You're building in cyber.
Pick your first check carefully.

We invest before the round is named. Pre-formation, pre-deck, sometimes pre-cofounder. The bar isn't traction — it's that you've spent enough time inside the security problem to know which version of the answer is worth building. More on the First Check Thesis →

No. The CISOs in our network advise the companies we fund as a community, not as paid advisors or investors. They are not on Whiteboard's payroll, do not receive equity from Whiteboard, and have no economic interest in the deals they help with. Their incentive is the same as yours — they want the next generation of security tools to actually be useful to the people who run security teams.

Yes. Whiteboard is a cybersecurity-focused early-stage venture firm. We invest across the cyber stack — security platforms, developer security, identity and access, security data and observability, AI safety and security — but we don't write checks outside the category. Founders who want a generalist investor are better served by a generalist fund.

They're three peer networks Whiteboard cultivates. CISO Ventures is a community of operating CISOs who advise the companies we fund. Rutgers Ventures is a community of Rutgers alumni operators and investors who back fellow Scarlet Knight founders. Parents Ventures is a community of parent founders building for families. Each network thickens our deal flow and our post-investment support; none is a separate fund.

Submit the pitch form at /apply — six fields, no deck required. If your wedge is specific and you've been inside the problem, we'll know in one read. We respond to every submission, typically within a week.

IEMMS is the discipline framework we run every company we back through, in the first twelve months: Ideate (sharpen the wedge into one buyer, one pain, one workflow), Experiment (smallest possible artifact that lets a real buyer say yes or no), Measure (pre-defined exit criteria — what advances the company, what kills the experiment), Modify (the cheap pivot, before the round that locks you in), and Scale (only after the first four are honest). It's why we say "first check, not theater" — we're a partner in the discipline, not just a wire transfer.

Three concrete things: (1) introductions to operating CISOs from CISO Ventures — real ones running security teams today, not LinkedIn icebreakers — as design partners and early customers; (2) a structured pass through the IEMMS framework on your wedge, in person or async; (3) a gut check on your first three hires before they're made. After that we stay close, but lightly — we don't take board seats at the first-check stage. We back you into your Series A; we don't lead it.