AI Cybersecurity Startup Pitch
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https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DGXi5-BAQhWfXYIOmNKK1A
Apply to Pitch or Attend & Learn 👀
Funded and Non-Funded Startups are welcome to apply!
🎤 1. Main Stage Pitch (7 Founders)
The top 7 funded startups, selected before the event, will pitch live during the first 30 minutes.
Each founder delivers an 80-second pitch followed by live buyer decisions (Demo Advisor Not Now) and feedback. While you'll be presenting primarily to one assigned buyer, all four buyers will be listening and evaluating your company.
🤝 2. Breakout Room Pitch (20 Founders)
An additional 20 of the strongest applicants—including both funded and earlier-stage startups—will be selected for Breakout Room Pitches.
Each founder gives a 60-second pitch directly to one enterprise buyer, followed by 60 seconds of live feedback, all facilitated in a small-group breakout session.
👀 3. Attend & Learn
Not selected to pitch? You're still invited to attend.
All applicants will be notified before the event whether they've been selected for the Main Stage, a Breakout Room Pitch, or are attending as a participant.
Hear enterprise buyers discuss their biggest challenges, watch the Main Stage pitches, participate in VC Q&A, and learn how security leaders evaluate new vendors.
OPTIONAL BONUS SESSION
💼 VC Office Hours (30 Minutes)
After the Buyer Pitch, founders are invited to stay for an optional 30-minute VC Office Hours with investors from Okta Ventures and other cybersecurity VCs.
The session will begin with rapid-fire startup reviews, where VCs will pull up a few founders' websites and spend about 60 seconds sharing what immediately stands out, what they find most compelling, and their biggest question or concern—giving founders a live look into how investors evaluate startups. This will be followed by Q&A.
CISO Panel:
Glean's CISO - Sunil Agrawal - sunilcagrawal
Factory's Head of Security - Kirk Strauser - kirk-strauser
Dropbox's Head of Security - Jessica Jimenez - jessica-jimenez-she-her-25b086166
Okta’s CSO of the Americas, & Head of Customer Audit - Matthew Hansen - matt-hansen
SentinelOne's Deputy CISO - Josh Blackwelder - josh-blackwelder-70282222
Pre-vote Judges:
Amazon Lab126's Senior Applied Scientist, Vashishtha Patil - vashishthapatil
Databricks's Senior Security Software Engineer, Vedasagar Karthykeyan - vkarthyk
Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s Principal Software Engineer, Pratik Raichura - pratikraichura
Akamai Technologies's Senior Engineer (Cloud Security), Yogesh Thanvi - yogeshthanvi
Catalyst Brands's VP, Digital Engineering & Platforms, Rohit Verma - rv4080
Tesla's Senior Manager, Applications Engineering, Ashwin Kumar - ashwinkrkumar
Snowflake's Senior Software Engineer, Harsh Ranjan - harsh-ranjan-8a30056b
Okta Ventures's Investor, David Lopez-Henriquez - david-lopez-henriquez-41a6b1a8
About your hosts:
Okta Ventures invests and supports companies creating cutting-edge technologies enabled by identity, security, and privacy. Feel free to also connect with the Head of Okta Ventures, Austin Arensberg, and Investor, David Lopez-Henriquez:
Hetz Ventures: Invests in and supports early-stage Israeli founders building cutting-edge AI infrastructure, data infrastructure, cybersecurity, developer tools, and enterprise software with global ambitions.
Holly Ventures: Invests in and supports seed-stage cybersecurity founders building the next generation of security infrastructure, identity, cloud security, AI security, and enterprise cybersecurity technologies.
Merlin Ventures: Enables exceptional founders to build the next generation of cybersecurity solutions. Through our deep domain expertise, network of hundreds of CISOs and go-to-market muscle, we open doors no other VC can.
The Founder Initiative is a podcast & event community that helps founders hit product-market fit, drive durable growth, and get funded faster.
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