> By scanning the networks of multiple customers, the company claimed, IronNet’s advanced software and skilled staff could spot signals and patterns of sophisticated hackers that a single company couldn’t do alone
> IronNet was projecting exponential growth that required the company to land a handful of major contracts, according to confidential board documents obtained by the AP. Those prospective deals included one valued at up to $10 million to provide cybersecurity for the U.S. Navy’s contractors and a more than $22 million deal with the government of Kuwait
> IronNet’s ideas about gathering threat data from multiple clients were not unique and the company’s biggest draw was Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director
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These 3 points sum up the core issue with IronNet (and a number of similar other startups I and my peers passed on):
1. Bad Product Market Fit - IDS was commodified by the time IronNet was founded. ThousandEyes was already acquired by Cisco, and Palo Alto Networks, VMWare, Akamai, CloudFlare, Imperva, etc could all extend core IDS functionality.
2. Horrible GTM strategy - there's a reason you don't go Fed/Govt sales until at least Series E. Any kind of government or government adjacent sale is a multi-quarter slog. You need a constant inflow of mid-sized deals to keep the lights on, and that comes from the private sector.
3. Relying on thought leadership at the expense of product strategy - thought leadership driven sales is losing efficacy, as procurement is increasingly driven by domain experts. Go into a PoC nowadays, and the people test driving products will almost always be technical, and their inputs are treated valuably.
4. Inexperienced investors - run away from a startup if the lead investing team DOES NOT have a track record funding successful startups in that domain.
This might be racist, but I've found EMEA investors to be the slimiest investors to work with. They almost never have domain experience - and those who do tend to leave for the US - plus they tend to overindex on pedigree instead of network.
5. Investors who lose interest - Forgepoint lead the Series A, but dropped to only a participant by Series B, which is a common trend of theirs. They maximize their returns at the early stage, and essentially don't care about the product itself. Some VCs do care about product, others don't. Tread carefully based on your own interests.
> EMEA investors
Thats a pretty broad sweep
Absolutely, but it's been my general experience.
A lot of the European "VCs" are basically rebranded Family Offices or PEs, and aren't staffed with former operators.
The European office of an American fund tends to be decent though, as they tend to filter for people with domain experience.
Index Ventures is a notable exception to this rule imo, but they actually worked at adopting the SV model.
i dont think you're wrong btw. Just was curious if there were specific pockets within EMEA that are better or worse
In general, it's better to move to the US if you want better terms fundraising.
That said, London is probably the closest in Europe due to strong dealflow, more capital, ease of access for American funds, and easier business operating conditions.
Before the war and sanctions, Russia+Ukraine were decent - they had a very active and American style VC ecosystem, plus diaspora VCs in the US investing in startups in the old country
Romania and Czechia have a decent startup scene as well, and former operators who are alumni of companies that exited (eg. Avast, BitDefender, UIPath) along with the diaspora investors in the US are fairly active.
Also, I need to add Munich Re Ventures to my list of notable exceptions, but then again, they're almost entirely in North America.