Today marks an important milestone–announcing our Fund V and Opportunity Fund III! And now the fun begins! We’re excited to continue investing this capital as early as Day One in startups across AI-Enabled SaaS, Data & AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech. We’re also thrilled to announce that John Cowgill has been promoted to General Partner. Having led our investments in industry leaders like AppOmni, Cyberhaven, Kepler Communications Inc. and Muon Space, John has not only built our Cybersecurity and Space practices, but has also proven himself to be an exceptional partner to founders. Read more in Greg's latest piece 👉 bit.ly/3Xwzm4t #venturecapital #startups #fundraising
Costanoa Ventures
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
Palo Alto, CA 7,959 followers
Seed and Series A investors backing tenacious and thoughtful founders who change how business gets done.
About us
Seed and Series A investors backing tenacious and thoughtful founders who change how business gets done. The firm's investments include companies such as Alation, BillGo, Demandbase, Kenna Security, Roadster, and Quizlet. For more information, visit http://www.costanoavc.com.
- Website
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http://costanoavc.com/
External link for Costanoa Ventures
- Industry
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- Palo Alto, CA
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2012
Locations
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Primary
160 Forest Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301, US
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255 Kansas St
San Francisco, California, US
Employees at Costanoa Ventures
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Michelle McHargue
Partner at Costanoa Ventures | | Talent & People | Helping Early Stage Companies Scale
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Martina Lauchengco
Costanoa Partner | Board Member | Author of LOVED | SVPG Partner | Lecturer | Speaker | Former Marketing Exec & Product Leader | AI-curious
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Mark Selcow
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Jim Wilson
Partner at Costanoa Ventures | Board Member and Advisor | Founder Sales | Enterprise Sales | GTM Strategy | International Operations
Updates
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"The problems are arguably getting worse due to AI." Attackers have new weapons and are using AI to identify vulnerabilities at a different level of scale. John Cowgill & Jim Wilson joined Joseph Cooper on the CyberBytes podcast to discuss the intersection of AI and cybersecurity and what we look for in early-stage founders. Tune in to the full episode here 👉 https://bit.ly/3VIW6hN Or if you prefer a written recap, here are the key takeaways: bit.ly/4iHcVDD #cybersecurity #artificalintelligence #startups #venturecapital Aspiron Search
AI is transforming cybersecurity, unlocking incredible opportunities for innovation and disruption. Recently, we had the privilege of hosting John Cowgill and Jim Wilson from Costanoa Ventures, a leading early-stage venture capital firm, on our podcast. They shared invaluable insights on cybersecurity market trends, investment strategies, and the transformative role of AI in this space. Dive deeper into their perspectives in our latest blog post: https://lnkd.in/eUgTXuUm Prefer to listen? Catch the full podcast episode here: https://lnkd.in/e4ru64NR
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Costanoa Ventures reposted this
Thank you Mark Selcow for hosting (most of) the Costanoa Ventures team tonight. Lovely, relaxing evening to kick off December
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Our outlook for 2025? Measured, yet optimistic. ✨ Despite increasing noise and complexity in the startup landscape, AI is refactoring large industries at an unprecedented pace. From the rise of AI agents in the physical world to the bifurcation of healthcare data and major SaaS security breaches, 2025 will be pivotal. The big question: Which teams and products will create enduring value for customers? 🔮 Here are our predictions for the year across our key investment sectors: https://bit.ly/41DKpwx #startups #venturecapital #artificialintelligence #cybersecurity #healthcare
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Great to be recognized in PitchBook's 2024 Wrap of top 30 VC firms raising capital this year. While we'll always be a boutique firm, we're so grateful for the support of our Limited Partners - both those who've been with us since the beginning and those who joined us this year - which helps us find, invest in and support amazing founders. #venturecapital #startups
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Most startups don’t fail because of bad products—they fail because they don’t get the 𝘨𝘰-𝘵𝘰-𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 strategy right. We recently published a piece advocating for a conceptual reframe from 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁 (𝗣𝗠𝗙) → 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁-𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗳𝗶𝘁 (𝗠𝗣𝗙). And now Jim & Martina are back with Part 2 of our series where we dive deeper into the counterintuitive lessons for early-stage startups: 👉 Why your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn’t static—and how to approach it thoughtfully. 👉 How “PLG” (Product-Led Growth) is a great 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘭, but not your entire GTM strategy. 👉 Why speed of adoption and market “pull” are as critical as adoption itself. 👉 The hardest startup question: Pricing strategy—𝘩𝘰𝘸 to approach how you charge, not just 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵. 💡 Key takeaway: MPF is a journey, not a destination. Markets evolve, and so must your startup. Bonus: We answered many of your great questions in response to Part 1 and include real examples from within our portfolio. Shout out to RunReveal, StackHawk, and Vannevar Labs. ↳ Check out the full piece: https://bit.ly/3Brltxy #startups #marketing #sales #productmanagement #venturecapital
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Costanoa Ventures reposted this
I'm proud of what Auterion has demonstrated and delivered in Ukraine. It's great to have Rheinmetall partnering with the company to further standards for and deliver products based upon a common operating system for drones and robots across air, land and sea. Great work Lorenz Meier and team! https://on.wsj.com/3DgXth3
Rheinmetall, Auterion to Develop Standardized Software for Military Drones
wsj.com
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Costanoa Ventures reposted this
🚀 Amazing news: System Two Security has raised $7 million in funding! Really excited that Costanoa Ventures, The Hive, LLC, Runtime Ventures (David Endler & Michael Sutton), Webb Investment Network, and individual investors like Scott McNealy, Frederic Kerrest, and Ash Devata among others wanted to back us. I didn’t expect this level of interest as quickly as we got it (literally the day I started). What are we doing with the money? Simple, two things: 1️⃣ Bringing on design partners, and 2️⃣ Hiring a first class team We’re actively looking for design partners who want to see how much power comes from the intersection of GenAI and detections. Early customers are seeing big savings in time (intel to detections in 90 seconds vs hours) and finding compromises (like LLMJacking) they hadn’t identified in the past. Would love to recruit more folks who’d like to see it in action. DM me. Onward 🚀🚀🚀 #cybersecurity #artificialintelligence #startups
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Introducing our latest investment: System Two Security 🎉 We're so excited to be working with Robert Fly again as well as Prasanth Ganesan and the entire System Two team as they tackle detecting emerging security threats in this new age of AI. Read more about System Two as told by John Cowgill 👉 https://bit.ly/3OF2Glm #cybersecurity #artificialintelligence #startups #SOC #AI
We’re thrilled to announce our investment in System Two Security, a company rethinking how security teams detect and respond to threats. For nearly two years, we’ve explored how AI will transform the security operations center (SOC). We’ve met many companies focused on helping teams triage endless alerts, but we’ve been searching for a team tackling the real challenge: improving how we detect threats in the first place. Today, writing and managing detections to novel cyber threats takes significant time and resources, leaving companies vulnerable to emerging threats. And testing these detections? Practically nonexistent. SOCs are stuck with gaps in coverage and mountains of false positives. System Two is a new approach leveraging the latest advancements in AI to automate detection engineering. We’re incredibly pumped to be working with the amazing Robert Fly again, along with Prasanth Ganesan and partners at The Hive, LLC, Runtime Ventures, Webb Investment Network and more. Let’s get to work! https://lnkd.in/gUTsKpYJ
Announcing Our Investment in System Two Security | Costanoa Ventures
https://costanoa.vc