There are plenty of nuclear physicists in finance – in fact there are whole venture funds, such as QWave, covering the area – but it is rare that people trained to operate nuclear power plants make the move. Tyson Clark, a partner at GV, a corporate venturing unit of US-listed conglomerate Alphabet, is one who has.
So it is perhaps little surprise that one of Clark’s first deals at GV, formerly Google Ventures, was in November, investing an undisclosed amount in US-based cybersecurity software developer Acalvio Technologies, taking its total funding to $22m.
Acalvio’s Deception 2.0 technology uses dynamic deception and data science to detect, engage and respond to cyberthreats at scale. The company emerged from stealth in July this year having raised $17m from Accel, Ignition Partners and Eileses Capital before data software producer Splunk added an undisclosed sum in September.
At the time of the deal, Clark said: “Acalvio has developed highly differentiated, scaleable deception technology that produces better detection and detailed attack analysis than traditional deception technology. As hacks and data breaches become increasingly prevalent, chief information security officers are taking a more holistic view of security architectures. Acalvio is well positioned in this market as companies deploy next-generation deceptive response technology as part of their core security strategies.”
Clark is someone who knows the importance of attack, stealth and defence. After two years of training by the US Department of Energy after the turn of the millennium as a nuclear reactor power plant supervisor, Clark served for a further two years as a lieutenant on board the US navy’s fast-attack submarine USS Salt Lake City. The navy had paid for his college tuition in industrial engineering at Stanford University.
After leaving the navy in 2007, he returned to school to collect his MBA from Harvard Business School before taking a more conventional route through the upper echelons of financial institutions. He was an associate at investment bank Morgan Stanley, a director of corporate development at technology company Oracle and a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz before joining GV last summer.
Jamie McGurk, a partner for strategic relations at Andreessen Horowitz, for Clark’s GCV Rising Stars 2016 listing, explained why he had hired him: ”He had a well-rounded and high-calibre pedigree that made him attractive to work in my enterprise strategic mergers and acquisitions team.
“He has a great academic pedigree from Stanford and Harvard. Oracle corporate development team is well known and one of the better teams, especially for its structure and discipline. I am also a Morgan Stanley alumnus, so I have a high respect for people who have worked there. Last, but certainly not least, his military background was impressive.”
McGurk supported Clark’s move to Google even if it meant he had only a few months at Andreessen Horowitz because “investment roles at good firms are not opportunities to pass up if you really want to be an investor”.
In a promotion shot in 2011, Clark talked about the type of skills he developed: “I think in the navy, in the submarine force, it is work hard, play hard. I felt like there was really nothing I could not tackle, you know, based on what I had overcome when I was in the navy.
“Some of the biggest lessons that I learned were integrity, telling the truth – under pressure, being as honest with people that you work with as you absolutely can be. Those lessons I think transcend the navy and create leaders that go off and do huge things.”