5 Former Founders Already Building New Companies

Joe Musselman, Founder & Managing Partner of BVVC, joined Tom Ryan on Welcome to the Arena to discuss the firm’s focus on national security investing and the infrastructure needed to help defense tech startups scale. The conversation explores why advanced manufacturing capacity matters to U.S. competitiveness, how BVVC supports founders building for the defense ecosystem, and why the next decade of investment could shape the country’s security priorities for years to come. Listen here: https://hubs.la/Q04nV4YB0

We've sat across from founders whose entire pitch was a technical achievement: a faster model, a clever architecture, a proprietary algorithm. Six months later, three other teams had matched it. The founders who survived that period weren't the ones with the best technology at the time of the pitch. They were the ones who had already started building something harder to copy underneath it: a customer base, a data set, a distribution channel. Technical differentiation buys time. It is rarely, by itself, the reason a company wins.

Registration is now open for the DIB Accelerator 2026 (DIBX) – the Defense Industrial Base Consortium’s event focused on revolutionizing defense investment! 📍 Philadelphia, PA | August 25–27, 2026 | Pennsylvania Convention Center This action-oriented gathering brings together Department of War leaders, interagency partners, global allies, private capital investors, and small business innovators to accelerate defense manufacturing, scale critical technologies, and strengthen supply chain resilience. With the theme “Revolutionizing Defense Investment,” expect unparalleled opportunities including: Key Highlights: It features an interactive Exhibit Hall, a live pitch competition, and a “Solutions Proving Ground” for diagnosing operational challenges, as well as various plenary and breakout sessions. For more information see post below. #DIBX2026 #DefenseIndustrialBase #SmallBusiness #SBIR #Manufacturing #AlaskaSmallBusiness

Seed and Series A companies almost always hit the same wall, an enterprise customer or investor asks for SOC 2 readiness, and the founding team has never built a security program because they were busy building the product. The Startup Sprint, 25,000 dollars over 4 weeks, takes a company from zero to first SOC 2 readiness through four phases, automated baseline, deep dive, validation, handover, built specifically for that first-time gap. If SOC 2 just became a blocker on a deal you are trying to close, this is the fastest credible path through it. https://lnkd.in/eG27fT3M

SK Hynix's upcoming U.S. listing is reportedly more than seven times oversubscribed, highlighting investor appetite for AI infrastructure plays. Nicole Petallides breaks down what's driving demand for one of the biggest IPOs in history and why investors are piling into the memory-chip giant.

Our founder and CEO, Carrie Osman, had a letter published in the Financial Times this week on the SaaS moat debate. Her point: plenty of software firms claim a moat, almost none can define one, and with billions in distressed tech debt already stacking up, PE investors backing the sector cannot afford to take that on faith. It's exactly why we built Cortex, to give firms and their investors a real, data backed answer to what their moat actually is, rather than a story. Camelot is gone. The real question now is who actually has a moat, and who was just telling a good story. Read Carrie's full letter in the FT below 👇

Tech alliances: easy to talk about, hard to get right. Brinqa's SVP of Tech Alliances Jay Klauser broke down what actually goes into a partnership that works: it's never just "how do we pull in your data." It's how do we build something both sides can use to get findings fixed, not just found. Jay's filter for a real partnership: what's the partner's unique lens, what can Brinqa's existing connectors and data already do, and where does that combination actually drive remediation. Watch the full clip 👇 Headed to Black Hat and want to connect with Jay? Here's where to find him and the team: https://champ.ly/qZBZc7B9 #BlackHatUSA #ExposureManagement #TechAlliances #CTEM w/ Hacker Valley Media

Last week we announced $9.3M in total seed funding, led by Inovia Capital with Sorenson Capital, Alumni Ventures, Launchpod and Christopher Key Key, former CPO of Mandiant. The thing I care about most isn't the raise. It's that we keep winning competitive evaluations against the incumbents customers were already paying, because we catch the attacks those tools wave through. That's the whole GTM story. We don't win on a longer feature list. We win when a security team runs us against what's actually hitting their inboxes, the business email compromise with no link, the vendor fraud that passes every authentication check, and sees us reason through intent the way their best analyst would. The new funding goes into GTM and platform expansion, so more teams can run that same evaluation, as we prepare for our next phase of growth and a planned Series A. If you've ever watched a "clean" email nearly trigger an irreversible wire, that's the conversation I want to have. Riz . Alan LeFort Joshua Bass

DreistStorgaard is pleased to have advised Trifork Labs on its strategic partnership with Verdane and the sale of ownership interests in four companies from the Trifork Labs portfolio. Trifork Labs leads Trifork Group’s venture-financed R&D activities and has, for more than 20 years, founded, co-founded and invested in innovative B2B software companies 👍🏻 The transaction establishes a strategic partnership between Trifork and Verdane and includes Verdane’s acquisition of ownership interests in Axoniq , Dawn Health and Frameo A/S. Verdane will also acquire Trifork’s entire ownership interest in XCI, a cybersecurity company specialising in communication intelligence 👏🏻 The partnership brings together Trifork’s experience in founding and developing software companies with Verdane’s expertise in supporting the growth and development of technology businesses. It also provides the portfolio companies with significant follow-on investment capacity and strategic support for their continued development👍🏻 DreistStorgaard’s core deal team consisted of Svend-Aage Dreist Hansen, Nikolaj Bak-Christensen, Nikolaj Juhl Hansen, Nadia Vinther and Alexander Elmgreen 💪🏻 We congratulate Trifork, Verdane and everyone involved, and thank Trifork for the trust🤝

Great team work Nikolaj Bak-Christensen, Nadia Vinther, Alexander Elmgreen and Svend-Aage Dreist Hansen - we’re very proud to have advised Trifork Labs on the creation of a strategic partnership with Verdane, including the sale of shares in four lab companies… DreistStorgaard Advokater A/S