The ex-Secret Service agent who flipped a hacker is now raising a second $250M cybersecurity fund

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Every time venture capitalists write a check, they’re secretly running numbers in their heads about different exit scenarios. It’s their job as fiduciaries. But nearly all will tell you (publicly, anyway) that every portfolio company is headed for an IPO. Stephen Ward, the co-founder of Brightmind Partners, a two-year-old cybersecurity fund in New York, says otherwise outright. “You have to sell on the way up,” he says.

每当风险投资家开出支票时，他们都会在心里暗自盘算各种退出方案。这是他们作为受托人的职责。但几乎所有人都会（至少在公开场合）告诉你，他们投资的每一家公司都将走向首次公开募股（IPO）。纽约一家成立两年的网络安全基金 Brightmind Partners 的联合创始人斯蒂芬·沃德（Stephen Ward）则直言不讳地表示反对。他说：“你必须在上升期就卖出。”

Ward’s unvarnished pragmatism is one reason he stands out. Another is the size of his firm’s debut fund late last year: a whopping $250 million fund, which he closed with co-founder Gur Talpaz. A third reason is his résumé, which includes a stint with the Coast Guard, nine years in the Secret Service, and CISO jobs at TIAA and Home Depot before he ever thought about investing.

沃德这种不加修饰的务实态度是他脱颖而出的原因之一。另一个原因是其公司去年年底首支基金的规模：高达 2.5 亿美元，这是他与联合创始人古尔·塔尔帕兹（Gur Talpaz）共同完成募集的。第三个原因是他的履历，其中包括在海岸警卫队的服役经历、九年的特勤局工作经验，以及在考虑投资之前曾在 TIAA 和家得宝（Home Depot）担任首席信息安全官（CISO）的职位。

One proof point that suggests the combination is working is SGNL, the identity security startup CrowdStrike agreed in January to buy for $740 million, 11 months after Brightmind led its Series A. Now Ward is raising a second fund, targeting roughly the same size as the first one. This time, though, he’ll be doing it without Talpaz, who left in April along with another early colleague, leaving Ward as the firm’s sole general partner.

证明这种组合行之有效的一个例证是 SGNL，这家身份安全初创公司在 Brightmind 领投其 A 轮融资 11 个月后，于今年 1 月被 CrowdStrike 同意以 7.4 亿美元收购。现在，沃德正在筹集第二支基金，目标规模与第一支大致相同。不过这一次，他将独自完成，因为塔尔帕兹已于 4 月与另一位早期同事离职，使沃德成为该公司唯一的普通合伙人。

He’s betting on himself at a moment when early-stage cybersecurity startups are raising more money than later-stage rivals for the first time in more than a decade. His unemotional approach to exits traces back to an unlikely career. Ward says he grew up in northwest New Jersey between two farms, in a family that couldn’t afford college for his older brothers. After high school, he joined the Coast Guard, inspired by a commercial of a man jumping out of a helicopter, though he says he barely knew how to swim at the time.

在网络安全初创公司十多年来首次筹集到比后期竞争对手更多资金的时刻，他选择了孤注一掷。他那种冷静的退出方式可以追溯到他那段不同寻常的职业生涯。沃德说，他在新泽西州西北部的两个农场之间长大，家里甚至负担不起他哥哥们的大学学费。高中毕业后，他加入了海岸警卫队，灵感来自于一则关于一个人从直升机上跳下的广告，尽管他说当时他几乎不会游泳。

He spent four years in search and rescue. Afterward, he studied criminal justice at Seton Hall in New Jersey and thought half-heartedly about law school. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Ward told me last week over Zoom, wearing a pale hooded sweatshirt and looking more like a basketball coach than a venture capitalist. “I was kind of lost. I missed the military and the camaraderie and all of that.”

他在搜救队工作了四年。之后，他在新泽西州的西顿霍尔大学（Seton Hall）学习刑事司法，并曾漫不经心地考虑过法学院。“我不知道自己想做什么，”沃德上周通过 Zoom 对我说道，他穿着一件浅色连帽衫，看起来更像是一位篮球教练，而不是风险投资家。“我当时有点迷茫。我很怀念军队生活、战友情谊以及所有那些经历。”

After graduating in 1998, he says, he mailed out some 300 résumés but no one responded. A Seton Hall professor who was also a chaplain to Secret Service personnel, as well as to members of the FBI and CIA, began introducing him around, and the Secret Service called first. The Secret Service has two primary missions: protecting people and investigating financial crimes. Ward gravitated to investigations, then to “cyber” after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

他说，1998 年毕业后，他寄出了大约 300 份简历，但无人回应。一位同时担任特勤局人员以及联邦调查局（FBI）和中央情报局（CIA）成员随军牧师的西顿霍尔大学教授开始为他引荐，特勤局率先打来了电话。特勤局有两项主要任务：保护人员和调查金融犯罪。沃德倾向于调查工作，并在 2001 年“9·11”恐怖袭击后转向了“网络”领域。

That year, he married a former college classmate, an American-born Syrian Muslim. Colleagues warned him the background check would be “miserable.” (They’re still happily married.) What came next took Ward’s life down an unexpected path. Stationed in New York, he arrested a hacker who’d pulled off the largest credit card data theft of that era. Instead of charging him, however, Ward flipped him, turning him into an informant and running him for about three years.

那一年，他与一位大学同学结婚，对方是一位在美国出生的叙利亚裔穆斯林。同事们警告他，背景调查会“非常痛苦”。（他们至今婚姻美满。）接下来的事情让沃德的人生走上了一条意想不到的道路。驻扎在纽约期间，他逮捕了一名实施了当时最大规模信用卡数据盗窃案的黑客。然而，沃德没有起诉他，而是策反了他，将其变成了一名线人，并对他进行了大约三年的管理。

But the hacker kept hacking behind Ward’s back, and after he was caught again, he told the agency, as a diversionary tactic, that Ward was in on it. By that time, Ward had left for the private sector, and he ultimately spent roughly 18 months clearing his name. “It was hard to get out of bed,” he said of that period, describing the investigation as “almost like a spouse cheating on you,” given his love of the agency.

但该黑客在沃德背后继续进行黑客活动，再次被捕后，他为了转移视线，告诉机构称沃德也参与其中。当时沃德已经离职进入私营部门，他最终花了大约 18 个月的时间才洗清了自己的名声。“那段时间很难起床，”他谈到那段时期时说，考虑到他对该机构的热爱，他将那次调查描述为“几乎就像配偶出轨一样”。

The hacker ultimately received a 20-year sentence, and Audible bought the rights to the story, turning it into an eight-episode podcast called “Operation Firewall.” Ward’s corporate career has been a success by most measures, though he describes it as a series of jumps he really wasn’t qualified to make. His first private-sector job at J.P. Morgan, where he was recruited in 2007 to build a cybersecurity unit, was the hardest transition of his career, he says.

该黑客最终被判处 20 年监禁，Audible 买下了这个故事的版权，将其制作成了一部名为《防火墙行动》（Operation Firewall）的八集播客。从大多数标准来看，沃德的企业生涯是成功的，尽管他将其描述为一系列他实际上并不具备资格的跳跃。他说，他在摩根大通（J.P. Morgan）的第一份私营部门工作——2007 年被招募去建立一个网络安全部门——是他职业生涯中最艰难的转型。

He felt like “the dumbest person in the room,” missed his Secret Service crew, and twice thought about going back, unaware he was still under investigation. He stuck it out and now calls the investment bank the “best management school.” Six years as CISO at the financial services company TIAA followed, and then two years at Home Depot starting in 2019. But in 2021, feeling burned out, he quit without anything lined up for the first time since age 16.

他感觉自己是“房间里最笨的人”，怀念他在特勤局的团队，并两次考虑过回去，却不知道自己当时仍在接受调查。他坚持了下来，现在称这家投资银行为“最好的管理学院”。随后，他在金融服务公司 TIAA 担任了六年首席信息安全官，并从 2019 年开始在家得宝工作了两年。但在 2021 年，由于感到精疲力竭，他辞职了，这是他自 16 岁以来第一次在没有找好下家的情况下离职。

That chapter didn’t last long. The founders of Wiz, whose security software Ward had used at Home Depot, put him on a short list for a job at their company. Jeff Hering, a venture capitalist at Insight Partners, which had co-led Wiz’s $100 million Series A round in late 2020, interviewed Ward for the role, then offered him one at Insight instead. It’s a good-news, bad-news story, given that Wiz was acquired last year by Google for $32 billion.

这一篇章并没有持续太久。沃德在家得宝使用过其安全软件的 Wiz 公司的创始人将他列入了公司职位的候选名单。Insight Partners 的风险投资家杰夫·霍林（Jeff Horing）曾于 2020 年底共同领投了 Wiz 的 1 亿美元 A 轮融资，他面试了沃德，随后却向他提供了 Insight 的职位。考虑到 Wiz 去年被谷歌以 320 亿美元收购，这是一个好坏参半的故事。

When I asked him about it last week, Ward observed that the friend who took the Wiz job “made life-changing money,” but said it doesn’t bother him. Regardless, he spent just three years at Insight, where he says he worked on Wiz, Abnormal Security, and Elisity, which IonQ agreed in October to buy for up to $1.3 billion. Then, at age 49, he thought about striking out on his own for the first time.

上周我问他这件事时，沃德表示，那位接受了 Wiz 工作的友人“赚到了改变生活的钱”，但他表示这并不困扰他。无论如何，他在 Insight 只待了三年，他说在那里他参与了 Wiz、Abnormal Security 和 Elisity 的工作，IonQ 已于 10 月同意以最高 13 亿美元的价格收购后者。随后，在 49 岁时，他第一次考虑自立门户。

He says people told him it was a young man’s game. He left anyway and began cold-emailing limited partners. Ultimately, fewer than 20 LPs filled the fund, including Horing. Ward started Brightmind in 2024 with Talpaz, a CrowdStrike corporate development executive whose deals overlapped with Ward’s during his time at Insight. Tayler Sipperly, another CrowdStrike corporate development alum, was the firm’s third employee.

他说人们告诉他这是年轻人的游戏。但他还是离开了，并开始向有限合伙人（LP）发送冷邮件。最终，不到 20 家有限合伙人填补了该基金，其中包括霍林。沃德于 2024 年与塔尔帕兹共同创立了 Brightmind，塔尔帕兹是 CrowdStrike 的企业发展高管，其交易在沃德任职 Insight 期间曾与沃德的交易有重叠。另一位 CrowdStrike 企业发展部门的校友泰勒·西珀利（Tayler Sipperly）是该公司的第三名员工。

The partnership ended this past spring. Asked what happened, Ward, using carefully worded legalese, cited “differences in opinions regarding operations and the future of Brightmind.” In August, Talpaz and Sipperly co-founded a new venture firm with Elia Zaitsev, CrowdStrike’s global.

这种合作关系在今年春天结束了。当被问及发生了什么时，沃德使用了措辞严谨的法律术语，称其为“在运营和 Brightmind 未来发展方面的意见分歧”。8 月，塔尔帕兹和西珀利与 CrowdStrike 的全球高管埃利亚·扎伊采夫（Elia Zaitsev）共同创立了一家新的风险投资公司。