TELSTRA PURPLE
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Telstra Ventures is a strategic growth investor passionate about scaling great products and leaders . An independent venture capital firm backed by Telstra and HarbourVest – one of the world ’ s largest private equity funds – it provides venture capital investment via a ‘ Strategic Growth Investment ’ approach . This offers entrepreneurs access to the investment itself and reduces the time to reach global scale .
In almost a decade , Telstra Ventures has invested over US $ 350mn in 60 + companies .
Marcus Bartram is a founding Partner at Telstra Ventures and leads the security portfolio for ventures . His main role is investing in new security startups , and then helping them scale to become successful large companies .
Telstra Ventures invests heavily in security ventures and is continuously seeking the best-in-breed security innovators globally . With expertise in picking cyber security companies to
invest in and helping them scale , Bartram believes it ’ s critical to pick a sector that you have a clear understanding about .
“ The best way you can understand a particular area is to go out and talk to as many people in that sector as you can , be it entrepreneurs , customers or vendors ,” says Bartram . “ Figure out who the best companies are , what they ’ re building , who the customers are and what problems they ’ re trying to solve . This will enable you to build a really rich knowledge base that informs where you invest .”
Telstra Ventures has an extensive portfolio of companies in the cyber security space such as Anomali , Auth0 , CyberGRX , AttackIQ , Cofense , CrowdStrike , Varmour and Zimperium .
Bartram notes there are several key areas to scrutinise before investing in a cyber security startup : “ It ’ s important that I understand who ’ s the team , what pain point they are solving and how many customers do we think
JUNE 2020