Industrial operators face unique cyber security challenges and today’s detection and monitoring products are inflexible, hardware-dependent and fail to provide the required visibility into Operations Technology environments. A better solution is needed to help protect critical infrastructure such as energy, utilities, manufacturing and industrial loT from cyber threats — which is why we’re thrilled to participate in SynSaber’s seed round and welcome their team to the Rally portfolio.

SynSaber is the industrial asset and network monitoring solution that provides continuous insight into status, vulnerabilities and threats. Its unique, technology-agnostic solution enables industrial operators and security analysts to see the full…

The critical skill sets founders need on their startup board.

The board of directors plays a critical role in the success of a venture-backed company. At the most basic level, particularly with an entrepreneurial board focused on rapid growth, the role of a board is to support and guide the company towards success.

For our latest masterclass, we joined together with Blackbird Ventures and Cicada Innovations to talk about the best practices and principles for a startup board. We discussed what to expect from your board members, the progression of a board and much more.

We’re thrilled to welcome Jay Borenstein to the Rally Ventures team. In his role as venture partner, Jay will be responsible for driving new investments, supporting existing portfolio companies and deepening our expertise in edtech and extended reality (XR).

Jay brings 25+ years of experience as a founder, operator and investor to Rally Ventures. He is a lecturer of computer science at Stanford University with a focus on virtual reality, software engineering and entrepreneurship.

Jay also runs the Education Modernization (EdMod) Group at Facebook. In this role, he focuses on leveraging modern technologies to improve education and create more equity…

College graduation is a tremendous moment of transformation for many people — a time when you leave the known path of school and jump into the unknown world.

A full year has passed since I graduated from Colby College and joined Rally Ventures. In that time, I’ve gone from college graduate to Rally Ventures intern to Rally Ventures associate.

I’ve experienced and learned a lot over the past 12 months. I’ve had the opportunity to help source and evaluate deals, build repeatable organizational systems, do market research and support industry-altering companies.

As I reflect on the past year and watch…

Online businesses lose over $50B each year to fraudsters, scammers and identity thieves, even though they spend three times that amount maintaining and updating their defenses. Attackers have no-code tools and click-to-deploy networks that put them at an unfair advantage against busy risk engineering teams.

The founders at SpecTrust have worked side-by-side with the hidden heroes fighting cybercrime for the better part of the last decade and they knew there was a better solution. …

Backer is a social savings platform that makes it quick and easy to set up a 529 plan account and get family and friends involved as contributors (“backers”).

Backer has helped families save $20 million for college, with 40% of the money coming from grandparents, aunts/uncles, and friends of the family — a rate of gifting that’s 30x higher than the 529 industry average. With Americans carrying a record $1.8 trillion in student loan debt, Backer helps families give their child the prospect of financial freedom.

The 529 industry is a several hundred billion dollar opportunity, but it’s still fairly…

Rally Tech Partner and Domo CFO Bruce Felt has more than 25 years of management and financial operations experience in companies ranging from early stage to IPO.

Bruce was previously the CFO of SuccessFactors, guiding the company through a public offering, six acquisitions and its $3.4 billion sale to SAP. He was also the CFO for LANDesk Software, Auction.com and Qualix Group, and he was the founder of Renaissance Software.

At a recent Masterclass for Rally portfolio companies, Bruce talked through what it takes to build a world-class finance organization and how the role of a CFO evolves over time.

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Yardstik is the market’s first comprehensive, fully integrated human security software platform. Pure white–label, it leverages deep background screening, certification administration, verification management, training systems and industry–specific nuance. It offers a unique operating model tailored to marketplaces and SaaS platforms, with an API-first approach adaptable to virtually any industry.

Rally Managing Director Justin Kaufenberg experienced first-hand how critical it is to commit to human security when you are a vertical platform of record. While Justin was the CEO of SportsEngine, a software platform to manage youth sports organizations, his team made the decision to bring safety and human security in-house…