The Innovation Sandbox is one of my favorite features at any security conference ever. Sure, it has highlighted some of the most innovative and exciting startups in cybersecurity, but I also love it for its entertainment value. Here’s one of my favorite presentations - Elevate Security, pitching their approach to security awareness, which, like Valence, has a user-focused approach.
Hugh Thompson, for as long as I can remember, has played the ever-exuberant and joyful MC for the event. He has some standup comedy chops, and it shows - he knows how to get the crowd excited and build up tension leading into the gauntlet each of the finalists has to run.
Here’s how it works. The top 10 finalists are chosen by a panel of judges from over 100 submissions each year. At the Innovation Sandbox event, each finalist will take the stage and has 3 minutes to pitch their company, team and product to the panel. What really ratchets up the drama here is that this is a strict 3 minutes. When the clock runs out, the microphone is cut!
Occasionally someone gets nervous and doesn’t finish before their time runs out. Regardless, after the presentation, the judges have a few additional minutes to ask the presenter follow-up questions. Then, the next finalist is queued up and introduced by Hugh.
After all 10 presentations have been completed, the judges have time to get up and visit some of the finalists’ booths (perhaps they’ll pick up a copy of the infographic from our latest research report) and to share thoughts with each other. At the end of the 90-minute event, the judges pick a winner, Hugh makes the announcement, and crowns the winner, Most Innovative Startup 2023.
In a market where funding and accolades have become scarce, the news of becoming an Innovation Sandbox finalist comes just a few months after Valence raised one of the strongest Series A rounds seen in the second half of 2022. If you’re not familiar with what Valence does, we’ll be representing SaaS Security at this event. This explainer video does a quick job (1:55) of explaining what we do.
I became an instant fan of the RSA Innovation Sandbox and have attended every event since my first year at RSA (2014). Words can’t express how excited I am to work for a company that’s a finalist this year.
Please take a moment to say hello if you see me there!
Read more about the RSAC 2023 Innovation Sandbox in their official press release on BusinessWire.
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About Valence Security
Valence Security is the first security company to offer collaborative remediation workflows that engage with business users to contextualize and reduce SaaS data sharing, supply chain, identity, and misconfiguration risks with scalable policy enforcement and automated workflows.
With Valence, security teams can secure their critical SaaS applications and ensure continuous compliance with internal policies, industry standards and regulations, without impeding business productivity or the speed of SaaS adoption.
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