About John Cowgill
John Cowgill is a partner at Costanoa Ventures, where he built the firm's cybersecurity practice and is the lead investor for Empirical Security. He has worked in venture capital since 2016.
Experience
This experience comes from official bios and from SEC filings. For roles taken from filings, the years are when the filings name John Cowgill in the role, so the role may have started earlier or lasted longer.
CV
Costanoa Ventures Current
Partner
Empirical Security, Inc.
Director
2025 – 2026 · Chicago, IL
Empirical Security sells exploit prediction models, a global one and one trained on each customer's data, to help security teams decide what to patch first.
Leap Services, Inc.
Director
2020 – 2026 · Chicago, IL
Leap launches and operates physical retail stores for brands.
Key Colleagues at Startups
The people John Cowgill works with at each company, as listed on that company's latest Form D.
Empirical Security, Inc. · Form D, Aug 3, 2026
EB
Edward Bellis
Co-founder & CEO, director
SW
Stephen Ward
Director
MR
Michael Roytman
Co-founder & CTO, director
JJ
Jay Jacobs
Co-founder & Chief Data Scientist
Leap Services, Inc. · Form D, Mar 12, 2026
JG
Jared Golden
Co-CEO and director
RZ
Rick Zullo
Director
AT
Amish Tolia
Chief Executive Officer and director
Fossa, Inc. · Form D, Jul 28, 2025
RunReveal, Inc. · Form D, Mar 10, 2023
EJ
Evan Johnson
Chief Executive Officer and director
AB
Alan Braithwaite
Executive officer and director
Sources
- SECEmpirical Security, Inc. Form D, filed Aug 3, 2026
- SECLeap Services, Inc. Form D, filed Mar 12, 2026
- SECFossa, Inc. Form D, filed Jul 28, 2025
- SECRunReveal, Inc. Form D, filed Mar 10, 2023
- Officialcostanoa.vc, Empirical Security portfolio page (Costanoa lead investor)
- Officialcostanoa.vc, seed investment post by John Cowgill (2025-07-17)
- OfficialEmpirical Security seed press release, PR Newswire (2025-07-17): quotes him as General Partner