A number of investors from around the country tell us they have a problem. When considering early stage investments in cybersecurity companies, whether at Mach37 or elsewhere, investors have a hard time telling the companies apart. One issue is that companies abstract away the technical jargon for their investor pitches, and at the buzzword level they really DO sound similar. However we know from the Mach37 portfolio, where we pay attention to competitive issues within cohorts and are always looking for new ideas, that each company is unique. The challenge then is making those differences clear in an easily comprehensible way. We were searching for a way to depict the entire portfolio on a one page graph with a modest number of categories; here it is.
Across the bottom are the target users for each product, color coded and grouped into the corresponding market segments across the top. The technology categories on the vertical axis are based on our "Understanding the Technology" white paper, with a few additional categories added. This segmentation clearly gives a nice spread of the Mach37 companies, and corresponds well with our intuitive understanding of how the portfolio is beginning to meet the market needs. It also provides an interesting working definition of a company pivot, which we are beginning to see in a couple instances: a pivot is reflected by a company moving from one place on the graph to another.We are interested in your feedback. Does this provide a useful differentiation of companies in the space? Do the categories make sense? How does your portfolio stack up? Could a similar depiction work for other verticals with a different set of technology categories and users?