Sarah Ittleston

I think the main thing is performance and speed and the ratio of signal to noise.

So I think what we have to realize in this moment is, as we're all so excited about how AI is making it possible to ship software so much more quickly, that same AI tool is being used by the bad guys to ship attacks more quickly.

And so the historical ratio of signal to noise just won't stand in the current era.

And so the security platform that Debt First has made is AI-native.

And what they are doing is continuously, agentically scanning a company's code.

They're looking at its architecture.

They're looking at its business logic.

And they're finding verified vulnerabilities eight times more than the previous best in class.

And I think the key there is verified vulnerabilities.

They're not waving their hands about things that aren't really a problem.

They're finding real problems, and then they're also serving up a solution.

You can press one button and say fix it, and folks are doing that en masse.

It's really critical.

And I think particularly in the case of security, there's just a societal imperative that we get this right.

And I think Excel, we've been investing for 43 years.

Throughout that time, security has been a key category of investment for us.

Folks like CrowdStrike or Netscope that IPO just last year.

And what we've seen is in these major innovation transitions, these major, you know,

uh cycles of of of transition the security apparatus has to be replaced it has to evolve to that new era and that's why we're so excited about companies like depth first but you're exactly right um you know it has to work it's imperative that it work and so those stats are really important they're important to the cso's they're important to the fortune 50 that are evaluating these companies and so

If we're going to put ourselves and our funds behind a company, it's imperative that we believe that the thing works and not just today, but that you have the team that can drive over this next era of transition, that you have the talent that can sort of weather this moment.