While sorting through my application for Startup Junkie's Cybersecurity cohort Fuel Accelerator In this programme, Sajjan Gautam had to brief the founders who were not familiar with the region.
“We've had to teach them quite a bit about Northwest Arkansas,” he said. “A lot of them don't know how great this place is. We start by talking about Walmart, Tyson Foods and the Waltons, and the conversation goes from there.”
Gautam is the entrepreneur in residence leading FUEL's 10-week cybersecurity program, which begins June 4 and will include eight companies from around the world. The participants are from Arkansas, Texas, California, Idaho, Argentina, Italy, Egypt and Israel, according to Darian Harris, director of FUEL.
Gautam is a former cybersecurity executive currently based in Bentonville as an advisor and investor. He has worked across several large corporate ecosystems including Goldman Sachs, Ernst & Young and Citigroup. Most recently, he served as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Arvest Bank for five and a half years before joining Fuel earlier this year.
Gautam is used to working in startups and would like to spend more time on that endeavor.
“I've always been interested in startups,” Gautam says, “and I worked in startups during my time at Citigroup before coming to Northwest Arkansas, and that continued after I moved to Arvest.”
Fuel is a no-cost, no-equity program run by Fayetteville's Startup Junkie Foundation, organized in partnership with Catapult Consulting, led by Tom Douglass, former director of emerging technologies for Walmart Inc., with programming support from Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund GrowthX.
The program provides hands-on education, workshops and support to guide companies to become “enterprise-ready.” Since its inception in 2018, Fuel has launched 51 cohort companies and six accelerator programs across the sectors of supply chain, medical technology and artificial intelligence.
Gautam, who has coached and lectured on the topic of cybersecurity in universities, said cybersecurity is becoming more sophisticated day by day.
“Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) have contributed to cybersecurity but have also created new challenges,” he said.
When it comes to cybersecurity technology and innovation, Northwest Arkansas represents a potential hub, Gautam said.
“There’s a lot of opportunity here and entrepreneurs are flocking to where the market is,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, especially when it comes to education. [about] “We're just starting to expand from Northwest Arkansas to other areas, but the potential is there.”
Bustazo, Arkansas-based software development startup Bastazo, which has ties to the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is one of the companies selected for Fuel's cybersecurity cohort. Bastazo, whose name means “bearing the burden” in Greek, uses AI and advanced analytics to support cybersecurity operations within industrial control systems.
Bustazo's initial industry focus is power utilities, with the company next looking at oil and gas and manufacturing.
“We see [Fuel] “This is a key moment for us,” said CEO Mauricio Iglesias. “As a startup looking to grow and expand into other industries, this is exciting. We hope to land a few customers through this program.”
Bastazo was founded by UA faculty in 2020 and is based on technology licensed from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Cybersecurity Center at UA in Fayetteville.
Since launching its first product in July 2023, the company has grown to 10 full-time employees and is in a growth phase. Bastazo has also raised funds for a $2.5 million seed round and just secured its first venture capital investor from Washington, DC.
“We've always been bootstrapped with government contracts and grants,” Iglesias said, “and we hope to grow to 15 employees by the end of the year.”
