There are people in the industry who seem to be everywhere you look. Zane Lackey has always been one of those people. He’s perhaps most well known as the cofounder and CSO of Signal Sciences, which was acquired by Fastly for $775M in 2020. Or maybe as an infrastructure angel investor. Or as the author of several books including the very popular O’Reilly book on building a devops friendly security program. Or … well, you get the point.
Over the last decade we’ve gotten to know Zane as a founder, an author, a luminary (I hate that word, too, but really he’s given foundational presentations at many of the top conferences in the industry), and as a great friend of the firm. Before all of that, he was the CISO of Etsy during the early days of devops and the shift to the cloud.
And so we’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Zane will be joining a16z as a general partner on the enterprise team focused on infrastructure. In many ways, this feels a bit like a homecoming. While we weren’t investors in Signal Sciences, we tracked the company closely and used it as a baseline when understanding where security met development. We’ve invested alongside Zane in a number of deals (e.g. Truffle Security and Material Security) and believe he’s one of the most beloved angel investors in the industry. In fact, with a number of entrepreneurs I work with, he’s the first call they make when looking for advice.
Zane typifies the original mold of an a16z GP. He’s an incredibly strong operator and built a company over nearly seven years, continuing to grow it post-acquisition. He’s seen a fantastic exit, but also knows what it’s like to be kicked in the teeth for years and have to get up and continue to fight.
We’ve always jumped at the opportunity to work alongside Zane, and now we’re making it official. At a16z, he’ll continue to focus on all aspects of infra, from security to devops to cloud. And whatever else comes along. Welcome Zane!
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