This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. This week, another Spack went public on Wednesday. It's the Athena Technology Acquisition Corporation. It's a two d fifty million dollar blank check company co founded by our next guest, who also founded a cybersecurity company, Extreme Solution. She is chair of that company. She spent twenty two years in the military. So many chapters,
so impressive. Great to welcome phillis new How she's CEO and co founder Athena Technology Acquisition on the phone in New York City. Uh, phillis great to have you here on Bloomberg Radio. I cut a litt bit of your interview with our own Matt Miller earlier on Bloomberg Television. Um, first of all, congratulations, the spaces crowded though, why is spack? Well,
thank you for having me. Yeah. So, you know, we've deliberately created the company to target the spective in UH, in which our diverse team has the knowledge experience in
our professional relationships. And we're all women, and we were dedicated to ensuring that the women's benefit from being early movers in the fact, uh that we were able to achieve something that hadn't been done before, and so we what we decided to do was we realized that it was a lot of you know, people say, well the market is getting saturated, but we we we realized is that we had something that was very different than what
you see with most facts. How is it different just because of the so many women involved or well no, not necessarily. Well we're all yeah, that is one thing. We all women. But here's the thing. Here's a takeaway. When we look at we span across industries from investment banking, the private equity to VC to founders to creators. We that we have three um women in the fact that started businesses from nothing and are doing in a billion
of revenues. So we so we believed that founders like to talk to founders, We understand, and we believe that because of the proprietary Gale float that we've been able to put together, we believe that ore aspect is very different because it was strategically done to win. And I believe that any company that we bring forward will benefit from from this group of women that we've been able to put together. And I just want to put out some of the names. Stacy Abrams, k Coplevitz. Uh, she was,
of course former USA Networks founder. Uh, you have um, gosh, I'm going through the list. It's just appreciate. Yes, Kristin Dickey, former maaging director at black Rock. You you're right, they cross uh different world, you know, different parts of our investment world, our business world. Um. Having said that, though, so obviously you can go anywhere when it comes to investments, is there any criterion particularly that you think will be
a common theme among the investments that you're looking for. Well, again, this this goes back. So if we if we're we're targeting you know, revenue generating early you know, come to their stays and sin tech cyber security. Now, what you have been seeing is a lot of companies in the cyberspace. We again, we we've we've um strategically brought people into
this fact that had the cyber expertise. Uh. It's a it's a field that is obviously one that's uh not as complicated as people think, but it is a if you look at the growth, we've had six thousand per cent increases cyber attacks since COVID nineteen and so as a result of that, we wanted to capitalize off the tail winds that we're coming. And we realize that we have the level of expertise in the experience, and we
have founders and creators that have done this before. So we believe that this was this was really one of the things we wanted when we looked at the criteria. Who do we have on the team that have deep level of expertise and experience? Listen, and one think I've got to ask you, uh, when it comes to diversity. And you know, we know that companies, institutions, investments all
do better when you've got a diversity of thoughts. So and I asked this of all the institutions, uh, and leaders that come on and especially those that are largely still white men, are you, though, concerned that you will be missing out by not having diversity of voices in other words, having some men involved in terms of making
some of the investment decisions. It's kind of the reverse thing, right because I'm often asking guys like, where's the diversity, um, But you know what I'm saying, oh yeah, uh, And and I would tell you, um, even though we are women, all women with aspect, we have had advisors and are you know UM trusted advisors that we've asked reached out to and other spects. Bets Cohen is one of our spect sponsors where she has a great team. They're not all women, and so they've been in our corner a
hundred percent. We understand we're not targeting just women owned businesses were you know, that's that's were ideally we would hope if that would be a great opportunity that we could leverage. But we've realized that UM all voices at the table matters, and we're just all women lead. But it doesn't mean that we're not bringing all voices to the table, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, absolutely. Hey, I do also wonder there's so many spacts out there.
They've just taken off so much in the past year. How concerned are you about a lot of money be its back investors or private equity that they're all kind of chasing similar targets and what that means for the potential to really overpay for a target. We just have
about fifty seconds, then we'll come back and talk some more. Okay, Well, I would say you this this goes back to what I believe our team most important differentiator is our outstanding deal sourcings networks that we developed just for this fact, and our partnership of other organizations that provide a unique properatary deal flow and and and so we believe that, you know, there are a lot of companies that are not on others facts radar, and so these are companies
in that cyberspace. These are companies that are AI, these are companies we have deep relationships with some of the founders, you know, and so we we we understand that there's a lot of spects up there right now, but we believe that we we strategically put this together so that we knew that we have the partnership already. One of the areas that you mentioned cyber and that's certainly something that you know a lot about having founded a cybersecurity
firm as well. Um, I do wonder what types of cyber firms you're going to be looking to invest in, I asked, because looking at a couple of the cybersecurity etf that are out there, I Shares global X overall, the group is down. UM, you know, investors not so keen. It seems like on some of those names there's a lot of players out there, So what are you going to be looking for? Well, so if we go back to as I stated early about you know, cyber attacks being up by six thousand percent um, you look at
companies that perform vulnerability assessments endpoint solutions. We're looking at the type of companies that have integrated cyber analytics into their platforms, which is really given the predictive UH analytics in terms of potentially where and where an attack may happen. We're looking at cyber operational intelligence platforms. So I think, UH, understanding the market and knowing those companies that are out there that exist, that are doing really have some incredible
solutions are the ones. So we would be looking at based off of where we see the potential risk in our global UH you know cyber UH landscape as a whole. And when it comes to fintech, I really feel like this is an area, you know, whether it's the you know, we we've talked a lot about some of the online trading platforms. That certainly has been one of our big stories this week, but when you see fintech and disruption innovation,
there's a lot going on in that space. Any idea in terms of maybe the types of companies that you guys. Obviously you can't show your hand at this point, but I just wonder parts of the area of the fintech space that you find interesting. Well, again, we found finding a lot of the fintech integration platforms that integrate into UM you know that our user friendly for you know, for a lot of the financial institutes. But more importantly, if you look at companies where you've had a growth
um in terms of UH. You know, when I look at platforms that I I around the fintech area, I would focus UH and and I would tell you a lot of companies are focusing on those companies that have a component of privacy uh financial platforms. And what do
I mean by that? You look at uh some of the you know, privacy UH platforms that are now integrating into the financial most people are still a concerned about the risk a loss of data or the sharing of data and so those data plat those privacy platform that integrate into fintech solutions or what we what we would be hard again you can see sort of a trend
with us. We're looking at more you know, privacy, security, financial, but all in that area, yeah, which which is certainly on all of our radar considering some of the big uh, you know, cyber attacks that we've certainly seen. We are our self Bloomberg, one of our reporters doing a story about all of the surveillance cameras and and the hackavists that have been able to kind of expose to the world how many cameras are out there and how easy
it is to access. You have you and your team have roughly two years I believe to like buy up names um with this back. How quickly do you think you can put the money to work or or how quickly do you plan to put it to work? Well, I We'll tell you this. We intended to talk to companies day one of our eligibility to do that, and we certainly have. Again, we put this team together strategically understanding that the SPAC market is crowded. There were four
hundred spacts looking for companies to take public. A lot of high profelemends are jumping in as investors, but not every spect has the management team that offers the combination of financial operational expertise UH that we bring to the table. So we believe that based off of the proprietary pipeline that we've developed that we'll be talking to companies day one and hopefully be announcing the combination fairly soon. We'll look forward to it. I'm really curious to see the
companies that you guys have on your radar. Hey, just one last quick question, just got about thirty seconds all of you who are involved, is are all of you investing in the fund? Or or how is it you are one of our advisors are also investors and that's uh, it's just great to see women to be able to participate and uh economically as well. Agreed. Looking forward to hearing more UM and especially where you you guys ultimately place those investments. Phillis, thank you so much. Good luck.
Phillis new House, CEO and co founder of Athena Technology Acquisition Corps joining us on the phone in New York City,