Second Front Systems, a public-benefit company that enables delivery of mission-critical SaaS solutions to government and military, has closed on a $2 million strategic investment from U.K.-based Gallos Technologies Limited.
The round is a secondary close to the Wilmington, Del.-headquartered firm’s $32 million Series A round in December. So far, 2F has raised $42 million from investors including Ron Gula’s Gula Tech Adventures.
“Our British and American armed forces operate closely from humanitarian assistance to crisis response. Yet, the lack of a common accreditation backbone creates an unacceptable gap between our information systems and operating effectiveness,” said 2F’s CEO, Peter Dixon, a former US Marine who served in Afghanistan.
Gallos co-founder Dean Jones, a former UK Special Forces and Royal Marines soldier, said 2F was well positioned to address both the U.K. and U.S. defence markets.
Frontline Founders
The trio of Peter Dixon, Mark Butler and Nate Hughes cofounded 2F in 2014, with the goal of bringing cutting-edge technologies to the military, after watching first-hand the cost of using antiquated systems in the frontlines. The firm aims to accelerate the delivery of emerging technologies to U.S. and Allied warfighters, and to bring enduring strategic advantage to the forces through “agile, responsive acquisition warfare.”
The company plans to use the recently raised funds to enter the U.K. market and develop its DevSecOps platform, Game Warden, as a software bridge between the two allied nations. It also seeks to expand Game Warden to additional environments and across multiple cloud providers. Game Warden is now available only on AWS GovCloud.
Dixon, who served in the US Marines from 2006 to 2017, is also a co-founder of With Honor, a nonprofit that seeks to bring next-generation veterans into public office in an effort to create a more effective and less polarized government.
Military Smarts
Gallos was founded in 2020 by Dean Jones, a former UK Special Forces and Royal Marines soldier with more than two decades of operational experience, and Josh Burch, a former senior UK national security/intelligence and commercial leader with more than 20 years’ experience.
Jones has also advised a leading U.K. hedge-fund, a FTSE 100 energy company and a deep-tech autonomous systems scale-up, besides being a performance mentor for a Premier League football club. Burch started his career in Goldman Sachs’ investment banking division. Since leaving government, he has served as a partner at FTI Consulting, where he established and led the firm’s cybersecurity practice in EMEIA.
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Gallos focuses on early-stage startups in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data analytics, sensors and autonomous systems. Following an oversubscribed capital raise last July, Gallos says it will also consider Series B rounds. Besides 2F, Gallos has made a portfolio investment in Angoka, a cybersecurity startup focusing on smart mobility systems and smart cities.
Gula an Early Backer
Ron Gula, best known for cofounding Tenable (TENB), is a cyber industry titan. He and his wife Cindy established Gula Tech Adventures as a venture firm focused exclusively on funding cybersecurity startups. The firm, based in Columbia, Md., has invested in over 30 startups and several nonprofits. Early in his career, Gula developed Dragon, one of the first commercial network intrusion detection systems. During his stint in the US Air Force in the 1990s, he deployed network honeypots for the US Defense Department and served as a penetration tester for the National Security Agency.
