Welcome, Second Front!
Accelerating software adoption within government.
- CEO: Tyler Sweatt
- Sector: Cybersecurity & Infrastructure, GovTech
- Location: Washington, D.C.
The Opportunity
For years, we’ve heard from portfolio companies and the broader Salesforce ecosystem about the challenges of selling and deploying software into all federal government levels – from civilian agencies to the Department of Defense (DoD) to the intelligence community. Companies today spend millions for custom security and compliance configuration over multiple years to reach the necessary accreditation, not to mention the continuous re-accreditation process that’s often required.
We’re still in the federal government’s early innings of cloud software adoption (just ~15% of the $100B+ gross technology spend this past year). Government agencies have begun embracing a software-centric future by increasingly buying commercial solutions at the “speed of relevance” vs. building in-house. The past few years have been a turning point for this movement, as federal agencies have begun dedicating budgets and even entire offices (e.g. the DIU, NavalX, Kessel Run) towards streamlining the procurement process for best-in-class cloud software vendors. With the foundation laid, the next five years are ripe for the proliferation of next-generation commercial software within the federal government.
The Solution
Second Front is a critical bridge to accelerating the delivery of mission-critical software solutions to government agencies. The company’s Game Warden product is a DevSecOps platform that abstracts the security and compliance requirements (i.e. the DoD’s Authority to Operate, or ATO) necessary to win and deploy into government end-customers.
Getting started on Game Warden can be as simple as pushing a container image to the platform, which then automatically identifies and helps resolve the vulnerabilities and controls necessary for deployment. Game Warden’s CI/CD pipeline is tightly integrated with core infrastructure like GitLab, Chainguard, and Grafana to streamline the process further. Pushing product updates, which previously required lengthy and costly manual re-review, is also seamless.
Second Front saves customers millions in consulting fees and has reduced the software adoption process from years to weeks. Second Front’s customers range from the largest enterprise SaaS companies globally to emerging companies breaking into the defense market for the first time. Similar to how our portfolio company, Drata, unlocked the enterprise market for thousands of software vendors via SOC II automation, Second Front has transformative capabilities for the government and every vendor looking to do business with it.
Why We’re Backing Second Front
We’re investing in Second Front because we believe they’re poised to become the default technical rails that enable thousands of commercial software vendors to capture their share of the $100B+ public sector software market. These rails allow real-time, secure collaboration between government agencies and cutting-edge software companies, breaking down barriers between the best technologies and the most pressing pain points.
Tyler and his entire team bring a rare combination of expertise across the highest levels of military, civilian government, and Silicon Valley – including the former digital transformation leaders in both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, Chief Data Scientist of the CIA, CISO for the Director of National Intelligence, and veterans of major service branches. This experience means Second Front possesses a firsthand understanding of the pain points in government software acquisition. As such, few are better positioned to be trusted partners to commercial software vendors and government agencies.
What’s more, Second Front has incredible synergy with the broader Salesforce Ventures portfolio. Game Warden is poised to become the de facto integration layer that our broader arsenal of application and cloud security tools can plug into to further protect software from threats and vulnerabilities. The platform’s centralized monitoring and compliance capabilities help ensure data integrity across the modern data stack. We’re also thrilled to be the first champions of the platform for any software company in our ecosystem serving the public sector.
What’s Ahead
We’re looking forward to the next phase of growth as Second Front brings a world-class suite of software tools to public sector agencies across Australia and NATO, along with a host of regulated industries that value Second Front’s security and compliance controls. We share the team’s vision of providing a single, unified design pattern for software deployment in any government network or commercially regulated environment globally. We’re particularly excited by the opportunities the broader Salesforce ecosystem can bring to Second Front.
Getting to know Tyler and the team over the past several quarters has been an incredible journey. When we attended Second Front’s annual conference, Offset Symposium, we not only heard glowing feedback from customers and partners but also appreciated the unique community of technology and government leaders this ‘n of 1’ team has cultivated. We broke bread with Tyler, Sam, Enrique, and others on the team across California and Virginia, where we aligned around shared values of building a generational company while strengthening our national institutions. It’s a privilege to be partners for the years ahead as we lead their $70M Series C alongside new investor Battery Ventures and existing investors NEA, Moore Capital Management, and Artis Ventures.
Onwards and upwards. Welcome to Salesforce Ventures, Second Front!
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