Will Lin

Will Lin is currently CEO and co-founder of AKA Identity, a cybersecurity company he co-founded in 2023 with Rob Fry. Business Wire describes AKA Identity as building an AI-native identity management platform focused on identity visibility, observability, analytics, and fragmented IAM data. Forgepoint’s portfolio page lists AKA Identity as founded in 2023, partnered with Forgepoint in 2024, and led by CEO Will Lin.

Before AKA Identity, Lin spent roughly a decade helping build Forgepoint Capital. Forgepoint announced his promotion to Partner in March 2019, saying the firm was founded in 2015 when Alberto Yépez, Don Dixon, and Will Lin spun out of Trident Capital to form a cybersecurity-focused early-stage venture firm. In February 2021, Forgepoint promoted him to Managing Director, noting that he had risen from Vice President to Managing Director in five years and was responsible for leading investments, growing the investment team, expanding industry relationships, and supporting fundraising.

Earlier in his career, Lin worked at Trident Capital, where he supported investments in cybersecurity and infrastructure software, and began as an investment banking analyst in Citi’s Investment Banking Group. SC Media adds that at Citi he worked on strategic transactions and capital offerings involving companies such as Facebook, GoPro, and SAP. Lin graduated with Honors in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lin is also the author of *The VC Field Guide: Fundamentals of Venture Capital*, published by Wiley in May 2023. Wiley describes the book as a practical framework for how venture capital deals are analyzed, vetted, and made. He also co-created Security Tinkerers, a nonprofit community for security professionals, and has been listed as a Visiting Fellow at George Mason University’s National Security Institute.

• Lin’s investing work has centered on cybersecurity and infrastructure software, especially companies solving hard enterprise security problems for CISOs and security practitioners.
• At Forgepoint, he backed early-stage and growth cybersecurity companies, with documented board or investor roles across Seed, Series A, and Series B investments.
• His stated evaluation framework in *The VC Field Guide* is organized around six questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how; the book’s site maps those to team, product, timing, market, motivation, and execution.
• In data security, Lin has looked for large unsolved enterprise gaps. On Symmetry Systems, he said: “There is a white space in data security for the modern hybrid cloud world.”
• In identity, his current operating thesis is that IAM and security need a data layer. On AKA Identity, he said: “Identity is no longer just about access.”
• He appears most receptive to companies where security practitioners validate the pain, the technical approach is credible, and the go-to-market path fits enterprise security buying.