Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. This week, another
Speaker 1: Spack went public on Wednesday. It's the Athena Technology Acquisition Corporation.
Speaker 1: It's a two d fifty million dollar blank check company
Speaker 1: co founded by our next guest, who also founded a
Speaker 1: cybersecurity company, Extreme Solution. She is chair of that company.
Speaker 1: She spent twenty two years in the military. So many chapters,
Speaker 1: so impressive. Great to welcome phillis new How she's CEO
Speaker 1: and co founder Athena Technology Acquisition on the phone in
Speaker 1: New York City. Uh, phillis great to have you here
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. I cut a litt bit of your
Speaker 1: interview with our own Matt Miller earlier on Bloomberg Television. Um,
Speaker 1: first of all, congratulations, the spaces crowded though, why is spack? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Yeah. So, you know, we've
Speaker 1: deliberately created the company to target the spective in UH,
Speaker 1: in which our diverse team has the knowledge experience in
Speaker 1: our professional relationships. And we're all women, and we were
Speaker 1: dedicated to ensuring that the women's benefit from being early
Speaker 1: movers in the fact, uh that we were able to
Speaker 1: achieve something that hadn't been done before, and so we
Speaker 1: what we decided to do was we realized that it
Speaker 1: was a lot of you know, people say, well the
Speaker 1: market is getting saturated, but we we we realized is
Speaker 1: that we had something that was very different than what
Speaker 1: you see with most facts. How is it different just
Speaker 1: because of the so many women involved or well no,
Speaker 1: not necessarily. Well we're all yeah, that is one thing.
Speaker 1: We all women. But here's the thing. Here's a takeaway.
Speaker 1: When we look at we span across industries from investment banking,
Speaker 1: the private equity to VC to founders to creators. We
Speaker 1: that we have three um women in the fact that
Speaker 1: started businesses from nothing and are doing in a billion
Speaker 1: of revenues. So we so we believed that founders like
Speaker 1: to talk to founders, We understand, and we believe that
Speaker 1: because of the proprietary Gale float that we've been able
Speaker 1: to put together, we believe that ore aspect is very
Speaker 1: different because it was strategically done to win. And I
Speaker 1: believe that any company that we bring forward will benefit
Speaker 1: from from this group of women that we've been able
Speaker 1: to put together. And I just want to put out
Speaker 1: some of the names. Stacy Abrams, k Coplevitz. Uh, she was,
Speaker 1: of course former USA Networks founder. Uh, you have um, gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm going through the list. It's just appreciate. Yes, Kristin Dickey,
Speaker 1: former maaging director at black Rock. You you're right, they
Speaker 1: cross uh different world, you know, different parts of our
Speaker 1: investment world, our business world. Um. Having said that, though,
Speaker 1: so obviously you can go anywhere when it comes to investments,
Speaker 1: is there any criterion particularly that you think will be
Speaker 1: a common theme among the investments that you're looking for. Well, again,
Speaker 1: this this goes back. So if we if we're we're
Speaker 1: targeting you know, revenue generating early you know, come to
Speaker 1: their stays and sin tech cyber security. Now, what you
Speaker 1: have been seeing is a lot of companies in the cyberspace.
Speaker 1: We again, we we've we've um strategically brought people into
Speaker 1: this fact that had the cyber expertise. Uh. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a field that is obviously one that's uh not
Speaker 1: as complicated as people think, but it is a if
Speaker 1: you look at the growth, we've had six thousand per
Speaker 1: cent increases cyber attacks since COVID nineteen and so as
Speaker 1: a result of that, we wanted to capitalize off the
Speaker 1: tail winds that we're coming. And we realize that we
Speaker 1: have the level of expertise in the experience, and we
Speaker 1: have founders and creators that have done this before. So
Speaker 1: we believe that this was this was really one of
Speaker 1: the things we wanted when we looked at the criteria.
Speaker 1: Who do we have on the team that have deep
Speaker 1: level of expertise and experience? Listen, and one think I've
Speaker 1: got to ask you, uh, when it comes to diversity.
Speaker 1: And you know, we know that companies, institutions, investments all
Speaker 1: do better when you've got a diversity of thoughts. So
Speaker 1: and I asked this of all the institutions, uh, and
Speaker 1: leaders that come on and especially those that are largely
Speaker 1: still white men, are you, though, concerned that you will
Speaker 1: be missing out by not having diversity of voices in
Speaker 1: other words, having some men involved in terms of making
Speaker 1: some of the investment decisions. It's kind of the reverse thing,
Speaker 1: right because I'm often asking guys like, where's the diversity, um,
Speaker 1: But you know what I'm saying, oh yeah, uh, And
Speaker 1: and I would tell you, um, even though we are women,
Speaker 1: all women with aspect, we have had advisors and are
Speaker 1: you know UM trusted advisors that we've asked reached out
Speaker 1: to and other spects. Bets Cohen is one of our
Speaker 1: spect sponsors where she has a great team. They're not
Speaker 1: all women, and so they've been in our corner a
Speaker 1: hundred percent. We understand we're not targeting just women owned
Speaker 1: businesses were you know, that's that's were ideally we would
Speaker 1: hope if that would be a great opportunity that we
Speaker 1: could leverage. But we've realized that UM all voices at
Speaker 1: the table matters, and we're just all women lead. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that we're not bringing all voices to
Speaker 1: the table, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, absolutely. Hey,
Speaker 1: I do also wonder there's so many spacts out there.
Speaker 1: They've just taken off so much in the past year.
Speaker 1: How concerned are you about a lot of money be
Speaker 1: its back investors or private equity that they're all kind
Speaker 1: of chasing similar targets and what that means for the
Speaker 1: potential to really overpay for a target. We just have
Speaker 1: about fifty seconds, then we'll come back and talk some more. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I would say you this this goes back to what
Speaker 1: I believe our team most important differentiator is our outstanding
Speaker 1: deal sourcings networks that we developed just for this fact,
Speaker 1: and our partnership of other organizations that provide a unique
Speaker 1: properatary deal flow and and and so we believe that,
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of companies that are
Speaker 1: not on others facts radar, and so these are companies
Speaker 1: in that cyberspace. These are companies that are AI, these
Speaker 1: are companies we have deep relationships with some of the founders,
Speaker 1: you know, and so we we we understand that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of spects up there right now, but we
Speaker 1: believe that we we strategically put this together so that
Speaker 1: we knew that we have the partnership already. One of
Speaker 1: the areas that you mentioned cyber and that's certainly something
Speaker 1: that you know a lot about having founded a cybersecurity
Speaker 1: firm as well. Um, I do wonder what types of
Speaker 1: cyber firms you're going to be looking to invest in,
Speaker 1: I asked, because looking at a couple of the cybersecurity
Speaker 1: etf that are out there, I Shares global X overall,
Speaker 1: the group is down. UM, you know, investors not so keen.
Speaker 1: It seems like on some of those names there's a
Speaker 1: lot of players out there, So what are you going
Speaker 1: to be looking for? Well, so if we go back
Speaker 1: to as I stated early about you know, cyber attacks
Speaker 1: being up by six thousand percent um, you look at
Speaker 1: companies that perform vulnerability assessments endpoint solutions. We're looking at
Speaker 1: the type of companies that have integrated cyber analytics into
Speaker 1: their platforms, which is really given the predictive UH analytics
Speaker 1: in terms of potentially where and where an attack may happen.
Speaker 1: We're looking at cyber operational intelligence platforms. So I think, UH,
Speaker 1: understanding the market and knowing those companies that are out
Speaker 1: there that exist, that are doing really have some incredible
Speaker 1: solutions are the ones. So we would be looking at
Speaker 1: based off of where we see the potential risk in
Speaker 1: our global UH you know cyber UH landscape as a whole.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to fintech, I really feel like
Speaker 1: this is an area, you know, whether it's the you know,
Speaker 1: we we've talked a lot about some of the online
Speaker 1: trading platforms. That certainly has been one of our big
Speaker 1: stories this week, but when you see fintech and disruption innovation,
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on in that space. Any idea
Speaker 1: in terms of maybe the types of companies that you guys.
Speaker 1: Obviously you can't show your hand at this point, but
Speaker 1: I just wonder parts of the area of the fintech
Speaker 1: space that you find interesting. Well, again, we found finding
Speaker 1: a lot of the fintech integration platforms that integrate into
Speaker 1: UM you know that our user friendly for you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of the financial institutes. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: if you look at companies where you've had a growth
Speaker 1: um in terms of UH. You know, when I look
Speaker 1: at platforms that I I around the fintech area, I
Speaker 1: would focus UH and and I would tell you a
Speaker 1: lot of companies are focusing on those companies that have
Speaker 1: a component of privacy uh financial platforms. And what do
Speaker 1: I mean by that? You look at uh some of
Speaker 1: the you know, privacy UH platforms that are now integrating
Speaker 1: into the financial most people are still a concerned about
Speaker 1: the risk a loss of data or the sharing of
Speaker 1: data and so those data plat those privacy platform that
Speaker 1: integrate into fintech solutions or what we what we would
Speaker 1: be hard again you can see sort of a trend
Speaker 1: with us. We're looking at more you know, privacy, security, financial,
Speaker 1: but all in that area, yeah, which which is certainly
Speaker 1: on all of our radar considering some of the big uh,
Speaker 1: you know, cyber attacks that we've certainly seen. We are
Speaker 1: our self Bloomberg, one of our reporters doing a story
Speaker 1: about all of the surveillance cameras and and the hackavists
Speaker 1: that have been able to kind of expose to the
Speaker 1: world how many cameras are out there and how easy
Speaker 1: it is to access. You have you and your team
Speaker 1: have roughly two years I believe to like buy up
Speaker 1: names um with this back. How quickly do you think
Speaker 1: you can put the money to work or or how
Speaker 1: quickly do you plan to put it to work? Well,
Speaker 1: I We'll tell you this. We intended to talk to
Speaker 1: companies day one of our eligibility to do that, and
Speaker 1: we certainly have. Again, we put this team together strategically
Speaker 1: understanding that the SPAC market is crowded. There were four
Speaker 1: hundred spacts looking for companies to take public. A lot
Speaker 1: of high profelemends are jumping in as investors, but not
Speaker 1: every spect has the management team that offers the combination
Speaker 1: of financial operational expertise UH that we bring to the table.
Speaker 1: So we believe that based off of the proprietary pipeline
Speaker 1: that we've developed that we'll be talking to companies day
Speaker 1: one and hopefully be announcing the combination fairly soon. We'll
Speaker 1: look forward to it. I'm really curious to see the
Speaker 1: companies that you guys have on your radar. Hey, just
Speaker 1: one last quick question, just got about thirty seconds all
Speaker 1: of you who are involved, is are all of you
Speaker 1: investing in the fund? Or or how is it you
Speaker 1: are one of our advisors are also investors and that's uh,
Speaker 1: it's just great to see women to be able to
Speaker 1: participate and uh economically as well. Agreed. Looking forward to
Speaker 1: hearing more UM and especially where you you guys ultimately
Speaker 1: place those investments. Phillis, thank you so much. Good luck.
Speaker 1: Phillis new House, CEO and co founder of Athena Technology
Speaker 1: Acquisition Corps joining us on the phone in New York City,