The interesting detail about Lockstep is hiding inside a customer testimonial. Clarence Chio, the founder of Coverbase, credits its partners with helping close his first customers. For a young cybersecurity company, that is a consequential introduction. Someone has moved from admiring the idea to trusting it with a piece of the business.
- Lockstep invests in early cybersecurity companies.
- Its founding partners bring the perspective of security buyers.
- The offer includes product advice, commercial guidance and introductions.
That last step is where the firm becomes interesting. A founder can have a persuasive demonstration and still struggle to explain where the product belongs in an enterprise. Who owns the problem? Who controls the budget? Which existing process must change? Lockstep has built its proposition around people familiar with those questions.
The first customer is the interesting part
Coverbase builds AI-native third-party risk management software. Its work concerns the security of the vendors a business depends on. Lockstep lists Fika as a co-investor. Chio’s account of the relationship emphasizes access to other CISOs who became early customers, alongside support from founding partners Rinki Sethi and Lucas Moody.
The testimonial is a founder’s endorsement, published by his investor. Read it with that context. Still, its specificity matters. Customer introductions are a more tangible contribution than a promise to be helpful. They give a founder a chance to discover whether the person with the problem agrees that the proposed solution deserves attention.
People who have signed the purchase order
Sethi and Moody are security executives as well as investors. Sethi’s career includes CISO roles at BILL, Twitter and Rubrik; Lockstep’s biography identifies her current role as chief security officer at Upwind Security. Moody’s biography identifies him as Alteryx’s CISO, following security leadership at Twitter, Rubrik and Palo Alto Networks.
Those jobs supply a particular kind of expertise: the experience of choosing, deploying and operating security technology. The inference behind Lockstep’s model is straightforward. An investor who understands the buyer’s working day can help a founder improve the product and explain its value. That perspective is especially relevant when technical sophistication has outrun the sales story.
“What makes Lockstep different is the practitioner lens.”Vineet Edupuganti, Cogent Security co-founder and CEO, in a Lockstep testimonial
Follow the work, not the acronym
The portfolio makes the thesis concrete. Cogent Security tackles vulnerability management with an AI-native approach. Petra Security focuses on identity threat detection and response for managed service providers protecting Microsoft 365 environments. IceGuard, whose founders include Trino and Starburst veterans Dain Sundstrom and David Phillips, is described as a security data platform.
These are separate products built by separate companies. Lockstep supplies capital and advice. Its position in the market is upstream of the software purchase, helping businesses that hope to become part of an enterprise security program. Its portfolio crosses several security jobs rather than presenting one all-purpose platform.
Conceptual illustration of the firm’s stated approach; no conversion rate implied.
In September 2026, FAZE Security announced a $6 million seed round led by New Era Capital Partners, with Lockstep participating. Formerly CYTRIX, FAZE describes autonomous agents testing web applications, APIs and cloud environments, then retesting after remediation. It reported 50 enterprise customers. That number belongs to FAZE, and is company-reported.
The appeal of this kind of product is practical: a security team needs evidence that a weakness has been fixed. For Lockstep, the investment also illustrates its place between new technical approaches and the organizations expected to put them to work.
For founders choosing capital, alternatives include specialist cyber investors such as Ten Eleven Ventures, which invests across stages, and generalist funds. Lockstep emphasizes its partners’ continuing practitioner perspective and direct engagement. The venture model seeks value from portfolio investments as those businesses develop. For a founder comparing offers, the practical question is how much relevant operating help comes with the capital, and whether that help matches the company’s next commercial obstacle.
The money has a denominator
Venture numbers become useful when their labels stay attached. An April 8, 2026 SEC amendment for Lockstep Partners Fund I, L.P. reports $9.397 million sold toward a $13 million offering, with 61 investors. It records April 9, 2025 as the first sale date.
Sold toward a $13m offering
These figures describe interests sold in a pooled investment fund. They establish neither Lockstep’s operating revenue nor its investment returns. The $6 million FAZE round is another distinct quantity: total financing announced by a portfolio company, with multiple investors participating. Keeping those numbers apart makes the business easier to understand.
Two hundred people, then karaoke
Moody’s account of Black Hat 2024 provides a less formal view of the machinery. Lockstep’s inaugural LockedIn gathering brought 200 practitioners and founders to the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Karaoke followed at Kamu. He also noted a few salespeople who had found their way into the room.
The joke reveals a useful tension. A room of security practitioners is valuable partly because it is a room salespeople want to enter. Lockstep’s community application says it is currently onboarding cybersecurity practitioners. Its invite-only Foundry is led by Katelyn Ruby, the firm’s head of community and engagement.
Ask what happens after hello
A founder can borrow something from this model before raising money: bring the intended buyer into the product conversation early. Ask which workflow changes, who would use the tool, and what evidence would justify a deployment. Then ask prospective investors which of those conversations they can help arrange.
The limits follow from the same logic. A well-connected investor cannot guarantee product fit, procurement approval or a successful rollout. Enterprise security experience is most useful when enterprise security is the problem being solved. A familiar name can get a meeting; the product still has to earn its place.
Lockstep’s proposition gives founders a concrete standard for judging investor help. After the introduction, is the problem clearer? Is the pitch sharper? Is there a credible next step toward deployment? Coverbase’s early-customer story supplies one example of what a useful answer looks like.