The Venture Codex

Participated · Series A · Feb 2026

Founded in 2021 and based in Boulder, Colorado, RADICL Defense has built an autonomous virtual security operations center (vSOC) tailored for small and mid-sized businesses operating in regulated or high-risk environments such as the defense industrial base and critical infrastructure. The company’s cybersecurity-as-a-service platform blends AI-driven “agentic operators” with human expertise to identify, assess, and respond to cyberattacks at machine speed, providing nation-state-level defense-in-depth and managed compliance. RADICL’s modular offerings unify workflows for agentic and human operators, the customer, and managed service providers, aiming to make SOC operations increasingly autonomous and software-led. Its vSOC helps SMBs improve both compliance and security posture in the face of emerging automated, AI-powered threats. The firm positions itself as a proactive answer to the growing “AI-enabled threat tsunami” that disproportionately affects resource-constrained organizations. With total funding now at $42 million, RADICL plans to accelerate AI-native vSOC development, launch new products, and drive broader market adoption.

Participated · Seed · Jan 2026

Samara Aerospace is building the Hummingbird satellite bus, which replaces conventional reaction wheels with articulated solar-panel hinges that tilt up, down, left, and right to control attitude. The company claims this mechanism can make spacecraft up to 1,000 times more stable than legacy systems, reducing vibration, eliminating image blur, and improving pointing accuracy. By removing bulky reaction wheels, Hummingbird can also shrink satellite size and weight, allowing flatter, more stackable designs that lower launch costs. Samara’s first in-orbit hardware—a panel with two hinges—flew on Impulse Space’s Mira spacecraft aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission in November and has powered on successfully while awaiting its turn to perform a full experiment. The technology targets Earth-observation operators who need clearer imagery and optical-communications providers that require precise pointing, and it has also attracted interest from an aerospace prime for high-density launch deployment. With fresh funding, the team aims to launch its first dedicated Hummingbird satellite in summer 2027. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and recently secured $10 million in seed capital to accelerate development.

Led · Seed · Sep 2024

Hydden offers an identity security platform that builds a single data layer across IAM, PAM, IGA, ITDR, cloud applications, and on‑prem systems to provide security leaders complete visibility into identities, accounts, and privileges. The platform connects to existing identity tools via connectors that automatically discover and interpret identity data wherever it lives, normalizes and models that data, and provides a real‑time source of truth. Hydden’s continuous discovery engine detects, classifies, and alerts on identity‑related risks, while a time capsule of identity history supports post‑event forensics and root‑cause analysis. The company says its product surfaces critical issues that siloed IAM solutions miss and enables security teams to prioritize and remediate identity risk without disrupting existing infrastructure. Hydden was founded by a team of seasoned identity security product and engineering leaders and is positioning the platform to address growing identity attack surface challenges. Financially, the company disclosed a $4.4 million seed raise to support its next phase of growth and early access program.

Participated · Series B · Feb 2023

Bonusly’s platform gives employees a monthly allowance to award small bonuses to colleagues, which appear in a public feed and are tagged with reasons and company values. The product captures and analyzes recognition data to inform HR teams and managers and the company reports an average of two recognitions per user per week. As of January 2023 Bonusly had 3,175 current customers and 396,813 current users. Rewards can be redeemed for popular-brand gift cards, cash, and charitable donations; the company is expanding its rewards catalog and adding non-U.S. redemption options plus travel and experiences at scale. Bonusly is investing in improved analytics and exploring AI features to surface overlooked work and encourage peer-to-peer recognition. The company says it is capital-efficient and employs about 108 people while continuing product and technical improvements. Bonusly is a points-based employee recognition platform that lets organizations allocate points employees can give to coworkers, redeemable via PayPal or vendor partners such as Amazon, Tango Card and Cadooz. Launched in 2013, the platform integrates with collaboration tools including Gmail and Slack and displays a social feed of recognitions in real time. Employers set overall recognition budgets which Bonusly breaks into points allotted to employees; the system includes features like an auto-scale button for multi-jurisdiction scaling and privacy controls for sensitive recognitions. Bonusly emphasizes peer-to-peer participation, reporting that 75% of employees give recognition in the first month of deployment and 80% give each month by the two-year mark. Users have donated over $500,000 through the platform, including more than $100,000 to the WHO in six weeks. The company competes with Kazoo and Motivocity and has raised nearly $14 million in total funding. Bonusly offers an employee recognition and rewards platform that enables organizations to build collaborative, inclusive, and productive team cultures centered on employee connections. The platform integrates with tools such as Slack, MS Teams, Workday, BambooHR, ADP, and Okta. Founded in 2013 by Raphael Crawford-Marks and based in Boulder, CO, the company has scaled usage globally. Last year, users gave more than 2.7 million bonuses across 114 countries and have contributed nearly a quarter of a million dollars to charity. Bonusly intends to use the new funding to scale its technology. The product is positioned for broader enterprise integration through its existing third-party tool connections. Bonusly provides a web platform that helps companies reward and motivate employees through peer-to-peer bonuses and recognition. The product aims to boost team motivation with regular positive feedback, recognize top performers with timely peer bonuses and awards, and create effective incentive programs through peer interactions. Led by co-founder and CEO Raphael Crawford-Marks, the company reports 10,000 active monthly users and has paying customers including ZipRecruiter and Kadence International. Bonusly plans to use new funding to make key hires in engineering, sales, and customer success and to continue building out the platform. Planned product work includes adding more integrations and developing advanced analytics. The company is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2022

Tidal Cyber offers a Threat-Led Defense platform that helps organizations measure and improve the effectiveness of their security stack against real-world threats and adversary behavior. The platform operationalizes MITRE ATT&CK and delivers independent tools and services to align security efforts to the threats that matter without vendor bias. Tidal Cyber plans to build a comprehensive CTI and adversary behavior–driven platform to shift organizations from managing intel to proactive, threat-informed defense. The company raised $10 million in Series A funding to accelerate product innovation and fuel company growth. Tidal Cyber was founded in 2022 and is based in Reston, Va. It was co-founded by three former MITRE experts — Rick Gordon, Richard Struse, and Frank Duff — who bring extensive experience in threat-informed defense and related standards and programs. Tidal Cyber offers a Threat-Informed Defense SaaS platform (Enterprise Edition) that aggregates MITRE ATT&CK®, third-party threat intelligence, and internal research to produce Tidal Confidence Scores and Coverage Maps. The platform recently integrated Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) test results to compare tests against existing confidence scores. The company also maintains a freely available Community Edition used by over 3,000 security professionals globally. Tidal Cyber plans to use new investment to accelerate go-to-market activities, expand sales and marketing, and enhance both Community and Enterprise Editions. The company reported customer and financial growth exceeding 10x over the past year. Founded in January 2022 by threat-intelligence veterans with experience at MITRE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Tidal Cyber aims to lead adoption of Threat-Informed Defense across critical infrastructure segments. Tidal Cyber offers a threat-informed defense platform that embeds the MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base to help security operations teams focus on the most relevant adversarial tactics and techniques. The platform includes a threat profile builder to identify and prioritize relevant threats, a prioritized to-do list for daily defensive actions, a map to optimize defensive tooling, and a proprietary confidence score to assess cyber posture. Tidal’s tools aim to align threats with the right defensive capabilities and streamline communication about an organization’s security program. The company is led by CEO Rick Gordon, CTO Richard Struse, and CINO Frank Duff. Tidal plans to use newly raised capital to accelerate growth of its platform. The company is based in Reston, VA. Tidal Cyber offers a SaaS-based threat-informed defense platform that maps an organization’s security capabilities to adversary tactics and techniques, including MITRE ATT&CK and additional intelligence sources. The platform includes a registry of vendor product capabilities mapped to adversary behaviors to produce actionable insight on defensive coverage, gaps, and overlaps. Tidal provides a free Community Edition that was made generally available at Black Hat USA in early August, featuring enriched technique data and the Tidal Product Registry. The company plans an enterprise edition with enhanced features, including reporting driven by a Tidal Confidence Score to help evaluate and communicate cyber risk reduction. Led by CEO Rick Gordon, Tidal intends to use the new funding to expand the platform and ramp up customer acquisition. Financially, the company raised $4M in funding to support these product and go-to-market efforts.