Dave Furneaux

Chief Executive Officer and Chairman BlueIO

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Dave Furneaux is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of BlueIO, an investment holding company he describes as a “builder capital platform” rather than a conventional venture fund: it forms, builds and scales deep-technology companies rather than simply writing cheques into them, and it holds positions across cybersecurity, biotechnology, medical devices, agriculture and industrial technology. The distinction matters to how he works, because it explains why he has repeatedly taken operating roles inside companies BlueIO backs. The clearest example is Virsec Systems, the runtime application-protection company whose foundation he backed and which he ran as chief executive from 2020, leading it through a $100 million Series C. His career before BlueIO ran from an early role at the electronic design automation company Chrysalis Symbolic Design, acquired by Synopsys, through the founding and leadership of Kodiak Venture Partners, an early-stage deep-technology venture firm, and a series of early cybersecurity and networking investments.

Career Highlights

• Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of BlueIO, named as such on the firm’s own team page as of September 2026, alongside President and Vice Chairman Jan Haas.
• Founding investor in Virsec Systems, the runtime application-protection cybersecurity company, and its chief executive officer from 2020.
• Led Virsec through a $100 million Series C funding round.
• Founded and led Kodiak Venture Partners, an early-stage venture firm focused on deep technology.
• Was an early team member at Chrysalis Symbolic Design, the electronic design automation company later acquired by Synopsys.
• Built or invested in a portfolio that BlueIO lists as including Virsec Systems, CyberSaint, Greenlight Biosciences, Lumicell and Lufa Farms, spanning cybersecurity, synthetic biology, cancer-detection imaging and urban agriculture.
• Made early investments, according to secondary accounts of his record, in Watchfire, acquired by IBM, and in Skystone and Aironet, both acquired by Cisco.
• Holds a B.A. from Colorado College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Professional Journey

Furneaux’s career began on the operating side of deep technology rather than in finance. He was an early team member at Chrysalis Symbolic Design, an electronic design automation company working on the formal verification of chip designs, which was acquired by Synopsys. Starting inside a technically demanding startup rather than at a fund is the fact that best explains the rest of his career, because it set the pattern of investing in companies whose value rests on a hard engineering claim.

He moved into venture capital and founded Kodiak Venture Partners, an early-stage firm concentrating on deep technology, where he served as its leader. The portfolio he is credited with over that period is heavily weighted towards networking and security infrastructure, and includes, by secondary accounts of his record, Watchfire, the web application security and compliance company acquired by IBM, and Skystone Systems and Aironet Wireless Communications, both acquired by Cisco. Those are the kinds of exits that establish a reputation in enterprise infrastructure investing.

He then founded BlueIO, structured deliberately as a holding platform rather than a fund with a fixed life. BlueIO calls itself a builder capital platform and states an ambition to create “a world that is cleaner, healthier, and safer”, which is reflected in a portfolio that runs well beyond software: Greenlight Biosciences in RNA-based biotechnology, Lumicell in intraoperative cancer imaging, Lufa Farms in rooftop urban agriculture, and CyberSaint and Virsec Systems in cybersecurity. The team is small, listing three people, which is consistent with a model that puts its principals inside portfolio companies rather than running a large investment staff.

Virsec Systems is the company most closely associated with him. Virsec sells runtime application protection, an approach that defends software by checking that a running application only executes the instructions it was designed to execute, which is intended to stop ransomware, zero-day exploits and memory-based attacks on both cloud and legacy server workloads. He was a founding investor and board member, and in June 2020 took over as chief executive officer, moving from investor to operator at a point when the application-protection market was expanding sharply. During his tenure the company raised a $100 million Series C. Virsec has since moved on to new leadership, and its current materials name a different chief executive.

He is a graduate of Colorado College, where he took a B.A. and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Education

Colorado College

B.A.