When a cybersecurity startup comes out of stealth, most tiptoe in, deck slides, jargon, maybe a soft launch at a quiet conference. SafeHill didn’t do subtle. The Chicago-based CTEM startup dropped into September with $2.6M in pre-seed funding like a zero-day hitting production. Mucker Capital and Chingona Ventures led the round, joined by Techstars, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, The Source Groups, Virginia Union University, and angel Eddie Lou. That’s not a cap table, it’s a war chest.
SafeHill, once called Tacticly, is taking on the reactive mess most enterprises call cyber defense. Their SecureIQ platform blends AI automation with human ethical hackers who don’t just find vulnerabilities, they validate, prioritize, and hand enterprises a living map of their real exposure. It’s CTEM done right: continuous, intelligent, and brutally honest. Machines handle the speed, humans bring the intuition, and together they deliver clarity in an industry drowning in dashboards.
At the top, CEO Mike Pena brings startup hustle and Wall St. precision from his trading days at Trust Company of the West. Chief Revenue Officer Nicholas Gonzalez, a Techstars alum with deep enterprise sales chops, turns cyber complexity into scalable deals. Chief Research Officer Hector Monsegur, yeah, that Hector, the former Sabu of LulzSec fame, translates two decades of offensive security experience into an ethical hacker’s arsenal. VP Infrastructure Ibrahim Karajic and VP Product Andy Sok round out a founding team fluent in the art of breaking and rebuilding digital fortresses.
SafeHill’s mission is simple: make continuous actually mean continuous. Their SecureIQ system delivers real-time external attack surface monitoring, AI-driven threat analysis, compliance mapping (PCIDSS, CMMC, NIST, ISO27001, HIPAA), and remediation prioritization, all in a single dashboard. No more once-a-year pen tests pretending to be protection. In a world where threats evolve hourly, SafeHill updates faster than the attackers can reload.
The $2.6M raise powers what’s next, expanding engineering and ethical hacking teams, scaling AI infrastructure, and deepening enterprise integrations. With 100+ enterprise clients, 1M daily active users, and early adoption across compliance-heavy industries, SafeHill isn’t chasing validation, they’re building the new normal for proactive security.
This isn’t another cybersecurity startup, it’s a statement. SafeHill’s name fits because the goal isn’t just to hold ground; it’s to fortify it. Congrats to the SafeHill crew for turning Chicago into a stronghold for innovation that actually protects something worth fighting for.
