Software keeping neighborhoods and networks safe
Ben Rudolph and Vineet Edupuganti are building the future of safety, from streets to cyber
Safety is the guiding north star for two of next week's showcase founders, though they're focused on the term in very different ways. Ben Rudolph of Peregrine is making our physical world safer, while Vineet Edupuganti is protecting the digital one with Cogent Security.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at what they’re building and giving you a sneak peek at the stories they’ll share next week.
With just a week to go until our September 10th startup showcase, seats are filling fast. Apply now to meet 10 breakout founders, get the inside-scoop on what they’re building, and hear why you should join their teams.
Ben Rudolph, founder of Peregrine
Ben’s path into software is not the typical Silicon Valley story; he began his engineering career not at a FAANG-like giant, but at the United Nations refugee agency. His co-founder, Nick Noone, took a different but parallel route: as Head of U.S. Special Operations at Palantir, he spent time working on national security problems where technology and real-world stakes collided. Both came out of those experiences convinced that software could be a lever for tackling some of the public sector’s hardest challenges.
The two first crossed paths as teammates on Stanford’s men’s gymnastics squad — “flipping software engineers”, as Ben puts it. Years later, they reunited to tackle a different kind of challenge: helping cash-strapped municipal governments turn raw data into safer communities through their startup, Peregrine.
Their platform serves as a real-time nerve center for public safety agencies nationwide, designed with the reality of government budgets and constraints in mind. Peregrine's tools deploy quickly and scale to fit tight municipal budgets. The platform has been used to combat mass-scale wildfires, coordinate emergency service efforts, provide disaster relief, and defuse organized crime networks.
Earlier this year, they announced their $190M Series C led by Sequoia Capital to continue delivering the best software for the public safety domain, and they’re hiring quickly to meet customer demand.
Join us next Wednesday to hear more of Ben’s story and how Peregrine is tackling one of government’s toughest challenges.
Vineet Edupuganti, founder of Cogent Security
Vineet knows what it takes to scale a security startup. He was an early engineer Abnormal AI, building the platform’s core technology before shifting to management as the team scaled 100x. Through interactions with hundreds of customers, a clear pattern emerged: vulnerability management was one of their most pressing concerns.
Late last year, he saw an opportunity to solve that problem himself. He assembled a founding team with a former Abnormal colleague and Coinbase's Head of Core Infrastructure to tackle the security challenges he'd seen plague customers firsthand.
Cogent Security is Vineet's bet on a fundamentally different approach to vulnerability management. The company's AI agents work autonomously—gathering context, identifying top risks, and executing fixes without human intervention. It's a large contrast to the manual, reactive tools that dominate the security landscape.
Since launching publicly in early July, Vineet has been deliberate about team building. "If you look at Cogent, it looks a lot more like any other applied AI company across verticals than it does a traditional security company," he tells his investors at Greylock. His thesis is straightforward: solving vulnerability management from the ground up requires rethinking the entire technology stack, which means recruiting top talent across all layers — not just veterans from legacy security firms.
Hear more of Vineet’s story and learn why you might be a good fit at next week’s showcase.
Want to hear more of their stories? Apply now to claim your seat at the showcase and meet these two breakout founders.