Q1 Labs Mines New CEO's History With Channel

Shaun McConnon, who was hired this month as CEO of the Atlanta-based company, has a long history with the channel, going back to his days as an executive with Data General. At the time, Data General generated 95 percent of its revenue from the channel.

McConnon also worked for Sun Microsystems and later founded Okena, a channel-friendly security threat-protection vendor that was bought by Cisco Systems this past April.

Q1 Labs has already hired channel manager Diane Johnson and is training its five salespeople to be channel managers, McConnon said.

"Our company will put a very strong emphasis on the channel going forward, and we will have a truly robust channel program," McConnon said.

Brute Force Security, a information security firm, recently signed up as a Q1 Labs partner because of its QVision product, which takes a behavioral and visual approach to network security, said Edward Schenk, CEO of the South Norwalk, Conn.-based company.

"Q1 Labs has a very unique approach to viewing network security in real time," Schenk said. "They really stand out in this area. There isn't another product that we've come across that really quickly, easily,and with so much power,allows us to view security events in real time."

Q1 Labs currently has about 10 partners, but McConnon said he expects that to change soon as the company works to engage the channel, especially in vertical markets such as the government and its various agencies, he said.

Q1 Labs is the latest security company to garner a few bucks from the venture capital community. However, because the security segment is overrun with potential "next-generation" companies, the investment community is still moving slowly.

Menlo Partners, one of Q1 Labs' investors, cited the security startup's next-generation take on network management, said Sonja Hoel, managing director at Menlo Partners, Menlo Park, Calif.

"This is not just another point solution, as we've seen so many of them out there," Hoel said. "This addresses a real pain point by visually assessing the network and giving the administrator a view of the network and vulnerabilities. A picture is worth a thousand words."

It would appear Hoel knows a good thing when she sees it. Her first investment choice for Menlo Partners was a little-known company called McAfee and later she helped fund vulnerability-assessment and intrusion-prevention vendor nCircle.

Menlo Partners has $2.7 billion in investment funds under management, with $1.5 billion allocated specifically for IT, Hoel said. But the firm doesn't give its money freely,that is, it isn't simply looking for improvements on existing technologies or point solutions solving a particular technology problem, Hoel said. Rather, it seeks out companies that have technologies to solve real business problems for customers.

"All these companies out there are point solutions, and they claim new and better technology to what already exists. But a higher problem needs to be solved, and a lot of the products I see out there can't solve the overall problem," Hoel said. "With this product [from Q1 Labs] you can see, you can visualize literally the problem. You can see, for example, the problem a worm is causing or may cause and contain the problem," she said.

In addition to Menlo Partners, Q1 Labs' other investors include Polaris Venture Partners, BDC Venture Capital and New Brunswick Investment Management.