Once upon a time...

Five misfits from ManTech decided ManTech was doing it wrong and ventured out to plot a different course. Two of the misfits, Dan Hall and Mike Viscuso, were tired of being told they weren’t allowed to reward and care for their employees, as that would be too expensive. Bonuses went to the executive compensation plans, rewarding people that had performed years ago, but not within the last year. To make matters worse, there was an utter lack of research dollars. Their innovative group had many ideas, but lacked the money needed to truly accelerate. Something had to change. They believed that if they were capable of solving tough problems for clients, contract funding would take care of itself, creating money for research in the process. They were taking a risk, but they knew they weren’t wrong.



“...they weren’t allowed to reward and care for their employees...”

In the beginning, there was Kyrus

The original story of Legion Capital starts with a boutique government contractor the five guys created and named Kyrus Tech, after the Greek god of luck and opportunity. They wanted to take their government contracting proceeds and reinvest them in technology ideas, using humility as a guiding force. It took some time and patience to secure their first government contract, but it wasn’t long after their first revenue win that fate paid them a visit.



"...fate paid them a visit."

One man’s breach is another man’s opportunity

Kyrus incubated the sensor known today as Carbon Black Responder, which is essentially a video camera for your computer that records execution at the endpoint where all malware lives. With a slew of entrepreneurial problems becoming apparent, Carbon Black made slow progress. Mike Viscuso pitched dozens of venture firms to no avail. Kyrus was profitable in those days, but the reinvested capital required to incubate a prototype technology is quite different than the capital required for a start-up.



“...taking what we make and reinvesting it in people.”

Blackstone

We witnessed the brilliance that only a first-rate private equity firm could produce. Blackstone leadership challenged its CTO and CISO to rethink their overhead security spending and use that budget to invest in innovative security technologies, becoming early adopters in their own investments at a much lower price point. The quest to find new technologies led Bill and Jay to find Mike Viscuso and the endpoint product idea that was in the works. Blackstone became the seed investor (we are told but can’t confirm that Carbon Black was the smallest investment in Blackstone history) and this gave us the jolt we needed. Two years later we found ourselves selling the technology to Bit9, the Boston based standard for whitelisting security technology.



While waiting in the Blackstone lobby for the meeting to sign the deal documents, Dan Hall and Mike Viscuso thumbed through a coffee table book on the history of Blackstone. The book told the story of the founders’ beginnings, how they mortgaged everything they had and eventually created success. This success was defined by how much money the founders were worth and how many billionaires were fund investors. Legion Capital comes from more humble beginnings. We believe in taking what we make and reinvesting it in the people we were three years ago. In the technology world, especially the world of computer security, investors bet on people who have been there, done that. We had no past successes to put in our investment deck, and we didn’t want to rely on yesterday’s innovations. Something had to change.



"...joining the legion might be your key to success."

Legion Capital

We’ve created Legion Capital to be a game-changing idea investor. We believe operators have the past ideas because they see the problems. We want to help first-time founders get their inventions to market. At Legion Capital, we emphasize employee ownership. We believe aligning incentives is the key to success. We believe the only way to make a difference is to band together and measure your success by something other than money. If you have an idea and you’re ready to do the startup grind, joining the legion might be your key to success.

PORTFOLIO

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Kyrus Technology

Specializing in software and hardware vulnerability research and secure software development, our team is able to approach our customers' projects with a depth of expertise and ingenuity that is truly world-class.

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Darkfield

Darkfield is the platform for serious cybersecurity entrepreneurs building compelling solutions to important problems.

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Carbon Black

Carbon Black is a leading provider of next-generation endpoint security. Carbon Black serves more than 3,700 customers globally, including 33 of the Fortune 100.

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Red Canary

Red Canary was founded to make security better. We defend hundreds of organizations around the world, with customers ranging from global Fortune 100s to 100-endpoint organizations.

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ID Vector

IDVector provides a very simple and unobtrusive way to safely and securely access the Internet without fear of data interception or leakage.

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Appsulate

Appsulate is a web isolation platform that secures SaaS apps from data exfiltration and shields corporate endpoints from web-borne threats.

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Randori

Rethinking the practice of security.

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Disruptive Solutions

Disruptive Solutions is an employee and Veteran-owned Small Business focused on providing niche technical services.

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Radical Convergence

Radical Convergence is a technology start-up company blending commercial technologies in content management with the latest techniques in machine learning and computer vision to manage content at scale.

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Overwatch ID

OverWatchID delivers a feature-rich platform that comprises privileged access management (PAM), identity access management (IAM), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and cloud access security brokering (CASB).

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