Cybersecurity startup founders in greater Washington, DC: prior experience required

The Greater Washington region is one of three leading cybersecurity industry clusters in the world. The proximity of this region to federal agencies, particularly in national security, has created a vibrant ecosystem linking talent and businesses with federal and commercial customers. National security agencies, such as the National Security Agency and the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, are a specific driver of cybersecurity research and development. Collectively, these favorable conditions support a broad array of businesses that contract with the federal government and provide cybersecurity innovations to commercial customers around the world. To better understand the composition of the Greater Washington region’s cybersecurity business base, this study differentiates between the more than 850 cybersecurity businesses in the region identified by us in a prior study that did at least some cybersecurity business and focuses more squarely on those that work only in cybersecurity. We describe these businesses as “pure play” cybersecurity firms. Our study examined the roots of pure-play cybersecurity firms by examining the background of their founders. We collected data on 177 pure-play cyber firms – and their founders – in the Greater Washington region (61% of the firms are in Northern Virginia and the rest in suburban Maryland and Washington D.C.). We believe that our dataset represents close to a census of such firms in this region. In these firms, there are 264 founders (48% of the firms have just one founder). There is clearly a premium placed on prior experience in the national security ecosystem. Almost three quarters (72%) of the pure-play cybersecurity firms had at least one founder with prior experience as either a vendor to the government or as a government employee. And in more than half of these firms (52%) this experience was a direct result of government service. This validates those who have previously argued that there is a close connection between Greater Washington region cybersecurity startups and the national security ecosystem. It also distinguishes the region from competing cybersecurity clusters such as Silicon Valley. Additionally, the premium on locally gained experience makes the Greater Washington region’s pure play cybersecurity startup ecosystem very much a local industry: 78% of founders worked in Greater Washington prior to founding the firm. Our research provided some other important insights. More than a quarter (26%) of founders founded at least one firm prior to their current business. Observers of innovation-based economic development often tie the long-term viability of a region as a tech hub to its ability to generate serial entrepreneurs. We also saw less impact from universities than what prevails in competing regions, as only 8% of founders emerged from university work. Demographically, female founders represented 8% of all founders, which underscores the shortfall of women in technology leadership roles since women are more than a fifth (22%) of all cybersecurity workers. Undoubtedly, understanding how our region’s cybersecurity businesses are established and grow is important. Findings from the Greater Washington Partnership contend that cybersecurity contributes $14 billion in annual economic impact to the region and can increase the region’s annual GDP growth by 11-18%. There are already about 300,000 cyber related jobs in the region. In that light, what can we make of our study’s findings? The results tell us quite clearly that the source for cyber innovation and entrepreneurship in this region are still very much rooted in U.S. national security ecosystem. It is this breeding ground that should be tapped and accelerated even more to create the dynamism of the cybersecurity industry in the region.