Why We Bet on NetRise Before the World Knew It Needed To

I’ve been fortunate to have been investing in startups for over 27 years and to have met thousands of founders. But the ones I remember don’t always have the best decks or cleanest TAM slides. The founders I remember most are the ones where, five minutes into a meeting, it’s already clear that they’ll never stop giving everything to what they believe in.

NetRise’s Thomas Pace is one of those founders.

Tom is a former Marine, and from the moment we met, it was clear to me that he was going to bust through walls to deliver value for NetRise’s customers. This dedication wasn’t because the market forced him to, but because stopping isn’t something he knows how to do. I recently shared author Kevin Kelly’s advice that being enthusiastic is the equivalent of 25 IQ points. Tom is a prime example of this.

As the team celebrates Accenture’s intent to acquire the company, I took a trip down memory lane to reflect on the moments that led to today.

The Problem Nobody Was Solving

Supply chain security had been on my mind well before SolarWinds’ 2020 breach made it a board-level conversation. While it was a wake-up call for the industry, I believe that enterprises had already been operating with a massive blind spot when it came to supply chain security.

The security industry has spent years going after developers via scanning code as it’s being written and catching vulnerabilities before they ship. And when you think about it, every company has one of three problems:

1. They’re building software
2. They’re buying software
3. They’re shipping hardware that has firmware on it

NetRise sits at the intersection of all three of these problems. It analyzes compiled code rather than source code to identify risk within the software actually installed on the systems critical to enterprise infrastructure. Following the 2020 breach at SolarWinds, I met with dozens of vendors that were doing surface-level analysis on top of developer platforms. NetRise stood out to me because they were doing deep binary code analysis at scale. That distinction sounds technical (and it is), but it’s also a structural moat that most of the market didn’t understand they were missing.

What the Journey Looked Like

When we initially invested in NetRise in 2021, we worked with the company to launch out of stealth and set out on its plan to focus on product development advancements, forge channel relationships, amplify go-to-market sales, and build a strong leadership team.

Now, when I look back at our nearly five-year relationship, I’d say the inflection point came when NetRise closed several major deals with the federal government. Getting contracts with the federal government was a validating moment. It signaled to the market that the supply chain security problem was real and that NetRise could operate in one of the most demanding environments on Earth.

From there, we helped bring on John Stewart, the former Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cisco, as an investor who got deeply involved. John had spent decades watching enterprises ship hardware products with firmware vulnerabilities they weren’t thinking hard enough about. We helped bring him in at the right moment, which opened doors to conversations with industry leaders and disruptors. The team continued to build relationships with Carahsoft, Guidepoint, WWT, and Booz Allen Hamilton. These strategic channel partnerships were crucial for growth. The right partner gets you in front of enterprise buyers you can’t reach on your own.

All of this – the partnerships, the customers, the leadership – has shaped NetRise into the perfect fit for Accenture. By combining NetRise’s innovation and expertise with Accenture’s reach, I’m confident that more enterprises will prioritize their supply chain security more strategically.

What NetRise Taught Me

I’ve spent some time thinking about what NetRise and Tom Pace have taught me, and I’ve narrowed it down to three main takeaways:

1. The right team is the true differentiator. Anyone can write a thesis on why supply chain security matters, but not everyone can execute the way Tom and the NetRise team have.
2. Clear technical differentiation is non-negotiable, and those that survive in the long run have a specific, defensible wedge. There are plenty of players in the supply chain security space (and I’ve met with many of them over the years), but NetRise had binary analysis as their key differentiation.
3. Conviction takes you far. We invested in NetRise before it launched out of stealth. What convinced us was Tom’s conviction in his team and their innovation.

Tom, it’s been such a pleasure to fight the good fight from the trenches with you and your team. We can’t wait to see the impact you have on Accenture’s clients alongside Dragos, Inc. and runZero!

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