering, Americas
Jack McDonough, Regional Sales Director, New England
Colleen Reichlen, Field & Channel Marketing Manager
Alex Rose, Sales Development Manager
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Pentera team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired (Locally):
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
What are the top strategic initiatives for 2025?
What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team in North America, globally, and to 200+ employees?
What is the long term vision for the company?
How is the competitive landscape changing in the agentic AI era for cyber attackers & defenders?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Pentera you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more enterprises into the age of AI. All cybersecurity defenders applaud your efforts. See you around town!
Adam Bosch, Partner at Bosch Ventures
Adam Jackson, Partner at Bosch Ventures joins The Lantern to detail how Bosch Ventures is one of the leading growth investors here in Boston (Series A-C) investing in hardware AND software startups!
Chris Munford, Founder & CEO at Nethopper
Chris Munford, Founder & CEO at Nethopper joins The Lantern to discuss how his team is building Private AI for enterprises, bringing AI to your data and keeping privacy intact!
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups, founders, or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt