High-security venturing

Ken Minihan and Jim Woolsey responded viscerally to the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- and not just because they are, respectively, former directors of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency.

Each had a son in harm’s way: Minihan’s at the Pentagon, Woolsey’s at the World Trade Center. Both escaped unharmed, but, says Minihan, “we were pretty pissed. We wanted to toughen the country up.” They approached Mark Maloney and Michael Steed of Washington-based private equity firm Paladin Capital Group with a proposal to raise a fund to invest in emerging security technologies. Minihan and Woolsey are now principals of the Paladin Homeland Security Fund, which had its first, $50 million closing in November on its way to a hoped-for $300 million by late this year. “We’ve come off a decade of inattention to security,” asserts Minihan, a retired Air Force lieutenant general. “These industries will grow from billions of dollars of revenues today into a trillion-dollar business by the end of this decade.” Paladin seeks investments in the $15 million to $30 million range; it led a $20 million round in January for Austin, Texasbased ClearCube Technology, which produces highly secure computer configurations known as blade servers.

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