• Splunk's former CTO teamed up with a special ops veteran to build cybersecurity startup Horizon3.ai.
• The military-tech combo has been the secret sauce for their startup, the cofounders tell Insider. 
• They've raised $8.5 million from VCs such as SignalFire, which backed Clubhouse and Ro.

Snehal Antani thought his Silicon Valley chops would prove a valuable asset when he began consulting for the Department of Defense.

But in the end, Antani, the former chief technology officer of big data company Splunk, was struck by how much the Valley could benefit from the expertise of veterans such as Anthony Pillitiere, a former deputy CTO within US Special Operations Command.

So Antani and Pillitiere teamed up to form their own cybersecurity startup, Horizon3.ai, which does what they describe as "automated penetration testing-as-a-service." In classic penetration testing, or pen testing for short, a company hires security pros to hack into their systems to test their defenses and report on the holes they found. Horizon3.ai has automated the process to make it a form of continuous security monitoring, Antani said.

But it was the cofounders' combination of backgrounds that brought their company $8.5 million in total funding between their seed and Series A rounds.

"We've really infused the special operations culture with the startup culture," Antani told Insider. "It's been a pretty awesome experiment for us to prove that it is absolutely possible with the talent we have." 

Many ex-military tech workers become contractors or start consulting firms but compared to, say, software engineers from a Facebook or a Google, relatively few successfully break into the Silicon Valley startup world. That's a contrast from the renowned cybersecurity startup scene in Israel, where companies like Snyk and Cato Networks have tapped into military expertise and landed huge rounds of venture funding.

One reason why vets don't routinely command VC-backed startups is that the return to civilian life can be difficult for some. Government contracting offers a relatively easy career path, Pillitiere told Insider. As a result, they spend years doing government work and can miss out on innovations more common in the private sector, like the cutting edge tech in big data, AI, or cloud. 

But veterans also have unique skills that private-sector software engineers don't have. That's what Horizon3 discovered when it teamed up ex-military workers with Silicon Valley natives on the company's early development exercises.

"We knew at that point we had found something special," Pillitiere said.

About a third of Horizon3's 50-odd employees have a background in special operations, like Pillitiere. That informs the startup's approach to cybersecurity: envisioning how potential hackers see a company's IT systems.

The demand for cybersecurity services has grown much stronger over the past year in the wake of several high-profile incidents, such as the hack of IT firm SolarWinds, which left several Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies vulnerable to attack.

That's drawn attention from VCs, and in response, many startups have popped up hoping to benefit from their deep pockets, Ilya Kirnos, a founding partner of SignalFire, told Insider.

But with their Silicon Valley-meets-Pentagon pedigree, Antani and Pillitiere were able to cut through the static. A week-and-a-half after meeting with SignalFire, a VC firm that has backed Clubhouse, Lime and Ro, the cofounders got their first term sheet. Their seed funding, at $3.5 million, closed in early 2020.

SignalFire later led Horizon3's Series A round, which closed earlier this year. 

"If you want a sparring partner who's going to point out what your weaknesses are, this team is like sparring with Mike Tyson in his prime," Kirnos said. "These guys are the best at what they do."

The deep admiration is mutual, Antani said. Early on, Horizon3's cofounders sought to test their potential backers by including a slide of frequently asked questions deep into their pitch deck.

None of the other VCs Antani and Pillitiere had talked to remarked upon the slide. But when the cofounders met with SignalFire, Walter Kortschak, the firm's executive chairman — who holds a deep knowledge of cybersecurity dating back to his investment in McAfee when he was at Summit Ventures — immediately began asking about details in the FAQ.

"It just showed the conviction and how much homework these guys do," Antani said. "As soon as he asked that question, Tony and I knew these were the guys we were going to work with."

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