Michael Fey

Mike Fey is one of the more accomplished operators in enterprise cybersecurity, and his angel/venture activity flows directly from that career. He spent years at McAfee (joining around 2007) in senior technical and product leadership roles, including EVP & GM for enterprise products and CTO of Intel Security, and was closely involved as Intel acquired McAfee (a ~$7.7B deal). He then became President & COO of Blue Coat Systems (Dec 2014–Aug 2016), leading the growth that culminated in Symantec's ~$4.7B acquisition of Blue Coat, after which he served as President & COO of Symantec (Aug 2016–Dec 2018). He later ran D2IQ as CEO. He is also the author of *Security Battleground: An Executive Field Manual* and is a frequent speaker at major cybersecurity events (e.g., The Montgomery Summit).

In 2020, Fey co‑founded Island, the "enterprise browser" company, and has built it into one of the most valuable cybersecurity startups in the U.S. — reported at a multi‑billion‑dollar valuation and headquartered in the Dallas–Fort Worth area (Southlake, Texas), a location Fey has publicly championed over Silicon Valley. This operating role is central to his identity as an investor: founders pitch him as a category‑defining security operator, not a career financier.

A note on the "Westwood Capital" data in this record: Westwood Capital, LLC is a New York investment bank, and no public team page for a "Michael Fey" there could be verified (the referenced page returns 404). Every angel/venture data source (NFX Signal, Foundersuite, PitchBook, CB Insights, Crunchbase, Tracxn) instead maps "Michael/Mike Fey, angel investor" to the Island CEO profiled here. The stub's Westwood Capital email and San Francisco phone number should therefore be treated as unverified/likely mis‑attributed employer data rather than confirmed contact details.

On the fund side, Fey is a Co‑Founder / limited partner of Picture Capital, a seed‑focused fund launched around 2024 alongside veteran cyber entrepreneurs Mickey Boodaei, Dan Amiga, and Rakesh Loonkar (with Loonkar as GP). The fund was framed partly as a vehicle to support Israeli cybersecurity startups at a time when other capital had pulled back from the region.

• Thesis in one line: Back early‑stage cybersecurity and enterprise‑infrastructure companies led by strong technical/enterprise founders — the categories he has personally operated in and sold into.
• Stage: Seed and Series A; comfortable being an early check and adding operator credibility.
• Check size: ~$5K–$50K personally (sweet spot ~$25K); meaningfully larger through Picture Capital (which *led* Ocean Security's seed round).
• Sectors: Cybersecurity broadly — application/software security, identity (including non‑human identity), data security & privacy, secure access/SSE, SaaS security, and email/AI‑driven threat defense.
• What makes him say yes: Deep domain fit (security/enterprise), founders who can build category leaders, and companies he can help via board work and enterprise go‑to‑market relationships. He frequently co‑invests alongside top‑tier firms (Sequoia, Accel, Lightspeed), so syndicate quality matters.
• Board engagement: He takes active board seats rather than passive checks — reported board roles include Cycode, Open Systems, and Ontinue (and previously Axis Security and Bionic before their acquisitions).